At Swim-Two-Birds
At Swim-Two-Birds is a 1939 novel by Irish writer Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien. It is widely considered to be O'Brien's masterpiece, and one of the most sophisticated examples of metafiction.
Author
English
1939
Ireland
224 pp (UK paperback edition)
The novel's title derives from Snám dá Én (Middle Irish: "The narrow water of the two birds"; Modern Irish: Snámh Dá Éan), an ancient ford on the River Shannon, between Clonmacnoise and Shannonbridge, reportedly visited by the legendary King Sweeney, a character in the novel.[1]
The novel was included in Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.[2] It was also included in a list, published by The Guardian, of the 100 best English-language novels of all time.[3]
Plot summary[edit]
At Swim-Two-Birds presents itself as a first-person story by an unnamed Irish student of literature. The student believes that "one beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with", and he accordingly sets three apparently quite separate stories in motion.[4] The first concerns the Pooka MacPhellimey, "a member of the devil class".[4] The second is about a young man named John Furriskey, who turns out to be a fictional character created by another of the student's creations, Dermot Trellis, a cynical writer of Westerns. The third consists of the student's adaptations of Irish legends, mostly concerning Finn Mac Cool and Mad King Sweeney. But even this is a jest — the first of many in the novel — as there's also a fourth beginning here: That introducing the Irish student's own discourse on the benefits of three beginnings, setting his own story in motion.
In the autobiographical frame story, the student recounts details of his life. He lives with his uncle, who works as a clerk in the Guinness Brewery in Dublin. The uncle is a complacent and self-consciously respectable bachelor who suspects that the student does very little studying. This seems to be the case, as by his own account the student spends more time drinking stout with his college friends, lying in bed, and working on his book than he does going to class.
The stories that the student is writing soon become intertwined with each other. John Furriskey meets and befriends two of Trellis's other characters, Antony Lamont and Paul Shanahan. They each become resentful of Trellis's control over their destinies, and manage to drug him so that he will spend more time asleep, giving them the freedom to lead quiet domestic lives rather than be ruled by the lurid plots of his novels. Meanwhile, Trellis creates Sheila Lamont (Antony Lamont's sister) in order that Furriskey might seduce and betray her, but "blinded by her beauty" Trellis "so far forgets himself as to assault her himself."[5] Sheila, in due course, gives birth to a child named Orlick, who is born as a polite and articulate young man with a gift for writing fiction. The entire group of Trellis's characters, by now including Finn, Sweeney, the urbane Pooka and an invisible and quarrelsome Good Fairy who lives in the Pooka's pocket, convenes in Trellis's fictional Red Swan Hotel where they devise a way to overthrow their author. Encouraged by the others, Orlick starts writing a novel about his father in which Trellis is tried by his own creations, found guilty and viciously tortured. Just as Orlick's novel is about to climax with Trellis' death, the college student passes his exams and reconciles with his uncle. He completes his story by having Trellis's maid accidentally burn the papers sustaining the existence of Furriskey and his friends, freeing Trellis.
Translations[edit]
At Swim-Two-Birds has been translated into several languages, including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, Hungarian, Swedish, Romanian and Bulgarian. The first French translation, Kermesse irlandaise, was written by Henri Morisset and published in 1964; another, Swim-Two-Birds, was published in 2002. The Spanish translation, En Nadar-dos-pájaros, was published in 1989 by Edhasa. The Dutch translation Tegengif was made by Bob den Uyl and first published by Meulenhoff in 1974. It was published again in 2010 by Atlas as Op Twee-Vogel-Wad. The book has been translated into German twice, once in 1966 by Lore Fiedler and subsequently in 2005 by Harry Rowohlt. The book has also been adapted as a German-language film by Austrian director Kurt Palm.[36] The Romanian version is by Adrian Oțoiu and was published in 2005, as ' La Doi Lebădoi'. The Bulgarian translation "Plavashtite Chavki" by Filipina Filipova was published in 2008 by www.famapublishers.com
Into other media[edit]
Film[edit]
The Austrian director Kurt Palm made a film from the book in 1997. The title of the film is In Schwimmen-zwei-Vögel.
Actor Brendan Gleeson has long planned to make his directorial debut in a movie adaptation of the book. The Irish production company Parallel Pictures announced that it would produce the film with a budget of $11 million. Michael Fassbender, Colin Farrell, Gabriel Byrne, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Cillian Murphy have at various times been attached to star in the film.[37][38] Gleeson confirmed in July 2011 that he had secured funding for the project. He described the writing of the script as torturous and that it had taken 14 drafts so far.[39] As of April 2014, the film was still in development.[40]
Stage[edit]
The book has been adapted for the stage on at least four occasions. The first stage version was commissioned in 1971 by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and written by Audrey Welsh.[41] The British theatre company Ridiculusmus toured a three-man adaptation of it in 1994–1995[42] and there was a 1998 version by Alex Johnston for the Abbey Theatre.[43] A more recent stage version was directed by Niall Henry and performed by the Blue Raincoat Theatre Company in Sligo in November 2009.[44]
Radio[edit]
The novel was adapted for radio by Eric Ewens and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 26 August 1979, repeated 2 November 1980. The director was Ronald Mason.[45]
Epigraph[edit]
The Greek phrase found in the front-matter of the novel is from Euripides's Herakles: ἐξίσταται γὰρ πάντ' ἀπ' ἀλλήλων δίχα (existatai gar pant' ap' allêlôn dikha), English "for all things change, making way for each other".[46] This may be construed as a consolation: "No matter how bad you feel, don't lose hope, because you can count on things getting better."[47]