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Classical texts in post-colonial literatures: Consolation, redress and new beginnings in the work of Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney

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Abstract

This article examines the ambivalent relationships between classical texts and post-colonial literatures in English, with special reference to the work of Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney. It is argued that analysis of the formal, discursive and contextual relationships between ancient and modern in poetry and drama reveals significant correspondences as well as important differences between the literary and political role of the Classical Tradition in Caribbean and Irish writing. These can be revealed and explained by the writers' balance between ideas of consolation, redress and new beginnings. This in turn opens the way to re-assessment of some of the models of appropriation, creativity and dialogue which have been used in recent research into both Reception Studies and Post-Colonial Literatures.

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Literatur

  1. This article arises from my research project, now in progress at the Open University, UK. The project investigates the reception of the texts and images of ancient Greece in late twentieth-century drama and poetry in English. A database of examples is being prepared and the pilot version can be accessed athttp://www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays. Part of the work of the project is to prepare case-studies which analyse closely the formal, discursive and contextual relationships between ancient and modern texts. From this basis it is then possible to relate the detailed textual work to broader literary and cultural issues. A shorter version of this paper was given at the Fourth Meeting of the International Society for the Classical Tradition at the University of Tübingen, July 1998. I am grateful to the participants for their comments and suggestions. I also thank Dr. Stephen Regan, the anony-mous readers for theIJCT and the Editor, Professor Wolfgang Haase, for constructive advice.

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  3. References are to the following editions: Derek Walcott,Omeros, London: Faber and Faber, 1990 and Seamus Heaney,The Cure at Troy: A version of Sophocles' Philoctetes, London: Faber and Faber, 1990.

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  19. Declan Kiberd has demonstrated the importance of the English language as an anti-colonial mechanism: ‘One of the great paradoxes of nineteenth-century history is that English became the language of Irish separatism, the medium in which the nationalist case was put’ (Kiberd, ‘Romantic Ireland's dead and gone’, lecture delivered at the Collège des Irlandais, Paris, April 29, 1998, reprinted in edited form inThe Times Literary Supplement, 12 June 1998, pp. 12–14). The same might be true in other colonial situations and the key issue then becomes the ways in which the language itself is refigured by its role in the process of decolonisation.

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  22. This approximates to the literary equivalent of the ‘double consciousness’ explored by cultural critics in the contexts of African diaspora communities. The process of political engagement has been said to be threefold. The first stage was self-emancipation from slavery; the second, the achievement of civic participation (fulfilment). Thirdly came the creation of autonomous space in which to develop politically and culturally (transfiguration). The term double consciousness recognises tension between on the one hand the emancipation and fulfilment shaped by the experiences of the colonised past and on the other hand the creation of a cultural process and identity which is not so bounded. For analysis of double consciousness, see Paul Gilroy,The Black Atlantic, London and New York: Verso, 1993, (Ch. 4 discusses the influence of W.E.B. DuBois).

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  26. Ramazani,, pp. 406

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  33. For discussion of the utility of the term ‘great poem’ rather than epic to cover the tradition which includes theIliad, theOdyssey, theAeneid, Paradise Lost, and theDivine Comedy see Richard Jenkyns, ‘Unconscious Classical Sources of theDivine Comedy, IJCT 4, 1997/98, pp. 23–26, especially pp. 23–24.Omeros might well be added to the list. Walcott's refiguration of epic has been addressed by T.P. Hofmeister, ‘Iconoclasm, Elegy and Epiphany: Derek Walcott contemplating the bust of Homer’,IJCT 1.1, Summer 1994, pp. 107–128, and ‘The Wolf and the Hare: Epic Expansion and Contextualisation in Derek Walcott'sOmeros', IJCT 2, 1995/96, pp. 536–554.

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  34. Derek Walcott,The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory. The Nobel Lecture, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993, p. 30.

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  35. For example, Robert D. Hamner,Derek Walcott, Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981, and Rei Terada,Derek Walcott's Poetry: American Mimicry, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993.

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  36. A comment by Helen Vendler, quoted and discussed in Paula Burnet,Derek Walcott: Politics and Poetics, Miami: University Press of Florida, 2001, p. 176.

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  37. Seamus Heaney, ‘The Murmur of Malvern’, in: Heaney,The Government of the Tongue, London: Faber, 1988, p. 29.

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  38. Derek Walcott, ‘The Caribbean: Culture or Mimicry?’,Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 16, 1974, pp. 3–13.

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  39. Walcott,, p. 5.

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  40. Walcott,, p. 10

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  41. See, for example,Another Life, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973, Ch. 19 (p. 127, lines 13–15: ‘those…who chafe and nurture the scars of rusted chains,/like primates favouring scabs’), and ‘The Muse of History’ (above, n. 5), Derek Walcott, ‘The Muse of History’, in Edward Baugh (ed.),Critics on Carib Bean Literature, Readings in literary criticism 19, London and Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1978, pp. 38–43; passim.

  42. Hamner, op. cit., p. 105. The narratological techniques associated with the poet's voice inOmeros have been interpreted as indicative of Walcott's personal Odyssey and his return to St Lucia. See Helen Kaufmann, ‘Odysseus’ Rückkehr nach St. Lucia: Der Erzähler in D. Walcott's Omeros', in: Manuel Baumbach (ed.),Tradita et Inventa: Beiträge zur Rezeption der Antike, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2000, pp. 615–628.

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  45. Another Life Ch. 16, pp. 104–106, discussed in Hamner,op. cit. (above, n. 35),Derek Walcott, Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981 p. 98f.

  46. Discussed in Hoegberg, op. cit., pp. 68.

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  47. For discussion of the impact of Greek source texts on modern Interventionist theatre and poetry from Heiner Müller to Tony Harrison, see Hardwick,Translating Words, Ch. 6. chapter 4. Chapter 5 of the same work considers broader aspects of the Classical Tradition in Ireland.

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  48. Some critics have advanced the view that cultures do have within them periods of fracture and cleavage, even to the point of trauma. The test of a culture is then whether and how it can survive and even derive strength from these. This is highly relevant to the issue under discussion here. For detailed discussion, see Robert Welch,Changing States: Transformations in modern Irish Writing London and New York: Routledge, 1993, passim, especially pp. 1–8.

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  49. Seamus Deane, General introduction to Deane (ed.),The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Derry: Field Day Publications, 1991, p. xx.

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  50. Both are included in Thomas Kinsella (ed.),The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, no. 152, p. 218.

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  51. For full discussion of this model and especially of the implications for Irish cultural history, see Michael Cronin,Translating Ireland: Translation, Languages, Cultures, Cork: Cork University Press, 1996.

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  52. Neil Corcoran,After Yeats and Joyce: Reading Modern Irish Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 5–6).

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  53. Declan Kiberd,Inventing Ireland, London: Jonathan Cape, 1995, p. 625.

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  54. Quoted by W.B. Standford,Ireland and the Classical Tradition, Dublin: Allen Figgis and Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Littlefield, 1976, p. 27.

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  55. Although classical literature in Irish translation dates from the Middle Irish period, there is also evidence from the writings of St. Columbanus that Latin authors were being read in Ireland from the sixth century. The earliest extant translations are from the tenth century, and theAeneid was translated into prose in the twelfth century. The translators were anonymous and were probably members of monastic communities. Some scholars have traced links between the choice of texts and style of translation and the Irish hero tales. See Stanford,.

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  56. For discussion of Friel's use of historical evidence, see Sean Connolly, Translating History: Brian Friel and the Irish Past' pp. 149–163 in: Alan Peacock (ed.),The Achievement of Brian Friel, Gerrard's Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993. The persistence into the present time of the image of the hedge schools and the invocation of Socratic parallels can be seen in Desmond O'Grady's poem ‘Lines in a Roman Schoolbook’: ‘when hedge school masters… kept alive/ the way of life that's ours by conversation just as that other hedge-school master talked/in his muddled market place under the Attic sun/and paid the price extorted’, in: Peter Fallon and Derek Mahon (eds.),The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1990, p. 126. Declan Kibberd has summarized the cultural and political impact of the hedge schools: ‘In one sense, Ireland had no need of a romantic movement, for the English intervention had ensured that those who defended classical ideals would also be the rebels, the anarchists, the dissidents’, Introduction to Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton (eds.),Amid Our Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy, London: Methuen, 2002, p. xii–xiii.

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  57. For discussion of Friel's direct use of Steiner's approaches to translation, see Kiberd,Inventing Ireland, p. 622.

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  58. Heaney's poem ‘Bann Valley Eclogue’ (1999) underlines the poetic and cultural resonance of Vergil: ‘Help me to please my hedge-schoolmaster Virgil/and the child that's due’. (Published text in Seamus Heaney,Electric Light, London: Faber and Faber, 2001, pp. 11–12).

  59. Tom Paulin,Ireland and the English Crisis, Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1984, p. 214.

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  61. Relevant recent discussions include: Elizabeth Butler Cullingford ‘British Romans and Irish Carthaginians: anti-colonial metaphor in Heaney, Friel and McGuiness,’Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 111(2), 1996, pp. 222–239; Richard Jones, ‘Degradation, Defiance, Dachau, Dublin: TheTroiades Adaptations of Brendan Kennelly and Aidan Carl Mathews’, in: Savas Patsalidis and Elizabeth Sakellaridou (eds.),(Dis) Placing Classical Greek Theatre, Thessalonika: University Studio Press, 1999, pp. 107–115; M. McDonald, ‘Seamus Heaney'sCure at Troy: Politics and Poetry’,Classics Ireland 3, 1996, pp. 129–140; Colin Teevan, ‘Northern Ireland: Our Troy? Recent versions of Greek Tragedies by Irish Writers’,Modern Drama 41, 1998, pp. 77–89; M. McDonald and J.M. Walton (eds.),. It is nevertheless significant that most of the detailed discussion of the impact of classical texts in the cultural politics of modern Ireland has been conducted by critics who start from a background in Classics and/or theatre studies. For more theoretical approaches to the problems of identity and authenticity and constructions of modern Irish culture, see Colin Graham and Richard Kirkland (eds.),Ireland and Cultural Theory: The Mechanics of Authenticity, London: Macmillan, 1999 and Luke Gibbons,Transformations in Irish Culture: critical conditions, Cork: Cork University Press/Field Day, 1996. There is some discussion of the relationship between source text, translation, performance and ideological context in W.B. Worthen, ‘Homeless Words: Field Day and the Politics of Translation’,Modern Drama 38, 1995, pp. 22–41.

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  62. For detailed discussion of recent examples, see Anthony Roche, ‘Ireland'sAntigones: Tragedy North and South,’, in: Michael Kenneally (ed.),Cultural Contexts and Literary Idioms in Contemporary Irish Literature, Irish Literary Studies 31, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988, pp. 221–250. Roche grounds his study in the dual context of the debate about the resonances of Sophocles' play for the situation in the north of Ireland, initiated in 1968 by Conor Cruise O'Brien, and the implications of Antigone's role for the relationship between feminist and republican perspectives.

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  63. For example, Shaun Richards, In the Border Country: Greek Tragedy and Contemporary Irish Drama' in: C.C. Barfoot and Bias van den Doel (eds.),Ritual Remembering: History, Myth and Politics in Anglo-Irish Drama (Proceedings of the Leiden IASAIL Conference), The Literature of Politics, The Politics of Literature 2, Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1995, pp. 191–200. Richards' argument is based on his interpretation of Aristotle's account of tragedy rather than on the analysis of specific plays. He also draws on the use of the phrase ‘tragic destiny’ by Seamus Deane, ‘Heroic Styles: the tradition of an idea’ in: Deane et al.,Ireland's Field Day, London: Hutchison, 1985, p 55. Dean'es point was that political languages fade more slowly than literary languages, hence the need for political languages to find new literary vehicles.

