A Way-Station Along a Way: Heaney and Heidegger and Wanderings and Home

Irene Gilsenan Nordin

In his Nobel lecture in 1995, Seamus Heaney uses the metaphor of the journey to describe the transition in time and space - both psychic and physical space - from his childhood home in rural Co. Derry to his standing in front of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, to receive the Nobel prize in literature. He describes what he calls this journey into the wideness of the world beyond, in terms of a journey into language itself, a journey that takes him from the child, in the farmhouse kitchen, climbing up on the arm of the sofa to get his ear closer to the wireless speaker, listening to the voices from the outside world, to his standing there as a man, in that honoured gathering, delivering his speech. He describes the journey, in his own words, as a journey into the wideness of language, a journey where each point of arrival - whether in ones poetry or ones life - turned out to be a stepping stone rather than a destination.[1] This idea of language as journey, as a stepping stone rather than a destination, as a movement outward from a state of silence to an articulation in speech, is an important motif in Heaneys poetry. It can be seen in terms of a bringing together of pre-verbal and verbal articulation, or what Julia Kristeva calls the mediation between preverbal semiotic space and the symbolic operations that depend on language as a sign system.[2] It can be seen as a search for articulation which the speaking subject makes on its journey into language. We see an example of this in an early poem, The Peninsula, from Door into the Dark, where the act of writing itself is described as a physical journey that the speaking subject makes into language. The poem begins with the interior space of the silent subject, then moves gradually outward to encompass the whole of the landscape: When you have nothing more to say, just drive / For a day all round the peninsula. As the physical space widens around the speaker, so too does the physic space, which constantly draws the speaking subject forward: The sky is tall as over a runway, / The land without marks so you will not arrive / But pass through, though always skirting landfall.[3] This constant state of movement suggests a state of estrangement, or homelessness, on the part of the speaking subject, a state which is juxtaposed with the return

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home that is suggested at the end of the poem: And drive back home, still with nothing to say / Except that now you will uncode all landscapes / [. . . ]. Here, the arrival home is again associated with the sense of absence and silence, expressed at the beginning of the poem. But the end of the journey also suggests a newly gained insight to uncode all landscapes, something which results from the state of homelessness experienced on the way. Another example of the motif of the journey, where a spiritual quality is associated with the idea of the search, is seen in the following lines from poem xxxii, in Seeing Things: Running water never disappointed. / Crossing water always furthered something. / Stepping stones were stations of the soul. Here, metaphors of movement and fluidity, seen in the images of the running water, and in the crossing of water, are juxtaposed with the stationary and fixed images of the stations of the soul, suggesting a state of temporary refuge for the speaking subject, as it makes its way into language.[4] It is this notion of striving towards, implying an underlying state of becoming, rather than any sense of arrival at that is of special interest to me here. This can be related to Heideggers ideas regarding the nature and significance of language, outlined in Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer, a conversation between Heidegger and a Japanese friend. In this discussion, Heidegger considers language in terms of thinking, which he describes as a process, or what he calls a waystation along a way. This process towards language is something which is always under way, something which has a mysterious quality, carrying the speaking subject forward in a Heraclitian-like flow of opposites. Heidegger expresses this as follows: And ways of thinking hold within them that mysterious quality that we can walk them forward and backward, and that indeed only the way back will lead us forward.[5] This journey towards language can thus be seen in an existential or spiritual sense as a process of thinking, which leads the speaking subject forward in his/her striving to reach a state of authenticity, a state of Being where self and world are brought together in language.[6] According to Heidegger, it is in the language of poetry, in the creative and dynamic process of poetic language, where boundaries are fluid and thresholds are blurred, that this search for authenticity is most clearly seen.[7] Connected with the concept of language as a search for an articulation of Being are the contrasting concepts of homelessness and home, the two competing poles between which the subject is suspended. For Heidegger, these two concepts exist in a state of dialectical tension: home is only understood as such when one has become exiled from it, and it is only when we acknowledge the absence of home,
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when we truly embrace our state of homelessness, that we can begin to experience true home.[8] These paradoxes of home and homelessness are seen very clearly in the poetry of Seamus Heaney.[9] They are seen not least in the motif of the journey, where the crossings of borders and boundaries from one state of awareness to another show these Heraclitian oppositional dynamics at work. This is especially so in the sub-section Crossings, from the volume Seeing Things, where the contrasting states of home and homelessness can be related to the overall metaphor of the quest, a governing motif in the volume as a whole. In this respect, the poetic form is understood as an articulation of the dialectical tension between striving states of being, which are expressed in the crossing of thresholds from the realms of the concrete and fixed, to the realms of the fluid and the liminal. In the following poem, the motif of the journey is clearly conveyed in the metaphor of a car, as it travels through a tree-lined road, bringing the speaker through on the other side, to a transformed state of awareness:
Not an avenue and not a bower. For a quarter-mile or so, where the country road Is running straight across North Antrim bog, Tall old fir trees line it on both sides. [ . . . . ](89)

