【英文原著类】RIDERS TO THE SEA(葬身海底).pdf

RIDERS TO THE SEA
RIDERS TO THE SEA
by J. M. SYNGE
1
RIDERS TO THE SEA
INTRODUCTION
It must have been on Synge's second visit to the Aran Islands that he
had the experience out of which was wrought what many believe to be his
greatest play. The scene of "Riders to the Sea" is laid in a cottage on
Inishmaan, the middle and most interesting island of the Aran group.
While Synge was on Inishmaan, the story came to him of a man whose
body had been washed up on the far away coast of Donegal, and who, by
reason of certain peculiarities of dress, was suspected to be from the island.
In due course, he was recognised as a native of Inishmaan, in exactly the
manner described in the play, and perhaps one of the most poignantly
vivid passages in Synge's book on "The Aran Islands" relates the incident
of his burial.
The other element in the story which Synge introduces into the play is
equally true. Many tales of "second sight" are to be heard among Celtic
races. In fact, they are mon as to arouse little or no wonder in the
minds of the people. It is just such a tale, which there seems no valid
reason for doubting, that Synge heard, and that gave the title, "Riders to
the Sea", to his play. It is the dramatist's high distinction that he has
simply taken the materials which lay ready to his hand, and by the power
of sympathy woven them, with little modification, into a tragedy which,
for dramatic irony and noble pity, has no equal among its contemporaries.
Great tragedy, it is frequently claimed with some show of justice, has
perforce departed with the advance of modern life and plicated
tangle of interests and forts. A highly developed civilisation,
with its attendant specialisation of culture, tends ever to lose sight of those
elemental forces, those primal emotions, naked to wind and sky, which are
the stuff from which great drama is wrought by the artist, but which, as it
would seem, are rapidly departing from us. It is only in the far pla