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E-mailI SEE Dick Keane was on his favourite hobby-horse (29 September) taking an opportunistic stick to Patrick Pearse on the issue of the commemorative stamp. Whatever about the issue of the stamp, he (Keane) takes a cynical, despicable and personal opportunity to accuse Pearse, by inference, of child molestation, in quoting his poem.
If Pearse was around in this enlightened time, his poem would be lauded, not only by the 'gay' community, but by all open-minded people. To publish a poem of such nature in the homophobic times in which Pearse lived was the act of a brave man indeed. In that context, he went on to prove his bravery later, when he, and men and women of his ilk, fought for, and died, to rid this country of the yoke of British imperialism.
Peter Pallas,
Toberteascain,
Ennis, Co Clare.
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That poem by Pearse has been presented as homoerotic, but this might be overlooking a 19th century poetic trend of romanticisation of childhood innocence.
It would help if a literary critic from academia with a specialist interest in 19th century English, predominantly British, romantic poetry would offer some observations on the literary idealisation of childhood.
Wordsworth did believe the Rousseauist idea that the small child is basically good but that as it gets older the evil experiences of adulthood 'ensnare the growing boy'. cf. Intimations of Immortality and other poems.
My own view of Pearse was that he was sexless and would never have married had he survived 1916. I'd say he was married to St. Enda's and the de-anglicisation of Irish culture and was too oblivious of sex and erotic feelings to harbour homoerotic or pederast feelings. I wouldn't enlist Freud into a close reading of his poem.