The poem begins with a mood of hesitancy, expressed in the line: Not an avenue and not a bower, suggesting an initial searching on the part of the speaking subject to find words to describe the particular stretch of road, a state of uncertainty which is continued in the second line, in the expression of a lack of precision: For a quarter-mile or so. The image of the bog, in the line which follows, also develops the initial mood of ambiguity, suggesting the idea of the layers of possible meanings that any of these words might have. These images evoke a sense of movement and displacement, which is suggested too in the contrasting images of the fixity of the terrain and the fluid image of country road that is running straight across it, just as tension is seen in the distance between the stretch of trees on the actual road itself, and the words used to describe it. In the first line of the second stanza, the metaphor of movement through is sustained in the image of the fir trees lining the road on both sides, suggesting the idea of transition and displacement. This metaphor is developed further in the third stanza, again with a suggestion of a process or momentum that urges the speaking subject forward:
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Nordic Irish Studies You drive into a meaning made of trees. Or not exactly trees. It is a sense Of running through and under without let, Of glimpse and dapple. [...]

Here, again, the final lines of the stanza, carry the movement of the language forward into the first line of the next stanza, suggesting a sense of freedom, or Heideggerian letting-be,[10] in the lines: It is a sense / Of running through and under without let, / Of glimpse and dapple. The transitory state of the speaking subject that is evoked here suggests a liminal moment of awareness, which can be compared to Heideggers state of what he calls being-in. He describes this as a state of understanding when everyday familiarity collapses, giving way to an experience of homelessness, or not-being-at-home, an experience he likens to a state of uncanniness (Being and Time 176). Thus the whole poem becomes a metaphor for the play of opposing forces between the fixed landscape, both physical and physic, which is travelled through, and the images of fluidity, which are used to describe it. In the final stanza, this sensation of movement through is developed further, as the speaking subject emerges from the meaning made of trees, which it has momentarily passed through, to reappear on the other side transformed by the experience. In the play of tension between these two forces, the speaking subject is transported to another state of awareness: A life all trace and skim, a world of glimpse and dapple, that is sensitive to the millionth of a flicker. Another example of the metaphor of movement as an articulation of the creative and dynamic process of language, this time associated with the idea of play, appears in the following poem, about youngsters on a slide, also from Seeing Things. In this poem, the physical movement that propels the children forward on the ice evokes an image of utter freedom, a moment of complete transformation, which carries the participants into another state of awareness, a state of exhilaration and letting-be:
The ice was like a bottle. We lined up Eager to re-enter the long slide We were bringing to perfection, time after time Running and readying and letting go Into a sheerness that was its own reward: A farewell to surefootedness, a pitch Beyond our usual hold upon ourselves. 22

Heaney and Heidegger [ . . . . ](86)

The initial mood of the poem is that of eagerness and expectation, as the children prepare themselves to re-enter the long slide they are bringing to perfection, time after time. Once on the slide, the prevailing mood becomes one of exhilaration, as the children become participants in an experience that is both physical and profound, and which carries them forward into another dimension of being, beyond their usual hold upon themselves. The transitory mood of the poem is evoked in the sheer animation of the action described, and also in the language, for instance, in the use of the progressive form of the verb: bringing, running, readying, sailing, letting go, going - all verbs of action, which evoke images of movement and becoming. This transitory mood is further conveyed in remaining lines of the poem, which continue as follows:
And what went on kept going, from grip to give, The narrow milky way in the black ice, The race-up, the free passage and return It followed on itself like a ring of light We knew wed come through and kept sailing towards.

