Image courtesy of nobelprize.org

It could have been a U2 concert, that’s how packed Schwartz Auditorium in Rockefeller Hall was on October 25^th. Except the famed Irishman inside wasn’t Bono or The Edge; it was Seamus Heaney, the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient, and the third speaker in the Barbara and David Zalaznick Fall 2012 Cornell Reading Series.

Introduced by Assistant Professor of English Ishion Hutchinson, who said that Heaney’s poetry has “accomplished that slight alteration of language” and “[brings] the whole soul of man into activity”, Heaney, who is 73, read in a quiet, reserved tone that heightened the sometimes-dark images in his poetry. While his voice remained rather monotone throughout the readings, and there was no applause interspersing each piece, the atmosphere lent itself to an appreciation of poems like “A Sofa in the Forties”, which takes a retrospective look at a childhood pastime. The poem describes a game Heaney used to play with his peers, pretending that the couch was a train while they watched “Riders of the Range”. But with an adult’s hindsight, Heaney compared the activity to the trains transporting people to concentration camps during World War II.

Heaney often writes from a reflective point of view, as he discovered writing a little later on in life than many literaries. Other pieces, evocative because of their history and nostalgia, include “Railway Children” (from Station Island), “To George Seferis in the Underworld” (from District and Circle) and “Album” (from Human and Chain). Heaney also writes with inclusions of his homeland in setting and diction, inevitably reminiscent of Joyce, but maintaining a distinct style, grace, and beauty in his syntax. His poems often embody a simple composition and form, but their beauty lies in the imagery and subject. Heaney’s body of work encompasses over forty years of poetry, amongst other pursuits, so there is no shortage of fodder for the reader craving a unique verse to entertain or provoke thought, especially since Heaney is acutely aware of the humor and irony of life. He brings this to his writings, such as in lines from a celebratory poem, “Oyster”: “My palate hung with starlight:” and “…I ate the day/ Deliberately, that its tang/Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb”, which exhibit Heaney’s ability to capture a moment with perhaps more beauty than it actually possessed.

Over eight years of stop and go, Heaney succeeded in re-translating Beowulf, incorporating his own Irish brand of diction and turns of phrase, a work for which he is still well-known, evidenced by the audience member who willingly relinquished her copy to Heaney, when he requested it so he could read a passage during the event. He has written countless anthologies, plays, and other translations. Given his innate sense of perseverance and creative energy, it is no wonder that Heaney has continued to write and find fountainheads of inspiration.