Title: Dwelling in the "Darkness Echoing" : the poetic vision of Seamus Heaney and Martin Heidegger
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2018, vol. 44, iss. 2, pp. [59]-76
Extent
[59]-76
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2018-2-4
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/140977
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
This essay aims to study Seamus Heaney's vision of poetry, particularly concerning his early oeuvre, in the light of Heidegger's approach to poetic language, memory, and dwelling. A Heideggerian reading of the prominent rural and agrarian sensibility of Heaney's early poems demonstrates how objects and topological features as poetized in his work exceed symbolic representation, and bring forth the aletheia of Being, and how the sense of the unhomely/uncanny in the poet's work serves to gather his community in the same vicinity where co-presencing, letting-be of the other [Gelassenheit], and staying with things assure the unity of the fourfold. The bog, as the principal trope of Heaney's oeuvre, is closely studied, in a cautiously de-politicized context, to reveal a feminine, pre-reflective realm of memory traces, inviting the reader to listen in thoughtful remembrance to the call of Mnemosyne. Thus, Heaney's poetic vision is rendered in terms of an authentic attunement to the maternal-feminine silence of Being, recorded as "rhythm" or the "sound of sense" at the threshold of the pre-linguistic origins of language.
References
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[21] Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe (1989) 'The Echo of the Subject.' In: Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics. Transl. and ed. by Christopher Fynsk. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 139–208.
[22] Longley, Edna (1992) ''Inner Émigré' or 'Artful Voyeur'? Seamus Heaney's North.' In: Andrews, Elmer (ed.) Seamus Heaney: A Collection of Critical Essays. New York: St. Martin's Press.
[23] MacKay, Peter (2009) 'Memory, the Bog, Seamus Heaney.' ecloga 7, 80–97.
[24] Malone, Christopher T. (2000) 'Writing Home: Spatial Allegories in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon.' ELH 67(4), 1083–1109. | DOI 10.1353/elh.2000.0034
[25] Nowell-Smith, David (2013) 'Sounding/Silence.' Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual 3, 18–29. | DOI 10.5840/gatherings201332
[26] O'Brien, Eugene (2003) Seamus Heaney: Searches for Answers. London: Pluto Press.
[27] Ovid (1958) 'Book III.' In: The Metamorphoses. Transl. and with an introduction by Horace Gregory. New York: The Viking Press, 62–89.
[28] Parini, Jay (2018) 'Seamus Heaney: Putting Feelings into Words.' The Telegraph, 14 March. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10288645/Seamus-Heaney-putting-feelings-into-words.html (accessed on 11 April 2018).
[29] Purdy, Anthony (2002) 'The Bog Body as Mnemotope: Nationalist Archaeologies in Heaney and Tournier.' Style 36(1), 93–110.
[30] Ramazani, Jahan (1994) Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[31] Regan, Stephen (2014) '"Things Remembered": Objects of Memory in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney.' Éire-Ireland 49(3&4), 320–336. | DOI 10.1353/eir.2014.0020
[32] Schmidt, A. V. C. (1985) 'Darkness Echoing': Reflections on the Return of Mythopoeia in Some Recent Poems of Geoffrey Hill and Seamus Heaney.' RES New Series XXXVI. (142), 199–225.
[33] Thomson, Iain (2015) 'Heidegger's Aesthetics.' Zalta, Edward N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 26 June. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/heidegger-aesthetics/ (accessed on 2 September 2017).
[34] Watson, George (2006) 'Yeats, Victorianism, and the 1890s.' In: Howes, Marjorie and John Kelly (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 36–58.
[2] Clark, Timothy (1986) 'Being in Mime: Heidegger and Derrida on the Ontology of Literary Language.' MLN 101(5), 1003–1021. | DOI 10.2307/2905708
[3] Deleuze, Gilles (1994) Difference and Repetition. Transl. by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press.
[4] De Man, Paul (1983) 'Heidegger's Exegeses of Hölderlin.' In: Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 246–266.
[5] Derrida, Jacques (1981) 'The Double Session.' In: Dissemination. Transl. by Barbara Johnson, 173–285. London: The Athlone Press.
