I should be back home by Sunday, thought things are always ready to go awry. Normal blogging should resume about then.

Apart from that, I bought many things today, including some Seamus Heaney.

Okay, onto the snippets.

Nikon has announced the D700, which is essentially a D3 minus some of the features, in the D300 body. [via The Online Photographer] Of course, the most important thing is that it's the D3 sensor. (Which, by the by, also means it's full-frame.) I wouldn't bother so much about the missing features. Expected to retail at 2,999 USD.

Also announced was the SB-900, which is the new top-of-the-line speedlight.

And on another note, this Eppendorf video in the form of a boyband music vid promotes their epMotion system. [via Wired Science] The epMotion system essentially allows for automation of routine pipetting, as far as I can tell.

d

now, moving along, today is william butler yeats birthday (and friday the 13th, but that's just a coincedence!). yeats is regarded as the greatest poet ireland ever produced, and he's certainly my personal favorite. yeats led the celtic renessaince & irish literary movement of his time, building upon the work done before him by the likes of oscar wilde and those who were his contemporaries and who'd come after him: james joyce, george bernard shaw, flann o'brien, samuel beckett, brendan behan (totally underrated!), seamus heaney, etc. yeats' words amaze me, and i don't even care much for poetry. i'd say that he may be the runner-up to favorite writer position (to flannery o'connor) for me. here's my personal favorite, "never give all the heart"...

never give all the heart, for love
will hardly seem worth thinking of
to passionate women if it seem
certain, and they never dream
that it fades out from kiss to kiss
for everything that's lovely is
but a brief, dreary, kind delight
o never give the heart outright
for they, for all smooth lips can say
have given their heart up to the play
and who could play it well enough
if deaf and dumb and blind with love?
he that made this knows all the cost
for he gave all his heart and lost

i do think that his best poem would have to be easter 1916, though. absolutely amazing. some other favorites are before the world was made, i am of ireland, in tara's halls, the lake isle of innisfree, the second coming, the song of wandering aengus, when you are old, why should not old men be mad?, and of course, he wishes for the cloths of heaven. and you can't forget his tales of a man young & old, aedh, crazy jane, cuchulain, the lover and oisin. a true genius.

you can hear yeats read one of his poems here and another here.

Dante, it seems, did not know Greek; but he had Virgil at his side.

The Mantuan had conscientiously and studiously designed his own Aeneid as a sequel to the Iliad and would have been chagrined to realise that his own, but not Homer’s, epic was available to Dante in the land of their birth. But in conjecturing a fitting end for Ulysses, Dante drew on the imagery of James’s letter in the New Testament.

According to David H Higgins, whose detailed notes accompany CH Sisson’s excellent translation of the Divine Comedy,[1] Dante knew the texts of the Iliad and Odyssey only

fragmentarily in quotation or glosses in Latin authors. Dante knew no Greek, and no MSS of the epics were known in the West early in the fourteenth century. Dante’s esteem of Homer is based solely on his reputation as reported in later classical authors. (p. 509)

As sometimes happens with translation, the spirit and nobility of a work leap across a chasm, not only of language, but of an absent text. This particular torch is important to the relay that is often observed to be central to the progressive character of European literature. Thus Homer is complemented and extended by Virgil, who – virtuous pagan – is adopted by Dante in early Renaissance Italy as a guide, psychopomp and emblem of human reason.

That Christian rationalism has seldom been so beset as in the Nazi era of Auschwitz. And no cry more piteous has been heard than in Primo Levi’s account, in chapter 11 of If This Is A Man,[2] of his reconstruction from memory of the ending of Inferno Canto XXVI for the benefit of Jean (or Pikolo), his twenty-four year old Alsatian companion, who

although he continued his secret individual struggle against death … did not neglect his human relationships […] (p. 137)

In the context of a first lesson in Italian, commenced immediately because

the important thing is not to lose time, not to waste this hour (p. 139)

‘Primo’ (as he is known in the camp) begins with the Canto on Ulysses! Pikolo shows his mettle (he is a survivor) by continuing to listen attentively, to wait, to suggest words, even when Levi struggles to tell him

about the Middle Ages, about the so human and so necessary and yet unexpected anachronism, but still more, something gigantic that I myself have only just seen, in a flash of intuition, perhaps the reason for our fate, for our being here today … (p. 143)

The soup queue, which they must enter to bring back a 100 pound canister of cabbage and turnip soup supported on two poles for their colleagues in the Kommando, is forgotten:

It is vitally necessary and urgent that he listen, that he understand this … before it is too late; tomorrow he or I might be dead, or we might never see each other again […] (p. 142)

Here the injured and perjured spirit of Europe cries, and is heard, through the medium of fastidious care for a text, the details of which, though many elude the memory of this man, a chemist who never thought of himself as a writer before he entered Auschwitz, come to seem, in the moment of telling, enormously significant:

“I set forth” [misi me] is not je me mis [Levi is trying both to remember Dante’s old Italian and to convey it in modern French to Pikolo], it is much stronger and more audacious, it is a chain which has been broken, it is throwing oneself on the other side of a barrier, we know the impulse well. (p. 140)

And as with every textual detail recounted, the meaning’s relevance to their situation explodes with the force of revelation.

2.

This textual force arises from a tradition, a channel of living inspiration, a world of ideal exemplars – of veracity, of clarity, even of mission, the task of the writer being to bear witness, to fulfil a national or divine purpose of the highest kind (the founding of Rome, the dispensing of eternal justice, of surviving the death camp in order to convey faithfully the intrinsic detail of the experience).

In addition to the vicissitudes of memory, which seem fatally to imperil the reconstruction of the Canto in the brief window of opportunity, as Primo and the Pikolo are

swept by the fierce rhythm of the Lager (p. 138 )

there is, for us as well as for Pikolo, the problem of linguistic access. Medieval Italian seems a special study, possibly requiring a lifetime; in this case, is there any English version which may be preferred?

Laurence Binyon (1933-43) and Dorothy Sayers (1949-62) have both ventured verse translations into English, which are highly regarded, but to which I do not have access. There are others, too, by John Sinclair (1939-46), John Ciardi (1954), Allen Mandelbaum (1980-82) and Mark Musa (1971), also unknown to me.

The internet provides[3] a verse translation by Henry F. Cary[4] (1892) which we may examine, choosing as specimen a pleasing extended simile (lines 27-35 or thereabouts) which compares the poet’s coming upon the eighth chasm of the eighth circle to a countryman’s view, at dusk, of glow-worms below in the valley where he has been working. Cary has this:

As in that season, when the sun least veils       

His face that lightens all, what time the fly        

Gives way to the shrill gnat, the peasant then,   

Upon some cliff reclined, beneath him sees

Fire-flies innumerous spangling o’er the vale,     

Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labor lies;         

With flames so numberless throughout its space           

Shone the eighth chasm, apparent, when the depth       

Was to my view exposed.

This is Miltonic – contrived with the mechanical model of Latin quantitative verse in mind – but, unlike Milton, relatively inert, even pedantic:

what time … [and] then

resolutely compacted to the metre, just as ‘innumerous’ must be devised to avoid the extra syllable of ‘innumerable’. This is the fabric of Wardour Street English, inkhorn words, even fustian. ‘Spangling’ carries peculiarly the wrong association – of decorative artificiality. Moreover

when the sun least veils 

His face that lightens all

requires some decoding, possibly recourse to a note (which is not supplied).

Another verse translation, undertaken with a “poetic rather than pedantic” approach, shows that even faithful versifying can be readable, that is, can flow:

The view

Beneath us was an empty depth, wherethrough

Lights moved, abundant as the fireflies are

At even, when the gnats succeed the flies.

