Hensen, Michael, and Annette Pankratz, editors, The Aesthetics and Pragmatics of Violence, Stutz (Passau, Germany), 2001. SH was exacting about titles too. As bibliographer Rand Brandes notes, for SH effective titles would be ‘successfully embodying the spirit of the poem or book in a way that resonates with the reader’ and ‘serve as emblems capable of calling forth the essence of the book or poem from memory’ (Brandes 2008b, 19). That said, an excerpt from the translation in progress of Aeneid Book VI ( ll. 638–78 of the standard Latin edition by R. A. B. Mynors; ABVIa, 35–7; TSH, 512–13, ll. 867–914) appears in print with two different titles: ‘The Fields of Light’ (2008) and ‘The Elysian Fields’ (2012). O'Brien, Eugene, Seamus Heaney and the Place of Writing, Florida University Press (Gainesville, FL), 2002. Janet Timbie, “A Liturgical Procession in the Desert of Apa Shenoute”, in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, David Frankfurter (ed.), Boston, Brill, 1998, p. 420.

O'Driscoll, Dennis. Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008: p. 235 Wood, adj., n.2, and adv.”, Oxford English Dictionary Online. Likewise, the Irish word geilt (used to describe Sweeney in the early manuscripts of the text) can either translate as terror, cowardice, frenzy, and fear or can refer to someone who dwells in the woods or deserts: a wild man or woman. See Feargal Ó Béarra, “ Buile Shuibhne: vox insaniae from Medieval Ireland”, in Mental Health, Spirituality, and Religion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, Albrecht Classen (ed.), Berlin, De Gruyter, 2014, p. 242-289 and particularly p. 263-269. Note that Ó Béarra lists as the third definition for the term geilt, based on the Dictionary of the Irish Language, “a crazy person living in the woods and supposed to be endowed with the power of levitation”. He highlights the absence of verifiable other source texts that substantiate such a definition, wondering “what other texts apart from Buile Shuibhne (if any) were excerpted to arrive at such a definition” ( ibid., p. 266). On Heaney and geilt, see Stephen Regan, “Seamus Heaney and the Making of Sweeney Astray”, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 2015, p. 331-332. Helen Vendler similarly applauded the collection when she reviewed it for The New Yorker. She writes: I am a bent tree / in misfortune’s wind”, says Sweeney in an early draft (Seamus Heaney, “Sweeney Astray”, Draft (13 January 1973), MS 41, 932/1, Dublin, National Library of Ireland). With Rebecca James, Miles Graham, Raphael Lyne) The May Anthology of Oxford and Cambridge Poetry (Varsity/Cherwell, Oxford, England) ,1993.

Numéros en texte intégral

New Statesman, April 25, 1997; September 18, 1998, review of Opened Ground, p. 54; April 15, 2001, p. 53. The third part is titled "Sweeney Redivivus." It consists of poems (or "glosses" as Heaney terms them) based on the figure of Sweeney from Sweeney Astray (1983), Heaney's translation of the medieval Irish text Buile Suibhne. In his introduction to Sweeney Astray Heaney indicates the significance that the story of Sweeney has for him by writing that it can be seen as "an aspect of the quarrel between free creative imagination and the constraints of religious, political, and domestic obligation." [9] Reception [ edit ] from which vantage point he gazes down, terrified yet furiously articulate. From the heights of his mad agony, Sweeney makes sad, beautiful, thrilling poems. He is the voice of darkness and nightmare but also, in his naked and ravaged Seamus Heaney, “Notebook with ms drafts for the poem ‘Sweeney Astray’”, MS 41, 932/1, Dublin, Natio (...)

the other characters on that commonplace stage, he is a driven figure raving gibberish. Sweeney in his turn sees them as if he were a mad Adam driven alone through a lunatic Eden. The language of the poem reflects this gulf - between the Yews were strongly associated with kingship in medieval Irish culture. In the story of the Fianna, an ancient Irish legend, we find reference to the yew as “the most beautiful of the wood, it is called a king” (Lady Augusta Gregory, Gods and Fighting Men: The Story of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Fianna of Ireland, London, J. Murray, 1910, p. 41). Ironically, although the yew tree offers shelter and sanctuary, it is also associated with violence as the tensile strength of its branches made it a favourite material in the production of spears and bows: see Niall Mac Coitir, Irish Trees…, p. 142. The spears that inaugurate and, in the end, fulfil Ronan’s curse would, most probably, have been fashioned from yew. Economist, September 12, 1998, review of Opened Ground, p. 14; November 20, 1999, "Translations of the Spirit," p. 101; June 23, 2001, p. 121. Some days later Ronan also shows up at the battle between Sweeney and Donal and the priest lays down some rules: no one may be killed before a certain hour of the morning and no one may be killed after a certain hour of the evening. In pointed rejection of Ronan’s authority, Sweeney makes it his business to kill one of Donal’s soldiers earlier each morning that Ronan’s rules allow, and also to kill one in the evening after the killing should have been over. Wills, Clair, Improprieties: Politics and Sexuality in Northern Irish Poetry, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1993.SH was exacting about disseminating his work. When a text was published, it was invariably in a state of advanced completion. Still, the ‘double-take of feeling’ influencing the poet-translator – being simultaneously accountable to ‘the inner literalist’ and to ‘the writer of verse’ – is a force that is always operating upon the author to an extent that can be considered ‘self-revealing’ ( CTb, 77; TSH, 251, l. 1606). The line between completion and abandonment is not always a clear one. After all, as SH himself asks in a poem stemming from translation, and titled ‘The Fragment’, ‘“Since when . . . / Are first line and last line of any poem /Where the poem begins and ends?”’ ( EL, 57).

In a line-up worthy of the winning side at the Battle of Moyra, the Martin-Heaney-Rea-Ó Lionárd battalion have the RTÉ Concert Orchestra on their side too.

The “wild man in the woods” genre is ancient and extends beyond Europe. William Sayers has argued that Buile Suibhne bears striking similarities to the story of Nebuchadnezzar as he appears in the Book of Daniel. See William Sayers, “The Deficient Ruler as Avian Exile: Nebuchadnezzar and Suibhne Geilt”, Ériu, vol. 43, 1992, p. 217-220; Penelope B. R. Doob, Nebuchadnezzar’s Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Literature, New Haven – London, Yale University Press, 1974. See also Bridgette Slavin, “The Irish Birdman: Kingship and Liminality in Buile Suibhne”, in Text and Transmission in Medieval Europe, Chris Bishop (ed.), Newcastle Upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, p. 17-45.