Absurdist Fiction in the Focus of Philosophy: Máirtín Ó Cadhain and his Novel "The Dirty Dust"

Ponomareva Anastasiia Lecturer, Department of General Education and Humanitarian Disciplines, Voronezh Industrial College of Humanities named after Vasily Mikhailovich Peskov 394063, Russia, Voronezh region, Voronezh, Revolution Ave., 20 As-ponomareva@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Literature has since ancient times acted as a mouthpiece of philosophical thought, helping to express general observations about the world vividly, acutely and, most importantly, as accessible as possible to the reader. The literature of the absurd has not remained aloof from this process, exposing the problem of the lack of meaning in the world and its desperate, albeit fruitless, searches. Ireland became a kind of experimental laboratory for reflecting the drama of the absurd, which gave rise to the work of many Irish and Anglo-Irish writers. This is due to its social cataclysms, including the recurrent famine in the country, terrorist attacks and pogroms, and finally, the civil war (1922-1923). During this period, the struggle for the independence of the country stimulates the rise of national consciousness, and, accordingly, the emergence of new national authors. And although James Joyce or Samuel Beckett do not need a special introduction, there are figures who receive less attention among researchers. One of these authors, Martin O'kayne, was rediscovered by the literary tradition relatively recently. Being a representative of the Irish people, he raises "island" problems, in which, however, as in a microcosm, all the imperfections of the human race are guessed in a collapsed form. The Russian translation of his most famous work, "Cemetery Dirt", appears only in 2020. The novel tells the story of the newly deceased Katrina Padin, her relationship with her neighbors, the living and the dead, as well as about modern reality (1940's). The whole novel is built as one global polylogue, and the mere fact that language acts as an independent hero of the work, placing emphasis on the opposition of articulated speech and speech not perceived, muffled, allows us to consider "Cemetery Dirt" among other works of absurdity in which language is powerless to find an organizing principle in the world.

Currently, researchers distinguish two trends in the interpretation of the phenomenon of the absurd. V.A. Lapatin speaks about the ordinary, traditional interpretation of the absurd as nonsense, on the one hand, and also about its understanding as an extended logic, showing a deeper semantic level, on the other hand ^{[1, p. 136]}.  It is noteworthy that the areas of manifestation of the absurd in its latest interpretation are just art and philosophy. The function of the absurd in these spheres is to mark the implicit meaning, and this function is a continuation of its essence, if we understand the absurd as a true position, but deaf–sounding, inaudible or soundless. According to Pomerants, "the absurd is the boundary of formalized thinking, without which it cannot function" ^[2]. Going beyond its limits, formalized thinking gives impetus to the creation of new worlds, and the absurd itself acquires a meaning that can be expressed and perceived. Being a logically completed formalized unity, a literary work of the absurd cannot contain meanings behind which there is nothing, so one should strongly disagree with the assumptions of some researchers that the linguistic constructions of a literary text hide entities that, in the end, may not be ^{[3, p.29]}.From the first pages of the novel, O'kayne takes an accusatory position in relation to reality and gives his work a distinct satirical orientation: the urgent question that Katrina Padin asks in the grave: "I wonder what plot I'm buried in: For a Pound or For Fifteen Shillings?" ^{[4, p. 13]}.

The character's ego, expressed in quantitative terms, remains unsatisfied: the grave is actually for fifteen shillings. The representation of the mortidic theme is carried out through the appeal to the images of money, materially binding to the world, reducing the values of the main character to a simple calculation and calculation. Padin does not overestimate her life path, does not ask questions about the purpose of her life, does not seek to understand and hear the rest of the inhabitants of the cemetery – her tombstone has a quantitative characteristic, turning the remains under it, as Guenon would put it, into "remains" galvanized by the "infernal" will ^{[5, p. 283]}. Isolated from the living, the dead try to recreate their social existence by discussing details that cannot be verified from the grave.  In general, their speech activity is aimed at recreating the same gossip, and, as in life, is not marked by truthfulness. Recently deceased people often tell their neighbors in the cemetery what they want to hear: for example, Katrina Padin is informed about a beautiful cross that is supposed to be installed on her grave, or retell news about the wonderful life of her son, allegedly receiving a relative's land, building a house, etc.

