tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post1729830755756016285..comments2023-11-22T09:11:01.567+00:00Comments on George Szirtes: Malaysia 10: A bazaar, heavy rain, a crash and the death of Seamus HeaneyGeorge Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-31261043902988693272013-09-01T11:10:53.163+01:002013-09-01T11:10:53.163+01:00I like your choice of Seamus Heaney picture. Hadn&...I like your choice of Seamus Heaney picture. Hadn't seen it before. Gwil Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03305768121713053837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-43735332814639419342013-09-01T03:10:59.439+01:002013-09-01T03:10:59.439+01:00"I love Mahon's work because it seems suc..."I love Mahon's work because it seems such a struggle with the ways of the world. I think he is a kind of moral aesthete whose sensibility is in books and isolation, the solitary imagination."<br /><br />Yes, I think really embracing and embodying uncertainty and ambiguity positively/creatively is itself a very moral act in this world. I have to say that Mahon often appeals to me more too; maybe because we are both urbanites, and from the same edgy old city. Also, there is a roundedness and resolution, a polish, to Seamus that, while very attractive and consoling, does not resonate with that same element of 'struggle', which in life, and in the broader Irish context for sure, can get messy.<br /><br />Mahon, as a northern Irish protestant, doesn't seem to have the same obsession as, say, Hewitt had with identity (MacNeice often seem to go off down creative avenues in reaction to his Irishness too). Mahon's concerns seem to be generally more immediate. I wonder if there is some element of that great historical and ideological Catholic/Protestant split operant between Heaney and Mahon: Heaney having one foot in the transcendent 'otherword', or having something of that tendency to oversee things in terms of a broad universality; and, in Mahon, the protestant immanence that saw 'the kingdom of God' as being potentially manifest right here in the nitty-gritty of daily life through good 'God's honest' work. <br /><br />Regards,<br /><br />Harry.Harryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02021863981697073525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-18943500840145752662013-09-01T02:39:22.217+01:002013-09-01T02:39:22.217+01:00In the few converations I had with him, and in his...In the few converations I had with him, and in his writing generally, there is a sense of responsibility that is, as you say, modest and therefore without pretension. I think he was determined to be as ordinary as he could be, as he would have been had he not been such a prominent poet.<br /><br />That Mahon quotation is very good. I think it reflects on Mahon's refined aesthetic sensibility and on the way he was, in many respects, an outsider, almost, as some said, a misanthrope. There is little sense of 'us' in Mahon. Granted Seamus avoided being of this or that party, he still addressed his readers as intimates.<br /><br />I love Mahon's work because it seems such a struggle with the ways of the world. I think he is a kind of moral aesthete whose sensibility is in books and isolation, the solitary imagination. I feel I share a little of that. Heaney includes me in his intimacy - that is an essential part of his greatness - but his poetry isn't particularly addressed to me the way Mahon is.<br /><br />George Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-71314486201918747462013-09-01T00:32:14.810+01:002013-09-01T00:32:14.810+01:00Hi, George.
Mahon once said this of Heaney:
&quo...Hi, George.<br /><br />Mahon once said this of Heaney:<br /><br />"Heaney has a very sure sense of what he’s about. I haven’t that certainty. Each poem for me is a new beginning. With Seamus each poem is an accretion, an addition, a further step along a known road. [... H]e is performing a task the dimensions of which seem to be fairly clear. He knows what he is about is the best way I can put it. I only know what I’m about when I’ve done it.’"<br /><br />I wonder do you agree?<br /><br />It seems to me that Seamus did have some abiding sense of his position, his duty to dignify things (maybe manifest in him as a moral/ethical imperative?), but that this was not necessarily a hurdle to him shaking things up stylistically when he needed to... and he certainly seems not to have been tempted by those cultural forces that would have had him as 'their poet', and so he was all of ours, as you indicate. <br /><br />In any case, I'm very sorry that he is no longer with us in person. It was quite strange how people over here were affected by his death. He was a big part of our upbringing without us even recognising it (a huge, if quietly modest, influence). There's something about his writing that just gets under the skin but yet is not conducive to being rammed down people's throats (and we all learned him in school where poetry is sometimes, or used to be, used a bit like a sort of language assault course!)<br /><br />Regards,<br /><br />Harry. Harryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02021863981697073525noreply@blogger.com