{"id":1989,"date":"2020-12-10T03:05:42","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T03:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=1989"},"modified":"2020-12-10T17:41:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T17:41:06","slug":"on-seamus-heaney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/10\/on-seamus-heaney\/","title":{"rendered":"On Seamus Heaney"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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An Admiration of Seamus Heaney<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Though not a typical example of literary criticism, R.F. Foster\u2019s On Seamus Heaney<\/em> provides an insightful look at both the poet\u2019s life and his works.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by John Austin Gray
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The best advice I can give,\u201d said a concert pianist, speaking to a group of aspiring musicians \u201cis when you\u2019re playing someone else\u2019s composition, just try to get out of the way.\u201d She was answering a question about how to perform a piece of classical music as though it were one\u2019s own, and her response indicated that the question itself, in her estimation, was misguided. \u201cYou want the audience to walk away thinking, \u2018Wow, isn\u2019t Bach\u2014or Bartok or Dvo\u0159\u00e1k or whoever it is you\u2019re playing\u2014incredible?\u2019\u201d She was keenly aware that her musical career existed in the shadows of giants.<\/p>

A similar sentiment lies at the heart of R.F. Foster\u2019s On Seamus Heaney<\/em>, the most recent contribution to Princeton University Press\u2019 \u201cWriters on Writers\u201d series. Foster, one of Ireland\u2019s most prominent historians, approaches his subject with utmost reverence, the end result being a kind of ode. Indeed, a reader who picks up the book expecting a rigorous work of literary criticism may be disappointed to find Foster\u2019s tone decidedly uncritical<\/em> (insofar as one defines \u201ccriticism\u201d as necessarily impartial). His intense admiration for Heaney is evident on every page, and one gets the sense that his ultimate goal in writing was to get provide a pedestal on which the poet\u2019s work might shine. Fulfilling such an objective is deceptively complex, as Foster admits in his introduction: \u201cIt is difficult to write about someone who wrote so well about himself.\u201d<\/p>

Readers unfamiliar with Heaney\u2014or with the long history of sectarian \u201cTroubles\u201d in Ireland that underpins so much of his poetry\u2014will find precious little handholding in Foster\u2019s exposition. With Heaney being one of the most famous and influential poets of the last century, Foster knows that much of the leg-work of crafting a depiction of the artist and his social landscape from scratch has already been done for him, and although his overview is fairly comprehensive, he thankfully chooses to spend relatively little time on the information one is bound to hear in any humdrum crash course on Heaney. Readers who simply want to read Heaney\u2019s \u201chits\u201d can buy a collection; those wishing to hear the poet contextualize his own work can listen to his lectures or perhaps read Dennis O\u2019Driscoll\u2019s Stepping Stones,<\/em> the definitive collection of Heaney interviews. Foster\u2019s endeavor is a more specialized one, namely, that of providing readers already familiar with and appreciative of Heaney\u2019s oeuvre with a more complex, nuanced view of the man both in-the-flesh and on-the-page.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Foster\u2019s primary task is examining the interplay between Ireland\u2019s cultural identity and Heaney\u2019s personal one.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Foster strikes a delicate balance between what one might call traditional narrative biography and literary criticism. In both spheres, his knowledge of Heaney is nothing short of encyclopedic. As a critic, he displays a profound familiarity not only with Heaney\u2019s published works but also with multiple drafts of particular poems, the poet\u2019s journals, and a number of uncollected poems (some too obscure to appear in Foster\u2019s own index). As a biographer, Foster relates dates, topics, locations, and public receptions of countless lectures; the street addresses of every residence Heaney ever called home; and even the vocations and favored haunts of the poet\u2019s Belfast drinking-buddies. With such a depth and breadth of knowledge, it is telling what details Foster includes and which he chooses to omit.<\/p>

Noticeably absent are any substantive details of Heaney\u2019s home life as an adult. In the handful of moments where Heaney\u2019s family makes an appearance, Foster relates only that Heaney\u2019s wife was beautiful, intelligent, and talented; that the two married in 1965 and had three children; and that together they all shared \u201ca radiantly happy family life.\u201d Foster\u2019s brevity on the subject reflects his deference to the poet and his privacy, but the decision also reinforces Foster\u2019s portrayal of Heaney as some kind of mythic, larger-than-life figure\u2014a modern, literary equivalent to St. Patrick. To depict \u201cSeamus\u201d sitting around breakfast table with his children or drinking whiskey at his desk or quarrelling with his wife would presume too much intimacy.<\/p>

