WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.700 I want you to picture a poet and be honest with 00:00:02.700 --> 00:00:05.099 me here. Okay. When I say important literary 00:00:05.099 --> 00:00:07.780 figure from the 20th century, what image pops 00:00:07.780 --> 00:00:10.240 into your head? Oh, that's easy. It's someone 00:00:10.240 --> 00:00:13.000 in a tweed jacket, probably has elbow patches. 00:00:13.199 --> 00:00:16.589 Right. Sitting in a dusty library, Oxford, Cambridge, 00:00:16.870 --> 00:00:18.670 Trinity College. Totally detached from the real 00:00:18.670 --> 00:00:21.469 world, maybe sipping a sherry. That's the archetype, 00:00:21.469 --> 00:00:23.609 isn't it? The ivory tower intellectual, the person 00:00:23.609 --> 00:00:25.809 who writes about life without ever really getting 00:00:25.809 --> 00:00:28.449 their hands dirty. Exactly. But today we are 00:00:28.449 --> 00:00:31.210 talking about a man who takes that image and 00:00:31.210 --> 00:00:33.950 essentially throws a brick through the stained 00:00:33.950 --> 00:00:37.439 glass window of that ivory tower. That is a very 00:00:37.439 --> 00:00:39.280 good way to put it. We are talking about a man 00:00:39.280 --> 00:00:42.299 who spent his youth not in a lecture hall, but, 00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:45.119 you know, in a ditch. A man who was an apprentice 00:00:45.119 --> 00:00:48.520 shoemaker, a subsistence farmer, and, this is 00:00:48.520 --> 00:00:50.759 my favorite part, the goalkeeper for his local 00:00:50.759 --> 00:00:54.340 Gaelic football team in rural Ireland. A goalkeeper 00:00:54.340 --> 00:00:58.299 who, I might add, probably spent half the match 00:00:58.299 --> 00:01:01.719 composing verses in his head while waiting for 00:01:01.719 --> 00:01:04.719 the ball to come down the pitch. Right. But here's 00:01:04.719 --> 00:01:08.359 the contradiction that hooks me. This same man, 00:01:08.439 --> 00:01:12.200 this rural cobbler, walks 80 miles. 80 miles? 00:01:12.500 --> 00:01:15.359 On foot just to knock on a door and meet a literary 00:01:15.359 --> 00:01:19.420 hero. He gets courted by British spies during 00:01:19.420 --> 00:01:22.319 World War II. Which is a story in itself. And 00:01:22.319 --> 00:01:24.540 then in a bizarre twist of modern pop culture, 00:01:24.719 --> 00:01:27.780 his poetry ends up causing a backstage brawl 00:01:27.780 --> 00:01:30.739 involving Russell Crowe at the BAFTAs. It is 00:01:30.739 --> 00:01:33.219 without a doubt. One of the most volatile and 00:01:33.219 --> 00:01:35.659 fascinating trajectories in literary history. 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:37.980 We are talking about Patrick Cavanaugh. We are. 00:01:38.140 --> 00:01:40.000 And while the Russell Crowe connection is a great 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:41.739 cocktail party story, and we will definitely 00:01:41.739 --> 00:01:44.200 get to that, the real mission of this deep dive 00:01:44.200 --> 00:01:47.299 is much more substantial. We're looking at a 00:01:47.299 --> 00:01:49.540 stack of sources here. Biographies, critical 00:01:49.540 --> 00:01:52.140 essays, even some legal transcripts. And the 00:01:52.140 --> 00:01:55.079 narrative arc is just wild. But the core theme 00:01:55.079 --> 00:01:57.620 seems to be a battle over reality. That's the 00:01:57.620 --> 00:01:59.340 perfect way to put it. It's a battle over how 00:01:59.340 --> 00:02:02.239 we see the world. Kavanaugh basically dismantled 00:02:02.239 --> 00:02:04.379 the Celtic twilight. Okay, you have to explain 00:02:04.379 --> 00:02:06.459 that. What was the Celtic twilight? Well, you 00:02:06.459 --> 00:02:09.080 have to remember, before Kavanaugh, the literary 00:02:09.080 --> 00:02:12.620 view of Ireland was dominated by W .B. Yeats 00:02:12.620 --> 00:02:16.960 and his circle. And it was all... mist and fairies 00:02:16.960 --> 00:02:19.719 and noble peasants who spoke in ancient riddles. 00:02:19.740 --> 00:02:22.319 It was very romantic, but it was a fantasy. And 00:02:22.319 --> 00:02:25.120 Cavanaugh hated that. He loathed it. He saw it 00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:27.919 as a lie. He wanted to replace that romanticism 00:02:27.919 --> 00:02:29.819 with something gritty, something he called the 00:02:29.819 --> 00:02:32.259 parochial. Now, hold on. Parochial is usually 00:02:32.259 --> 00:02:34.240 an insult. If I call someone parochial, I'm saying 00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:35.800 they're small minded. They don't know anything 00:02:35.800 --> 00:02:38.259 outside their tiny village. And that is exactly 00:02:38.259 --> 00:02:41.039 where Kavanaugh flips the script. He redefined 00:02:41.039 --> 00:02:43.639 that word completely. For him, being parochial 00:02:43.639 --> 00:02:46.009 was actually the highest form of art. It's a 00:02:46.009 --> 00:02:48.389 complex idea, and we're going to spend some time 00:02:48.389 --> 00:02:50.469 unpacking it because it really changes how you 00:02:50.469 --> 00:02:53.050 see your own life, not just his poetry. Okay, 00:02:53.110 --> 00:02:55.530 so we've got libel suits, we've got lung cancer, 00:02:55.729 --> 00:02:58.469 a poetic rebirth on the banks of a canal, and 00:02:58.469 --> 00:03:01.370 we've got a gladiator fighting a TV producer. 00:03:01.849 --> 00:03:03.810 It's quite a life. Let's start at the very beginning, 00:03:03.990 --> 00:03:07.530 the soil and the shoemaker. To really get Kavanaugh, 00:03:07.569 --> 00:03:10.189 you have to smell the mud of Iniskeen, County 00:03:10.189 --> 00:03:13.590 Monaghan. He was born there on October 21, 1904. 00:03:14.060 --> 00:03:16.360 And when we say rural, we don't mean a nice cottage 00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:19.180 with Wi -Fi. We mean rural. We mean subsistence. 