The idea of perpetual movement forward is clearly suggested here in the line: And what went on kept going, and in the contrasting mood-shifts between different states of being, suggested, for instance, in the image of the sudden swing from grip to give. Thus a state of tension is established between opposing forces of fixity and flux, reflected in the contrast between the sheer feeling of the race-up and free passage of the children, as they hurl themselves along on the ice, a feeling of abandon, which is juxtaposed with the contrasting state of solidity and fixed surefootedness, which is left behind on entering the slide. This tension between oppositional forces is again evoked in the contrast between the gleaming narrow milky way of the polished slide being brought to perfection, and the surrounding black ice, through which the perfected path of the slide runs. In the final stanza, the notion of movement through is continued in the image of the ring of light that the children knew [theyd] come through and kept sailing towards, further evoking the notion of becoming, which brings the participants back to the beginning, in preparation for another journey. On a hermeneutical level, the whole poem becomes an event in itself, and the slide can be interpreted in terms of a game in which the children are participants, propelled along by their involvement in the play. Hans-Georg Gadamers concept of play can be applied here.[11] He sees play as a
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dynamic process, which carries the players forward in a forceful and creative cyclic movement, transporting those immersed in the activity into another dimension of awareness. As he expresses it: play fulfils its purpose only if the player loses himself in his play.[12] The ability to lose oneself in the game carries with it its own rewards, while it also involves an element of risk, or abandon, in which the primacy of the game takes over the consciousness of the player. To quote Gadamer, The real subject of the game [ . . . ] is not the player, but instead the game itself. The game is what holds the player in its spell, draws him into play, and keeps him there(956). This sense of awareness can be compared to Heideggers in-between state of the uncanny, which is expressed in the dialectic between home and homelessness, where liminal moments of understanding and heightened awareness are experienced. An expression of such a state of liminality is seen in the above poem, in the lines, Running and readying and letting go / Into a sheerness that was its own reward: / A farewell to farewell to surefootedness, a pitch / Beyond our usual hold upon ourselves. The idea of constant becoming, expressed throughout the poem, is once more stressed in the final lines: It followed on itself like a light / We knew wed come through and kept sailing towards. Seen in terms of the metaphor of the journey into language, the mood of continual movement evoked in the poem suggests a state of homelessness and displacement on the part of the speaking subject as s/he bids farewell to surefootedness, in setting out on the journey into language. This same element of risk and letting go is expressed in the following poem, The Swing, from The Spirit Level, where again the metaphor of the journey is associated with the concept of play, this time in the form of children swinging on a makeshift swing in the middle of a barnyard shed:
Fingertips just tipping you would send you Every bit as far - once you got going As a big push in the back. Sooner or later, We all learned one by one to go sky high, Backward and forward in the open shed, Toeing and rowing and jackknifing through air. [. . . . ] [13]

Like the movement forward of the children, picking up momentum on the icy slide, suggested in the previous poem, the metaphor of the swing, in this poem, starts out with the gentle push, and gathers velocity to become a steady force, as the poem progresses. A sense of setting out and departure is
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evoked in the suggestion, once you got going, and also in the solitary sense of the activity one sets out, an activity which all learned one by one. This state of homelessness is associated with a the idea of movement through, suggested in the image of the swing, moving Backward and forward in the open shed, as it carries one through air. In the second stanza, a dialectic is established between, on the one hand, the earthbound solidity of the shed with its physical surroundings, and, on the other hand, the contrasting feeling of free passage, and the liminal experience awaiting the speaker, as the swing rises above the mundane shed in which it is situated. This anticipated experience is expressed here in the form of desire, or longing, for departure:
Light over fields and hedges, the shed-mouth Sunstruck and expectant, the bedding-straw Piled to one side, like a nativity Foreground and background waiting for the figures. And then, in the middle ground, the swing itself With an old lopsided sack in the loop of it, Perfectly still, hanging like pulley-slack, A lure let down to tempt the soul to rise. [....]