Characterization of Heaney as a fabled hero is actually present in the poet\u2019s own work, though his own depiction is far less rose-tinted than Foster\u2019s. In early poems, Heaney used the Irish folk-figure Mad Sweeney as a kind of alter ego, a warped mirror in which he might more clearly see his own place in Irish history. Sweeney, a cursed medieval king, was transformed into a bird and made to roam around the British Isles for seven years before returning home to die. Sweeney\u2019s kingdom included what would become the province of Ulster in Northern Ireland, where Heaney was born and spent his formative years. Heaney viewed his own departure from Ulster and his rise to prominence on the world-wide stage as a kind of mad wandering, but he ultimately fared far better, assuming what Foster calls \u201ca position of overpowering but benign authority . . . in Irish cultural life.\u201d<\/p>

Foster\u2019s primary task is examining the interplay between Ireland\u2019s cultural identity and Heaney\u2019s personal one. Foster particularly addresses Heaney\u2019s inescapable association with W.B. Yeats, the other paragon of Irish literature, who passed away only a few months before Heaney\u2019s birth in 1939. Yeats, a senator of the Irish Free State for several years, likely had an easier time assuming the role of Ireland\u2019s emblematic poet, but Foster persuasively argues that Heaney was eventually able to take on Yeats\u2019s mantle by addressing Ireland\u2019s political turmoil with a certain degree of objectivity\u2014a \u201cwatchful independence\u201d\u2014that set Heaney above the fray, granting him immunity to detractors and critics, most of whom, Foster points out, \u201ctended to auto-destruct.”<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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In his presentation of most of Heaney’s poems, Foster mimics his muse’s modesty by choosing to provide only essential context and focus on only one or two key elements in any given poem.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Some readers may find it hard to identify or empathize with this unreproachable version of Heaney, but Foster manages to ease this difficulty with several humanizing moments, most of which derive their power not from Foster\u2019s exposition but from Heaney\u2019s own words. Foster-the-critic shows remarkable tact and restraint in providing a minimal amount of context before presenting Heaney\u2019s poems in a way that lets them prove their own merit. Perhaps the best example of this comes from Foster\u2019s exposition of \u201cMid-Term Break,\u201d an early poem about Heaney\u2019s returning home from boarding school following the death of his younger brother. Foster foregoes gilding the lily, simply stating that Heaney was ten years old at the time his brother suffered a fatal road accident; he is selective in the lines he includes, offering a brief summary of the poem\u2019s early tercets before quoting the final stanzas in full:<\/p>

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops<\/p>

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him<\/p>

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,<\/p>

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,<\/p>

He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.<\/p>

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.<\/p>

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.<\/p>

The final line is heart-wrenching, made all the more so, as Foster suggests \u201cfor being restrained and unshowy.\u201d In his presentation of most of Heaney’s poems, Foster mimics his muse’s modesty by choosing to provide only essential context and focus on only one or two key elements in any given poem.\u00a0<\/p>

By loading the gun and then having Heaney pull the trigger, Foster is able to humanize the poet while still maintaining his attitude as a humble odist, seeking only to provide the best lighting for the showcase of his subject\u2019s beauty. This approach makes for a punchy critique and also allows the book to be comprehensive without being exhaustively long; despite Foster identifying over one hundred fifty noteworthy poems, the volume barely tops two hundred pages. While On Seamus Heaney<\/em> isn\u2019t exactly a personally guided tour through Heaney\u2019s entire body of work, it provides an excellent roadmap for readers who wish to make the trip and, more importantly, makes such a trip seem wholly worthwhile.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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John Austin Gray<\/strong> is a writer and musician who lives in Nashville, TN.<\/em><\/p>

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On Seamus Heaney<\/em><\/strong> is part of Princeton University Press’s Writers on Writers Series. It was published on August 25, 2020. You can purchase a copy from the publisher here<\/a>. <\/em>
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Though not a typical example of literary criticism, R.F. Foster\u2019s On Seamus Heaney provides an insightful look at both the poet\u2019s life and his works. 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