00:03:19.539 --> 00:03:22.620 He was the fourth of ten children. His father, 00:03:22.759 --> 00:03:25.539 James Cavanaugh, was a cobbler, a shoemaker, 00:03:25.719 --> 00:03:28.520 and a small farmer. His mother, Bridget Quinn, 00:03:28.800 --> 00:03:31.840 ran the household. It was a hard, repetitive 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:34.479 life. A tough life. But right off the bat, looking 00:03:34.479 --> 00:03:36.860 at the family history, there's a crack in the 00:03:36.860 --> 00:03:39.240 foundation. Cavanaugh wasn't even their real 00:03:39.240 --> 00:03:41.409 name. I saw this in the notes and I had to reread 00:03:41.409 --> 00:03:44.110 it. This involves his grandfather, right? A schoolteacher 00:03:44.110 --> 00:03:46.289 named Keveny. That's right. His grandfather was 00:03:46.289 --> 00:03:48.949 a schoolteacher in the west of Ireland. But the 00:03:48.949 --> 00:03:51.569 records are frustratingly vague. They just mentioned 00:03:51.569 --> 00:03:54.250 a scandal. A scandal. That sounds ominous. It 00:03:54.250 --> 00:03:56.509 does. We don't know exactly what happened, but 00:03:56.509 --> 00:03:58.310 it was significant enough that he was forced 00:03:58.310 --> 00:04:00.870 to leave the area and he never taught in a national 00:04:00.870 --> 00:04:03.250 school again. Wow. So it must have been serious 00:04:03.250 --> 00:04:06.669 for that time period. It must have been. He moved 00:04:06.669 --> 00:04:09.719 to Tullamore. Raised a family. But the shadow 00:04:09.719 --> 00:04:12.860 of that scandal must have followed them. Because 00:04:12.860 --> 00:04:15.120 when it came time for Patrick's baptism, the 00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:19.040 local priest in Inniskeen, he didn't just baptize 00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:20.680 him. What do you mean? He changed the family 00:04:20.680 --> 00:04:24.040 name in the registry. He changed Keveny to Kavanaugh. 00:04:24.180 --> 00:04:26.500 Wait, the priest just decided, I'm changing your 00:04:26.500 --> 00:04:28.899 name, and that was it? Unilaterally. Yeah. Just 00:04:28.899 --> 00:04:31.290 wrote it in the book. That speaks volumes about 00:04:31.290 --> 00:04:33.430 the power dynamic in rural Ireland at the turn 00:04:33.430 --> 00:04:35.509 of the century. The priest wasn't just a spiritual 00:04:35.509 --> 00:04:38.230 leader. He was like the administrator of your 00:04:38.230 --> 00:04:41.250 identity. Absolutely. And that authority, the 00:04:41.250 --> 00:04:43.149 looning presence of the church, is something 00:04:43.149 --> 00:04:45.529 Patrick would wrestle with his entire life. So 00:04:45.529 --> 00:04:48.250 despite this kind of strange start with the name, 00:04:48.470 --> 00:04:51.290 the family was industrious. They weren't destitute. 00:04:51.660 --> 00:04:54.180 No, not at all. In fact, they believed in education 00:04:54.180 --> 00:04:57.120 as a way out. His brother Peter became a university 00:04:57.120 --> 00:04:59.879 professor. His sisters became teachers and nurses. 00:05:00.120 --> 00:05:02.420 They were all about upward mobility. But Patrick, 00:05:02.579 --> 00:05:05.160 he zagged where they zigged. He dropped out. 00:05:05.259 --> 00:05:08.100 He left school at age 13 after finishing sixth 00:05:08.100 --> 00:05:10.600 class. And that was it. That was the end of his 00:05:10.600 --> 00:05:12.680 formal education. Thirteen years old, so he's 00:05:12.680 --> 00:05:14.899 just thrown into the workforce. He was apprenticed 00:05:14.899 --> 00:05:17.779 to his father. He sat on the bench mending shoes. 00:05:18.379 --> 00:05:20.699 And he went out into the fields to work the land. 00:05:21.339 --> 00:05:24.360 And this is where we have to address a very specific 00:05:24.360 --> 00:05:27.319 and frankly kind of dark definition Kavanaugh 00:05:27.319 --> 00:05:30.560 had. Okay. He was a peasant. He lived a peasant's 00:05:30.560 --> 00:05:33.379 life. But he hated the mindset of the peasant. 00:05:33.439 --> 00:05:35.220 This was the quote that really stuck out to me. 00:05:35.279 --> 00:05:37.240 He said, a peasant isn't just a farm laborer. 00:05:37.279 --> 00:05:40.360 He defined a peasant as all that mass of mankind 00:05:40.360 --> 00:05:43.399 which lives below a certain level of consciousness. 00:05:43.860 --> 00:05:45.779 It's brutal, isn't it? It sounds like he's describing 00:05:45.779 --> 00:05:48.959 a zombie movie. They live in the dark cave of 00:05:48.959 --> 00:05:50.980 the unconscious and they scream when they see 00:05:50.980 --> 00:05:53.120 the light. I mean, that is not a man who is happy 00:05:53.120 --> 00:05:55.519 with his neighbors. It's Plato's cave. That's 00:05:55.519 --> 00:05:57.819 exactly what he's channeling. He felt that the 00:05:57.819 --> 00:05:59.680 people around him were just watching shadows 00:05:59.680 --> 00:06:02.819 on the wall. He later said that the real poverty 00:06:02.819 --> 00:06:05.300 of his childhood wasn't about the lack of money. 00:06:05.579 --> 00:06:08.019 What was it then? It was the lack of enlightenment. 00:06:08.220 --> 00:06:11.279 He called it the fog of unknowing. The fog of 00:06:11.279 --> 00:06:13.620 unknowing. That's a terrifying phrase. It is. 00:06:13.699 --> 00:06:16.560 He felt this fog was suffocating him. He felt 00:06:16.560 --> 00:06:18.680 trapped in a community that didn't examine itself, 00:06:18.819 --> 00:06:21.120 that didn't look up at the stars, that just worked 00:06:21.120 --> 00:06:23.740 and slept and prayed. So you have this image 00:06:23.740 --> 00:06:26.379 of him. He's the goalkeeper for the Iniskin Gaelic 00:06:26.379 --> 00:06:28.220 football team. Which is such a great visual. 00:06:28.360 --> 00:06:31.779 The poet in the goal mouth. Imagine him standing 00:06:31.779 --> 00:06:34.759 there, guarding the net. or bending over a boot 00:06:34.759 --> 00:06:38.180 in his father's shop. And internally, he is screaming. 00:06:38.480 --> 00:06:41.439 He is desperate to claw his way out of that fog. 00:06:41.660 --> 00:06:45.060 He wants consciousness. He wants the light. That's 00:06:45.060 --> 00:06:47.100 the core of his early struggle. And his ladder 00:06:47.100 --> 00:06:49.279 out of the fog wasn't school, because it already 00:06:49.279 --> 00:06:52.160 left. It had to be literature. But surely in 00:06:52.160 --> 00:06:54.980 1920s, Inneskeen, access to books wasn't exactly 00:06:54.980 --> 00:06:58.000 easy. No, it wasn't. He started by writing verses 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:00.220 for the local papers, like the Dundalk Democrat 00:07:00.220 --> 00:07:03.019 and the Irish Independent. But they were... Well, 00:07:03.019 --> 00:07:04.699 they were pretty amateur. He was learning his 00:07:04.699 --> 00:07:08.759 craft. He was. But the lightning bolt hit around 00:07:08.759 --> 00:07:12.160 1929 or 1930 when he found a copy of The Irish 00:07:12.160 --> 00:07:14.420 Statesman. And for those who don't know the landscape 00:07:14.420 --> 00:07:16.899 