In the middle ground, the swing hangs expectantly, in the space between the straw, piled, like a nativity / Foreground and background waiting for the figures, evoking a mood of silent reverence and hope. The image of the nativity that is evoked in these lines suggests an impending moment of epiphany, or heightened awareness, a mood which is further developed in the image of the swing, hanging perfectly still, a metaphor of longing and desire, acting as A lure let down to tempt the soul to rise. In the fourth stanza, the metaphor of desire is further developed, as the stationary swing is set in motion. Starting out from the conscious physical actions of the speaker, the solitary journey outward is embarked upon: To start up by yourself, you hitched the rope / Against your backside and backed onto it / Until it tautened. This built-up tension is released as the speaker and the swing leave the ground with a forceful thrust and become airborne: you hurled a gathered thing / From the small of your own back into the air. / Your head swept low, you heard the whole shed creak, an image which not only suggests the idea of displacement, but also a sense of at-oneness, in which swing and speaker are united in an ongoing experience of Heideggerian Being and becoming. The final movement of the poem further develops the idea of the solitary experience of the speaker, in the repetition of the line: We all
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learned one by one to go sky high, from the first stanza. This once more suggests the notion of displacement and homelessness, followed by the idea of the widening circle of experience of the speaker, suggested in the line: Then townlands vanished into aerodromes. The poem concludes on a dialectical note, as the speaker contrasts the stationary state, before departure, with that of the airborne state, where boundaries between the physical and the spiritual become blurred in a liminal moment of letting-be:
So who were we to want to hang back there In spite of all? In spite of all, we sailed Beyond ourselves and over and above The rafters aching in our shoulderblades The give and take of branches in our arms.

Thus, the overall metaphor of the swing evokes images of free passage and liminality, further suggested in the epiphany-like setting of the bedding straw in the shed through which the swing moves. The movement through of the swing, as it swings Backward and forward, echoes the lines from Heidegger, quoted earlier, where he describes language in terms of the mysterious quality of thinking, which leads one forward and backward, and where, in going backward, he claims, one is lead forward. In the movement forward through the air, a sense of the wonderful is evoked. Only when the swing becomes airborne can the children sail beyond themselves and over and above, just as it is only in the state of homelessness and exile that a state of letting-be is experienced. On leaving the ground, the marvellous is experienced, or, to paraphrase Gadamer, one loses oneself in the magic of the play. Finally, let us turn briefly once more to The Spirit Level, to the poem entitled Postcript, where the dialectic play between home and homelessness is again evident. In contrast to the metaphorical journey seen in the previous two poems, an actual physical journey is suggested in this poem, this time, in the form of another journey by car, reminding us of the car journey explored above in The Peninsula. The following poem begins with a concrete, clearly defined, physical starting point, where place and time are established in the specific naming of the places: And some time make the time to drive out west / Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore, / In September or October. In the lines which follow, once again, dialectical tension is established as interacting elements play off each other:
when the wind And the light are working off each other 26

Heaney and Heidegger So that the ocean on one side is wild With foam and glitter, and inland among stones The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans, Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white, [ . . . ](70)

Here, we see the juxtaposing of physical forces, in the images of the wind and the light, working off each other, and the ocean, wild / With foam and glitter, contrasted with the darkness of the slate-grey lake, which, inland among stones, is lit with the brightness and softness of the swans, Their feather roughed and ruffling, white on white. Against this background of the play between the tangible and intangible, a sense of the ephemeral quality of experience is evoked in the remaining lines of the poem:
Useless to think youll park and capture it More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there, A hurry through which known and strange things pass As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

