Seamus Heaney As Aesthetic Thinker

Seamus Heaney as Aesthetic Thinker Irish Studies James MacKillop, Series Editor Other titles from Irish Studies Compassionate Stranger: Asenath Nicholson and the Great Irish Famine Maureen O’Rourke Murphy Irish Women Dramatists, 1908–2001 Eileen Kearney and Charlotte Headrick, eds. Israelites in Erin: Exodus, Revolution, and the Irish Revival Abby Bender Joyce/Shakespeare Laura Pelaschiar, ed. Postcolonial Overtures: The Politics of Sound in Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry Julia C. Obert Representing the National Landscape in Irish Romanticism Julia M. Wright The Snake’s Pass: A Critical Edition Bram Stoker; Lisabeth C. Buchelt, ed. Writing Lough Derg: From William Carleton to Seamus Heaney Peggy O’Brien Seamus Heaney as Aesthetic Thinker A Study of the Prose Eugene O’Brien Syracuse University Press Copyright © 2016 by Syracuse University Press Syracuse, New York 13244-5290 All Rights Reserved First Edition 2016 16 17 18 19 20 21 6 5 4 3 2 1 Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC: Excerpt from The Burial at Thebes by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 2004 by Seamus Heaney. Excerpts from Crediting Poetry by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1995 by The Nobel Foundation. Excerpts from Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1990 by Seamus Heaney. Excerpts from “Vitruviana” and “The Real Names” from Electric Light by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 2001 by Seamus Heaney. Excerpt from “A Drink of Water” from Field Work by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1979 by Seamus Heaney. Excerpts from Finders Keepers: Selected Prose, 1971–2001 by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 2002 by Seamus Heaney. Excerpts from The Government of the Tongue by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1989 by Seamus Heaney. “Grotus and Coventina” and excerpt from “Terminus” from The Haw Lantern by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1987 by Seamus Heaney. Excerpts from “Bogland,” “Kinship,” and “Punishment” from Opened Ground by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1998 by Seamus Heaney. Excerpts from Preoccupations by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1980 by Seamus Heaney. Excerpts from The Redress of Poetry by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1995 Seamus Heaney Excerpt from “The Settle Bed” from Seeing Things by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1991 by Seamus Heaney. Excerpts from Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney by Dennis O’Driscoll. Copyright © 2008 by Dennis O’Driscoll. ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. For a listing of books published and distributed by Syracuse University Press, visit www.SyracuseUniversityPress.syr.edu. ISBN: 978-0-8156-3460-7 (cloth) 978-0-8156-3448-5 (paperback) 978-0-8156-5372-1 (e-book) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available from the publisher upon request. Manufactured in the United States of America To the loves of my life, Áine, Eoin, Dara, and Sinéad, and in memory of Noreen Brophy-McElhinney, who has left a luminous emptiness in all our lives If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character, the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, & stand still unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again. —William Blake, There Is No Natural Religion Contents Acknowledgments ◆ xi Introduction: The Structure of Poetic Thinking ◆ 1 1. The Poet as Thinker—the Thinker as Poet ◆ 39 2. Space: The Final Frontier ◆ 74 3. The Epistemology of Poetry: Fields of Force ◆ 115 4. Poetics and Politics: Surviving Amphibiously ◆ 150 5. The Place of Writing—the Writing of Place ◆ 183 6. Translations: The Voice of the Other ◆ 219 Conclusion: Aesthetic Responsibilities ◆ 267 Works Cited ◆ 279 Index ◆ 297 Acknowledgments In a work of this length, a number of people have been involved from the beginning to the end, and I would like to take this oppor- tunity to thank them. Áine McElhinney read this book critically as a final draft, and her observations and pertinent questions, some of which I struggled to answer, have made the argument stronger and the expression clearer. Tony and Sinéad Corbett both read and com- mented on the manuscript, and their input, as well as their friendship over the years, has made the book better. Eamon Maher, through phone calls, e-mails, and a careful read- ing of the book, participated in all stages of its gestation. Our discussions on literature, and on the role of the literary in culture, have sharpened many of my own ideas, and I thank him for his collegial- ity and his friendship. My colleagues in the Department of English Language and Literature at Mary Immaculate College (MIC), both academic and administrative, through their hard work and profes- sionalism, have made my job as head of the