Sir, - The Haunted Inkwell, a book on literature and criticism by Mark Patrick Hederman, published a few months ago in Dublin, has just reached me here. I note that Father Hederman disapproves strongly of my account and estimate of the poet Seamus Heaney in my pamphlet Whatever you Say, Say Nothing: Why Seamus Heaney is No.1 (1991).
What a pity, then, he doesn't argue with me - I mean, quote or fairly paraphrase things I wrote which he disagrees with, and then show, with arguments, that they are untrue or unjust. Instead, alas, he does the typical Irish Catholic thing when disagreeing with the views of a fellow Irish Catholic (practising or post). He denigrates me.
He represents me as a self-righteous, ignorant and malicious person who (1) uses abusive and offensive language about Heaney, Americans, Harvard and Oxford professors; (2) tells Heaney how he "should" write poetry; and (3) hectors Heaney about his religious belief and moral life.
I owe it to Heaney and myself to state that this is nonsense, unsupported by any words I have written. Actually, in Hederman's various quotes of me, the difference is obvious between my humane and measured language and the invented rantings he imputes to me.
Much of the misrepresentation occurs because Hederman quotes from my section headed "What Good is Poetry to People?" without giving its context - mainly Heaney's discussion of the social usefulness of poetry and the poet in his Inaugural Lecture at Oxford on "The Redress of Poetry". So that when I am discussing what Heaney says, theorisingly, about "the poet, his art and the world", Hederman represents me as discussing Heaney and his art!
What sort of writing is this? Does it pass in Ireland for literary criticism?
To make matters worse, Hederman makes it impossible for the reader to look up his quotations of me and read them in context. In his notes he refers the reader to my Heaney essay as published in the English poetry magazine Stand. But in his subsequent page references to quotes, the page numbers are not taken from Stand, but from the pamphlet version of my essay (first edition), which is paged quite differently!
I'm not angry. I've been through this sort of inter-Irish bitchery before. I'm only sad that, once again, reasoned debate did not occur and I am robbed of the pleasure of a good argument. Incredibly, in four pages, Hederman fails to counter with argument anything I say. He merely makes rude noises and caricatures me. - Yours, etc.,
Desmond Fennell, Anguillara, Rome, Italy.