Dublin takes pride in its rich cultural heritage

By Zatni Arbi

DUBLIN (JP): The River Liffey which runs through Dublin, its water dark in color, is called dubh linn in Gaelic. That's where the city's name came from.

Every place in the world endowed with a strong character must have at least one distinctive feature that makes it memorable. In Dublin, it's not the dark water of the River Liffey, it's the "Doors of Dublin".

To me, a first-timer in Europe, the city's houses look more like large cardboard boxes, all with almost completely uniform windows and doors. Almost every door has an arch above it, and the frames and pillars are painted white. The doors are also painted in different colors, hence, the renowned Doors of Dublin. I was told that each of these doors had to be a different color so men coming home late and drunk from the pub could find their homes.

Driven by hunger and poverty in the past, particularly during the failure of the potato crops in the 1840s, many Irish people were forced to leave their homeland and seek their livelihood elsewhere in the world. Today, tens of millions of their Irish descendants live outside Ireland, and are called the Irish Diaspora.

The Irish people are warm and friendly. They seem to always want to know what life on the other side of the globe is like. That's why it came as no surprise that the doorman at the Burlington Hotel knew a lot about Indonesia, although he may not have met many Indonesians in his life.

As their traditional music also testifies, the Irish are very energetic people. Should you ever feel low while in Dublin, just go to the Abbey Tavern at Howth and listen to live Irish folk music and songs and your spirit is bound to be lifted. Remember the Dubliners, the Chieftains, and U2? They are all Irish. Mind you, the first performance ever of Handel's Messiah took place here in Dublin.

Irish finesse in literature is beyond any doubt. Ireland was home to world literary figures including Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Richard Steele, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats and Samuel Beckett. The last three were Nobel prize winners.

The city was built by the Vikings more than a thousand years ago. Therefore, you'll find houses here that are hundreds of years old. In the 1960s, some of the Georgian houses were torn down and new, modern buildings were erected. Today, Irish people look at these new buildings with remorse, because they look awfully ugly amidst the restored old houses with their classical facades.

A visit to the Old Library of Trinity College was perhaps the best starting point for exploring Dublin. The Book of Kells, an exuberantly decorated manuscript copy of the four gospels, is yet another testimony of how the Irish always cherish their past. The Long Room, the main chamber, houses about 200,000 copies of the oldest books in the library. To me, the thought that for 400 years, people have entered this huge chamber to seek knowledge was overwhelming.

I was very lucky to meet Mrs. Mary Gibbon. Mary runs her own tours in and around Dublin, and she differentiates herself from other tour guides by an astonishingly vast and detailed knowledge of Irish history, arts and literature. I went on one of her half- day city tours, and it was one of the best experiences I had in this city. While other tour guides usually entertain their groups with jokes and light-hearted monologues, Mary gave us detailed accounts on what role people like Daniel O'Connell and Eamon de Valera played in the Irish struggle for home rule. As we passed city landmarks such as the old Parliament House where the Bank of Ireland is now headquartered, the 400-year-old Trinity College, O'Connel Street and St. Patrick's Cathedral, she took time explaining to us what their respective significance is in the country's history.

Inside the magnificent St. Patrick's Cathedral, we paused at one particular corner as Mary recounted the life and works of Jonathan Swift, who was the dean of the cathedral from 1713 to 1745. Both Swift and his lifelong closest friend Stella (Esther Johnson) were buried side by side in the cathedral, and you can see their tombs.

Castle

The tour with Mary Gibbon was both highly insightful and enjoyable. But I was also lucky to have the chance to visit two other remarkable landmarks in Ireland, the Malahide Castle near the seaside town of Malahide and the Newbridge House in Donabate.

Surrounded by 250 acres of park land, the Malahide Castle was home to the Talbot family for almost 800 years. The last Lord Talbot died in 1973 with no heir. His sister bequeathed the estate to the Irish government and then went to live in Tasmania, Australia. The castle still featured the family's beautiful old furniture and even the children's toys. Of all the rooms that were open to public, the Great Hall was the most affecting. On the walls hung paintings of the family members, each depicting his or her period of the turbulent history of the Irish. Legend has it that on the morning of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, 14 family members had breakfast in this room and then left for the battle. None of them returned, as they were all dead by sundown.

The Newbridge House, which was built on even larger park land in the 18th century, is a witness to how wealthy lords and ladies used to live in the past and how the common people had to work so hard and bear tremendous humiliation to support their lords' excessively lavish lives. A visit to the kitchen and laundry room downstairs, which featured the servants' tools and implements from hundred fifty years 150 ago???correct number of years?, would make one understand why, in 1729, Jonathan Swift wrote a horrible satire, A Modest Proposal. In it, he suggested that the Irish poor raise their children as food for the wealthy.

Nonetheless, the breathtaking stucco plaster work found in Newbridge House remains as proof of the dedication that people in the past had for perfection and beauty. Indeed, one can see this level of dedication in both the exterior and interior of so many buildings in Dublin.

What else did I do? I had a nice stroll on a cold afternoon through the beautiful and tranquil St. Stephen Green Park, a seven-acre park right in the middle of the city where no radios are allowed. I went in and out of the friendly shops along St. Henry Street. Since I had been away from home for a couple of days, it was time for a peep into KOMPAS On-line, so a stop at the PlaNET Cyber Cafe on South St. George's Street was in order. Yes, the existence of cyber cafes in Dublin demonstrates how the Irish have embraced cyberworld technology without abandoning their past.

What did I feel as I looked around me, indulging myself in the charm of all this old heritage that was still in such a magnificent state? What questions came to my mind as I noticed how proud the Irish people were about their past -- and justifiably so? Was I intrigued by the fact that Gaelic was still in use, although English was spoken as the main language?

All the while I was awed by the glorious past and present of Dublin and Ireland, I couldn't help being beleaguered by painful thoughts about home: How many of our historic buildings and sites in Jakarta and its surroundings have disappeared forever, depriving our children and grandchildren of any sense of our past? Why do we continue to replace our old buildings and sites with new houses, office buildings and apartments, which could be erected somewhere else? Are we going to keep on destroying our own cultural heritage that once made us proud to be Indonesians, much as the Irish are proud to be Irish? We also had our own glorious past, but can we remain a nation with a strong character if we no longer have the opportunity to learn about our country and view its heritage?