May 29, 2024

Hiked to Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral. Passed Sullivan Quay on the way, where I felt a frisson of remembrance. To a bar there (it must have changed its name since the event, and I don’t recall the current one) I came in 1980 to hear an Irish poet and met Liam Broderick, who lingers in memory as one of the great and momentary loves. I did seek him once later, a task impossible unless you’ve more than a name to go on, even adding that he was a university student. Forty-four years ago. It cannot be endured. Realized my journals from 2005 are on this computer, whereby discovering The Rose Lodge, the lovely B&B that I had when I spent New Year’s here, is still in operation, though my hostess Alice must be long retired. I spent more time in pubs in 2005 than I do now. Didn’t go to plays or operas every night. Could count on erotic assignations, as I cannot, or dare not, now. 

In the Cathedral a lovely docent was far more eager to give me a tour than I was to take it– wanting to be alone with my thoughts–but on it went, and I did learn a great deal. She asserts that the Cathedral was built as an assertive monument to Anglicanism in a time when Irish Catholics were beginning to build churches of their own again. That explains its voluptuous Victorian overstatement of every detail. It still remains loudly majestic. Forty-four years ago I met the assistant dean (or somebody) and we talked about Spenser. The ambulatory was closed for repairs, and I waited 25 years to see it, and saw it again today. The red Cork marble of the church trim is now used up. The docent told me twice that when the old cathedral was pulled own, they found one of King Billy’s cannonballs lodged in the tower. 

Cork is some 300 years older than Dublin. One does not feel such antiquity in the stones. 

Tonight, the National Opera Company’s La Traviata. I had the best possible seat, second inhabited row, dead center, the only impediment being the back of the director’s head. He was energetic and had lovely, silky hair. I’ve always been lucky in theater seats. I’d seen the opera years ago in London, but remember nothing but Violetta’s dress. It was gorgeous and adept in all the ways a show like that is meant to be gorgeous and adept. The choruses I sang with the Asheville Symphony made better sense in context. But, also, it was ludicrous, without one moment of what anyone would recognize as actual human emotion. This is not a flaw, but a typical and expected aspect of the art form, Italian Kabuki, a Venetian mask set to shield one from all untidy true (and therefore hurtful)  emotion and allow the curated tempests of a soap opera. I’d forgotten how flimsy and absurd the crisis is. It doesn’t matter to anyone who buys in. I did not fully buy in, alas, while admiring, as I had not before, Verdi’s musical and theatrical mastery. The young lady beside me lives in Alaska but was brought to the opera by her grandfather, who lives in New Hampshire– they have relatives or something in Cork. The Japanese man on the other side wore the only suit in the house and recorded the show on his phone. 

Drunken boys sing in the plaza below my window, between the hotel and the river.