IN MEMORIAM
SEAMUS HEANEY
1939-2013
Professor Stephen Yenser wrote about the world's loss of Seamus Heaney saying:
These are the last lines of the last poem in Seamus Heaney’s last book, Human Chain
(2010). The poem is “A Kite for Aibhín” with an epigraph, “after ‘L’Aquilone’ by Giovanni
Pascoli (1855-1912).”
. . . and my hand is like a spindle
Unspooling, the kite a thin-stemmed flower
Climbing and carrying, carrying farther, higher
The longing in the breast and planted feet
And gazing face and heart of the kite flier
Until string breaks and—separate, elate—
The kite takes off, itself alone, a windfall.
Though he is now “separate, elate,” Seamus Heaney has left us the
poems of a man with “planted feet.” From the beginning—“Between my
finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests. / I’ll dig with it”—his verse was
rooted in the sensuous world, earthy, pithy, a vigorous grower. He shared
with his beloved predecessor W. B. Yeats a commitment to this world and
its “dying generations,” and after Yeats he is the greatest Irish poet.
On August 30, 2013, in the Wall Street Journal, Jeanne Whalen also wrote a Remembrance of
Seamus Heaney entitled: Irish Poet Exalted 'Everyday Miracles':
LONDON—The Irish poet Seamus Heaney, a Nobel laureate and one of
the 20th century’s greatest poets, died Friday at age 74.
Mr. Heaney died in a Dublin hospital after a short illness, according to a
statement from his publisher, Faber & Faber.
The most acclaimed Irish poet since William Butler Yeats, Mr. Heaney was
loved by critics and everyday readers alike. So admired was he in Ireland
that locals referred to him as Famous Seamus.
His work often focused on everyday life in his homeland, “its farms and
cities beset with civil strife, its natural culture and language overrun by
English rule,” according to the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation,
publisher of Poetry magazine.
Upon awarding Mr. Heaney the literature prize in 1995, a Nobel committee
praised his poems for their “lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt
everyday miracles and the living past.”
“For us, Seamus Heaney was the keeper of language, our codes, our
essence as a people,” Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said. “We are
blessed to call Seamus Heaney our own and thankful for the gift of him in
our national life. He belongs with Joyce, Yeats, Shaw and Beckett in the
pantheon of our greatest literary exponents.”
Mr. Heaney was born in 1939 on a farm in Castledawson in Northern
Ireland, an Irish Catholic nationalist living in a mostly Protestant part of the
U.K.
While studying English at Queen’s University in Belfast, he was inspired to
try his hand at poetry after reading Ted Hughes, Patrick Kavanagh and
Robert Frost. He resigned his post as a lecturer at Queen’s University and
moved his family south to Dublin after the Bloody Sunday massacre of
1972, when unarmed civil rights protesters in Northern Ireland were shot
by British soldiers.
Over the years he offered various explanations for the move, according to
the book “Seamus Heaney: The Making of a Poet,” by Michael Parker.
He was determined to pursue a career as a poet, and wanted to escape
the high tax rates in the North, according to the book. Mr. Heaney also
offered political explanations, saying Belfast was “not a good place to
bring up children,” and that he didn’t want his presence to be used “to
bolster a state whose legitimacy he denied,” according to the book.
The Protestant Telegraph rejoiced at the departure of what it called a
“papist propagandist,” while the Irish Times in Dublin celebrated his arrival
with the headline “Ulster Poet Moves South.”
Mr. Heaney was Professor of Poetry at Oxford University from 1989 to
1994. Starting in 1985 he held various posts at Harvard University,
including visiting professor and poet in residence.
Friends and colleagues recall him as brilliant, witty, companionable and
humble.
Don Share, now the editor of Poetry magazine, remembers a surprise visit
from the poet when he started work as Harvard’s curator of poetry in 2000.
“I wasn’t a big deal or anything,” Mr. Share recalls. So he was shocked to
find Mr. Heaney sitting in a chair outside his office on his first day of work.
Mr. Heaney said he was “reporting for duty, because somewhere buried in
the fine print it said one of his roles was to be an adviser to the curator of
poetry,” Mr. Share says. “He was probably one of the three or four most
famous living writers at the time. I was amazed.”
Mr. Share compares Mr. Heaney to Mr. Frost, the American poet, for his
ability to “talk to anybody.”
“He could talk to great crowds or to individual people, not only as a poet
but as a fellow sufferer,” Mr. Share says. When Mr. Heaney held readings
in Cambridge, Mass., “there’d be a line out the door,” he adds.
The poet’s first book, “Death of a Naturalist,” published in 1966, begins
with “Digging,” which would become one of his most famous poems.
Describing the image of Mr. Heaney’s father digging in the earth, the
poem attempts to reconcile the poet’s own profession with his ancestors’
agrarian past:
Ciaran Carson, a poet and director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for
Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast, cites a work from Mr. Heaney’s
most recent collection, “Human Chain,” as among his favorites.
At the end of the poem, “A Kite for Aibhin,” the kite string breaks: “The kite
takes off, itself alone, a windfall.”
“Somehow, he’s like that now,” Mr. Carson says of Mr. Heaney. “He’s up
in the air now but still hovering over us.”