Desmond Fennell

[ top ]

[ top ]

Bibliographical details
Heresy: The Battle of Ideas in Modern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1993), xiii, 289pp. CONTENTS (chaps.): The last years of the Gaeltacht; Irish socialist thought; The humanism of James Connolly and George Russell; A project to end the paralysis; The independence of Ireland in the 1990s; Can history help to reconcile?; Peace in the North; Whatever you say, say nothing [prev. 1991]; Left, right in the New Europe; Getting to know Dublin 4; Intellect and national welfare.

[ top ]

Criticism
Toner Quinn, ed., Desmond Fennell: His Life and Work (Dublin: Veritas), 169pp. [contribs. incl. Brian Arkins, intro.; Carrie Crowley, Bob Quinn, John Waters, Mary Cullen, Joe Lee, Nollaig Ó Gadhra and Risteárd Ó Glaisne; bibl. pp.162-69].

There is a Wikipedia page on Fennell - online [accessed 16.12.2011].

Note that the Fennell webpage formerly at http://www.desmondfennell.com/ is now devoted to Art topics (e.g., Islamic Calligraphy, Street Art, Art Therapy) alien to the writings of the named author. ]

Also Joseph McMinn, review of Heresy: The Battle of Ideas in Modern Ireland (Blackstaff 1993), 289pp., in Linenhall Review (Spring 1994); John Kirkaldy, review of Cutting to the Point, in Books Ireland (April 2004), pp.84-85 [infra]; Brian Power, review of Savvy and the Preaching of the Gospel, in Books Ireland (Summer 2004), [ infra].

See also sundry other reviews, in Commentary - as [infra].

[ top ]

Commentary
J. H. Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (OUP 1991): ‘[Fennell], is faithful to the traditional nationalist view of the British as the historical root of the problem, but repudiates the notion that the Protestant is an Irishman in disguise: “there is one nation, the Irish nation, and part of another nation, namely, the British nation” and the “problem is devising a state in which both these communities can share.”’ [Excerpts from 1986 and 1983]. Revision […] &c (1989) is an attack on revisionist history. [Whyte, 1991, p.138.] Also cites The State of the Nation, 1983; Beyond Nationalism, 1985; Nice People but Rednecks: Ireland in the 1980s, 1986.

Seán de Fréine, The Great Silence: the Study of a Relationship Between Language and Nationality (Cork: Mercier 1978), quotes Fennell’s letter to the Evening Press (19 Aug. 1963), in which he writes of ‘the shameful fact that in our forty years of freedom not one book which could be called an important contribution to thought has been produced by an Irishman living in Ireland’. (de Fréine, p.103.)

Barry Ó Séagha, review of Toner Quinn, ed, Desmond Fennell: His Life and Work and The Turning Point: My Sweden Year and After, in The Irish Times (30 March 2002) [Weekend]: contribs. incl. Brian Arkins [intro., here called ‘feeble’], Carrie Crowley, Bob Quinn, John Waters, Mary Cullen, Joe Lee, Nollaig Ó Gadhra and Risteárd Ó Glaisne; cites first published volume, Mainly in Wonder.

Bill Sweeney, reviewing Desmond Fennell, The Post-Western Condition: Between Chaos and Civilisation (2000), speaks of the author’s reputation as a ‘fiery critic of modernism’ who ‘shoots from the spleen’ at any deviation from nationalist orthodoxy, ‘an avid collector of conspiracy theories’, and a ‘staunch, if not always lucid defender of his own personal take on the human condition’. The current work of invective gives eyewitness account of collapse of East Germany; Fennell sets his sights on comsumerism and capitalism of the Ameropean [sic] system; lists as evils tolerance of homosexuality, of public display of bodily intimacies and the abandonment of authority of age over youth, as well as ‘demise of civilisation in favour of postmodernism’. Sweeney considers that the book offers a litany of generalisations with no definition of terms.

John Kirkaldy, review of Desmond Fennell, The Turning Point: The Postwestern Condition: Between Chaos and Civilisation, and Desmond Fennell: Life and Work, in Books Ireland, May 2002, pp.123-24: ‘Fennell fits into no neat little box; conservative, old-fashion and bigot are unfair or inadequate descriptions. He speaks several languages …’; ‘There is a touch of Swift about him, but also a little bit of Malvolio and Eeyore’ ‘The Turning Point is the weakest of thes books … at one level … cringe-making … a polemic of disgust ... [Fennell believes that] the whole wretched mess is the inevitable result of a liberal state … Fennell is grossly unfair to Sweden […].’

Conor McCarthy, Modernisation: Crisis and Culture in Ireland 1969-1992 (Four Courts Press 2000): ‘The term [revisionism] was introduced into Irish debate by Desmond Fennell, who, in a series of books published since the 1960s, has questioned the modernistation process initiated by Whitaker and Lemass, suggesting that this process has led to the abandonment [17] of most of the goals of the Free state (subsequently the Republic) set itself in the immediate post-Independence period. The most important of such goals were the project of political unification with Northern Ireland and the revival of the Irish language.’ (pp.17-18.)

Brian Power, review of Savvy and the Preaching of the Gospel, in Books Ireland (Summer 2004), p.153: ‘[…] Fennell […] describe[s] and analyse[s] the anti-nationalist, liberal civilisation that is gaining momentum here [... He] declares himself disappointed on a number of grounds, such as the absenceof an effective and well-supported Chatolic media. For example, no journal comparable to the English Tablet has emerged in Ireland. He wonders at our general apathy and at the Church’s leadership’s apparent conviction that being publicly inaudible is a satisfactory way to evangelise. Nor can he understand how RTÉ has been able to sideline, without challenge, Catholic thought, news and culture.

