Chapter 12 - Synge and Disappearing Ireland

Summary

For over a century, readers have savoured the paradox of J. M. Synge’s work, which combines, in negative dialectical fashion, a style of savage vitality with a keen sense of loss. These affective dimensions, which W. B. Yeats recognised as personality, are the key features of a transfigurative aesthetic that seeks to show how we are constantly misrecognising a world that is never quite what it seems. Thus the savagery of Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World is misrecognised as heroism and the grief felt by Pegeen Mike is twisted into a note of defiance at his loss. The dynamic found in Playboy can be found in just about every work Synge completed.