Vol. 3, No. 1, Summer 2004

[page 151]

Dan Cawthon, Ph. D.
Saint Mary’s College

Images Of Transcendence
In The Plays of Brian Friel

Naming transcendence has been the primary task of theatre in the western world since its beginnings over two and one-half millennia ago. The theatre of Dionysus in Athens was built on sacred ground; the plays themselves probed the nature of the gods and their relationship to mortal humans. The audiences that assembled for the dramatic festivals did so in order to glimpse what is not visible in day-to-day existence--the transcendent action underlying their entrances and exits on the stage of life. The myths that were enacted awakened them to the mysterious ways of the cosmos. They framed the fundamental questions of human nature and confronted the cold silence of the grave. For the Greeks, the theatrical experience and the religious experience were the same.

Early in the twentieth century, Eugene O'Neill challenged the theatre of the modern world to re-discover a theatre rooted in transcendence. He insisted that the most daunting reality to be faced by the playwrights of his day was the death of God and the failure of science to provide a viable alternative. His entire career was dedicated to the struggle of naming, like the Greeks did, that reality which he calls (borrowing Strindberg's term) "behind life."

In the final act of O'Neill's autobiographical Long Day's Journey Into Night, the young poet, Edmund, refers to this reality as "something greater than my own life, or the life of Man . . . Life itself! . . . God, if you want to put it that way."(1) To perceive this reality is to be charged to give it a shape, a name:

It is the thesis of this paper that the unseen reality that haunts the plays of Eugene O'Neill is to be discerned, as well, in the plays of Irish playwright Brian Friel. Like O'Neill, Friel has struggled to image-forth that reality which lies behind, shapes, and drives human action. In his plays, with very few exceptions, he treads on to that slippery territory where the human and transcendent "otherness" intersect.

In other words, both Friel and O'Neill take seriously the plight of the modern; both of them leave behind the Catholic institutional framework in which they were raised. Yet, each of their souls has been wounded by the experience of something beyond, alive and active within them, demanding that they reject the world-view of their cultures and set out on an unknown path. Their calling is relentless, religious. It demands a surrender of their lives, promising nothing in return except the fleeting assurance that they have been spared a life of death-doling conformity.

Matt Wolff, in the April, 1994 issue of American Theatre, has detected Friel's preoccupation with transcendence. He points out that the "ineffable" is a constant theme in Friel's plays:

While Wolff finds similarities between Friel and his compatriot Samuel Beckett, I am suggesting that Friel is aligned, as well, with the dramatic vision of O'Neill. The protagonists of [page 153] Friel's plays bear within their souls "a touch of the poet." Wounded by the perception of transcendent otherness, of mystery, they can no longer find solace in the homeland of family, country or religion. For a second they "see" the secret which escapes the sight ot those around them; they set out to give it a shape, a form. Like O'Neill's Edmund, they confess to being strangers who never feel at home, who do not really want and are not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death. Finally, they perceive the futility of their enterprise: each of them echoes Edmund's plaintiff cry: "I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered . . . Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people."(4)

Friel is a prolific writer. In addition to over fifty short stories, many of which were published in the New Yorker during the late fifties and early sixties, he has written over twenty plays since The Enemy Within was performed in 1962. In the United States, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Lovers, Faith Healer, Translations, Dancing at Lughnasa, Wonderful Tennessee, and Molly Sweeny have been the most frequently performed. The Friel cannon is filled with images of the quest for and dim perception of transcendence. In almost all of his plays, the protagonist is under the charge of an unseen force to leave the familiar in order to take up life on the boundary between two worlds.

In The Enemy Within, the playwright's first play to be produced, Saint Columba leaves Ireland with his companions to begin life anew at Iona, off the coast of northern Scotland. The journey is not from one geographical place to another: it is from the homeland of his birth to the mysterious kingdom of his soul. The play recounts the cost of surrendering to the call of transcendence. In the final scene, Columba curses Ireland for having seductively robbed him of his Christ, of sucking his blood, of stealing his manhood: "What more do you demand of me, damned Ireland? My soul? My immortal soul? Damned, damned, damned Ireland!" But his voice breaks; he is suddenly aware of what he is leaving behind: "Soft, green Ireland-beautiful, green Ireland-my lovely green Ireland. O my Ireland." He then musters the courage to confront his destiny on the boundary: "We were. . .asleep. . .But we are awake now and ready to begin again--to begin again--to begin again."(5)

[page 154] In Philadelphia, Here I Come!, transcendence is imaged by splitting the personality of the protagonist into the "public" Gar and the "private" Gar. The former wears the shackles of Irish enculturation, whereas Private Gar is "the unseen man, the man within, the conscience, the alter ego, the secret thoughts, the id. . . the spirit."(6) The play recounts Gar's growing awareness of life in a world other than the one in which he lives. However, as in The Enemy Within, life on the boundary is paralyzing. In the course of the play, Gar says goodbye to the girl he has loved (and lost), his mates, his school teacher, the parish canon. In the final scene, he anticipates the separation from Madge, the housekeeper who helped raise him and, like Columba, experiences the pain of the border: Private Gar taunts Public: "God, Boy, why do you have to leave? Why? Why?" He can only stammer: "I don't know. I-I-I don't know."(7)

In Crystal and Fox, Fox Melarkey and his wife Crystal roam the countryside seeking audiences for their traveling carnival show. They have no permanent home. Malarkey's description of what drives him is reminiscent of O'Neill's reflection in A Long Day's Journey Into Night: