Brendan Behan
Brendan Behan | |
---|---|
Irish republican struggle, often autobiographical | |
Notable works | The Quare Fellow The Hostage Borstal Boy |
Spouse | |
Children | Blanaid Behan |
Parents | Stephen Behan (father) Kathleen Behan (mother) |
Relatives | Dominic Behan (brother) Brian Behan (brother) Rory Furlong aka Roger Casement Furlong (brother) |
Brendan Francis Aidan Behan
An
In 1954, Behan's first play, The Quare Fellow, was produced in Dublin. It was well received; however, it was the 1956 production at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in Stratford, London, that gained Behan a wider reputation. This was helped by a famous drunken interview on BBC television with Malcolm Muggeridge. In 1958, Behan's play in the Irish language, An Giall had its debut at Dublin's Damer Theatre. Later, The Hostage, Behan's English-language adaptation of An Giall, met with great success internationally. Behan's autobiographical novel, Borstal Boy, was published the same year and became a worldwide best-seller.
By the early 1960s, Behan reached the peak of his fame. He spent increasing amounts of time in
Early life
Behan was born in the inner city of Dublin at Holles Street Hospital on 9 February 1923 into an educated working-class family.[9]
His mother, Kathleen Behan, née Kearney, had two sons, Sean Furlong and Rory (Roger Casement Furlong), from her first marriage to compositor Jack Furlong; after Brendan was born she had three more sons and a daughter: Seamus, Brian, Dominic and Carmel.[10]
They first lived in a house on Russell Street near Mountjoy Square owned by his grandmother, Christine English, who owned a number of properties in the area. Brendan's father Stephen Behan, a house painter who had fought in the War of Independence, read classic literature to the children at bedtime including the works of Zola, Galsworthy, and Maupassant; their mother Kathleen took them on literary tours of the city. She remained politically active all her life and was a personal friend of the Irish leader Michael Collins. Kathleen published her autobiography, Mother of All The Behans, a collaboration with her son Brian, in 1984.
Brendan Behan wrote a lament to Collins, The Laughing Boy, at the age of thirteen. The title was from the affectionate nickname Mrs Behan gave to Collins.
Behan's uncle Peadar Kearney wrote The Soldier's Song, which became the Irish national anthem Amhrán na bhFiann when translated into Irish.[9] His brother Dominic was also a songwriter, best known for the song The Patriot Game;[11] His brother Brian was a prominent radical political activist and public speaker, actor, author, and playwright.[12][13][14]
Biographer Ulick O'Connor wrote that one day, aged eight, Brendan was returning home with his granny and a friend from a pub. A passer-by remarked, "Oh, my! Isn't it terrible, ma'am, to see such a beautiful child deformed?" "How dare you," joked his granny. "He's not deformed; he's just drunk!"
In 1937, the Behan family moved to a newly-built local council housing scheme in Kildare Road, Crumlin, then seen by Dubliners as the countryside – Stephen muttered that the working classes were being sent "To Hell or to Kimmage" a parody of Oliver Cromwell's demand that the Irish be sent "To Hell or to Connacht". At this stage, Behan left school at 13 to enter apprenticeship to follow in his father's and both grandfathers' footsteps as a house painter.[9]
IRA activities
Behan became a member of
At 16, Behan joined the IRA and embarked on an unauthorised solo mission to England to set off a bomb at the
Refusing to be turned, the 16-year-old Behan was sentenced to three years in a borstal (Hollesley Bay,[15] once under the care of Cyril Joyce[16]) and did not return to Ireland until 1941. He wrote about the experience in the memoir Borstal Boy.
In 1942, during the
He was first incarcerated in
Writer
Behan's prison experiences were central to his writing career. In Mountjoy he wrote his first play, The Landlady and also began to write short stories and other prose. It was a literary magazine called Envoy (A Review of Literature and Art), founded by John Ryan, that first published Behan's short stories and his first poem. Some of his early work was also published in The Bell, the leading Irish literary magazine of the time. He learned Irish in prison and, after his release in 1946, he spent some time in the Gaeltacht areas of counties Galway and Kerry, where he started writing poetry in Irish.