A myriad gleams the labourer sees who lies

Above them, resting, while the vale below

Already darkens to the night, - he toiled

From dawn to store the ripened grapes, or till

The roots around, and on the shadowing hill

Reclines and gazes down the vale.[5]

This succeeds, though, at the cost of suppressing the elaborate reference to summer.

The greatness of Dante having been lost by straining through Cary’s sieve, we turn to the contemporary Sisson:

As the countryman, who is resting on a hill,

At the season when he who lights up the world

Hides his face from us for the shortest time,

When flies give way to gnats, sees in the valley

Thousands of glow-worms, perhaps in the very place

Where he has worked at harvest or at plough;

There were as many flames there glittering

In the eighth cleft, which I perceived,

As soon as I arrived where I could see the bottom.[6]

It is clear, now, that Dante’s nested parentheses (“at the season when … he who”) are going to cause difficulty to any translator and reader, but

At the season when he who lights up the world

Hides his face from us for the shortest time,

is graced by a note:

i.e. during the summer, when the days are longer than the nights. (p. 543)

This hurdle over, we find the agreeable colloquialism of the last line, and metrical overflow of

Thousands of glow-worms, perhaps in the very place

(devices both of which make for readability over the course of many pages), more than matched by a return of classical brio in:

There were as many flames there glittering

The contemporary fashion in verse translation for rough carpentry may be accepted in the present case, but it is a delicate balance. In passing, it may be noted that Seamus Heaney, who has acknowledged the soaring figure of Dante in his own inspiration, even writing ‘Station Island’[7] within the “big acoustic” of the Divine Comedy, has twice included his translations of sections of the ‘Inferno’ in his own books.[8] The later of these, a version of Canto III, lines 82-129, ends

And they are eager to go across the river

Because Divine Justice goads them with its spur

So that their fear is turned into desire.

No good spirits ever pass this way

And therefore, if Charon objects to you,

You should understand well what his words imply […] (p. 113)

- thus confirming, in spite of serious urgency, some sense that, as regards any main verse line, the departures rather outnumber the returns.

Sisson, then, bridges the considerable gap between verse probity and prose readability, a modern achievement that may make him a preferred contemporary Dante.

Less modern, but with its own vivacity, is the Carlyle-Okey-Wicksteed version,[9] so-called because three pairs of hands translated the three parts of the Comedy. With the ‘Inferno’ we are concerned with the work of John Aitken Carlyle. The same passage is given as:

As many fireflies as the peasant who is resting on the hill – at the time when he who lightens the world hides his face from us,[10]

when the fly yields to the gnat – sees down along the valley there perchance where he gathers grapes and tills:

with flames thus numerous the eighth chasm was all gleaming, as I perceived, so soon as I came to where the bottom showed itself. (p. 139)

Here the syntax of the argument is stretched further, necessitating the “thus numerous” to pick up the thread of the fireflies, introduced early. But we may admire the immediacy of “where the bottom shows itself” and “where he [the peasant] gathers grapes and tills”. This cheerful pithiness of diction is sustained, agreeably to the modern reader: Ulysses and his companions, swathed in fire, soon appear moving “along the gullet of the fosse”.

If the modern trend in verse translation is to eschew manicured lines and forms imposed from a tradition alien to the Divine Comedy, then this kind of springy and mineral-rich prose is likely to hold the frail attention of the interested, but fatigable, contemporary reader, in all probability a student.

There is finally, an older version long held in special regard by connoisseurs, the prose translation by Charles Eliot Norton.[11] This was reviewed in the early 1920s in the following terms:

[…] a prose translation, and, needless to say, a faithful one. Compared with a prose masterpiece like Andrew Lang’s version of Theocritus, it seems rather dry, and wanting in such rhythmic beauty as is well within the reach of prose. Here the austerity of Dante seems to have fused with the austerity of the Norton stock to produce something more austere than either. Norton’s version holds its own, however, with other prose versions of Dante.[12]

But Norton was writing somewhat in the shadow of Longfellow’s own verse translation of Dante and perhaps in a spirit of quiet dissidence. Let us make the same comparison:

As many as the fireflies which, in the season when he that brightens the world keeps his face least hidden from us, the rustic, who is resting on the hillside what time the fly yields to the gnat, sees down in the valley, perhaps there where he makes his vintage and ploughs ― with so many flames all the eighth pit was gleaming, as I perceived so soon as I was there where the bottom became apparent. [13]

Here the laws of elegant prose, rather than of regular verse, are being observed. Once again the quantitative figure (“As many … with so many”) has to be picked up after an interval occasioned by those nesting parentheses, but by now we may attribute this equally to the elaborateness of Dante and the fidelity of the translator. Otherwise the version is faultless and might well satisfy even the eagle-eyed Robert Graves, pitiless exposer of unclear prose.[14]

3.

The criterion, then, for a translation of Dante in any age – because each new failure reveals unfamiliar faces of a turning planet – is: does it enable the trembling entry of the new reader into the world of Dante? The new reader, like Pikolo, needs to understand unmistakably the meaning of this work, the concern with salvation and judgement, with cosmos and order, in an older language; with valid living and existential truth, in a newer one.

History is the motor of culture, as tradition is of literature. In an age of relativism and officially sponsored amnesia, there is always denial of this obvious truth. But against all the odds, new questioners are born who wish to possess the cultural world they find themselves in – and wish to possess themselves.

In Europe, this sequence of defining epics – masterworks – begins perhaps with the lyric sweep of Homer, is crystallised further in the noble polity of Virgil and flowers through Christianity and the judicious passions of Dante, her greatest poet. Thus we look, as if down a telescope, from Levi to Dante, to Virgil and finally to Homer. The segments cohere, they obey an invisible sequence, they subdue the gulfs of time and interpret the inner values of a civilisation.

At its weakest this tradition gathers dust like a geranium in a museum, slumbering on the sill of yawning scholarship; but it is not its weakest that concerns us. Like a resilient nervous system, whose power is revealed only in extremity, the European tradition throws off fleshly veils of aestheticism when survival itself is threatened, when the succession becomes Homer, Virgil, Dante … and Primo Levi.

Dante leads Ulysses and his crew through the Pillars of Hercules and out towards Atlantis where, after a further five months of voyaging past the forbidden limits, they reach the imposingly dark mountain isle of Purgatory. Here, in a storm, the ship with all lives is lost, as “it pleased another [i.e. God] it should [be]”. This is an invented, but fitting, death for Ulysses, one of the

corrupt advisers, guilty of misapplying their intellectual powers, [who] are similarly guilty of the abuse of eloquence.[15]

Levi writes:

[…] the sun is already high, midday is near. I am in a hurry, a terrible hurry […] (p. 141)

He continues:

As if I also was hearing it for the first time: like the blast of a trumpet, like the voice of God. For a moment I forget who I am and where I am. (p. 141)

Has all this urgency to communicate and remember, to recover, through exact text, the fountain of European spirituality in the most unpropitious circumstances imaginable, been in vain? Perhaps, says Levi,

perhaps, despite the wan translation and the pedestrian, rushed commentary, he [Pikolo] has received the message, he has felt that it has to do with him, that it has to do with all men who toil, and with us in particular; and that it has to do with us two, who dare to reason of these things with the poles for the soup on our shoulders. (pp. 141-2)

Thus are Dante’s words, variably translated, given a meaning and urgency that might have surprised Dante or Virgil, but would not have surprised those sinners writhing eternally in their fires in the eighth circle of that other hell.

30^th August 2003

A few months ago I posted about the controversy over the translation of the so-called "Gospel of Judas." This week the Chronicle of Higher Education reviews and updates the whole story, and the four scholars most involved with translating and publicizing the ancient text: Bart Ehrman, Marvin Meyer, Elaine Pagels, who contracted with the owner of the manuscript fragments, National Geographic, to translate it and participate in a highly publicized documentary about the text, and April D. DeConick, who questioned the results:

These discoveries filled her with dread. "I was like, this is bad, and these are my friends," she says. It's worth noting that it didn't take DeConick months of painstaking research to reach her conclusions. Within minutes, she thought something was wrong. Within a day, she was convinced that significant mistakes had been made. Why, if it was so obvious to her, had these other scholars missed it? Why had they seen a good Judas where, according to DeConick, none exists?

Maybe because they were looking for him. The first reference to the Gospel of Judas was made by St. Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, in Against Heresies, written around 180. Irenaeus was not a fan of the Gospel of Judas, which he deemed a heretical text (though it's not known whether he actually read the gospel or had only heard rumors about it). Until the Coptic manuscript surfaced in the 1970s, Irenaeus' mention of the gospel was the only known reference. Irenaeus wrote that the gospel portrayed Judas as "knowing the truth as no others did." It was an intriguing statement and suggestive of a more positive Judas.

DeConick thinks the translators were overly influenced by Irenaeus and read the gospel with his interpretation in mind. If you come to the gospel free of preconceptions, she argues, then it's clear that Judas is evil and cursed, not holy and chosen.

Last week, the Chronicle reviewed a new translation of Virgil's Aeneid, the first by a woman (a second will be published later this year), and also discussed the interpretive slants of other popular translations:

Our own recent, bloody history makes it easy to hear echoes in Virgil's tragedy. That has made the Aeneid even more appealing to a post-Vietnam generation of translators.

"Particularly when you get meaningless wars like World War I, Vietnam, and Iraq, the legitimacy of death gets questioned," says Richard F. Thomas, a professor of Greek and Latin and director of graduate studies in the classics department at Harvard University. "This is a poem that activates that question pretty well: Is Rome worth it?"

He points to a 1971 translation by Allen Mandelbaum as one that has been particularly popular with instructors "who wanted to get Virgil as a post-Vietnam poet." That resonance has not faded. The cover photo on [Stanley] Lombardo's 2005 version is a close-up of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, with the names of the fallen inscribed on black stone.

. . .

Richard Thomas . . . points to a phrase in Lombardo's edition . . . "Without very much justification on the level of Virgil's Latin but a great deal of justification from what's going on in the poem," he says, "Lombardo writes 'shock and awe,' which immediately takes one to more-recent events and sets one asking the question, Are we Rome?"

Seamus Heaney's popular translation of Beowulf is now embedded in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, and although I and many other critics have praised its readability and poetic style, they've also noted that it's not always very accurate. Heaney's introduction to the translation discusses the many parallels he found to ancient Irish culture, which some think lead to a somewhat odd result. Tom Shippey critiques the pros and cons very even-handedly.

Mi abuela Nieves trabajó en el campo durante toda su vida. La recuerdo como una venerable anciana que, a sus noventa y tantos, inspiraba el mayor de los respetos. Confieso que me intimidaba. Yo era una niña con las trenzas torcidas y ella la gran matriarca. Un manojo de inseguridades frente a la personificación de la serenidad y la fortaleza.

Mi abuela Antonia siempre ha trabajado en el mar. Cuando veo su rostro surcado de cicatrices, adivino las penurias que superó para sacar adelante a su familia. Tras enterrar a un marido, cuatro hijos y un nieto, conserva una sonrisa limpia y la mirada astuta de quien ha visto muchas cosas.

Observándolas, me he sentido como una intrusa entre ellas.  ¿Es posible que descienda de tan admirable raza de mujeres?  Mis manos nunca han trabajado la tierra. Las rocas de la orilla apenas me han rozado la planta de los pies. Jamás he sentido hambre. Nunca he utilizado una pala, un rastrillo o una red.

Yo sólo escribo. La pluma es mi azada.

Entre mi índice y mi pulgar,
descansa la redondeada pluma.
Con ella cavaré.

Enlace al poema. Para leer "Digging", de Seamus Heaney, haz clic aquí.

Archivo de audio. Para escuchar el poema recitado por su autor, haz clic aquí.

Actualización. El mp3 "Digging" también está disponible en la caja "Pandora", en uno de los menús laterales de este blog.

Perhaps this week/last week's delay is down to simple fear - fear of trying to write something meaningful about (probably) Great Britain's most celebrated living poet - Seamus Heaney. I remember my poetry tutor, Olivia Byard, saying that of today's contemporary poets, Carol Ann Duffy and Seamus Heaney are the two who will undoubtedly still be read in a hundred years' time. Academic, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995... where do you start? Perhaps I'll brush it all aside in favour of this lovely glimpse into the poet's writing space, and remember that he's still human.

Like Duffy, Heaney is one of those poets you think you know just by virtue of their ubiquity. Aside from a few anthologised poems, though, this was my first real encounter with him. And like a lot of the poets I've recently been reading, it felt like I needed a gloss, to make sense of all the Irish and classical references. Happily though this piqued my curiosity rather than made the poems impenetrable (mostly, anyway).

I do like the way that Heaney is dense, but in a solid, compact sort of way rather than a showy, embellished way. I also love his often playful, aural way of writing:

... on air
That is water, on carpets of Bann stream, on hold
In the everything flows and steady go of the world. ('Perch')

Although I wish I'd taken the time to follow up all the references I didn't follow, what I really warmed to about Heaney (and in this he reminded me of R.S. Thomas) is the humanity and the sense of place with which he infuses his poems. Are the two linked? A sense of place, the specifics of where you live, seem to me to be a very human way of writing, anyway. Place names feature in many of the poem's titles, and are revisited in other poems: Toomebridge, the Bann Valley, Montana, Ballynahinch Lake, Glanmore...

My three knock-out favourites were 'Perch', 'Lupins' and 'The Clothes Shrine', and I find it hard to choose between the last two, but here's 'Lupins':

They stood. And stood for something. Just by standing.
In waiting. Unavailable. But there
For sure. Sure and unbending.
Rose-fingered dawn's and navy midnight's flower.

Seed packets to begin with, pink and azure,
Sifting lightness and small jittery promise:
Lupin spires, erotics of the future,
Lip-brush of the blue and earth's deep purchase.

O pastel turrets, pods and tapering stalks
That stood their ground for all our summer wending
And even when they blanched would never balk.
And none of this surpassed our understanding.

Electric Light, Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber, 2001)

The Flight Path

 
1
Prima la prima piega, poi altre pieghe
di volta in volta più strette e nette finché
l'intero foglio si riduceva
a un quadratino ripiegato che poi tirava su per i due angoli,
e manteneva come una promessa che aveva la facoltà di rompere,
ma che non ruppe mai.
Una colomba s'alzava in volo dal mio petto
ogni volta che le mani di mio padre a me si svelavano,
reggendo una barchetta di carta, arca nell'aria,
linee di una tenda tesa coi picchetti:
cima aguzza, fondo squadrato, la piccola piramide
centrale sempre più incavata
come una parte di me che sprofondava, sapendo
che l'intera cosa sarebbe affondata,
una volta mandata al varo.

2.
Uguale e contraria, è la parte che si solleva
in quei cieli trapunti di stelle nell'occhio dell'inverno,
quando a Wicklow me ne sto sotto la rotta di volo
di un tardo jet da Dublino, coi fari sollevati
e baluginanti dinanzi a ciò che trascinano via.
Un fragore di motori potenti e il diminuendo
che si allunga come una scia, impronta bassa e lontana
lasciata nel chiarore delle stelle.
Il sicomoro parla la lingua del sicomoro al buio,
la luce alle mie spalle è la luce di una casa a schiera.
In piedi sulla soglia di casa nelle prime ore della notte,
a rappresentare tutto ciò
che perpetua la posa: il restare a casa
di chi s' appoggiava allo stipite, sollevava lo sguardo e attendeva,
coloro che imparammo ad amare, salutandoli alla partenza,
o a cui ritornammo, coi vestiti diversi
di cui avevamo vergogna
Quelli che non dimenticavano mai
un volto o un nome, che mai poterono abbassare
all'improvviso gli occhi,
mentre l' aereo raggiungeva l'altitudine di crociera,
per accorgersi che la casa appena sorvolata
- troppo lontana per vedersi adesso -
era proprio la casa che avevano abbandonato un'ora prima,
ricambiando i baci con i baci,
mentre il tassista caricava una sull'altra le valigie.

3.
In alto, lontano. Ebbrezza del duty-free.
Black Velvet. Bourbon. Altitudine con lettere d'amore.
Passeggiata aerea su Manhattan. Rientro.

Poi la California. Il Tiburon e la sua distesa.
Gli hamburger di Sam, tavolate e champagne,
più un gabbiano che ci fissa con uno sguardo duro.

Di nuovo rientro. Voti ripresi. E fuori -
Reculer pour sauter, entro un anno dal
ritorno, l'arrivederci meno lungo dell'impasse.

Dunque, verso Glanmore. Glanmore. Glanmore. Glanmore.
Preso in trappola, consenziente, al lavoro, a rischio e al sicuro.
Rifugio e alloggio. Quercia, alloro e sicomoro.

Poi, posizione-jet. Ah, questo attraversare il tempo!
Si va verso occidente, verso oriente, il jumbo come lo scuolabus,
"The Yard", a metà tra fattoria e campus.

Un giro d'attesa e una presa che diventa più tesa -
Sweeney Astray svanisce nelle verità d' Orazio:
Mutano i cieli, non i crucci, per chi attraversa i mari.

4.
Quanto segue è per la cronaca, alla luce
di ogni cosa prima e da allora:
uno splendida mattina di maggio, millenovecentosettantanove,
appena atterrato con il volo speciale da New York,
sono sul treno per Belfast. Piena e semplice
felicità dell'essere tornato: il mare
a Skerries, la fioritura nuziale del biancospino,
il viaggio verso nord con me che mi appiglio
dolcemente come una catena
ad ogni corporea dentellatura.
Allora entra
- come fosse una guardia di frontiera -
entra uno che avevo visto l'ultima volta in sogno,
più crucciato in viso di quanto non lo fosse nel sogno stesso
in cui mi faceva cenno di accostare al lato d' una strada di montagna,
si avvicinava, appoggiava il gomito sul tetto della macchina
e mi spiegava attraverso il finestrino aperto
che tutto quello che dovevo fare era guidare prudentemente
un camion fino alla prossima dogana
a Pettigo, spegnere il motore, scendere come se
volessi avviarmi all'ufficio per il controllo dei documenti
- ma invece proseguire più in giù di dieci metri
verso la strada principale e montare su una macchina - ed ecco
il nome d' un altro compagno di classe, strizzata d'occhio e ammiccamento,
l'avrei riconosciuto senz'altro, sarebbe stato alla guida d' una Ford
e io sarei tornato a casa sano e salvo ...
Allora entra e si siede
di fronte e mi affronta di petto;
"Quando cazzo ti decidi a scrivere
qualcosa per noi?" "Se pure scriverò qualcosa,
qualsiasi essa sia, la scriverò per me stesso."
E questo fu quanto. O parole con uno stesso effetto.

Per mesi e mesi i muri della prigione furono imbrattati di escrementi.
Fuori da Long  (1), terminata la lorda  ,(2)
quegli occhi di brace erano gli occhi di Ciaran Nugent
come emersi dal lurido inferno di Dante
che si aprivano un varco attraverso rime e immagini
là dove anch'io camminavo dietro il pietoso Virgilio,
sano e salvo, traducendo liberamente:
Quand'ebbe detto ciò con li occhi torti
riprese 'l teschio misero co' denti
che furo all'osso, come d'un can, .(3)

5.
Quando risposi che venivo "da molto lontano",
il poliziotto al posto di blocco mi domandò con tono brusco,
"E dove sarebbe, questo posto?"
Aveva compreso a malapena le mie parole e pensò
si trattasse di qualche posto al nord del Paese.

E tra il punto in cui ho vissuto e quello
da cui sono partito, c'è una distanza ancora da colmare
-  luce stellare che viene da lontano, in viaggio
da anni luce - e anni luce lontana dall'arrivo.

6.
All'improvviso, la pura frenesia
di rammentare la salita a zig-zag su per gradini arroventati
fino al rifugio dell'eremita in cima a Rocamadour.
Stormi di cornacchie volano alte, una lucertola pulsava
sulla ghiaia ai miei piedi con zampe anteriori
simili a supporti articolati di veicolo lunare.
E una farfalla, soffice come il soffio della vita
in un soffio di vento, una farfalla verde come vischio
 attraversa l'assolata via crucis dei pellegrini.

Le undici di mattina. Ho annotato:
"Amante della roccia, anima solitaria, sentinella del cielo, salute!"
E da qualche posto sorse una colomba. E continuò ad alzarsi in volo.

1) , la prigione del Nord d'Irlanda dove negli anni Settanta erano detenuti molti esponenti dell'IRA.  La poesia è dedicata alla memoria di Bobby Sand, ivi morto per la causa repubblicana dopo uno sciopero della fame durato 66 giorni. volto a ottenere il riconoscimento dello stato di "prigioniero politico".
2) : così venne denominato lo sciopero della fame di quei detenuti politici ,capeggiati da Bobby Sand, che alla fine degli anni Settanta imbrattarono le prigioni di escrementi, come da scenario di inferno dantesco.
3)  dall'episodio del Conte Ugolino (Dante, Divina Commedia, Inferno).  

  The Flight Path

1
The first fold first, then more foldovers drawn
Tighter and neater every time until
The whole of the paper got itself reduced
To a pleated square he'd take up by two corners,
Then hold like a promise he had the power to break
But never did.
A dove rose in my breast
Every time my father's bands came clean
With a paper boat between them, ark in air,
The lines of it as taut as a pegged tent:
High-sterned, splay-bottomed, the little pyramid
At the center every bit as hollow
As a part of me that sank because it knew
The whole thing would go soggy once you launched it.

2
Equal and opposite, the part that lifts
Into those full-starred heavens that winter sees
When I stand in Wicklow under the flight path
Of a late jet out of Dublin, its risen light
Winking ahead of what it hauls away:
Heavy engine noise and its abatement
Widening far back down, a wake through starlight.

The sycamore speaks in sycamore from darkness,
The light behind my shoulder's cottage lamplight.

I'm in the doorway early in the night,
Standing-in myself for all of those
The stance perpetuates: the stay-at-homes
Who leant against the jamb and watched and waited,
The ones we learned to love by waving back at
Or coming towards again in different clothes
They were slightly shy of.
Who never once forgot
A name or a face, nor looked down suddenly
As the plane was reaching cruising altitude
To realize that the house they'd just passed over
Too far back now to see - was the same house
They'd left an hour before, still kissing, kissing,
As the taxi driver loaded up the cases.

3
Up and away. The buzz from duty free.
Black velvet. Bourbon. Love letters on high.
The spacewalk of Manhattan. The re-entry.

Then California. Laid-back Tiburon.
Burgers at Sam's, deck-tables and champagne,
Plus a wall-eyed, hard-baked seagull looking on.

Again re-entry. Vows revowed. And off -
Reculer pour sauter, within one year of
Coming back, less long goodbye than stand-off.

So to Glanmore. Glanmore. Glanmore. Glanmore.
At bay, at one, at work, at risk and sure.
Covert and pad. Oak, bay and sycamore.

Jet-sitting next. Across and "cross and across.
Westering, eastering, the jumbo a school bus,
The Yard' a cross between the farm and campus,

A holding pattern and a tautening purchase -
Sweeney astray in home truths out of Horace:
Skies change, not cares, for those who cross the seas.

