On leaving Ireland

Leaving Ireland is as difficult as deserting the church. For two groups of the Irish population – artists and the poor – the central question about Ireland was always how to get out of it. Exile and emigration are as much Irish pursuits as hurling and poteen-brewing, and living abroad as much a modality of Irishness as living on Aran. In the 19th century, more Irish lived outside the country than in it; leaving Ireland became part of what it meant to live there. If it hadn’t been for the contributions of the New York police force or the Chicago building industry, whole villages in Kerry and Donegal would have sunk without trace. The Irish population was haemorrhaging like an open wound, forced out by the threat of starvation and the dreariness of colonial life; so that if the Irish are an international race, they have the British to thank for it. As for the writers, it was more spiritual than material poverty which drove them to Trieste or Toronto, in flight from clerical oppression, sectarian wrangling and a dearth of usable cultural traditions. There is a wry irony in the recruitment of the Wildes, Joyces and Becketts to the English literary canon: having helped to reduce their country to a stagnant colonial enclave, the English then coolly appropriated those Irish artists who took to their heels to escape this dire condition

Source Terry Eagleton