Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus HeaneyNobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, author of nine collections of poetry and three volumes of influential essays, is regarded by many as the greatest Irish poet since Yeats. Passage to the Center is the most comprehensive critical treatment to date on Heaney's poetry and the first to study Heaney's entire body of work. It is also the first to examine the poems from the perspective of religion, one of Heaney's guiding preoccupations. According to Daniel Tobin, the growth of Heaney's poetry may be charted through the recurrent figure of "the center", a key image in the relationship that evolved over time between the poet and his inherited place, an evolution that involved the continual re-evaluation and re-vision of imaginative boundaries. |
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Page 70
... hope of discerning a link through which the conflict between them might be imaginatively reconciled . This hope is built into the structure of the book which , like North , is binary . In Part I , poems that explore language as well as ...
... hope of discerning a link through which the conflict between them might be imaginatively reconciled . This hope is built into the structure of the book which , like North , is binary . In Part I , poems that explore language as well as ...
Page 95
... Hope rests therefore in a process of identification founded on a kind of sympathetic distance through which the tragedy of the historical predicament gives rise to a com- passion that knows no sides . Rather than pretending to offer a ...
... Hope rests therefore in a process of identification founded on a kind of sympathetic distance through which the tragedy of the historical predicament gives rise to a com- passion that knows no sides . Rather than pretending to offer a ...
Page 97
... hope of salvation . Christ the Logos , 2 the tran- scendent Word that anchors meaning and sustains the hope in some final , graspable truth is denied by the poem.53 At the mercy of his own interpret- ers , Christ paradoxically comes ...
... hope of salvation . Christ the Logos , 2 the tran- scendent Word that anchors meaning and sustains the hope in some final , graspable truth is denied by the poem.53 At the mercy of his own interpret- ers , Christ paradoxically comes ...
Contents
List of Abbreviations | 14 |
Door into the Dark | 39 |
Wintering Out | 68 |
Copyright | |
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affirms allegory allusion artistic becomes brutal called consciousness Corcoran creation cultural cycle Dante's dark death displacement door early poems echoes emblem embody empty source envisions eternal return explore feminine Field figure finds forces Francis Ledwidge Grauballe ground Haw Lantern Heaney's early Heaney's imagination Heaney's poem Heaney's poetry Heaney's quest Heaney's sense human Ibid idea ideal identity immanence Interview Ireland Irish Irish language journey language liminal lines Lough Lough Beg Lough Neagh masculine memory metaphor Mircea Eliade myth mythic nature Nerthus North Northern Ireland numinous observes omphalos once origins parable paradox poem's poet poet's poetic political Potato Digging primal quest for self-definition reality relationship religious reveals rhythms ritual roots sacred center Seamus Heaney sectarian sense of place shape sonnet space Spirit Level Station Island suggests Sweeney symbol T.S. Eliot things tion Tollund trans transcendence transfigured transformed tribal violence vision voice words Yeats Yeats's