Brain is not only organ with which poets thinkIf O Searchaigh was a dustman, we wouldn't even be having this discussion, writes Eilis O'Hanlon
It's almost unbelievable that, in this age of instant worldwide communication, it should only be now that a controversy has erupted over what Donegal poet Cathal O Searcaigh did or did not do with boys, young men, whatever you want to call them, on his visits to Nepal, when the film which gave rise to it was premiered at a festival in Amsterdam as long ago as last November. News travels fast? Not in the world of Irish-language poetry it doesn't.
But it's probably nowhere near as unbelievable that anyone would bother trying to justify O Searcaigh's actions now that the details have come to light.
It's not that there isn't a case to be made for the defence. Friends and supporters have been putting up a heroic effort of advocacy all week, on RTE's Liveline in particular, pointing out that all the young men involved were over the age of consent in Nepal and that no actual offence had therefore been committed, and furthermore that no complaints against O Searcaigh have been made. Clinton-like, they even quibbled over the definition of "sex", while sweepingly questioning the motives of the filmmaker who pursued these allegations, accusing her of being a shameless publicity seeker trying to make a name for herself out of a juicy scandal, and lambasting the media for covering the story in the first place. One caller even blamed the immaturity of Ireland in dealing with sensitive issues.
So it's our fault? Ah, it all makes sense now.
You can see where they're coming from. The youths involved were not little children.
People are married by that age in Nepal and elsewhere. The age of homosexual consent in France and Denmark is 15. In Canada, it's 14. In Spain, it's only 13.
But that's the point, isn't it? This isn't Spain or Canada, it's Nepal, a desperately poor country with an average life expectancy of under 60 years of age, a high rate of illiteracy, and an average annual income that would scarcely buy a decent meal in a restaurant in Dublin. You can make subtle lawyerly points about the meaning of sex and the definition of consent, but if they admit nothing else, would his defenders at least not concede that the whole thing is, in the words of another Liveline caller, "a bit creepy"?
Fiftysomething men from the West making out with poor and needy teenagers in the Third World, whether they're boys or girls, might be breaking no law, but if you believe it can happen without the spectre of sexual exploitation raising its ugly head then your moral radar must be seriously askew. And indeed, if it was 16-year-old girls involved in this case, then most people would probably have accepted by now that it just ain't right.
The planes to Bangkok are filled with Western males with big wallets and a holiday's supply of Viagra, all of whom are technically law-abiding citizens, but since when did that stop us from recognising them for what they are? Should we be defending them too?
A couple of factors seem to be making things more complicated here than they need be. O Searcaigh's homosexuality is one. Everyone is so afraid of being labelled homophobic that they overcompensate with exaggerated insouciance about behaviour they would otherwise regard as questionable at best and repugnant at worst.
These are the same buttons which O Searcaigh's trying to push when, in an interview with a Donegal newspaper, he talks of male sexuality being misunderstood by the filmmaker who has accused him. You can call it a pink version of the Ali G defence. He's saying: "Is it because I is gay?"
No, it's not, but by posing the question, the seed of doubt is planted in the minds of those attacking you, and they step back.
The other complicating factor is his poetry. If O Searcaigh was a dustman -- or a school teacher, imagine that -- we wouldn't even be having this discussion. He'd already have been roundly condemned as a dirty old man, probably fired from his job, and that would be that. We're only gnawing at this bone because he's not a dustman, he's a poet, so we think we owe the whole thing an extra duty of care.
Artists and poets are the good guys in our culture, so when one of them comes under attack, there's a natural rallying round. Allowances are made, and excuses tendered, because we can't square the dicothomy in our own heads of a man who is clearly capable of producing art that lasts and connects -- and one who is, by all accounts, a kind and gentle soul; a good man -- also being involved in something which most of us instinctively regard as morally suspect. Confused, some of us seem to be responding in this instance by simply clinging on like limpets to the good stuff and closing our minds to the bad.
That's the way the mind works. We need certainty, and these stories remind us that there often is no black and white, only shades of grey.
Kind and gentle people do exploit others whether they mean to or not, or know it or not. Clever people can do incredibly stupid things. The brain is not the only organ with which poets do their thinking.
"I wasn't coercing them," he says of the boys, and he surely believes it. But you can't fly into a Third World country with your money and have a sexual relationship with young men you're also helping out financially and honestly believe it can stay simple and wholesome and untainted. But he probably managed to blank that out from his own mind too, because what he was doing was satisfying a need in him and the boys seemed OK with it and besides, it's back to that idea of being a good person. If you're a good person, how can what you do be so very wrong?
The human capacity for self-delusion really is limitless.
In a way, O Searcaigh's defenders are making the same mistake as those who have called for his poems to be banned from the Leaving Cert syllabus. They're confusing the poet and the man. On one side, they love the poet, so excuse the man. On the other, they hate what the man has done so attack the poems. Both responses are equally misguided.
Banning books is certainly not what we're about anymore. People who do wrong things sometimes make great art. The wrong things don't make the art any less great. Nor should a desire to show disapproval of the wrong things mean we should deny others the chance to engage with that art.
Poems never hurt anyone. Quite the opposite. If we thought otherwise, we wouldn't still be reading Oscar Wilde and the loss would be entirely ours.
See Living section