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  64. For discussion of the ideological context to this aspect of the debate see D. O'Rawe, ‘MMis)Translating Tragedy: Irish Poets and Greek Plays’, in: L. Hardwick, P.E. Easterling, S. Ireland, N. Lowe and F. Macintosh (eds.),Selected Proceedings of the January Conference 1999: Theatre ancient and modern, Milton Keynes: The Open University, 2000, and athttp://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/CC99/.

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  65. It is, however, also worth noting the author's comment on the religious associations of the word ‘Cure’ in the title, Seamus Heaney, “ThtThe Cure at Troy: Production Notes in No Particular Order’, in: M. McDonald and J. M. Walton (eds.),, p. xii-xiii p. 171–180, at p.172. op. cit. (above, n. 56), Introduction to Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton (eds.),Amid Our Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy, London: Methue, 2002, p. xii–xiii. pp. 148–164 (p. 163 n. 16).

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  66. Colin Meir, ‘Irish Poetic Drama: Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy’, in: Jacqueline Genet and Elisabeth Hellegouarc'h (eds.),Studies on the Contemporary Irish Theatre. Actes du Colloque de Caen, Caen: Centre de Publications de l'Université de Caen, 1991, pp. 67–68.

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  67. For discussion of the aims and impact of the earlier work of Field Day,see Marilynn J. Richtarik,Acting Between the Lines: The Field Day Theatre Company and Irish Cultural Politics 1980–1984, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, especially Ch. 1 and Conclusion. It has been asserted that ‘Sophocles has been Field Day's Greek Dramatist’; Deane, ‘Field Day's Greeks (and Russians)’ (above, n. 65), from Sophocles in order to intensify the ethical issues, Deane, ‘Field Day's Greeks (and Russians)’ p. 148.

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  68. In spite of its poor critical reception, the revival demonstrates the status of the play as part of the modern canon. See Marianne McDonald'sDidaskalia review,http://didaskalia.berrkeley.edu/issues/vol3no2/MacHeaney.html. In 1999 the play was also performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and at Ohe Oxford Playhouse (both directed by Helen Eastman). In these productions the opening set depicted a debate in a student bar. Further details of this production may be accessed onThe Reception of the texts and Images of Ancient Greece in Late Twentieth-Century Drama and Poetry in English Database:http://www2.open.ac.uk/Classical Studies/ GreekPlays.

  69. T. Eagleton,News from Nowhere 9, 1991, pp. 93–95, reprinted in: S. Regan (ed.),The Eagleton Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, pp. 374–377. The tone recalls Heaney's joke about an alternative title for the play, ‘Ulcer says No’. It is worth pointing out, however, that other contexts might suggest different readings of the situation of the alienated Philoctetes. A Belfast staging of Sophocles’Philoctetes in 1933 featured twenty one unemployed workers and was performed at Queen's University as part of a plan to provide ‘instruction and reacreation’ (sic) for the unemployed and to raise money for textbooks for the 1,400 unemployed who were taking courses in subjects ranging from English and Latin to shorthand (The Times 21 April 1933).

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  70. Meir,, pp. 71–73, drawing on George Steiner,The Death of Tragedy, New York: Knopf, 1961, reprinted New York: Oxford University Press, 1980, pp. 303–324.

