Literary Criticism: There are some who believe the Irish imagination is purely artistic and that the job of interpretation is best left up to those superiorly capable of it. Utter nonsense, of course, but with great Irish writers such as James Joyce, WB Yeats, Elizabeth Bowen and Samuel Beckett highly present in the consciousness of readers at home and abroad, it is sometimes too easy to disremember that there has always been a vigorous attendant criticism to this literary heritage.
Prof Maurice Harmon is one such critic, who has for more than 40 years been actively engaged with Irish writing as both teacher at University College, Dublin and writer-critic at large.
His has been a very hands-on commitment, as is evidenced by his recent editorship of Poetry Ireland Review, and his lively editorials from that time are gathered here. From 1970 to 1986 he was founder-editor of the Irish University Review, where his continuing dedication to the best in Irish writing and scholarship was on show; it remains one of the premier journals in Irish literary studies. Indeed, this desire to be in direct contact with the living artist is a feature that marks Prof Harmon's entire career. While many in the academy occupied themselves with the giants of Irish literary art, Harmon's critical imagination has mainly been stirred by those writers who had to operate in their shadow, who had to fashion their own unique space in order that their voices could be heard. Patrick Kavanagh, Austin Clarke, Mary Lavin and Benedict Kiely are thus sympathetically considered in their efforts to create in a seemingly indifferent post-independent Ireland.
There are essays, too, on the work of Seamus Heaney, John Montague and Thomas Kinsella, each charting the developing themes and concerns of these three very distinct voices in Irish poetry. An interesting essay on Francis Stuart highlights the knotty paradoxes and extremes inherent in a writer who remains a challenge to the reader forced to grapple and struggle with a writer who is, himself, grappling and struggling with material and ideas and language.
This is a criticism unburdened with the questions of literary theory, content instead to focus on individual texts and their distinctive aesthetic workings. Harmon is attuned to language and its applications. For him, good writing comes from the desire of the writer to achieve honesty, and his chosen writers are celebrated - and celebrate is the right word - for their skill of technique, their control of subject matter and for their success - as Harmon sees it - in breaking with the emotional and mythological imagination of the revival period. Seán O'Faolain consequently emerges as something of an exemplary figure in this regard, with his tireless efforts to initiate intellectual debate in post-revolutionary Ireland in The Bell, his constant desire to demythologise Irish culture and his adherence to an artistic realism that would allow him, and others, to tell it like it is. Though not explicitly said, this reading explains why O'Faolain's art may not be much read in the future: it cannot transcend its own moment, being so caught up in and bound to that particular moment of its inception.
One of the more intriguing pieces is an interview with Mary Lavin in which she makes a brilliant and challenging distinction between the novel and the short story, the latter being - surprisingly - the medium that permits more, rather than less, to be artistically done and said.
Many of these essays were, in their original form, introductions to collections of criticism, or collections of artists' work, and thus the approach is broad and inclusive in scope. This, though, means that there is something here for all readers who want to discover a place to begin their understanding of Irish writing.
As with all good critical writing, Harmon does not pretend to offer the definitive or final word on his subjects, leaving plenty of room for future scholars to enter into the debate and dialogue he has started. For instance, as a counterpoint to the image of O'Faolain and others battling against the philistine wasteland of an official Ireland, Harmon's essay on RTÉ Radio's early involvement with poetry, drama and prose shows how central and utterly accessible high quality art actually was in the early years of independence.
What we are witness to in this collection is an ongoing re-imagining, and reappraisal, of the work under consideration. It is the only proper state that a critic still engaged with his or her subject should aspire to. It is worth noting, too, that most of these essays first appeared only in recent times: proof that there is much critical life to be lived after teaching. Maurice Harmon, then, is still exercised by Irish writing and, Yeats-like, energised by its peculiarities and its intricacies. Long may it be so.
Derek Hand was awarded a Research Fellowship 2005-2006 from St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin, where he teaches in the English department. He has just edited a special issue of the Irish University Review on the work of John Banville
Maurice Harmon: Selected Essays Edited with an Introduction by Barbara Brown, Irish Academic Press, 231pp. €27.50