A
Land Without Wolves
A
Novel
By
Daniel
Wade
Publisher:
Temple Dark Books, 2021.
Pages:
250
The Wolf has always played a very interesting role as
either a sign or trope in literature. One only has to think of Saint Francis in
connection with the animal; one of the saint’s apparent miracles was the taming
of the wolf of Gubbio in Umbria and which had been marauding the countryside
there to all of the farmer’s frustration. Francis bid the wolf to stop, invoking
Christ, and the beast relented. Or, possibly, Sigmund Freud in connection with
the Wolf Man a reference to Sergi Pankejeff his first major case and who made
him so notorious as a psychoanalyst. Pankejeff had a recurring dream of several
wolves perched on a tree surveying him and from this image, which the patient
famously drew, Freud interpreted the dream to signify the subject’s Oedipus
complex. His sister, who had been both his parent’s favourite, had been his
apparent object of anxiety, wanting to replace her in the affections of his
parents his subconscious, according to Freud, had conjured up this image of the
tree of wolfs which was a symbol representing an event he had witnessed of his
parents copulating. Classic Freud, the wolves were deemed by the Viennese
Clinician to be symbolic of the bestial act, Pankejeff had apparently witnessed
his parents doing it “doggy style”. In popular culture then you have the Wolf Man
littering comics, or Werewolf of film, the famous lycantrophe of ancient
Greece, conjuring up both images from Hollywood, from the special effects of
the eighties, to the costumes of the late forties in the black and white horror
films in which the creature appeared alongside such other Gothic literary
characters like Frankenstein.
However, in Daniel Wade’s debut novel, which is
historic in genre, the wolf is more evocative of Milton’s reference to the
animal in his political tract in defence of Cromwell and his rebel army who
fought against King Charles I. “ Be therefore, in the name of God, the master
of a wolf.”[i]” Milton had been
commissioned by Parliament to respond to a text in defence of the King. This is
a very interesting insight into Daniel Wade’s novel, all the more so since it
is coming directly from the writer himself. Daniel Wade is a poet, first and
foremost, with a deep reverence for the historical. So, to see him write a
novel set in revolutionary Ireland during the end of the 18th
century is a very wonderful thing. As Milton, a revolutionary himself,
permeates Wade’s novel. As well as the symbolism of the wolf.
The novel begins in cinematic mode. We are introduced,
on the very first page, to one of the main protagonists, a certain Mogue
Trench, who is about to be hanged by the neck on the scaffold, complete with
audience. As the Hangman approaches him, Mogue goes into total recall, and so
we quickly flashback 12 years earlier in chapter 2 which bears the date 1786.
Mogue is a young man of 27 on the gallows, so we start the book proper while he
is in the bloom of adolescence.
Before I continue on the plot, a word first on the
language that is being used.
it
looked withered and egg-shaped,
a
maw of agape nylon gently swinging from
the
traverse beam in the dawn like a hypnotist’s pendulum.
Such is the description of the noose upon the
scaffold. As I have said, Daniel Wade is a poet, and it is language like this,
plus the very cinematic pacing of the story that make this book instantly
enjoyable and so approachable. I foresee Daniel writing a screenplay and some
talented director making a superb action film adaptation.
Of course, ideally, Martin Scorsese would be the man
behind the camera. Or at least directing the film. Why do I say this? For the
simple reason that Daniel Wade’s debut novel A Land without Wolves is an
extremely violent tale. Why Wade positively delights in the almost ceaseless
mayhem that he so graphically depicts. For instance, chapter iv The Crucible,
which is dated Wexford 1786, is an extremely harrowing account of how the
MacTíre family met their gruesome end, all barring Joseph who becomes the
mentor for Mogue Trench whom we were introduced to upon the scaffold in the
opening chapter. So the crucible in the sense that it because of this extreme
violence inflicted upon his older brother Redmond, and his sister Fiadh ( the
parents long since dead) who is gang raped by a gang of local Ribbonmen, or
revolutionary Irishmen, typically Catholic, and so rebelling against the
appalling caste system that was in exitance in Ireland during the eighteenth
century when the country was under the yoke of the mighty British Empire.
