Arts and Literature
- June 16 - The first public celebration of "Bloomsday" takes place in Dublin. Writers Flann O'Brien, Patrick Kavanagh and Anthony Cronin travel in a horse drawn coach stopping at numerous pubs to retrace the steps of the characters from James Joyce's novel Ulysses.
- November 19 - Brendan Behan's first play, The Quare Fellow, premières at the Pike Theatre, Dublin, to great reviews.
- First Cork International Choral and Folk Dance Festival.
- English-born painter Derek Hill settles at St Columb's Rectory, near Churchill, County Donegal.
- Publication of Christy Brown's autobiography My Left Foot.
- Publication of Iris Murdoch's first novel, Under the Net.
Read more about this topic: 1954 In Ireland
Famous quotes containing the words arts and, arts and/or literature:
“A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone, and must; but coop up most men and you undo them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure—if you don’t like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don’t like it, you don’t understand and you ought to find out.”
—John Drummond (b. 1934)
“In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)