Edna Longley's second collection of essays for Bloodaxe investigates the
links between Irish literature (especially contemporary poetry), Irish
culture and Irish politics. The Living Stream takes its title from
Yeats's poem 'Easter 1916' 'Hearts with one purpose alone/ Through
summer and winter seem/ Enchanted to a stone/ To trouble the living
stream...' By questioning the fixed purposes of both nationalism and
unionism, literature has helped to make living streams flow in Ireland.
Edna Longley shows in particular where recent Northern Irish writing,
together with the critical debates it has occasioned, fits into this
process of change. In her introduction, which includes a hard-hitting
critique of The Field Day Anthology, Edna Longley argues that it's time
for Irish literary criticism to adopt the "revisionist" approach that
characterises the writing of Irish history, which would mean paying more
attention to religious factors, to literary relations with Britain, and
to the cultural diversity that underlies creative diversity. These ideas
inform her consideration of such topics as: the historical imaginations
of Northern Irish poets; Belfast in literature; Protestant writers after
Irish Independence; the Thirties generation of Northern Irish writers;
the influence of Louis MacNeice; aesthetic differences between poetry
from the North and from the Republic. The book also contains a reflection
on the 75th anniversary of the Easter Rising, and Edna Longley's
controversial pamphlet From Cathleen to Anorexia: The Breakdown of
Irelands.
