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 183Bibliography of Seamus Heaney’s Works 198General Bibliography 199Index 206

Introduction

In 1997, Seamus Heaney published a review of Roy Foster’s TheApprentice Mage, the first volume of his biography of William ButlerYeats, in The Atlantic Monthly. In this review, Heaney wrote aboutboth biographer and subject in terms which have no small bearingon this book, and its raison d’être. To write a book about SeamusHeaney, one must, of necessity, declare one’s raison d’être from theoutset as with over 30 books devoted to his work, the field is indanger of becoming over-ploughed (indeed I have already ploughedsome earlier furrows myself). Any further exploration of Heaneymust, de facto, suggest its relation to, and difference from, this bodyof critical work, if it is to justify its existence. That the majority ofthese studies of Heaney have been beneficial to any understandingof his work is a further problem – as this book cannot be offered asa necessary corrective to previous critical errors. However, the poethas, to date, been fortunate in his critics, therefore that avenue isalso closed.

So, if this book is to justify its place on the shelves, what then doesit bring to Heaney studies that has been heretofore lacking? In a time-honoured manner in literary studies, and validated by the words ofShakespeare that one can ‘by indirections find directions out’(Hamlet: II, I), I will advance my thesis via Heaney’s book review. Interms of what Heaney has to say about both Foster and Yeats, thisreview serves as an index to the reasons for my writing this book, aswell as suggesting the critical niche which it hopes to fill. Contraryto 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 thecontrary, oriented very much towards the future.

Writing about Roy Foster, Heaney makes the following points withregard to his position within Irish historical studies in particular andIrish cultural studies in general. He notes that Foster is ‘identified asthe most influential “revisionist” among contemporary Irishhistorians, which is to say that he, like his subject, has often been atthe centre of the culture wars’. He goes on to discuss the nature ofthis revisionism noting that it attempts to revise the default nation-alistic narrative of Irish history as a teleological emergence of the‘Gaelic nation from foreign domination, culminating in the

1

2 Seamus Heaney

reinstatement of native government and the official recognition ofthe native language and majority religion after Irish independencewas gained, in 1921’ (Heaney 1997). This narrative, it is argued,suppresses other strands or varieties of Irishness ‘and is thereforedetrimental to any move toward a more politically workable,culturally pluralist future for the country, north and south’ (Foster1997: 158). It is Foster’s participation in this ongoing, and sometimesfraught, process, that Heaney sees as being of value. Revisionism par-ticipates in what might be called the deconstruction of a monologicalhistorical narrative, bringing out the strains, fractures, aporias andantinomies that have been attenuated by the narrative sweep.

Indeed, part of my thesis in this book will be that from a philo-sophical, and arguably methodological standpoint, this type ofrevisionism is allied to deconstruction, specifically the work ofJacques Derrida, who also focuses on neglected strands of discoursesin order to bring out other narratives, histories and perspectives; ashe puts it ‘marginal, fringe cases’ are important to the deconstructiveproject as they almost ‘always constitute the most certain and mostdecisive indices wherever essential conditions are to be grasped’(Derrida 1988: 209). That Heaney should see Foster as ideally suitedto write Yeats’s biography is also significant in terms of his own intel-lectual orientation. That he should be so affirmative of Foster’srevisionist project indicates an identification with a thinker who hasengaged with the increasing complexities of socio-cultural identitythat have become definitive of the situation in Northern Ireland overthe past 30 years. That he should use this notion of ‘culturalpluralism’ to adequate Foster with his subject, Yeats, is highlysignificant in terms of Heaney’s own orientation on these issues. AsHeaney points out:

Nobody, therefore, was better qualified to write this book, whichfollows Yeats into his fiftieth year, through a period of Irish historywhen all the questions about national and cultural affiliation thathave come so desperately to the fore again in Northern Irelandwere being lived through in the rest of the country at both privateand public levels and leaving their indelible mark on Irish life. Butit was precisely because these crucial tensions had come to thefore that Yeats, at fifty, began to set himself up as the representa-tive Irish poet of his times – one whose ancestors included notonly a soldier who had fought for William of Orange at the Battleof the Boyne at the end of the seventeenth century but also a

