Der 1939 im County Londonderry, Nordirland, geborene irische Schriftsteller Seamus Heaney (Bild) ist am heutigen 30. August 2013 in Dublin gestorben. Er hatte 1995 den Nobelpreis für Literatur erhalten.
Foto: Sean O’Connor, 2009, http://www.flickr.com/photos/seanoconnor365/3290653431/– Lizenz: gemeinfrei – Zur Originaldatei: http://de.wikipedia.org
Heaneys Dichtung war stark von seiner Geburtslandschaft geprägt: vom Bauernhof in der nordirischen Grafschaft Derry. Immer wieder fand er ländliche Metaphern, um die menschliche Existenz abzubilden. In Irland, dessen Mentalität trotz der wirtschaftlichen Metamorphose noch immer stark von der Scholle geprägt ist, stiess diese Sprache auf ein hellhöriges Publikum.
Martin Alioth
Das irische Kulturministerium bestätigte den Todesfall. Heaney sei ein grossartiger Botschafter für die Literatur, aber auch für Irland gewesen, sagte der irische Kulturminister Jimmy Deenihan. «Für uns war Seamus Heaney der Hüter der Sprache, unserer Normen, unseres Wesens als ein Volk», erklärte der irische Premierminister Enda Kenny. Der Dichter sei in einem Atemzug mit den bedeutenden irischen Schriftstellern James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett und George Bernard Shaw zu nennen.
http://www.derbund.ch/kultur/buecher/LiteraturNobelpreistraeger-gestorben/story/31385987
At the close of his Nobel address he spoke of «poetry’s power to do the thing which always is and always will be to poetry’s credit»: «the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable, in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being».
Liz Bury
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/30/seamus-heaney-dies-74-poet
Mr. Heaney’s poetry had a primeval, epiphanic quality and was often suffused with references to myths – Celtic, of course, but also those of ancient Greece. His style, linguistically pyrotechnic, was at the same time conspicuously lacking in the obscurity that can attend poetic pyrotechnics.
At its best, his work had both a meditative lyricism and an airy velocity. His lines might carry a boggy melancholy, but they also, as often as not, communicated the wild onrushing joy of being alive.
Margalit Fox and James C. McKinley jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/arts/seamus-heaney-acclaimed-irish-poet-dies-at-74.html?_r=0
President Michael D Higgins said Heaney’s contribution «to the republics of letters, conscience, and humanity was immense».
«As tributes flow in from around the world, as people recall the extraordinary occasions of the readings and the lectures, we in Ireland will once again get a sense of the depth and range of the contribution of Seamus Heaney to our contemporary world, but what those of us who have had the privilege of his friendship and presence will miss is the extraordinary depth and warmth of his personality,» he said.
Mehr:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1995/
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1392
Interview in The Guardian vom 8. November 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Heaney
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