Die Wölfe von Belfast

by Brian Moore, Rudolf Rocholl (Translator)

Diarmuid Devine is a teacher, and bachelor, destined for a lifetime of loneliness. One day he overhears a colleague mocking his sexual inexperience then he meets Una and a possible future appears. Set in an oppressive Belfast, stifled by religion and the conformity it imposes, Brian Moore explores the innocence, misunderstanding and consequences of Devines relationship with Una until rejection and the fear of scandal forces him to choose how he will live the rest of his life.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Novels, British Literature, 20th Century

188 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Brian Moore (1921–1999) was born into a large, devoutly Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a surgeon and lecturer, and his mother had been a nurse. Moore left Ireland during World War II and in 1948 moved to Canada, where he worked for the Montreal Gazette, married his first wife, and began to write potboilers under various pen names, as he would continue to do throughout the 1950s.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, The Colour of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”

Reviews

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diarmuid Devlin, Dev,teaches English at a Catholic boy's secondary school in Belfast in the late 1950's. As restricted as American society was in the 50's about sex, Northern Ireland was even more oppressive. The slightest indiscretion especially if it involves the opposite sex, can have disasterous results. Poor Dev, at 37, has never had a girlfriend. He lives in the basement of a Catholic widow with teenage children. This living arrangement also restricts his lifestyle as we will see as the story unfolds. His knowledge of women is limited to his family, which makes Dev very vulnerable. As in his novel The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Moore is a master at portraying the lives of Catholic adults leaving celibate, lonely lives.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the front cover of my copy of this book, Moore's second novel under his own name, there is a quotation from The Times stating that 'Brian Moore is astonishing'; after reading two books by him (the other one was his first novel, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne) I would have to agree. If I describe Judith Hearne as being about the futile attempts by the titular heroine to improve her own life in a repressed society then the same could be said for The Feast of Lupercal except with a male protagonist; but it's not simply a re-run of Judith Hearne, it's more of a companion piece to it.

Diarmuid Devine is a thirty-seven year old schoolmaster at a Catholic boys' school, Ardath College, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is a bachelor who lives in some dingy digs and is very set in his ways. He's largely ignored at the school by fellow teachers and students alike and is treated as being of no real importance. He enjoys helping out with an amateur dramatic group, with some behind the scenes work, but even there he is either ignored or taken for granted; for example his name is missed off the programme for five years running; it's not certain if this was deliberate or not. He is also a virgin though no-one else knows this. Despite all this Devine (or Dev) gets a shock when he overhears two colleagues talking about him in the lavatory where they describe him as an 'old woman' who wouldn't 'understand what a fellow feels about a girl'. Devine is shocked to realise that people think of him in this way and begins to ponder his situation.

As for girls, well, he had never been a ladies' man. He was not ugly, no, nor too shy, no, but he never had much luck with girls. It was the education in Ireland, dammit, he had said it many a time. He had been a boarder at this very school, shut off from girls until he was almost a grown man.

And he is still there, only now as a teacher. So, Dev decides to change things and try to talk to women and he gets the chance at a party hosted by a colleague and friend, Tim Heron, where he starts a conservation with an attractive young woman who turns out to be Heron's niece. She is called Una Clarke, she's from Dublin, she's a Protestant, and is staying with her uncle before starting her nursing training at a local hospital. At the party Devine has to endure the teasing from his colleagues for being seen talking to a young attractive woman, and he hears the gossip that she left Dublin because she was involved with a married man and was sent to her uncle's in Belfast by her mother. He's not sure whether to believe the gossip but when he wonders what a twenty year old Protestant could possibly see in a thirty-seven year old Catholic schoolteacher he decides to leave the party early.

Devine, as organiser of the amateur dramatic group, is asked by Father McSwiney to put on a play to help raise funds for a charity. After a meeting with Una and another member of the drama group it is agreed that Una will audition for a part in the play. As she hasn't had much acting experience the others in the group are not too keen on her taking the part but Devine offers to help her out with some tuition. Devine and Una get to see quite a bit of each other and Una reveals that the gossip about her is true; that she was in love with a married man back in Dublin and was shipped off to her uncle's in Belfast to keep her out of trouble. When she reveals that she may still be in love with the man Devine is distraught but outwardly reassures her. Devine now becomes self-conscious of his unfashionable appearance. He shaves off his moustache and decides to get some new clothes. There are a couple of amusing scenes where Devine goes to a tailor's to buy some clothes but hasn't a clue about fashion and another where he has some intensive dancing lessons as he's promised Una that he'll take her dancing.

