Brian Friel · 1980 · EPUB · Calibre ID 6182
Resurfaced in The Private Core (2026-10-18).
Role in the triad
Anchor: the scene the other two books theorize (1833 Name-Book; a closed speech-community opened by translation)
Why this book
A play about translation written entirely in English; dramatizes the Ordnance Survey’s Anglicising of Irish place names and voices Steiner’s theory of the private core through Hugh and Yolland.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “Owen – Roland – what the hell. It’s only a name. It’s the same me, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?” (Act One)
- “I may learn the password but the language of the tribe will always elude me, won’t it? The private core will always be … hermetic, won’t it?” (Yolland, Act Two, Scene One)
- “But remember that words are signals, counters. They are not immortal. And it can happen – to use an image you’ll understand – it can happen that a civilisation can be imprisoned in a linguistic contour which no longer matches the landscape of … fact.” (Hugh, Act Two, Scene One)
- “it is not the literal past, the ‘facts’ of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.” (Hugh, Act Three)
- “I will provide you with the available words and the available grammar. But will that help you to interpret between privacies?” (Hugh, Act Three)
Themes
Aeneid · Anglicisation · interpreter as censor · Name-Book · Ordnance Survey · password · private core · Tobair Vree