Early Life
Firrell was educated in England but left school unofficially at 14 because he “had no more use for it”. He educated himself during his absence from school by walking and reading in the Norfolk countryside. He read early 20th century-literature extensively, citing the works of Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and the French writer Marguerite Duras (with whom he shares his birthday and a high degree of political sympathy) as key influences on his later development.
It was a passage in Anaïs Nin’s novel The Four Chambered Heart that set Firrell on the path of socially engaged public works. In the passage in question, the novel’s protagonist declares that literature fails to prepare us for, or guide us through, the calamities or challenges of life, and is therefore worthless.
“In a very early work, (The Beautiful and The Grave, Providence Press, published 1992) almost twenty years ago, I wrote that art should be a force for good, and I have stuck faithfully to that premise. As I have grown older I have become more adamant that my purpose is to campaign in some way for change, using my works as a medium for catalysing debate. If you can raise debate, eventually change will follow.”
Firrell sets out to remedy Nin’s ‘worthlessness’ of words by using language to raise provocative questions about society, relevant to the vast majority of people and freely available in public.
Read more about this topic: Martin Firrell
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