During this period he was employed by the Commissioners of Irish Lights,[20] where the lighthouse keeper of Saint John's Point, County Down, recommending his dismissal, described him as “the worst specimen” he had met in 30 years of service, adding that he showed "careless indifference" and "no respect for property".[21][22]
He left Ireland and all its perceived social pressures to live in Paris in the early 1950s. There, he felt he could lose himself and release the artist within. Although he still drank heavily, he managed to earn a living, supposedly by writing pornography.[citation needed] He returned to Dublin and began to write seriously, and to be published in serious papers such as The Irish Times, for which he wrote In 1953, drawing on his extensive knowledge of criminal activity in Dublin and Paris, he wrote a serial that was later published as The Scarperer.
Throughout the rest of his writing career, he would rise at seven in the morning and work until noon, when the pubs opened. He began to write for radio, and his play The Leaving Party was broadcast. Literary Ireland in the 1950s was a place where people drank. Behan cultivated a reputation as carouser-in-chief and swayed shoulder-to-shoulder with other literati of the day who used the pub McDaid's as their base:
Behan's fortunes changed in 1954, with the appearance of his play The Quare Fellow. Originally called The Twisting of Another Rope and influenced by his time spent in jail, it chronicles the vicissitudes of prison life leading up to the execution of "The quare fellow", a character who is never seen. The prison dialogue is vivid and laced with satire but reveals to the reader the human detritus that surrounds capital punishment. Produced in the Pike Theatre, in Dublin, the play ran for six months. In May 1956, The Quare Fellow opened in the Theatre Royal Stratford East, in a production by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop. Subsequently, it transferred to the West End. Behan generated immense publicity for The Quare Fellow as a result of a drunken appearance on the Malcolm Muggeridge TV show. The English, relatively unaccustomed to public drunkenness in authors, took him to their hearts. A fellow guest on the show, Irish-American actor Jackie Gleason, reportedly said about the incident: "It wasn't an act of God, but an act of Guinness!" Behan and Gleason went on to forge a friendship. Behan loved the story of how, walking along the street in London shortly after this episode, a Cockney approached him and exclaimed that he understood every word he had said—drunk or not—but had not a clue what "that bugger Muggeridge was on about!" While addled, Brendan would clamber on stage and recite the play's signature song, The Auld Triangle. The transfer of the play to Broadway provided Behan with international recognition. Rumours still abound that Littlewood contributed much of the text of The Quare Fellow and led to the saying, "Dylan Thomas wrote Under Milk Wood, Brendan Behan wrote under Littlewood". Littlewood remained a supporter, visiting him in Dublin in 1960.[24]
In 1958, his Irish-language play An Giall (
His autobiographical novel Borstal Boy followed in 1958. In the vivid memoir of his time in St Andrews House, Hollesley Bay Colony Borstal, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, England. (The site of St Andrews House is now a Category D men's prison and Young Offenders Institution). An original voice in Irish literature boomed out from its pages. The language is both acerbic and delicate, the portrayal of inmates and "screws" cerebral. For a Republican, though, it is not a vitriolic attack on Britain; it delineates Behan's move away from violence. In one account, an inmate strives to entice Behan into chanting political slogans with him. Behan curses and damns him in his mind, hoping that he would cease his rantings-hardly the sign of a troublesome prisoner. By the end, the idealistic boy rebel emerges as a realistic young man, who recognises the truth: violence, especially political violence, is futile. The 1950s literary critic Kenneth Tynan said: "If the English hoard words like misers... Behan sends them out on a spree, ribald, flushed, and spoiling for a fight." He was now established as one of the leading Irish writers of his generation.
