Poet and critic who knew what really mattered

FOR those fortunate to read him, Robert (Bobby) O’Donoghue, who died recently, was a guide to what literature and the arts could offer.

Through his writings in the Cork Examiner and Evening Echo, he brought before us the works of other cultures as well as telling us of our own. No one was more scathing of the second-rate and shoddy than Bobby O’Donoghue.

He was widely read and he put his reading to good use. His own gifts as poet and dramatist served him well as a critic and commentator. His prose was clear and coherent, sure evidence of a mind that had come to grips with his subject and did not have to resort to vague generalities to conceal ignorance.

To read his pieces in the Evening Echo was to experience a breadth of culture that was intoxicating. Like his fellow-critic and reviewer Cyril Connolly, Bobby was someone who made you eager to read the books he wrote about, see the plays he reviewed, consider the issues he addressed.

It is conventional now to view the 1950s and ‘60s in Ireland as a dead time in which nothing happened. This betrays a lack of knowledge that is sad but not surprising.

Despite lack of encouragement, latent hostility and profound suspicion, the arts did survive.

The Cork Film Festival and film society made up for the lack of good cinema in general. Everyman Theatre, Compántas Corcaí and the stalwarts of The Group Theatre on South Main street allowed us to see the works of Beckett, Ionescu, Camus, Williams and countless others.

It seemed that precisely because they were not cosseted, not grant-aided, people were more adventurous, more creative than is often the case today.

Bobby lived to see the changes: the wider acceptance, the greater availability of funding, the rise of poetry readings, the rush of book launches. All of these were a source of joy to him.

He also lived to see the untimely death of his son Gregory, a fine poet, who shared his father’s knowledge of and love for the arts. May it will be some small comfort to Bobby’s family to know that Cork has also suffered a loss — one it can ill afford.

Aidan Harman

Brian Dillon Park

Dillon’s Cross

Cork