Next Book, Nobels and nobility: LONG

Thu Oct 5 13:46:59 CDT 1995

> I just heard this morning that an *Irish* writer won this year's Lit. Award.
> Anyone know about him?

Seamus Heaney, a poet. Here's the press release from the svenskas:

PRESS RELEASE

The Nobel Prize for Literature 1995

Seamus Heaney

"for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday
miracles and the living past"

Seamus Heaney was born on a farm some distance west of Belfast in Northern
Ireland 56 years ago. After studies and marriage he moved to the Irish
Republic and has been living in Dublin since 1976. He has held a post as
visiting professor in rhetoric at Harvard since 1982, and from 1989 to 1994
he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Heaney is a poet, essayist and
translator.

One point of departure for Heaney is what he calls, in one of the poems in
his collection "North" (1975), northern reticence. He sympathises with this
stance but is of course at the same time aware of the risks it involves for
a writer. In an interview, he acknowledges that he feels a form of guilt
when he writes. He assumes that generations of rural ancestors - who while
not illiterate were not literary either - are asserting themselves within
him. He speaks with warmth of the rich experience his parents have
communicated, but can also express some impatience with their reticence. It
is against this background that one can read the poem "Alphabets" (in "The
Haw Lantern", 1987) with the lines "The poet's dream stole over him like
sunlight / And passed into the tenebrous thickets".
As an Irish Catholic he has concerned himself with analysis of the violence
in Northern Ireland - with the express reservation that he wants to avoid
the conventional terms. In his opinion, the fact that there has been
unwillingness on both sides to speak out - even about manifest injustices -
has been of great importance in the explosive development. But he also
opposes the defeatism of the Catholics, as in the poem "From the canton of
expectation" (in "The Haw Lantern" ) which begins: "We lived deep in a land
of optative moods, / under high, banked clouds of resignation."
In collections of essays such as "The Government of the Tongue" (1988) and
"The Place of Writing" (1989) Heaney discusses the role of poetry and the
poet, a theme he often returns to. Experiences from the lives of Osip
Mandelstam and other 20th century writers lead him to the conclusion that
the task of the poet is to ensure the survival of beauty, especially in
times when tyrannical regimes threaten to destroy it.
In 1990 Heaney published "The Cure at Troy", a translation of Sophocles'
"Philoctetes", from the point of view of composition the most modern of the
classical dramas. The play was staged by the Field Day Theatre in the same
year and received a positive reception although no direct link was made to
his poetry. It can, however, be seen as one element of Heaney's continual
endeavour to find poetic expression for complex ethical issues. The
translation points forward to his next collection of poems.
 "Seeing Things" (1991) includes the very interesting section "Squarings".
Here the poems consist of twelve lines, their fixed, restrained form
matching only superficially the content of the poems with their breadth of
variation. A poem like "Lightenings viii", on the miracle at Clonmacnoise,
is a crystallisation of much of Heaney's imaginative world: history and
sensuality, myths and the day-to-day - all articulated in Heaney's rich
language.

The annals say:  when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.
The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
A crewman shinned and grappled down a rope
And struggled to release it.  But  in vain.
'This man can't bear our life here and will drown,'
The abbot said, 'Unless we help him.'  So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

Seamus Heaney

Biobibliographical note

Seamus Justin Heaney was born in 1939 in Mossbawn, County Derry in Northern
Ireland, to Catholic parents (his father was a farmer), the eldest of their
nine children. Member of the Irish Academy of Letters and "Field Day
Theatre Company". Professor of Poetry at Oxford 1989-94, visiting professor
(Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory) at Harvard since 1982.
Attended a Catholic boarding school, St. Columb's College, Londonderry, and
then Queen's University, Belfast, gaining his B.A. in English in 1961.
Teacher of modern literature 1962-72 and 1975-81, at one time a lecturer at
Queen's University, Belfast. As a student he began to publish poetry under
the pseudonym of "Incertus". In Belfast he became associated with "The
Group", a group of young writers including Derek Mahon, Michael Longley and
James Simmons. In 1965 he married Marie Devlin. Moved in 1972 from Northern
Ireland to Ashford (Wicklow) in the Irish Republic. 1972-75 he was a
free-lance writer and collaborated on radio programmes. Since 1976 he has
been living in Dublin and has two sons and a daughter. Heaney has received
a number of awards for his poetry, among them the Irish Academy of Letters
Award in 1975 and the Bennett Award in 1982. He is an honorary doctor of
Queen's University, Belfast.

Poetry

Death of a Naturalist. Faber 1966
Door into the Dark. Faber 1969
Wintering Out. Faber 1972
North. Faber 1979
Selected Poems 1965-1975. Faber 1980
Sweeney Astray.  A version from the Irish by Seamus Heaney. Faber 1984
Station Island. Faber 1984
The Haw Lantern. Faber 1987
New Selected Poems 1966-1987. Faber 1990
Seeing Things. Faber 1991
Prose, essays
Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978. Faber 1980
The Government of the Tongue. Faber 1988
The place of Writing. Introd. by Ronald Schuchard. Scholars Press 1989
A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. by Elmer Andrews. Macmillan 1993
The redress of poetry: Oxford lectures. Faber 1995

Drama

The Cure at Troy. A version of Sophocles' Philoctetes. Farrar, Strauss and
Giroux 1991
Critical studies
Blake Morrison, Seamus Heaney. Methuen 1982
Tony Curtis (ed.), The art of Seamus Heaney.  Poetry Wales 1982
Neil Corcoran, Seamus Heaney.  Faber 1986
Neil Corcoran (ed.), The chosen ground. Essays on the contemporary poetry
of Northern Ireland. Dufour 1992
Harold Bloom (ed.), Seamus Heaney. Chelsea House 1986
Thomas Foster, Seamus Heaney. Twayne 1989
Henry Hart, Seamus Heaney, poet of contrary progresssions. Syracuse U.P. 1992
Michael Parker, Seamus Heaney, the making of the poet. Macmillan 1993