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Life
| 1889-1960 [Browne; de Brún]; b. Grangemockler, Co. Tipperary, son of a National School teacher [b. Cappoquin, Co. Waterford] and Catherine Browne [nee Fitzgerald], of Tipperary; ed. Rockwell College, and Conliffe College where he was taught maths by Eamon de Valera; spent last year at UCD and grad. BA 1909; and MA 1910 (both Maths); studied at Sorbonne (Doc. Sc., 1912) and Gottingen; ord. 1913; appt. Prof. of Maths at Maynooth [NUI], 1914; close friend of the 1916 signatory and language revivalist Seán MacDiarmada; visited the Kerry Gaeltacht after the 1916 Rising and espoused revival policies; built a house at Dunquin; sided with Republicans in Civil War and briefly imprisoned in Mountjoy, Feb. 1923; wtote "", a widely-circulated elegy for four men executed by the Free State on 8 Dec. 1922; edited Aftermath of Easter Week, a pamphlet with contributions from Oliver Gogarty, Seamus O’Kelly, and Seamus O’Sullivan, to benefit Volunteers’ Independent Fund and Irish National Aid, suppressed by Govt.; trans. num. classics from Greek, Latin, French and Italian into Irish; |
| translated Sophocles’ Antigone (1926); Oedipus Rex (Maynooth 1928); Oedipus at Colonus (1929) and Euripedes’ Iphigenia (1935); issued Beatha Iósa Críost, with Fr. Ó Baoghealláin (1929) - a composite biograph of Jesus from the Gospels; translated Racine’s Athalie (1930) and Corneille’s Polyeucte (1932); also translated Plutarch’s Lives (1936) and an irish version of the history of Greece by J. B. Bury [q.v.] (orig. 1900; trans. 1954); trans. a short life of St. Patrick by M. H. Gaffney; his trans. of Homer’s Odyssey as An Odaisé remained unpublished until 1990; his Miserere, a poem collection to accompany the George Rouault exhibition he curated, was also issued posthumously (ed. Máire Mac an tSaoi, 1971); he also published legal and medical documents in Irish; he was working on the Divine Comedy [Commedia Divina] of Dante when he died - later Dante's Divine Comedy; his trans. of the Inferno as Ifreann was published in 1963, a preface by Máire Mac an tSaoi, to be followed by the entire work, edited by Ciarán Ó Coigligh, in 1997. |
| De Brún was elected chairman of council at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies [DIAS] at its foundation in 1940 and was instrumental in inviting the physicist Erwin Schrödinger to Dublin, in flight from Nazism anti-semitism; appt. Pres. of Univ. College Galway (UCG), 1945-59; sufered heart-attack at his newly-occupied house at Seapoint, Dun Laoghaire, and d. in St. Vincent"s Hosp., 5 June 1960ç ; there is a portrait by Estella Solomons [q.v.]; a bust in bronze was made by Seamus Murphy on commission from colleagues at UCG; the Árus De Brún at Galway U. [NUI] was designed during his tenure by Michael Scott; appt. Director of newly-formed Arts Council, 1959-60; awarded French Légion d’honneur, 1949; his Cardinal Michael Browne (1887-1971) was his elder br., and Maurice Browne [q.v.] was his brother and Mac an tSaoi [q.v.] his niece. DIW DIB DIH OCIL |
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Works
Scholarship, ed. two redactions of Trí Biorghaoithe an Bhais; also Iomarbhaigh im bhFileadh and Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Eirinn [copy-text on 18th-century paper; Michael White of Callan, Kilkenny, scripsit]; with Myles Dillon & Canice Mooney OFM, eds., Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the Franciscan Library of Killiney (DIAS 1969), xxvi, 185pp; ed., Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in King’s Inns Library (DIAS 1972), 105pp.
Translations incl. Coméide Dhaiga Dante: Leabhar 1 - Ifreann (M. H. Mac an Ghoill agus a Mhac Teor. 1963), [iii-]iv, 299pp. [Notaí from p.255], and Do., as An Choiméide Dhiaga [by] Dainté Ailíghéirí, ed. Ciarán Ó Coigligh (BÁC: An Clóchomhar 1997), 380pp.; Odaisé, ed. Ciarán Ó Coigligh (BÁC: Coiscéim 1990). Poetry, Máire Mac an tSaoi, ed., Miserere (Dublin 1971); Miscellaneous incl. Preface to the Collected Works of Padraic Pearse (1917).
See also Liam Prút, eag. [ed.], Athbheochan an Léinn nó Dúchas na Gaeilge: iomarbhá idir Pádraig de Brún agus Domhnall Ó Corcora [Daniel Corkery], Humanitas 1930-31 (Coiscéim 2005), 61pp.
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References
DIAS (Cat. 1996) Lámhscríbhinní Gaeilge: treoirlio (DIAS 1988), pb., xi+101pp.[ISBN 0 901282 97 9]; Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in King’s Inns Library, Dublin (DIAS 1972), xviii+105pp., pbk [ISBN 0 901282 42 1]; Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the Franciscan library, Killiney (1969), xxvi+185pp., pbk [ISBN 0 901282 04 9]. Aintigoine, Drama le Sofoicleas (1st edn. 1926).
| Dictionary of Irish Biography (RIA 2009) - “Padraig De Brun (Patrick Browne”, by Laurence William White: ‘[...] De Brún’s primary scholarly interest was the translation into Irish of the major works of classical antiquity and the Renaissance. Deeply involved with the short-lived Irish-language literary review Humanitas, in an article in the journal's first number (March 1930) he offered what amounted to a scholarly credo. Contending that the European Renaissance had by-passed Ireland owing to the country’s political and cultural subjection, he urged the replication in twentieth-century Ireland, through the medium of the Irish language, of the project of Renaissance humanism: applying the influence of Greek and Latin antiquity on a vernacular language and culture. The argument elicited a vigorous rebuttal in the journal's second issue by Daniel Corkery, who deplored the effects of the Renaissance one continental literatures, argued the purity of Irish as a language unadulterated by classicising influences, and urged writers in Irish to concentrate on native themes and models. The controversy became a defining caus célèbre within the language movement, with Corkery’s disciples in the ascendant.’ (Available online; accessed 29.12.2025). |
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Quotations
"Valparaiso”: ‘Tháinig long ó Valparaiso / Scaoileach téad a seol sa chuan / Chuir a hainm dom i gcuimhe / Ríocht na greine, tír na mbua / “Gluais”, ar sí, “ar thuras fada […]”’. (Quoted in Dermot Bolger, ‘Primary Colours’ [“Finishing Lines”], in The Irish Times Magazine, 24 Nov. 2001, p.82.) Note: "Valparaiso” is a trans. of “The Ship” by Oliver St. John Gogarty [q.v.].
Inferno [beginning]: ‘I lár a bhealaigh tríd an saol so againne, / I bhfad on mbother direach dom as eolas, / Mothaíos tharnais i ndoimhneacht dhiamhair choille. Cad í mar choill í is deacair dom a chomhartú / ’S a fiántas crann a bhí chomh garbh láidir / ’S go dtig le smaoineamh air athnuachaint sceoin dom. / Is beag is géire an bás ná a ghéire atá san: / Scéal ar an ádh bhí romham ann sara ndéanfad, / Tá a mhalairt feicthe agam nach mór dom trácht air. [...] (p.3.)
[Original:] Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva obscura / che la diritta via era smarrita. / Ah quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura / esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte / che nel pensier rinova la paura! Tant’è amara che poco e piú morte; / ma per trattar del ven ch’io trovai, diro dell’altre chose ch’ i’ v’ho scorte. (Dán I; p.2.)
Inferno [ending]: ‘Tá slí ó Bealsabúl fada deighilte / ’S atá a leachtán féin leata amach sa domhan tíos, / Is gur le fuaim a bratear ’s nach le raharc í; / Mar cloistear feadh na faide ag titim abhainnín / Trína canáile i gcloich atá aici sciúrtha / Ag sileahd léi go mall ’na cúrsa cham síos. / Chabhamar, an treoraí is mise, an bóthar rúin sin / Chuin fillte suas ar ghile an domhain in airde. / ’S gan éinne againn ag cuimhniú ar shos ó chúram. / Suas linn, é sin chun tosaigh ’s mé ar a shála, / Trí pholl comhchruinn go bhfaca a raibh ag spéartha / A breithe leo timpeall thuas dá seadaibh áille, / ’S amach linn tríd ag athbreathnú na réaltan.’ (Coméide Dhaiga Dante: Leabhar 1 - Ifreann, Dublin: M. H. Gill 1963, p.253.)
[Original:] Luogo è lá giú da Belzebú remoto / tanto quanta la tomba si distende, / che non per vista, ma per suono, è noto / d’un ruscelletto che quivi discende / per la buca d’un sasso, ch’elli ha roso, / col torso ch’elli volge, e poco pende. / Lo duca e io per quel cammino ascoso / intrammo a ritornar nel chiaro monde; / e sanza cura aver d’alcun riposo / salimmo so, el prima e io secondo, / tanto ch’ i’ vidi delle cose belle / che porta ’l ciel, per un pertugio tondo; e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle. (Dán XXXIV; p.252 [end].)
Notes
Máire Mac an tSaoi: Mac an tSaoi [later Mrs. Conor Cruise O’Brien] spent ‘extended stays in Dun Chaoin in the company of her beloved uncle Paddy [de Brún], for whom she used to interpret at petrol pumps at the age of six, assuming this translator of Racine had no English’. (See Mary O’Malley, ‘Language of the Heart’, interview with Mac an tSaoi, in The Irish Times, 26 Feb. 2000, Weekend.)
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