of Irish literature, The Irish Statesman was 00:07:16.899 --> 00:07:20.040 a big deal. Huge. It was edited by George William 00:07:20.040 --> 00:07:23.839 Russell, who wrote under the pen name A .E. Russell 00:07:23.839 --> 00:07:26.819 was a titan. He was right there with WB8s leading 00:07:26.819 --> 00:07:29.620 the Irish literary revival. He was a mystic, 00:07:29.620 --> 00:07:32.019 a painter, a poet, and an editor. He was the 00:07:32.019 --> 00:07:34.860 gatekeeper. So Kavanaugh sees this magazine and 00:07:34.860 --> 00:07:38.379 he thinks, this is it. This is the door. He starts 00:07:38.379 --> 00:07:41.060 sending poems to Russell. And at first, Russell 00:07:41.060 --> 00:07:43.540 rejects them. Of course. But, and this is to 00:07:43.540 --> 00:07:45.879 his eternal credit, he wrote back. He encouraged 00:07:45.879 --> 00:07:48.699 Kavanaugh. He told him to keep submitting. And 00:07:48.699 --> 00:07:50.810 eventually, Russell published them. And this 00:07:50.810 --> 00:07:52.910 leads us to the walk. This is the part of the 00:07:52.910 --> 00:07:55.089 story that feels like folklore, but it's real. 00:07:55.230 --> 00:07:57.790 It's absolutely real. The sources say in 1931, 00:07:58.029 --> 00:08:00.709 Kavanaugh walked to Dublin to meet Russell. I 00:08:00.709 --> 00:08:03.910 checked the map. Monaghan to Dublin. That is 00:08:03.910 --> 00:08:08.110 80 miles, 129 kilometers. In December. In December. 00:08:08.269 --> 00:08:10.470 And he walked. He walked. He couldn't afford 00:08:10.470 --> 00:08:12.930 the train fare. So he put on a pair of shoes, 00:08:13.110 --> 00:08:15.430 which, remember, as a cobbler, he probably made 00:08:15.430 --> 00:08:17.649 or fixed himself. And he just started walking. 00:08:18.029 --> 00:08:20.889 That is a level of hunger I can barely comprehend. 00:08:21.170 --> 00:08:23.649 I get annoyed if my Uber takes five minutes. 00:08:23.870 --> 00:08:26.269 He walked 80 miles just to have a conversation. 00:08:26.569 --> 00:08:29.009 It was a pilgrimage. He was walking out of the 00:08:29.009 --> 00:08:32.570 fog and towards the light. And it paid off. He 00:08:32.570 --> 00:08:34.850 knocked on Russell's door in Dublin. And Russell 00:08:34.850 --> 00:08:36.929 let him in. He didn't just open the door. He 00:08:36.929 --> 00:08:39.269 opened his library. And this connects back to 00:08:39.269 --> 00:08:41.649 what we said earlier about the ivory tower. You'd 00:08:41.649 --> 00:08:44.190 expect a guy like Russell, who was obsessed with 00:08:44.190 --> 00:08:47.129 fairies and Irish mythology, to tell Cavanaugh 00:08:47.129 --> 00:08:49.710 to read old Celtic legends. He would, but he 00:08:49.710 --> 00:08:52.389 didn't. What did he give him? No. Russell was 00:08:52.389 --> 00:08:55.490 incredibly well -read. He gave Cavanaugh books 00:08:55.490 --> 00:08:58.570 by Victor Hugo, Dostoevsky, Walt Whitman, Robert 00:08:58.570 --> 00:09:01.970 Browning. He gave him the world. He opened his 00:09:01.970 --> 00:09:04.409 mind. And the most important detail in that reading 00:09:04.409 --> 00:09:06.990 list, for me, is the first book Cavanaugh borrowed 00:09:06.990 --> 00:09:09.720 when he finally joined the Dundalk Library. It 00:09:09.720 --> 00:09:13.019 wasn't Eats. No, it was T .S. Eliot's The Wasteland. 00:09:13.200 --> 00:09:15.379 Stop and think about that collision of worlds 00:09:15.379 --> 00:09:17.720 for a second. It's massive. You have a guy living 00:09:17.720 --> 00:09:21.159 in rural 1930s Ireland, a place that is very 00:09:21.159 --> 00:09:24.539 traditional, agrarian, almost 19th century in 00:09:24.539 --> 00:09:27.440 its rhythm. And he is reading The Wasteland, 00:09:27.659 --> 00:09:31.340 which is the ultimate fragmented urban modernist 00:09:31.340 --> 00:09:34.519 text. April is the cruelest month. That friction 00:09:34.519 --> 00:09:36.820 is the spark that created Patrick Cavanaugh. 00:09:37.419 --> 00:09:40.059 He's reading Eliot, and he realizes that poetry 00:09:40.059 --> 00:09:42.340 doesn't have to be about pretty sunsets or noble 00:09:42.340 --> 00:09:45.039 warriors. Eliot showed him that poetry could 00:09:45.039 --> 00:09:47.820 be disjointed. It could be ugly. It could be 00:09:47.820 --> 00:09:49.940 about the debris of life. So he looks around 00:09:49.940 --> 00:09:52.539 his own life. Exactly. He looked at his own life, 00:09:52.659 --> 00:09:54.539 the mud, the manure, the boredom of the potato 00:09:54.539 --> 00:09:57.659 field, and he realized, wait. I can write about 00:09:57.659 --> 00:10:00.259 this. That leads to his first collection in 1936, 00:10:00.500 --> 00:10:02.820 Plowman and Other Poems. Macmillan publishes 00:10:02.820 --> 00:10:04.460 it. That's a major publisher. So he's made it, 00:10:04.500 --> 00:10:06.500 right? He's the shoemaker poet. Well, he's published, 00:10:06.580 --> 00:10:08.899 which is a huge step. Right. But the reception, 00:10:09.080 --> 00:10:12.480 it was patronizing. How so? The literary establishment 00:10:12.480 --> 00:10:14.500 didn't really know what to do with him. The Times 00:10:14.500 --> 00:10:16.879 Literary Supplement called him a poet of promise 00:10:16.879 --> 00:10:20.360 rather than achievement. Ouch. The classic pat 00:10:20.360 --> 00:10:23.399 on the head. And... The spectator gave him a 00:10:23.399 --> 00:10:25.840 real backhanded compliment, saying he wrote better 00:10:25.840 --> 00:10:28.820 prose than poetry. They treated him like a curiosity. 00:10:29.679 --> 00:10:31.820 Oh, look at the clever peasant who learned to 00:10:31.820 --> 00:10:35.159 rhyme. They wanted him to stay in his box. They 00:10:35.159 --> 00:10:37.700 wanted the Celtic twilight version of a peasant 00:10:37.700 --> 00:10:40.399 simple, happy, grateful. They didn't want the 00:10:40.399 --> 00:10:43.000 guy who reads Dostoevsky and hates the fog of 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:46.259 unknowing. Precisely. And Kavanaugh, being Kavanaugh, 00:10:46.259 --> 00:10:48.480 didn't handle that pigeonholing well. I can imagine. 00:10:48.970 --> 00:10:50.990 He decided to bypass the Dublin scene and try 00:10:50.990 --> 00:10:54.090 his luck in London directly. In 1938, he goes 00:10:54.090 --> 00:10:56.250 over there, spends about five months, and out 00:10:56.250 --> 00:10:58.210 of this period comes a book called The Green 00:10:58.210 --> 00:11:01.009 Fool. Now, this book is described as a loosely 00:11:01.009 --> 00:11:03.690 autobiographical novel, and I get the sense that 00:11:03.690 --> 00:11:05.950 loosely is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. 