Seamus Heaney

Contents Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction

1

1

‘Preoccupying Questions’: Heaney’s Prose

9

2

‘Continuous Adjudication’: Binary Oppositions and the Field of Force

28

3

‘Writing in the Sand’: Poetry and Transformation

60

4

‘Surviving Amphibiously’: Poetry and Politics

81

5

‘A Bright Nowhere’: The Deconstruction of Place

112

6

‘Through-Otherness’: The Deconstruction of Language

133

7

Nobel Causes: Heaney and Yeats

156

Conclusion

180

Notes Bibliography of Seamus Heaney’s Works General Bibliography Index

183 198 199 206

Introduction In 1997, Seamus Heaney published a review of Roy Foster’s The Apprentice Mage, the first volume of his biography of William Butler Yeats, in The Atlantic Monthly. In this review, Heaney wrote about both biographer and subject in terms which have no small bearing on this book, and its raison d’être. To write a book about Seamus Heaney, one must, of necessity, declare one’s raison d’être from the outset as with over 30 books devoted to his work, the field is in danger of becoming over-ploughed (indeed I have already ploughed some earlier furrows myself). Any further exploration of Heaney must, de facto, suggest its relation to, and difference from, this body of critical work, if it is to justify its existence. That the majority of these studies of Heaney have been beneficial to any understanding of his work is a further problem – as this book cannot be offered as a necessary corrective to previous critical errors. However, the poet has, to date, been fortunate in his critics, therefore that avenue is also closed. So, if this book is to justify its place on the shelves, what then does it bring to Heaney studies that has been heretofore lacking? In a timehonoured manner in literary studies, and validated by the words of Shakespeare that one can ‘by indirections find directions out’ (Hamlet: II, I), I will advance my thesis via Heaney’s book review. In terms of what Heaney has to say about both Foster and Yeats, this review serves as an index to the reasons for my writing this book, as well as suggesting the critical niche which it hopes to fill. Contrary to many studies of Heaney which see him as obsessed with the past, I will be arguing that his work, both poetry and prose, is, on the contrary, oriented very much towards the future. Writing about Roy Foster, Heaney makes the following points with regard to his position within Irish historical studies in particular and Irish cultural studies in general. He notes that Foster is ‘identified as the most influential “revisionist” among contemporary Irish historians, which is to say that he, like his subject, has often been at the centre of the culture wars’. He goes on to discuss the nature of this revisionism noting that it attempts to revise the default nationalistic narrative of Irish history as a teleological emergence of the ‘Gaelic nation from foreign domination, culminating in the 1

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reinstatement of native government and the official recognition of the native language and majority religion after Irish independence was gained, in 1921’ (Heaney 1997). This narrative, it is argued, suppresses other strands or varieties of Irishness ‘and is therefore detrimental to any move toward a more politically workable, culturally pluralist future for the country, north and south’ (Foster 1997: 158). It is Foster’s participation in this ongoing, and sometimes fraught, process, that Heaney sees as being of value. Revisionism participates in what might be called the deconstruction of a monological historical narrative, bringing out the strains, fractures, aporias and antinomies that have been attenuated by the narrative sweep. Indeed, part of my thesis in this book will be that from a philosophical, and arguably methodological standpoint, this type of revisionism is allied to deconstruction, specifically the work of Jacques Derrida, who also focuses on neglected strands of discourses in order to bring out other narratives, histories and perspectives; as he puts it ‘marginal, fringe cases’ are important to the deconstructive project as they almost ‘always constitute the most certain and most decisive indices wherever essential conditions are to be grasped’ (Derrida 1988: 209). That Heaney should see Foster as ideally suited to write Yeats’s biography is also significant in terms of his own intellectual orientation. That he should be so affirmative of Foster’s revisionist project indicates an identification with a thinker who has engaged with the increasing complexities of socio-cultural identity that have become definitive of the situation in Northern Ireland over the past 30 years. That he should use this notion of ‘cultural pluralism’ to adequate Foster with his subject, Yeats, is highly significant in terms of Heaney’s own orientation on these issues. As Heaney points out: Nobody, therefore, was better qualified to write this book, which follows Yeats into his fiftieth year, through a period of Irish history when all the questions about national and cultural affiliation that have come so desperately to the fore again in Northern Ireland were being lived through in the rest of the country at both private and public levels and leaving their indelible mark on Irish life. But it was precisely because these crucial tensions had come to the fore that Yeats, at fifty, began to set himself up as the representative Irish poet of his times – one whose ancestors included not only a soldier who had fought for William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne at the end of the seventeenth century but also a

Introduction

3

country scholar who was friends with the revolutionary Robert Emmet at the beginning of the nineteenth. By invoking these figures in 1914, in the introductory verses of a volume significantly titled Responsibilities, Yeats was reminding his Irish readership that he took the strain of both the major ideologies that were exacerbating Irish political life in that critically important year. (Heaney 1997: 158–9) For Heaney, then, The Apprentice Mage saw a congruence between two Irish intellectuals – Foster and Yeats – both of whom were keen to avoid a singular, monocular vision of Irishness and instead to embrace a more pluralistic and complicated construction of what it means to be Irish. Revisionism involves pluralising the narrative of history and Yeats, too, was involved in such a process. Discussing the mooted destruction of Nelson’s Pillar, in 1923, Yeats argued that the monument ‘should not be broken up’ as it represented the ‘feeling of Protestant Ireland for a man who helped to break the power of Napoleon’. Interestingly, Yeats goes on to explain his reasons for his view, noting that the ‘life and work of the people who erected it is part of our tradition’, and concluding his remarks with the telling assertion: ‘I think we should accept the whole past of this nation and not pick and choose’ (Evening Telegraph, 25 August 1923). The unravelling of different strands is again a feature of this perspective. That Heaney should be attracted by such complex and creative allegiance to a notion of a revisioned Ireland, and that he should also be attracted by the intellectual position of Foster, serves as an index of his own commitment to a similar range of ideas. Throughout his writing, in both poetry and prose, he will stress the duality and necessity for interaction and intersection of notions of selfhood and notions of alterity. As he put it elsewhere: the locating of one’s identity in ‘the ethnic and liturgical habits of one’s group’ is all very well, but for that group to ‘confine the range of one’s growth’ and ‘to have one’s sympathies determined and one’s responses programmed’ by that group, is clearly a ‘form of entrapment’ (1985: 6–7), an entrapment which defines place and identity in extremely narrow terms, and which is a polar opposite of the discourse of poetry as Heaney sees it. As Heaney puts it in The Redress of Poetry, poetry has to be ‘a working model of inclusive consciousness. It should not simplify’ (1995a: 8), and this desire to express the complexity of intersubjective relationships is the connecting thread that binds Heaney, Foster, Yeats and, I would also suggest, Derrida.