department easier and have helped to provide the time during which this book was written, and I would like to thank them most sincerely: Linda McGrath, John McDonagh, Maria Beville, Marita Ryan, Anne O’Keeffe, Kathryn Laing, Margaret Healy, and more recently Joan O’Sullivan, Donna Mitchell, and Eóin Flannery. The undergraduate and postgraduate students who study Heaney with me in different courses in Mary Immaculate College have enriched this book by their questions and by their discussions. With- out computer assistance and financial assistance, this book could not have been completed, and I would like to thank Niall Sheehy, John xi xii • Acknowledgments Spencer, and John Coady at MIC for their invaluable assistance. Mary Immaculate College is a very supportive working environment for the kind of research that I pursue, and I would like to thank the college for this productive and affirming environment and for the good coffee that has always been a source of inspiration. I would like to thank Faber and Faber, Farrar, Straus and Gir- oux, and W. W. Norton and Company for permission to quote from the works of Seamus Heaney. I would also like to thank Catherine Heaney and the Heaney estate for their kind permission and support. The cover photograph was taken by Press 22 at the Kate O’Brien Weekend in Mary Immaculate College, on February 26, 2012. It was a very special occasion, and I would like to thank Grace Cameron for sourcing this photograph for me. It captures Heaney as poet and aesthetic thinker at the height of his powers. The two anonymous peer reviewers for Syracuse University Press offered genuine and insightful comments, critiques, and suggestions on the original draft of this book, which added significantly to its intellectual argument, and for these contributions, and for their open minds to what is a new departure in Heaney studies, I would like to thank them most sincerely. Annette Wenda was a punctilious and helpful copy editor, and I thank her for the care with which she read my work; it is the better for her input. Deborah Manion, Kelly Balen- ske, and others at Syracuse University Press have been a pleasure to work with, and I thank them for their efficiency and support in the gestation of this book. In terms of academic acknowledgments, the work of Seamus Heaney has been a constant presence in my life for the past thirty years, and I would like to acknowledge the privilege it has been to engage with his work on a sustained level. I met him only three times, but he has been an enabling presence in my intellectual life, and his loss has been keenly felt. I would also like to thank Catherine Heaney most sincerely for her kindness and courtesy in responding to my queries and questions. Finally, sincere appreciation to my family for all of their help. My parents, Bill and Alice O’Brien, set me on this path with a lot of Acknowledgments • xiii books in the house, and for that, and much else, I thank them. My three children, Eoin, Dara, and Sinéad, were great sources of support, questions, and encouragement (and fun) in the writing of this book. Their ongoing inquiries as to the progress of the book kept me going, and their ongoing interest in my work has been a huge support to me. They are also great fun. Paul and Katie, as ever, were in my mind throughout the process. Finally, I would like to thank my wife and partner, Áine, my first reader and ideal audience, for support that touches the Lacanian real—necessary, sustaining, constitu- tive—but impossible to put into words. Seamus Heaney as Aesthetic Thinker Introduction The Structure of Poetic Thinking In an ever-growing list of studies on the work of Seamus Heaney, this book will attempt something different. His poetry will not be the focus of analysis, except where it is relevant to the main theme, which is an outline of Heaney as an aesthetic thinker in the European intellectual tradition. This tradition, generally located in the sphere of Continental philosophy and cultural theory, sees the aesthetic as a valid epistemological mode of thinking. From Plato through Imman- uel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to contemporary philosophical and theoretical writers such as Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben, the aesthetic has been studied as an area that offers a supplementary mode of knowing to the paradigm of rational discourse and philosophical or scientific inquiry. This notion is in no way to decry such rational philosophical and theoretical inquiry; however, it cannot be denied that not everything can be expressed in such discourses. The aesthetic, as a mode of thinking, has value because it can address aspects of the human being that are not voiced by the discourse of rational intellectual inquiry, and in this book the mode of knowledge expressed in a particular area of aesthetic practice, namely, poetry, is the focus of attention.

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