00:11:06.049 --> 00:11:08.309 Very heavy lifting. He reinvents himself a bit, 00:11:08.409 --> 00:11:12.090 plays up the innocent abroad angle. But the book 00:11:12.090 --> 00:11:14.990 is significant for two reasons. One, it was actually 00:11:14.990 --> 00:11:17.970 well received internationally. But two, it caused 00:11:17.970 --> 00:11:20.009 him a spectacular amount of legal trouble. This 00:11:20.009 --> 00:11:21.889 story actually made me laugh out loud. It involves 00:11:21.889 --> 00:11:24.730 Oliver St. John Gogarty. Yes, it does. Now, for 00:11:24.730 --> 00:11:26.769 listeners who don't know, Gogarty was a massive 00:11:26.769 --> 00:11:29.070 figure in Dublin. He was a surgeon, a poet, a 00:11:29.070 --> 00:11:32.230 senator, a wit. He was the model for Buck Mulligan 00:11:32.230 --> 00:11:34.710 in James Joyce's Ulysses. He was the ultimate 00:11:34.710 --> 00:11:38.710 insider. Wealthy, sharp -tongued, part of the 00:11:38.710 --> 00:11:41.929 elite. And the green fool... Cavanaugh describes 00:11:41.929 --> 00:11:44.909 visiting Gogarty's home. It's a passing anecdote. 00:11:45.289 --> 00:11:48.429 What does he say? He writes, I mistook Gogarty's 00:11:48.429 --> 00:11:51.389 white road maid for his wife or his mistress. 00:11:51.830 --> 00:11:54.789 I expected every poet to have a spare wife. I 00:11:54.789 --> 00:11:57.210 expected every poet to have a spare wife. I mean, 00:11:57.250 --> 00:11:59.610 come on. That is clearly a joke about the bohemian 00:11:59.610 --> 00:12:01.750 reputation of poets. It's a joke. And frankly, 00:12:01.909 --> 00:12:05.570 it's a pretty funny one. But Gogarty. Well, Gogarty 00:12:05.570 --> 00:12:07.610 did not have a sense of humor about this specific 00:12:07.610 --> 00:12:10.070 thing. What did he do? He sued Kavanaugh for 00:12:10.070 --> 00:12:12.350 libel. He sued over a joke. He took particular 00:12:12.350 --> 00:12:14.850 offense to the coupling of the words wife and 00:12:14.850 --> 00:12:17.909 mistress in the same sentence as his name. He 00:12:17.909 --> 00:12:20.409 argued it defamed his character. That seems incredibly 00:12:20.409 --> 00:12:22.470 sin -skinned for a guy who hung out with James 00:12:22.470 --> 00:12:24.870 Joyce. It was a class issue, really. The wealthy 00:12:24.870 --> 00:12:26.889 surgeon putting the upstart peasant back in his 00:12:26.889 --> 00:12:29.470 place. Did he win? And Googerty won. He was awarded 00:12:29.470 --> 00:12:31.990 100 pounds in damages. Which, for a struggling 00:12:31.990 --> 00:12:34.409 poet in 1938, must have been a fortune. It was 00:12:34.409 --> 00:12:37.330 ruinous. It was a disaster. But what I love is 00:12:37.330 --> 00:12:39.590 Kavanaugh's reaction to the book's reception 00:12:39.590 --> 00:12:42.950 in general. While he's getting sued, Other people 00:12:42.950 --> 00:12:45.669 in Ireland are claiming the book is anti -Catholic. 00:12:45.710 --> 00:12:47.909 Which is ironic given how devout his upbringing 00:12:47.909 --> 00:12:50.389 was. But did Cavanaugh apologize? Did he retreat? 00:12:50.570 --> 00:12:53.830 No. He demanded that the book be displayed prominently 00:12:53.830 --> 00:12:56.610 in Dublin bookshop windows. He had this streak 00:12:56.610 --> 00:12:59.409 of defiance. If you push him, he pushes back 00:12:59.409 --> 00:13:02.049 harder. He wanted the controversy. So he's burnt 00:13:02.049 --> 00:13:04.210 bridges with Go -Garty. He's got a reputation 00:13:04.210 --> 00:13:07.830 as a wild card. And then 1939 hits. He moves 00:13:07.830 --> 00:13:10.370 to Dublin permanently just as the world catches 00:13:10.370 --> 00:13:12.740 fire. The emergency. That's what they called 00:13:12.740 --> 00:13:16.580 WWII in neutral Ireland. And this period is crucial 00:13:16.580 --> 00:13:19.299 for understanding Kavanaugh's psychology. He 00:13:19.299 --> 00:13:21.679 arrives in Dublin expecting a salon. He thinks 00:13:21.679 --> 00:13:23.860 he's going to find high conversation, brilliant 00:13:23.860 --> 00:13:27.240 minds, a community of artists. And instead, what 00:13:27.240 --> 00:13:29.940 did he find? He finds what he called dandies, 00:13:29.940 --> 00:13:32.799 journalists and civil servants playing at art. 00:13:33.309 --> 00:13:36.309 He was incredibly disillusioned. He felt the 00:13:36.309 --> 00:13:38.870 Dublin literary scene was fake. He felt they 00:13:38.870 --> 00:13:41.350 were posing. He even made a comment that smuggling 00:13:41.350 --> 00:13:43.649 on the Monaghan border would have been a better 00:13:43.649 --> 00:13:45.669 career choice during the war than writing in 00:13:45.669 --> 00:13:48.129 Dublin. Economically, he was probably right. 00:13:48.330 --> 00:13:51.730 Smuggling was very profitable. Poetry, not so 00:13:51.730 --> 00:13:54.590 much. But his social connections during this 00:13:54.590 --> 00:13:56.590 time did lead to one of the weirdest episodes 00:13:56.590 --> 00:13:59.620 in his life. The British spy story. I love this. 00:13:59.720 --> 00:14:01.639 This involves John Betjeman, who would later 00:14:01.639 --> 00:14:04.840 become the poet laureate of the UK. Yes. At the 00:14:04.840 --> 00:14:07.659 time, Betjeman was in Dublin as a press attaché 00:14:07.659 --> 00:14:10.240 for the British government. But his real job 00:14:10.240 --> 00:14:13.580 was British intelligence. He was a spy. Effectively, 00:14:13.580 --> 00:14:16.179 yes. His job was to gauge Irish public opinion 00:14:16.179 --> 00:14:19.100 and try to influence it toward the Allies. And 00:14:19.100 --> 00:14:21.259 he identified Kavanaugh as a potential recruit. 00:14:21.500 --> 00:14:23.879 Why Kavanaugh? I mean, he's a loose cannon. He's 00:14:23.879 --> 00:14:25.899 getting sued for libel. Why would you want him 00:14:25.899 --> 00:14:28.289 as an asset? Because Kavanaugh was an oddity. 00:14:28.309 --> 00:14:30.850 He was an outsider on the inside. He moved in 00:14:30.850 --> 00:14:33.429 elite circles. He knew the writers and the politicians. 