• Welcome
    • Curriculum Vitae
    • About Me
  • Publications
    • Work in Progress
  • Blog
  • Provocations

MORE ON SEAMUS HEANEY'S LAST WORDS 

9/10/2013

2 Comments

 
Helen Vendler was kind enough to respond to my recent blog post on Seamus Heaney's last words.  She writes:“I think he was thinking back to his poem "The Master", which, as he told me himself, is about Milosz.  You may know it.  Seamus climbs precariously up the master's tower, but when he gains the Master's presence and is instructed by him, he finds the following:

Deliberately he would unclasp

his book of withholding

a page at a time, and it was nothing

arcane, just the old rules

we all had inscribed on our slates.

Each character blocked on the parchment secure

in its volume and measure.

Each maxim given its space.

Tell the truth.  Do not be afraid.




Durable, obstinate notions,

like quarrymen's hammers and wedges

proofed by intransigent service.
Like coping stones where you rest
in the balm of the wellspring.

So I think he may have been crossing his Milosz poem with the address of the risen Jesus to Mary Magdalene, saying that human touch was no longer possible between himself and this woman.”

2 Comments
Jim Tatum link
1/12/2014 02:30:02 am

"Tell the truth. Do not be afraid." Yes, Heaney is right as usual. Recall Emily Dickinson's "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant/Success in circuit lies/Too bright for our infirm delight/The truth's superb surprise/Like Lightning to the children eased/With explanation kind/The turth must dazzle gradually/Or every man be blind." James M. Cox, one of the great teachers at Dartmouth and a fine reader of American literature, esp. Mark Twain, recited this poem to me when I first started teaching there. I wish I had understood it better than I did at first. Better late than never.

Reply
Jim Tatum
1/12/2014 02:31:44 am

This is a characteristically brilliant observation, but go down to the laundry room and put the cothes in the dryer.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    RSS Feed

    Picture