Over the weekend of 27-28 April 2024, the University of Notre Dame held a commemoration of the work of Seamus Heaney in Kylemore, Co. Galway. Hosted by Professors Clíona Ni Ríordáin and Declan Kiberd, it included outstanding contributions by academics based in Ireland, Britain, America, Italy, Poland, Croatia and New Zealand. Among the extensive range of subjects different speakers addressed were Heaney’s revisiting of childhood experiences; his role as a teacher; his critical writings and translations; his engagement with Polish and Greek poets; his strong sense of public duty, reflected in his letters and in his contributions to Field Day. Particularly moving was a recorded interview with Marco Sonzogni, editor of The Translations of Seamus Heaney, conducted by Enrico Terrinoni, in which recalled his relationship with Heaney from 1995 onwards. Aspects of Heaney’s character he returned to were ‘integrity’ and ‘generosity’, and how, in his personal and public life and in his role as a translator, he constantly advocated the work of others.
My contribution centred on a cluster of lyrics from ‘Squarings’, written between the autumn of 1988 and the end of 1989. Poems xix, xx, xi and xxvi address political concerns, often from an oblique angle, with a stance very much in accord with convictions voiced by Czesław Miłosz . ‘To see’, he avers, may mean to preserve in memory. ‘To see and to describe’ may also mean to reconstruct in imagination. A distance achieved, thanks to the mystery of time, must not change events, landscapes, human figures into a tangle of shadows growing paler and paler. Those who are alive receive a mandate from those who are silent forever’ (Nobel Speech, December 1980). What speakers in the conference repeatedly affirmed was the continuing resonance of Heaney’s words in Ireland and far beyond.
Photograph: the conference’s opening speakers, Michael Parker, Joyelle McSweeney and Declan Kiberd.