Una's uncle, Tim Heron, is not pleased that Devine and Una are seeing each other and tries to put a stop to it and threatens to get her pulled from the play. Tim tries to bully him and Devine, unused to confrontation, only meekly defends himself. Moore's narrative highlights the total lack of any private life for the students and teachers: The teachers know about Una's past; Heron finds out about Una and Devine; the boys overhear the conversation beween Heron and Devine; the teachers overhear and punish the boys when they are found gossipping about the same things the teachers are gossipping about. And the Dean of the school is informed about everything.

Una doesn't get the part in the play as an actress who has played the part before becomes available—it's not certain whether this was down to Heron's interference or not. When Devine lets Una know about not getting the part she's preoccupied about something else and is unconcerned about 'the silly play' as she has had some bad news. Devine feels that she is slipping away from him as he believes that she is pregnant. He is distraught but desperate; this is his only chance of love. Walking home Devine, in his desperation, reasons to himself that everything is not all lost:

Supposing the worst were true? Well then, the Dublin fellow could not marry twice, could he? A husband would have to be found, a husband who would take the child and breed legitimate brothers and sisters to keep it company. She would not refuse him. She could not.

Later in a pub, on his own and in a maudlin state, he ruminates further on his own lack of experience with women.

He signalled for another double. Another double was served. But drink was no substitute, was it? He was like a flower that had never opened. He felt foolish when he thought of that, but it was true. Like a flower that had never opened. He had been afraid to open, afraid. He was ashamed to think how few girls he had gone out with more than once. He would not have confessed it to anyone, not even a priest, but he could count only four. And none of those girls would even remember him today. Not one of them. No girl had ever found him interesting. And he had his pride, dammit, he was not going to plead and beg with them. He could get along rightly, so he thought, without any silly girls. Or so I thought then, he thought now. But it's no more true today than it ever was. I was always lonely for a girl to find me interesting, to know one girl half as well as I knew my only sister.

Initially I was going to post on the whole of the plot as the rest of this novel is expertly handled by Moore but I think I will stop here. Devine is a character whom everybody feels they can push around. Moore makes us empathise with him and realise just how confined he is—both by society and his own personality. Devine was ridiculed for having no love life but when he does have a glimpse of love he's opposed, ridiculed and humiliated by just about everyone in the novel. The ending is simply superb and there is a scene with Una and Devine that is tragic and, if you have a nasty streak, could be considered comic. Moore has an amazing way of subtly portraying weak personalities; Devine, totally out of his depth, fails at everything, he doesn't have the strength to stand up to people and misjudges everything. He realises, when it's too late, that he's done the wrong thing and his attempts to correct it are equally disastrous.

It is explained in the book that the Feast of Lupercal was an ancient Roman feast of expiation. After the offerings the priests ran through the streets striking those they met with thongs. Barren women would let themselves be struck by the priests in the belief that their barrenness would then disappear. The symbolism in the novel is blatant whereas the characterisation is subtle, which is how I like it. I should also add that it's not quite as humourless as I've portrayed it.

[Allan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel was first published in 1958, and given that it's not one of Brian Moore's most well known novels, it took me a while to pick it off my shelves to read. I'm so glad that I did.

The main protagonist in the book is a 37 year old English Master at a Catholic Grammar School in North Belfast, Diarmuid Devine, who is well respected and affable, but lives a pretty mundane existence in digs off the Cavehill Road. After hearing two colleagues joking about him while at work, he begins to question his whole situation, and is therefore susceptible when introduced to Una, a 20 year old niece of a colleague, freshly arrived from Dublin under a bit of a cloud...