Now, as a fellow Irishman myself, what I find really
admirable about Daniel Wade’s deep exploration of late 18th century
Ireland which he portrays in this novel is the entirely unsentimental appraisal
of the various motivating factors of the characters who people this most
extraordinary debut novel. I have said already that Wade is deeply interested
in history, as a poet, and this is also on full display in the little details
which he peppers the text. For example, the depiction of the Hedge School
Teacher, Hugh Ó Doirnín, who teaches all the MacTíre children before their
tragic end. In a brief appearance, we hear the man speaking to Joseph, one of
the main protagonists of the novel, when he is a very young boy about the
Cyclops. The Cyclops were the one-eyed Giants which marauded the islands in the
Mediterranean. Sicily is singled out particularly as the place where Odysseus
encountered Polyphemus who had his eye famously burned out by Odysseus and his
crew after the said giant ate some of the Greek captains men alive washing them
down with Maron’s wine.
Yet, Daniel Wade evokes Aeneas in A Land without
Wolves and Virgil’s Aeneid. He has written a poem about Achamenides,
“the sole survivor of Ulixes’ crew. Sir.” As the young Joseph explains to his
learned Teacher. Hedge Teachers were common at the time, as Catholics were not
allowed to attend schools publicly. The were outlawed. With revolutionary
pamphlets and books being printed aplenty, particularly in revolutionary
France, the colonial power wanted to keep the population as ignorant as they
possibly could. So, Wade’s insertion of the Cyclops in this chapter is perfectly
judged, being a deeply historical and metaphorical symbol of brutish power and
ignorance which, most importantly, will also come to a brutish end.
The violence which poor Joseph is subjected to
himself, he is almost strangled to death, by the local revolutionary thugs, and
which he sees his poor brother and sister subjected to makes difficult reading.
No prude myself, and pretty well versed in gore, having read countless volumes
on Stalingrad, Monte Cassino and other hell holes from WW2 , I must say that I
found this chapter hard going. Wade’s descriptions of the savagery that are
inflicted upon Joseph’s two siblings is truly harrowing.
“Up,
ye Judas melt” he hissed from behind his cawl. “ On yer feet, MacTíre,
c’mon!”
He turned to one of his men who’d lingered by the door and
beckoned
him over, who in turn approached Redmond’s stricken form.
Kneeling,
he lashed the elder MacTíre Brother’s hands together with a
bit
of hawser, the taunts and mockery and spitting of his fellows bubbling
about
them. A length of chord was tied around his neck and tightened;
the
tip of his tongue was forced out, and the leader sliced part of it with
a
gralloch. ( p.XXVII)
A gralloch is a hunting knife of Scottish origin and
which typically would have a six inch blade, spear pointed, and they were used
for ‘gralloching’, that is removing the offal of the beast with sharp cuts to the
thick hide of whatever poor beast one had downed.
Wade’s savage five- page description of the violence
is of course deliberate, as the perpetrators, remember, of the savagery are
supposed to be rebelling against the forces of the Crown which have subjected
the Irish people to some of the most brutal laws ever inflicted upon a people,
and yet here they are terrorising members of their own race which they
proclaim, and at every opportunity, that they are defending! And of course,
this is historically true. It is, indeed, often the case. Yeats perhaps said it
best, I am poorly paraphrasing, when he said that the whip remains, yet only
the hand that holds it truly changes. It is a point that the contemporary
philosopher Slavoj Žižek, the one time defender of socialism, is constantly
making, and that is the fact that revolutions, by their very nature, are all
doomed to failure due to man’s fundamentally flawed nature. It is the subject
of Samuel Beckett’s final full length epic novel How It Is. Hence the
insertion of the Cyclops at the beginning of the chapter referencing Virgil’s
epic poem The Aeneid which also charts the violent bloody genesis of
Italy as a nation. According to Virgil, Aeneas leads the last remaining Trojans
who have been kicked out of Troy by the Greeks after years of war, only to
wander the seas to finally settle on the shores of Italy, thus subsequently founding
Rome and its subsequent bloody murderous empire. Do unto others as has been
done unto you. One only has to look at the middle east today. It is the subject
of poets and writers, ever eternal. Man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. Of
course, poets, like most people, are also looking for justice too. Hence art!
