History Is Always With Us
With William Trevor, history intrudes into the present in ways that change both people and events.
But Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran are not figures from the 1916 uprising. They are figures from an earlier time in Irish history, an earlier rebellion, an earlier defiance against the interloper that too long defined Ireland in the context of another civilization. A civilization that not once, but several times, sought to bring Ireland under control through famine and oppression. The interloper who gave rise to Swift's "Modest Proposal" and who stood by as the whole island perished in the famine. And this past lives with the past that haunts the lives of Tom and his sister--a past that is pieced together in the course of the story and which in its great gravity is inescapable in the course of it.
A note on "Low Sunday"--The close of the Octave of Easter--the second Sunday of the Easter Season.
From "Low Sunday, 1950"It is in the inversions, in the subtle variation from expected of the prose that the past comes forward. The lovers do not speak of "Ireland as it would be one day," but of "Ireland as it would one day be." It was not here that Robert had walked with Sarah, rather, "here it was." These subtle shifts move us into the past with Tom as he thinks about the rebellion that did not set him and his sister free--rather it bound them in tighter than the repression had done, even as it freed the country they lived in.
in The Hill Bachelors
William Trevor
The song always came to him in the territory of the lovers it celebrated; here it was that Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran had walked too. Far ahead of him, the last of the sun no longer brightened the gorse on the slopes of Kilmashogue, where their stifled romance had been a happiness. Fiery, handsome Robert Emmet, foolish insurgent; gentle Sarah. In their company, Tom thought of them as friends--here or in the deerpark below the distant gorse slopes. They had sat in its summerhouse, talking of Ireland as it would one day be, and of themselves and how they'd be too. They had wandered in the future, as Tom now wandered in the past to eavesdrop in pretence. Part of today it was, the walk and being with them.
But Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran are not figures from the 1916 uprising. They are figures from an earlier time in Irish history, an earlier rebellion, an earlier defiance against the interloper that too long defined Ireland in the context of another civilization. A civilization that not once, but several times, sought to bring Ireland under control through famine and oppression. The interloper who gave rise to Swift's "Modest Proposal" and who stood by as the whole island perished in the famine. And this past lives with the past that haunts the lives of Tom and his sister--a past that is pieced together in the course of the story and which in its great gravity is inescapable in the course of it.
A note on "Low Sunday"--The close of the Octave of Easter--the second Sunday of the Easter Season.
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