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216 LITERATÛRZINÂTNE, FOLKLORISTIKA, MÂKSLA
tural backwater that time forgot. He said no one who ever did anything stayed in
Ireland. You had to get out to be recognized.” 12
However, as it is proven later, he heavily pays for his youthful maximalism. Everything
is reversed in this modern version of exile; although the causes of emigration such
as “inflations, cuts, unemployment, all of that” are “[the] same old story” 13 , Eddie has
not achieved anything in comparison to his Joycean counterpart Gallaher. In several
pages, or in several years if we follow the plot, there comes a refutation: “The old career
hadn’t been going exactly to plan. He was getting there alright. But much slower
that he thought. Still, that was the business. Things got a bit lonely, he said. He got so
frustrated, so down. It was hard being an exile. He didn’t want to be pretentious or
anything, but he knew how Sam Beckett must have felt.” 14 The last words of the invitation
“to come here [in London] for good” 15 sound as unconscious self–mockery.
The first story sets the tone for the whole volume: the time for emigration has
gone; now it is time to see the results. The reader enters the space where former or,
rather, New Dubliners strive to live. The previously unknown territory today is rendered
habitable, nevertheless the background constantly reminds of itself, making
Irish people alien or Other.
The demarcation line is deeply rooted in the minds of both parties. A taxi driver
whose wife is half Irish “loved Ireland”. “Lovely country. Terrible what was going
on over there, though. He said they were bloody savages.” 16 Thinking of the problematic
space, he unintentionally switches to the usage of the pronoun ‘they’, thus
subconsciously marking the border separating two worlds.
The experience of crossing the real border is vividly described by the narrator of
the next story Mothers Were All the Same. “I hadn’t done anything but the way he
[custom officer] looked at me made me feel like some kind of terrorist, just the same.”
17 The topical theme of terrorism is ever–present in the book. “There were posters
everywhere, saying that unattended luggage would be removed by the cops and
blown up.” 18 The territory of the conflict is full of soldiers; “everybody seemed to be
wearing a uniform”. 19 These are only small fragments to construct the whole picture
from; the oppressiveness of the atmosphere is masterfully recreated through such
unobtrusive remarks.
Irish authors naturally concern themselves with the problems of power; terrorism,
the police state, armed rebellion as well as the nature of politics and the consequences
of political action are the themes Irish writers are drawn to. They, “conscious
of the troubled history of their country struggle for independence and by the continuing
sharp and cruel division between Catholic and Protestant in the North, cannot
avoid acquiring [such] a body of experience…” 20
But, returning to the plot line, finally the narrator comes to London, “such an
overwhelming place. So huge and anonymous and impersonal. So different from
Dublin.” 21 However, impressions become ambiguously verbalized when realistic details
such as dirty phone boxes full of prostitutes’ advertisements, too expensive cafés
and El Dorado hotels immediately ruining any expectations raised by the name, are
depicted. Certainly it is not the whole picture, but that is the part observed by the
majority of newcomers. Feelings of unreality, irrationality and absurdity sprout from
the tension between great expectations and freezy welcome of the paradise regained.