英美概况之爱尔兰4

Music and Dance
The oldest form of music is that embodied （体现）by the sean nos or “old style” of singing. Traditionally, sean nos is sung by the unaccompanied（无伴奏） voice. The singer will often close his eyes and hold one hand behind his ear, to hear himself better. The words are always in Irish. Usually the song is about unrequited （无结果的）love and is a lament（伤心） for lost love. The last line is spoken, not sung. The Irish pipe （风笛）is distinctive.
Oral Culture
Although the Irish do not generally now speak Irish, they do retain one element of their native culture: they talk. The Irish value good talk, and they love a good story. The basis for this is, of course, in the original peasant culture, which made the transfer from an oral to a written culture only slowly in the late 19th century.
What Is Irish about Irish Culture
Ireland is a culture where art flourishes, although the arts that flourish most vigorously are those associated with the ear, not the eye. Ireland is also a very people-oriented （以人 为本）society, which regards the family as central to its values. What is clear today is that Ireland is still a nation that is making itself—and the first place a nation makes itself is in its imagination.
Art Culture
Ireland is a traditional culture and it is true to say virtually every art form in Ireland derives from its rich folk heritage. In Ireland, writers may publish in either the Irish or the English language. In dance, Ireland is known throughout the world for the intricacy(错综复杂） and fervour （热情） of its folk dances, rearranged and modernized in the current stage production of Riverdance.
Language
No one may enter the civil service or the diplomatic core or the teaching profession in first- and second-level schools without having a certain level of competence in the Irish language. Despite such official pressures, the language that is spoken universally in the Republic of Ireland is a version of standard English known as Hiberno-English.
Visual Culture
If one looks at Ireland’s accomplishments （成就） they are in literature and music— arts of the ear, particularly as they are manifest（表演） in the old oral culture—not of the eye.
Literature
In modern times alone, the territory that has become the Republic of Ireland has been the home of four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature: the poets, W.B. Yeats(济慈1865-1929) and Seamus Heaney(1939-); and the playwrights, George Bernard Shaw(肖伯纳18561950) and Samuel Beckett(毕吉特）1906-1989). Self-conscious avant-garde: Oscar Wilde (18561900), James Joyce(1882-1941) and Samuel Beckett. In Ireland, the poet and the writer are honored above all other artists.
Chapter 14:
Irish Culture: Language, Literature and Arts
Languageቤተ መጻሕፍቲ ባይዱ
The issue of language is heavily politicized. Traditionally, the Irish people spoke their own language, called Irish or Erse. It is a very ancient (and difficult) language with a rich oral culture.
Music and Dance
Dancing is traditionally part of Irish culture. Fiddlers （小提琴手）became common in the early 19th century in Ireland and Irish fiddlers today are well-known for their repertoire（多 种剧目） of jigs and reels, hornpipes and slides（快步舞，旋转舞，号笛及U字型滑音管）.
What Is Irish about Irish Culture
Today Ireland is considered to be one of the most globally-oriented （面向世界的） societies in the Western world. One of the reasons that Irish people look outward, towards the larger world, is that they have had a history of emigration.
Language
The death blow to the Irish language was the Great Famine of 1845-48, in which about two million Irish people emigrated or died. Most of the Irish-speaker were peasants. After the first Irish national state was set up (the Free State of 1922), under Eamonn De Valera’s government, the school system was reconfigured （重新恢复）so that it taught the Irish language to all Irish children from the age of four until they left school at fifteen.
Sports Culture
The performance culture which elicits （表现 出）the most passionate response in the Irish people is sports, such as soccer or football, rugby football（橄榄球）, hurling （爱尔兰棒 球）and golf. Other widely popular sports are sailing, tennis and running. But that nearest the Irish heart must be the sport of horse-racing. Watching horse racing combines several elements that the Irish particularly enjoy: it is very sociable, involves valuable and elegant animals, and is an occasion for placing a bet.