Introduction 3

country scholar who was friends with the revolutionary RobertEmmet at the beginning of the nineteenth. By invoking thesefigures in 1914, in the introductory verses of a volume signifi-cantly titled Responsibilities, Yeats was reminding his Irishreadership that he took the strain of both the major ideologiesthat were exacerbating Irish political life in that criticallyimportant year. (Heaney 1997: 158–9)

For Heaney, then, The Apprentice Mage saw a congruence betweentwo Irish intellectuals – Foster and Yeats – both of whom were keento avoid a singular, monocular vision of Irishness and instead toembrace a more pluralistic and complicated construction of what itmeans to be Irish. Revisionism involves pluralising the narrative ofhistory and Yeats, too, was involved in such a process. Discussingthe mooted destruction of Nelson’s Pillar, in 1923, Yeats argued thatthe monument ‘should not be broken up’ as it represented the‘feeling of Protestant Ireland for a man who helped to break thepower of Napoleon’. Interestingly, Yeats goes on to explain his reasonsfor his view, noting that the ‘life and work of the people who erectedit is part of our tradition’, and concluding his remarks with the tellingassertion: ‘I think we should accept the whole past of this nation andnot pick and choose’ (Evening Telegraph, 25 August 1923). Theunravelling of different strands is again a feature of this perspective.

That Heaney should be attracted by such complex and creativeallegiance to a notion of a revisioned Ireland, and that he shouldalso be attracted by the intellectual position of Foster, serves as anindex of his own commitment to a similar range of ideas. Throughouthis writing, in both poetry and prose, he will stress the duality andnecessity for interaction and intersection of notions of selfhood andnotions of alterity. As he put it elsewhere: the locating of one’sidentity in ‘the ethnic and liturgical habits of one’s group’ is all verywell, but for that group to ‘confine the range of one’s growth’ and ‘tohave one’s sympathies determined and one’s responses programmed’by that group, is clearly a ‘form of entrapment’ (1985: 6–7), anentrapment which defines place and identity in extremely narrowterms, and which is a polar opposite of the discourse of poetry asHeaney sees it. As Heaney puts it in The Redress of Poetry, poetry hasto be ‘a working model of inclusive consciousness. It should notsimplify’ (1995a: 8), and this desire to express the complexity of inter-subjective relationships is the connecting thread that binds Heaney,Foster, Yeats and, I would also suggest, Derrida.

4 Seamus Heaney

All of these writers have endeavoured to avoid those ‘forms ofentrapment’ of which Heaney spoke and instead, have looked forbroader symbolic enunciations of individual and cultural identity,and in his Atlantic Monthly review, he stresses this admirable aspectof Yeats as icon:

As a Yeats, he belonged to the respectable stratum of ProtestantIrish society that owed its position and power to William ofOrange’s victory and its consequences – the establishment of anAnglo-Irish ascendancy and the institution of penal laws againstthe Catholic population. So as a Yeats he might have been expectedto support the cause of the union of Ireland with the other Britishnations under the English crown. But as an Irish poet who hadwritten a manifesto aligning himself with Irish Nationalistprecursors such as Thomas Davis and James Clarence Mangan, asthe author of the early, inflammatory ‘rebel’ play Cathleen NiHoulihan, as the chief inventor of the Celtic Twilight and afounding member of the Abbey Theatre, which claimed to be thecountry’s national theatre, Yeats had long been creating a visionof Ireland as an independent cultural entity, a state of mind asmuch as a nation-state, one founded on indigenous myths andattitudes and beliefs that pre-dated not only William of Orangebut even Saint Patrick himself. (Heaney 1997: 159)

The idea of the nation as a ‘state of mind’ is a recurring trope in con-temporary cultural discourse. Heaney has made the point in hissequence ‘Squarings’ from Seeing Things, that places are always opento different naming paradigms; indeed that places are created by suchparadigms:

In famous poems by the sage Han Shan,Cold Mountain is a place that can also meanA 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 nationthat further unites these writers as they all, in different ways, look tomore 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’sidea of the importance of a dialogue between notions of selfhoodand notions of alterity. Ireland as a ‘state of mind’ is a concept thatis transformative of the givens of identity, in any ideological group,and it is this ongoing transformation that will take the strain ofconflicting ideologies and, possibly, create new structures which willallow these ideological and cultural positions to interact, intersectand enter some form of dialogue with each other which may allowfor some dissipation of the conflict.