[ top ]

Quotations
“Against Revisionism” (1988): ‘What is the popular image of historical revisionism in Ireland today? A retelling of Irish history which seeks to show that British rule in Ireland was not, as we have believed, a bad thing, but a mixture of necessity, good intentions and bungling; and that Irish resistance to it was not, as we have believed, a good thing, but a mixture of wrong-headed idealism and unnecessary, often cruel, violence. The underlying message is that in our relations with Britain on the Irish question we have been very much at fault […] [Revisionism] is not, primarily, the presentation of new facts, nor again, as some revisionists would have us believe, the refutation of factually false historical “myths”. Primarily, it is a new moral interpretation of the known major facts, and the general course of events, especially in the last century and a half More precisely, it is a new allocation, with regard to the known major facts and the general course of events, of the rightness and wrongness, as between the ideas and actions of the Irish and the intentions and actions of the British (or Ulster British).’ (Quoted in Liam Harte, Satellite Lect., MA Dip., UUC, Feb. 2003.) Further, ‘a new moral interpretation of the known major facts ... of rightness and wrongness, as between the ideas and actions of the Irish and the intentions and actions of the British ... [due to] British, American, and German capital providing wealth which Sinn Féin economics had failed to provide, and the rise to power in Dublin of a new elite of businessmen, bureaucrats, media people and polticians who adopted swinging London as their cultural lodestar.’ (Lecture delivered at UCD symposium, 1985; printed in Irish Review, 4, 1988).

Crossing Swords over Phaedra (Letter to The Irish Times, 11 March 1996): ‘Fintan O’Toole on theatre is always a pleasure to read, and his “Second Opinion on Phaedra at the Gate Theatre (March 5th)” was no exception. But before this fine production, in Derek Mahon’s melodious translation, passes from discussion, I wish to make two corrections to what has been said. The first is embodied in my use of the word “translation ”. Fintan O’Toole, as others before him, speaks of Derek Mahon’s “version”. But the text, published by Gallery Books, is described by the publisher as a translation; the blurb calls Mahon an “inspired translator”. / The confusion is understandable because renderings of foreign language plays by a number of Irish playwrights and poets in recent years have had varying relationships to the original texts. Moreover, the recent play at the Gate was presented. misleadingly as “Racine’s Phaedra by Derek Mahon”, rather than, correctly, as “Phaedra, by Racine, translator Derek Mahon”. Admittedly, Mahon’s translation, in a few places, unaccountably takes liberties with the original and does not render what it says. But 95 per cent of the text is Racine’s play rendered into English, and therefore almost entirely what its publisher calls it, namely, a translation. (A pity, that “almost entirely ”.) / My other point has to do with the predecessors of Racine’s play. Mr O’Toole, taking his lead, presumably, from Derek Mahon’s programme note, names these predecessors as Euripides and Greek myth. So let me speak up for Seneca whose Phaedra, written 500 years after Euripides, was the immediate predecessor of Racine’s play. Racine had read Seneca and mentions his play in the preface to his own. His own was a new creation, not a translation; but just as large passages of his dialogue draw on Euripides, at two or three points it echoes Seneca. Yours, &c.’ / Portobello, Dublin 8.

The State of the Nation: ‘in business, science ... etc., the vast bulk of our thinking is derivative’. (The State of the Nation: Ireland Since the Sixties, Swords: [Poolbeg] 1983, pamph.; included also in Seán Ó Tuama, in The Gaelic League Idea, Cork: Mercier 1972.)

The Legacy of Pearse: ‘The nation states of Europe have not been established by peaceful means. Why should the case of Ireland be any different?’ (Letter to The Irish Times, 2 Sept. 2000).

[ top ]

References
Bernard Share, ed., Far Green Fields, 1500 Years of Irish Travel Writing (Belfast: Blackstaff 1992), incls. “Weekend in Boso”, an extract from Desmond Fennell, Mainly in Wonder (London: Hutchinson 1959).

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1992) , Vol. 3 - Challenging the canon: revisionism and cultural criticism, ed. Luke Gibbons, incls. Desmond Fennell (1929- ), extract from The Irish Review in 1988.

Website: There is a Desmond Fennell web site at www.desmondfennell.com.

[ top ]

Notes
The Fennell Wars: Fennell’s scathing attack on the poetry of Seamus Heaney in The Heaney Phenomenon elicited strong response, not least from the poet who probably intended him in the phrase ‘the anvil brains of some who hate me/As I sit weighing and weighing/My responsible tristitia’ (”Exposure”) - quoted by Heaney in his Stockholm Nobel Award Address, 1996. Among stringent critics of the pamphlet were Conor O’Callaghan, who called it ‘an ignorant piece’ ‘State of Poetry’ [special issue], in Krino (Winter 1993), p.51; others incl. Fred Johnstone and Mary Campbell [separately], in Books Ireland (Summer 1991); Fintan O’Toole, ‘Second Opinion’, in The Irish Times, and letters from Robert Welch et. al.

Namesake: Sir Desmond Fennell, 1933-2011, son of a Cork-born MD and a Dublin mother, settled in England; ed. Ampleforth, and Corpus Christi, Cambridge; national service in Grenadier Guards; called to the bar 1959; appt. High Court, 1990, ret. 1992; appt. to preside over London Tube Bombings, 2005; died on 29 June 2011.