A look at the late man of letters favored by Joe Biden, after-the-jump ….
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In this space earlier this month, I noted the poem that Joe Biden likes to cite, marking the fifth month since he was projected to be the president-elect. Yet it occurs to me that many are unfamiliar with its author Seamus Heaney, or that he had other literary works in a 45+ year career: of prose, as a playwright, an author of literary criticism and literary translation. I am far from a literary expert, yet believe that a brief look at someone that Joe admires is in order.
This week marks the eighty-second birthday anniversary of Seamus Heaney, born in County Derry, Northern Ireland in 1939. The son of a cattle dealer, as a small child he saw US soldiers practice on nearby fields for the 1944 Normandy invasion. He attended Queen’s University in Belfast, where he studied English Language and Literature — which included courses in ancient Anglo-Saxon (which would prove useful, years later). While there, he also read a poem by Ted Hughes (who had a troubled marriage to Sylvia Plath) that proved to be his calling.
After graduation in 1961, he first underwent training at a teacher’s college: enabling him to have a career while he began his writings on the side, beginning at a prep school. He did not leave teaching for writing on a full-time basis until 1972, although never abandoning work as a lecturer/visiting professor later: with stints at both Harvard and Oxford.
His fist published book of poems was in 1966 with Death of a Naturalist, which won acclaim and a post as a lecturer at his alma mater, Queens University. His style has often been referred to as regional, yet the Poetry Foundation suggested he was “a traditionalist who deliberately gestures back towards the pre-modern world of William Wordsworth”. Heaney went on to write over twenty volumes of poetry, prose and literary criticism.
He subjects were often about “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, and as the political tension grew: in 1970 he moved to the Irish Republic, where he lived the rest of his life.
While it was not his main calling, he also dabbled in plays — joining with Irish playwright Brian Friel’s company — with 1990’s The Cure at Troy (more later on this) and 2004’s The Burial at Thebes… an adaptation of Sophocles's Antigone(which suggested parallels between the Greek mythology ruler and the George W administration).
He was also known for several modern translations of classic works: one released posthumously in 2016, Book VI of the Aeneid(by Virgil). Yet he is most famous for his translation in 2000 of Beowulf— which I recalled (even just a small passage) as dreary reading in school in my mis-spent youth — where his studies of Anglo-Saxon helped him craft a version far more meaningful to modern audiences, and which received nearly unanimous accolades across the literary world.
He received numerous awards and honors in life, most notably in 1995: receiving France’s Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and then the Nobel Prize for Literature— which the Nobel committee said was for “works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth”.
A day after suffering a fall, Seamus Heaney died in Dublin in August, 2013 at the age of seventy-four.
Tributes came in from around the world, with Harvard’s Stephanie Burt calling him a modern poet “whose best phrases circulate without attribution”, the UK’s Blake Morrison seeing “a rare thing: rated highly by critics and academics yet popular with ‘common’ readers” and Bill Clinton saying, “His wonderful work, like that of his fellow Irish Nobel Prize winners George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats and Samuel Beckett will be a lasting gift for the world”.
On the day last November that Joe Biden was declared president-elect, Ireland’s national broadcaster (RTÉ News) signed-off its nightly newscast with Joe reciting the words of Heaney from his (aforementioned) play The Cure at Troy— an adaptation of a play by the Greek dramatist Sophocles. It took on added significance after the 1998 Good Friday accord, which was trying to mend “The Troubles”.
On Joe Biden’s inauguration night, Lin-Manuel Miranda also read this passage.
Human beings suffer They torture one another They get hurt and get hard No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured
History says, “Don’t hope On this side of the grave” But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme
So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge Believe that a further shore Is reachable from here Believe in miracle And cures and healing wells
Call miracle self-healing: The utter, self-revealing Double-take of feeling If there’s fire on the mountain Or lightning and storm And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing The outcry and the birth-cry of new life at its term
Now, on to Top Comments:
From elfling:
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And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the front-page story about how Ivanka Trump learned the “No good deed goes unpunished” lesson by tweeting her Covid shot, yet being upbraided by MAGA Nation — AKALib offers one cheer, for a good-faith effort.
TOP PHOTOSApril 14th, 2021 Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful *PictureQuilt™* below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo.
(NOTE: Any missing images in the Quilt were removed because (a) they were from an unapproved source that somehow snuck through in the comments, or (b) it was an image from the DailyKos Image Library which didn't have permissions set to allow others to use it.) |
And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
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