It is with this idea of taking the strain of conflicting and diverseideological positions that I return to the question posed in the firstparagraph of this introduction, as to the raison d’être of this book. Ithink, in the light of Heaney’s comments on Foster and Yeats, thata strand of his thinking can be traced which engages with thesenotions of complexity of identity, hybridity and liminality in termsof the situating of the text of selfhood within the context of one’scultural associations and predications. His praise of the methodologyused by Foster also contains the glimmerings of my own modusoperandi in this book, as I will offer parallel analyses of Heaney’spoetry and prose, the latter being a glaring lacuna in what might betermed ‘Heaney studies’ over the years. Until now, I would suggest,Heaney’s prose has been generally used as a preparatory gloss on hispoetry; it has never been subjected to any sustained critique in termsof its role in Heaney’s overall project. This book will redress thisbalance by taking specific themes in his writing, most notablyconcerned with issues of identity, belonging, ideology and the roleof the aesthetic with respect to the political, and examine themthrough a sustained study of both his poetry and his prose.

Finally, the connections I have made between the disciplines ofhistorical revisionism and deconstruction presage another thematicstrand of this book, namely the adequation of the ideas of Heaneyand Derrida with respect to the notions of reading, writing, culturaldiscourse and ideology. If nothing else, this articulation has the virtueof being an unploughed part of the Heaney canon, and it alsodemonstrates, as I hope to show, that Heaney needs to be addressedas a cultural thinker as well as an artist in terms of his involvementin themes so seminal to the cultural narration of a contemporaryform of Irishness. In both his poetry and his prose, Heaney partici-pates in a transformative discourse which exfoliates the fixedideological positions of Catholic-nationalist-republican andProtestant-loyalist-unionist by probing their borders, their points of

6 Seamus Heaney

limitation. By then locating these within broader and more expansivecontexts, Heaney’s writing transforms points of closure into pointsof opening to the other. Working at the level of the individual con-sciousness, 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 fromRoy Foster’s earlier book Paddy & Mr. Punch, citing the idea that we‘need not give up our own claims on Irishness in order to conceiveof it as a flexible definition. And in an age of exclusivist jihads toeast and west, the notion that people can reconcile more than onecultural identity may have much to recommend it’ (Foster 1993:xvi–xvii). It is this complexity of perspective that attracts Heaney toYeats, and which, I will suggest, creates a strand in his work whichenacts 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 ideaunravels and reforms itself, always in anticipation of the next actof definition and criticism which, like this one, will be inade-quately applied to it. (Graham 2001: x)

‘Revisionism’, ‘deconstruction’, ‘different states of mind’ ‘flexibilityof definition’ or pluralism: what all of these terms have in commonis a desire to enunciate the complexity of Irish culture and societythrough the different strands of identity and to focus on the creationof this plural form of identity instead of being fixated on the givensof the past. It is this ongoing theme that will be discussed in thecoming chapters.

Chapter 1 deals with the theories of selfhood and alterity that runthrough Heaney’s prose writings. These are seen as being organisedaround some central questions posed in Preoccupations as to the roleof poetry within society and culture. The chapter also examines theinteraction and intersection of tropes of selfhood and alterity inHeaney’s writing as well as his focus on the emancipatory aspects ofwriting. Heaney addresses these questions, in both poetry and prose,throughout his writing. The second chapter deals with Heaney’stheory of poetry, specifically in terms of the dialectical interchangebetween different identitarian positions in Northern Ireland.Connections are made between his experience of internal exile andthat of Derrida in Algeria, with these concrete images of travel andcrossings used to extrapolate a particular strain in the work of both

Introduction 7

writers as they create plural and complex structures within whichthe binary oppositions can interact and inform each other, in thename of what Heaney describes as the need to accommodate ‘twoopposing notions of truthfulness simultaneously’ (1985: 4). Poetry asa vehicle for the achievement of such a structure is examined inpoems from The Haw Lantern, Seeing Things and The Spirit Level, aswell as in essays from Preoccupations, where his notions of ‘continuousadjudication’ and a ‘field of force’ are first expressed.