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All of these writers have endeavoured to avoid those ‘forms of entrapment’ of which Heaney spoke and instead, have looked for broader symbolic enunciations of individual and cultural identity, and in his Atlantic Monthly review, he stresses this admirable aspect of Yeats as icon: As a Yeats, he belonged to the respectable stratum of Protestant Irish society that owed its position and power to William of Orange’s victory and its consequences – the establishment of an Anglo-Irish ascendancy and the institution of penal laws against the Catholic population. So as a Yeats he might have been expected to support the cause of the union of Ireland with the other British nations under the English crown. But as an Irish poet who had written a manifesto aligning himself with Irish Nationalist precursors such as Thomas Davis and James Clarence Mangan, as the author of the early, inflammatory ‘rebel’ play Cathleen Ni Houlihan, as the chief inventor of the Celtic Twilight and a founding member of the Abbey Theatre, which claimed to be the country’s national theatre, Yeats had long been creating a vision of Ireland as an independent cultural entity, a state of mind as much as a nation-state, one founded on indigenous myths and attitudes and beliefs that pre-dated not only William of Orange but even Saint Patrick himself. (Heaney 1997: 159) The idea of the nation as a ‘state of mind’ is a recurring trope in contemporary cultural discourse. Heaney has made the point in his sequence ‘Squarings’ from Seeing Things, that places are always open to different naming paradigms; indeed that places are created by such paradigms: In famous poems by the sage Han Shan, Cold Mountain is a place that can also mean A state of mind. Or different states of mind At different times. (1991: 97) It is this embracing of the difference that is at the heart of the nation that further unites these writers as they all, in different ways, look to more pluralistic and complex structurations of society and culture. Not seeing nationhood or identity as either predestined or given, instead they see it as something to be created through language and

Introduction

5

imagery, and I would suggest that Heaney and Derrida follow Yeats’s idea of the importance of a dialogue between notions of selfhood and notions of alterity. Ireland as a ‘state of mind’ is a concept that is transformative of the givens of identity, in any ideological group, and it is this ongoing transformation that will take the strain of conflicting ideologies and, possibly, create new structures which will allow these ideological and cultural positions to interact, intersect and enter some form of dialogue with each other which may allow for some dissipation of the conflict. It is with this idea of taking the strain of conflicting and diverse ideological positions that I return to the question posed in the first paragraph of this introduction, as to the raison d’être of this book. I think, in the light of Heaney’s comments on Foster and Yeats, that a strand of his thinking can be traced which engages with these notions of complexity of identity, hybridity and liminality in terms of the situating of the text of selfhood within the context of one’s cultural associations and predications. His praise of the methodology used by Foster also contains the glimmerings of my own modus operandi in this book, as I will offer parallel analyses of Heaney’s poetry and prose, the latter being a glaring lacuna in what might be termed ‘Heaney studies’ over the years. Until now, I would suggest, Heaney’s prose has been generally used as a preparatory gloss on his poetry; it has never been subjected to any sustained critique in terms of its role in Heaney’s overall project. This book will redress this balance by taking specific themes in his writing, most notably concerned with issues of identity, belonging, ideology and the role of the aesthetic with respect to the political, and examine them through a sustained study of both his poetry and his prose. Finally, the connections I have made between the disciplines of historical revisionism and deconstruction presage another thematic strand of this book, namely the adequation of the ideas of Heaney and Derrida with respect to the notions of reading, writing, cultural discourse and ideology. If nothing else, this articulation has the virtue of being an unploughed part of the Heaney canon, and it also demonstrates, as I hope to show, that Heaney needs to be addressed as a cultural thinker as well as an artist in terms of his involvement in themes so seminal to the cultural narration of a contemporary form of Irishness. In both his poetry and his prose, Heaney participates in a transformative discourse which exfoliates the fixed ideological positions of Catholic-nationalist-republican and Protestant-loyalist-unionist by probing their borders, their points of

