WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.520 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are turning 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:06.280 our attention to a figure who occupies a very 00:00:06.280 --> 00:00:09.740 strange, almost paradoxical space in modern history. 00:00:09.960 --> 00:00:12.160 We're talking about a man who spent his life 00:00:12.160 --> 00:00:15.580 dealing with, you know, the most solitary, quiet, 00:00:15.820 --> 00:00:18.460 and introspective of crafts writing poetry, but 00:00:18.460 --> 00:00:20.719 who somehow ended up with the kind of visibility 00:00:20.719 --> 00:00:25.269 and, well, public adoration that we usually associate 00:00:25.269 --> 00:00:28.609 with pop culture icons. It is a paradox, isn't 00:00:28.609 --> 00:00:30.870 it? I mean, usually when we talk about famous 00:00:30.870 --> 00:00:33.969 poets in the 20th or 21st century, we mean famous 00:00:33.969 --> 00:00:35.850 within the academy. Right. Famous to people who 00:00:35.850 --> 00:00:38.090 have master's degrees in English. Exactly. Right. 00:00:38.149 --> 00:00:40.170 But today we're talking about Seamus Heaney, 00:00:40.250 --> 00:00:43.289 and he was famous in a way that just spilled 00:00:43.289 --> 00:00:45.350 over the edges of the literary world entirely. 00:00:46.100 --> 00:00:47.460 That's actually where I want to start. One of 00:00:47.460 --> 00:00:49.640 the things that really struck me when we were 00:00:49.640 --> 00:00:51.640 preparing for this is this specific term that 00:00:51.640 --> 00:00:54.340 popped up in the 90s. Heaneyboppers. Heaneyboppers. 00:00:54.659 --> 00:00:56.899 It's brilliant. Just the sound of it. It sounds 00:00:56.899 --> 00:00:59.140 like a joke, but it wasn't. It was a real phenomenon. 00:00:59.280 --> 00:01:01.520 You had these readings, specifically around the 00:01:01.520 --> 00:01:03.359 time he was teaching at Oxford, where people 00:01:03.359 --> 00:01:05.180 were queuing around the block. That's true. And 00:01:05.180 --> 00:01:07.319 it wasn't just, you know, dutiful students with 00:01:07.319 --> 00:01:10.099 notepads. It was fans. They were clamoring to 00:01:10.099 --> 00:01:12.299 get into these lecture halls just to hear him 00:01:12.299 --> 00:01:16.000 read verse. That image of a poet generating that 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:19.959 kind of electric excitement, it feels like a 00:01:19.959 --> 00:01:22.099 glitch in The Matrix. It does, but it speaks 00:01:22.099 --> 00:01:25.579 to the... specific magnetism he had. I mean, 00:01:25.579 --> 00:01:28.480 by the time he died in 2013, he was widely considered 00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:30.540 the most famous poet in the world. Without question. 00:01:30.840 --> 00:01:32.780 But the danger with that kind of celebrity, especially 00:01:32.780 --> 00:01:35.519 for a writer, is that the image can eclipse the 00:01:35.519 --> 00:01:39.239 work. He becomes the lovable Irish bard with 00:01:39.239 --> 00:01:41.680 the shock of white hair. And people forget the 00:01:41.680 --> 00:01:44.599 sheer intellectual steel and the complexity involved 00:01:44.599 --> 00:01:46.709 in getting there. Right. And that's the mission 00:01:46.709 --> 00:01:49.090 for this deep dive. We aren't just here to celebrate 00:01:49.090 --> 00:01:51.810 the famous guy. We want to understand the mechanics 00:01:51.810 --> 00:01:54.230 of that journey, because on paper, this just 00:01:54.230 --> 00:01:56.230 doesn't make sense. Not at all. He was born in 00:01:56.230 --> 00:01:59.109 1939, the son of a cattle dealer in County Derry. 00:01:59.290 --> 00:02:01.969 He grew up in a house with no electricity. He 00:02:01.969 --> 00:02:04.510 was destined, statistically speaking, to be a 00:02:04.510 --> 00:02:07.609 farmer or a tradesman. Absolutely. The trajectory 00:02:07.609 --> 00:02:10.050 from a farm in Castle Dawson to the podium in 00:02:10.050 --> 00:02:12.629 Stockholm accepting the Nobel Prize is not a 00:02:12.629 --> 00:02:15.520 straight line. It is a path full of fractures, 00:02:15.520 --> 00:02:20.000 political violence and intense personal negotiation. 00:02:20.280 --> 00:02:22.860 And negotiation seems to be the key word. He 00:02:22.860 --> 00:02:25.300 wasn't just negotiating his own career. He was 00:02:25.300 --> 00:02:27.960 negotiating a war zone. He was writing during 00:02:27.960 --> 00:02:30.419 the troubles in Northern Ireland. He was constantly 00:02:30.419 --> 00:02:32.439 being pulled by different factions. Speak for 00:02:32.439 --> 00:02:35.039 us. Denounce them. Take a side. And that is the 00:02:35.039 --> 00:02:37.819 crucible. How do you remain an artist when your 00:02:37.819 --> 00:02:40.080 community is demanding you become a propagandist? 00:02:40.180 --> 00:02:42.000 That's really the central tension of his life. 00:02:42.099 --> 00:02:44.280 It has to be. But what I love about digging into 00:02:44.280 --> 00:02:46.599 Heaney is that despite all this heavy political 00:02:46.599 --> 00:02:50.020 weight, the man himself, the personality, remained 00:02:50.020 --> 00:02:52.460 incredibly grounded. We have sources that talk 00:02:52.460 --> 00:02:54.819 about how he called the Nobel Prize the end thing 00:02:54.819 --> 00:02:57.979 to avoid sounding arrogant. The end thing, which 00:02:57.979 --> 00:03:00.199 is such a specific kind of humility. It's not 00:03:00.199 --> 00:03:03.560 false modesty. It's almost like a protective 00:03:03.560 --> 00:03:05.680 mechanism. It is. It's about keeping it real, 00:03:05.780 --> 00:03:08.659 keeping it manageable in his own head. But let's 00:03:08.659 --> 00:03:11.319 rewind. Let's go back to the soil, literally. 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:14.879 To understand the poet, we have to understand 00:03:14.879 --> 00:03:17.810 where he stood. We have to go to Mossbond. That 00:03:17.810 --> 00:03:20.050 was the name of the family farmhouse in County 00:03:20.050 --> 00:03:23.550 Londonderry. He was born there in 1939, the first 00:03:23.550 --> 00:03:26.969 of nine children. The first of nine. Wow. And 00:03:26.969 --> 00:03:29.669 Mossbond isn't just a location. In Heaney's work, 00:03:29.750 --> 00:03:32.889 it's almost a mythical landscape. He called it 00:03:32.889 --> 00:03:35.770 his omphalos, the navel of the world. Everything 00:03:35.770 --> 00:03:38.469 started there. And that world was defined by 00:03:38.469 --> 00:03:40.969 his parents. But looking at the background here, 00:03:41.009 --> 00:03:43.270 it seems like his mother and father weren't just 00:03:43.270 --> 00:03:45.969 two different people. They represented two completely 00:03:45.969 --> 00:03:47.830 different cultures, almost two different timelines 00:03:47.830 --> 00:03:50.870 coexisting in one house. That is a crucial observation. 