Chapter 3 focuses on the transformative effect which poetry canbring to reality and actuality in terms of subverting, and amplifying,the givens with which our culture presents us. This chapter discussesthe effects of poetry as a dialectical structure on both writer andreader, looking at the title essay and ‘Frontiers of Writing’ in TheRedress of Poetry, as well as at his Nobel lecture Crediting Poetry.Parallels between Heaney and Derrida in terms of concepts ofidentity, responsibility, liminality and the fluidity of borders will alsobe discussed.

The fourth chapter examines the transformative interaction ofpoetry and politics, examining the creative ambiguity in the phrase‘government of the tongue’, and then developing this analysis toexamine some of his poetry and prose which attempt to transformsignifiers which have a hegemonic attachment to a particulartradition into indices of plurality and complexity. Connections aremade between his work and that of Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas.These include some of the placename poems from Wintering Out aswell as the almost programmatic example of a poem involving theinteraction of self and other: ‘The Other Side’, read in tandem with‘The Pitchfork’ in Seeing Things. ‘The Flight Path’, from The SpiritLevel, is read in terms of a transformation of the individual in termsof political allegiance.

The fifth chapter deals with the deconstruction of notions of place,particularly with how placenames specifically associated withnationalist ideology, are recontextualised in order to open differentpaths of signification. These names are significant in terms of theHeaney canon – Toome, Mossbawn, Glanmore – and are read in termsof Derrida’s presence/absence conceit, and in terms of Heaney’s ownresonant image of a creative space which stood where a chestnut treehad stood, an image traced from an essay in The Government of theTongue, through some poems in The Haw Lantern. This reading ofabsence as a creative source is paralleled with Maurice Blanchot’s TheSpace of Literature.

8 Seamus Heaney

The sixth chapter parallels the fifth by deconstructing differentaspects of language which have been associated with a particulartradition in Northern Ireland. By examining different signifiers thatwould seem to have a nationalist or Gaelic association, and by teasingout Heaney’s deconstruction of this aspect of their etymology as hebrings the signifier into the ambit of the other tradition, his ongoingpluralisation of language is foregrounded. Specifically, the complexityof language as it is experienced in art is discussed, ranging throughHeaney’s poetry and prose.

Chapter 7 examines the influence and interaction of Heaney’swork with that of another Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet, one withwhom he has often been compared. I refer, of course, to WilliamButler Yeats. Heaney has written of his debt to Yeats, and in thischapter, we will examine the ethical similarities between these writersin terms of their views on the role of the aesthetic with respect tothe politic, as well as in terms of their attitude to the complexities ofidentity. The Nobel lectures of each writer will also be compared interms of their attitudes to the place of writing in society.

In his essay ‘Vision and Irony in Recent Irish Poetry’, publishedin The Place of Writing, Heaney stresses the relationship between thepoet and his or her cultural context in ideal terms: ‘as poets, theycomprehend both the solidarities of their own group and the needto subvert them’ (1989: 49). It is this complexity of response thatwill be the terminus ad quem towards which Heaney’s ongoingsearches for answers will be directed.

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, 68aesthetic (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, 45Algeria (see also Derrida), 6, 36–7alterity (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, 184Icon Critical Guide, 9

Anglo-Saxon, 19, 135Annwn, David, 97Antrim, County, 125Ashcroft, Bill, 138atavism, 31, 43–6, 71–2, 97, 100,

133Atlantic Monthly, 1, 4Auseinandersetzung, 14Austen, Jane, 32

Bakhtin, Michael, 16, 20, 23Barrell, John, 15, 22

Barrell, John and John Bull (eds)The Penguin Book of EnglishPastoral Verse, 18

Barthes, Roland, 34bawn (see also Mossbawn), 17, 93,

122Belfast, 34–5, 37, 42, 43, 44, 45,

102, 104, 125, 154, 159, 171

Bellaghy, 32, 34, 35, 131Benjamin, Walter, 49Bennington, Geoffrey, 35, 144Bhabha, Homi, 141–2

The Location of Culture, 141binarism, 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, 115The Space of Literature, 7, 115

bog people, 98–9border (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 ofOrange; 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, 88–9Britannic, 155, 162British (see also English), 32, 124,