[6] Derrida, Jacques (1989) Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. Transl. by Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
[7] Garrard, Greg (1998) 'Heidegger, Heaney and the problem of dwelling.' In: Kerridge, Richard and Neil Sammells (eds.) Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature. London: Zed Books, 167–181.
[8] Harries, Karsten (1976) 'Language and Silence: Heidegger's Dialogue with Georg Trakl.' boundary 2 4(2), 495–511.
[9] Heaney, Seamus (1972) Wintering Out. London: Faber & Faber.
[10] Heaney, Seamus (1980) Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968–1978. London: Faber & Faber.
[11] Heaney, Seamus (1988) 'The Placeless Heaven: Another Look at Kavanagh.' In: The Government of the Tongue: Selected Prose, 1978–1987. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 3–14.
[12] Heaney, Seamus (1998) Opened Ground: Poems 1966–1996. New York: Faber & Faber.
[13] Heidegger, Martin (1956) 'The Way Back into the Ground of Metaphysics.' In: Existentialism: From Dostoevsky to Sartre. Ed. and transl. by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Meridian Books, 206–221.
[14] Heidegger, Martin (1968) What Is Called Thinking? Transl. by J. Glenn Grey. New York: Harper & Row.
[15] Heidegger, Martin (1971) On the Way to Language. Transl. by Peter D. Hertz. New York: Harper & Row.
[16] Heidegger, Martin (1996) Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister." Transl. by William McNeill and Julia Davis. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
[17] Heidegger, Martin (2000) 'The Origin of the Work of Art.' Transl. by Albert Hofstadter. In: Cazeaux, Clive (ed.) The Continental Aesthetics Reader. New York & London: Routledge, 80–101.
[18] Heidegger, Martin (2001) Poetry, Language, Thought. Transl. by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Perennial Classics.
[19] Heidegger, Martin (2012) Contributions to Philosophy: Of the Event. Transl. by Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
[20] Kelkel, Arion L. (1997) 'Language after Husserl.' Transl. by Lester Embree. In: Embree, Lester et al. (eds.) Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media, 394–401.
[21] Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe (1989) 'The Echo of the Subject.' In: Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics. Transl. and ed. by Christopher Fynsk. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 139–208.
[22] Longley, Edna (1992) ''Inner Émigré' or 'Artful Voyeur'? Seamus Heaney's North.' In: Andrews, Elmer (ed.) Seamus Heaney: A Collection of Critical Essays. New York: St. Martin's Press.
[23] MacKay, Peter (2009) 'Memory, the Bog, Seamus Heaney.' ecloga 7, 80–97.
[24] Malone, Christopher T. (2000) 'Writing Home: Spatial Allegories in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon.' ELH 67(4), 1083–1109. | DOI 10.1353/elh.2000.0034
[25] Nowell-Smith, David (2013) 'Sounding/Silence.' Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual 3, 18–29. | DOI 10.5840/gatherings201332
[26] O'Brien, Eugene (2003) Seamus Heaney: Searches for Answers. London: Pluto Press.
[27] Ovid (1958) 'Book III.' In: The Metamorphoses. Transl. and with an introduction by Horace Gregory. New York: The Viking Press, 62–89.
[28] Parini, Jay (2018) 'Seamus Heaney: Putting Feelings into Words.' The Telegraph, 14 March. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10288645/Seamus-Heaney-putting-feelings-into-words.html (accessed on 11 April 2018).
[29] Purdy, Anthony (2002) 'The Bog Body as Mnemotope: Nationalist Archaeologies in Heaney and Tournier.' Style 36(1), 93–110.
[30] Ramazani, Jahan (1994) Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[31] Regan, Stephen (2014) '"Things Remembered": Objects of Memory in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney.' Éire-Ireland 49(3&4), 320–336. | DOI 10.1353/eir.2014.0020
[32] Schmidt, A. V. C. (1985) 'Darkness Echoing': Reflections on the Return of Mythopoeia in Some Recent Poems of Geoffrey Hill and Seamus Heaney.' RES New Series XXXVI. (142), 199–225.
[33] Thomson, Iain (2015) 'Heidegger's Aesthetics.' Zalta, Edward N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 26 June. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/heidegger-aesthetics/ (accessed on 2 September 2017).
[34] Watson, George (2006) 'Yeats, Victorianism, and the 1890s.' In: Howes, Marjorie and John Kelly (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 36–58.