00:03:51.030 --> 00:03:52.569 I think you've hit the nail on the head. If you 00:03:52.569 --> 00:03:55.150 look at his father, Patrick Heaney, he is the 00:03:55.150 --> 00:03:57.750 archetype of the old rural Gaelic world. The 00:03:57.750 --> 00:04:00.009 cattle dealer. The cattle dealer. He was a man 00:04:00.009 --> 00:04:02.550 of silence. Heaney writes about his father not 00:04:02.550 --> 00:04:04.810 really speaking, but communicating through presence, 00:04:04.990 --> 00:04:06.569 through the handling of animals, through the 00:04:06.569 --> 00:04:08.710 rhythm of the seasons. He was deeply connected 00:04:08.710 --> 00:04:10.949 to the earth. And then there's the mother, Margaret 00:04:10.949 --> 00:04:13.389 Kathleen McCann. She wasn't from the farm originally. 00:04:13.650 --> 00:04:17.089 No, and that's the clash. Her family, the McCanns, 00:04:17.089 --> 00:04:19.970 were from the linen mill country. They were industrialized. 00:04:20.089 --> 00:04:22.910 To Heaney, his mother represented the modern 00:04:22.910 --> 00:04:25.870 world. She represented speech. She was articulate. 00:04:26.089 --> 00:04:28.829 She was anxious. She was connected to the busyness 00:04:28.829 --> 00:04:31.389 of the town and the mill. So you have the father 00:04:31.389 --> 00:04:34.850 representing silence, nature, and the past, and 00:04:34.850 --> 00:04:37.370 the mother representing speech, industry, and 00:04:37.370 --> 00:04:40.029 the present. Exactly. And Heaney is the product 00:04:40.029 --> 00:04:42.410 of that collision. He famously said that his 00:04:42.410 --> 00:04:44.449 poetry came from the tension between his father's 00:04:44.449 --> 00:04:47.149 silence and his mother's speech. He was constantly 00:04:47.149 --> 00:04:49.430 trying to bridge those two worlds. Which explains 00:04:49.430 --> 00:04:52.050 so much about his style. It does. It's why his 00:04:52.050 --> 00:04:54.629 poetry is so physical. It's the mud of the father, 00:04:54.730 --> 00:04:57.810 but it's also so articulate and crafted. It has 00:04:57.810 --> 00:04:59.779 the speech of the mother. It's almost like he 00:04:59.779 --> 00:05:02.220 was genetically engineered to be a translator 00:05:02.220 --> 00:05:05.079 between worlds. But it wasn't just a philosophical 00:05:05.079 --> 00:05:08.259 childhood. There was a specific event, a tragedy, 00:05:08.339 --> 00:05:12.579 that really ruptured that early innocence. I 00:05:12.579 --> 00:05:14.439 think for many listeners, this might be the first 00:05:14.439 --> 00:05:16.899 Heaney poem they ever encountered in school. 00:05:17.120 --> 00:05:18.899 I'd bet on it. You're thinking of midterm break. 00:05:18.959 --> 00:05:21.850 Yes. The context here is just brutal. Heaney 00:05:21.850 --> 00:05:24.569 is 12 years old. He's just won a scholarship 00:05:24.569 --> 00:05:26.949 to St. Columns College, which is a boarding school 00:05:26.949 --> 00:05:29.250 in Derry. So he's already left the farm. He's 00:05:29.250 --> 00:05:31.529 already in that process of being educated out 00:05:31.529 --> 00:05:34.050 of his class, which is a lonely position to be 00:05:34.050 --> 00:05:37.370 in. Incredibly lonely. But then in February 1953, 00:05:37.790 --> 00:05:39.910 while he is away at school, his younger brother 00:05:39.910 --> 00:05:42.470 Christopher is killed. Christopher was only four. 00:05:42.629 --> 00:05:45.250 Four years old, hit by a car on the road near 00:05:45.250 --> 00:05:47.290 their home. And Heaney has to come back from 00:05:47.290 --> 00:05:50.939 school, this strange... educated boy to face 00:05:50.939 --> 00:05:54.060 this raw rural tragedy. The poem Midterm Break 00:05:54.060 --> 00:05:56.680 is so famous, but I think because it's often 00:05:56.680 --> 00:05:58.920 taught in schools, we can sometimes gloss over 00:05:58.920 --> 00:06:01.100 just how devastating the craftsmanship is. Oh, 00:06:01.100 --> 00:06:03.240 absolutely. It's not a weeping, wailing poem. 00:06:03.500 --> 00:06:06.100 No, and that's the power of it. It's clinical. 00:06:06.160 --> 00:06:08.399 It's almost like a reporter's notebook. He describes 00:06:08.399 --> 00:06:11.379 sitting in the sickbay at school, counting bells, 00:06:11.720 --> 00:06:14.279 nulling classes to a close, waiting for his neighbors 00:06:14.279 --> 00:06:16.910 to pick him up. The detachment is shilling. It 00:06:16.910 --> 00:06:19.589 is. He describes the ambulance arrival. He describes 00:06:19.589 --> 00:06:22.449 the old men shaking his hand and saying they're 00:06:22.449 --> 00:06:25.189 sorry for his trouble. It's all very observed, 00:06:25.269 --> 00:06:27.709 very detached. Until he goes into the room with 00:06:27.709 --> 00:06:29.949 the coffin. Right. And even then, it's about 00:06:29.949 --> 00:06:32.930 observation. He sees his father crying, which 00:06:32.930 --> 00:06:36.050 is a shock because his father is this stoic cattle 00:06:36.050 --> 00:06:38.509 dealer. But then he looks at the body of his 00:06:38.509 --> 00:06:41.329 brother. He notes the poppy bruise on his left 00:06:41.329 --> 00:06:44.250 temple. He notes that there are no gaudy scars. 00:06:44.959 --> 00:06:46.959 because the bumper knocked him clear. It's that 00:06:46.959 --> 00:06:49.660 refusal to look away from the detail, but the 00:06:49.660 --> 00:06:51.899 ending, the math of the ending. It's what makes 00:06:51.899 --> 00:06:54.360 the whole thing land. A four -foot box, a foot 00:06:54.360 --> 00:06:57.420 for every year. It creates a silence. You read 00:06:57.420 --> 00:06:59.240 that line, and there is nothing else to say. 00:06:59.319 --> 00:07:01.899 Snaps the box shut. It shows that even at the 00:07:01.899 --> 00:07:04.279 very beginning of his writing life, Heaney understood 00:07:04.279 --> 00:07:06.480 that you don't generate emotion by telling people, 00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:10.480 I was sad. You generate emotion by showing the 00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:13.620 cold, hard facts of the loss. The measurement 00:07:13.620 --> 00:07:16.420 of the coffin. That tragedy seems to hang over 00:07:16.420 --> 00:07:19.300 a lot of his work, but midterm break is the one 00:07:19.300 --> 00:07:22.560 that really punches you in the gut. Later on, 00:07:22.579 --> 00:07:25.079 he wrote The Blackbird of Glanmore, which returns 00:07:25.079 --> 00:07:28.100 to this, right? Yes, much later in his life. 00:07:28.220 --> 00:07:31.500 He revisited that loss. In The Blackbird of Glanmore, 00:07:31.639 --> 00:07:34.579 he connects the memory of his brother to a blackbird 00:07:34.579 --> 00:07:37.870 he sees on his land in Wicklow. It's less raw, 00:07:38.029 --> 00:07:40.470 perhaps, but it shows that the grief never really 00:07:40.470 --> 00:07:42.610 leaves. It just changes shape. It becomes part 00:07:42.610 --> 00:07:44.790 of the landscape of his mind. Exactly. So he 00:07:44.790 --> 00:07:47.189 has this grief and he has this education. He's 00:07:47.189 --> 00:07:49.509 moving further and further away from the cattle 00:07:49.509 --> 00:07:52.350 -dealing life of his father. This brings us to 00:07:52.350 --> 00:07:54.750 the central metaphor of his early career. I think 00:07:54.750 --> 00:07:56.790 digging is probably the poem that defines his 00:07:56.790 --> 00:07:59.990 mission statement. It is his manifesto. Without 00:07:59.990 --> 00:08:02.689 a doubt. You have to imagine the anxiety he must 00:08:02.689 --> 00:08:04.589 have felt. He comes from a line of men who worked 00:08:04.589 --> 00:08:06.889 with their hands. His grandfather cut turf on 00:08:06.889 --> 00:08:09.629 the bog. His father handled cattle. Real physical 00:08:09.629 --> 00:08:12.689 labor. Right. And here is Seamus holding a pen, 00:08:12.850 --> 00:08:15.389 reading Latin, studying literature. There was 00:08:15.389 --> 00:08:19.250 a deep sense of almost betrayal. Is he betraying 00:08:19.250 --> 00:08:22.290 his class? Is he betraying his masculinity? That's 00:08:22.290 --> 00:08:24.910 a very real imposter syndrome. My dad is out 00:08:24.910 --> 00:08:26.569 there sweating in the fields and I'm in here 00:08:26.569 --> 00:08:29.449 trying to find a rhyme for flower. Exactly. And 00:08:29.449 --> 00:08:32.730 in digging, he confronts that head on. He looks 00:08:32.730 --> 00:08:34.570 out the window and sees his father digging in 00:08:34.570 --> 00:08:36.850 the flower beds. And he remembers his grandfather 00:08:36.850 --> 00:08:40.039 digging turf. He describes the sound, the nicking 00:08:40.039 --> 00:08:42.580 and slicing, the clean rasping sound of the spade 00:08:42.580 --> 00:08:45.259 sinking into the gravelly ground. He admires 00:08:45.259 --> 00:08:47.320 the skill of it, the rhythm. But then he looks 00:08:47.320 --> 00:08:49.500 at his own hand. He looks at the pen, and he 00:08:49.500 --> 00:08:51.519 has this realization. He says, I've no spade 00:08:51.519 --> 00:08:54.679 to follow men like them. He accepts that he cannot 00:08:54.679 --> 00:08:57.039 do what they did. He isn't that man. But then 00:08:57.039 --> 00:09:00.000 he pivots. Between my finger and my thumb. The 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:02.799 squat pen rests. I'll dig with it. And that is 00:09:02.799 --> 00:09:05.820 the moment everything changes. He reframes writing 00:09:05.820 --> 00:09:08.340 not as this airy -fairy high intellectual pursuit, 00:09:08.519 --> 00:09:11.580 but as a form of digging. He's going to use the 00:09:11.580 --> 00:09:14.419 pen to excavate. He's going to dig into the past, 00:09:14.539 --> 00:09:16.980 dig into the culture, dig into the memory. Just 00:09:16.980 --> 00:09:20.000 like his father dug into the soil, it validates 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:22.820 his art as labor. It's such a powerful way to 00:09:22.820 --> 00:09:24.820 bridge that gap. He's telling himself and his 00:09:24.820 --> 00:09:26.539 family, I'm still working. I'm just working a 00:09:26.539 --> 00:09:28.889 different seam. And that metaphor of digging, 00:09:29.090 --> 00:09:32.169 of going down, of unearthing, it becomes the 00:09:32.169 --> 00:09:34.750 method for his entire career. He is an archaeologist 00:09:34.750 --> 00:09:37.330 of the South and of Ireland. So he commits to 00:09:37.330 --> 00:09:39.950 the pen. He heads to Queen's University, Belfast 00:09:39.950 --> 00:09:43.950 in 1957. This is the late 50s, early 60s. What 00:09:43.950 --> 00:09:46.049 was the atmosphere like for a young poet there? 00:09:46.149 --> 00:09:48.570 I assume the syllabus was very English. Incredibly 00:09:48.570 --> 00:09:50.549 English. You study the canon, Shakespeare, Milton, 00:09:50.750 --> 00:09:52.929 Wordsworth, Keats. And for a young Irish Catholic 00:09:52.929 --> 00:09:55.269 from a rural background, there was this subtle. 00:09:56.300 --> 00:09:59.559 pervasive message that real literature happened 00:09:59.559 --> 00:10:01.860 elsewhere. It happened in London or the Lake 00:10:01.860 --> 00:10:04.600 District. It didn't happen in County Derry. Your 00:10:04.600 --> 00:10:07.759 local life, the barns, the bogs, the dialect, 00:10:07.980 --> 00:10:10.480 that wasn't poetic. That was just backward. So 00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:12.700 how did he break out of that? How did he realize 00:10:12.700 --> 00:10:15.840 that his own life was worth writing about? It 00:10:15.840 --> 00:10:18.139 didn't happen in a vacuum. He was reading widely, 00:10:18.259 --> 00:10:20.919 of course. But the spark, funnily enough, came 00:10:20.919 --> 00:10:24.350 from a British poet, Ted Hughes. Ted Hughes, 00:10:24.649 --> 00:10:26.950 who wrote The Iron Man and was married to Sylvia 00:10:26.950 --> 00:10:29.850 Plath. That's the one. Heaney read a collection 00:10:29.850 --> 00:10:33.200 by Hughes called Lupercal. And Hughes was writing 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:36.059 about the countryside, but not in a polite, pastoral 00:10:36.059 --> 00:10:38.419 way. He was writing about the violence of nature, 00:10:38.500 --> 00:10:41.100 the mud, the blood, the raw vitality of animals. 00:10:41.259 --> 00:10:43.600 It wasn't daffodils dancing in the breeze. No, 00:10:43.600 --> 00:10:45.600 it was pikes in a pond eating each other. It 00:10:45.600 --> 00:10:47.919 was a hawk tearing his prey apart. And Heaney 00:10:47.919 --> 00:10:49.679 read this and said, wait a minute, this sounds 00:10:49.679 --> 00:10:52.360 like my life. He realized that his own local 00:10:52.360 --> 00:10:54.840 county dairy experience, which he thought was 00:10:54.840 --> 00:10:58.000 unliterary, was actually a goldmine. He said 00:10:58.000 --> 00:10:59.720 reading Hughes was like hearing his own voice 00:10:59.720 --> 00:11:02.409 being validated. It gave him permission. That's 00:11:02.409 --> 00:11:05.330 a massive confidence hurdle to clear, to realize 00:11:05.330 --> 00:11:07.710 that your boring background is actually art. 00:11:07.909 --> 00:11:11.269 It is. And he wasn't doing it alone. This is 00:11:11.269 --> 00:11:12.990 where we have to talk about the Belfast group. 00:11:13.370 --> 00:11:14.990 This sounds like a band, but it was a workshop, 00:11:15.129 --> 00:11:17.070 right? It was a writer's group. Yeah. Organized 00:11:17.070 --> 00:11:20.549 by a man named Philip Hobsbawm in 1963. Hobsbawm 00:11:20.549 --> 00:11:23.169 was a lecturer at Queens and he brought together 00:11:23.169 --> 00:11:26.230 these young writers, Heaney, Derek Mahon, Michael 00:11:26.230 --> 00:11:29.450 Longley. They would meet, drink coffee and probably 00:11:29.450 --> 00:11:31.690 other things and critique each other's work. 00:11:31.850 --> 00:11:34.049 Having that peer group must have been essential. 00:11:34.269 --> 00:11:37.309 Iron sharpening iron. Crucial. Yeah. They pushed 00:11:37.309 --> 00:11:39.389 each other. They were competitive, sure, but 00:11:39.389 --> 00:11:41.230 they were also a support network. They were, 00:11:41.250 --> 00:11:44.009 in effect, defining a new Northern Irish poetry. 00:11:44.370 --> 00:11:46.570 And Heaney also had a mentor figure, Michael 00:11:46.570 --> 00:11:49.429 McLaverty. He did. McLaverty was a headmaster 00:11:49.429 --> 00:11:51.169 at the school where Heaney taught for a bit, 00:11:51.289 --> 00:11:54.190 St. Thomas' Secondary School. Right. And McLaverty 00:11:54.190 --> 00:11:56.590 was an established writer himself. a novelist. 00:11:56.850 --> 00:11:59.409 He took Heaney under his wing. He introduced 00:11:59.409 --> 00:12:01.590 him to the poetry of Patrick Cavanaugh. Now, 00:12:01.649 --> 00:12:03.690 Cavanaugh is important because he was an Irish 00:12:03.690 --> 00:12:06.470 rural poet who wrote about the grim realities 00:12:06.470 --> 00:12:09.450 of farming, the bachelor farmers, the stony gray 00:12:09.450 --> 00:12:12.110 soil. McLaverty basically told Heaney, look at 00:12:12.110 --> 00:12:14.590 Cavanaugh, you can do this. Your world is valid. 00:12:14.870 --> 00:12:17.429 So he has the permission from Hughes, he has 00:12:17.429 --> 00:12:19.710 the peers in the Belfast group, and he has the 00:12:19.710 --> 00:12:22.990 mentor in McLaverty. The pieces are all falling 00:12:22.990 --> 00:12:25.389 into place. They are. He starts publishing. he 00:12:25.389 --> 00:12:28.590 gets married to Marie Devlin in 1965, who was 00:12:28.590 --> 00:12:30.549 a writer herself, right? She was. She published 00:12:30.549 --> 00:12:32.710 a collection of Irish myths called Over Nine 00:12:32.710 --> 00:12:35.629 Waves. So he was marrying into an intellectual 00:12:35.629 --> 00:12:38.470 equal, someone who understood the craft. Absolutely. 00:12:38.490 --> 00:12:41.820 And then in 1966, the big one. Death of a Naturalist 00:12:41.820 --> 00:12:43.559 comes out. This is his first major collection 00:12:43.559 --> 00:12:46.659 with Faber and Faber, which was and is the most 00:12:46.659 --> 00:12:49.080 prestigious poetry publisher in the UK. And it 00:12:49.080 --> 00:12:51.200 lands with a splash. It was an immediate success. 00:12:51.360 --> 00:12:54.120 It won the Gregory Award, the Jeffrey Faber Prize. 00:12:54.539 --> 00:12:56.779 Critics loves it. But what they loved was that 00:12:56.779 --> 00:12:59.620 it felt real. This brings us to the concept of 00:12:59.620 --> 00:13:01.970 naturalism. Yeah, let's pause there. We use these 00:13:01.970 --> 00:13:04.809 terms like naturalism and romanticism. Can we 00:13:04.809 --> 00:13:06.889 break that down? If you're a listener who hasn't 00:13:06.889 --> 00:13:09.649 touched a poetry textbook in 20 years, what's 00:13:09.649 --> 00:13:12.629 the difference? Okay, broadly speaking, romanticism 00:13:12.629 --> 00:13:16.509 think, Wordsworth or Keats often looks at nature 00:13:16.509 --> 00:13:19.750 as a source of beauty, spiritual renewal, or 00:13:19.750 --> 00:13:23.629 sublime awe. Nature is a place you go to feel 00:13:23.629 --> 00:13:27.389 good or to feel God. It's idealized. In a way, 00:13:27.450 --> 00:13:30.860 yes. Naturalism, on the other hand, looks at 00:13:30.860 --> 00:13:33.220 nature as a physical system. It includes the 00:13:33.220 --> 00:13:35.879 rot, the decay, the slime, the biological processes. 00:13:36.179 --> 00:13:38.700 It doesn't try to make it pretty. So romanticism 00:13:38.700 --> 00:13:41.179 is the sunset over the mountains. Naturalism 00:13:41.179 --> 00:13:43.830 is the maggot and the dead sheep. Vivid, but 00:13:43.830 --> 00:13:46.029 yes. That's a very good way of putting it. And 00:13:46.029 --> 00:13:47.909 Heaney's Death of a Naturalist is full of that 00:13:47.909 --> 00:13:49.970 stuff. He writes about soggy pee, potato mold, 00:13:50.129 --> 00:13:52.529 frog spawn. He writes about the childhood realization 00:13:52.529 --> 00:13:55.409 that nature isn't just cute animals, it's threatening 00:13:55.409 --> 00:13:57.809 and gross and alive. There's that famous title 00:13:57.809 --> 00:13:59.710 poem, Death of a Naturalist, where the frogs 00:13:59.710 --> 00:14:01.490 essentially turn on him. He loves collecting 00:14:01.490 --> 00:14:03.450 the frog spawn, but then the adult frogs come 00:14:03.450 --> 00:14:06.509 back. They gather in the flax dam, like mud grenades. 00:14:06.789 --> 00:14:09.879 He describes them as gross -bellied. Their slack 00:14:09.879 --> 00:14:13.919 throats pulsed like sails. It's terrifying. It 00:14:13.919 --> 00:14:16.759 is. It's the loss of childhood innocence through 00:14:16.759 --> 00:14:19.379 the encounter with the gross biological reality 00:14:19.379 --> 00:14:22.029 of the world. And critics found this incredibly 00:14:22.029 --> 00:14:24.950 refreshing because it felt honest. It smelled 00:14:24.950 --> 00:14:27.610 of the earth. So he's established. He's the country 00:14:27.610 --> 00:14:29.970 poet. He's the guy who writes about digging frogs. 00:14:30.490 --> 00:14:33.269 But the world around him is changing. We are 00:14:33.269 --> 00:14:35.649 moving into the late 60s. This little rights 00:14:35.649 --> 00:14:37.809 movement is starting in Northern Ireland. The 00:14:37.809 --> 00:14:40.149 tension is building. And this is where the story 00:14:40.149 --> 00:14:42.509 gets darker. The troubles didn't just happen 00:14:42.509 --> 00:14:44.850 in the background. They tore through the fabric 00:14:44.850 --> 00:14:47.190 of the society Heaney was living in. You couldn't 00:14:47.190 --> 00:14:49.090 ignore it. For our listeners who might need a 00:14:49.090 --> 00:14:51.289 quick refresher, the Troubles were a 30 -year 00:14:51.289 --> 00:14:53.610 conflict in Northern Ireland. Roughly speaking, 00:14:53.750 --> 00:14:55.610 you had the Unionists, who were mostly Protestant 00:14:55.610 --> 00:14:58.509 and wanted to remain in the UK, and the Nationalists, 00:14:58.509 --> 00:15:00.710 who were Republicans, mostly Catholic, who wanted 00:15:00.710 --> 00:15:03.990 a united Ireland. And it got incredibly violent. 00:15:04.350 --> 00:15:07.350 Car bombs, assassinations, checkpoints, hunger 00:15:07.350 --> 00:15:11.110 strikes. It was a low -level civil war. And Heaney 00:15:11.110 --> 00:15:14.299 was a prominent Catholic from Derry. The pressure 00:15:14.299 --> 00:15:16.820 on him was immense. From both sides. From all 00:15:16.820 --> 00:15:19.399 sides. Yeah. His community, the nationalist community, 00:15:19.659 --> 00:15:22.639 expected him to speak for them, to use his platform 00:15:22.639 --> 00:15:25.960 to denounce British oppression. But on the other 00:15:25.960 --> 00:15:29.100 side, if he spoke too stridently, he'd be written 00:15:29.100 --> 00:15:31.720 off as a propagandist for the IRA by the British 00:15:31.720 --> 00:15:34.769 media and the unionist community? Exactly. He 00:15:34.769 --> 00:15:36.909 was walking a tightrope. He was accused by some 00:15:36.909 --> 00:15:39.210 Republicans of being an apologist or too passive 00:15:39.210 --> 00:15:41.409 because he didn't write explicit up the rebels 00:15:41.409 --> 00:15:43.990 poetry. Right. But he was also viewed with suspicion 00:15:43.990 --> 00:15:46.210 by the British establishment. He had that quote 00:15:46.210 --> 00:15:48.769 about permitting the situation. What did he mean 00:15:48.769 --> 00:15:50.929 by that? You don't have to love it. You just 00:15:50.929 --> 00:15:53.090 have to permit it. He meant you have to allow 00:15:53.090 --> 00:15:55.129 the reality of the violence to enter your consciousness 00:15:55.129 --> 00:15:57.309 in your work. You can't pretend it isn't happening. 