4
The following for the record, in the light
Of everything before and since:
One bright May morning, nineteen-seventy-nine,
Just off the red-eye special from New York,
I'm on the train for Belfast. Plain, simple
Exhilaration at being back: the sea
At Skerries, the nuptial hawthorn bloom,
The trip north taking sweet hold like a chain
On every bodily sprocket.
Enter then -
As if he were some film noir border guard
Enter this one I'd last met in a dream,
More grimfaced now than in the dream itself
When he'd flagged me down at the side of a mountain road,
Come up and leant his elbow on the roof
And explained through the open window of the car
That all I'd have to do was drive a van
Carefully in to the next customs post
At Pettigo, switch off, get out as if
I were on my way with dockets to the office -
But then instead I'd walk ten yards more down
Towards the main street and get in with - here
Another school friend's name, a wink and smile,
I'd know him all right, he'd be in a Ford
And I'd be home in three hours' time, as safe
As houses ...
So he enters and sits down
Opposite and goes for me head on.
'When, for fuck's sake, are you going to write
Something for us?' 'If I do write something,
Whatever it is, I'll be writing for myself.'
And that was that. Or words to that effect.

The jail's walls all those months were smeared with shite.
Out of Long Kesh after his dirty protest
The red eyes were the eyes of Ciaran Nugent
Like something out of Dante's scurfy hell,
Drilling their way through the rhymes and images
Where I too walked behind the righteous Virgil,
As safe as houses and translating freely:
When he bad said all this, his eyes rolled
And his teeth, like a dog's teeth clamping round a bone,
Bit into the skull and again took hold.

5
When I answered that I came from 'far away',
The policeman at the roadblock snapped,'Where's that?'
He'd only half heard what I said and thought
It was the name of some place up the country.

And now it is - both where I have bee living
And where I left - a distance still to go
Like starlight that is light years on the go
From far away and takes light years arriving.

6
Out of the blue then, the sheer exaltation
Of remembering climbing zig-zag up warm steps
To the hermit's eyrie above Rocamadour.
Crows sailing high and close, a lizard pulsing
On gravel at my feet, its front legs set
Like the jointed front struts of a moon vehicle.
And bigly, softly as the breath of life
In a breath of air, a lime-green butterfly
Crossing the pilgrims' sunstruck via crucis.

Eleven in the morning. I made a note.
'Rock-lover, loner, sky-sentry, all hall!'
And somewhere the dove rose. And kept on rising.

Malec na powrót oddany
Wodom. Lecz jestem pewien
Że kiedy stała na płyciźnie
Zanurzając go czule,

Aż zziębnięte kostki przegubów
Zmartwiały jak żwir,
Był płotką i hakiem
Rozdzierającym ją na wskroś.

Brnęła przez wodę pod
Znakiem swego krzyża.
Jego wyciągnięto z rybami.
Odtąd otchłań będzie

Zimnym odblaskiem dusz
Spoza dalekiego pasma morza.
Nawet nie zagojone dłonie Chrystusa
Pieką i nie mogą tam łowić.
.

"Limbo" by Seamus Heaney
tłumaczył Piotr Sommer

Seamus Heaney napisał też kiedyś wiersz o chłopcu, trzymanym latami w zamknięciu ("Bye-Child"); również bardzo poruszający. Może Heaney napisze w przyszłości o ostatnio odkrytej zbrodni w Austrii? Może wtedy będę w stanie jakoś to przetrawić?

Zachód słońca nad morzem - Iwan Ajwazowski

sancisce la Sibilla di Cuma a Enea, che le implora l'accesso al regno di Ade, per rivedere l'anima del padre. In questi versi tratti da Il ramo d'oro (in Veder cose), Heaney rivela lo scopo vero e profondo, finale, di ogni autentico viaggio, ogni autentica impresa: il ritorno.
Per Ulisse tale scopo è chiaro, anche se continuamente ostacolato da miraggi e incanti. Per Enea si complica, poiché il luogo del ritorno non è il centro degli affetti, l'isola, la moglie che lo attende, ma una terra di esilio e passaggio, il mondo dei vivi sottoposti alla luce del cielo. Il viaggio agli inferi ha senso a condizione che abbia esito e termine con il ritorno alla luce, con una nuova coscienza, modificata dal buio. L'accesso al regno delle ombre, al buio delle viscere telluriche non può concludersi in una pura perdita, in una dissoluzione naufraga dell'informe. Lo sa Melville, che affida ad Ismaele il compito di imbarcarsi alla caccia della balena bianca ma anche il destino di tornare, per poter raccontare l'incontro con Leviatano, col signore dell'abisso, col mito, a quegli stessi abitanti che all'inizio di Moby Dick passeggiano alla domenica lungo le rive del mare, attratti dalla misteriosa massa ondosa, ma respinti da un moto di paura. Achab ha cercato e conseguito il contatto pieno col mito, il bacio finale, la scomparsa nelle sue fauci immemoriali.

A Ulisse che ne visitava l'ombra annichilita dalla natura buia e informe dell'oltretomba, Achille rispondeva che avrebbe preferito essere un porcaro vivo piuttosto che un eroe morto. Il regno di Ade non ha luce né vita, l'unica durata concessa al greco è nel mondo luminoso della memoria, tra i vivi.
All'uomo pio che per amore si accinge al viaggio nel ventre materno della terra l'emissaria vaticinante ingiunge di non dimenticare la superficie, la luce, il mondo policromo dei viventi: a loro è destinato il senso della visita al regno oscuro di Ade. Il mondo dei viventi deve conoscere gli esiti del viaggio nel regno infero, nel dominio di ciò che in superficie appare ignoto. In questa poesia, in questi versi, Heaney dice molto sulla natura e la ragione della sua opera: un viaggio per amore, come ora che scrive di Enea pensando al proprio padre, morto come allora quello dell'eroe, un viaggio nel profondo per risalire e comunicare alla luce. L'amore, la pietà è il moto originario dell'atto poetico, lo scavo, l'immersione nella terra, fino al buio, il suo movimento, la sua azione.

Novalis pensava al poeta come ad un minatore capace di trovare nell'oscurità delle viscere le gemme splendenti dei segreti più miracolosi dell'essere, Heaney affonda la vanga verso l'origine perché l'amore, essendo per natura insostenibile, ci forza a cercare dove non conosciamo, ad andare oltre, poiché scavare è un atto storico di speranza, significa credere che sotto ci sia qualcosa, che l'opera non debba mai cessare e la ricerca debba comunque continuare.
Scavare, non scolpire, vale a dire porsi nella prospettiva della scoperta piuttosto che in quella dell'invenzione. Riduttivo quindi parlare di Heaney come "poeta contadino", solo perché il suo mondo d'origine è la campagna, e la vita contadina rappresenta per lui un modello di sobrietà e stile. Il poeta contadino è appagato del volto fenomenico del mondo, della superficie vegetale. Heaney cerca sotto le radici. Non ritualizza il mistero, lo sente, lo cerca, lo esplora. Lo scruta, a volte con meraviglia, a volte con sgomento, come certi personaggi di Shakespeare vedono e appercepiscono simultaneamente la natura umana e la natura del cosmo a quella umana misteriosamente ma indissolubilmente interconnessa.

