Vol. 2 No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

7 1916-1941 : TRADITION AND CREATION
of decentralised factories, and for that we had an ideal
picture of little industries in the small towns and villages.
The Census returns replied in the name of Realism with the
flow from the fields to the cities, the decay of the small
villages, and even of some of the smaller towns. A natural
urge to keep out the alien supported the Censorship.
World Radio replies night after night. On the other hand
a world-war has assaulted our isolation, and we have
replied by armed neutrality.
There is this contradiction in big things and little.
Even in this little microcosm of THE BELL there must be
many contradictions. Every month Frank O'Connor defends
the traditional in poetry, but he has to print what he
can get. Just as one may see that the Abbey Theatre no
longer produces verse-plays, and that all its successes are
a brutal Naturalism. In fiction, as last month, we print
opposites, and even in those little opposites there was the
same opposition of the traditional and the experimental,
of reverence and revolt. For the better part of a year we
have been exploring assiduously, and nobody can say that
we try to jump off our own shadows, but if the reader looks
through our past issues he will see there no rigidly
traditional outlook.
One may see this challenge to tradition clearly in the
passing of our old symbolism. The Irish Literary Movement
and the 1916 Rebellion killed between them the old
wolf-dog and round-tower Ireland. It was to be expected.
History has a way of abandoning its young : too intent on
further creation to bother about the past. For history is
creative, not a frigidaire. It is largely the inevitability of
things ; like tradition it evolves and creates ; it is not just
something that people make. History has gone on
abandoning its young. One must go to old books and
museums, now, for Granuaile, the Shan Van Vocht,
Cathleen ni Houlihan, and the sword of Michael Collins,
and nobody but a moron dares to ask * Where were you
in 1916 ?' Of all our antique symbols there remain only