00:14:33.730 --> 00:14:36.009 But he was also from the country. He knew the 00:14:36.009 --> 00:14:38.509 farmers. He was politically ambiguous. So he 00:14:38.509 --> 00:14:41.370 could move between worlds. Benjamin was impressed 00:14:41.370 --> 00:14:44.429 by his wide social range. He thought Kavanaugh 00:14:44.429 --> 00:14:46.450 could be a conduit to understanding what real 00:14:46.450 --> 00:14:49.509 Irish people were thinking. Can you imagine Patrick 00:14:49.509 --> 00:14:52.049 Kavanaugh? Double zone seven. It's a hilarious 00:14:52.049 --> 00:14:55.440 image. Thankfully, it didn't go anywhere. Kavanaugh 00:14:55.440 --> 00:14:57.860 wasn't cut out for espionage. He was too busy 00:14:57.860 --> 00:15:01.120 channeling his energy into what critics now consider 00:15:01.120 --> 00:15:04.659 his absolute masterpiece. In 1942, he published 00:15:04.659 --> 00:15:07.340 The Great Hunger. Now, when I first saw that 00:15:07.340 --> 00:15:09.059 title on the outline, I assumed it was about 00:15:09.059 --> 00:15:11.220 the historical famine, the potato famine of the 00:15:11.220 --> 00:15:14.139 1840s. That is the intentional echo. He wants 00:15:14.139 --> 00:15:16.080 you to think of that. But the poem isn't about 00:15:16.080 --> 00:15:18.700 history. It's about the spiritual and emotional 00:15:18.700 --> 00:15:21.740 famine of the 1940s. Okay. It's a long poem, 00:15:21.799 --> 00:15:24.399 over a thousand lines, about a bachelor farmer. 00:15:24.779 --> 00:15:27.039 named Patrick McGuire. And this is not the Celtic 00:15:27.039 --> 00:15:29.759 Twilight Farmer, is it? God, no. This is the 00:15:29.759 --> 00:15:32.200 anti -yeets. There are no happy maidens dancing 00:15:32.200 --> 00:15:35.019 at the crossroads. It's about a man who stays 00:15:35.019 --> 00:15:38.019 on the farm to look after his aging mother. He 00:15:38.019 --> 00:15:40.980 delays marriage. He delays life. And before he 00:15:40.980 --> 00:15:43.740 knows it, he's 65, he has no wife, no children, 00:15:43.860 --> 00:15:47.519 and his life has just evaporated. It sounds incredibly 00:15:47.519 --> 00:15:51.090 bleak. It is bleak. It deals with sexual repression, 00:15:51.149 --> 00:15:53.789 loneliness, the crushing repetitive weight of 00:15:53.789 --> 00:15:55.649 the seasons. There's a line where he talks about 00:15:55.649 --> 00:15:58.450 the apocalypse of clay. The soil isn't nurturing, 00:15:58.590 --> 00:16:01.970 it's a tyrant. And this poem was so raw, so honest 00:16:01.970 --> 00:16:04.029 about the misery of rural life that it attracted 00:16:04.029 --> 00:16:06.470 the attention of the police. It did. The poem 00:16:06.470 --> 00:16:09.070 was published in a magazine called Horizon. There 00:16:09.070 --> 00:16:11.690 were strong rumors that the Gardaí, the Irish 00:16:11.690 --> 00:16:14.330 police, visited the magazine's offices and even 00:16:14.330 --> 00:16:16.470 seized copies. Was that true? Cavanaugh later 00:16:16.470 --> 00:16:18.370 denied the seizure happened, but he confirmed 00:16:18.370 --> 00:16:20.610 the two Gardaí visited his home to investigate. 00:16:20.889 --> 00:16:23.049 Because of a poem, that seems wild to us now. 00:16:23.110 --> 00:16:25.090 What were they investigating? They were investigating 00:16:25.090 --> 00:16:27.830 under the Special Powers Act. The suspicion was 00:16:27.830 --> 00:16:31.009 likely obscenity or indecency. You have to remember, 00:16:31.210 --> 00:16:34.370 1940s Ireland was deeply conservative and sensorial. 00:16:35.019 --> 00:16:38.200 A poem discussing masturbation, sexual frustration, 00:16:38.460 --> 00:16:41.139 and the despair of a good Catholic farmer was 00:16:41.139 --> 00:16:43.360 seen as a threat to the moral fabric of the nation. 00:16:43.519 --> 00:16:45.220 It threatened the self -image of the country. 00:16:45.539 --> 00:16:48.820 Exactly. But artistically, it was his peak. He 00:16:48.820 --> 00:16:50.879 had finally done it. He had taken the fog of 00:16:50.879 --> 00:16:53.779 unknowing and turned it into high art. He gave 00:16:53.779 --> 00:16:56.159 a voice to the silent misery of the rural bachelor. 00:16:56.879 --> 00:16:59.080 Critics later called it a work of mythic intensity. 00:16:59.710 --> 00:17:01.929 So he's written his masterpiece. He's 38 years 00:17:01.929 --> 00:17:03.970 old. He's established himself as the real deal. 00:17:04.089 --> 00:17:06.369 You'd think, OK, now comes the tenure, the respect, 00:17:06.549 --> 00:17:09.190 the easier life. You would think. But Cavanaugh 00:17:09.190 --> 00:17:11.930 had a tragic talent for self -sabotage. The next 00:17:11.930 --> 00:17:16.190 decade, from 1945 to 1954, is a slow, painful 00:17:16.190 --> 00:17:18.930 slide into chaos. We call this section of his 00:17:18.930 --> 00:17:21.630 life the nadir. The low point. He's working as 00:17:21.630 --> 00:17:24.029 a gossip columnist. That seems beneath him. He 00:17:24.029 --> 00:17:26.730 needed the money. He wrote for the Irish press 00:17:26.730 --> 00:17:30.000 under the pseudonym Piers Plowman. He was also 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:33.900 a film critic. But his personality was deteriorating. 00:17:34.500 --> 00:17:37.380 The sources used the word quixotic, which is 00:17:37.380 --> 00:17:39.579 a polite way of saying he was impossible. What 00:17:39.579 --> 00:17:41.539 was he doing? He was drinking heavily. He was 00:17:41.539 --> 00:17:43.900 becoming disheveled. He had a habit of roaring 00:17:43.900 --> 00:17:46.339 at people in pubs and turning on the very friends 00:17:46.339 --> 00:17:48.519 who tried to help him. And this culminates in 00:17:48.519 --> 00:17:51.049 the second great legal battle of his life. The 00:17:51.049 --> 00:17:54.470 Leader libel case in 1954. This feels like the 00:17:54.470 --> 00:17:57.250 sequel to the Gogarty trial, but much darker. 00:17:57.410 --> 00:18:01.150 Much darker. In 1952, a magazine called The Leader 00:18:01.150 --> 00:18:03.769 published an anonymous profile of Kavanaugh, 00:18:03.789 --> 00:18:06.630 and it was brutal. It painted him as an alcoholic 00:18:06.630 --> 00:18:08.990 sponger who just hung around Dublin bars trying 00:18:08.990 --> 00:18:11.190 to be famous. And Kavanaugh, remembering that 00:18:11.190 --> 00:18:13.849 he had to pay up when he libeled Gogarty, probably 00:18:13.849 --> 00:18:16.829 thought, aha, now I can sue them and get a payout. 00:18:17.079 --> 00:18:18.940 Exactly. He thought he'd get an easy settlement. 