Oldal 27 [27]
Orientation: Approaches to Place in Northern Irish Poetry | 25
there is an objective critical position employed in his reflections on the ex¬
perience as well as on the discourse used for reflection. Heaney’s treatment
of the Glanmore motif shows a sensitive and subtly altering dialogue with
the pastoral as his repeated returns to the location present him with new
insights and perspectives on each occasion, encompassing various phases of
his poetic career.
Ihe motif of the cottage as a rural escape, a type of retreat, introduces the
element of the use of another location from which to examine the targeted
place, and this act of relativizing the perspective to uncover aspects of a lo¬
cation with the help of another vantage point is explored in the essay on Ma¬
hon’s concept of “elsewhere” frequently employed in the poems of his early
and middle phases’’. Mahon’s use of the perspective of another location when
addressing a particular place suggests his understanding of the complexity of
places and the acknowledgement of their interconnectedness for definition
and description. This recognition leads to the mobilisation of the observing
position, implying the motif of the journey, real or imaginary, and the impor¬
tance of the act of crossing along the way of borders, in turn real or arbitrarily
drawn, between the point of departure and that of the hoped for arrival. This
motif is explored in detail in John Montague’s volume The Dead Kingdom in
the final essay of the collection. Montague’s explicit concern with the act of
crossing opens up the category of place towards an even broader metaphys¬
ical dimension by virtue of its inevitable entanglement with time. In this pro¬
cess place is seen explicitly determined by time and becomes a malleable and
shifting concept that is never fully observed from an external position but is
constructed by the contemplating and simultaneously participating, because
located, consciousness. This act eventually leads to the reassessment of the
concept of the border as well, with implications specific to the Northern Irish
context and its multifarious divisions. Montague’s understanding of the in¬
tricate interrelation of personal and communal history, stemming from his
own experience, carries the potential of projecting the tentative possibility of
finding a means of moving beyond those divisions on the analogy of his own
personal reconciliation with his traumatic heritage.
The treatment of place in poetry from Northern Ireland is regularly seen as
closely related to questions of identity as a result of the “fractured geographi¬
cal communities” of the province. As demonstrated above, place is not an
innocent and uncontested constant in the context of human experience, con¬
sequently approaches to place reflect social conditions that are seen as tradi¬
tionally patterned, culturally and historically determined and/or influenced.
Identity discourses in literary criticism, however, offer the temptation, and
therefore pitfalls, of directing attention away from the poetry and thus reflect
on other considerations that have little to do with the actual texts criticism is
77 Ina similar manner to the other piece, Mahon’s later poems are not considered in this essay due to
their shift of perspective and emphasis on an ecocritically responsible position.
78 Vance, Irish Literature: A Social History. Tradition, Identity and Difference, 211