Abroad: Where masterpieces were created

The rocky island, Inishmaan, inspired writer J.M. Synge, above. Below, right, is a poster for the play that Pamela and her class viewed before visiting the place of Synge's inspiration. Below, left, is Teach Synge, the cottage J.M. Synge stayed at during his visits to the Aran Island of Inishmaan. (Photos by Pamela Reynolds)

Inishmaan, where Synge found his 'Playboy'

By Pamela Reynolds

Aug. 22, Galway -- The wind bites through my fleece with icy precision, and I am enveloped in a deafening silence. And to think that this is the mildest season on the island!

I hide from the wind in Cathaoir Synge, or Synge's chair, a sheltered spot high above the sea where the famous playwright spent many hours lost in thought staring out at the ocean. Gulls cry and soar upon the wind, rocks shift beneath my feet.

It was here, on Inishmaan, that Synge was told a story about a man from Connemara who killed his father and was hidden from the police by the islanders. It was here that he witnessed the grief and harsh tenuousness of life on an island where death upon the sea was an expected reality. It was here he attended a wake for a young man found washed upon the shore, where a woman digging her son's grave cried as she came across the skull of her own mother.

It is on this island that the Irish playwright John Millington Synge received his inspiration for his plays, Playboy of the Western World and Riders of the Sea, as well as his book The Aran Islands.

Seeing a play in the Abbey

Only a few days ago in Dublin, my classmates and I attended a performance of Synge's Playboy of the Western World in the Abbey Theatre. The play first opened in the Abbey, Ireland's national theatre, in 1907.

The version of the play we watched was a more modern interpretation of this once highly controversial play. I was thrilled to sit inside the Abbey watching Synge's masterpiece of poetic drama. However, I was unable to truly understand the harsh life imprinted upon Synge's strong characters until I visited the Aran Islands.

'I am in love'

On our quest to further investigate literary Ireland, today we visited Inis Meáin, or Inishmaan, one of the three Aran Islands Synge visited. In 1898 Synge came to the island and wrote: "With this limestone Inishmaan I am in love." Inishmaan is indeed a giant rocky knoll jutting up out of the Atlantic.

Standing on top of the 20-foot walls of the island's largest ring fort, Dún Chonchúir, my eyes gaze across the island at high stone walls enclosing small green fields.

From here, the world is an interwoven patchwork of blinding white stone, vibrant emerald grass and azure sea and sky. In the distance I can see the other two Aran islands, Inishmore and Inisheer and the Connemara Coast.

Picturing Synge

The waves crash upon the shore, and I can picture Synge watching a group of fishermen muscle a curagh (black tar boat) up the rocky beach.

Women dressed in Aran knitwear prepare seaweed to fertilize their rocky fields. Children run about the cliffs, cutting what little turf they can find for their cottage fires.

Today, motor boats have replaced the old currachs, the traditional knit skirts are worn mostly for show and packaged turf briquettes are purchased from the mainland.

Yet the old lifestyle remains largely unchanged. Most islanders still live in the cottages of their great grandparents. Teach Synge, the cottage in which Synge lodged during his visits to the island, still hosts budding artists along with a developing library of Synge's works and deep connections to the Aran Islands.

Much larger and still inhabited, Inishmaan is perhaps the antithesis of the Great Blasket Island. Yet standing on its windswept, rocky face I feel even more isolated than I did on the Blasket Island.

Although life has changed drastically for the Aran islanders with the introduction of the tourist industry, I can still feel remnants of the fading culture Synge sought to capture.