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limitation. By then locating these within broader and more expansive contexts, Heaney’s writing transforms points of closure into points of opening to the other. Working at the level of the individual consciousness, Heaney gradually creates the plural, complex and fluid ‘state of mind’ of an Ireland which is open to its future. At the end of his ‘Frontiers of Writing’ essay, Heaney quotes from Roy Foster’s earlier book Paddy & Mr. Punch, citing the idea that we ‘need not give up our own claims on Irishness in order to conceive of it as a flexible definition. And in an age of exclusivist jihads to east and west, the notion that people can reconcile more than one cultural identity may have much to recommend it’ (Foster 1993: xvi–xvii). It is this complexity of perspective that attracts Heaney to Yeats, and which, I will suggest, creates a strand in his work which enacts Colin Graham’s concept of deconstructing Ireland: The conclusion which this book edges towards is that ‘Ireland’ stages its own deconstruction and that at every turn the idea unravels and reforms itself, always in anticipation of the next act of definition and criticism which, like this one, will be inadequately applied to it. (Graham 2001: x) ‘Revisionism’, ‘deconstruction’, ‘different states of mind’ ‘flexibility of definition’ or pluralism: what all of these terms have in common is a desire to enunciate the complexity of Irish culture and society through the different strands of identity and to focus on the creation of this plural form of identity instead of being fixated on the givens of the past. It is this ongoing theme that will be discussed in the coming chapters. Chapter 1 deals with the theories of selfhood and alterity that run through Heaney’s prose writings. These are seen as being organised around some central questions posed in Preoccupations as to the role of poetry within society and culture. The chapter also examines the interaction and intersection of tropes of selfhood and alterity in Heaney’s writing as well as his focus on the emancipatory aspects of writing. Heaney addresses these questions, in both poetry and prose, throughout his writing. The second chapter deals with Heaney’s theory of poetry, specifically in terms of the dialectical interchange between different identitarian positions in Northern Ireland. Connections are made between his experience of internal exile and that of Derrida in Algeria, with these concrete images of travel and crossings used to extrapolate a particular strain in the work of both

Introduction

7

writers as they create plural and complex structures within which the binary oppositions can interact and inform each other, in the name of what Heaney describes as the need to accommodate ‘two opposing notions of truthfulness simultaneously’ (1985: 4). Poetry as a vehicle for the achievement of such a structure is examined in poems from The Haw Lantern, Seeing Things and The Spirit Level, as well as in essays from Preoccupations, where his notions of ‘continuous adjudication’ and a ‘field of force’ are first expressed. Chapter 3 focuses on the transformative effect which poetry can bring to reality and actuality in terms of subverting, and amplifying, the givens with which our culture presents us. This chapter discusses the effects of poetry as a dialectical structure on both writer and reader, looking at the title essay and ‘Frontiers of Writing’ in The Redress of Poetry, as well as at his Nobel lecture Crediting Poetry. Parallels between Heaney and Derrida in terms of concepts of identity, responsibility, liminality and the fluidity of borders will also be discussed. The fourth chapter examines the transformative interaction of poetry and politics, examining the creative ambiguity in the phrase ‘government of the tongue’, and then developing this analysis to examine some of his poetry and prose which attempt to transform signifiers which have a hegemonic attachment to a particular tradition into indices of plurality and complexity. Connections are made between his work and that of Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas. These include some of the placename poems from Wintering Out as well as the almost programmatic example of a poem involving the interaction of self and other: ‘The Other Side’, read in tandem with ‘The Pitchfork’ in Seeing Things. ‘The Flight Path’, from The Spirit Level, is read in terms of a transformation of the individual in terms of political allegiance. The fifth chapter deals with the deconstruction of notions of place, particularly with how placenames specifically associated with nationalist ideology, are recontextualised in order to open different paths of signification. These names are significant in terms of the Heaney canon – Toome, Mossbawn, Glanmore – and are read in terms of Derrida’s presence/absence conceit, and in terms of Heaney’s own resonant image of a creative space which stood where a chestnut tree had stood, an image traced from an essay in The Government of the Tongue, through some poems in The Haw Lantern. This reading of absence as a creative source is paralleled with Maurice Blanchot’s The Space of Literature.

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The sixth chapter parallels the fifth by deconstructing different aspects of language which have been associated with a particular tradition in Northern Ireland. By examining different signifiers that would seem to have a nationalist or Gaelic association, and by teasing out Heaney’s deconstruction of this aspect of their etymology as he brings the signifier into the ambit of the other tradition, his ongoing pluralisation of language is foregrounded. Specifically, the complexity of language as it is experienced in art is discussed, ranging through Heaney’s poetry and prose. Chapter 7 examines the influence and interaction of Heaney’s work with that of another Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet, one with whom he has often been compared. I refer, of course, to William Butler Yeats. Heaney has written of his debt to Yeats, and in this chapter, we will examine the ethical similarities between these writers in terms of their views on the role of the aesthetic with respect to the politic, as well as in terms of their attitude to the complexities of identity. The Nobel lectures of each writer will also be compared in terms of their attitudes to the place of writing in society. In his essay ‘Vision and Irony in Recent Irish Poetry’, published in The Place of Writing, Heaney stresses the relationship between the poet and his or her cultural context in ideal terms: ‘as poets, they comprehend both the solidarities of their own group and the need to subvert them’ (1989: 49). It is this complexity of response that will be the terminus ad quem towards which Heaney’s ongoing searches for answers will be directed.

Index absence (see also presence), 7, 20, 52–3, 62, 90, 114–16, 118, 119, 121–2, 127, 128, 130, 160, 161, 167, 177 Adorno, Theodor, 23, 49, 68 aesthetic (see also poetry), 5, 8, 11, 14–15, 19, 27, 32, 44–5, 48, 56, 58, 64, 74–5, 78–9, 95, 99, 102, 105–7, 112, 135–6, 138, 147, 157, 160–3, 168, 170, 171–9 aesthetics, 14, 45 Algeria (see also Derrida), 6, 36–7 alterity (see also other), 3, 5, 6, 24, 31, 37, 39, 42, 53, 66, 69, 78, 80, 86, 88–9, 95, 97, 102, 105, 107, 109, 122–3, 136, 142, 148, 150, 152, 177, 180–2 anastomosis, 16–19, 22, 28, 45, 47, 49, 52, 54, 72, 74, 78, 82, 85, 94, 103, 144, 146, 149, 152, 171–3, 180, 182 Andrews, Elmer, 9, 84, 94, 97, 184 Icon Critical Guide, 9 Anglo-Saxon, 19, 135 Annwn, David, 97 Antrim, County, 125 Ashcroft, Bill, 138 atavism, 31, 43–6, 71–2, 97, 100, 133 Atlantic Monthly, 1, 4 Auseinandersetzung, 14 Austen, Jane, 32 Bakhtin, Michael, 16, 20, 23 Barrell, John, 15, 22 Barrell, John and John Bull (eds) The Penguin Book of English Pastoral Verse, 18 Barthes, Roland, 34 bawn (see also Mossbawn), 17, 93, 122 Belfast, 34–5, 37, 42, 43, 44, 45, 102, 104, 125, 154, 159, 171

