Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney (April 13, 1939 - August 30, 2013), Irish poet. He was born in Mausbon County, Derry County, northern Ireland, into a devout Catholic family that has been farming for generations. Heaney is not only a poet, but also an expert in poetry. Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. His Nobel Prize Lecture "Crediting Poetry" (1996) is also an important poetry theory. He also wrote a screenplay. Heaney's translation of the Old English epic poem Beowulf (2000) into modern English became a sensation. He is recognized as the best English poet and gifted literary critic in the world today. Heaney received formal British education since childhood, and graduated from the English Department of Queen's University with first place in 1961. After graduation, he worked as a secondary school teacher for a year. At the same time, he read a lot of Irish and British modern poetry, looking for ways to combine the British literary tradition with the experience of rural life in County Derry. In 1966, he became famous with his collection of poems "Death of a Naturalist". From 1966 to 1972, Heaney served as a lecturer in modern literature at his alma mater and witnessed the riots caused by Catholics in Northern Ireland demonstrating for civil rights. On August 30, 2013, Irish poet Seamus Heaney passed away at the age of 74.
Chinese name: Seamus Heaney
Foreign name: Seamus Heaney
Nationality: Ireland
Birthplace: County Derry, Ireland Maosibang County
Date of birth: April 13, 1939
Date of death: August 30, 2013
Occupation: Poet
Graduation institution: Queen's University
Main achievements: 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature
Representative work: "Death of a Naturalist"
< p>Personal experienceEarly years
In 1939, Seamus Heaney was born in Mausbon County, County Derry, northern Ireland, into a devout Catholic family that had been farming for generations. After receiving a scholarship to attend St. Columb's College, a boarding school in Derry, Heaney met John Hume (a leader of the Northern Ireland peace movement and winner of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize) who was two grades above him. While studying at Queen's University Belfast, he became a member of the generation of "Northern Poets". In 1961, he graduated from the English Department of Queen's University Belfast with first place honors. After graduation, he worked as a secondary school teacher for a year. At the same time, he read a lot of Irish and British modern poetry, looking for ways to combine the British literary tradition with the experience of rural life in County Derry. Heaney became famous in 1966 when he published his first collection of poems, Death of a Naturalist. His poetry combines the British literary tradition with Irish folk and rural life, and calmly explores and tastes the Irish national spirit with a modern and civilized vision. However, when he published poems in the early years, Heaney always used the pen name "Incertus", which means "uncertain" - that's because everyone on the farm used plows when working with their backs to the sky, and there was no need for a pen at all; secondly, In Northern Ireland, which is dominated by Protestants, Heaney, who believes in Roman Catholicism, belongs to a "minority" that is easily bullied.
Moving towards maturity
As the shy boy was getting closer and closer to becoming a poet, the earthy smell of spring fertilization and cultivation kept oozing out from the lines of his poems. . This is still the case in "The Chain of Man": a bag of coal can also be included in poetry, subject to the poet's patient words and constant pauses. This naturally attracted some criticism. Some mainstream book reviews and newspapers in the United States believe that perhaps everyone has too much respect for Heaney's "poems lost in the pastoral". Critics believe that Heaney is increasingly "replacing the old-style excavators of British romantic poets such as Wordsworth." In the contemporary world, the dirt of our predecessors is still embedded between our fingernails.” American scholar Susan Sontag once commented that Heaney's Ireland was "like Disneyland in Dublin" when she was still alive. Some British book reviewers pointed out that Heaney in the new collection of poems is like "writing an obituary for himself."
After hearing this, Sydney laughed. He is the first Irish poet since Yeats to win the Nobel Prize. After turning 70 years old, Yeats began to write "The Last Psalm"; and Heaney admitted that his 12th collection of poems, "The Chain of Man", is indeed shrouded in the emptiness of facing the ultimate struggle and the same fate of mankind. feel. The poet said that this palpitating fog ran through his entire writing process. There is a poem in the collection, "The door is open, but the room is dark", which Heaney dedicated to his late friend, Celtic folk musician David Harmon.
For some criticisms, Heaney read another hidden meaning: criticizing his own "pastoral poetry" for ignoring reality. He admitted that modern poetry has more social realism than in the past, but he said that he missed the traditional way of writing a little: "James Joyce said: 'Just the right order, just the right words.'"
< p>Heaney will use the entire poem to use the image of "Aunt Mary" baking bread on the farm, describing the lack of sunlight in the yard and Aunt Mary's fingernails stained white by flour. But he also wrote poems with political metaphors.To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Sinn Féin Easter Rising in Northern Ireland in 1917, Heaney published Requiem for a Peninsular Revolutionary, nominally "In Memory of the Irish Rising of 1798". It was the 1960s, the end of the most intense violent conflict between the Unionists and Unionists in Northern Ireland, and Heaney actually recited this poem in front of a large Protestant audience. Heaney remembers the audience going silent. His attitude is: "You don't need to love it, just allow it to exist."
The Glorious Period
In 1969, the second collection of poems "Towards Darkness" The publication of "The Door" marked the beginning of the poet's excavation into the dark soil of Irish national history. From 1966 to 1972, Heaney served as a lecturer in modern literature at his alma mater and witnessed the riots caused by Catholics in Northern Ireland demonstrating for civil rights. In 1972, due to the severe political pressure in Northern Ireland, Heaney and his family moved to Dublin, Ireland, where he focused on teaching and writing poetry and poetry reviews. He hoped to become a professional writer. He published a collection of poems "Winter Outside", which the poet based on Ireland. religious and political conflicts, seeking images and symbols that can express the suffering situation of the nation. In 1974, he went to the University of Berkeley in the United States as a visiting scholar, which was a turning point in his poetry creation. Since the 1980s, he has been an honorary professor at Oxford University in the UK and Harvard University in the US.
The peak of Heaney's creation was in the 1970s and 1980s, which were also the bloodiest years of the conflict in Northern Ireland. During this period, he published important poetry collections including "North" (1975), "Field Work" (1979), "Island of the Cross" (1984), "Hawthorn Lantern" (1987), "Visions" (1991) and " "Selected Poems" (1980), etc. Heaney once said: "Poets fundamentally need to answer and react to the world." But he also believes that "the poet's first duty is to allow poetry to happen again and allow poetry to continue."
Late life
After peace was achieved in Northern Ireland, Heaney said: "I will never forget the feeling I felt on the day I heard the ceasefire was announced: it was like a dark roof being opened and bright sunlight shining in. ". In 1995, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The reason for the award was: because his works are filled with lyrical beauty, contain profound ethics, and reveal the miracles of daily life and real history ("Seamus Heaney for works so flirical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past"). Seamus Heaney passed away on August 30, 2013, at the age of 74.
Chronology of works
Writing characteristics
Heaney’s poems are simple and natural, flowing with the blood of his ancestors, exuding the fragrance of the land, and inheriting Irish literature The excellent tradition of China is famous for its pastoral lyric poems with strong emotional color. For example, at the beginning of "Picking Plums", the poet explains the season and environment of picking berries: "at the end of August", "heavy rain" and "scorching sun". This is the time when blackberries are ripe and delicious. Then the poet elaborates and renders, vividly describing the ripe and delicious blackberries at one point from the aspects of shape, color, taste, state, etc. The blackberry "at first was just a small one, shining with crystal clear purple" "mixed among the red flowers and green leaves", it was a "hard little bump", inconspicuous. But the taste of "tasting the first piece" is so "delicious" and tempting. Immediately afterwards, the author used a unique metaphor - the ripe blackberries all over the mountains and fields "are like settled wine: absorbing all the beauty of summer", and further strengthened and highlighted this refreshing beauty and feeling from the surface. .
Heaney's poetry also has a strong national flavor and contains rich philosophy in daily life. He also conducted in-depth research and introduction to ancient Greek and British epics, thereby broadening the scope of modern poetry. performance areas. With a modern and civilized vision, he calmly explored and tasted the Irish national spirit. Although he has an academic background, he has absolutely no academic self-admiration. In 12 collections of poems, he describes Irish rural life, praises the land, nature, and ancient morality, thinks about Ireland's complex history and political conflicts, and attempts to awaken people's awareness of tolerance and reconciliation in his works. Like his predecessor, the Irish poet Yeats, Heaney's name is inseparable from his native Ireland, and like Yeats, his simple and profound poetry can reach a wide range of people in different countries and times.