In the tension between the contrasting notions of fixity and flux, the idea of the ongoing dialectic between home and homelessness is clearly stressed here. In the image of the moving car, stress is given to the situation of the speaking subject, in its continual state of process: Useless to think youll park and capture it / More thoroughly. This suggests a state of displacement, which is further developed in the evocative lines which follow: You are neither here nor there / A hurry through which known and strange things pass. This mood of becoming is continued in the image of the big soft buffetings, which come at the car sideways, an image which is brought to a crescendo in the final line of the poem, as the heart is caught off guard and blown open, in a liminal moment of passage through. To conclude, Heaneys concern with the motif of the journey can be regarded in the wider context of the notion of language as a journey towards articulation - a journey which is always under way. At the centre of Heaneys poetics is the concern for the articulation of the speaking subject, where an awareness is shown that the very notion of language itself implies the idea of exile or estrangement, or in Heideggers words a way-station along a way. The speaking subject wanders in the dialectical tensions between the states of home and homelessness, and in the liminal space
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between - as we saw in the metaphor the slide and the swing, and the passage through of the car and its occupants - borders and thresholds are transgressed and wider states of awareness are reached. In moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar, Heaneys poetics underlines the fact that in order to give credit to the unexpected and the marvellous, one has to exile oneself and leave the familiar confines of home.

Notes and References:

Heaney, Seamus, Crediting Poetry, Nobel Lecture (The Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, 7 Dec. 1995) 2-3. [2] Kristeva, Julia, Revolution in Poetic Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984) 27. [3] Door into the Dark (London: Faber, 1969), in New Selected Poems 1966-1987 (London: Faber, 1990) 11. [4] Seeing Things (London: Faber, 1991) 90. [5] Heidegger, Martin, On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper and Row, 1971) 12. [6] The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982) 297. Heidegger explains this further, as follows: Self and world belong together in the single entity Dasein. Self and world are not two beings, like subject and object, . . . [instead,] self and world are the basic determination of Dasein in the unity of the structure of being-in-the world. [7] Poetry, Language and Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971). [8] Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, 1953) 255-56. By accepting our exile from home, and listening to the call attuned by Angst, we prepare ourselves for a return home, for entry into a state of authenticity, a fundamental state of being-in-the-world, which, according to Heidegger, is covered over in everydayness. [9] Richard Kearney refers to Heaneys desire for journey over sojourn, for exodus over abode. In his early works, according to Kearney, Heaney refers to home in terms of a personal quest for self-identity, while in his later collections, especially in North and Station Island, homecoming is seen in terms of a linguistic search for historical identity. Kearney draws parallels in Heaneys work to Heideggers description of the poets search for Being as a dialectical passage towards home through the unhomely. Transitions: Narratives in Modern Irish Culture (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1983) 102-03,113. [10] Heidegger describes thinking as an opening up to language, or, what he calls a letting-be, as opposed to the idea of language as willing, understood in a determinate and representational sense. See Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freud (New York: Harper and Row, 1969) 59-60. [11] Gadamer,Hans Georg, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. And ed. David E. Linge (Berkeley: U of California, 1976) 66. 28 [1]

Heaney and Heidegger [12] Truth and Method, trans.William Glen-Doepel (London: Sheed and Ward, 1979) 92. For a very interesting discussion on the ludic, see the whole of this chapter, Play as the Clue to Ontological Explanation, 91-119. Here, Gadamer refers to the investigations on play done by Huizinga (J. Huizinga, Homo ludens, Vom Ursprung der Kultur im Spiel), which, in Gadamers words, have led Huizinga to recognise the curious lack of decisiveness in the playing consciousness, which makes it absolutely impossible to decide between belief and non-belief (93). Contrary to some poststructuralists, who see the play of language in terms of dissolution of the subject, Gadamer sees this dissolution as something positive, something which leads the player back to a reconciliation with the self: That which detaches [the player] from everything also gives him back the whole of his being (Truth and Method 113-14). See Bruce Krajewski, Traveling with Hermes: Hermeneutics and Rhetoric (Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1992) 120. [13] The Spirit Level (London: Faber, 1996) 48.

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