Poetry English Language

Human Chain

Seamus Heaney

2010 Faber & Faber

Interviewer: Do you ever feel confined by the personal mythologies that take over a life? […]
Heaney: Well, I’d go back to the image of the concentric ripples. They are always on the move and invisible to themselves. It’s the person looking at the pool from the bank who sees the process as a pattern. The public’s perception is just that, and you can never share it, even if you wanted to. And your own perception of yourself is always going to be very different. Imagine if you were an oyster. The public would see you as an infrangible nut, a kind of sea-raid shelter, but you would feel yourself all mother-of-pearly inwardness and vulnerability.

Seamus Heaney

Human Chain

Seamus Heaney

2010 Faber & Faber

Interviewer: Do you ever feel confined by the personal mythologies that take over a life? […]
Heaney: Well, I’d go back to the image of the concentric ripples. They are always on the move and invisible to themselves. It’s the person looking at the pool from the bank who sees the process as a pattern. The public’s perception is just that, and you can never share it, even if you wanted to. And your own perception of yourself is always going to be very different. Imagine if you were an oyster. The public would see you as an infrangible nut, a kind of sea-raid shelter, but you would feel yourself all mother-of-pearly inwardness and vulnerability.

Seamus Heaney

Description

Human Chain is Seamus Heaney’s twelfth and final poetry collection. His career spans five decades, with his first major work Death of a Naturalist published in 1966, and includes four collections of prose, two plays, and acclaimed translations of Beowulf and The Aeneid, amongst other translated works. During his lifetime he received many honours and international accolades, including the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, and his work has been translated into over 25 languages. Seamus Heaney passed away on 30th August 2013.

 

 
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