{"id":17299,"date":"2025-01-31T15:40:36","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T15:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=17299"},"modified":"2025-01-31T15:40:36","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T15:40:36","slug":"my-mother-at-the-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2025\/01\/31\/my-mother-at-the-time\/","title":{"rendered":"My Mother (at the Time)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none;\" title=\"Embed Player\" src=\"https:\/\/play.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/35098190\/height\/192\/theme\/modern\/size\/large\/thumbnail\/yes\/custom-color\/e7e7e7\/time-start\/00:00:00\/playlist-height\/200\/direction\/backward\/font-color\/000000\" width=\"100%\" height=\"192\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>This is a special episode of our Cassandra Voices podcast, where host Luke Sheehan travelled to Amsterdam to interview the Irish critic, art historian and Joycean named Patrick Healy.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In a suburb of Tokyo, sometime in the future, a Japanese scholar of Irish literature is studying an obscure text. He has heard of it through a Joycean friend. The work is Beyond the Pale, an immersion into the mind of a character not unlike its author, Patrick Healy, who was an Irish critic and philosopher who spent much of his life in Amsterdam. The whole heavy volume of Beyond the Pale sits before him. It is a little daunting.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-17311 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_0198.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Who is Patrick Healy?\u00a0 The Japanese scholar has been finding out, bit by bit. Reliable information is hard to find.<\/p>\n<p>Some of this is by design. Some of it because of the cruelty (or at least indifference) of the writer\u2019s early fate. Healy was a gifted child, but born to an unmarried mother in postwar Ireland, and thus was sent to foster families and to the care of various \u201cSisters\u201d of the church.<\/p>\n<p>The Japanese scholar has been able to locate a separate, early text published by Healy back\u00a0 in 1985, called Up in the Air and Down. It is a short novella, a stream of consciousness spoken from the point of view of a child living through such a reality. Near the start of this work he reads:<\/p>\n<p><em>I didn\u2019t have a mummy or daddy because they died just like one of the cats who was Snowy\u2019s mammy and now I remember I cried because the cat would never come back <\/em>(p.10)<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Japanese scholar likes this detail of the cat. However, he already knows this account of the parents may be an untruth told to the boy narrator, if the character can be said to closely match the real Healy. He finds more of this apparent attempt to placate and to steer the boy\u2019s thinking on the next page:<\/p>\n<p><em>Sister was my mammy now and so were all the big girls and I was lucky because I had lots of mammies and daddies and Sister said that some little boys and girls have only one and I had lots and I should be very happy and that these two nice people who were going to be my mummy and daddy are waiting for their new boy and I wasn\u2019t to be afraid and they lived far away but we would see them soon, but I wanted to go back and play and why was Sister taking me away and not being my mammy anymore, maybe Sister was going to heaven too, and I was afraid.<\/em> (ps. 10-11)<\/p>\n<p>The short book ends with the boy narrator affirming his existence in the celestial terms of his day, showing his need for play and exploration:<\/p>\n<p><em>I am not a secret because God knows who I am even when I play with the yo-yo that goes Up in the Air and Down.<\/em> (p.55)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17308\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_0194-copy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\" \/><\/p>\n<p>All of this is important because the huge, late-life opus the Japanese Joycean will now begin to study is likewise framed around a life in 20th century Ireland. A growing up given form by a dislocation of parenthood, and an attempt to seize upon a renewed existence in young adulthood, through language and music and sensation.<\/p>\n<p>The Japanese scholar knows that the Irish cultural output of books and films addressing the plight of \u201cfallen\u201d women who were separated from their offspring and often pressed into misery and forced labour in laundries and convents has been substantial. Yet here it is: a little-known testament by someone who emerged from such circumstances and sought to form his own mind, rather than let it be formed negatively by them. Not directly concerned with the young boy\u2019s voice, it instead forms an internal, semi-conscious portrait of the man who emerged, grasping life through an adoration of words and ideas.<\/p>\n<p>The Japanese scholar begins to read Beyond the Pale, and he can hear the melodies of Healy\u2019s voice, which he already knows from his epic recording of Finnegan\u2019s Wake. It thrills him that this Joyce-evoking book begins with an unexpected burst of Japanese words: as the \u201cstory\u201d (if it is a story) meanders out into existence, we encounter a young Irish lad being tutored in Japanese by a \u201cViscount Taffe\u201d, who seems to be simultaneously preparing a beef consomm\u00e9; a consomm\u00e9 \u201cdevoutly to be wished.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Unlike this hypothetical Japanese scholar, in the summer of 2024 I had the opportunity to meet Patrick Healy, in Amsterdam, where he was completing work on Beyond the Pale in a cavernous apartment looking like the workshop of an ancient Egyptian priest. Confined there during Amsterdam\u2019s hard lockdowns, he had begun to submerge more deeply in his memories.\u00a0 This was something of an intimidating foray into his world for me, at first. I had heard stories, including from my own father, and other intellectually-minded people of their generation, about this brilliant and erudite figure. Perhaps more than a little rogueish, he would sit in Bewley\u2019s in 1980s Dublin and mesmerise them all with his sophistry. The reputation for seduction and for cunning behaviour was reinforced for the Healy of that long ago time by many. Yet his life in the meantime, hard to unwind and with very little detail available, made more sense through the encounter with him and with his work. He had invented a career for himself unlike those of his peers: as a scholar he spent significant time in Germany and German archives, mastering that language, eventually settling in Holland where he taught at the university of Delft. HIs links to Ireland were kept in tenuous health over the years. He was a very close friend of the barrister and historian Frank Callanan, also a personal friend, who had sadly passed away unexpectedly in 2021.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17309\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_0200-copy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Healy\u2014who once performed a read through and recording of Finnegan\u2019s Wake in the early 90s, getting through the whole thing in four days\u2014has a famously fine voice.