What did Nietzsche say? We have art in order not to die of the truth!
So, Joseph MacTíre ‘The Notorious Highwayman’ is born.
After seeing the last of his family so cruelly dispatched in such a fashion,
his older brother eventually drowns a year after their home was burnt to the
ground, Joseph settles on a life of crime, being orphaned and now homeless,
what else was there for him to do? Human’s, at the end of the day, were simply
a bad lot. It is a realistic, and philosophically at least, also a reasonably
sound truth. What follows then is an account of Joseph’s life of criminal
vagabondage. He starts off living in a cave in County Wexford not far from Hook
Head. This conceit is totally within keeping with Joseph’s newfound vision of
Man, caves being the abode of the first, so called, originators of society as
we know it. The Cyclops, those one-eyed kings, vision obscured to everything
but criminal bounty. Daniel Wade, remember, is first and foremost a poet. So,
Homer is never too far off, though he shall be replaced by Milton.
But firstly, I
should say, at this point, that most of the action in the novel takes place in
either Wexford or Dublin city. Wade spent a lot of his childhood holidaying
near Tintern Abbey, a key location in the book, and in a promotional film
accompanying the book he explains the origin of the character of Joseph MacTíre
and his accomplice Mogue Trench. Apparently, when he was a very young boy, the
author wondered about the highwayman whom he had read about when he was
holidaying by the dark woods near the old abbey. This is an extraordinary
revelation, and it does help to explain the very unique atmosphere that Wade creates
when he is describing the origins of his singular late 18th century
Irish highwaymen. Among Joseph’s library, in the inventory of the cave, Wade
does not forget to mention a copy of Daniel Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe. This
is timely, of course. Dafoe’s classic tale of the castaway was first published
in 1719, the book is often considered to be one of the first examples of what
we now know as the modern novel. Again, Wade is acknowledging his literary
origins. As a poet, and also as someone who has lived by the sea, Wade delights
in maritime poems and, again, in this respect he is unique in Irish literature
today.
After, we see the young Joseph grow and develop in the
country like some feral Anti-Rousseau, we eventually get to witness our new -found
villain plying his trade in the Augustan capital that was Dublin in the late
eighteenth century. This is the Dublin so lovingly described by Maurice Craig[ii] , this is the Dublin of
James Gandon whose Four Courts ( 1786) had just been erected, rotund and domed
with pillars resplendent. Yet, almost forgotten now by the city dwellers today,
the few bridges that traversed the oozing Liffey river were patrolled by
armies, or gangs, of thugs who often fought pitched battles among one another
in a vain attempt to outdo one another in business. The cities denizens were
obliged to forfeit a toll if they wished to cross the river, in those days, or
failing that hire a boat. Wade clearly delights in depicting one of these
bloody battles. Although, I must say, I kind of delighted in reading his superb
bloody accounts, as I feel that this it is a very neglected side to the city’s
history. Its brutal bloody past. We in Ireland are always gorging ourselves on
films and series depicting the violence going on in other nations, in
metropolises so very distant, when all the while the invisible thread of
history, stained and bloodied that she is, garlands the very air we
breathe.
But the narrative really kicks up a gear in part 2 of
the novel, this is when Mogue Trench is introduced proper into the story. After
having been wounded and taken hostage by Joseph in the final chapter of part 1,
Wade depicts the pseudo-couple hiding out in MacTíre’s cave. There is an
element of Captain Jack Sparrow in Wade’s creation, no doubt. The dialogue
between the two main protagonists, as they fight one another before eventually
pairing up as a team, all reads like the dialogue in some Hollywood
blockbuster. But this is not to detract or takeaway from the overall tone of
the novel. It is more a moment of welcome light relief after the rather gory
episodes of part 1. So well judged, and besides, the scene depicted also
provides a moment of seeing again the character of Joseph MacTíre through the
eyes of another. Trench! As Joseph presents himself to the young man, whom he
has almost killed, in a very different light as he is known by many. For
example, after the two protagonists have fought, and whereby Trench proves
himself to be a dab hand at the arts of wielding a knife, MacTíre recites a passage
from Book XII of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the final chapter in that
illustrious tome. In this final book, we remember, the Archangel Michael
explains man’s fate to Adam after the crucifixion of Christ.
