| Extract |
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| Chapter I - Death of a Naturalist |
| Seamus Heaney's long-time friend, Seamus Deane, wrote in The
New Yorker that as an undergraduate Heaney was "always
'well-in' with those in power - teachers, professors, and the
like." Nonetheless, Deane recalled, in private Heaney was
rebellious, making fun of and laughing at those in power. Deane
attributes Heaney's youthful ambivalence toward the powerful
to a fundamental contradiction in Heaney's character. This ambivalence
is said to be the result of "Heaney's way of dealing with
his own contradictory sense of himself: his authority and his
uncertainty." |
| This contradiction seems to be at the root of Seamus Heaney's
career to date. The career is a success story, after all, and,
as a result, a certain glamour emanates from it. It is not a
rags-to-riches story, exactly, but rather an obscurity-to-celebrity
story. It is likely that Heaney's uncertainty has driven him
to seek public recognition. This uncertainty accounts for his
frequent interviews (Ian Hamilton accurately describes him as
"the most over-interviewed of living poets"), the
lectures, the academic posts and honours, the reliance on what
Heaney has called "craft and determination" in the
production of verses, the ambition to erect relatively large
poetic structures, and so on. Heaney's authority, on the other
hand, turns up in individual primarily private poems or even
in single lines. In short, this contradiction does much to explain
the disparity between Heaney's public reputation and his achievement. |
| His combination of uncertainty and authority shows up early.
It is present in Heaney's first and at least arguably still
his best full-length book of poems, Death of a Naturalist, published
in 1966. |
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