This was a fascinating read for me. Moore, as he has done in other books of his that I have read that are set in the city, captures the contemporary Belfast of the 1950s perfectly, both physically and in attitude. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about life in Ardath, the fictional Grammar School in which he taught, and found the underlying 'Catholic guilt' and overarching repression so touching. Such was the empathy that Moore created for Dev, I was at times cringing, at other times feeling immense sympathy, and when things took an unexpected turn towards the end, almost laughing out loud-rarely will I have a book engender such a response from me.

Yes, those that know me will know that this book is right up my street due to its setting etc, but I really can't recommend it enough. I've now read 4 of Moore's novels, and while I've criminally ignored him until last year, it's good to know that there are lots of other titles that he's written, that I'll be able to enjoy over the coming months and years.

It says something for Moore that, in 2014, of the 100+ books I've read this year already, this novel and Judith Hearne are two of my most enjoyable reads.

[A. Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the way Goodbye Mr. Chips would be if it had been written by an Irish novelist. The boys do not love the master, and the master does not get to marry Greer Garson or Petula Clark. Mr. Devine is perhaps the most pathetic character I have ever read. Moore draws him so completely, from his accommodations to his eyeglasses. He is the most impotent of characters, except for one distraught moment. I feel so sorry for him, want so much for him to have his happiness. This is the book I would give to all those people who say life is what you make it or you can be anything you want to be. I would hold Mr. Devine up to them and render them speechless.

[Patrick Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Diarmuid is a 37 year-old teacher at a Catholic boarding school. He is a good teacher but he is hearing whispers from colleagues because he has not married. He went to all boys schools throughout his education and thus had little contact, much less experience, with women. He meets Una, a Protestant, who had had a tryst with a married man(this is 1950s Ireland). She is many years his junior and his efforts to please her do not go well. Word gets out that he is dating a Protestant and it seems this is worse than dating no one at all amongst his contemporaries. The Feast of Lupercal is a criticim of the religious and sociological forces that existed in Ireland at the time. It is a decent read.

[Anthony Weir · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1960 Ted Hughes' second volume of word-encumbered poems, Lupercal, was published.

In 1958, Brian Moore's The Feast of Lupercal exploded into front rank of Irish literature.

Between those two years I was at a rhododendron- and sports-field-encircled school in Protestant East Belfast, living a life which, though oppressive to me, was not one tenth as dreadful as the lives of Catholic schoolboys in North and West Belfast - about whom I knew nothing, even though my next-door neighbours' son of the same age, went to St Malachy's College.

It was only in 2021 that I read (a slightly-battered first edition with splendid jacket) this excruciatingly brilliant book. I am not only ashamed of this, but feel that if I had read this book at the end of the 1950s (and my unhappy time at school) my whole life might have been different, due to awareness of how more criminally, and insanely oppressed Catholics were by the Irish church than by the one-party anti-Catholic state of Northern Ireland. (It was the Catholic church which insisted on the continuing apartheid in education there.)

The Irish in America and Britain were notorious for their mad, often drunken violence, and this book tells you why.

No wonder it was denounced from pulpits and thrones, forbidden to be sold in the Republic, as was Moore's previous one (The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, later made into an excellent film). It was the unsurpassed inspirer and forerunner of all those books by indignant Catholic writers who started to peel away the layers upon layers of hypocrisy, guilt, hatred of honesty, fear and hatred of sensuality, terror of truth or even simple inquiry... that had accreted and smothered Ireland since Catholic Emancipation in the 1830s. John McGahern (whom I did read shortly after he was published) was also preached against, vilified and banned. Moore wrote his books from the safe havens and perspective of England and Canada. McGahern stayed in Ireland and 'rode out' the vituperative denunciations; simply by remaining he challenged the totalitarian church of fear, shame and oppression, escape from which was possible for most only by brain- and guilt-deadening alcohol.

Brian Moore was great at titles. Some time after this one came the ironic, funny The Emperor of Ice Cream - about the pro-German antics of some Catholic Republicans during the Second World War, during which Moore was an anti-aircraft volunteer on the hilly basalt escarpment overlooking Belfast. (That book brought me to the poetry of Wallace Stevens!)

