Seamus Heaney's Religious Redress

Abstract

For Seamus Heaney, as it is for many who originate from Northern Ireland, religion is closely allied to politics. Heaney's religious ideals, however, extend beyond the divisiveness of sectarianism, and stem from the desire for unity, balance and redress. He finds these religious and social ideals voiced by Simone Weil, the religious writer and social activist. The religious nature of Heaney's early poems originates in part from his regard for the landscape as a sacramental book that offers an alternative reality beyond the covert level of meaning. By naming or renaming a place, one has written or rewrit ten one's meanings onto it, endowing it with an alternative reality. Hence, the first task of historical redress is to recover the poet's alternative or Celtic heritage beneath the Anglicisation of placenames. The second task, which balances and interrogates the first, is to seek out the linguistic heritage shared by the Celts and their British colonisers. Heaney's etymological endeavours, therefore, work to uncover and unite the different and yet interrelated cultural identities of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Likewise, his desire for equilibrium enables him to reread and interrogate the wounded text-bodies of sectarian 'martyrs', thereby challenging their apotheosis. He compares the poet to a medieval poet-scribe whose function was to negotiate between two differing visions of reality, the 'pagan' and the Christian. Similarly, he believes the present-day poet may offer the middle way of peace and redress. In both the introduction and first chapter of The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures, Seamus Heaney focuses on negotiation and countervailing. Of the first and last poems discussed in this volume of lectures (Herbert's 'The Pulley' and one from his own series of poems, 'Squarings'), Heaney observes that '[b]oth poems are about the way consciousness can be alive to two different and con tradictory dimensions of reality and still find a way of negotiating between them'.1 Further on he quotes from Gravity and Grace, by the religious writer and social activist, Simone Weil: If we know in what way society is unbalanced, we must do what we can to add weight to the lighter scale ... we must have formed a conception of equilibrium and be ever ready to change sides like justice, 'that fugitive from the camp of ,2 conquerors . Literature & Theology 17/1 © Oxford University Press 2003; all rights reserved. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.76 on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 04:24:07 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms