James Stevens' book "A Pot of Gold" is printed in Russian. Stevens (1880-1950) - Associate in Nursing Irish classic, one amongst the creators of the culture of freelance eire and one amongst the foremost furious critics of the freelance Irish state, that was fashioned within the 1920-1930s. "Bitter publishes an editorial by philologue Robert W. Maslena "The economic science of Fantastic: Flann O'Brien and James Stevens", within which he compares the "Pot of Gold" with the novel "Third policeman" by another Irish classic Flann O'Brien (1911-1966), and at a similar time tells a short story of Irish popular opinion within the half of the 20th century: from the hopes of the start of the century to the following skepticism.
About the author
Since 1999, Robert W. Maslen has been a senior lecturer in English literature at the University of port and has conjointly lectured at university, the colleges of London and Exeter, Dartmouth, New Hampshire, St. Thomas' University, Minnesota, and others. Dr Maslen focuses on trendy literature, in addition as fantasy and fiction; he's the author of 3 books and plenty of dozens of analysis articles. In 2015, Robert Maslen began teaching the world's initial university literature program dedicated entirely to the study of fantasy and fiction.
In this essay, I will show that Flann O'Brien's Third Officer (1940) is (among different things) a radical reinvention of James Stevens, one amongst the foremost beloved Irish novels of the twentieth century. process the eccentric nationalist fantasy of Stevens for a younger generation, O'Brien equips the weather of the initial novel in strange new figures, custom-made to the gloomy new social and political reality of the Thirties. Stevens thought of his book as Associate in Nursing act of the imagination against the ungodly union of the church with Brits state, exposing the mutual facilitate of the poor against the reactionary self-centeredness of the center category, an avid material body - against the cultural and spiritual authorities, seeking to suppress it, Associate in Nursingd predicting a superb future for an freelance, equal, quasi-speaking land. O'Brien reinterprets the novel as Associate in Nursing tortuous entice, and during this new incarnation, Ireland, its individuals and its landscape mix in with the world trend. they're moving towards totalitarian Stalinism, Associate in Nursingd from it towards an inevitable outcome: self-destruction. The key elements of each novels - pastoral, typically lyrical vision of Irish country, the nest of self-taught philosophers, a person doomed to death, and eccentric, however at a similar time dangerous law enforcement officials. however and why such similar components square measure redesigned and manufacture such radically totally different texts, every of that is Associate in Nursing equally mordacious assessment of Ireland's position at some extent in history admire each novels - that's what the essay is regarding.
O'Brien's debt to Stevens has been noted persistently. In 1966, Associate in Nursing anonymous journalist wrote within the Times Literary Appendix that O'Brien owed way more to "the traditions of contemporary Irish literary fantasy and romance, wherever the shaping figure is James Stevens," than to modernist joysowns (although it's unclear why choose from these 2 debts, since author and Stevens were friends). Thirty years later, Keith Hopper [philologist and film scholarly person from Oxford] noted that Sergeant Pluck was "a fictional composite attribute borrowed from different texts (most notably from law officer James Stevens' Pot of Gold), and Carol Taaffa [Irish publicist] recently in agreement that "O'Nolan's [one of O'Brien's permanent aliases]'s nearest precursor in his literary fantasy is "The Pot of Gold" by James Stevens. None of those observers have captive on the far side the comments created, however the terribly frequency with that O'Brien's liability to Stevens is emphasised suggests that it's time to interact in a very shut comparison for an extended time.
From Taaffeta's purpose of read, "The Third Policeman" is "a decisively unpolitical work of absurdity," reflective O'Brien's ambiguous angle towards First State Valera's eire, that is stuck between the anger at the oppressive attitude of the state towards its voters and also the agreement with this attitude. It appears to Pine Tree State that O'Brien's obvious fascination with "Potty Gold" is taken because the key to a decisively political reading of "The Third officer," that reinforces Shelly Brewerk's purpose of view: beneath the surface of O'Brien's masterpiece lies "rebellious sentiment. Neither "The Pot of Gold" nor James Stevens is in any means "apolitical" - they're too deeply imbued with the spirit of national policy that was thus pervasive before war I.
Thus, O'Brien's call to translate Stevens' book into the context of the national fermentation that preceded the Second war was in itself a political act. the actual fact that political opinions clothed to be thus totally different is attributed to the variations within the category origins of the 2 writers, in addition on the days after they created. And these variations seem most clearly within the contrastive fantastic economies within the novels of Stevens and O'Brien.
To be continued on the next part