00:15:57.610 --> 00:16:00.139 But he refused to be a rabble rouser. There's 00:16:00.139 --> 00:16:02.220 the example of Requiem for the Crappies. That 00:16:02.220 --> 00:16:05.200 poem is a key moment in this whole dilemma. It 00:16:05.200 --> 00:16:08.480 is a key moment. He wrote this poem in 1966 for 00:16:08.480 --> 00:16:11.659 the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. But 00:16:11.659 --> 00:16:14.840 the poem is about the 1798 rebellion. It describes 00:16:14.840 --> 00:16:17.980 the rebels, the crappies, fighting with pikes 00:16:17.980 --> 00:16:19.879 against the British cannons. And it ends with 00:16:19.879 --> 00:16:23.580 that incredibly powerful image. Yes. The rebels 00:16:23.580 --> 00:16:25.659 were carrying barley in their pockets for food. 00:16:25.779 --> 00:16:27.840 And when they were buried in mass graves, the 00:16:27.840 --> 00:16:30.379 barley grew up out of the ground. He ends the 00:16:30.379 --> 00:16:32.899 poem with, and in August the barley grew up out 00:16:32.899 --> 00:16:35.419 of the grave. It's a powerful image of resilience. 00:16:35.759 --> 00:16:38.399 The people die, but the resistance grows back. 00:16:38.919 --> 00:16:40.779 It's easy to see how that could be taken as a 00:16:40.779 --> 00:16:43.799 call to arms in 1966. And it was. But Heaney 00:16:43.799 --> 00:16:45.759 read that poem to mixed audiences, Catholics 00:16:45.759 --> 00:16:48.299 and Protestants. And he insisted that reading 00:16:48.299 --> 00:16:50.440 it wasn't an incitement to violence. He called 00:16:50.440 --> 00:16:52.980 it silence -breaking. Silence -breaking. He was 00:16:52.980 --> 00:16:55.379 giving voice to a historical grief and a historical 00:16:55.379 --> 00:16:57.600 resistance, but he wasn't telling people to go 00:16:57.600 --> 00:16:59.399 out and plant a bomb today. That distinction 00:16:59.399 --> 00:17:02.019 between silence -breaking and incitement is so 00:17:02.019 --> 00:17:04.259 subtle, but it's everything. But eventually the 00:17:04.259 --> 00:17:06.200 pressure became too much, or at least the environment 00:17:06.200 --> 00:17:10.269 became too stifling. In 1972, he moved. He moved 00:17:10.269 --> 00:17:13.410 his family south to Wicklow in the Republic of 00:17:13.410 --> 00:17:15.869 Ireland. He left the war zone to write full time. 00:17:16.529 --> 00:17:18.750 Some people criticize this as running away. I 00:17:18.750 --> 00:17:21.369 can imagine. But artistically, it was necessary. 00:17:21.690 --> 00:17:24.109 And it led to his most controversial and perhaps 00:17:24.109 --> 00:17:26.990 most brilliant collection, North, which came 00:17:26.990 --> 00:17:29.950 out in 1975. This is where we get the bog poems. 00:17:30.049 --> 00:17:32.670 And this is where the digging metaphor goes from 00:17:32.670 --> 00:17:35.450 being about turf to being about, well, bodies. 00:17:35.509 --> 00:17:38.269 It's a fascinating pivot. Heaney had been reading 00:17:38.269 --> 00:17:40.869 a book by a Danish archaeologist named P .V. 00:17:40.930 --> 00:17:44.230 Glob called The Bog People. It was full of these 00:17:44.230 --> 00:17:47.210 incredible photographs of Iron Age bodies that 00:17:47.210 --> 00:17:49.269 had been preserved in the peat bogs of Denmark. 00:17:49.569 --> 00:17:51.849 Peat is an amazing preservative. It's anaerobic, 00:17:51.910 --> 00:17:54.849 right? It tans the skin like leather. Yes. These 00:17:54.849 --> 00:17:56.750 bodies look like they are sleeping. You can see 00:17:56.750 --> 00:17:58.829 their eyelashes. But they weren't just people 00:17:58.829 --> 00:18:01.390 who fell in. They were ritual sacrifices. They 00:18:01.390 --> 00:18:03.559 were murdered. They were. They had their throats 00:18:03.559 --> 00:18:05.759 cut or they were strangled. They were killed 00:18:05.759 --> 00:18:07.920 by their tribes to appease the goddess of the 00:18:07.920 --> 00:18:10.220 earth, usually during times of crisis or winter. 00:18:10.440 --> 00:18:13.099 And Heaney looks at these 2 ,000 -year -old sacrificial 00:18:13.099 --> 00:18:16.940 victims and sees Belfast. That is the leap of 00:18:16.940 --> 00:18:19.920 genius. He sees a parallel between the tribal 00:18:19.920 --> 00:18:22.640 violence of the Iron Age and the sectarian violence 00:18:22.640 --> 00:18:26.049 of the 1970s. He looks at a poem like The Tollan 00:18:26.049 --> 00:18:29.589 Man or The Grauball Man. He describes the violence 00:18:29.589 --> 00:18:32.450 done to their bodies with incredible forensic 00:18:32.450 --> 00:18:35.150 detail. Why make that connection? Is he saying 00:18:35.150 --> 00:18:37.630 we haven't changed? Is it that bleak? In a way, 00:18:37.670 --> 00:18:40.089 yes. He's suggesting that the violence in Northern 00:18:40.089 --> 00:18:42.349 Ireland wasn't just about modern politics or 00:18:42.349 --> 00:18:44.990 civil rights. He was tapping into a darker, deeper 00:18:44.990 --> 00:18:47.450 current. He was suggesting that this is a recurring 00:18:47.450 --> 00:18:50.250 human tragedy. The need for a tribe to have a 00:18:50.250 --> 00:18:53.230 scapegoat. The need to sacrifice someone to... 00:18:53.500 --> 00:18:55.920 the territory. That is deeply disturbing. It 00:18:55.920 --> 00:18:58.180 takes the conflict out of the realm of politics 00:18:58.180 --> 00:19:00.779 that can be solved and into the realm of ritual 00:19:00.779 --> 00:19:03.200 that just repeats. It is disturbing and it was 00:19:03.200 --> 00:19:06.099 controversial. The critic Ciaran Carson famously 00:19:06.099 --> 00:19:08.599 called him the laureate of violence, a myth maker, 00:19:08.759 --> 00:19:11.819 an anthropologist of ritual killing. Some people 00:19:11.819 --> 00:19:14.140 accused him of mythologizing the violence, of 00:19:14.140 --> 00:19:16.680 making it seem inevitable or beautiful rather 00:19:16.680 --> 00:19:18.420 than a political problem that could be solved. 00:19:18.579 --> 00:19:21.509 It's a heavy charge. It is. But Heaney was trying 00:19:21.509 --> 00:19:23.369 to find a framework to understand the horror 00:19:23.369 --> 00:19:26.250 without just shouting slogans. He was trying 00:19:26.250 --> 00:19:28.750 to find a container for the blood. He was using 00:19:28.750 --> 00:19:31.710 the distance of history 2 ,000 years to get close 00:19:31.710 --> 00:19:33.490 to the trauma of the present. Chris Laisley. 00:19:33.630 --> 00:19:35.670 But while he was doing this deep anthropological 00:19:35.670 --> 00:19:38.250 work, he was also dealing with the day -to -day 00:19:38.250 --> 00:19:41.309 politics of who he was. There's a lighter, sharper 00:19:41.309 --> 00:19:44.369 moment in 1982 involving a poetry anthology. 