Bellaghy, 32, 34, 35, 131 Benjamin, Walter, 49 Bennington, Geoffrey, 35, 144 Bhabha, Homi, 141–2 The Location of Culture, 141 binarism, 7, 17, 20, 22, 25, 30–1, 36, 37, 39, 41–5, 54, 55, 59, 62–6, 86, 87, 92, 96, 99, 116, 124, 135–9, 145, 154–5, 174, 180 Blanchot, Maurice, 7, 25, 28, 50, 114–18, 131, 161, 167, 178–9 The Gaze of Orpheus, 7, 115 The Space of Literature, 7, 115 bog people, 98–9 border (se also frontier), 5, 7, 20–7, 50, 65–9, 86–7, 96, 114, 140–3, 146–9, 152–3, 159–60, 182 both/and (see also either/or), 149, 172 Boyne, Battle of (see also William of Orange; Protestantism), 2, 41 Bradley, Catherine, 32, 38, 42, 52, 56, 62, 64, 76, 154, 161, 181 sampler, 32, 38, 42, 52, 56, 62, 64, 76, 78, 154, 161, 181 Brewster, Scott, 88–9 Britannic, 155, 162 British (see also English), 32, 124, 148, 153–4, 166 Broadbridge, Edward, 99 Brown, Richard, 169, 172, 182 Bull, John, 15, 22 Burns, Robert, 174 Burris, Sidney, 57 Caputo, John D., 37 Carson, Ciarán, 49, 134 Catholic (see also Protestant), 4, 5, 25–6, 32, 34, 41, 45, 51, 61, 87, 92, 97, 99, 101, 104, 109, 134, 136, 141, 152, 174 Christ, Jesus, 59, 60

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Index Christianity, 31, 97, 112, 166 Clare, John, 163–4 community (see also society), 25–6, 45, 47, 50–1, 77–8, 82–3, 86–7, 98–9, 101, 103–4, 109, 117, 121, 128, 141, 147, 172 consciousness, 3, 6, 26, 28, 31, 40, 42, 44, 47–8, 51, 54, 56–7, 62–5, 72–5, 78, 80, 83, 85, 103, 107, 110, 113, 118, 130, 134, 139, 143, 149, 152, 156, 170, 172, 175, 177 constellation, 49, 50, 52, 54, 58–9, 63, 66, 74, 108, 147, 149 Corcoran, Neil, 9, 12, 31, 32, 36, 39, 42, 63–4, 68, 184 Corkery, Daniel, 136–7, 144 Critchley, Simon, 39, 88, 106 critique, 5, 18, 21, 37, 47, 98, 147, 151 Crotty, Patrick, 17 Cruise O’Brien, Conor, 98 culture (see also society), 1–2, 4–8, 13–19, 22–3, 28, 33–8, 41–3, 51, 59, 65, 67, 70, 75–6, 83–8, 93–5, 112–13, 115, 117, 121–4, 130, 134, 136, 138, 141–2, 144–5, 148–55, 159, 163–70, 174, 176–7, 180–1 Dante, 61, 132 Deane, Seamus, 172 deconstruction (see also Derrida), 2, 5–8, 18, 24, 35, 40, 66, 85, 88, 96, 99–102, 110, 122–3, 127–38, 144–8, 150–1, 154, 175, 181 Derrida, Jacques, 2–7, 12–13, 17, 19–24, 31, 33–9, 50–5, 60, 65–70, 72, 74, 76–7, 79, 85, 89–92, 96, 98–105, 108, 110, 114–16, 121–8, 130, 137–44, 147–8, 161–7, 173, 180–2 Acts of Literature, 72, 121 Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, 89–90 ‘Biodegradables’, 85 Deconstruction and Criticism, 21, 22 Deconstruction and the Other, 148 Deconstruction in a Nutshell, 70, 79, 108, 110, 123–4

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Demeure: Fiction and Testimony, 115, 147 différance, 33, 35–6, 38, 52, 74, 144 Dissemination, 122–3, 253 Limited Inc, 2, 19 Margins of Philosophy, 143–4 Mémoires For Paul de Man, 96 Monolingualism and the Other, 138, 181 Of Grammatology, 53 Of Hospitality, 182 Of Spirit, 37 ‘On Responsibility’, 147 Points, 36, 77 Positions, 20, 23, 33 Specters of Marx, 98 Speech and Phenomena, 127 supplement, 9, 137 The Ear of the Other, 70 The Other Heading, 36, 70 The Politics of Friendship, 76 Writing and Difference, 66 Derry, 37, 74–5, 92, 94, 103, 112, 125, 136, 139 dialectic (see also anastomosis), 6–7, 14–20, 22–5, 30, 32, 37–45, 47–53, 58, 61–2, 64, 66, 70, 72–9, 100, 128–9, 133, 137, 149, 163, 167, 177–81 dialogue, 5, 37, 59, 66, 102, 130, 139, 146 Docherty, Thomas, 10 Eagleton, Terry, 98 education, 31, 40, 51, 136, 145, 152, 158–9 either/or (see also both/and), 92, 149, 172 Eliot, T.S., 13, 160, 184 Elizabethan, 17, 145 Ellmann, Richard, 61, 169 enculturation, 112, 132, 166–7 England, 20, 30, 39, 66, 135, 145, 153, 155, 172 English (see also British; Britannic), 4, 9, 12, 15–22, 29, 31, 33–6, 58, 66, 88, 94–5, 113, 122, 130, 132–9, 143–6, 149–53, 171–2