Ma la poesia in questione è importante anche per altre ragioni, correlate a quelle appena esposte. L'incontro con la Sibilla è il momento culminante del viaggio di Enea, ed è quello che idealmente Dante assume come staffetta quando scrive la Commedia e sceglie Virgilio come guida. Col passo del Ramo d'oro Virgilio trapianta nella cristianità (allora incombente) il tema archetipico del viaggio agli inferi, tramutandolo già cristianamente da missione gloriosa in missione pietosa. Dante riscriverà quel viaggio, ispirato da pietà universale, segnando una tradizione che culmina nei climi purgatoriali di Eliot.
Nell'opera di Seamus Heaney il motivo dantesco del viaggio infero e purgatoriale è ricorrente. Anche a lui appaiono guide, spiriti di scrittori amati. Anche lui, come Dante, suggerisce l'idea della poesia come esplorazione dello spazio profondo, buio, sommerso con l'aiuto di una guida capace di mantenere in vita la tradizione storica, positiva, laica. Incontro di tradizione, lingua, e sottofondo tellurico, bolo fonetico e mitico preesperienziale e prepoetico, corrispondente al mondo che nel singolo poeta, inteso come individuo, precede, tra gola e lingua, la parola scritta.

Station Island, altro libro capitale del poeta irlandese, è un viaggio purgatoriale popolato da fantasmi familiari: inizia con una splendida poesia, Metropolitana, il tunnel a volta, la giovane donna in corsa, la paura che lei svanisca, i sassolini con cui lui segue le sue tracce, come Hänsel con Gretel, scrive, ma anche come Dante verso Beatrice, aggiungiamo noi, se è vero che tutta la Commedia non è che il drammatico inseguimento di un volto amato e capace di dispensare salvezza e grazia.

Dantesco, purgatoriale nello spirito, infero nella scena, il viaggio di Station Island è frequentato da ombre, come accade nella Commedia e in Eliot, la memoria affonda nel passato storico e lo spezza con le apparizioni, ma conservandone i volti, le storie. Con North il viaggio si spinge molto più indietro nel tempo, in un'età precedente la memoria individuale: non sono ombre di persone note a visitare il poeta, ma resti di vite sepolte nella torbiera, non è il passato storico a frequentarlo ma il passato preistorico, non la tradizione scritta e vocante ma quella muta e fossile, scritta nella torba, inscritta nell'ambra, custodita nella melma millenaria, dal buio grigio di un tenero cemento cosmico. I personaggi che parlano emergono da una torbiera dove i loro corpi sono stati conservati intatti, pelle, capelli, abiti, per millenni. Torneremo presto su questo libro, ma non prima di averlo collocato cronologicamente: pubblicato nel 1975, segue di nove anni l'opera di esordio, Morte di un naturalista, che apriva con una poesia divenuta giustamente celebre e indicativa, più che di una poetica, di una vocazione e di una scelta: Digging, Scavando, dove nel rievocare l'opera degli scavatori di torba, il poeta terminava scrivendo:

Ma io non ho una vanga per seguire tali uomini.
Tra l'indice e il pollice
c'è la tozza penna.
Scaverò con quella.

La stessa penna era stata nominata all'inizio della composizione, sempre tra l'indice e il pollice, tozza e comoda come una pistola.

Con North non siamo al progetto di scavo ma nella torba, da cui escono corpi sepolti. Il viaggio di Veder cose, edito nel 1991, il viaggio purgatoriale visitato dalle ombre, giunge quindi dopo un'esperienza più radicale e profonda, alle origini preistoriche della vita e del linguaggio, come seguendo il processo dell'evoluzione della specie: la stessa memoria nasce dalla sedimentazione passiva dei volti nella melma, si sviluppa in forma di coscienza quando all'origine, di fronte a quei reperti, non era che stupore magico e a tratti sgomento.

Segnata dallo scavare, dal viaggio infero, dalle visite di anime interroganti o indicanti strade comunque non definitivamente salvifiche, la poesia di Heaney mostra la natura dedalica del mondo e dell'esperienza vitale, senza concedersi alcun estetismo del labirinto, alcun compiaciuto smarrimento, ma, mentre ripropone l'archetipo dantesco dell'impresa, del viaggio, del duro travaglio, richiamando quindi il sotteso ma non criptico correlativo tecnico del poiein, del rovello, dell'ossesso lavoro di bulino, sviluppa la metafora dello scavatore di torba come emblema dell'homo faber e quindi del poeta, immerso nella materia, nella melma secolare e originaria, ma anche proteso ai segreti del fondo, alla zona misteriosa celata nel buio materno della terra. Questa immagine dello scavatore è quindi, in se stessa, non un'allegoria, ma un potente correlativo oggettivo, emblema di una delle opere poetiche più molecolarmente metafisiche, nel senso moderno ed eliotiano del termine, dopo quella di Eliot stesso.
Consequenzialmente Heaney si libera dalla ganascia metalinguistica, che incatena tanta poesia novecentesca (poiché egli scrive della materia, dei luoghi, degli eventi, del mondo), senza eludere l'ineludibile conoscenza, filiata dalla lezione del grande simbolismo, che la lingua poetica ha in sé l'energia di cui parla, che genera ciò che la genera. Pietra e crittogramma, fiume e papiro sono il destino della lettera.

Congenita a questa poesia la condizione ulissica di smarrimento, così affine a quella espressa dagli Ulisse di altri due Nobel anglofoni e non inglesi, Derek Walcott e Wole Soyinka, dove l'enigma che si profila a Ulisse non segna l'indecifrabilità crudele del mondo, generando disincanto, ma ne celebra la magica inafferrabilità finale, la natura perennemente fuggevole nell'ubriacante epifania delle immagini e della consustanziata convivenza di sogno e stoffa del vivere quotidiano.
Come ogni epopea ulissica, l'opera di Heaney ha origine e anela a compimento su un'isola, ma la sensibilità superiore di Heaney (superiore in quanto dotata di compassione poetica, di umiltà, di conoscenza del rasoterra) gli ha fatto comprendere subito che era ingenuto credere sua vera origine e suo vero approdo definitivo la sua isola, l'Irlanda: che, appassionatamente amata, lo è come il volto della donna per il poeta tosccano duecentesco che sa di quel volto la natura medianica e la maschera di un'altra, celata realtà amorosa, durevole e inattaccabile dalle insidie del tempo e dalla morte ma inafferrabile nell'età secolare e quindi straziante. Perché è questa la ragione che induce, a mio parere, Heaney a disamare ogni nazionalismo irlandese, ogni illusione etnica: non è solo equilibrio, senso dell'equità, a fargli rifiutare ogni atto di violenza e nello stesso tempo a fargliene comprendere la scaturigine; Heaney non è un signore di buon senso, ma un sapiente che legge con rigore sapiente anche la storia e la cronaca della sua amatissima terra, e non si lascia trascinare dalla commozione deviante del sentimentalismo. Sulla natura di questa sapienza, sulla natura salina di questa sapienza, che pare risalire alla terra come le anguille risalgono le correnti dalle loro avventure marine, avremo necessità di tornare.

Shakespearianamente Heaney conosce la natura a un tempo vera e illusoria della sua origine: l'Irlanda è lì, è realmente amata, ma come amano l'ombra fuggevole il sapiente platonico, il mistico sufi, il saggio indiano, Schopenhauer: come si ama la prova vivente e fenomenica di qualcosa di ulteriore, non sappiamo se vero o vivente, ma comunque ulteriore, fosse anche, alla fine dell'esplorazione, vuoto. L'Irlanda è l'amore votato a lui come altri amori sono stati votati ad altri, in una concezione poetica dell'identità, antitetica a quella delirante del politico nazionalista o del sentimentale. E infatti l'amata isola letteralmente scompare, quando pare consistere definitivamente, si dilegua come Itaca agli occhi di Ulisse improvvisamente e rapinosamente rapiti da un nuovo incanto, quando la stringevano, messa a fuoco più nitidamente e amorosamente che mai, nel ricordo.