Wolves
shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves,
Who
all the sacred mysteries of heaven
To
their own vile advantages shall turn
Of
lucre and ambition, and the truth,
With
superstitions and traditions taint,
Left
only in those written records pure,
Though
not but by the spirit understood. [iii]
The prophecy for the Irish, when they did eventually
break free some 200 years later, was that the wolves would come in sheep’s
clothing. I am thinking now of the legions of people who suffered abuse, in
some form, from the church which aligned itself with the ‘revolutionary’ movement,
and who would together become the new tyranny, after the British had long gone.
Wade, of course, as a writer, and an Irish one at that, is writing history from
the all- seeing eye of retrospect. But, written on the eve of the centenary of
Irish independence from Great Britain, you can be sure that by going back to
the events around the time of revolutionary Ireland in the late 18th
century, the rebellion of 1798 in Ireland played out mainly in Wexford and the
south east coast of Ireland and which failed dismally, was deliberate as here
are the real germs of the revolutionary fervour which was to govern
predominantly Irish and British politics for the next century.
Of course, the figure of the Highwayman, Joseph Mac
Tíre, the Milton quoting overman, is the perfect tool foil for the so called
enlightenment ideals which were sweeping across Europe and the newer colonies
to at the time. Ideas about freedom, equality and fraternity which the French
were calling on. Mac Tíre’s sister hardly saw much freedom the night she was
gang-raped by a gang of so called freedom fighters. So, his cynicism is very
aptly grounded in the Real, he will serve no Master. Not Crown nor Republican.
Once again, Satan’s famous line ‘Better to reign in Hell, rather than serve in
Heaven’ from Paradise Lost is very apt. As for Mac Tíre, Life is Hell.
As he clearly states to Trench when he makes him an offer to join him as a
highwayman.
“So,
I’m offerin’ ye a chance to live a life where eventually
you’ll
be free from wages, from hunger, from the petty laws men devise
to
keep each other shackled. I’m offerin’ ye a chance for freedom, real
freedom
now, not the abstract fancies they fill books with.” ( p.Ixxxix)
As Joe Mac Tígh makes
this offer to Mogue Trench, symbolically it’s a pivotal secne in the novel,
Trench casts his eyes about the Highwayman’s cave and the fire that is going in
the cave illuminates all the many volumes which Mac Tígh has stacked against
the walls. ‘All of Ireland could have been plundered to make this underground
library.’( Ixxxvii.) The reference to Plato is again almost impossible to
ignore, his parable of the cave, rather. The books, according then to the
Highwayman, being likened to the ghostly shadows thrown against the walls of
the cave in Plato’s enduring parable, which the prisoners, or cavemen,
mistakenly construe to be reality itself. Whereas, Mac Tígh is not talking
about abstract notions of freedom. His reading, if you will, is what we would
now consider to be, with hindsight, a Heideggerian interpretation of Freedom –
BEING! As Plato depicts, the sole cave dwellers who have the strength of
purpose to get up, shake off their chains and leave the cave to step into the
light of TRUTH.
This chapter set in the
cave is echoed beautifully in the following chapter ( XI ) in which the two
heroes find themselves taken prisoner while attempting to break into a local
Lord’s manor. Like the trope of the Cave, the Big House is another motif which
appears in many novels in the western canon. One only has to think of the
wonderful novels of Jane Austen, all those period dramas which play out in the
great houses of England, they are the natural theatrical stages for authors to
frame their microcosmic explorations of societies, past and present. Sir Vesey
Colclough (1745-1794) in Daniel Wade’s A Land Without Wolves, as we see
him in the great library in his country estate set beside Tintern Abbey in
County Wexford where so much of the action plays out, is an individual who
actually existed at the time and this is one of the reasons why the novel is so
interesting as a lot of the characters who appear in it are in fact historical
characters. Wade has clearly immersed himself in the whole period, and not just
in terms of political history, but in order to really imbue the text with a
feel for the era it is in the character portrayals, the costumes, the weapons,
the food and drink; every possible detail of the period is given due attention.
