Oldal 44 [44]
42 | Peter Dolmänyos
experience that remain only partially disclosed but the motivation for the act
of stopping itself too: by starting the account of the episode with the word
“so” a gap is present in the narrative from the outset, considering the function
of the word to suggest summing up, consequence or explanation for previous
action. Ihe implication is that of prior knowledge of the place and concurrent
expectation of its potential power for inducing such visionary moments, and
the speakers initiative of making a stop at the place appears to be a deliberate
and premeditated action with an anticipation of the eventual outcome.
While the motivation for the act of stopping at that particular location
remains essentially unspecified, the intimation of that prior knowledge of
the place points to the importance of personal experience for Heaney in the
approach to place in general. In the case of both named and unnamed locations,
the few descriptive details of the given place reflect the observer-speaker’s
choice of emphasis, and although this may result in apparently generic pic¬
tures, the selected details indicate the meaning with which the place has been
endowed by the observer. In this way the places retain their particularity and
facilitate the observer’s realisation of his propensity for receiving the vision
or insight that the place has the potential to induce. The openness of the ob¬
server to this vision is the pivotal element of Heaney’s sense of place since this
allows for the reception of the experience of the chosen locations, this is what
makes possible his reading of places in terms of their recognised significance.
In the essay Heaney makes a reference to and subsequently explores John
Montague’s concept of the landscape as manuscript. Montague’s metaphor fo¬
cuses on the inscription of history, legendary as well as actual, into the orig¬
inal place names, thus recalling the tradition of the dinnséanchas. The act of
naming the territorial elements reflects the intention of possessing and con¬
trolling the items to be named, thus endowing them with value and settling
them in a culturally delineated interpretive field, which corresponds to Tuan’s
observation of the transformation of space into place.** Montague’s focus lies
principally on the potentially irrecoverable loss that the shift from Irish to
English or Anglicised place names caused, throwing light on the act of cultural
dispossession. In contrast, Heaney’s concern with the place names shifts the
emphasis towards personal experience in this respect, uncovering his own re¬
sponse to the subtext of what they are still capable of preserving, in terms of
meaning as well as cultural bond for a community, both understood beyond,
and despite, the act of the dispossession Montague focuses on. For Heaney the
landscape becomes a text of a different kind, not centring on the legendary
layer but not purely relying on the aesthetic eye mentioned in the essay either.
Heaney’s reading of locations is always rooted in his own personal experience,
in turn lived and in turn learned, on occasion with a fusion of the two per¬
spectives, yet in all cases the given place is endowed with value that stems
from his personal assessment of the location, even when drawing on cultural
or historical associations for presenting the appeal of a place. In this way his
48
cf. Tuan, Space and Place, 6