L'isola che scompare è una di quelle poesie in cui la visione non appare solo all'interno, come materia del racconto o del ricordo, ma dall'esterno, come fonte vivente dell'ispirazione poetica. Impossibile, in Heaney, distinguere l'interno dall'esterno, poiché l'equilibrio, il bilanciamento, la coincidentia oppositorum, chiodo fisso della grande letteratura irlandese, cromosomicamente naturalista e magica, sono mete desunte dai sintomi della realtà. Così accadeva in Yeats, in questo senso alchemico, e al nostro autore, che dall'alambicco dell'alchimista ritorna alla sua fonte primaria, la melma della palude in cui si mescolano i segni della vita inclusi nell'acqua e quelli della terra che la vita seppellirà per custodirla nel silenzio, preservandola per la rivelazione e il ricordo.
"Una volta convinti di essere stabili per sempre" una volta che tutto pareva fisso e stabile l'isola sotto di noi scoppiava come un'onda. Vani i fuochi accesi da noi, illusi di consistere, inutili le preghiere alle divinità del luogo: il luogo scompariva, l'isola si inabissava come scompare una visione o un sogno. Questa è la terra, l'origine, e la meta per Heaney, un'isola che illude e scompare, come le ombre di Platone, ma come quelle ombre, sotto il velo di Maia, solo relativamente illusoria, poiché rivela una realtà ulteriore e inconosciuta, ne apre il passaggio.
L'origine, l'isola, hanno insomma un'autentica realtà, ma realtà di luogo d'accesso, di soglia.

Non è Mossbawn, luogo d'infanzia, non è l'Irlanda la culla originaria e definitiva, ma la sua immagine incarnata e visibile. L'origine, l'isola, la meta, come Itaca, non sono che la porta attraverso la quale si accede alla vera, misteriosa, origine. L'origine e la fine non sono che soglie, luoghi sacri del passaggio. Necessario sacrificare a quei luoghi, venerarli, amarli, ma come si venera un santo, che introduce ad altro. Per il poeta moderno quell'altro è innanzitutto, soprattutto buio, che non è il nulla, ma il luogo dove nulla dà prove di esistere. L'innominato ma onnipresente Ulisse di Heaney è quello di Dante, quello delle Colonne d'Ercole, la porta verso l'ignoto. Comprensibile la sua difficoltà a spiegarsi verso coloro che lo volevano vassallo di una terra o una fazione. L'amore non è volontà di identificazione, ma apertura al movimento.

Una porta sul buio, il libro che ho tradotto prima di questo scaldico North, premente pietà sotto le sfaccettature del quarzo e l'araldica segnata da natura e tempo, indicava il rivelarsi di questa semplice visione; il profilarsi non della conoscenza o dell'identità, ma del loro inizio, una porta. Chi appariva dietro quella porta? Un cavallo morto, un uomo che impagliava i tetti, poi, letteralmente dal buio della sua fucina un fabbro, sporco, sudato, come la poesia di Heaney, rude e raffinatissimo come tanti uomini dai polsi grossi e pelosi e dal cesello infallibile.
La fucina che ci rivela il fabbro, poeta e uomo forgiatore, in aspro e amoroso conflitto con la materia, con la fusione, col fuoco, è la scena che appare all'apertura della porta. Ma il buio non è vuoto, è animato dalla forza costruttrice e resistente dell'uomo.
Lo scavatore, l'irlandese, il poeta, l'ulissico scrutatore dei fossati e delle anguille, scopre che la sua isola è un luogo di passaggio, una soglia, un punto visibile e memorabile nel viaggio, ma l'origine è in fondo, lo stesso fondo da cui riemergono uomini di un'età passata, custoditi nella melma della torbiera a mantenere indimenticabile la realtà di un tempo più vicino all'origine.
Che non è se non in parte la tua terra natale, ma piuttosto la terra dove tutti convivono nello spazio e nel tempo, terra accessibile solo dai tuoi luoghi amati e privilegiati, dalla tua soglia. L'uomo agisce per affetti e affinità, ma la meta è una terra dove affetti e affinità si annullano nella comunione del destino. Per questo Heaney comprende la vittima e il carnefice: non è neutralità, è una compassione di livello superiore, cioè più basso, più umile.

La torba, la palude, lo strato solido e morbido nello stesso tempo in cui affonda il passato, il paesaggio topico dell'Irlanda di Heaney, è occasione nel 1969 di un incontro eccezionale per il poeta. Che in quell'anno viene a conoscenza di un libro del danese Peter V. Glob, Il popolo delle paludi, edito nel 1965 a Copenhagen e quattro anni dopo a Londra da Faber and Faber, dove appaiono gli esiti di una scoperta straordinaria: corpi risalenti alla civiltà vichinga conservati perfettamente nella torba, con la pelle, i capelli, gli abiti e gli oggetti: la regina, la ragazza giustiziata per adulterio, un intero mondo che emerge dalla palude, immobile e intatto. Questa realtà ispirerà il nucleo forte del libro, in cui la civiltà dissepolta diviene luogo d'incontro di mito e cronaca. La torba a sua volta si rivela, una volta per tutte, il luogo naturale e magico da cui emerge il passato, simile a quella zona indescrivibile da cui esce la poesia.
I corpi riemersi dalla melma del tempo compongono una scena umana di dramma e pietà, giovinezza e amore, su cui si proiettano le vicende del mito (esemplare quella di Anteo, rigenerato dalla terra, e Ercole che lo vince tenendolo sollevato al cielo) e della cronaca. Il mondo passato dei vichinghi vive nelle fibre intatte e morte della sua pelle la dimensione mitica precedente ogni tempo e il dramma della cronaca irlandese dell'età contemporanea, divenendo un potentissimo correlativo oggettivo: la stessa dislocazione geografica e temporale conferisce anche alle vicende marcatamente irlandesi l'universalità dell'epica.

La torba è un medium ambivalente: chiude e custodisce il passato nella sua sostanza, ma rappresenta nella sua concretezza l'incombenza del presente, il mistero del mondo nascosto e la realtà della materia. Che poi è la condizione ideale della poesia metafisica di Heaney, dove visione e senso coincidono.
In questa straordinaria interrogazione sul passato, in questo irripetibile viaggio in una civiltà fissata nella morte, il poeta interroga la specie, si specchia con tutto il suo mondo contemporaneo e il suo passato storico e individuale nella sedimentata, fossile realtà dell'uomo e della civiltà. Le poesie che compongono questo epico canto di lutto e di gloria, strette, lunghe, dure e acuminate come lame di silice, costituiscono un punto cruciale e di svolta della poesia occidentale alla fine del millennio: conosciuta ogni terra, attraversato ogni mare, inquieto e inappagato dal cielo, l'uomo abbassa lo sguardo in fondo, sotto di sé, dentro di sé, nella buia caverna che dal tempo conduce al pre-tempo, verso l'origine. Scavando.

[Roberto Mussapi, introduzione a North di Seamus Heaney, collana Lo Specchio, Mondadori]

This passage from Seamus Heaney's collection of prose, Finders Keepers, spoke deeply to me. I want to share a few passages with my poetry-loving readers from his essay, Feeling Into Words.

I intend to retrace some paths into what William Wordsworth called in the 'The Prelude' "the hiding places":

Implicit in these lines is a view of poetry which I think is implicit in the few poems I have written that give me any right to speak: poetry as divination, poetry as revelation of the self to the self, as restoration of the culture to itself; poems as elements of continuity, with the aura and authenticity of archaeological finds, where the buried shard has an importance that is not diminished by the importance of the buried city; poetry as a dig, a dig for finds that end up being plants.

Digging, one of Heaney's most famous poems was also the first poem where he believed he had been able to get his feelings into words. Or more accurately, get his "feel" into words.

This was the first place where I felt I had done more than make an arrangement of words: I felt that I had let down a shaft into real life.