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entrapment, 3, 4, 45–7, 146 epiphany, 109, 137 ethics, 8, 11, 14, 24, 26, 31, 37–47, 66, 68, 69, 73, 74, 75–80, 88–90, 92–5, 101, 105–6, 108, 133, 152, 177 ethnicity, 3, 45, 47, 169, 181 Europe, 14, 19, 24, 36, 75, 98–9, 105–6, 143, 151–3 Fennell, Desmond, 23, 102 field of force (see also Kraftfeldt), 7, 15, 23, 25, 30, 35, 40–4, 49–56, 59–65, 68–73, 75–80, 82, 84, 100–1, 104–5, 110, 113, 132, 135, 138–9, 143–6, 149–50, 154, 160–1, 177, 181–2 Foster, Roy, 1–6, 26–7, 156 Paddy & Mr. Punch, 6 The Apprentice Mage, 1, 3 Foster, Thomas C., 27 France, 19–20, 22, 36–7, 113, 132 Freud, Sigmund, 34 Heimlich, 36 Unheimlich, 36 frontier (see also border), 21–2, 25–7, 65, 68–9, 73, 79, 87, 91, 98, 147, 149–50, 165, 182 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 39 Gaelic (see also Irish), 1, 8, 29, 34, 40, 67, 93, 95–6, 122, 137, 144–5, 153–4, 168 genre, 14–16, 19–22, 40, 49, 79, 100, 167, 174 Gibbons, Luke, 54 Glanmore (see also Field Work; Electric Light), 7, 124–31, 147, 171 glissement, 12, 95 god, 49, 68, 129, 141, 178 goddess, 44, 49, 97–9, 134 Graham, Colin, 6, 123–4 Greece, 11, 19, 31, 38, 40, 43, 74, 121–2, 130–1, 139, 152, 163 Haffenden, John, 57, 103 Hammond, David, 50, 82, 104–5, 184

harmony, 25, 49, 74, 159, 163 Hart, Henry, 27, 68 Havel, Vaclav, 51, 147 Heaney, Seamus (works), Among Schoolchildren, 13, 32, 136, 157–62 ‘lachtar’, 140–4, 147–9, 151, 154 Beowulf, 31, 101, 148, 169 bog poems, 97–8, 100 Crediting Poetry, 7, 13, 75, 77, 109, 126, 143, 171, 177 Death of a Naturalist, 24, 29, 37, 90 ‘Churning Day’, 33, 95 ‘Digging’, 34, 41, 94 ‘Docker’, 45, 47 ‘Orange Drums, Tyrone, 1966’, 45, 47 ‘Thatcher’, 33, 95 ‘The Diviner’, 33 Door into the Dark, 29, 90, 120–1 ‘A Lough Neagh Sequence’, 124–5 ‘Requiem for the Croppies’, 13 Electric Light, 19, 31, 118, 121, 130–2 ‘Glanmore Eclogue’, 134–5 ‘Known World’, 23, 136 ‘Sonnets from Hellas’, 135 ‘The Gaeltacht’, 136 Field Work, 31, 43, 125, 129 ‘A Postcard from North Antrim’, 129 ‘Casualty’, 129 ‘Glanmore Sonnets’, 128, 130 ‘The Strand at Lough Beg’, 129 Finders Keepers, 13, 25, 154, 180 ‘Something to Write Home About’, 72, 143, 148, 152 ‘Through-Other Places, Through-Other Times: The Irish Poet and Britain’, 152 North, 30, 31, 47, 54, 67, 71, 84, 86, 93, 97, 100–3, 108, 122, 124–5, 133–4, 150 ‘Belderg’, 126 ‘Bone Dreams’, 139 ‘Exposure’, 71, 109–10

Index ‘Kinship’, 48, 49, 51, 76, 101–2, 137 ‘Punishment’, 101, 137 ‘Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces’, 138 ‘Whatever You Say Say Nothing’, 107, 110 Place and Displacement, 13, 32, 38 Preoccupations, 6–9, 11–15, 20, 29–30, 36, 41, 65, 71–2, 82, 84, 94–6, 99, 121–2, 139, 157, 163, 164, 180, 184 ‘Feeling into Words’, 49, 88 ‘In the Country of Convention’, 19, 24 ‘Mossbawn’, 11, 21, 41, 45, 93, 97, 121–2, 125–6, 129, 131, 139, 143, 151, 167, 181 Seeing Things, 4, 7, 31, 53, 67, 90, 126 ‘A Haul’, 58 ‘Glanmore Revisited’, 128, 130 ‘Markings’, 57, 71, 84, 111 ‘The Golden Bough’, 58 ‘The Pitchfork’, 11, 94, 96, 99 ‘The Point’, 58 ‘The Pulse’, 58 ‘Three Drawings’, 58 ‘Wheels within Wheels’, 60 ‘Crossings’, 65, 72 ‘Lightenings’, 69, 72, 146 ‘Settings’, 72, 77 ‘Squarings’, 8, 68, 71–2, 104, 111 Sweeney Astray, 31, 101, 130, 175 The Cure at Troy, 31, 52, 101 The Government of the Tongue, 7, 9–10, 13, 28, 46, 60, 62, 79, 81, 85, 184 ‘Sounding Auden’, 165 ‘The Placeless Heaven: Another Look at Kavanagh’, 117 The Haw Lantern, 7, 9, 10, 26, 40, 68, 116, 140 ‘A Daylight Art’, 120 ‘Alphabets’, 44, 47 ‘Clearances’, 118, 120 ‘From the Frontier of Writing’, 30