00:18:18.980 --> 00:18:21.440 He thought he could turn the tables. But he miscalculated 00:18:21.440 --> 00:18:24.839 badly. How so? The leader didn't fold. They decided 00:18:24.839 --> 00:18:27.779 to fight. And they hired a barrister named John 00:18:27.779 --> 00:18:30.759 A. Costello. Wait, the John A. Costello? The 00:18:30.759 --> 00:18:33.039 former and future Ty Siech Prime Minister of 00:18:33.039 --> 00:18:36.059 Ireland. Imagine getting into a legal dispute 00:18:36.059 --> 00:18:38.339 and the other side hires the Prime Minister to 00:18:38.339 --> 00:18:41.339 cross -examine you. That is a mismatch of epic 00:18:41.339 --> 00:18:43.720 proportions. Costello was one of the sharpest 00:18:43.720 --> 00:18:46.319 legal minds in the country. Kavanaugh took the 00:18:46.319 --> 00:18:48.859 stand. hoping to charm the jury or outwit the 00:18:48.859 --> 00:18:52.259 lawyer. But Costello absolutely destroyed him. 00:18:52.619 --> 00:18:55.539 Really? He went through Kavanaugh's own writings, 00:18:55.579 --> 00:18:58.960 his own behavior. He painted Kavanaugh as a hypocrite 00:18:58.960 --> 00:19:01.440 who dished out abuse but couldn't take it. He 00:19:01.440 --> 00:19:03.940 tore his credibility to shreds. So he loses the 00:19:03.940 --> 00:19:06.000 case? He loses. And it wasn't just a financial 00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:09.019 loss. It was a public humiliation. He was exposed. 00:19:09.599 --> 00:19:11.680 There's even this bizarre little twist to it. 00:19:11.740 --> 00:19:14.170 What's that? Years later. Costello and Kavanaugh 00:19:14.170 --> 00:19:16.150 actually became good friends. Kavanaugh even 00:19:16.150 --> 00:19:18.869 voted for him. Well, that's a very Kavanaugh 00:19:18.869 --> 00:19:21.009 thing to do. It really is. But the story gets 00:19:21.009 --> 00:19:23.390 worse. And then, as if the universe were writing 00:19:23.390 --> 00:19:26.289 a tragedy, immediately after the trial, he gets 00:19:26.289 --> 00:19:28.710 sick. Immediately. Yeah. He was diagnosed with 00:19:28.710 --> 00:19:31.309 lung cancer. Wow. Talk about kicking a man when 00:19:31.309 --> 00:19:33.470 he's down. He was admitted to the hospital and 00:19:33.470 --> 00:19:35.869 had a lung removed. So let's take stock. It's 00:19:35.869 --> 00:19:40.490 1954. Kavanaugh is 50 years old. He has lost 00:19:40.490 --> 00:19:43.269 his reputation in a humiliating trial. He is 00:19:43.269 --> 00:19:46.250 broke. He has just lost a lung. He is lying in 00:19:46.250 --> 00:19:49.170 a hospital bed. By all conventional logic, this 00:19:49.170 --> 00:19:51.170 is the end of the story. This is where he fades 00:19:51.170 --> 00:19:53.410 away. It feels like the end. But this is actually 00:19:53.410 --> 00:19:55.490 where the story pivots. This is where we get 00:19:55.490 --> 00:19:57.670 the canal bank rebirth. Okay, let's unpack this. 00:19:58.220 --> 00:20:00.460 Because this is the moment where Kavanaugh seems 00:20:00.460 --> 00:20:03.319 to find peace. And it leads to his most important 00:20:03.319 --> 00:20:06.059 philosophical idea. While he was recovering from 00:20:06.059 --> 00:20:08.119 the surgery, he was weak. He couldn't drink. 00:20:08.180 --> 00:20:10.599 He couldn't shout. He spent the hot summer of 00:20:10.599 --> 00:20:13.759 1955 just sitting on the banks of the Grand Canal 00:20:13.759 --> 00:20:16.259 in Dublin. Just sitting. Doing nothing. Doing 00:20:16.259 --> 00:20:18.779 nothing. And in that stillness, stripped of his 00:20:18.779 --> 00:20:21.019 ambitions, stripped of his arrogance, he found 00:20:21.019 --> 00:20:23.420 a new way of seeing the world. He wrote a poem 00:20:23.420 --> 00:20:25.759 about it. Lines written on a seat on the Grand 00:20:25.759 --> 00:20:28.289 Canal, Dublin. This is one of his most famous 00:20:28.289 --> 00:20:31.529 poems. It is. The opening lines are iconic. Oh, 00:20:31.549 --> 00:20:33.730 commemorate me where there is water, canal water, 00:20:33.829 --> 00:20:36.170 preferably. So stilly greeny at the heart of 00:20:36.170 --> 00:20:39.690 summer. Canal water, preferably. I love that 00:20:39.690 --> 00:20:43.029 modification. Not a mighty ocean, not a rushing 00:20:43.029 --> 00:20:45.630 river, just a man -made ditch in the middle of 00:20:45.630 --> 00:20:47.569 the city. It's the celebration of the ordinary. 00:20:47.809 --> 00:20:51.309 And this is where his philosophy of the parochial 00:20:51.309 --> 00:20:54.319 versus the provincial crystallizes. We tease 00:20:54.319 --> 00:20:56.299 this in the intro, but we need to really explain 00:20:56.299 --> 00:20:59.279 it because it's his legacy. Right, because to 00:20:59.279 --> 00:21:03.259 modern ears, parochial sounds bad. It sounds 00:21:03.259 --> 00:21:06.740 small. And provincial sounds, well, maybe a bit 00:21:06.740 --> 00:21:09.319 similar. Kavanaugh flipped the definitions. For 00:21:09.319 --> 00:21:11.819 him, provincial was the negative term. Okay, 00:21:11.859 --> 00:21:14.400 so what did provincial mean to him? To be provincial 00:21:14.400 --> 00:21:16.980 meant you're constantly looking over your shoulder 00:21:16.980 --> 00:21:19.509 at the metropolis. You're in Dublin, but you're 00:21:19.509 --> 00:21:21.369 looking at London. You're in New York, but you're 00:21:21.369 --> 00:21:23.470 checking what Paris is doing. You don't trust 00:21:23.470 --> 00:21:25.509 your own experience. You think real life is happening 00:21:25.509 --> 00:21:28.210 somewhere else. So you try to copy it to be sophisticated. 00:21:28.509 --> 00:21:31.549 So the Dublin literary types he hated, the dandies, 00:21:31.549 --> 00:21:34.369 they were provincial because they were just imitating 00:21:34.369 --> 00:21:36.869 what was cool in London. Exactly. They were insecure. 00:21:37.509 --> 00:21:40.779 But to be parochial in Kavanaugh's view. was 00:21:40.779 --> 00:21:43.900 to have total trust in the local. It meant understanding 00:21:43.900 --> 00:21:46.819 that the life you live right where you are contains 00:21:46.819 --> 00:21:49.700 all the drama and truth of the universe. He had 00:21:49.700 --> 00:21:52.480 a quote about this, right? All great civilizations 00:21:52.480 --> 00:21:56.279 are based on the parish. Yes. He believed that 00:21:56.279 --> 00:21:58.400 if you went deep enough into your own small corner 00:21:58.400 --> 00:22:01.160 of the world, your own parish, you would find 00:22:01.160 --> 00:22:03.779 the universal. You didn't need to go to London 00:22:03.779 --> 00:22:07.279 or Rome to find art. Art was in the soil of Inniskien. 00:22:07.579 --> 00:22:09.859 Art was in the green water of the Grand Canal. 