<\/p>\n<p>Selections from our affable 3-day conversation in Amsterdam follow here. After, you may access the <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/posts\/my-mother-at-121203062\">bonus episode<\/a> <\/span>to hear more of Patrick reading at length from Beyond the Pale. Don\u2019t worry about the Ariadne\u2019s thread of the story, if there is one. Just try to hear the Irish soul that is alive in his voice. This is, I feel, the best way to savor the hidden currents and magical word play that Healy has worked into his text.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">My Mother (at the Time) &#8211; Bonus Episode<br \/>\nAvailable to all our Patreon supporters.<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/5yBxikDm7w\">https:\/\/t.co\/5yBxikDm7w<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/VoicesCassandra\/status\/1885381028623122512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 31, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Here below are two testimonials from writer and journalist Bridget Hourican and human rights lawyer David Langwallner<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Bridget Hourican<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>I\u2019ve been haunted by a poem of Patrick Healy\u2019s called \u2018Stoic Fire\u2019 since I read it maybe ten years ago. The title, and as I recall it, the poem itself, is a kind of oxymoron because fire is passionate, a conflagration, and stoicism is dispassionate, quietly enduring. I think stoic fire describes Patrick.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>He is poet, visual artist, art critic, translator, philosopher of aesthetics and novelist. Before he was all those, he was \u2013 I\u2019m told reliably by everyone who was there then \u2013 the best debater in UCD and Trinity (he attended both). His heckles were legendary, his voice astonishing. Reviewing his translation of Karl Kraus\u2019s epic play \u2018Last Days of Mankind\u2019, Eileen Battersby shrewdly noted that \u2018Healy&#8217;s musicality and feel for the rhythms of speech\u2026 possibly explains why his Kraus is so vibrant\u2019. Perhaps the greatest use of his voice is his recording of Finnegans Wake, which my late husband, Frank Callanan told me, he listened to right through one night with Margaret O\u2019Callaghan, and it left them shattered, delirious, in tears, ecstatic. I believe this was one of the things that spurred Frank to write his book on Joyce.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Luke Sheehan introduced me to podcasts, more or less. Before he (or anyone) was making podcasts, he was seeking out unusual and arcane material and people. He would come back and recount his findings in ways that were unanticipated, circuitous, marvellously detailed (by marvellous I mean the detail was not where you would expect it) and funny, always very funny. Luke is also poet, critic and short-story writer but I\u2019ve always thought his great gift was for oral narratives (or as we now call them, podcasts).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Although I know both of them, I\u2019m not quite sure how Luke tracked Patrick down and got him on the record, but what a fabulous thing that he has done this, and that we have Patrick\u2019s voice telling his story and exploring his ideas, in this immensely subtle and moving curation by Luke. I noticed, very early on when I was with Frank, that every time he mentioned Patrick\u2019s name, someone would whip round and demand with fierce urgency \u2018Patrick Healy? where is he?\u2019 \u00a0It is like Luke to have acted on his own fierce urgency and brought us this.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17315\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-01-31-at-16.45.52-e1738342029432.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1200\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>David Langwallner<\/strong><\/p>\n<div><em><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">I am very pleased that Luke Sheehan is doing this podcast on Patrick Healey. From the late 1970&#8217;s through the late 1980&#8217;s\u00a0 often in great penury he was one of the most outstanding cultural figures in Dublin. A winner of The Irish Times debating competition as he stresses as an individual where he became the kind of fool to the King Lears of his contemporaries.\u00a0 Mostly dead.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n<div><em><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">He is the greatest conversationalist and cafe side philosopher I have ever encountered and that includes the jurist Ronald Dworkin.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n<div><em><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">He is man of Olympian intellect and great personal grace charm and civility which the Dutch through his architecture Professorship have recognized. The loss was Irelands. He was also a great mentor to me and when he played Oscar Wilde to my playing Edwards Carson in a reenactment of the trial of Oscar Wilde strange to say now with David Norris and Alice Glynn as expert witnesses he queues to the graduate memorial building extended the full extent of Westmoreland street.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">In this trial Oscar won and so has Patrick!\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17304\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/b470b5bf-9050-46be-a821-79f56545faa8-e1738340746596.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1200\" \/><\/div>\n<div><em><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Since then an interest we very much share in common and crucial to our times he has become an expert in the Viennese intellectuals of the Weimar Repubic most noticeable Karl Krauss.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n<div><em><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">He is the last of great old Dublin Joycean in fact and one hopes his new book gets the attention he richly deserves.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n<div><em><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Otherwise he will be most upset.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeff This is a special episode of our Cassandra Voices podcast, where host Luke Sheehan travelled to Amsterdam to interview the Irish critic, art historian and Joycean named Patrick Healy. In a suburb of Tokyo, sometime in the future, a Japanese scholar of Irish literature is studying an obscure text. He has heard of it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17300,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[85,1446,4583,4611,4654,5723,6281,6359,7016,7017,7018,7019,7020,7021,7022,7298,8922,9422],"class_list":["post-17299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcast","tag-at","tag-cassandra-voices-podcast","tag-irish-literature-podcast","tag-irish-podcast","tag-irish-writer-podcast","tag-luke-sheehan-podcast-host","tag-mother","tag-my-mother-at-the-time","tag-patrick-healty-amsterdam","tag-patrick-healy","tag-patrick-healy-cassandra-voices","tag-patrick-healy-culture","tag-patrick-healy-literature","tag-patrick-healy-reading","tag-patrick-healy-writer","tag-podcast","tag-the","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}