148, 153–4, 166Broadbridge, Edward, 99Brown, Richard, 169, 172, 182Bull, John, 15, 22Burns, Robert, 174Burris, Sidney, 57

Caputo, John D., 37Carson, Ciarán, 49, 134Catholic (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

206

Index

Index 207

Christianity, 31, 97, 112, 166Clare, John, 163–4community (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, 144Critchley, Simon, 39, 88, 106critique, 5, 18, 21, 37, 47, 98, 147,

151Crotty, Patrick, 17Cruise O’Brien, Conor, 98culture (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, 132Deane, Seamus, 172deconstruction (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, 121Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, 89–90‘Biodegradables’, 85Deconstruction and Criticism, 21, 22Deconstruction and the Other, 148Deconstruction in a Nutshell, 70,

79, 108, 110, 123–4

Demeure: Fiction and Testimony,115, 147

différance, 33, 35–6, 38, 52, 74,144

Dissemination, 122–3, 253Limited Inc, 2, 19Margins of Philosophy, 143–4Mémoires For Paul de Man, 96Monolingualism and the Other,

138, 181Of Grammatology, 53 Of Hospitality, 182 Of Spirit, 37‘On Responsibility’, 147Points, 36, 77Positions, 20, 23, 33Specters of Marx, 98 Speech and Phenomena, 127 supplement, 9, 137The Ear of the Other, 70 The Other Heading, 36, 70The Politics of Friendship, 76Writing 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, 98education, 31, 40, 51, 136, 145,

152, 158–9either/or (see also both/and), 92,

149, 172Eliot, T.S., 13, 160, 184Elizabethan, 17, 145Ellmann, Richard, 61, 169enculturation, 112, 132, 166–7England, 20, 30, 39, 66, 135, 145,

153, 155, 172English (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

208 Seamus Heaney

entrapment, 3, 4, 45–7, 146epiphany, 109, 137ethics, 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, 181Europe, 14, 19, 24, 36, 75, 98–9,

105–6, 143, 151–3

Fennell, Desmond, 23, 102field 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, 156Paddy & Mr. Punch, 6The Apprentice Mage, 1, 3

Foster, Thomas C., 27France, 19–20, 22, 36–7, 113, 132Freud, Sigmund, 34

Heimlich, 36Unheimlich, 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, 39Gaelic (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, 54Glanmore (see also Field Work;

Electric Light), 7, 124–31, 147,171

glissement, 12, 95god, 49, 68, 129, 141, 178goddess, 44, 49, 97–9, 134Graham, Colin, 6, 123–4Greece, 11, 19, 31, 38, 40, 43, 74,

121–2, 130–1, 139, 152, 163

Haffenden, John, 57, 103Hammond, David, 50, 82, 104–5,

184

harmony, 25, 49, 74, 159, 163Hart, Henry, 27, 68Havel, Vaclav, 51, 147Heaney, Seamus (works),

Among Schoolchildren, 13, 32, 136,157–62‘lachtar’, 140–4, 147–9, 151,

154Beowulf, 31, 101, 148, 169bog poems, 97–8, 100Crediting Poetry, 7, 13, 75, 77,

109, 126, 143, 171, 177Death 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: TheIrish 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 209

‘Kinship’, 48, 49, 51, 76, 101–2, 137

‘Punishment’, 101, 137‘Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces’,

138‘Whatever You Say Say

Nothing’, 107, 110Place and Displacement, 13, 32, 38Preoccupations, 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,

111Sweeney Astray, 31, 101, 130, 175The Cure at Troy, 31, 52, 101The 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’, 117The 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

‘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, 101The Place of Writing, 8, 13, 165The 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 andPhilip 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, 133Herbert, George, 59, 64, 66Herbert, Zbigniew, 10, 11Hillis Miller, J., 16, 22, 24

The Ethics of Reading, 16history, 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, 150home, 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

210 Seamus Heaney

Homer, 67, 129–30, 152, 164Hopkins, Gerald Manley, 65Hughes, Francis (see also Provisional

IRA), 74Hughes, Ted, 55, 155hybridity (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, 176–8inclusiveness, 3, 25, 28, 42, 56, 75,

