right|thumb|Memorial bust of Mangan in [[St. Stephen's Green, sculpted by Oliver Sheppard]]

James Clarence Mangan, born James Mangan (; 1 May 1803 – 20 June 1849), was an Irish poet. He freely translated works from German, Turkish, Persian, Arabic, and Irish, with his translations of Goethe gaining special interest. Starting around 1840, and with increasing frequency after the Great Famine began, he wrote patriotic poems, such as A Vision of Connaught in the Thirteenth Century. Mangan was troubled, eccentric, and an alcoholic. He died early from cholera, amid the continuing dire conditions of the Famine. After his death, Mangan was hailed as Ireland's first national poet and admired by writers such as James Joyce and William Butler Yeats.

Early life

Mangan was born at Fishamble Street, Dublin, the son of James Mangan, a former hedge school teacher and native of Shanagolden, County Limerick, and Catherine Smith from Kiltale, County Meath. After marrying Smith, James Mangan took over a grocery business in Dublin owned by the Smith family, eventually becoming bankrupt as a result.

Mangan described his father as having "a princely soul but no prudence", and attributed his family's bankruptcy to his father's suspect business speculations and tendency to throw expensive parties. Thanks to poor record keeping, inconsistent biographies, and his own semi-fictional and sensationalized autobiographical accounts, Mangan's early years are the subject of much speculation. However, despite the popular image of Mangan as a long-suffering, poor poet, there is reason to believe that his early years were spent in relative middle-class comfort.

He was educated at a Jesuit school where he learned Latin, Spanish, French, and Italian. He attended three schools before the age of fifteen. Obliged to find a job in order to support his family, for seven years he was a scrivener's clerk and for three years earned meagre wages in an attorney's office, and was later an employee of the Ordnance Survey and an assistant in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.

Literary career

Mangan's first verses were published in 1818. From 1820 he adopted the middle name Clarence. In 1830 he began producing translations – generally free interpretations rather than strict translations – from German, a language he had taught himself. Of interest are his translations of Goethe. From 1834 his contributions began appearing in the Dublin University Magazine. In 1840 he began producing translations from Turkish poetry, Persian poetry, Arabic poetry, and Irish poetry. He was also known for literary hoaxes; some of his "translations" are in fact works of his own, like Twenty Golden Years Ago, attributed to a certain Selber. His connection with The Dublin University Magazine was terminated because his habits rendered him incapable of regular application.

He was friends with the patriotic journalists Thomas Davis, and John Mitchel, who would write his biography. His poems were published in their newspaper The Nation. Mangan was for a time paid a fixed salary, but, as on former occasions, these relations were broken off, though he continued to send verses to "The Nation" even after he had cast in his lot with Mitchel, who in 1848 began to issue The United Irishman.

James Joyce wrote two essays on Mangan, the first in 1902 and the second in 1907 and also used his name in his works, for instance in Araby in Dubliners. Joyce wrote that in Mangan's poetry "images interweave [their] soft, luminous scarves and words ring like brilliant mail, and whether the song is of Ireland or of Istambol it has the same refrain, a prayer that peace may come again to her who has lost peace, the moonwhite pearl of his soul". Joyce also described Mangan as "a prototype for a would-be-nation", but stressed that he was ultimately a "feeble figure" that fell short of such promise.

WB Yeats considered Mangan one of the best Irish poets, along with Thomas Davis and Samuel Ferguson, writing "To the soul of Clarence Mangan was tied the burning ribbon of Genius."

Among the contemporary Irish writers he has influenced are Thomas Kinsella; Michael Smith; James McCabe, who wrote a sensationally discovered continuation of Mangan's autobiography that appeared in the Dublin journal Metre in 2001, but was later revealed – in a Mangan-style hoax – to be written by McCabe rather than Mangan; and David Wheatley, author of a sonnet sequence on Mangan. He is also cited by songwriter Shane MacGowan as an inspiration for both his work and his lifestyle. McGowan's song "The Snake with Eyes of Garnet" features Mangan as a character:

<blockquote><poem>

Last night as I lay dreaming

My way across the sea

James Mangan brought me comfort

With laudanum and poitin…

</poem></blockquote>

A 1979 novel by Northern Irish/Canadian novelist Brian Moore, The Mangan Inheritance, tells the story of (fictional) young American James Mangan traveling to Ireland to find whether he is descended from the poet.

While Mangan still is not held in the same esteem by critics as Joyce or Yeats, more recent literary criticism has begun to seriously consider his work. Largely, this can be attributed to the publication of David Lloyd's Nationalism and Minor Literature: James Clarence Mangan and the Emergence of Irish Cultural Nationalism in 1987. Lloyd's work was the first to seriously attempt to untangle Mangan the man from the nationalist poet fostered by John Mitchel.

Private papers of Mangan are held in the National Library of Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy, and the archives of Trinity College, Dublin.

Bibliography

  • Hourican, Bridget. (2024). Finding Mangan. The many lives and afterlives of James Clarence Mangan, Gill Books, Dublin. 978-0717194834

References

  • Cousin, John William: A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. (London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton, 1910)
  • Boylan, Henry, A Dictionary of Irish Biography, (Dublin, Gill and Macmillan, 1978)
  • James Clarence Mangan and The Nation newspaper or the making of a national poet. Lecture by Bridget Hourican, Dublin 2017.
  • Ten poems by James Clarence Mangan