De Valera's Irelands by Dermot Keogh, Keogh Doherty Read Free Book Online Page A

never quite goes away and in all the most important ways a writer remains a beginner throughout his work­ing life. Now I find I will resort to almost any subterfuge to escape the blank page, but there seems to be always some scene or rhythm that lodges in the mind and will not go away until it is written down. Often when it is writ­ten it turns out that there was never anything real behind the rhythm or scene, and it disappears in the writing; other times those scenes or rhy­thms start to grow, and you find yourself once again work­ing every day, sometimes over a period of several years, to discover and bring to life a world through words as if it were the first and (this is ever a devout prayer) last time. It is true that there can be times of intense happiness throughout the work, when all the words seem, magically, to find their true place, and several hours turn into a single moment; but these occur­rences are so rare that they are, I suspect, like mirages in desert fables to encourage and torment the half-deluded traveller.
    Like gold in the ground – or the alchemist’s mind – it is probably wise not to speak about the pursuit at all. Technique can certainly be learned, and only a fool would try to do without it, but technique for its own sake grows heartless. Unless technique can take us to that clear mir­ror that is called style, the reflection of personality in language, every­thing having been removed from it that is not itself, then the most perfect technique is as worthless as mere egotism. Once work reaches that clear­ness the writer’s task is ended. His or her words will not live again until and unless they find their true reader.

Eamon de Valera: the price of his achievement
Garret FitzGerald
    With O’Connell and Parnell, de Valera was one of three Irish political lead­ers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who had not alone the capa­city and the ability to play a major political role over an extended period of time, but also the opportunity to do so. There are others who, if they had lived and had had the opportunity to exercise their remark­able talents in the political sphere under conditions of peace, might have rivalled or even outshone some or all of these three – most notably Mich­ael Collins in this century. But those whom the gods love die young, and the nature of Ire­land’s almost always tragic, but at times heroic, history has been such that many men of exceptional talent have died or, more frequently, been killed before they reached the age of 35, no more than a third of the way through their potential working life.
    All three of the men I have mentioned – O’Connell, Parnell and de Va­lera – excited controversy and division amongst Irish nationalists at some point in their lives. O’Connell especially, perhaps, towards the end of life, when he and the new generation of Young Irelanders found them­selves at odds, and Parnell also at the end of his career and life. De Va­lera, by contrast, became a controversial figure amongst Irish nation­alists before he was 40 and, inevitably, living longer than any other major poli­tical figure, well into his 90s, continued to divide Irish politics there­after. This has made especially difficult an objective assessment of his achieve­ments and defects within his own lifetime, or even within the generation following his death in 1975.
    The political system of the Irish state remains today largely based upon a party system, the origins of which are to be found substantially in a polarisation around de Valera. The issues that led to this polarisation ceased to have any current relevance in domestic politics many decades ago, and the two major political parties moved on to seek, and find, new roles as they addressed the complex and difficult problems of Ireland in the last third of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the mem­ory of the