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‘Terminus’, 72, 133, 144, 146, 148, 151–2, 158–9 ‘The Disappearing Island’, 119 ‘The Stone Grinder’, 120 ‘The Wishing Tree’, 118 The Midnight Verdict, 43, 101 The Place of Writing, 8, 13, 165 The Redress of Poetry, 3, 7, 13, 24, 28, 42, 48, 59, 61, 64, 70, 102, 150, 184 ‘Frontiers of Writing’, 10–11, 78, 158 ‘Joy or Night: Last Things in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats and Philip Larkin’, 52 The Spirit Level, 7, 56, 101 ‘Postscript’, 61 ‘The Flight Path’, 11, 111–13, 116 ‘The Swing’, 62–3 ‘Tollund’, 61–2, 101, 103 ‘Weighing In’, 60, 84 Wintering Out, 7, 30, 82–3, 86, 93, 100–4, 117, 121, 124, 156 ‘A New Song’, 22 ‘Anahorish’, 20, 24, 97–100, 122, 151 ‘Broagh’, 20, 24, 97–100, 122, 151 ‘Fodder’, 89 ‘The Other Side’, 11, 29, 90, 92–6, 99, 172 ‘The Tollund Man’, 61, 101 ‘Toome’, 11, 121–6, 151 ‘Traditions’, 21 hegemony, 7, 75, 123–4, 126, 133 Herbert, George, 59, 64, 66 Herbert, Zbigniew, 10, 11 Hillis Miller, J., 16, 22, 24 The Ethics of Reading, 16 history, 1–5, 11–14, 18, 36, 49, 52, 55–9, 72, 77, 82, 87, 95, 111, 113, 115–19, 124, 134, 137–8, 145–56, 159, 164, 166, 170 hoke, 139–40, 145, 147, 150 home, 17, 33, 36, 39–40, 57–9, 92, 95, 97, 108, 112–13, 117–18, 120, 122–6, 131, 136, 139, 148, 154, 163, 171, 177, 182

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Homer, 67, 129–30, 152, 164 Hopkins, Gerald Manley, 65 Hughes, Francis (see also Provisional IRA), 74 Hughes, Ted, 55, 155 hybridity (see also liminality), 5, 17, 36, 124, 138–49, 153, 165, 171, 182 identity (see also selfhood) , 2–8, 14, 17–19, 23-29, 32–40, 45, 47, 50, 53, 57, 65–6, 69–70, 76, 82–8, 90, 92, 94, 97–100, 104, 109, 113, 122–3, 128, 133, 136, 141–8, 152, 165, 173–82 ideology (see also consciousness; culture), 5, 7, 25, 33, 38, 41–5, 66–7, 71, 81, 83, 86–7, 90–1, 97–8, 101, 104, 109, 112, 115–24, 132, 134–5, 138, 144, 147, 149, 152–5, 159–63, 168, 172–6, 180 imagination, 25, 37, 53, 55, 59, 63, 70, 92, 94, 104, 107, 117, 123, 139, 164–5, 184 immanence, 47, 61, 92, 176–8 inclusiveness, 3, 25, 28, 42, 56, 75, 97, 103, 118, 134, 141, 145, 156, 163 internment, 67 intersubjectivity, 3, 24, 43, 46, 65, 89, 90 Ireland (see also identity), 2–8, 13, 18, 20, 25–6, 29–32, 38–40, 49–51, 62, 66, 76–7, 80, 82, 86–90, 92–3, 98–105, 112, 118, 123–5, 128, 131–2, 135, 137, 140, 142, 145–59, 166, 168, 170–6 Ireland, Northern, 2, 6, 8, 13, 25–6, 31–2, 38–40, 50–1, 62, 76–7, 80, 82, 86–7, 90, 92, 98–100, 103, 105, 112, 118, 125, 128, 140, 142, 149, 153, 172, 176 Irelandness, prior (see also quincunx), 150 Irishness, 1–10, 14, 16–22, 24, 29, 31–9, 43, 46, 51, 55–8, 66, 84, 88, 90, 95–9, 102, 107, 112–13, 117, 122–6, 130–56, 158, 165–6, 171–8

James, Clive, 4, 44, 97, 141, 151, 156 Jay, Martin, 23 Joyce, James, 16–18, 44, 151–2, 165 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 44, 97, 152 Ulysses, 18, 151–2, 165 justice, 24, 40, 52, 60–1, 69, 72, 79, 171, 174, 176, 179 Kavanagh, Patrick, 21, 113 Kearney, Hugh, 155 Kearney, Richard, 66, 88, 155 Kiberd, Declan, 29, 30 Inventing Ireland, 29 Kingsmills massacre, 77, 176 Kraftfeldt (see also field of force), 23, 25, 56, 62–3, 73, 76, 105 Kristeva, Julia, 52 Lacan, Jacques, 34 lace, Brussels, 52–3, 60, 62, 79 land, 15, 24, 45, 82, 93, 98, 107, 115, 120, 123, 134–5, 141–7, 171 language, 2, 4, 8, 14–23, 29, 31, 33–7, 41, 51–3, 57, 65, 69–81, 84–8, 90, 92–6, 101–2, 112, 117, 121–7, 130–44, 147–8, 150–5, 159–69, 172–5, 179–84 Latin, 19–20, 22, 40, 45, 117, 130, 138 Levinas, Emmanuel (see also ethics), 7, 37, 48, 76, 88, 89–95, 102, 106, 109–10, 168, 180 liminality (see also hybridity), 5, 7, 24–7, 36, 143–8, 153 Lloyd, David, 98 locus, 18, 42, 45, 55, 121, 126–31, 150, 164, 167 London, 36, 49, 143, 149 Londonderry, 112 Longley, Edna, 50, 82, 87, 134 Lowell, Robert, 161 loyalism, 5, 32, 99, 104, 171 lyric, 14, 26, 34, 60, 62, 130 MacNeice, Louis, 21, 83, 150–3 Carrickfergus Castle, 151

