Honouring a quiet bridge-builder

ESSAYS: CLÍONA NÍ RÍORDÁINreviews Franco-Irish Connections: Essays, Memoirs and Poems in Honour of Pierre JoannonEdited by Jane Conroy Irish Academic Press, 364pp, €55

THIS BOOK of essays is a timely reminder of the deep bonds that link France and Ireland. Jane Conroy has gathered together a remarkable group of people from a variety of walks of life to pay homage to a man who has been, in the words of Brendan Kennelly, a “quiet bridge-builder”. Pierre Joannon, former President of the Ireland Fund of France, whose eclectic interests include history, the law, film, literature, philanthropy and most of all Ireland, has been working to further the connections between Ireland and France for more than 40 years.

Many of the essays in the volume examine those connections. Some extend back into the late 17th century, tracing, for instance, the cartographic expedition during which French geographers mapped the west coast of Ireland. Jane Conroy highlights the transcription of place names by the French; the transformation of Ballybunion into “Castel Balé bonen” immediately translates the reader (if not the inhabitant) to warmer southern climes. Kevin Whelan examines the Irish in France in the 18th century. His study pinpoints the presence of the Irish in many fields, forming as he says “an alternative state apparatus, always anticipating a glorious return”. Thomas Bartlett examines the early historiography of the most famous Irish exiles in France, the Wild Geese. Patrick O’Connor turns his attention to the history of one of the Irish colleges, tracing its development and transformation into the Centre Culturel Irlandais that is a beacon for Irish culture in France today.

No fewer than four articles evoke the iconic figure of General de Gaulle. The historian JJ Lee examines the rapprochement that is frequently made between de Gaulle and de Valera. Lee points out that while both men became national symbols transcending the politics of the moment, they emerged from very different backgrounds. He even encourages us to speculate on how the future might have been different had de Gaulle been brought up in an agricultural labourer's cottage. Grace Neville, on the other hand, turns her attention to the representation in the Irish press of de Gaulle's visit to Ireland in 1969. Press coverage hovered between hagiography and cliché (de Gaulle, we are told, maintained his sartorial elegance by having a local tailor iron his clothes every day), with the Irish Pressshowing more enthusiasm for the former French president's visit than the more restrained approach adopted by the Irish Times.

De Gaulle also appears in Garret FitzGerald’s reflections on Irish-French relations between 1919 and 2009. In this essay, as in the others contributed by public figures in Irish life, the reader is fascinated by the personal element at the heart of the historical moment (such as the impact a discussion with François Mitterand on Jacques Maritain and Étienne Gilson may have had in the defence of Ireland’s milk quota at the European Council). Dermot Keogh’s article examines the relationship between Ireland and France in the 20th century, devoting special attention to the diplomats (Walshe, Cremin and Murphy) who were at the heart of Franco-Irish diplomatic relations during the critical period of the second World War.

The volume has been structured in alphabetical order and so rather than dipping into pockets of history, memoir and literature, the reader adopts an approach not dissimilar to the big bird hovering on Anne Madden's majestic painting that adorns the front cover of the book. And so it is that we swoop down on passages such as Seamus Heaney's adaptation of Guillevic's Herbier de Bretagne, or Montague's Vendange, recalling his own voyage of initiation into the French countryside.

We pause too on what David Norris has called “ledges”, regaling ourselves with tales of trips to Monaco, behind the scenes happenings at the Cannes Film Festival, or the real story of Graham Greene’s involvement in the GPA Book Award.

This book also places Ireland very firmly at the heart of the European adventure. Alongside Denis Corboy’s memoir of the road to Europe, Lara Marlowe provides a stimulating analysis of France, Ireland and the failed referenda of 2005 and 2008, and Ben Tonra outlines the commitment to multilateralism that is shared by both France and Ireland alike.

One is struck in reading successive essays by the pertinence to contemporary Franco-Irish relations of many of the topics addressed. Perhaps the most stimulating of these is Richard Kearney's Memory and Forgetting in Irish Culture. Basing his analysis on two main examples, Joyce's Ulyssesand Tolle's New York Famine Memorial, Kearney guides us to a greater understanding of the function of memory, recalling as he does the philosopher Paul Ricoeur's notion of "blocked memory" and "emancipatory memory", which enables people to move forward on a personal or collective level.

This stimulating, multi-faceted book, prefaced in French by another Irish Frenchman, Michel Déon, is a fitting tribute to the many endeavours of Pierre Joannon.

Clíona Ní Ríordáin teaches Irish Studies at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle