Clare funeral hears purpose of Edna O'Brien's writing was to 'illuminate, inspire, give courage'

The son of Edna O’Brien has said the purpose of his mother’s writing was to “illuminate, inspire, give courage” to those who struggled to speak out, her funeral mass in Tuamgraney, Co Clare heard today.

O’Brien, a novelist, short story writer, memoirist, poet and playwright, died aged 93 last month after a long illness.

A violinist and cellist performed ahead of the service at St Joseph’s Church in Tuamgraney, Co Clare, on Saturday.

Ireland’s President Michael D Higgins joined the family and friends of Edna O’Brien to pay tribute to the Irish novelist at her funeral mass.

Speaking at her funeral mass, her son Marcus Gebler said: “In the last week, I’ve been moved and overwhelmed by the tributes and affection for our mother from so many different people in so many countries.”

He continued: “For many writers, it is their first book that is their best, and they never quite live up to that initial curated distillation of their own life.

“But in our mother’s case, her development as a writer was an arc continually ascending from the lives of young women in 1940s Ireland – through age, experience and suffering – to 1990s Bosnia or Nigeria in 2014.”

Reflecting on the purpose of his mother’s stories, he added: “I believe in her case, it has been and will remain, to illuminate, inspire, give courage to and speak for those who are rendered dumb.”

Mr Gebler also read a poem he wrote for his mother, which received a round of applause from the congregation.

He became emotional as he recalled what a doctor told him at the birth of his son, Oscar: “The most important thing you can do is to give him love as much as possible and all the time, and that is what we got from her.”

President Higgins was joined by his wife Sabina Coyne, who appeared emotional throughout the service. Independent Clare TD Michael McNamara was also in attendance.

During the procession of symbols, family and friends laid items which held significance for O’Brien.

Her grandson Oscar presented her French Legion of Honour to represent a “lifetime of extraordinary achievement”.

Other items included a Buddha statue offered by her niece, which was said to symbolise how O’Brien was a “deeply spiritual woman whose curiosity and open heart led her to many faiths throughout her lifetime”, including Buddhism.

Her Irish literary inspirations were honoured by a friend who carried a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and another presented a portrait of the late author Samuel Beckett, a friend of O’Brien.

Among the songs performed during the service was the hymn The Lord’s My Shepherd.

Edna O’Brien’s friend, Scottish novelist Andrew O’Hagan, paid tribute to her legacy, including how she changed the perception of Irish female writers.

During his speech at her funeral mass, he recalled fond memories of the writer and spoke about “how funny” she was, saying: “Her comic engine was always turning, even, or especially, in the midst of of anxiety – the comic engine, along with those other great turbines of creativity, outrage, ambition.

“But at the centre of it all was a talent so singular, that nothing could countermand it, nor age, nor illness, or lack of stamina.

“She lived inside her prose like no writer I’ve ever known. Her gifts were both solid and ethereal, like the sprites… in her favourite play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“Yet they were rooted in the history and the byways of Ireland, which was forever the landscape of her imagination, the seedbed of her writing and her soul.”

Novelist Andrew O’Hagan added in his tribute to Edna O’Brien: “We’ve heard a lot in the last two weeks about Edna’s revolutionary intervention in Irish fiction, her opening up of the novel to the truths of desire and the complexities of interior female complexity.

“But we must remember, as we celebrate her now, the hard road she had to navigate, even amongst her heroes. ‘Men are governed by lines of intellect’, James Joyce wrote, ‘Women by curves of emotion’.

“But Edna made it her task on an international stage both to embody and to defy that thought, marrying the intellectual to the sensual, coupling the emotional and the thoughtful, raising the bar on common experience and on inheritance, our pride of worth.”

O’Brien was best known for her portrayal of women’s lives against repressive expectations in Irish society.

Her first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960 and became part of a trilogy that was banned in Ireland for their references to sex and social issues.

O’Brien, who has lived in London since 1958, described an outraged response from people in Ireland in contrast to the book’s international success.

Ms O’Brien will be laid to rest on Holy Island, where an ancient monastic settlement is still in use as a burial ground and where her mother was laid to rest.