00:19:44.609 --> 00:19:47.450 Ah, yes. The Penguin Book of Contemporary British 00:19:47.450 --> 00:19:51.210 Poetry. The editors, Blake Morrison and Andrew 00:19:51.210 --> 00:19:54.529 Motion, included Heaney. Now, from their perspective, 00:19:54.769 --> 00:19:56.930 this was an honor. You are one of the great poets 00:19:56.930 --> 00:19:59.109 of these islands. Join the club. But Heaney is 00:19:59.109 --> 00:20:01.490 an Irish nationalist. Being called British is 00:20:01.490 --> 00:20:04.509 complicated. It's not just complicated. For him, 00:20:04.589 --> 00:20:06.589 it's an erasure of his identity. It's a political 00:20:06.589 --> 00:20:09.349 act. So he wrote a pamphlet called An Open Letter. 00:20:09.740 --> 00:20:12.000 And in it, he wrote these famous lines. He advised 00:20:12.000 --> 00:20:14.920 my passport's green. No glass of ours was ever 00:20:14.920 --> 00:20:17.279 raised to toast the queen. It's such a polite 00:20:17.279 --> 00:20:20.859 burn. It's so heeny. It is. It's witty. He's 00:20:20.859 --> 00:20:23.339 not screaming. He even acknowledges in the poem 00:20:23.339 --> 00:20:25.500 that he has British friends and that English 00:20:25.500 --> 00:20:28.279 is his medium. But he draws a line in the sand. 00:20:28.460 --> 00:20:31.400 He says, my constitutional status might be ambiguous, 00:20:31.759 --> 00:20:35.359 but my cultural identity is not. It's him asserting 00:20:35.359 --> 00:20:38.700 control over his own label. He refused the UK 00:20:38.700 --> 00:20:40.859 poet lorry chip for the same reason later on. 00:20:40.940 --> 00:20:43.640 He did. But he did it with grace. He wasn't anti 00:20:43.640 --> 00:20:46.259 -British people. He was anti -imperial assumption. 00:20:47.019 --> 00:20:49.599 He once said, I had lunch at the palace once 00:20:49.599 --> 00:20:52.000 upon a time. He could navigate those worlds, 00:20:52.160 --> 00:20:55.000 but he knew where he stood. So as we move into 00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:58.000 the 80s and 90s, Heaney becomes this truly global 00:20:58.000 --> 00:21:00.240 figure. He's teaching at Harvard. He's the professor 00:21:00.240 --> 00:21:02.819 of poetry at Oxford. This is the era of the Heaney 00:21:02.819 --> 00:21:05.220 Boppers. The fame really did reach a fever pitch. 00:21:05.660 --> 00:21:07.960 He was straddling the Atlantic. He was a professor 00:21:07.960 --> 00:21:11.460 at Harvard from 1981 to 2006. So he became a 00:21:11.460 --> 00:21:13.960 major figure in American letters, too. He was 00:21:13.960 --> 00:21:15.859 the voice of Ireland for the world. And that 00:21:15.859 --> 00:21:18.880 culminates in 1995 with the Nobel Prize in Literature. 00:21:18.920 --> 00:21:20.880 The biggest prize in literature. The one that 00:21:20.880 --> 00:21:23.279 changes your life forever. I love the story of 00:21:23.279 --> 00:21:25.440 how he found out because it's so on Hollywood. 00:21:25.460 --> 00:21:29.240 It feels very true to his character. It's perfect. 00:21:29.359 --> 00:21:32.640 He was in Greece on holiday with Marie. This 00:21:32.640 --> 00:21:34.519 was before everyone had a smartphone in their 00:21:34.519 --> 00:21:37.930 pocket. The Nobel Committee was frantically trying 00:21:37.930 --> 00:21:41.529 to call him, but he was just away, out of touch. 00:21:41.690 --> 00:21:44.210 I can just imagine the Swedish Academy sweating, 00:21:44.430 --> 00:21:45.750 wondering if he's going to pick up the phone. 00:21:45.950 --> 00:21:48.269 Eventually, a journalist tracks him down. He 00:21:48.269 --> 00:21:50.910 lands at Dublin Airport two days later, and the 00:21:50.910 --> 00:21:54.089 world is waiting. The media scrum is insane. 00:21:54.369 --> 00:21:57.029 And his reaction is just so grounded. The citation 00:21:57.029 --> 00:22:00.089 praised his works of lyrical beauty and ethical 00:22:00.089 --> 00:22:02.480 depth. That's heavy stuff. But when asked how 00:22:02.480 --> 00:22:04.460 he felt about joining the list of Irish winners, 00:22:04.700 --> 00:22:08.259 Yates, Shaw, Beckett, he said, it's like being 00:22:08.259 --> 00:22:10.500 a little foothill at the bottom of a mountain 00:22:10.500 --> 00:22:12.920 range. A little foothill. That is serious humility. 00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:15.279 It is. And privately, as we said, he called it 00:22:15.279 --> 00:22:17.279 the end thing. Did you sort out the end thing? 00:22:17.420 --> 00:22:19.779 It was a way of domesticating the glory. He didn't 00:22:19.779 --> 00:22:21.700 want the prize to separate him from his friends 00:22:21.700 --> 00:22:24.359 or his roots. He wanted to remain Seamus. He 00:22:24.359 --> 00:22:27.200 was intensely aware of the danger of that kind 00:22:27.200 --> 00:22:29.539 of thing. He didn't want it to buff him up. But 00:22:29.539 --> 00:22:32.190 despite the foothill comment, The world didn't 00:22:32.190 --> 00:22:34.569 see him that way. The critic Robert Lowell called 00:22:34.569 --> 00:22:37.430 him the most important Irish poet since Yeats. 00:22:38.349 --> 00:22:42.049 That is the crown. It is. And arguably, Heaney 00:22:42.049 --> 00:22:45.130 was more beloved than Yeats. Yeats was aristocratic, 00:22:45.210 --> 00:22:50.369 distant. He was the farmer's son. He was approachable. 00:22:50.430 --> 00:22:52.269 You felt like you could have a pint with Seamus 00:22:52.269 --> 00:22:54.029 Heaney. You wouldn't necessarily want a pint 00:22:54.029 --> 00:22:56.549 with Yeats. He might cast a spell on you or talk 00:22:56.549 --> 00:22:59.849 about fairies. That's exactly. So he wins the 00:22:59.849 --> 00:23:02.650 Nobel. He's achieved everything a poet can possibly 00:23:02.650 --> 00:23:05.690 achieve. You'd think he might relax. But in 1999, 00:23:05.990 --> 00:23:08.470 he does something incredibly risky. And as it 00:23:08.470 --> 00:23:11.390 turns out, incredibly popular. He publishes a 00:23:11.390 --> 00:23:14.410 translation of Beowulf. Beowulf. The bane of 00:23:14.410 --> 00:23:17.109 high school English students everywhere. An old 00:23:17.109 --> 00:23:19.650 English epic about monsters and dragons. Not 00:23:19.650 --> 00:23:21.630 exactly a page -turner for most people. Why did 00:23:21.630 --> 00:23:23.450 he do it? And why did it become a bestseller? 00:23:23.509 --> 00:23:25.390 I mean, it beat Harry Potter on the bestseller 00:23:25.390 --> 00:23:27.710 list at one point? That's insane. The success 00:23:27.710 --> 00:23:30.549 comes down to voice. Heaney realized that he 00:23:30.549 --> 00:23:32.109 didn't have to write it in standard English. 