Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1989. 19/3. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 19)
Bertha, Csilla: Distortions of Character in John B. Keane's Peasant Plays
- 427non-being, reason and imagination, the soul and the body, Use transcendentally divine and the immanentiy temporal and so on. ... In contradistinction to the orthodox dualist logic of either/or , the Irish mind may be seen to favour a more dialectic logic of both/and : an intellectual ability to hold the traditional oppositions of classical reason together in creative confluence." (1985:9) This "doublemindedness" or "double vision" has always created very favourable ground for fantasy as an important and vital part of Irish culture. So it is in the play: fantasy permeates reality; in some form and to some degree it touches the life of all the characters. Even the most sober and reasonable figure, Trassie, in spite of tier better knowledge, half believes in the magic power of the faith-healer (who is, of course, a quack), and even though she does not hope too much that the doctor would be able to cure her brother, she is seriously afraid of his curse should she refuse his service. The men all have dreams about women, although Peadar's, the wandering thatcher's dreams about Trassie's beauty are iiealthy and real; Qanzie's ravings are based on his evil, but ntill practical plans, and only Neelus's are totally other-worldly. Peadar's attitude is the ideal: he is sensitive enough to the irrational and to supernatural beauty to sympathize with Neelus's admiration for Sharon, but is sober enough to base his life on realities and to appreciate beauty in its attainable form. Reality and fantasy are very closely interrelated not only in the way of thinking of the characters but also in the plot. The hypnotic power of Oinzie is only at the border between reality and fantasy. He is like a rural Cipolla - he even uses Cipolla's (cf., lhomas Mann: Mario and the Magici an ) magic equipment, the whip, but in a much ruder way. That he paralyzes most people around him is only a stretching of psychological reality. Neelus's escape into fantasy is a different matter: a total absorbtion. For his love for a phantom lie gives up the possibility of love in reality, although in several ways he keeps contact with what is happening around him. At the beginning his fantasy seems only daydreaming, but gradually it takes up new dimensions: it will give him courage at the end to save his sister from the very real danger of Oinzie's knife. Thus fantasy, that first diverges from the real world,