Index Mandelstam, Nadezhda, 47, 105 Mandelstam, Osip, 28, 47, 52–3, 105, 164 Marxism, 15, 21 McDonald, Peter, 58, 116 meaning, 11, 16–17, 20, 24, 28–9, 34–5, 38, 40, 52–3, 66, 73–4, 82, 84, 96, 99–101, 104, 114, 117, 121, 126–32, 134, 140–4, 154, 160, 162–3, 166 memory, 37, 42, 50, 54, 68, 104, 110, 119, 127, 135, 139, 156 Mendelson, Edward, 10 Merriman, Brian, 43 metaphor, 11, 13–14, 19, 26, 30, 45, 53, 60–5, 75, 115, 122, 138–9, 161, 178 metonym, 86, 144, 182 Miller, Karl, 16, 22, 24, 181 Milosz, Czeslaw, 79 Molino, Michael, 26 Montague, John, 21 Morrison, Blake, 29, 84, 103, 134 Mossbawn, 7, 17, 41, 93, 121–7, 139, 147, 163, 177 Murphy, Andrew, 9 Murphy, Mike, 125, 175 nationalism (see also Irishness; identity), 1, 5, 7–8, 32, 34, 39, 50, 70, 81–4, 89, 94, 98–9, 101, 104, 112, 121–2, 133–7, 140, 154, 156, 168, 172–5 Ni Houlihan, Cathleen, 4, 29, 49, 98, 157, 172 Nobel Prize, 8, 9, 75 Norman, 150, 165, 166, 168 Norris, Christopher, 11 omphalos, 121, 122, 163 origin, 22, 34, 37, 57, 62, 113, 127, 131, 136–8, 142, 144, 172 oscillation, 15, 33, 35, 38, 42, 63–4, 70–4, 79 other (see also alterity), 2, 4–9, 11–21, 23, 26–7, 29–30, 33, 35–9, 41–2, 44–5, 47–50, 52–3, 55–6, 58, 63, 65–70, 73–4, 76–80, 82–4, 86, 87–96, 98, 101, 104–6, 108–9,

211

112, 114, 118–28, 131, 134, 137–9, 141, 144, 146–57, 159, 161–3, 166–7, 171–2, 174, 176–7, 180–2, 184 Parker, Michael, 82 pastoral, 15–16, 18–22, 94, 130 peace process, 90 perspective, 2–3, 6, 10–11, 14–16, 19, 22, 24–5, 30–1, 36, 41–3, 47–50, 52, 55–6, 64–5, 68, 79, 82, 84, 93, 100–3, 105, 108, 120, 135–6, 138, 152–5, 169 Pinsky, Robert, 69 place (see also land; home; Irishness), 1, 3–4, 7–8, 10–16, 22, 24, 29, 31, 36–40, 45, 47, 51, 54, 57, 63, 66, 71–4, 81–9, 93–8, 100–1, 104, 107, 110–32, 134–44, 147, 149, 151–4, 158–69, 171, 173, 176–8, 180–1, 184 planter, 122 plurality (see also hybridity; liminality; subjectivity), 2, 7, 15, 19, 48, 51, 92, 93, 100, 120, 123, 133, 135, 138, 140–1, 147, 152 poetry, 1, 3, 5–14, 16, 18, 19–31, 34–7, 40–3, 46–56, 58–85, 93, 95, 97–108, 110, 112, 113, 115, 118–21, 124, 129–34, 139–40, 143, 146–52, 154–7, 159–76, 178–84 poetry, epistemology of (see also aesthetic), 13–15, 21–2, 25, 29, 31, 34, 37–8, 40, 45–9, 54, 59–64, 67, 71, 73–4, 79–80, 82, 101–2, 110, 115, 134, 138–9, 146, 151, 154, 157, 161, 173, 177–9, 182 politics (see also ethics; nationalism), 3, 5, 7, 10, 13–14, 20–6, 30, 31, 38–9, 42–7, 50–1, 54, 60, 63, 71–6, 78, 80–3, 86–8, 90, 93–5, 97–109, 112–13, 118–19, 122–4, 134–5, 137–9, 142, 146–52, 154–6, 162–3, 165, 171–8, 180, 184