Behan revered the memory of Father
This section's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. (June 2015) |
Personal life
In February 1955, Behan married horticultural illustrator for The Irish Times, Beatrice Ffrench Salkeld, daughter of the painter Cecil Ffrench Salkeld. A daughter, Blanaid, was born in 1963, shortly before Behan's death.[9] Various biographies have established that Behan was bisexual to some degree.[26][27]
Decline and death
Behan found fame difficult. He was a long-term heavy drinker (describing himself, on one occasion, as "a drinker with a writing problem" and claiming "I only drink on two occasions—when I'm thirsty and when I'm not") and developed diabetes in the early 1950s but this was not diagnosed until 1956.[9] As his fame grew, so too did his alcohol addiction. This combination resulted in a series of famously drunken public appearances, on both stage and television. Behan's favourite drink was champagne and sherry.
The public wanted the witty, iconoclastic, genial "broth of a boy", and he gave that to them in abundance, once exclaiming: "There's no bad publicity except an obituary." His health suffered, with diabetic comas and seizures occurring regularly. The public who once extended their arms now closed ranks against him; publicans flung him from their premises. His books, Brendan Behan's Island, Brendan Behan's New York and Confessions of an Irish Rebel, published in 1962 and 1964, were dictated into a tape recorder because he was no longer able to write or type for long enough to be able to finish them.[28]
Behan died on 20 March 1964 after collapsing at the Harbour Lights bar (now Harkin's Harbour Bar) in Echlin Street, Dublin. He was transferred to the Meath Hospital in central Dublin, where he died, aged 41. At his funeral he was given a full IRA guard of honour, which escorted his coffin. It was described by several newspapers as the biggest Irish funeral of all time after those of Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell.[29]
Acclaimed Irish sculptor James Power sculpted Brendan Behan's death mask.[30]
Following his death, his widow had a son,
Behan had a one-night stand in 1961 with Valerie Danby-Smith,[32][33] who was Ernest Hemingway's personal assistant and later married his son, Dr Gregory Hemingway.[34] Nine months later, Valerie gave birth to a son she named Brendan. Brendan Behan died two years later, having never met his son.[33]
In popular culture
Behan is frequently mentioned in works of popular culture. His work has been a significant influence in the writings of
He was named by the US website Irish Central as one of the greatest Irish writers of all time.[36]
Australian singer songwriter
Behan is referenced in Thinking Voyager 2 Type Things, a song from the 1990 Bob Geldof album, Vegetarians of Love, with the lyrics So rise up Brendan Behan and like a drunken Lazarus / Let's traipse the high bronze of the evening sky like crack crazed kings.
Chicago-based band
Behan's two poems from his work The Hostage, On the eighteenth day of November and The Laughing Boy were translated into Swedish and recorded by Ann Sofi Nilsson on the album När kommer dagen. The same poems were translated in 1966 to Greek and recorded by Maria Farantouri on the album Ένας όμηρος (The hostage) by Mikis Theodorakis.
Irish actor Shay Duffin wrote and performed a one-person show in which he portrayed Behan.[37]
A pub named after Behan is located in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, Massachusetts. A bronze sculpture of the writer sits on the banks of the Royal canal, while a bronze of Behan's head sits inside Searson's bar, one of his watering holes, on Pembroke Road, Dublin..[38]
According to J.P. Donleavy's History of The Ginger Man, Behan was instrumental in bringing Donleavy in contact with M. Girodios of Olympia Press (Paris) to help Donleavy's first novel, The Ginger Man, be published despite its having been ostracised by the world literature community for its "filth" and "obscenity".
In the season 4 Mad Men episode Blowing Smoke, which premiered on 10 October 2010, Midge Daniels introduces Don to her playwright husband, Perry, and says, "When we met, I said he looked like Brendan Behan."
