Κόκκινα τριαντάφυλλα για μένα

by Seán O'Casey

Το έργο γράφτηκε ατά 1942. Αφετηρία του στάθηκε μια απεργία των Ιρλανδών Εργατών Μεταφορικών Μέσων του 1913. Ήρωάς του ο ιδεαλιστής, νεαρός Αγιάμον Μπρέυντον, εργάτης, προτεστάντης, ερωτευμένος με μια καθολική νέα, τη Σήλα Μορνήν. Ο Αγιάμον ζει με τη μητέρα του σ' ένα φτωχόσπιτο. Αγαπάει τη μουσική, το διάβασμα, τη ζωγραφική, το θέατρο. Όμως αυτό που, πάνω απ' όλα, τον κερδίζει, είναι ο αγώνας για τη βελτίωση των Συνθηκών ζωής των συνανθρώπων του. Οι εργάτες ζητούν αύξηση, ένα σελίνι, και οργανώνουν απεργία. Η καλή του προσπαθεί να πείσει τον Αγιάμον να μη λάβει μέρος στην απεργία. Εκείνος δεν την ακούει. Σε μια σύγκρουση με την Αστυνομία σκοτώνεται. Πάνω σ' αυτή την απλή ιστορία, ο συγγραφέας έχει στηρίξει μια σειρά σκηνές και περιστατικά που προσθέτουν θαυμαστή ομορφιά, μεγαλοσύνη, ανθρωπισμό στο έργο, που, λίγο - πολύ, αποτελεί κι ένα είδος αυτοβιογραφίας του Ο' Κέϊζυ. Ο νεαρός Αγιάμον είναι ο νεαρός Σων Ο' Κέϊζυ, όπως τον βλέπει ο γέρος πια Σων Ο' Κέϊζυ. Και η ζεστή, συμπάσχουσα, μαχητική μητέρα του ήρωα, είναι άλλο ένα μνημείο αγάπης και χρέους του συγγραφέα προς τη μητέρα του. Η επίθεσή του κατά του καπιταλισμού είναι, σ' αυτό το έργο του, πολύ πιο αποτελεσματική παρ' ότι σε οποιοδήποτε άλλο του, επειδή είναι "εκ των πλαγίων": αντί τα εικονίσει τον "διεφθαρμένο καπιταλιστικό κόσμο", παρουσιάζει τις επιπτώσεις του καπιταλιστικού συστήματος πάνω στη μάζα του λαού. Στη σκηνή δεν υπάρχουν κακοί τραμπούκοι και φασίστες: υπάρχει μόνο πεινασμένος λαός που διώκεται και πυροβολείται, επειδή διεκδικεί το ψωμί του.
Το έργο "Κόκκινα Τριαντάφυλλα για Μένα" παίχτηκε στο Λονδίνο το 1946, και στη Νέα Υόρκη στα 1955. Από τότε, έχει πια καθιερωθεί. Είναι ένα έργο που θαυμάζεται, είτε κρίνεται, είτε "χρησιμοποιείται" για πολιτικούς λόγους. Προπαντός όμως, είναι ένα έργο που αγαπιέται.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Literature, Irish Literature

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Sean O'Casey was born in 1880 and lived through a bitterly hard boyhood in a Dublin tenement house. He never went to school but received most of his education in the streets of Dublin, and taught himself to read at the age of fourteen. He was successively a newspaper-seller, docker, stone-breaker, railway-worker and builders' labourer. In 1913 he helped to organise the Irish Citizen Army which fought in the streets of Dublin, and at the same time he was learning his dramatic technique by reading Shakespeare and watching the plays of Dion Boucicault. His early works were performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and Lady Gregory made him welcome at Coole, but disagreement followed and after visiting America in the late thirties O'Casey settled in Devonshire. He lived there until his death in 1964, though still drawing the themes of many of his plays from the life he knew so well on the banks of the Liffey. Out of the ceaseless dramatic experimenting in his plays O'Casey created a flamboyance and versatility that sustain the impression of bigness of mind that is inseparable from his tragi-comic vision of life.

He was a major Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Red Roses for Me—a play about a young working man in the Dublin slums in the days before the Lockout of 1913—debuted at the Dublin Olympia in 1943, more than fifteen years after Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars, Sean O’Casey’s two universally acknowledged masterpieces, were first performed at the Abbey. Red Roses, although considered one of the best of the author’s later expressionist plays, is often deemed inferior to the two mentioned above. I disagree.