O'Kane's novel draws a parallel between the living and the dead. The soul does not separate from the body, as prescribed by the Christian canon, but remains attached to the body, and Katrina, surprised by this state of affairs, wonders whether she is alive or dead. The dead conduct conversations in the same way as on earth, and, according to O'Kane's English translator Alan Tatley ^[6], conversation was in fact the only form of culture in Connemara, the hegoraphic region of western Ireland, with which the place of action in the novel correlates.  The conversations of the dead with each other are forced, and they are a burden to the inhabitants of the cemetery themselves: "I thought that from the hour I was brought to church, they sang and I no longer need to work hard, do housework, worry about the weather, be afraid of a storm, I would be granted peace… Why is this fuss in the dirt of the cemetery? "— asks Katrina. ^{[4, p. 18]}The novel repeatedly emphasizes the fact that everyday difficulties and conflicts of the living do not disappear after death, and the dead continue fruitless attempts to settle scores with each other.

Through the optics of village gossip, catastrophic world events are also presented. When Katrina finds out that her living sister supports Churchill in the "War of Two Foreigners", she enters into an alliance with his enemy: "Hurrah for Hitler!" she exclaims. "Do you think if he comes, he'll level her house to the ground?" ^{[4, p.341]} War is thus perceived as a means to avenge an insult, and not as a total threat. Katrina's stupidity and callousness appear in the novel as the plane of expression behind which the apocalyptic subtext is hidden, described further in more detail. The motif of the "last confrontation" is a fairly frequent phenomenon for the literature of the absurd, which R?diger Gerner first drew attention to in his "Art of the Absurd", directly linking the absurd and the historical crisis ^[7].

The year of the novel's release was marked by historical events. In 1948 , the Republic Act was adopted in Ireland Ireland, which came into force in 1949. According to the document, the country was leaving the British Commonwealth and becoming completely independent, control over Northern Ireland from the UK, however, remained. This was followed by spelling reform, which caused many complaints among conservative-minded Irishmen. The foundations of the old world were undermined, and in the new mind unsuccessfully tried to find a harmonizing beginning.  By its very content, the absurdity of Irish literature, thus, tends to the philosophy of traditionalism, if we understand by the latter "philosophical and religious teaching criticizing the modern world, i.e. having an anti–modern and anti-postmodern character" ^{[8, p.55]}. The loss of the meaning of human activity is largely due to the destruction or perversion of contexts that can be designated as traditional: for example, family, community. Tradition here is proposed to be considered as any inheritance that the outgoing generations pass on to the new ones. ^{[9, pp. 394-395]} With the philosophy of traditionalism, O'Kane's novel brings together, in addition to the problem of qualitative values, the question of a broken hierarchy, more precisely, the building of a "counterarchy" with such a pathetic creature as Padin at the head and with its last link in the person of the first buried in the cemetery. Throughout the novel, the "oldest" dead man strives to be heard, but he is not allowed to speak. However, according to the novel's plan, only he alone can convey to the rest of the dead the truth about their actual ontological status "after the end of time". When it comes to ancient Irish prophecies, Catherine recalls, among others, the prediction of Colm Killet, where it is said that when the marble on the Island ends, the end of the world will come" ^{[4, p.262]}. This prediction is drowned in a series of equally vivid prophecies, so it remains unheard. In addition, one of the characters notices how often Colm Killet was wrong (2/3 of the predictions were wrong). Meanwhile, it is this prophecy that becomes fundamentally important in the context of the whole novel, since, according to the first buried, his cross is no longer made of island marble, and as it turns out, there is no marble left for the dead even before the deployment of their endless polylogue. The reconstruction of the narrative logic reveals that throughout the novel, O'kayne shows us the terrible reign of the Antichrist, however, without the usual depiction of horror and suffering for this topic.