In May 2011, Brendan at the Chelsea, written by Behan's niece
Morrissey's 2014 song Mountjoy references the writer: Brendan Behan's laughter rings / For what he had or hadn’t done / For he knew then as I know now / That for each and every one of us / We all lose / Rich or poor, / We all lose / Rich or poor, they all lose.[39][40]
In 1959, on the Album Songs for Swingin' Sellers, Peter Sellers parodies Behan's TV interviews in the sketch 'In a Free State' - an interview with Mr Bedham, an Irish playwright who is "slurred, angry, panting and ready to commit murder to get at a drink". According to the journalist William J. Weatherby, Behan's wife admired Sellers' impersonation of her husband and considered Bedham's references to "the thirst" the most accurate part of the sketch. The Sketch was written by Max Schreiner with music by Ron Goodwin.
Works
Plays
- The Quare Fellow (1954)
- An Giall (The Hostage) (1958)
- Behan wrote the play in Irish, and translated it to English.
- Richard's Cork Leg (1972)
- Moving Out (one-act play, commissioned for radio)
- A Garden Party (one-act play, commissioned for radio)
- The Big House (1957, one-act play, commissioned for radio)
Books
- Borstal Boy (1958)
- Brendan Behan's Island (1962)
- Hold Your Hour and Have Another (1963)
- Brendan Behan's New York (1964)
- Confessions of an Irish Rebel (1965)
- The Scarperer (1963)
- After The Wake: Twenty-One Prose Works Including Previously Unpublished Material (posthumous – 1981)
Music
- Brendan Behan Sings Irish Folksongs and Ballads Spoken Arts Records SAC760 (1985)
- The Captains and the Kings
Biographies
- Brendan Behan – A Life by Michael O'Sullivan
- My Brother Brendan by Dominic Behan
- Brendan Behan by Ulick O'Connor
- The Brothers Behan by Brian Behan
- With Brendan Behan by Peter Arthurs
- The Crazy Life of Brendan Behan: The Rise and Fall of Dublin's Laughing Boy by Frank Gray
- My Life with Brendan by Beatrice Behan
- Brendan Behan, Man and Showman by Rae Jeffs
References
- ^ Brendan Behan: A Life, Michael O'Sullivan, pg 23
- ^ Brendan Behan: A Life, Michael O'Sullivan, pg xi
- ^ "Remembering the Past: Brendan Behan, a rebel and a writer, | An Phoblacht". www.anphoblacht.com. Retrieved 23 March 2022.
- ^ Nolan, Megan (16 March 2024). It must be wonderful to be free. Archive on 4. United Kingdom: BBC Radio 4.
- ^ Prone, Terry (17 April 2023). "Collective Silence spared sexual aggressors like Brendan Behan". Irish Examiner. Retrieved 16 March 2024.
- ^ "NYC – Chelsea – Hotel Chelsea – James Schuyler, Brendan Behan". Flickr. 12 August 2007. Archived from the original on 11 May 2017. Retrieved 25 May 2017.
- ^ "Brendan's tragic voyage: Behan in the USA: The Rise and Fall of the Most Famous Irishman in New York". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 1 November 2014. Retrieved 25 May 2017.
- ^ "Behan enters alcoholics clinic for treatment". The Globe and Mail. 28 March 1961.
- ^ a b c d e Joan Littlewood, 'Behan, (Francis) Brendan (1923–1964)’, Brendan Behan Archived 23 September 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on line ed., Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 14 June 2014 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
- ^ Dictionary of Irish Biography, Behan, Kathleen https://www.dib.ie/biography/behan-kathleen-a0542
- ^ Patriot Game, lyrics Archived 8 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine. Brobdingnagian Bards. Retrieved 14 June 2014
- ^ Green, Martin (5 November 2002). "Obituary: Brian Behan". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 21 September 2016. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
- ^ "Brian Behan". The Telegraph. 4 November 2002. Archived from the original on 12 May 2014. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
- ^ "Brian Behan, 75, Irish Playwright And Member of a Literary Family". The New York Times. Associated Press. 9 November 2002. p. A20. Archived from the original on 2 July 2020. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
- ^
Behan, Brendan (1990). Borstal Boy (New ed.). Arrow. ISBN 978-0099706502.