Diarmuid Devine, the apparent anti-hero of Moore's book is also an early hero, belonging to a category of person hardly even recognised (and if so, jeered at, despised) until recently: the asexual. Many mild men were of course turned asexual by Catholicism, and the Church had its place for them in the priesthood and monastic orders - as also does Buddhism for more natural asexuals. Less mild men reacted by becoming pseudo-macho, drink-fired wife-beaters and misogynists.

There is no Blue Plaque marking a Moore residence or lodging in Belfast, no street commemorating him...

(The German editions bear the less literary titles of Saturnischer Tanz and, more illuminatingly, Die Wölfe von Belfast. Since dancing is an important element in Moore's masterpiece, the 1990 film Dances with Wolves, which also features a 'gentle outsider', comes to mind!)

The original dust-jacket can be seen here .

[Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Feast of Lupercal (1958), the second of Moore’s serious novels, he returns to post-war Belfast to explore Catholic schooling and the impact it has on boys and the men they become.

Diarmid Devine is nearing forty and teaching English at the same school he once boarded at. But for all his professional experience, he lacks personal experience, namely a way with women. His feebleness around the fairer sex is well noted by his peers, something he learns when overhearing a conversation in a toilet.

Things are about to change for Mr Devine as he meets a colleague’s Protestant niece and falls for her and it looks like she is interested in him too. But as the relationship develops, he is faced with questions as to what he would put in the line for this love - his career, his security, his faith - and also faced with the reality of his own nature.

It feels like an reversal of Moore’s earlier novel, The Passion of Judith Hearne (1955), the lonely spinster replaced with a lonely bachelor, each with their own vices. However it sings its own song, managing both the reputation of a man and the institution that has delivered him this way into the world.

[Rincle Tinkle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tale from another world, or not so other? More about the writing for this reader, the gleam of the word crafting: the easy swish of the sentence, the magnetic smile of the off-centre but appropriate word, the lush smell of a cauldron of mighty, bubbling story.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading Brian Moore and he’s still one of my favourite writers. I think this is my third time reading this book (last finished 10th August 2010). It is amazing. The writing is exceptional.

p11. At Ardath, stoicism is regarded as folly. Stoics made a master think he had missed.

McAleer, the second offender, stood out. Mr Devine punished, McAleer registered suffering, and the class opened the blue-bound Macbeths at Act Two, Scene One.

When describing the party p11-12:
Unwanted, even by each other, they were the kind of relatives who must be invited to every function because, being the least noticed, they were the quickest to take offence.

Out of it, in this room, the old ones and maiden ladies waited for Mr Devine to bring some of the party to them. And when he could not, they wished that he would go, they could discuss him then, they could use him as a starting point to begin again that familiar conversational pilgrimage from the unsatisfying present to the familiar past.

The attention to detail, in even the minor characters, is astonishing :
p52 Mrs Dempsey’s eldest daughter, her wall-eye staring with the peculiar, inattentive look of the strabismic, waited by the door.
( this daughter is identified by her divergent gaze each time she appears)

I was totally drawn into the world of Diarmuid Devine as I was with Judith Hearne such is the empathy Brian Moore creates for his characters. I liked the ending.
Read it. I will be reading it again.

[Derek Bridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moore had a real talent for inhabiting the minds of his characters, especially his female leads. Here, we have a male lead and he is less credible than some of Moore's other characters; the climax of the tale is also barely credible. But the character's inner turmoil is nicely done. Not one of Moore's best, but even when not firing on all cylinders, Moore's work is still a cut above the rest.

[Reginald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this book feels rather dated I enjoyed it.
The hero Diarmud Devine is a Catholic Schoolmaster in a traditional RC school and, mid thirties, is stuck in a relationless rut with little joy in his life. He meets a Protestant girl and his whole life is turned upside down.
I'm glad I'm not a Catholic!

[Wuthering16 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a sad wasted life brilliantly captured, beautifully written. So we can really feel for this sad Irish Catholic teacher trapped by his upbringing unable to truly 'live'.

[Kevin Darbyshire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful. This is the 5th book I have read of Brian Moore's and I have enjoyed them all immensely. The story is very intense and you can feel an impending sense of doom as the tale unfolds. Moore describes the claustrophobic environment of a catholic school really well and the casual approach to violence which I also experienced. Highly recommended.