The only means of getting to know the characters in "Cemetery Mud" is their speech characteristics, but it is enough to accurately determine the ontological state of the world and the person in it. O'kayne's understanding of the role of language in culture makes him related to such a thinker as Martin Heidegger. According to Heidegger, language, along with abandonment and understanding, is a key characteristic of human existence. In language, Heidegger distinguishes between speaking and listening. It is listening as a prerequisite for existence that allows us to get closer to the meaning of being and the meaning of language, which exist in close union. Since man is being, since he is essentially related to others (Mitmenschen), language as such is a conversation (Gespr?ch) ^{[10, p. 152]}. In O'Kane's work, a separate being is represented as purposeless, limited, having lost all essential connections with the world, except quantitative ones. A person, as O'kayne shows him, is fixated on himself, mired in gossip and bustle, he is no longer interested in the existence entrusted to him, he does not feel himself either his shepherd or his master. The gap between listening and speaking generates the linguistic absurdity of speech turned to nowhere and, according to Heidegger's concept, ceases to be the house of being, does not cope with its main function. A special emphasis on the language is also made by introducing distorted Anglicisms into the novel. Nora Shanin is Katrina's matchmaker and the main lover of "decorating" speech with English honest and smashing. And for O'Kane, who fought for the preservation of the Gaelic language, this is, of course, a device designed to draw the reader's attention to the loss of the national language, and at the same time – the loss of national identity. Along with the words of native Gaelic, the concepts denoting them also disappear, and this speaks of an ontological collapse, the flattening of the world, its degraded state. The simplification and shallowing of language in the context of eschatology is directly indicated by Mircea Eliade. His work "Aspects of Myth" emphasizes the indestructibility of myth as an integral part of the human psyche, where eschatology acts as the reverse pole of cosmogony. While cosmogony describes the destruction of the world, eschatology tells about its disintegration. At the level of the structure of an absurd text, the motives of disintegration manifest themselves in stressed speech deformations. "Since the beginning of our century, plastic arts, as well as literature and music, have experienced a transformation so radical that in this case we can talk about the "destruction of the artistic language" ^{[11, p. 79]}. According to Eliade, the authors of modern times do this in order to build a new world on the ruins of the old one, assembling it from formless matter. However, in relation to Irish modernism, such a technique is probably just an honest statement of the degradation blamed by the author. According to O'Kane, the threat to the language due to government neglect and emigration was existential, and the prospects were bleak. Towards the end of his life, an interviewer asked him where he thought the country was heading. "If we lose the Irish language, we will lose our native literature," he said sullenly. "We are finished as a people. The perspective that every generation of Irishmen had will come to an end" ^[12].

The symbolism of decay and decomposition is laid down in interludes under the names "Black mud", "Scattered mud", "Compacted Mud" and the like. According to O'Kane, the characters of the novel remain dirt, remaining indifferent to spiritual rebirth. The main character Katrina Padin recalls with annoyance about the stain on her shroud, literally symbolizing her depravity, and one of the inhabitants of the cemetery compares her to her sister with two stupid puppies, whose confrontation ends in death and nonsense. Meanwhile, the ability to fully meaningful communication, the ability to listen and hear theoretically could help the characters find ways to spiritual rebirth. Speaking about the impossibility of transcending to the "Other", shown by the example of the insincerity and superficiality of the relations of the "soulmates", it is appropriate to recall the creator of the "dialogical theology" M. Buber. A thinker close to existentialism calls life with people one of the spheres of the world of relations. In our opinion, O'kayne speaks of this sphere as inaccessible to his characters. "Here the attitude is open and it is framed in speech. We can give and receive You," Buber proclaims ^[13]. No one seems to be trying to establish such an attitude with the main character of O'Kane's novel, noting that she is "empty-headed" and "it would be better to do without her voice" ^{[4, p.163]}. Despite the abundance of voices sounding on the kaladin, no one really cares about anyone. 

In the "Dirt of the Cemetery", the inability of a human being to go beyond his subjectivity to the "Other", and therefore to overcome the profane, is particularly prominent. The cross made of island marble remains an empty dream, and the inhabitants of the cemetery are forever doomed to act as "talking heads", washing the bones of the living. Their speeches are absurd, because they cannot be verified with reality – and they ignore even the one who wants to tell them about the true state of things. And here the absurd acts as something like an advocate of meaning, ready to tell the reader about what it (world sense) is not. It is characteristic that wherever modernists talk about the absurd, it hides not so much an artistic experiment and a game with form, as an attempt to tell a philosophical parable. The broken (inverted) hierarchy, speech deformations and eschatological motives are indispensable attributes of the literature of the absurd, which makes it related to the philosophy of traditionalism. A work of art that reflects an absurd life always contains a longing for meaning. And although the problems of the tragedy of human existence have been raised since Antiquity, the senselessness of human existence depicted by O'Kane and other modern writers allows us to talk about the genetic connection of the literature of the absurd with the philosophy of the absurd. By raising questions about the meaning of human existence and its purpose, about the connection of cause and effect, purpose, limit and boundless, the literature of the absurd falls into the focus of fundamental philosophical ontology, paving the way for philosophical discourse.