- ISBN 9781461660279. Archived from the original on 27 July 2020. Retrieved 14 August 2014 – via Google Search.
- ISBN 978-0-692-04283-0.
- ^ Thorne, Pg. 375
- Arlington House, The National Archives, London 2004
- ^ McConville, Marie Louise (4 October 2017). "Funeral of 'kind' lighthouse keeper who struck up friendship with Brendan Behan". The Irish News. Archived from the original on 4 October 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2021.
- ISBN 0953852806.
He is the worst specimen I have met in 30 years service. I urge his dismissal from the job now before good material is rendered useless and the place ruined.
- ^ "St John's Point Lighthouse (and Brendan Behan)". COASTAL. 5 June 2018. Archived from the original on 14 August 2020. Retrieved 29 March 2021.
- ^ Cavendish, Dominic (31 January 2008). "Brendan at the Chelsea: less large than life". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 5 November 2018. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
It hints at Behan's bisexuality without getting explicit and never paints him, as Patrick Kavanaugh (sic) once described him, as "evil incarnate".
- ^ "August 4th, 1960". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 25 March 2016. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
- ^ Patrick Kenny (2017), To Raise the Fallen: A Selection of the War Letters, Prayers, and Spiritual Writings of Fr. Willie Doyle, S.J., Ignatius Press, page 32.
- ^ "Journalism Archive".
- ^ "Brendan Behan discovers New York City". 10 April 2020.
- ^ Jeffs, Rae, Brendan Behan, Man and Showman (1966)
- ^ "Remembering the literary legend Brendan Behan with some of his top quotes". IrishCentral.com. 20 March 2017. Archived from the original on 30 May 2017. Retrieved 25 May 2017.
- ^ Acclaimed sculptor of Behan's death mask dies aged 90 by Denise Clarke, Irish Independent April 17 2009
- ^ Ed Moloney (2003). A Secret History of the IRA. Penguin. p. 51.
- ^ "Mother of Behan's son who became a Hemingway wife". Irish Independent. 14 February 2010. Archived from the original on 12 January 2020. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
- ^ a b O'Riordan, Alison (10 January 2010). "Secret of a love affair that united Behan and Hemingway as family". Irish Independent. Archived from the original on 12 May 2018. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
- ^ "The influence of Brendan Behan's women on Tom O'Brien's latest play". The Irish Post. 25 June 2014. Archived from the original on 6 September 2019. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
- ^ Behan Statue to be unveiled at Royal Canal Irish Times, Dec 8 2003
- ^ "From James Joyce to Oscar Wilde, top ten Irish novelists in history". IrishCentral.com. Archived from the original on 17 August 2016. Retrieved 27 October 2015.
- ^ Jones, John Bush (17 March 1981). "Hostage to Blarney: A Tribute to Brendan Behan". The Boston Phoenix. Retrieved 29 February 2024.
- ^ Nihill, Cian. "Palace of inspiration: Sculptures of writers unveiled" Archived 6 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine, The Irish Times, 6 October 2011.
- ^ "Mountjoy Lyrics". Metrolyrics.com. Archived from the original on 10 August 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ Kirkpatrick, Marion (15 July 2014). "Morrissey's 'World Peace is None of Your Business': What the Critics are Saying". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 8 August 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
External links
- Petri Liukkonen. "Brendan Behan". Books and Writers.
- Borstal Boy at IMDb
- Brendan Behan discography at MusicBrainz
- Two portraits from life by Irish artist Reginald Gray at Artmajeur
- Improving the Day... Tribute site, last updated in 2010.
- Brendan Behan in Paris | RTÉ Radio 1, Sep 2019 Documentary on One
- [1] Irish Times centenary article, Feb 9th 2023.