I think by this time we've gotten to know each other fairly well. By which I mean you read my archive, and I revel in my increasing reader-counter. I like to imagine you each morning, anxiously awaiting my newest post: Will it include poets you've never encountered, or theorists you wish you'd never encountered? Will it have inexplicable references to dormice and Michael Palin? [i] Will you find yourself graced with fame and fortune as I lovingly mock your personage?

Obviously you value my wit and charm. The self-referential humour of this archive, too, is brilliant. I'm hoping that my next confession, then, doesn't lower the massive esteem you must hold for me.

I'm not that good with the technology.

I know: the format of my archive is beautiful. To be honest, I owe a lot of the professional facade to the pre-provided formats and helpfully-labelled icon palettes offered by the Wordpress people. Hovering over these palettes, I can see exactly which icon will make my text into a "Blockquote," or will "Remove formatting".

I can't find the helpful "Turn this bit of text into a link to another website" icon, however; I've been copying and pasting the utterly necessary addresses from Word or Gmail. This is growing tiresome. Will someone please indicate to me the necessary html to make these links work?

Too, you, my dedicated reader, may have noticed I like to use footnotes. Now in online academic articles the notation numbers [ii] are generally linked to the notes at the bottom of the page? Can I do this too?

Finally, is there an etiquette that says I should respond to every comment left on my articles? I fear my potential rudeness. I also fear overly-attentive response will make me more of a pedant than Ben. [iii]

End Notes

[i] http://www.palinstravels.co.uk/

[ii] This notation was clearly provided only as a visual example. Why are you reading it?

[iii] more of a pedant than Ben. Obviously a reference to yesterday's article. By the way, I know that Kari only leaves comments so that I'll mention her in future articles. It's very narcissistic and selfish of her. Not like Steve. His comment about artificially aging* my Seamus Heaney was both amusing and helpful. Thanks Steve!

13 April 2008 ~ St. Catharines

Glossary of terms:

Artificially aging. adj. v. phrase. See also, the margarine in Seamus Heaney's photo above. Unlike the margarine, Seamus Heaney is naturally aged, and, I'd say, has aged fairly well.

It seems no matter what level of program I'm at, I appear to be one level higher. Moreover, my Age Convincing Factor (ACF) increases in proportion with the density of academics around me in the formula:

ACF= Academic Mass (AM)* / Room Volume (RV)

If my hypothesis is right, then while I'm working on the MA, my professors will mistake me for a PhD. student. Then, when I'm enrolled in a PhD., I'll immediately convince everyone that I'm a low-level professor. I'll work my way onto the faculty payroll, and, if all goes according to plan, after two or three years when my colleagues finally sort out my lack of real qualifications, I'll have tenure and it will be impossible to get rid of me.

One minor obstacle. It seems this phenomenon only occurs when I am in an academic environment. Academics, however, spend a lot of time at the pub. Unfortunately, when I am at the pub, an opposite age phenomenon often occurs and I seemingly appear much younger than I actually am. If I don't have identification no amount of pleading or flashing of impressive vocabulary will avail.

Since the pubs I (infrequently) frequent are both fairly small and usually filled with academics, I can only conclude that ethanol (C2-H5-OH) works to counteract the ACF:

ACF=AM/RV - [Consumed Ethanol Volume (CEV)*]

In order to maintain a high Age Convincing Factor, I need to find a variable that balances the CEV. Somehow I think books are the key, but there are a number of unknown variables that need to be tested, such as the number and mass carried, abstruseness of title, and author credibility. All of these variables will contribute to what I refer to as the "Pretension Factor" (PF). The goal is to combine pretension variables that the total PF=CEV. This will be known as the "Stabilizing Factor" (SF). The final formula appears:

ACF=AM/RV - [SF]

ACF=AM/RV - [CEV + PF=0]

I suspect carrying a single copy of Sartre's Nausea , Camus's The Plague or Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra would have a low PF, based on their small size and popularity among eager first years. (One might carry all three together, but then the effort might look staged.) Derrida's Of Grammatology would likely only work if the AM was already high. In the past, I have had good results with Seamus Heaney's Finders Keepers (but that might be because he's Irish), Don Quixote, and Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, as well as Shakespeare. I think Virginia Woolf might work out, considering she's fairly well known, but not too obvious (also, I wanted to work her in to one more post).

Any more suggestions? I need to solve this problem so that in a few years I can start writing these theories on some lucky faculty's budget.

7 April 2008 ~ St. Catharines

Glossary of Terms:

AM = The number of academics in the room.

Bulgakov, Mikhail. n.nom. Russian author and critic of the Soviet regime. Works include The Master and Margarita, The Heart of a Dog, Black Snow, and The Fatal Eggs.

CEV= Number of pints consumed per person.

Punnet, Reginald. n. nom. Geneticist and inventor of the "punnet square". That's his smashing photograph in the top left!

La 4ª era clandestina, donde fuimos a verlo la primera vez era la GIR (Guardia de Infantería Reforzada)

Long story short, my eye-opener was Seamus Heaney, "The Rain Stick" (from The Spirit Level, 1996). By the way, I checked the version of the poem and it is a perfect copy. Every comma, semicolon, hyphen etc. is in the right place; a somewhat important factor in this particular case.

~~~~~

Other poems for April

From yesterday:

The Academy of American Poets, the ones who initiated National Poetry Month over a decade ago, send out a "Poem-A-Day" during April. The first one for this year was Charles Simic, "Secret History".

The poetry editors over at one of my favorite anglophone publishing houses, Alfred A. Knopf, have been doing the same thing. For some poems, they also provide audio recordings done by the poet. This was the case yesterday: Mary Jo Salter, "A Phone Call to the Future" (the link to the audio file in mp3 format is right above the poem's title).

You can also subscribe to email newsletters for both the Academy and Knopf's "poem-a-day."

[UPDATE]

From today:

Poets.org: Robert Creeley, "The Charm"

Knopf: Frank O'Hara, "Avenue A"

Send to : : : : : : : :

Few poets find a way into the inner ear of the multitude. Mere rhymesters can do it, bards of the birthday card, bluff wearers of the heart on the sleeve, but who would have imagined that an artist of Seamus Heaney's seriousness, range and subtlety would appeal so directly not only to the sternest tenders of the groves of academe, but also to the simplest hearts. From his first published volume, Death of a Naturalist, which opens with that most tender and determined of manifestos, Digging, Heaney has had a wide and more than enthusiastic following, for whom the awarding of the Nobel prize in 1995 was merely the international community's due recognition that here was one of the greats.

Heaney was born on a small farm in County Derry in 1939, "the eldest child of an ever-growing family". In his Nobel address in Stockholm he spoke lovingly of his childhood at Mossbawn - could his birthplace have had a more Heaneyesque name? In the three-roomed thatched farmhouse where, in their early years, he and his siblings - they are all there in A Sofa in the Forties, "kneeling / Behind each other, eldest down to youngest" - passed "a kind of den-life which was more or less emotionally and intellectually proofed against the outside world". That outside world, as we know, had entered upon one of its most murderous and cataclysmic phases, though "none of the news of these world-spasms entered me as terror ... and if there was something culpable about such political ignorance in that time and place, there was something positive about the security I inhabited as a result of it."

This unapologetic stance is characteristic of Heaney; if he insists on affirming the enduring decencies, what Wordsworth calls "the little, nameless, unremembered, acts / Of kindness and of love", it is in the full acknowledgment of the savagery that man is capable of visiting upon man. Many of the poems he wrote in the 1970s and the 1980s, during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, are unflinching and often enraged threnodies for a terrible time.

After attending boarding school at St Columb's College in Derry city as a scholarship boy - a transition, as he has said, "from the earth of farm labour to the heaven of education" - Heaney went on to study at Queen's University Belfast. Here he joined that extraordinary band of "Northern poets" that included Michael Longley and Derek Mahon, and later on P