00:23:32.849 --> 00:23:35.589 He realized that the old English language, the 00:23:35.589 --> 00:23:38.130 language of the Anglo -Saxons, had a taproot 00:23:38.130 --> 00:23:40.269 that connected to the dialect he grew up with 00:23:40.269 --> 00:23:43.559 in Ulster. How so? Can you give an example? Well, 00:23:43.579 --> 00:23:45.259 in Northern Ireland, the English spoken there 00:23:45.259 --> 00:23:47.779 is infused with Scots and Gaelic. Yeah. But it 00:23:47.779 --> 00:23:49.960 also retains old archaic words that have died 00:23:49.960 --> 00:23:52.099 out in standard British English. He gives the 00:23:52.099 --> 00:23:55.000 example of the word thole. Thole. T -H -O -L 00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:58.460 -E. Yes. It means to suffer, to endure. I couldn't 00:23:58.460 --> 00:24:00.500 thole it. Heaney grew up hearing his aunt say 00:24:00.500 --> 00:24:03.599 that. And he found that word in Beowulf. So he 00:24:03.599 --> 00:24:06.240 realized that his own local voice was actually 00:24:06.240 --> 00:24:08.200 the perfect instrument to translate this ancient 00:24:08.200 --> 00:24:11.460 poem. So he translated Beowulf into Ulster English. 00:24:11.740 --> 00:24:14.079 In a way, he used the cadence and the vocabulary 00:24:14.079 --> 00:24:16.440 of his childhood. The very first word of the 00:24:16.440 --> 00:24:19.579 poem in Old English is quite. Traditionally, 00:24:19.599 --> 00:24:22.980 translators rendered this as hark or listen or 00:24:22.980 --> 00:24:26.200 low. Very King James Bible. Very formal. Extremely 00:24:26.200 --> 00:24:31.549 formal. He translated white as so. So just. So? 00:24:31.549 --> 00:24:36.349 So. The Spear Danes in Days Gone By. It's conversational. 00:24:36.490 --> 00:24:38.990 It sounds like a man in a pub in County Derry 00:24:38.990 --> 00:24:41.789 slapping the table and starting a story. So let 00:24:41.789 --> 00:24:44.130 me tell you this. Grab the reader immediately. 00:24:44.369 --> 00:24:46.970 It took the poem out of the museum and put it 00:24:46.970 --> 00:24:49.089 back in the mouth. That is a brilliant example 00:24:49.089 --> 00:24:50.670 of what we talked about earlier, trusting his 00:24:50.670 --> 00:24:52.309 own background. He didn't try to sound like an 00:24:52.309 --> 00:24:54.950 Oxford Don. He sounded like a Heaney. Exactly. 00:24:54.950 --> 00:24:57.009 He reclaimed the English language by showing 00:24:57.009 --> 00:24:59.369 that his version of it was just as valid and 00:24:59.369 --> 00:25:01.910 perhaps more powerful than the standard version. 00:25:02.170 --> 00:25:04.829 This openness to language brings me to a detail 00:25:04.829 --> 00:25:07.329 I absolutely love. We have the Nobel Prize winner, 00:25:07.509 --> 00:25:10.230 the Oxford professor, the translator of Beowulf 00:25:10.230 --> 00:25:14.589 talking about Eminem. Yes. Yeah. In 2003, it 00:25:14.589 --> 00:25:17.109 was a wonderful moment. Heaney praised Eminem. 00:25:17.150 --> 00:25:19.490 He said Eminem sent a voltage around a generation. 00:25:19.869 --> 00:25:22.450 He was fascinated by the verbal energy. And you 00:25:22.450 --> 00:25:25.170 can see why. Heaney wasn't a snob. He didn't 00:25:25.170 --> 00:25:26.670 care if the words were in a leather -bound book 00:25:26.670 --> 00:25:29.289 or a rap song. If the words had power, if they 00:25:29.289 --> 00:25:31.210 had rhythm, if they had alliteration and assonance, 00:25:31.349 --> 00:25:34.710 if they moved people, he respected it. Voltage 00:25:34.710 --> 00:25:37.029 is a great word for it. It implies a physical 00:25:37.029 --> 00:25:39.710 shock. And that's what Heaney always wanted poetry 00:25:39.710 --> 00:25:42.650 to be. Not a puzzle to be solved, but a physical 00:25:42.650 --> 00:25:45.549 experience. A shock to the system. We should 00:25:45.549 --> 00:25:47.210 also mention his theater work. He wasn't just 00:25:47.210 --> 00:25:50.150 a poet. No, he wrote adaptations of Greek tragedies. 00:25:50.549 --> 00:25:54.049 The Cure at Troy? based on Sophocles' Philoctes, 00:25:54.250 --> 00:25:56.829 is the most famous. It has that line about the 00:25:56.829 --> 00:25:59.970 moment when hope and history rhyme. But in 2004, 00:26:00.130 --> 00:26:03.130 he wrote The Burial of Thebes, which is an adaptation 00:26:03.130 --> 00:26:05.490 of Sophocles' Antigone. And this wasn't just 00:26:05.490 --> 00:26:07.829 an academic exercise either, was it? No, it was 00:26:07.829 --> 00:26:10.490 2004, the Iraq War, the Bush administration. 00:26:11.200 --> 00:26:13.619 Antigone is a play about a woman who defies the 00:26:13.619 --> 00:26:17.119 state, King Creon, to bury her brother. It's 00:26:17.119 --> 00:26:19.259 about the clash between personal conscience and 00:26:19.259 --> 00:26:22.339 state power. And Heaney saw parallels. Clear 00:26:22.339 --> 00:26:25.200 parallels between Creon's rigid, uncompromising 00:26:25.200 --> 00:26:27.720 stance and the Bush -Blair rhetoric of you are 00:26:27.720 --> 00:26:30.119 either with us or against us. He was using the 00:26:30.119 --> 00:26:31.859 classics to comment on the present again, just 00:26:31.859 --> 00:26:34.079 like he did with the bog poems. He never stopped 00:26:34.079 --> 00:26:36.720 engaging with the world. But the world eventually 00:26:36.720 --> 00:26:39.779 catches up with all of us. In 2006, he had a 00:26:39.779 --> 00:26:42.750 major health scare. He did. He suffered a stroke. 00:26:42.930 --> 00:26:45.549 He was in Donegal, staying with his friend, the 00:26:45.549 --> 00:26:48.349 playwright Brian Friel. He woke up and couldn't 00:26:48.349 --> 00:26:50.269 move his leg. He was rushed to the hospital. 00:26:50.509 --> 00:26:52.529 And even in the ambulance, the wit was there. 00:26:53.329 --> 00:26:57.450 Laughs. It's incredible. He recounts that when 00:26:57.450 --> 00:26:59.250 the paramedics were attaching the heart monitor, 00:26:59.450 --> 00:27:01.950 he looked at them and said, blessed are the pacemakers. 00:27:02.190 --> 00:27:04.470 That is incredible. A pun on the Sermon on the 00:27:04.470 --> 00:27:06.289 Mount while you're having a stroke. It just shows 00:27:06.289 --> 00:27:09.410 his mind was still firing on all cylinders. But 00:27:09.410 --> 00:27:11.509 the stroke shook him badly. He wrote about feeling 00:27:11.509 --> 00:27:14.289 babyish, crying easily, feeling the fragility 00:27:14.289 --> 00:27:17.589 of his body. It changed his work. His 2010 collection, 00:27:17.849 --> 00:27:20.289 Human Chain, is very different from his earlier 00:27:20.289 --> 00:27:23.230 stuff. How so? What's the shift? It's lighter. 00:27:23.349 --> 00:27:26.410 It's airier. It's almost ghostly. The critic 00:27:26.410 --> 00:27:28.910 Colm Toibin called it a book of shades and memories. 00:27:29.230 --> 00:27:31.730 He writes about his parents again, but this time 00:27:31.730 --> 00:27:33.450 it's about trying to help his father get up from 00:27:33.450 --> 00:27:35.789 the bed or remembering the weight of his wife's 00:27:35.789 --> 00:27:38.720 hand. It's a book about holding on to human connection 00:27:38.720 --> 00:27:41.799 before you let go. Human chain. We are all linked. 00:27:42.059 --> 00:27:45.559 Exactly. Hand to hand. It's a very tender, very 00:27:45.559 --> 00:27:48.559 mortal book. Which brings us to the end. August 00:27:48.559 --> 00:27:52.859 2013. Heaney is 74. He's recovered from the stroke. 