00:22:10.200 --> 00:22:12.259 That is a really empowering idea. It's basically 00:22:12.259 --> 00:22:14.519 saying stop looking at Instagram to see what 00:22:14.519 --> 00:22:16.460 life should look like. Look at the bench you're 00:22:16.460 --> 00:22:18.660 sitting on. Exactly. And you see the influence 00:22:18.660 --> 00:22:20.900 of this everywhere. Seamus Heaney, the Nobel 00:22:20.900 --> 00:22:22.680 Prize winner who came after Kavanaugh, said that 00:22:22.680 --> 00:22:25.779 this distinction, the parochial versus the provincial 00:22:25.779 --> 00:22:28.660 liberated Irish poets. How so? It gave them permission 00:22:28.660 --> 00:22:30.420 to write about their own lives without feeling 00:22:30.420 --> 00:22:33.299 inferior. Kavanaugh told them, your life matters. 00:22:33.440 --> 00:22:35.819 Your mud matters. So Kavanaugh is recovering. 00:22:35.980 --> 00:22:38.220 He has this new philosophy. Does his career recover? 00:22:38.339 --> 00:22:42.319 It does. It wasn't instant. In 1956, he had a 00:22:42.319 --> 00:22:44.420 setback when Macmillan rejected his new poems. 00:22:44.700 --> 00:22:47.079 He was depressed again. Of course. But a man 00:22:47.079 --> 00:22:50.119 named Patrick Swift intervened. Swift was an 00:22:50.119 --> 00:22:53.119 artist, a writer, and he arranged for the poems 00:22:53.119 --> 00:22:54.940 to be published in a magazine called Nimbus. 00:22:55.119 --> 00:22:58.009 And this was the turning point. It was. This 00:22:58.009 --> 00:23:00.210 collection included the canal poems, and suddenly 00:23:00.210 --> 00:23:02.829 the critics woke up. They realized he wasn't 00:23:02.829 --> 00:23:05.329 just the peasant poet or the alcoholic sponger. 00:23:05.349 --> 00:23:08.150 He was a master. He was writing with a clarity 00:23:08.150 --> 00:23:10.549 and a grace that he never had before. And around 00:23:10.549 --> 00:23:12.569 this time, we have to talk about On Raglan Road. 00:23:12.730 --> 00:23:15.130 It's probably his most famous work to the general 00:23:15.130 --> 00:23:17.470 public because of the song. It's a beautiful 00:23:17.470 --> 00:23:20.490 story of unrequited love. The poem was originally 00:23:20.490 --> 00:23:23.210 titled Dark -Haired Miriam Ran Away, published 00:23:23.210 --> 00:23:25.829 way back in 1946. So before the cancer, before 00:23:25.829 --> 00:23:28.349 the rebirth. Way before. It's about a woman named 00:23:28.349 --> 00:23:31.170 Hilda Moriarty. Kavanaugh was infatuated with 00:23:31.170 --> 00:23:33.130 her. She was a medical student, much younger, 00:23:33.269 --> 00:23:35.289 beautiful. And he knew it was doomed. Oh, he 00:23:35.289 --> 00:23:38.690 did. The poem begins. On Raglan Road, on an autumn 00:23:38.690 --> 00:23:42.450 day, I met her first and knew that her dark hair 00:23:42.450 --> 00:23:44.589 would weave a snare that I might one day rue. 00:23:44.769 --> 00:23:47.569 I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted 00:23:47.569 --> 00:23:50.240 way. It's heartbreaking. He walks into the trap 00:23:50.240 --> 00:23:53.900 willingly. Years later, Cavanaugh was in a pub 00:23:53.900 --> 00:23:56.380 in Dublin, the Bailey, and he met Luke Kelly. 00:23:56.619 --> 00:23:59.759 Of the Dubliners. A legend. The legendary folk 00:23:59.759 --> 00:24:02.819 singer. Cavanaugh told Luke Kelly that he should 00:24:02.819 --> 00:24:05.839 sing this poem. He suggested setting it to the 00:24:05.839 --> 00:24:09.000 traditional air, Thane, Giel, and Leigh, the 00:24:09.000 --> 00:24:11.000 dawning of the day. And the rest is history. 00:24:11.220 --> 00:24:14.240 Luke Kelly's version is definitive. You can hear 00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:16.339 the gravel in his voice that matches the gravel 00:24:16.339 --> 00:24:18.680 in Kavanaugh's life. But it's been covered by 00:24:18.680 --> 00:24:21.700 everyone. Van Morrison, Sinéad O 'Connor. Mark 00:24:21.700 --> 00:24:24.619 Knopfler, Ed Sheeran. It's entered the DNA of 00:24:24.619 --> 00:24:27.819 Irish culture. It really has. So he has this 00:24:27.819 --> 00:24:30.119 late success. He's finding his footing again. 00:24:30.420 --> 00:24:33.839 And he even finds love. He does. He married Catherine 00:24:33.839 --> 00:24:37.440 Barry Maloney in April 1967. She was a significant 00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:39.880 figure herself. the niece of Kevin Barry, the 00:24:39.880 --> 00:24:41.940 famous Irish Republican martyr. They set up a 00:24:41.940 --> 00:24:44.240 home on Waterloo Road in Dublin. It seemed like 00:24:44.240 --> 00:24:45.660 he was finally going to have some stability. 00:24:45.880 --> 00:24:48.640 But sadly, the clock had run out. It had. Later 00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:51.720 that same year, in 1967, there was a premiere 00:24:51.720 --> 00:24:54.480 of a play adaptation of his novel, Terry Flynn. 00:24:55.059 --> 00:24:57.359 It was at the town hall in Dundalk, near his 00:24:57.359 --> 00:25:00.319 home. So, a homecoming of sorts. A real celebration. 00:25:01.140 --> 00:25:03.039 Kavanaugh attended, he was a guest of honor, 00:25:03.160 --> 00:25:05.640 but he fell ill right there at the premiere. 00:25:06.039 --> 00:25:08.359 That feels almost too scripted. Dying right as 00:25:08.359 --> 00:25:10.299 his work is being celebrated on stage in his 00:25:10.299 --> 00:25:13.480 home county? It's poetic, in a dark way. He died 00:25:13.480 --> 00:25:16.779 a few days later, on November 30, 1967. He was 00:25:16.779 --> 00:25:19.099 buried back in Enniskeen. So that's the life. 00:25:19.259 --> 00:25:21.279 From the shoemaker's bench to the canal bench. 00:25:21.789 --> 00:25:24.069 But the afterlife of Patrick Cavanaugh is just 00:25:24.069 --> 00:25:26.250 as interesting. We mentioned Seamus Heaney earlier. 00:25:26.470 --> 00:25:29.210 Heaney is the key witness here. He credited Cavanaugh 00:25:29.210 --> 00:25:31.049 with having a transformative effect on Irish 00:25:31.049 --> 00:25:33.670 culture. He said Cavanaugh liberated the gifts 00:25:33.670 --> 00:25:35.490 of the poets who came after him. What did he 00:25:35.490 --> 00:25:37.529 mean by that? Before Cavanaugh, you felt you 00:25:37.529 --> 00:25:39.990 had to write like Gatesmithic, grand, distant. 