Achievements
Achievements in works
In his early masterpiece, the collection of poems "Death of a Naturalist", Seamus recalled his lost childhood , expressing his nostalgia for his hometown. In the poem "Digging", he hopes that he can write poems with the perseverance and skill of his fathers digging the land: "Between my fingers and thumbs, a thick pen lies, as comfortable as a gun." In 1995, Seamus won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The organizing committee commented: "His poetry has lyrical beauty and ethical depth, sublimating the miracles in daily life and the vivid past." According to statistics, in 2007 The sales of Seamus' poetry collection in the British book market accounted for 1/3 of the total sales of all living British poets at that time.
Academic achievement
Irish poetry has once again been honored. The most important Eliot Award in poetry has announced its results. Seamus Heaney won the 2006 Eliot Award for his 2005 collection of poems "District and Circle" (District and Circle). Heaney's path to the award was not a smooth one. Another strong opponent was also the Irish poet Paul Muldoon, professor of poetry at Oxford University, but in the end, Heaney won the 10,000-pound prize, and T.S. Eliot’s wife Val Lee Elliott came in person to present the award.
Critics generally believe that the newly published "Reincarnation", although it revolves around daily life on the London Underground line, is full of darkness, prophecy and danger. His poems depict a conflicted world. Avoid a world where war is everywhere. Eliot Award jury chairman Sean O'Brien spoke highly of Heaney's work, calling it a "delightful work."
Heaney himself did not attend the award, but after receiving the news of the award, he said that he felt very honored, not only because of T. S. Eliot’s name, but also because of his respect for previous winners and that year. respect from other candidates. Since its establishment in 1993, the Eliot Prize has become an important agenda item in literature, especially poetry. Previous winners include Alice Oswald, Ted Hughes, Les Murray, etc. Heaney's award did not come as a surprise to the poetry community at home. Poet Wang Jiaxin said that when Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he used Heaney's poems to express his hope that the success would be "like potatoes being dug out of the ground when they are ripe." He said that Heaney is not only an internationally recognized great poet, but also a poet generally recognized, respected and paid attention to by the domestic poetry circle. According to him, Heaney was born on the same day that Yeats died, and is also recognized as Ireland's most important poet after Yeats. He is a son of a peasant family, and his works have always focused on exploring life experiences.
Social Comment
Former U.S. President Clinton is a loyal fan of Heaney. The title of his memoir "Between Hope and History" is taken from Heaney's play "Healing at Troy" 》. Clinton said of the poet: "It is a gift from the Irish people and the world, and it is my comfort when I am in trouble." It is said that the name of the Labrador that Clinton once raised was "Seamus".
Heaney enjoys a high reputation in Ireland. He is a star figure in Ireland, and his poems have become a part of Irish culture and the lives of ordinary people in Ireland. Paul Muldoon, Pulitzer Prize winner and poetry editor of The New Yorker, commented: "Although Yeats was so famous and played an important role in the lives of the public, to be honest, he did not enjoy it. No one with such a reputation could touch ordinary people like him.” The New York Times also published an obituary of Heaney: “Heaney is almost inseparable from the country of Ireland. He is like a rock star. , but he happens to be a poet." "Publishers Weekly" also wrote: "Heaney has an aura, if not star power, that only a few contemporary poets have. From his leonine physique, his practical civic responsibilities, but also from the immediacy of his verses."
Many people have noticed the connection between Irish tradition and modernity in Heaney's poetry. combine. The poet Richard Murphy said: "By birth and upbringing, Heaney belonged to the old world of rural Ireland and traditional culture, its roots deep in its glorious pre-Protestant past; but he was Education brought him to the modern world, where he discovered English poetry."
But some people were dissatisfied with Heaney's way of writing poetry, thinking it was "too superficial." In 1980, the poet, Poetry critic Al Alvarez wrote in an article in the New York Review of Books: "If Heaney represents the highest achievement of poetry, then the entire anxious, exploratory Modern poetry has strayed from the right path. Eliot and his contemporaries, Robert Lowell and his, Sylvia Plath and hers were all wrong: try to The untamed, unfenced darkness that clears the way for sense, rules, and forms is simply to mistake pathology for inspiration.
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