00:27:52.940 --> 00:27:55.259 He's still active, still traveling. He went for 00:27:55.259 --> 00:27:58.039 dinner with Marie and a friend in Dublin. He 00:27:58.039 --> 00:27:59.980 fell outside the restaurant. It seemed like a 00:27:59.980 --> 00:28:02.059 minor fall, but he was taken to the Black Rock 00:28:02.059 --> 00:28:04.140 Clinic for observation. And the next morning, 00:28:04.200 --> 00:28:07.180 he was gone. A ruptured artery in his aorta. 00:28:07.259 --> 00:28:10.599 It was sudden. And the reaction was just global 00:28:10.599 --> 00:28:13.559 grief. The funeral was broadcast live on Irish 00:28:13.559 --> 00:28:16.279 television. You had politicians like Bill Clinton, 00:28:16.440 --> 00:28:19.799 rock stars like Bono, poets and farmers all mourning 00:28:19.799 --> 00:28:22.400 him. But the thing that everyone remembers, the 00:28:22.400 --> 00:28:24.440 thing that still gives me chills is the final 00:28:24.440 --> 00:28:26.759 message. This is the moment that elevates his 00:28:26.759 --> 00:28:29.950 story into something almost spiritual. Minutes 00:28:29.950 --> 00:28:31.450 before he was taken to the operating theater, 00:28:31.589 --> 00:28:33.569 minutes before he died, he sent a text message 00:28:33.569 --> 00:28:35.430 to his wife, Marie. She wasn't in the room with 00:28:35.430 --> 00:28:37.789 him. She was on her way or just outside. He was 00:28:37.789 --> 00:28:39.809 alone for a moment, and he typed two words in 00:28:39.809 --> 00:28:43.710 Latin. Noli timer. Noli timer. Be not afraid. 00:28:43.869 --> 00:28:47.150 Why Latin and why that phrase? Well, the Latin 00:28:47.150 --> 00:28:49.190 is the language of his education, the language 00:28:49.190 --> 00:28:51.190 of the Catholic Church of his childhood, the 00:28:51.190 --> 00:28:53.549 language of the classics. It was deep in his 00:28:53.549 --> 00:28:56.569 hard drive. But the sentiment. Be not afraid. 00:28:56.789 --> 00:28:58.970 It appears in the Bible when angels appear to 00:28:58.970 --> 00:29:01.470 humans. It appears when Jesus walks on water. 00:29:01.750 --> 00:29:04.789 It is the ultimate message of reassurance from 00:29:04.789 --> 00:29:07.289 the beyond. It's devastatingly beautiful. He's 00:29:07.289 --> 00:29:09.170 facing his own death, the terrifying unknown, 00:29:09.410 --> 00:29:12.349 and his final act is to comfort his wife, to 00:29:12.349 --> 00:29:15.009 tell her not to be afraid. It encapsulates his 00:29:15.009 --> 00:29:17.589 entire character. He was a man of immense duty 00:29:17.589 --> 00:29:20.569 and immense love. And he used his final breath 00:29:20.569 --> 00:29:22.950 or his final thumbs to try to make it easier 00:29:22.950 --> 00:29:24.710 for the person he loved. It also feels like a 00:29:24.710 --> 00:29:27.609 message to us, to his readers. I think so. I 00:29:27.609 --> 00:29:29.470 think it has to be. He spent his life looking 00:29:29.470 --> 00:29:32.130 at the bog bodies, the violence, the gaudy scars, 00:29:32.329 --> 00:29:34.430 the coffins. He didn't shy away from the darkness. 00:29:34.670 --> 00:29:37.549 But his final conclusion wasn't despair. It was 00:29:37.549 --> 00:29:41.099 courage. Nulli Tamir. That courage is literally 00:29:41.099 --> 00:29:43.279 carved in stone now. We have to talk about his 00:29:43.279 --> 00:29:45.779 epitaph. He's buried in belly, right? Why? Back 00:29:45.779 --> 00:29:48.420 in the earth of County Derry, back where he started. 00:29:48.960 --> 00:29:51.400 And the headstone bears a line from one of his 00:29:51.400 --> 00:29:54.039 poems, The Gravel Walks. Walk on air against 00:29:54.039 --> 00:29:56.200 your better judgment. I love this line. Walk 00:29:56.200 --> 00:29:58.460 on air against your better judgment. It's so 00:29:58.460 --> 00:30:00.900 optimistic, but also so realistic. Let's unpack 00:30:00.900 --> 00:30:03.640 that. Better judgment is sensible. It's gravity. 00:30:03.819 --> 00:30:06.480 It's logic. It's what keeps you safe. Better 00:30:06.480 --> 00:30:09.559 judgment. is what tells you to keep your head 00:30:09.559 --> 00:30:12.539 down, to not take risks, to stay on the ground. 00:30:12.740 --> 00:30:16.039 But Heaney is telling us to defy that, to walk 00:30:16.039 --> 00:30:18.960 on air, to allow ourselves to feel joy, to feel 00:30:18.960 --> 00:30:22.220 uplift, to trust in art and the spirit, even 00:30:22.220 --> 00:30:24.809 when the world tells us it's foolish. It connects 00:30:24.809 --> 00:30:27.130 back to the Heaney Boppers, doesn't it? The excitement 00:30:27.130 --> 00:30:29.910 he generated. He lifted poetry off the page and 00:30:29.910 --> 00:30:32.549 made it walk on air for a while. He did. He proved 00:30:32.549 --> 00:30:34.269 the poetry wasn't just for the classroom. It 00:30:34.269 --> 00:30:36.869 was for life. It was a survival mechanism. He 00:30:36.869 --> 00:30:39.210 believed it should be transformative, not just 00:30:39.210 --> 00:30:41.369 a printout of reality. And his legacy is still 00:30:41.369 --> 00:30:43.630 growing. The Seamus Heaney Homeplace in Belly 00:30:43.630 --> 00:30:46.009 is a huge visitor center now. And there is a 00:30:46.009 --> 00:30:49.859 new book coming in 2025. Yes. The poems of Seamus 00:30:49.859 --> 00:30:52.319 Heaney. It's going to be the definitive collection, 00:30:52.559 --> 00:30:55.099 including uncollected works. So we aren't done 00:30:55.099 --> 00:30:57.000 learning from him yet. I think it's the perfect 00:30:57.000 --> 00:30:59.160 place to land. We've gone from the boy at Moss 00:30:59.160 --> 00:31:01.460 Bonn listening to the wind in the chimney to 00:31:01.460 --> 00:31:03.720 the Nobel laureate telling the world, be not 00:31:03.720 --> 00:31:06.339 afraid. It's a journey that shows the power of 00:31:06.339 --> 00:31:09.359 paying attention. Heaney paid attention to the 00:31:09.359 --> 00:31:12.440 small things, the spade, the pen, the blackbird. 00:31:12.880 --> 00:31:15.839 And through them, he understood the world. He 00:31:15.839 --> 00:31:18.440 made the local universal. So here is the takeaway 00:31:18.440 --> 00:31:20.680 for you listening. We live in a world that is 00:31:20.680 --> 00:31:23.359 loud, often violent, and full of better judgment 00:31:23.359 --> 00:31:25.519 telling us to be cynical. It's very easy to be 00:31:25.519 --> 00:31:27.640 cynical. It's the default setting. But Heaney 00:31:27.640 --> 00:31:30.799 challenges us to dig deeper, to trust our own 00:31:30.799 --> 00:31:33.079 voice, our own local experience, and ultimately 00:31:33.079 --> 00:31:36.519 to walk on air. My challenge to you today, read 00:31:36.519 --> 00:31:39.599 one Heaney poem. Don't analyze it for a grade. 00:31:39.680 --> 00:31:42.099 Just read it. Read postscript. Read digging. 00:31:42.400 --> 00:31:44.539 Read midterm break. Listen to the sound of it. 00:31:44.640 --> 00:31:47.190 Let the voltage hit you. Exactly. And maybe for 00:31:47.190 --> 00:31:50.509 a moment, you'll feel that reassurance, that 00:31:50.509 --> 00:31:53.190 courage. No lead timer. Thanks for digging with 00:31:53.190 --> 00:31:54.529 us today. We'll see you on the next deep dive.