Although its mood is more elegaic, its action less intense, and its dialogue less amusing, its historical observations are just as sharp, the poetry of its Irish speech just as lyrical, and its people just as vividly imagined as in the two earlier plays. Moreover, it seems to me more deeply felt, a work close to O’Casey’s heart. Its portrait of the young protagonist Ayamonn Breydon, a young Protestant working man with a passion for many things, including painting, Shakespeare, and social justice, is wistfully autobiographical, and its language—particularly in the expressionistic last act—gives us O’Casey’s most poetic exploration of the blighted and beautiful Dublin he loved, the city of his birth.

Here are two excerpts, to give you a taste of the language. First, Ayamonn Breydon speaks to his girlfriend Sheila who tells him that “we must look well ahead on the road to the future” to make “it possible for us to live together.”

”We live together now; live in the light of the burning bush. I tell you life is not one thing, but many things, a wide branching flame, grand and good to see and feel, dazzling to the eye of no-one loving it. I am not one to carry fear about with me as a priest carries a host. Let the timid tiptoe throught the way where the paler blossoms grow; my feet shall be where the redder roses grow, though they bear long thorns, sharp and piercing, thing among them!”

Later, Ayamonn marvels of the transformation wrought on dingy old Dublin by the setting sun:

Look! Th’ vans an’ lorries rattling down th’ quays, turned to bronze an’ purple by th’ sun, look like chariots forging forward to th’ battle-front...There’s th’ great dome o’ th’ Four Courts lookin’ like a golden rose in a great bronze bowl! An’ th' river flowin’ below it, a purple flood, marbled with ripples o’ scarlet; watch th’ seagulls gliding over it — like restless white pearls astir on a royal breast. Our city’s in the grip o’ God!”

[Szijártó Máté · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the tension rises slowly, there aren't any turning points in the story, and it doesn't make you want to read further. Basically everything can be known upfront after reading the first act. The characters feel underdeveloped, and personally the writer's notes are uselessly lengthy, and too strict, leaving few place for one's imagination.

[Mohamedridha Alaskari محمد رضا العسكري · Rating 3 out of 5]

واحدة من روائع المسرح العالمي!

[Julian Munds · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sean O'Casey is a master of dialect and sound, but his play is also a mishmash of half finished ideas and scenes. He did experience these events that he shows here, and I would love to see a production of this, but I think this play might work better as an opera than a play. The first two acts seem out of place with the last two. An experiment, that is not sure what it wants to be.

[أحمد · Rating 2 out of 5]

هناك فقرة طريفة في مقدمة المترجم لهذه المسرحية القصيرة تقول:

ودأبت ليدي جريجوري على تشجيع أوكيسي وحثّه على أن يكتب عن سكّان الأزقّة والأحياء الشعبية، حيث كانت تدرك أن أوكيسي يعرف هؤلاء الناس عن قرب، ذلك لأنه عاش صغره في أحد المساكن الشعبية في دبلن، وأنه مارس أقسى الأعمال وأكثرها مشقّة، فمن كنّاس في الشارع وعامل بالميناء تكوّنت خبرته الأولى بهذا العالم الذي نشأ فيه، وفي ظلّ هذه الظروف الشخصية كانت تعتقد أنه قد يفعل شيئًا هامًا للمسرح الإيرلندي


وهي مشكورة، ولكن مشكلتي في هذه المسرحية كانت أني كنت أرى الموقف الأساسي بوضوح، موقف الإضراب والإغراء للآخرين للمطالبة بالحقوق، وكنت أحسب أن الرؤية واضحة، ولكني سرعان ما مللت على طول المسرحية مع قصرها، فالمواقف كانت جدّ فضفاضة (مع جمالها) كشخص منحول يلبس قطعًا أكبر من مقاسه ثلاث أو أربع مرات!

[David Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

awesome, but meanders at points

[Daniel Silveyra · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't go beyond the first act. The setting is very familiar (a romeo and juliet, except they're poor and protestant/catholic). The characters speak in a strange mixture of formal English and Irish slang, as if sometimes the author forgets himself and just reverts back to literary conversation.

Its just dull.

[Matt Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has got to be really deep on anybody's bookshelf. I picked up O'Casey's "Three Plays" because I was looking for plays and I had never read anything by him. This is a Romeo/Juliet story; and the characters switch between Irish slang and beautiful neo-shakespearean poetry. But it works, I swear.