The worst thing I could say about Dublin is that visually, it is probably the EU’s least impressive capitalProbably, because I have yet to visit Helsinki. And Luxemburg is certainly in the running.. But I really don’t mind the lack of eye candy; I suspect it is because Dubliners have never been materialists. In any case, the labors of its favorite sons are much more impressive than a monument or two. Anyone can build a monument.

This may explain the relative unease that has greeted the latest “modern” monument in Dublin — a 120-meter high metal spike, in a renovated part of town, that the locals have yet to fully adopt. It is a piece of public architecture tailor-made for deconstruction. It is tall, and strong, yet it seems the planners were unsure how much of a statement it should make. The spike has a brushed-metal sheen, and in the typical overcast skies it all but disappears. It projects ambivalence, above all else, but this may be apt: The go-go 90s and all this talk about the Celtic Tiger are a notable departure from the traditional image the Irish have of themselves. They are not yet comfortable in the role of EU wunderkind, because it is a success measured by criteria such as GDP growth and per capita income, not the traditional criteria Ireland excels at: per capita great writers; net cultural exports.

Dubliners autoanalyse themselves, of course, and rather articulately so:

“The Irish are the blacks of Europe, Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland, and the North Siders are the blacks of Dublin … so say it loud — I’m black and I’m proud!”

So says Jimmy in the 1991 film The Commitments. The prosperity of the intervening decade must have softened this self-image somewhat. I remembered Jimmy’s line while watching the East German nostalgia comedy Good Bye Lenin! at the excellent Irish Film Center,The center is in Dublin’s Temple Bar, as in the neighborhood, not the bar. I’m sure many more New Yorkers have been confused. and it struck me that recent Irish experience must have more in common with that of the Eastern Europeans. Newfound wealth, spread unevenly, is worn uneasily, with much fretting about maintaining an identity forged amid privationGood Bye Lenin!, while funny enough, could have benefited from a thicker slathering of British comic timing. The film is primarily a cathartic exercise for ex-East Germans, though, with us as incidental audience. My main peeve: Using the musical score from Amélie to heighten the emotional appeal is merely distracting. Get your own score, I say..

Dublin is now among the world’s most expensive cities. In the eurozone, it ranks second only to Milan; in the EU, it is fourth after London and Copenhagen. 21st in the world, it climbed from 73rd last year. Take a moment, then, to permanently sever the connection you have in your mind between the words “Ireland” and “cheap”.

Despite the material successes in Ireland’s recent history, the Irish above all remain geniuses at intangibles — dance, music, but especially the narrative form. Take a great English writer, and there’s a good chance he’s Irish. Shaw, Joyce, Wilde, Yeats, Swift, Beckett, Trollope, Heaney, and many others… For a nation of under 5 million, that amounts to punching way above its weight.

The following is perhaps a stretch, and I am too new to Ireland to back it up, so I would appreciate constructive criticism/flamings, butI’m off to Dingle peninsula tomorrow for 5 days of hiking, so it is entirely possible my first exposure the West coast demolishes the basic premise of this post.: my hunch is that the deft hand with which the Irish handle a yarn is a skill passed on from Celtic times, where culture’s core revolved around great mythic sagas. Christianity, when it reached Irish shores, also took on a reverence for ancient texts. My theory, then, is that in traditional Irish culture the narrative takes precedence over the visual. And when the Irish have excelled at visual arts — when they illuminated those monkish tomes — it was done in the service of a narrative. The end result: More great writers than painters. Dublin as a feast for the mind, rather than the eyes.