In this respect, A Land Without Wolves is clearly an immersive experience,
and of course this is one of the reasons why historical fiction as a literary
genre has become so popular. As, living in a hyper modernistic age, with all of
its unparalleled uncertainties, whether it be apocalyptic visions brought on by
climate change, or visions of war due to imploding economies and global economic
competition; perhaps by returning to the past we seek greater clarity in order
to somehow comprehend the almost overwhelming tsunami of events which assail us
day to day, and so take shelter within the confines of two secure covers which,
once opened, give us almost omnipotent access into more, due to historical
perspective, perhaps comprehensible periods in human history.
Of course, there is much
that is familiar in the late 18th century compared to today. The
figure of Colclough comes across as a highly modern figure, as opinionated and
self-serving that he appears to be, forming his own voluntary army to patrol
his great estate while Whiteboys and Redcoats prepare for war. Wade very
successfully manages to grant us access into the tumultuous world of late 18th
century Ireland which, as with most countries at the time, was experiencing also
huge political and social turmoil due to the ideas which were circulating. So
while the Highwayman Mac Tíre advocates personal freedom using the political
ideas of John Milton and perhaps even more so the philosophical musings of the
figure of Satan, the rebel angel who defied God in Paradise Lost,
Colclough praises the ideas of Thomas Hobbes who was at pains to underline the
concessions that citizens must make in order to be protected in society, hence
the importance of the law and the maintenance of social order. But for who’s
profit, one asks? This is where Wade’s novel perhaps differs from others, as he
quite successfully manages to contrast the two wholly opposite views quite naturally
with the narrative of the novel, as the characters wholly embody the different world
views through their actions which push the events which take place and the
narrative along, so as we readers we feel that we are participating with them
rather than if the whole thing was merely descriptive. This is all down to
Daniel Wade’s extraordinary attention to every particular aspect, as already
mentioned, to 18th century society. He is a Dubliner, after all, and
18th century Dublin was in its prime. Today, as one walks around the
city, the architecture bears witness to this fact. One only has to look to
Gandon’s masterpieces the Four Courts and later the Custom House, they remain,
after almost 300, the unparalleled architectural edifices in the city. There is
absolutely nothing to rival them in terms of sheer grandeur and scale. Similarly,
Daniel Wade’s debut novel A Land Without Wolves reaches the sublime, as
it comes through the portrayal of its many characters, from a multiplicity of
angles and perspectives so that we the readers may gain access into Dublin and
beyond its borders in a time in the countries history which must have appeared
extremely daunting for the people of the time. And surely, looking around us
the world that we find ourselves in today, this must return us to our own time
with a more philosophical bent.
I would strongly recommend
A Land Without Wolves to anyone who enjoys a good rollicking yarn, first
and foremost but also to anyone who appreciates language, for Daniel Wade,
first and foremost, is a poet. The phraseology is constantly beguiling. It is a
very physical read, in this respect. I have already mentioned the violence
depicted in the battle scenes, but there is an almost Hemingwayesque attention
to movement, particular when the author is describing the fighting, of which
there is plenty, but also in the chases – it is, after all, a tale about highwaymen,
so chases are a plenty. But, also, as already pointed out, the effort to embody
the ideas of these very revolutionary times, be they advocating the Enlightenment
ideas percolating on mainland Europe at the time, or the more realistic ideas
of contemporary poets such as John Milton, there is a lot to contemplate in
this tale. Personally, I think its an extraordinary debut for a contemporary
writer, and if it does not put Daniel Wade on the literary map there is
something seriously askew.
[i] Milton, John: The Works of John
Milton- Historical, Political & Miscellaneous, In Two Volumes, A.
Millar, London, MDCCLIII. p. 522.
[ii] Craig, Maurice: Dublin
1660-1860, The Shaping of a City, With a Foreword by Mark Girouard,
Liberties Press, 2006.
[iii] Milton, John: Paradise Lost, An
illustrated edition with an introduction by Philip Pullman, Oxford University
Press, First Published 2005, p. 365.
