“Like blossoms on slow water”: the Power of Metaphor in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry and its Translation

Abstract

The translation of poetry between English and French is dependent on the recognition of the centrality of metaphoric networks, not only within a poem but between poems in a poet’s body of work. In order to translate Seamus Heaney as the serious, contemporary Irish poet that he is, it is necessary to have an understanding and appreciation of his philosophy, his culture, his language, and of the metaphoric networks between these levels within his poetry. If for example the metaphor of water can create a way out of an apparent impasse in Heaney’s poetry, so then will this need to be achieved in the translation – the metaphor of water itself migrating across cultural and linguistic boundaries between the two languages.