Brian O'Nolan

Brian O'Nolan, Irish Brian Ó Nualláin ( born October 5, 1911 in Strabane, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, † April 1, 1966 in Dublin ) was an Irish writer.

Better known he is under his pseudonyms: under the name Flann O'Brien, he published four novels in English: At Swim -Two -Birds (1939 ) The Hard Life (1962 ) The Dalkey Archive (1964 ) The Third Policeman (1968, posthumously ), with Myles na gCopaleen he drew his from 1940 until his death in 1966, published in the Irish Times satirical column Cruiskeen Lawn and An Béal Bocht (1941 ), his only novel in Irish ( Gaelic ) language.

Life

Brian O'Nolan was born as the third of twelve children. From 1929 to 1935 he studied at University College Dublin and the University of Cologne, Irish, English and German. Already during his studies he published articles under numerous pseudonyms and was editor of the magazine Blather. From 1935 he worked as a government official, taught temporarily at University College Dublin and wrote for several newspapers. Around 1940 he wrote the three novels to Swim Two Birds, An Béal Bocht - in the Irish language under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen (German Myles of the little horse) - and The Third Policeman. The Third Policeman was rejected by publishers and published posthumously. He had borrowed from a character from Dion Boucicault melodrama The Colleen Bawn The pseudonym. From 1940 he published daily in the Irish Times also under this pseudonym, the satirical column Cruiskeen Lawn ( Anglicized version of Irish Cruiscin Lán, " full pitcher " ), appeared from the last 25 years nearly 3,000. In his environment was from the civil O'Nolan, against the intention of the Creator, a Myles.

The column Cruiskeen Lawn is an example of the multilingual humor, which is often found in Brian O'Nolan. Initially Irish, the column was usually written in English, but sometimes again in Irish or French, Latin or German, and sometimes in an invented his own Anglo- Irish hybrid. So he wanted to make " linguistic nationalists " and their mirage of Irish independence ridiculous. He also described in the column ironically many ingenious inventions and plans to improve the situation of the Irish nation. In the early 1940s he criticized the neutral foreign policy of the then Irish Fianna Fail government and thus contributed to the formation of political opinion. Among the Irish "all-purpose liberal" was ridiculed most sharply from him, the writer Seán O'Faolain.

In 1953 he had to leave the public service, after he had in his newspaper column written a satire about a minister. Although he henceforth had more time to write, O'Brien was unable to repeat his successful time as a writer first.

Brian O'Nolan was received as a unique creator of bizarre characters and a master of word game in the history of literature. The central themes of his works are: Irish life, death, "scientific" theories, drunkenness and bicycles and the sheep as an object of molecular physics thought experiments O'Brienscher as part of science parody.

Novelist

O'Nolans novels have thanks to their bizarre humor and their artful modernity associated metafiction found a large readership. At Swim - Two - Birds, named after the ford Snámh dá Én, English: Swim -Two -Birds, on the Shannon, is a novel about a student who wrote several stories in which act the people involved with each other, for example by itself ally against the imagined by the student author and in turn write even a novel. The Third Policeman, however, has a superficial action on hell vision of a young, living in the countryside Irish, shown against a background of satire disguised as academic debate about an eccentric scientist and philosopher named de Selby. In the same work which O'Brien man and bike still found room to introduce the atomic theory of the bicycle, according to through close contact atoms exchange: the bikes " vermenscheln ", " verfahrradeln " people. The protagonist in From Dalkeys archives, another young man encounters a penitent, elderly James Joyce, who reportedly never wrote one of his books and just trying to be absorbed by the Jesuits. Until this is achieved, Joyce worked as an assistant waiter in a resort. As in The Third Policeman also appears in this book on the enigmatic scientist de Selby, who is planning to remove all the oxygen from the atmosphere. The bicycle motif is again introduced in From Dalkeys archives by a policeman.

Other novels are The hard life, a fictional autobiography, and Irish Diary or The Barmen, the O'Brien wrote in Irish and himself translated into English. This, too, is a fictional autobiography, which is a parody of the autobiography of Tomás Ó Criomhthain called An t - Oileánach.

As a novelist, O'Nolan was heavily influenced by James Joyce. He had even tried to attend the same college as Joyce, and used to a fake interview with Joyce's father. He, however, remained skeptical about the cult of Joyce: I declare before God that I will have foam at the mouth when I hear that name Joyce one more time!

Reception

Brian O'Nolan is regarded as a major Irish writers of the 20th century. The British writer Anthony Burgess said of him: If we do not cherish the work of Flann O'Brien we are stupid fools who do not deserve to have great men. Flann O'Brien is a very important man. Burgess took on swim -two birds on its list of the 99 great novels.

At Swim - Two - Birds is now recognized as one of the most important novels of the modern age before 1945. It can even be seen as a pioneer novel of postmodernism, although the academic Keith Hopper convincingly argued that The Third Policeman - superficially less radical - is actually a very subversive and proto- post-modern book. At Swim - Two - Birds was one of the last books that read Joyce. He praised it over O'Nolan friends. This praise was subsequently used for many years on the covers of O'Brien's books. The title of gambling during the Easter Rising 1916 novel At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill (2001) is a reference to Flann O'Brien.

The science fiction writer and satirist Robert Anton Wilson took the fictitious, invented by O'Nolan scientist de Selby on in his novel cycle The Illuminati Chronicles.

Works (selection)

• At Swim -Two -Birds. Longman, London 1939 Two birds while swimming. Translated by Lore Fiedler, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1966.
• In Swim Two Birds. Translated by Harry Rowohlt and Helmut Mennicken. Haffmans, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-251-20071-2.
• At Swim - Two - Birds. Translated by Harry Rowohlt and Helmut Mennicken. Kein & Aber, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-0369-5104-0.

• The Third Policeman. Translated by Harry Rowohlt. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1975, ISBN 3-518-01446-3.

• The Barmen. Translated by Harry Rowohlt, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3- 518-01529 -X (also known as Irish CV ).

• The hard life. Translated by Annemarie Böll and Heinrich Boll. Nannen, Hamburg 1966.

• From Dalkeys archives. Translated by Harry Rowohlt. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-518-01623-7.