Life
1908-1959; b. 15 Apr., Greenock, Scotland, returning with family in 1918;
ed. Belvedere College; spent a year at All Hallows seminary; member of
Vincent de Paul; studied UCD, 1927-29; Munich, 1930-31; and Sorbonne,
1931-3; MA thesis on Montaigne; degrees in modern languages, period of
research and lectureship at UCD; joined Irish Diplomatic [Foreign] Service,
1935; posts in New York, 1939; Washington (first sec.), 1940-47; met St.
John Perse, and Americans Allan Tate and Robert Penn Warren; contrib.
poems and translations from St. John Perse and René Char to Sewanee
Review and Botteghe Oscure, published ‘Lough Derg’
in The Southern Review (1942); m. Marie Caren Radon, 1946; Irish
High Commissioner, London 1947; Irish Plenipotentiary, Italy 1950; accredited
to Turkey, 1951; "Lough Derg" severely criticised by Randell
Jarrell in Poetry and the Age (1953); accredited to Turkey, 1951;
d. 21 Aug., Dublin; the Devlin papers are held, uncatalogued,
in the National Library of Ireland; the copyright holder of his estate
is Countess Maria Caren di Gropello. DIW DIB DIL FDA HAM OCIL
Works
[with Brian Coffey], Poems (Dublin 1930) [of which 4 by Devlin;
5 by Coffey]; Intercessions (London: Europa 1937) [15 poems]; Lough
Derg and Other Poems (NY: Reynal & Hitchcock 1946); trans.
Exile and Other Poems by St-John Perse (NY: Pantheon Books 1949);
The Heavenly Foreigner ed. Brian Coffey [Dolmen Edns. VI] (Dublin:
Dolmen 1967); Memoirs of a Turcoman Diplomat (Rome 1959); Robert
Penn Warren and Allen Tate, ed., Selected Poems (NY: Holt, Rinehart
& Winston 1963); Collected Poems, ed. Brian Coffey (Dublin:
Dolmen 1964) [prev. special number of University Review, 1963];
also Collected Poems, ed., J C C Mays, ed. and intro., to The
Collected Poems of Denis Devlin (Dublin: Dedalus 1989); Translations
into English, from French, German and Italian Poetry, ed., Roger Little
(Sawtree: Dedalus 1992), 353pp.
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Criticism
Thomas MacGreevy [review of Intercessions], in Ireland Today
II (Oct. 1937), pp.81-82.
Samuel Beckett, review of Intercessions, in transition 1937, rep. in Ruby Cohn, ed., Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and A Dramatic Fragment (London: John Calder 1983), pp.91-94.
Beckett, review of Intercessions, in Times Literary Supplement (23 Oct. 1937), p.786.
Randell Jarrell, ‘Poets’, in Poetry and the Age (NY: Knopf 1953), pp.220-36.
Brian Coffey, ‘Of Denis Devlin, Vestiges, Sentences, Presages’, Irish University Review, 2 No.10 (1965), pp.3-18.
Frank Kernoswki, ‘The Fabulous Reality of Denis Devlin’, Sewanee Review (Winter 1973), pp.113-122.
Mary Salmon, ‘Modern Pilgrimage, Denis Devlin’s Lough Derg’, Studies (Spring 1973), pp.75-83.
[Brian Coffey, ed.,] Advent VI, ‘Denis Devlin Special Issue’ (Southampton: Advent Books 1976) [incl. Robert Welch, ‘Devlin’s Rhythm’, pp.14-16].
Brian Coffey, ‘Denis Devlin, Poet of Distance’, in Andrew Carpenter, ed., Place Personality, and the Irish Writer (Colin Smythe 1977), pp.137-158.
Robert Welch, ‘Language as a Pilgrimage: Lough Derg Poems of Patrick Kavanagh and Denis Devlin, in The Irish University Review, Vol. 13, No.1 (?1978), pp.54-66.
William Downey, ‘Thinking of Denis Devlin’, Eire-Ireland, 14, 1 (1979), pp.102-14.
Stan Smith, "Precarious Guest, The Poetry of Denis Devlin’, in The Irish University Review, Vol. 8, No.1 (1987), pp.51-67.
J. C. C. Mays, Introduction to The Collected Poems of Denis Devlin (Dublin: Dedalus Press 1989), pp.22-45.
Robert Welch, ‘My Present Unresolved: Denis Devlin and Montaigne’, in Barbara Hayley & Christopher Murray, eds., Ireland and France - A Bountiful Friendship: Essays in Honour of Patrick Rafroidi (Colin Smythe 1992), pp.137-43.