00:25:40.849 --> 00:25:43.950 Cavanaugh made it okay to just be Irish, to be 00:25:43.950 --> 00:25:46.220 ordinary, to write about your own parish. But 00:25:46.220 --> 00:25:48.880 his legacy pops up in the weirdest places. We 00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:51.099 have to go back to the Russell Crowe story. We 00:25:51.099 --> 00:25:53.380 teased it. Now give us the details. Okay, so 00:25:53.380 --> 00:25:56.779 it's 2002. The BAFTAs, the British Academy Film 00:25:56.779 --> 00:26:00.759 Awards. Russell Crowe wins Best Actor for A Beautiful 00:26:00.759 --> 00:26:03.240 Mind. I remember this. He gets up on stage in 00:26:03.240 --> 00:26:06.779 his tuxedo and he decides to quote a four -line 00:26:06.779 --> 00:26:09.819 poem by Patrick Cavanaugh called Sanctity. Do 00:26:09.819 --> 00:26:12.079 you have the quote? To be a poet and not know 00:26:12.079 --> 00:26:15.000 the trade. to be a lover and repel all women. 00:26:15.160 --> 00:26:17.779 Twin ironies by which great saints are made, 00:26:17.859 --> 00:26:21.460 the agonizing pincer jaws of heaven. It's a profound 00:26:21.460 --> 00:26:24.200 quote. It's about how suffering and failure make 00:26:24.200 --> 00:26:27.420 you a saint. But the BBC, who was broadcasting 00:26:27.420 --> 00:26:29.960 the show, cut that part of the speech out. Why? 00:26:30.160 --> 00:26:32.319 To save time. Yeah, to save time for the news 00:26:32.319 --> 00:26:35.000 or something. And Crow didn't appreciate the 00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:37.880 edit. To put it mildly, he reportedly confronted 00:26:37.880 --> 00:26:40.680 the producer, Malcolm Gary, at a dinner afterwards. 00:26:41.589 --> 00:26:43.750 Allegedly, he shoved them against a wall and 00:26:43.750 --> 00:26:46.069 used some very colorful language, shouting about 00:26:46.069 --> 00:26:48.670 how dare they cut the poetry. It's so Kavanaugh, 00:26:48.750 --> 00:26:50.930 isn't it? A brawl over a poem. Kavanaugh would 00:26:50.930 --> 00:26:53.069 have absolutely loved it. The idea of a Hollywood 00:26:53.069 --> 00:26:55.430 gladiator fighting a TV executive in defense 00:26:55.430 --> 00:26:57.589 of his four lines of verse. It's the perfect 00:26:57.589 --> 00:27:00.849 tribute. And speaking of weird tributes, tell 00:27:00.849 --> 00:27:02.910 me about the Disney World connection, because 00:27:02.910 --> 00:27:04.809 I genuinely thought you were joking when I read 00:27:04.809 --> 00:27:07.470 this in the notes. I am not joking. If you go 00:27:07.470 --> 00:27:10.089 to Disney Springs, formerly Downtown Disney, 00:27:10.569 --> 00:27:14.190 In Orlando, Florida, there is a massive Irish 00:27:14.190 --> 00:27:17.750 pub called Raglan Road. Okay, that makes sense. 00:27:17.950 --> 00:27:20.289 And right outside that pub, there's a bronze 00:27:20.289 --> 00:27:23.069 statue of Patrick Cavanaugh sitting on a bench. 00:27:23.269 --> 00:27:27.009 No way. Yes way. Tourists in Mickey Mouse ears 00:27:27.009 --> 00:27:30.029 sit next to him and take selfies. The man who 00:27:30.029 --> 00:27:32.650 hated the provincial impulse to copy others, 00:27:32.829 --> 00:27:35.529 the man who wrote about the grim reality of potato 00:27:35.529 --> 00:27:37.890 farming and the crushing poverty of the fog of 00:27:37.890 --> 00:27:42.339 unknowing, commercial, sanitized, artificial 00:27:42.339 --> 00:27:45.039 place on Earth. It is the ultimate irony. But 00:27:45.039 --> 00:27:47.339 then again, remember his request? Right. He wanted 00:27:47.339 --> 00:27:50.339 to be commemorated where there is water. Florida 00:27:50.339 --> 00:27:52.259 has plenty of water. Maybe he'd appreciate the 00:27:52.259 --> 00:27:54.559 absurdity of it. True. And back in Dublin, there 00:27:54.559 --> 00:27:57.619 is the real seat on the Grand Canal. Yes. It's 00:27:57.619 --> 00:28:00.000 a place of pilgrimage now. Every St. Patrick's 00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:02.619 Day, people gather there. They read his poems. 00:28:02.700 --> 00:28:04.839 They have a drink. It's exactly what he asked 00:28:04.839 --> 00:28:07.779 for. Brother, commemorate me thus beautifully. 00:28:08.539 --> 00:28:11.980 And we do. It's a beautiful legacy. So as we 00:28:11.980 --> 00:28:14.539 wrap this up. What does this all mean for us? 00:28:14.640 --> 00:28:17.579 Why does a shoemaker from 1930s Monaghan matter 00:28:17.579 --> 00:28:21.140 to someone listening to a podcast in 2026? I 00:28:21.140 --> 00:28:23.119 think Kavanaugh matters because he validated 00:28:23.119 --> 00:28:25.880 the ordinary life. He took the fog of unknowing 00:28:25.880 --> 00:28:28.299 and showed us how to clear it. He showed us that 00:28:28.299 --> 00:28:30.339 you don't need to look for myths or fairies or 00:28:30.339 --> 00:28:33.220 go to London or New York to find magic. The magic 00:28:33.220 --> 00:28:35.500 is in the street, in the canal, in the potato 00:28:35.500 --> 00:28:37.619 field. He grounded us. He brought literature 00:28:37.619 --> 00:28:39.380 down from the Misty Mountains and put it in the 00:28:39.380 --> 00:28:41.460 mud where we actually live. And in doing so... 00:28:41.740 --> 00:28:43.759 He made it real. He made it universal. I want 00:28:43.759 --> 00:28:46.099 to leave the listener with a thought today. We 00:28:46.099 --> 00:28:48.619 live in a world that is obsessed with being global. 00:28:48.900 --> 00:28:51.440 We're connected to everyone, everywhere, all 00:28:51.440 --> 00:28:53.259 the time. We're constantly scrolling, looking 00:28:53.259 --> 00:28:54.519 at what's happening on the other side of the 00:28:54.519 --> 00:28:57.160 world, feeling like that is where real life is. 00:28:57.579 --> 00:28:59.759 In Kavanaugh's terms, we are very provincial. 00:28:59.839 --> 00:29:02.500 We are constantly looking outward, insecure that 00:29:02.500 --> 00:29:04.819 we are missing out. Exactly. So here's the question. 00:29:05.180 --> 00:29:09.000 In this age of hyper -connectivity, is Kavanaugh's 00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:11.960 idea of the parochial, knowing your own small 00:29:11.960 --> 00:29:14.619 corner deeply, truly understanding your own immediate 00:29:14.619 --> 00:29:17.279 reality, is that actually the only way to be 00:29:17.279 --> 00:29:20.500 unique? Is looking inward at your own parish 00:29:20.500 --> 00:29:23.960 the only way to really say something to the world? 00:29:24.099 --> 00:29:26.420 A man innocently dabbles in words and rhymes. 00:29:26.900 --> 00:29:29.619 and finds that it is his life. Thanks for diving 00:29:29.619 --> 00:29:31.539 deep with us today. Thank you. We'll see you 00:29:31.539 --> 00:29:31.859 next time.