Oldal 27 [27]
OCR
Orientation: Approaches to Place in Northern Irish Poetry | 25 there is an objective critical position employed in his reflections on the experience 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 location with the help of another vantage point is explored in the essay on Mahon’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 importance 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 metaphysical dimension by virtue of its inevitable entanglement with time. In this process 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 intricate 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 geographical communities” of the province. As demonstrated above, place is not an innocent and uncontested constant in the context of human experience, consequently approaches to place reflect social conditions that are seen as traditionally 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