97, 103, 118, 134, 141, 145,156, 163

internment, 67intersubjectivity, 3, 24, 43, 46, 65,

89, 90Ireland (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 alsoquincunx), 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, 23Joyce, James, 16–18, 44, 151–2, 165

A Portrait of the Artist as a YoungMan, 44, 97, 152

Ulysses, 18, 151–2, 165justice, 24, 40, 52, 60–1, 69, 72, 79,

171, 174, 176, 179

Kavanagh, Patrick, 21, 113Kearney, Hugh, 155Kearney, Richard, 66, 88, 155Kiberd, Declan, 29, 30

Inventing Ireland, 29Kingsmills massacre, 77, 176Kraftfeldt (see also field of force), 23,

25, 56, 62–3, 73, 76, 105Kristeva, Julia, 52

Lacan, Jacques, 34lace, Brussels, 52–3, 60, 62, 79land, 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, 98locus, 18, 42, 45, 55, 121, 126–31,

150, 164, 167London, 36, 49, 143, 149Londonderry, 112Longley, Edna, 50, 82, 87, 134Lowell, Robert, 161loyalism, 5, 32, 99, 104, 171lyric, 14, 26, 34, 60, 62, 130

MacNeice, Louis, 21, 83, 150–3Carrickfergus Castle, 151

Index 211

Mandelstam, Nadezhda, 47, 105Mandelstam, Osip, 28, 47, 52–3,

105, 164Marxism, 15, 21McDonald, Peter, 58, 116meaning, 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, 10Merriman, Brian, 43metaphor, 11, 13–14, 19, 26, 30, 45,

53, 60–5, 75, 115, 122, 138–9,161, 178

metonym, 86, 144, 182Miller, Karl, 16, 22, 24, 181Milosz, Czeslaw, 79Molino, Michael, 26Montague, John, 21Morrison, Blake, 29, 84, 103, 134Mossbawn, 7, 17, 41, 93, 121–7,

139, 147, 163, 177Murphy, Andrew, 9Murphy, 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, 75Norman, 150, 165, 166, 168Norris, Christopher, 11

omphalos, 121, 122, 163origin, 22, 34, 37, 57, 62, 113, 127,

131, 136–8, 142, 144, 172oscillation, 15, 33, 35, 38, 42, 63–4,

70–4, 79other (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,

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, 82pastoral, 15–16, 18–22, 94, 130peace process, 90perspective, 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, 69place (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, 122plurality (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 alsoaesthetic), 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, 123postcolonialism, 124presence (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, 135Protestantism (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, 168Randall, James, 125Rapaport, Herman, 17, 115, 139republicanism (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, 5rhyme, 42, 52, 63–4, 67, 126, 129,

146, 165, 167, 169–70, 179Rilke, Rainer Maria, 168Rodgers, 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, 1signified, 32, 34–5, 38, 51, 119, 135,

144, 162, 164, 179signifier, 8, 34, 51, 94–5, 106, 112,

119, 122, 126, 131–2, 134–40,143–4, 147, 154–5, 162–4, 179

Simmons, James, 97Smyth, Gerry, 136Spenser, Edmund, 16, 93, 150–2

Kilcolman Castle, 150Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 53, 56strike, hunger, 74, 83, 160, 179subject – 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, 176symbol, 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, 176The Playboy of the Western World,

175

Tacitus, 44–5, 98Tamplin, Ronald, 9, 94teleology, 1, 12, 15, 34, 67, 78Terminus, 68, 129, 140–8, 154–5territory (see also home; land), 49,

122, 175text (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 offorce; ethics), 96, 148–53, 155,163, 166, 171, 180–2

Tobin, Daniel, 26, 68Tóibín, Colm, 10

Index 213

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

Viking, 134–5Virgil, 16, 54, 130vocable, 66vowel, 66, 95

Weil, Simone, 72William of Orange, 2, 4, 41, 49,

141, 151Carrickfergus Castle, 151

Williams, Raymond, 15Wolfreys, Julian, 24Wordsworth, William, 30, 31, 113writing (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, 177Cathleen Ni Houlihan, 53, 102The Irish Dramatic Movement, 175Thoor Ballylee, 154, 169, 171

Young, Robert, 141