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One thing that baffles me, as someone from outside Ireland, is the political meaning ascribed to Heaney’s move in the mid 1970s from Belfast to Dublin when he t
by OfSanguineFire 3y ago
One thing that baffles me, as someone from outside Ireland, is the political meaning ascribed to Heaney’s move in the mid 1970s from Belfast to Dublin when he took up an academic position there. I’ve seen several people suggest that that move in and of itself meant that Heaney was “taking a side” in the Troubles. The poet himself never made any overt statement to the fact, and yet we’re told the move itself spoke volumes.
- foobarxyzzy 3y agoIts like Israel:Palestine, or any number of other conflicts - there is zero middle ground permitted.
- biorach 3y agoThat's not true
- Supernaut 3y agoI am acquainted with a number of people who in childhood came south with their parents. These families were not making a political statement; they simply did not wish to be murdered.
- biorach 3y agoWho said this?
- stg22 3y agoI don't think that's a common interpretation of the move. Heaney spent a year as a guest lecturer in UC Berkeley in 1970-'71 and realised there that his daily life in Northern Ireland had become dominated by the Troubles to an extent that was harming his development as a writer. After that, he moved south of the border and spent 4 productive years as a full-time writer in Wicklow (a rural county south of Dublin and quite far from the conflict). He called his time in Wicklow a "retreat" in the religious sense of the word, emphasizing how it was about getting away from the world. Then, from 1976, he started taking academic jobs outside of Northern Ireland, first in Dublin and then in America. Since long before he left Northern Ireland, he'd have been considered a prominent Nationalist by both sides, so the move south should have seemed more like opting out of the conflict than taking a side in it.