Maurice Harmon, review of Denis Devlin, Translations into English, from French, German and Italian Poetry, in Books Ireland (May 1993).
Alex Davis, ‘"Foreign and Credible": Denis Devlin’s Modernism’, in Éire-Ireland, 30, 2 (Summer 1995), pp.131-48.
Alex Davis, A Broken Line: Denis Devlin and Irish Poetic Modernism (Dublin: UCD Press 2000), 192pp.
Alex Davis, ‘The Irish Modernists and Their Legacy’, in Matthew Campbell, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry (Cambridge UP 2003), pp.76-93, espec. p.77ff.
Dillon Johnston, ‘Devlin and Montague’, Irish Poetry After Joyce (Dublin: Dolmen Press; Notre Dame UP 1985; rep. Syracuse 1996), pp.167-203.
John Montague, ‘The Impact of International Poetry on Irish Writing’, in Sean Lucy, ed., Irish Poets in English (Cork: RTÉ/Mercier Press 1973), pp.144-58 [rep. in The Figure in the Cave and Other Essays, Syracuse UP 1989, pp.208-20.
Patricia Coughlan & Alex Davis, ed., Modernism in Ireland: The Poetry of the 1930s (Cork UP 1995) [essays on MacGreevy, Devlin, Beckett, and Coffey by Coughlan, Davis, Terence Brown; Tim Armstrong; Anne Fogarty; W. J. McCormack, Trevor Joyce, et al.]
Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, gen. ed., Seamus Deane, 1991, Vol. 3.
John Montague, ‘The Impact of International Modern Poetry on Irish Writing’, in Seán Lucy, ed., Irish Poets in English (Cork: Mercier 1972), pp.144-58.
Robert Welch, Changing States: Transformations in Modern Irish Writing (London: Routledge 1993).
Gerald Dawe, review of Alex Davis, A Broken Line: Denis Devlin and Irish Poetic Modernism (2000), with Donal Moriarty, The Art of Brian Coffey (2000), in The Irish Times, 26 Aug. 2000.
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Notes
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing
(Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, selects "Lough Derg" "Encounter"
from Lough Derg and Other Poems; also "The Colours of Love",
"The Tomb of Michael Collins" from Later Poems. BIOG
& COMM, 169 [as supra]. Note, FDA ed. refers to Beckett’s review
of Intercessions, included in Disjecta (pp.91-94), which
praises ‘Est Prodest’ and and compares the review with Thomas
MacGreevy’s in Ireland Today II (Oct. 1937), pp.81-82, which
sets Devlin’s volume against Beckett’s Echo’s Bones.
(For Beckett’s remarks, see Quotations.)
Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979), entry on Montague by Nora F. Lindstrom.
John Montague, ed., Faber Book of Irish Verse (Londo: Faber & Faber 1974), incls. "Encounter"; "Lough Derg"; "Ascension"; "Ank’hor Vat"; "Venus of the Salty Shell".
Maurice Harmon, ed., Irish Poetry After Yeats: Seven Poets (Wolfhound Press 1979), includes selection.
The last poem published by Denis Devlin, Memoirs of a Turcoman
Diplomat, begins as a series of separate brief epiphanies, a selection
of which makes up eight sections; prepared in extensive drafts and revisions;
an ageing diplomat meditates on the discrepancy between the country he
represents as it is in his mind and in sordid reality, exploiting parallels
between Ireland and Turkey; shows deeping of tolerance measured against Lough Derg (1946), possibly compromising ironic stance of Turkish
diplomatic; J. C. C. Mays, ‘A Poems by Denis Devlin’, in Brian
Coffey, ed., Advent VI, ‘Denis Devlin Special Issue’
(1976) [add bibl. RWel].
Murderous angels: The phrase ‘murderous angels in the head’, in his poem set in ‘Béal na mBláth’ (‘Tomb of Michael Collins’), provides the title of a book by Conor Cruise O’Brien.
Special Number: Collected Poems (1964) was first issued as special issue of University Review, Dublin, 1963, book-form copyright Countess Maria Caren di Gropello; see also a poem in memory of Devlin by Coffey, included in John Montague, ed., Faber Book of Irish Verse (1974), p.293.
Randall Jarrell identified a ‘rather poor and arbitrary ear’ as the defining characteristic of Denis Devlin’s work. (See Patrick Crotty, review of W. J. McCormack, ed., Ferocious Humanism: An Anthology of Irish Poetry, Dent 2000, in Times Literary Supplement, 2 June 2000, pp.4-5.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)