Cocktail: nothing. The ice would have fallen out of my drink as I jogged through Central Park in a desperate attempt to get to the Society of Ethical Culture on 64th and 7th Ave. in 10 minutes. Doggone it.
The 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature will be awarded tomorrow. Bookmakers say that it won't be an American; accolades for fiction will reflect the non-fiction that America is decidedly unpopular right now. Perhaps the Swedes can give the Nobel to Seamus Heaney again. That would be a decidedly popular gesture.
Mr. Heaney was in town last week-end as part of the New Yorker Festival. He participated in an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Princeton professor, Paul Muldoon. The interview was noticeable for its avoidance of alliteration.
Mr. Heaney was 1995 Nobel winner for "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." He himself is an everyday miracle. In his discussion with Prof. Muldoon about history and homeland, Heaney was brilliant, and yet at the same time, warm, personable, accessible! He was the Nobel Laureate next door. And surprisingly, he was unapologetic for being the intellectual who managed to put Beowulf back on the bestsellers list.
The role of the poet in new Ireland (which the Prof. noted was starting to resemble old Ireland) was considered by Heaney to be a register for society, not a megaphone. He used the example of his "deeply ambivalent" feelings toward the IRA in his home town of Derry. He understood their desires to be free from England but "deeply ashamed of their methods." The role of the poet is to put a pen to that ambivalence.
Mr. Heaney's additional role in Irish drama is significant if not as well known as his poetry. He had been part of Brian Friel's groundbreaking Field Day Theatre Project in the 1980s, and he was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre to translate Sophocles'
Burial At Thebes. Here is a standout review in The Guardian on the interpretation.
The Derryman got one of his many laughs in describing his work in translations: "Working with with languages I don't know makes my work much easier. It is freeing, and I have less anxiety." Almost as funny as his musings on Danny Boy also known as The Derry Air. The Derry Air. Say it aloud. It may be an old joke but new to this Washington outsider.
I will leave you (though there was so much more) with his most inspiring statements on perseverance. He meant it toward the act of writing but watching the Dow and Washington Journal, I imagine it can be applicable to all livelihoods. "The most important thing is to get started, keep it going, and then get started again."
Digging
- by Seamus Heaney
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
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