Seamus Heaney and Irish Identity

MIGUEL MONTEZANTI

Buenos Aires

Jornada; Terceras Jornadas Internacionales de Lengua Inglesa y Literatura en Lengua Inglesa; 2013

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Universidad del Salvador

Seamus Heaney and Identity     Seamus Heaney got his Nobel Prize in 1999 and has continued writing poems and lecturing after this date. He was born in Ulster within a Catholic family. At a certain moment he moved to Ireland. This justifies the statement he applies to himself: inner emigré. This concise sentence, as a matter of fact, describes the situation and fate of thousands of people on the grounds of massive migrations, depopulations, wars, etc. But it can metaphorically by applied to everybody. After all it is another way of referring to the homo viator, the voyager through the world, which can also be related, from the point of view of literature, to the Odyssey and to James Joyce.   Ireland is a very special case in the history of colonialism. Heaney writes in English but he is very much concerned with the problem of Irish identity. This lecture is an attempt to trace back Heaney?s search for identity: his poems, his metaphors, his essays, his lectures, his comments on other poets, his concern with etymologies and obviously with the terrible Troubles. Identity is not for Heaney a static or rigid concept but something dynamic, submitted to permanent research, challenged by circumstances, mixtures and interlinguistic influences. Poetry, in Heaney?s case, means the spiritual and linguistic exploration of this richness, depth and vastness.