Russian Influence in Irish Literature (Русский след в ирландской литературе)
Alan Titley
University College, Cork
Abstract
On the one hand, the title of this article may seem like a triumph of hope over experience, but on the other hand, it seems so general as to be meaningless. On the one hand, it can hardly be said that two countries on opposite sides of Europe have made any contact at all; on the other hand, the attempt to prove the presence of literary influence is more often a game of the imagination than an establishment of any specific connections. But I hope to show that on the road to modernism in the 19th century, both literatures had much in common, and that there is a clear and undeniable influence of Russian literature in the best Irish-language prose of the 20th century.