Oldal 44 [44]
OCR
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 pictures, 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 observer 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 focuses on the inscription of history, legendary as well as actual, into the original place names, thus recalling the tradition of the dinnséanchas. The act of naming the territorial elements reflects the intention of possessing and controlling 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 response 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 perspectives, 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
