Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Justin Heaney, MRIAwas an Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, and the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 April 1939
CityCastledawson, Northern Ireland
CountryIreland
art ifs inner-life
If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.
writing impulse ifs
The thing about writing is that if you have the impulse, you will find the time.
self location ifs
If self is a location, so is love.
way chance ifs
If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.
green passports ifs
Don't be surprised if I demur, for, be advised my passport's green.
hope ifs
Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.
beings both conduct envisage exposure human inner moment reminder scary
It was like a moment of exposure to interstellar cold, a reminder of the scary element, both inner and outer, in which human beings must envisage and conduct their lives.
time
The wartime, in other words, was pre-reflective time for me. Pre-literate too. Pre-historical in its way.
art born brought devoted earnest experience ireland lived northern past quarter though towards
This temperamental disposition towards an art that was earnest and devoted to things as they are was corroborated by the experience of having been born and brought up in Northern Ireland and of having lived with that place even though I have lived out of it for the past quarter of a century.
conferred fact musically order poet quite repose satisfying seeking speaker stability strain towards uttered
But the thing uttered by the speaker I strain towards is still not quite the story of what is going on; it is more reflexive than that, because as a poet I am in fact straining towards a strain, seeking repose in the stability conferred by a musically satisfying order of sounds.
censure considers flourish itself qualified rhetoric vigilance
No place in the world prides itself more on its vigilance and realism, no place considers itself more qualified to censure any flourish of rhetoric or extravagance of aspiration.
electric heart impatient picture proper sets shock surprise television
We want the surprise to be transitive like the impatient thump which unexpectedly restores the picture to the television set, or the electric shock which sets the fibrillating heart back to its proper rhythm.
advised glass ours raised surprised toast
Don't be surprised if I demur, for, be advised my passport's green. No glass of ours was ever raised to toast The Queen.
alive attentive behind grown history news
I may have grown more attentive to the news and more alive to the world history and world-sorrow behind it.