Thoughts on Heaney and (my) being Irish
When Seamus Heaney died, I didn't quite know how to react. I had had to read his poems in school and I loved them then, but on the whole I'm insensitive to poetry, so picking up one of his collections to read in remembrance would have been a chore, and so have missed the point. So, as I was reading some epic poems at the time, I bought his translation of Beowulf. I loved it, but I also loved Heaney's introduction, which I wanted to quote like one quotes poetry.
Sprung from an Irish nationalist background and educated at a Northern Irish Catholic school, I had learned the Irish language and lived within a cultural and ideological frame that regarded it as the language that I should by rights have been speaking but I had been robbed of. [...] For a long time... the little word [lachtar] was - to borrow a simile from Joyce - like a rapier point of consciousness pricking me with an awareness of language-loss and cultural dispossession, and tempting me into binary thinking about language. I tended to conceive of English and Irish as adversarial tongues... and this was an attitude that for a long time hampered the development of a more confident and creative way of dealing with the whole vexed question - the question, that is, of the relationship between nationality, language, history and literary tradition in Ireland.
pp. xxiii-xxiv
And then at the end:
Putting a bawn in Beowulf seems one way for an Irish poet to come to terms with that complex history of conquest and colony, absorption and resistance, integrity and antagonism, a history that has to be clearly acknowledged in order to render it ever more 'willable forward / again and again and again'.
p. xxx
Irish people, to my eyes, see their relationship to England either in an ugly racist way or in a politically correct way, one that forgets all the injustices done by ancestors to ancestors. (The one person can do both.) For those of us who are educated and have no personal grievances, it is very hard to acknowledge any uncomfortableness about our relationship with England without being racist, and without showing sympathy with the atrocities committed by the IRA and suchlike. (Not that such sympathy would ever be intended or felt: but that is not needed for it to be shown, because showing it is political and symbolic and a step removed from what we actually think and feel.) It struck me as very brave, then, for Heaney to acknowledge that there is indeed some deep uncomfortableness or resentment in Irish people. And it is also a tribute to Heaney that he can do it without being racist or sympathising with the IRA; while at the same time not stressing again and again - as I am scared not to - how we disown the uncomfortableness. He just presents it, as something in our psyche which has to be faced. And again, he makes no show of facing this: he just faces it. And in this - in humbly setting himself to the task before him, and striving to do it as honestly as possible, and facing the results squarely, without drawing attention to himself, or his task's difficulty - I realised that this was something I hold as a central virtue for my own life.
I'd always admired Heaney's quiet and non-judgemental aesthetic, but I hadn't realised how much it wasn't something I just admired but also something I wanted to emulate. And I realised this at the same time as I realised something else. In his obituaries, one of the themes that kept returning was how he could talk as an equal with anyone; he had neither intellectual arrogance nor working-class pride; he neither patronised nor fawned. This struck me as a remarkable virtue, and again one which I only wish I could embody myself.
Because of these two realisations especially (inasmuch as I can express them) it occurred to me that Heaney, though this is not a concept that had ever before had any grip on me, is I guess a hero for me, someone who embodies virtues in the way I aspire to. But what is further interesting about this is that the second virtue at least is a very Irish virtue. (I was astonished when an English friend said to me, when I started chatting to the handyman of the block of flats I live in, "Don't talk to the staff!" This comment, even in jest as the friend meant it, would be impossible in Ireland.) And so that in making Heaney a hero for embodying it, I'm being, or realising that I am, or aspiring to be, or becoming, Irish.
This is interesting because in general my thoughts are turning more and more to Ireland, as I've been away longer and as I'm somewhere more foreign; even to the point of obsession and distortion. When I was there the other week, I visited a friend in Wicklow town, and everything struck me as adorable and quaint, even the small industrial area. Another day I went to Dublin, and was inordinately pleased to be passing the time on Beweley's James Joyce balcony; I listened in to the sounds around me, and was transfixed by the sound of two men's conversation a table away, "Well Paidear how are you. You were heading to China last time I saw you, how was that?" This is nice and pleasant, but it's no good: it's seeing Ireland as a tourist, without attentiveness to its ugliness, its corruption and poverty. And this is to not see Ireland at all, but to see a fictional picture-postcard Ireland.
Perhaps this is just how it goes; as each year becomes the next, and as the economy in Ireland remains weak, I'm more and more becoming a typical Irish émigré, no doubt just a typical émigré of any country whatsoever. Romanticising the homeland is perhaps just part of that. If I ever return to Ireland, I'll no doubt be appraised one way or another of all its facets; but perhaps I never will, in which case I'll hardly be alone.
Sprung from an Irish nationalist background and educated at a Northern Irish Catholic school, I had learned the Irish language and lived within a cultural and ideological frame that regarded it as the language that I should by rights have been speaking but I had been robbed of. [...] For a long time... the little word [lachtar] was - to borrow a simile from Joyce - like a rapier point of consciousness pricking me with an awareness of language-loss and cultural dispossession, and tempting me into binary thinking about language. I tended to conceive of English and Irish as adversarial tongues... and this was an attitude that for a long time hampered the development of a more confident and creative way of dealing with the whole vexed question - the question, that is, of the relationship between nationality, language, history and literary tradition in Ireland.
pp. xxiii-xxiv
And then at the end:
Putting a bawn in Beowulf seems one way for an Irish poet to come to terms with that complex history of conquest and colony, absorption and resistance, integrity and antagonism, a history that has to be clearly acknowledged in order to render it ever more 'willable forward / again and again and again'.
p. xxx
Irish people, to my eyes, see their relationship to England either in an ugly racist way or in a politically correct way, one that forgets all the injustices done by ancestors to ancestors. (The one person can do both.) For those of us who are educated and have no personal grievances, it is very hard to acknowledge any uncomfortableness about our relationship with England without being racist, and without showing sympathy with the atrocities committed by the IRA and suchlike. (Not that such sympathy would ever be intended or felt: but that is not needed for it to be shown, because showing it is political and symbolic and a step removed from what we actually think and feel.) It struck me as very brave, then, for Heaney to acknowledge that there is indeed some deep uncomfortableness or resentment in Irish people. And it is also a tribute to Heaney that he can do it without being racist or sympathising with the IRA; while at the same time not stressing again and again - as I am scared not to - how we disown the uncomfortableness. He just presents it, as something in our psyche which has to be faced. And again, he makes no show of facing this: he just faces it. And in this - in humbly setting himself to the task before him, and striving to do it as honestly as possible, and facing the results squarely, without drawing attention to himself, or his task's difficulty - I realised that this was something I hold as a central virtue for my own life.
I'd always admired Heaney's quiet and non-judgemental aesthetic, but I hadn't realised how much it wasn't something I just admired but also something I wanted to emulate. And I realised this at the same time as I realised something else. In his obituaries, one of the themes that kept returning was how he could talk as an equal with anyone; he had neither intellectual arrogance nor working-class pride; he neither patronised nor fawned. This struck me as a remarkable virtue, and again one which I only wish I could embody myself.
Because of these two realisations especially (inasmuch as I can express them) it occurred to me that Heaney, though this is not a concept that had ever before had any grip on me, is I guess a hero for me, someone who embodies virtues in the way I aspire to. But what is further interesting about this is that the second virtue at least is a very Irish virtue. (I was astonished when an English friend said to me, when I started chatting to the handyman of the block of flats I live in, "Don't talk to the staff!" This comment, even in jest as the friend meant it, would be impossible in Ireland.) And so that in making Heaney a hero for embodying it, I'm being, or realising that I am, or aspiring to be, or becoming, Irish.
This is interesting because in general my thoughts are turning more and more to Ireland, as I've been away longer and as I'm somewhere more foreign; even to the point of obsession and distortion. When I was there the other week, I visited a friend in Wicklow town, and everything struck me as adorable and quaint, even the small industrial area. Another day I went to Dublin, and was inordinately pleased to be passing the time on Beweley's James Joyce balcony; I listened in to the sounds around me, and was transfixed by the sound of two men's conversation a table away, "Well Paidear how are you. You were heading to China last time I saw you, how was that?" This is nice and pleasant, but it's no good: it's seeing Ireland as a tourist, without attentiveness to its ugliness, its corruption and poverty. And this is to not see Ireland at all, but to see a fictional picture-postcard Ireland.
Perhaps this is just how it goes; as each year becomes the next, and as the economy in Ireland remains weak, I'm more and more becoming a typical Irish émigré, no doubt just a typical émigré of any country whatsoever. Romanticising the homeland is perhaps just part of that. If I ever return to Ireland, I'll no doubt be appraised one way or another of all its facets; but perhaps I never will, in which case I'll hardly be alone.