Cú Chulainn I

by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

from Selected Poems, 1988

Small dark rigid man

Cú Chulainn
who still lacks a lump on your shoulder
who spent your first nine months in a cave
swimming in your mother’s fluid.
Grave hunter
who’d satisfy no woman
saying your father never went
to a small seaside town
like Ballybuion
never made arms and instruments of war
to give you
so you could leap from the womb
three minutes after the conception
your hand full of spears
holding five shields -
it is not we who injured you.

1
From my point of view the poem that I choosed to present is about a mythological
hero and his portret is revealed from the first lines in the poem„Small dark rigid man”.
Is a strange figure that is presented in a different way, a strange way I can say , he’s a
„cave man”, a „Grave hunter” a warior without weapons.
The poem is written in a diferent style, like in a mirror, as the reader is one and the
same with Cú Chulainn. Examples are to be found throughout the poem like „your
sholder”, „your first nine months, „ in your mother’s fluids”, „your father” .another
approach would be that he is the reader’s brother or a shadow of the reader’s own
entity.
The 2 lyrics ”who spent your first nine months in a cave/swimming in your mother-s
fluid ” emphasizes the natural way of pregnancy ,”nine months”,”mother-s fluid” but
in the same time it shocks through antithesis ”spent nine months in a cave” .this
methafor could stand,in fact,for a life wasted and isolated but it could also mean that
death has taken over life from the beginning .
The presence of death is marked in the poem by certain words like cave ,grave(hunter)
but taking into account the words which deals with life and giving life ,like” nine
months”,”mother-s fluid””conception” it could be said that the poet wants to
emphasize the struggle between life and death.
Instruments of war also stands for this struggle and in the final lyrics there is a visual
image which refers to a hand full of ”spears” but in the same time holding ”five
shields”,protecting life ,and through this injuring in fact the self ;craving so much for
life and protecting it ,eventually you injure yourself due to the fact that you surround
yourself with instruments of war and never live without the tendency to destroy
through protection.
Taking all these points into consideration,I would say that the poem is full of antithesis
and could be interpreted in different ways and has more than one connotation.The
struggle between life and death or the fierce want of life which has no result than
injuring the self with these ”instruments of war”.

2
Universitatea Dunărea de Jos, Galati, Facultatea de Litere,
Jalbă Cosmin Gabriel,
Grupa 1, Română-Engleză, An I.