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  71. Heaney's words are quoted by Steve E. Wilmer, ‘Seamus Heaney and the Tragedy of Stasis’, in: Patsalidis and Sakellaridou (eds.), More recently, Heaney has emphasized that the discourse and idiom of the Chorus does not restrict the resonances to the situation in the North of Ireland and that the speeches ‘defend the right of poetry/poetic drama to be something other than protest’, Heaney, ‘The Cure at Troy: Production Notes’ (above, n. 65), from Sophocles in order to intensify the ethical issues, Deane, ‘Field Day's Greeks (and Russian))’, p. 173. In discussing the translation of the Chorus Odes into American idiom, Heaney also refers to a reading directed by Derek Walcott in New York in 1993 ibid., from Sophocles in order to intensify the ethical issues, Deane, ‘Field Day's Greeks (and Russians)’,p. 174, 180).

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  72. The Greek text and the English translation are taken from SophoclesPhiloctetes, Introduction, Translation and Commentary by R. G. Ussher, Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1990.

  73. The sequence specifically echoes Sophocles'Philoctetes, line 1416, with Heracles' labours likened to stepping stones. Helen Eastman's 1999 production (Edinburgh and Oxford) showed Philoctetes being helped on his way across the stepping stones represented by a line of bar stools. Heaney's text direction that the Chorus should be female is usually followed for the Heracles intervention even if some members of the Chorus have to be male. The 1999 Oxford production also used the movement and position on stage of the Chorus to represent visually the changing focus and sympathies of the debate and to guide the audience's possible response. (Source: Interview with Director, 21 October 1999).

  74. Seamus Heaney, ‘Mycenae Lookout’, in: Heaney,The Spirit Level, London: Faber & Faber, 1996, discussed by Helen Vendler, ‘Seamus Heaney and theOresteia: “Mycenae Lookout” and the usefulness of tradition’, in: M. McDonald and J. M. Walton (eds.), op. cit. (above, n. 56), Introduction to Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton (eds.),Amid Our Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy, London: Methuen, M002, p. xii–xiii. pp. 181–197.

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  75. Another exploration of this ambivalence can be seen in the very different historical context explored in the poem ‘Philoctetes’ by the Anglo-Irish academic T. R. Henn, ‘Philoctetes and other poems’, in: Henn,Five Arches: A sketch for an Autobiography, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1980. Henn notes Philoctetes an an archetypal figure not only in Ireland but also in the Europe of the 1930s when Henn regarded the Spanish Civil War as a microcosm of the future. The closing lines of the poem are ‘And with the shot, the ulcer shed its poison,/The blood flowed red again’.

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  76. There is a resonance with Padraig Colum's poem ‘A Poor Scholar of the Forties’ in which the schoolmaster gets his reward by hearing phrases from the ancient texts recur in ‘rustic speech’, Kinsella (ed.),. For discussion of examples of how Heaney's words have been appropriated in current political discourse by figures such as the Irish President Mary Robinson and the U.S. President Bill Clinton, see Heaney, ‘The Cure at Troy: Production Notes’ (above, n. 65), from Sophocles in order to intensify the ethical issues, Deane, ‘Field Day's Greeks (and Russians)’, especially pp. 176–178, 180 n. 5, and Lorna Hardwick,New Surveys in the Classics: Reception Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, chapter 6; Hugh Denard, ‘Seamus Heaney, Colonialism and the Cure’,PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 22.3, 2000, pp. 1–18.

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  77. M. Ringer,Electra and the Empty Urn: Metatheater and Role Playing in Sophocles, Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1998, Ch. 6.

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  78. Seamus Heaney, ‘Feeling into words’, collected in: Heaney,Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978 London: Faber and Faber 1980, pp. 41–60.

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  79. The role of classical images in the development of his work is outlined in Heaney's Nobel Lecture, ‘Crediting Poetry’, in: Heaney,Opened Ground pp. 445–467. I hope to explore the figurative and cultural aspects of this interaction in a future article, ‘Seamus Heaney’s Classical Ground’.

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    Lorna Hardwick

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Hardwick, L. Classical texts in post-colonial literatures: Consolation, redress and new beginnings in the work of Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney. Int class trad 9, 236–256 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02898436

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