Oldal 31 [31]
Seamus Heaney’s Sense of Place
Seamus Heaney opens his essay “The Sense of Place” with the following as¬
sertion: “I think there are two ways in which place is known and cherished,
two ways which may be complementary but which are just as likely to be anti¬
pathetic. One is lived, illiterate and unconscious, the other learned, literate
and conscious.” While Heaney’s principal point to illustrate in the essay is
the way how place provides a point of orientation for a selected number of
poets he feels affinity with, his position is general enough to attribute an
essentially personal frame of reference for the experience of the category of
place. Although the broader and more abstract term to cover the dimension he
addresses would be “space”, Heaney uses the term “place” to address the spa¬
tial aspect of the work of the respective poets, suggesting a more particular
approach to the object of his inquiry. Heaney’s reading of his poets of choice
aligns with the usual critical practice that sees place as an important element
of Irish poetry, a definitive aspect that marks Irish poetry as a distinctive set
within poetry written in English. By suggesting that the poets he reads gain
a strong point of reference from their places, he also offers an implicit insight
into his own poetic allegiances and convictions both in terms of the impor¬
tance of the spatial element for his poetry and its more general position in
human experience.
The relation of space and place, according to Yi-Fu Tuan, is a complex one
that is essentially centred around the meaning attributed to and value be¬
stowed on the practical scope of the respective terms. Though he claims that
the meanings of the two terms often merge in experience, he indicates a con¬
ceptual difference opening between them: “[w]hat begins as undifferentiated
space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value.”? It
follows from this that “[f]rom the security and stability of place we are aware
of the openness, freedom, and threat of space, and vice versa.”? Approached
in this way, place is comprehended, interpreted and humanised space whose
understanding is a function of the interpretational framework imposed on it
by human intelligence. This attributes a major role in the understanding of
place to the observer and consequently allows for various possible readings
of the same place by different persons, both simultaneously and at different
1 Seamus Heaney, Preoccupations. Selected Prose 1968-78. (New York: The Noonday Press, 1980), 131
2 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place. The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1977), 6
Tuan, Space and Place, 6