212

Seamus Heaney

polyglossic, 31, 123 postcolonialism, 124 presence (see also absence), 7, 14, 34–5, 39, 44, 48, 52–3, 57, 62, 69, 93, 98, 116, 119, 121, 127–8, 130, 137, 151, 159, 177 prose (see also poetry; genre), 1, 3, 5–14, 23–4, 29, 31, 78, 81, 94, 121, 157, 171, 179–80, 184 prosopopeia, 135 Protestantism (see also Catholicism), 3–5, 32, 41, 45, 51, 77, 83, 86–8, 92, 99, 151 Provisional IRA, 50–1, 74, 77, 83, 97, 104, 108, 125, 133, 159, 171 quincunx (see also Yeats, Spenser, MacNeice; Joyce), 24, 150–4, 165–8, 181 Raftery, Anthony, 168 Randall, James, 125 Rapaport, Herman, 17, 115, 139 republicanism (see also Provisional IRA; nationalism), 5, 32, 97–9, 134–5 responsibility (see also ethics), 7, 24, 37–8, 42, 48, 69, 76, 79, 90–2, 107, 109–10, 116, 123–4, 184 revisionism, 1, 2, 5 rhyme, 42, 52, 63–4, 67, 126, 129, 146, 165, 167, 169–70, 179 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 168 Rodgers, W.R., 83, 149, 150 sectarianism (see also politics; nationalism), 31, 41, 46–7, 49, 77–8, 91–2, 97, 99, 101, 104, 134, 167 self (see also subject – the ‘I’; other; alterity), 3, 5–7, 15, 18, 26–7, 33–8, 40–5, 48, 50, 53, 55, 57–9, 62, 64, 67–70, 73–80, 86, 90, 95–9, 105–10, 114–15, 118, 120, 123, 125, 130, 136, 141–2, 148, 150, 152, 159, 161, 163, 168, 171, 174–7, 180, 181, 182

Shakespeare, William, 1, 17, 18, 33, 136, 152 Hamlet, 1 signified, 32, 34–5, 38, 51, 119, 135, 144, 162, 164, 179 signifier, 8, 34, 51, 94–5, 106, 112, 119, 122, 126, 131–2, 134–40, 143–4, 147, 154–5, 162–4, 179 Simmons, James, 97 Smyth, Gerry, 136 Spenser, Edmund, 16, 93, 150–2 Kilcolman Castle, 150 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 53, 56 strike, hunger, 74, 83, 160, 179 subject – the ‘I’, 1–2, 12, 19, 30, 33–4, 40, 42–5, 47–8, 54–6, 62–3, 67, 72, 76–7, 82–3, 85, 87, 98, 105, 108, 109–10, 117, 119–21, 127, 129, 139–42, 152, 162, 174, 181 Sweden, 176 symbol, 4, 17, 32, 50, 57, 59, 71, 77–8, 84, 90–1, 99–100, 107, 114, 118–20, 127, 137–8, 142, 147, 150–1, 163–7, 174 synecdoche, 16, 43, 63, 65, 130, 135, 148, 152, 161, 174 Synge, John Millington, 21, 174, 176 The Playboy of the Western World, 175 Tacitus, 44–5, 98 Tamplin, Ronald, 9, 94 teleology, 1, 12, 15, 34, 67, 78 Terminus, 68, 129, 140–8, 154–5 territory (see also home; land), 49, 122, 175 text (see also context), 5, 13, 15–16, 19–29, 34, 39, 45, 50, 52–4, 62, 73–4, 76, 82, 85, 89, 92, 94, 99, 103, 106, 121, 144, 154, 171–5, 180 theory, 6, 11–14, 23–4, 29–34, 45, 68, 74, 124, 180, 184 through-otherness (see also field of force; ethics), 96, 148–53, 155, 163, 166, 171, 180–2 Tobin, Daniel, 26, 68 Tóibín, Colm, 10

Index tradition, 3, 7–8, 12, 14–18, 20, 32, 36, 41–2, 51, 67, 69, 81, 84–5, 95–7, 109, 117, 120–6, 131, 139–40, 145, 149–56, 159, 166–9 transcendence, 46, 52, 61, 72, 92, 108, 110, 113, 147, 160–3, 168, 170, 176, 180 transformation, 5, 7, 14–15, 25–6, 29, 47, 51, 55, 56, 63–6, 70, 77, 82, 84–5, 107, 110, 112, 116, 120–3, 128, 130, 132, 145, 152, 168–9, 173–6, 182 translation (see also language), 16–17, 19–20, 22, 43, 54, 61, 65, 94–6, 101, 130, 148, 169 tribal, 39, 47, 57, 80–2, 84, 97, 107–9, 128, 133–4 trope, 4, 6, 16–17, 22, 27, 29, 54–5, 58, 63, 67, 90–1, 126, 127, 132, 134, 137, 144, 148, 152 Troubles, the, 103 Ulster, 26, 30–3, 38, 39, 52, 64, 76–8, 82, 83, 97, 122, 149 unionism (see also Protestantism), 5, 32, 39, 50, 99, 112, 140, 174 university, 33, 163 value, 2, 13, 21, 23, 28, 31, 38, 59, 62, 72, 76, 108, 134, 148, 155, 157–61, 164–5, 170, 176, 181–2 Vendler, Helen, 13, 26, 101–2

213

Viking, 134–5 Virgil, 16, 54, 130 vocable, 66 vowel, 66, 95 Weil, Simone, 72 William of Orange, 2, 4, 41, 49, 141, 151 Carrickfergus Castle, 151 Williams, Raymond, 15 Wolfreys, Julian, 24 Wordsworth, William, 30, 31, 113 writing (see also language, poetry, prose), 1, 3, 5–16, 19, 21, 23–31, 36–8, 40–1, 43, 45–8, 50, 52, 56, 58, 60–9, 73, 75–82, 85, 90, 93, 98, 100, 107–8, 110, 114–15, 125, 133, 144, 147, 150–7, 160, 162, 164–5, 167–73, 177–84 Yeats, William Butler, 1–6, 8, 14, 22, 24, 30, 46, 48, 55, 60–2, 150–3, 155–81 ‘Easter 1916’, 50 ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’, 170–1, 183 ‘The Fisherman’, 59 ‘The Man and the Echo’, 174, 176, 177 Cathleen Ni Houlihan, 53, 102 The Irish Dramatic Movement, 175 Thoor Ballylee, 154, 169, 171 Young, Robert, 141