I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.                     
                    James Joyce    
    A BRIEF NOTE FROM THE EDITORS: We regret that illness has kept the following magazine from being maintained in the manner in which it should. Please note, however, that we are in the process of revamping the look of The Celtic Quill with a focus that will become, over the next few issues, more and more dedicated to literature and art. We are planning a number of interviews with some of today's most influential writers and have added some staff members who will give a new look to The Celtic Quill. This issue includes the first two parts of a new translation by Dr. Randy Lee Eickhoff of Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova. For those who are unfamiliar with Dr. Eickhoff's work, a link has been provided in the left column of this page to his website. Dr. Eickhoff is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on Ancient Ireland. He is an old-world classicist who works in eight languages.
    We hope you enjoy this first look at the new Quill.
                The Editors            
O’Rúairí

Top: The Tart with the                     Cart; Bottom: Anna Liffey
Dublin—And so there she was, stretched out in a long brick tub, Anna Livey or Liffey, whatever pronunciation the Dubliners are into these days, water cascading over her golden locks (although, I might confess, they seemed to be more tarnished than golden at the moment), bathing herself in full public view, this doxy, earning her inelegant and irreverent nickname of the “Floozie in the Jaccuzzi.”
    “She’s a nice little thing,” Brendan Kennelly said, grinning, he of the wonderful tongue-in-cheek epic poem Poetry My Arse, an anatomy of mockery about Kennelly’s Dublin. Oh, he’s well aware of the mockery and parody and scruffy intellectualism that abounds throughout the city. Where else could you see an impromptu gathering outside Davy Byrne’s pub with three fellows putting on the entirety of Finnegans Wake within a half-hour and making all there believe that they had covered the entire bloody impossible read?
    Where else can you stumble into another coming out of a bookstore on Grafton Street and realize you’ve almost trodden down the Noble laureate Seamus Heaney who acts as if it’s nothing at all to have his brogans trod upon and invites the trodder across the street to Bewley’s for a cup of tea and when the tea begins to swell the stomach, why there’s nothing to it but to go down the street to Doheny & Nesbitt’s for a whiskey to set the tea right followed by a pint over which one can argue the merits of poetry.
    But while Seamus gives us an intellectual spin, it is the Swiftian humor and satire of the impish Kennelly that appeals at the moment. If there’s anyone in dear, dirty, Dublin more deserving of the Dean’s laurels, I had yet to meet him.
    “But,” Brendan continued, “she is the spirit of Dublin—so to speak, whether we like her or not.”
    Was there much trouble when she went in to take her initial bath from some of the righteous right of the moment?
    “Oh, yes,” Brendan said. “My yes, but fortunately saner heads prevailed and she became one along with the Tart—have you met her?”
    Molly Bloom, I said, the Tart with the Cart on the corner of Grafton.
    “Yes, that’s the one,” Brendan said delightedly, his blue eyes twinkling wickedly with great mischief. She’s the most popular with the tourist trade. It’s the song, you know.”
    Funny, I’d think it would be James Joyce leaning cockily upon his cane.
    “Well,” Brendan laughs, casting a quick glance around, “there’s really not that many tourists who are know him like the Dubliners. We call him ‘the Prick on the Stick.’”
    Shocking! Truly shocking! The man lately lauded as the most influential writer of the twentieth century referred to in Dublinese reverential manner such as this? Why, they should hang garlands around his neck, cast roses at his feet, gardenias in his hat.
    “Truth be known, if most of Dublin had its way, they would have melted him down into a dozen or so doorstops for privies. There are still some who look askance at him. But, then the Floozie and the Tart came along and their boobies made others forget Joyce’s words. There is something about the visual that makes intellectuals forget their train of thought. I find it quite refreshing.”
    As do I. But not as refreshing as a pint or two at one of the locals and a stroll around the town with Dean Kennelly providing satiric comments upon the points of historical significance that would never make the history books. Yes, for a look around the town, the Dean is the one to take in tow.

(Padraic O’Ruairi is a wandering writer who prefers to go by his last name alone. “There are enough Padraics in this world without me adding another to the confusion.”)

The premier "watering hole"
of the "Prick with the Stick"