#thomas kinsella

[victusinveritas]

[finnlongman]

Thomas Kinsella, poet and one of the best-known translators of the Táin, has died at the age of 93 (22nd December, 2021). [Irish Times article here]

I’ve been haunted for several years by a poem of his that I read in undergrad and have never been able to find again (“I have glided in loveless dream transit | over the shadowy sea floor | satisfied in the knowledge | that if I once slacken in my savagery | I will drown”), and his translation of the Táin is a classic that I must have read and recommended dozens of times.

May his memory be a blessing!

[eirikrjs]

Do you sometimes think people don't really get Cu Chulainn, or take the whole warp spasm thing a bit too literally?

First, I should really reread my copies of the Tain, the 1969 Thomas Kinsella translation and the modern one by Ciaran Carson, to compare and contrast the differences, something I've never done.

But I honestly think you're right. The truth about Cu Chulainn, if you take the stories literally, is that he's not only extremely powerful, he's also a extremely violent, sometimes in ways aloof, other times deliberately cruel. You might not even want to be in the same room as him or he might sling a stone through your brains accidentally or intentionally. Quite a bit different from the knightly Cu Chulainn you see in Japanese media!

The warp spasm/riastrad/torque is on a whole 'nother level and yeah, I very much doubt it's meant to be taken literally; if so, it's so grotesque that it has no precedent elsewhere in hero myths. If you're unfamiliar with the description, this page has Kinsella's translation of the description. Some of the highlights:

His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins and knees switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front.

he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane could not probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek.

his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared; his lungs and liver flapped in his mouth and throat;

It's easy to find depictions and art that follow the description down to most details (never seen the lung/liver flapping in his mouth) or compare him to the Incredible Hulk (ew). Honestly, this situation is somewhat comparable to biblically-accurate angels, though at least the Tain is more descriptive.

But I think what's missing here is context. Cu Chulainn enters the warp spasm to avenge the prior killings of Emain Macha youth, riding on the armed chariot of Laeg; he slaughters hundreds upon hundreds of warriors. Then, and this is the important part, the next morning the de-torqued Cu Chulainn emerges to survey the armies and show the people he is no longer "unearthly."

Indeed, he is described as "handsome" but moreover he is still given impossible descriptors like having tri-colored hair, seven pupils, seven toes on each foot, and seven fingers on each hand. You never seen people clinging to a Cu Chulainn with that many fingers and toes, but the warm-spasm is more visceral and sounds like a cool superhero move so it gets more attention. I feel it's all supposed to represent Cu Chulainn as the idealized Celtic warrior: he is ugly and fearsome in battle (to his enemies), beautiful outside of battle (to his allies).

Also in Kinsella's translation are illustrations by Irish artist Louis le Brocquy, including those of the warm-spasm:

Though abstract silhouettes, they are also not Hulks. They convey a violent battle-fury you might seen on a real adrenaline-fueled warrior with flushed skin and bulging veins and the comparisons I've seen to berserkers I think are apt. "Tain-accurate warp-spasm Cu Chulainn" seems like a modern myth.

[theshatterednotes]

Irish poet Thomas Kinsella

[teenpelagius]

Thomas Kinsella

[poem-today]

A poem by Thomas Kinsella

Another September

Dreams fled away, this country bedroom, raw With the touch of the dawn, wrapped in a minor peace, Hears through an open window the garden draw Long pitch black breaths, lay bare its apple trees, Ripe pear trees, brambles, windfall-sweetened soil, Exhale rough sweetness against the starry slates. Nearer the river sleeps St. John's, all toil Locked fast inside a dream with iron gates.

Domestic Autumn, like an animal Long used to handling by those countrymen, Rubs her kind hide against the bedroom wall Sensing a fragrant child come back again - Not this half-tolerated consciousness That plants its grammar in her yielding weather But that unspeaking daughter, growing less Familiar where we fell asleep together.

Wakeful moth wings blunder near a chair, Toss their light shell at the glass, and go To inhabit the living starlight. Stranded hair Stirs on still linen. It is as though The black breathing that billows her sleep, her name, Drugged under judgement, waned and - bearing daggers And balances - down the lampless darkness they came, Moving like women : Justice, Truth, such figures.

Thomas Kinsella

[existential-celestial]

[…]                                           It is as though The black breathing that billows her sleep, her name, Drugged under judgement, waned and - bearing daggers And balances–down the lampless darkness they came, Moving like women : Justice, Truth, such figures.

Thomas Kinsella, from “Another September,” in Collected Poems

[perkwunos]

The Tain, translated by Thomas Kinsella