Lord Jim

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was born in the Ukraine, but naturalized British. Captain in the English merchant marine, his novels were outlined from his wide experiences at sea and in other different parts of the world; he was even embroiled in arms smuggling for the Carlist cause in Spain. Due to the malaria, he had to stop travelling and it was then that he started writing. 

He wonderfully depicted English characters against exotic backgrounds and rendered the dangerous life aboard vessels, with skippers yelling through gale force winds. His work is set in the context of colonial expansion in late Victorian England. The nature and effects of European imperialism, brutal and brutalizing, are less central in Lord Jim than in other novels like Heart of Darkness, masterpiece which would be the basis for Apocalypsis Now. Both novels share the same narrator, Marlow. In Heart of Darkness, his trip along the river in the Belgian Congo (which Francis Ford Coppola marvellously turned into the Vietnam background) is compared to Dante´s descent to the inferno, while in Lord Jim he explores the question of honour and moral conflicts of man's struggles at sea. 

Captain Marlow tells about Jim´s fall and redemption. He is a British naval officer disgraced by a single act of cowardice in the past and haunted by a guilty conscience since then. He, who had always dreamt of proving his heroism at sea, was paralyzed with fear the day he had to put his courage to the test. Together with the other disreputable crew, he abandoned their ship in a storm, not taking care of the sleeping passengers who were unaware of their peril. The story, which is partly based on true events, is about moral dilemmas, humiliation and second chances, about men who despite their heroic appearance are quite hollow.

A Greek hero? Like in all Aristotle's tragedies, Jim has got a flaw: probably his romantic idealism. Duty, conscience, self-sacrifice, self-knowledge, personal growth... Is death the only way honour can be retrieved? Does anyone care about all this? We are more than likely to be just talking about old-fashioned values, no longer valid nowadays...

Seamus Heaney, Dante and Asturias

Seamus Heaney, who was born Catholic in a predominantly Protestant Northern Ireland, never forgot the world where he came from. He was intensely aware of the often violent political and religious struggles that plagued his country and the unrest and oppression it entailed. At the same time, his roots and poetry lay deep and were grounded in that Irish rural countryside. 

The Little Canticles of Asturias is a beautiful tribute to a region he loved and used to visit because one of his sisters-in-law lived here. Besides, Asturian landscape lovingly evoked his homeland. This work is also a version of The Divine Comedy, the well-known 14th c. epic poem where Dante describes his journeys through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, an allegory of the soul´s pilgrimage towards God. Like the Italian genius, Heaney looks into human experience trying to explain the mystery of our own identity. 

All along three stanzas, he renders a splendid account of a drive in Asturias. In the first one, it is midnight, they are driving through an industrial area among furnaces and hot refineries and they curse the hellish roads. (And then at midnight as we started to descend / into the burning valley of Gijón, / .../ for we almost panicked there in the epic blaze / of those furnaces and hot refineries / ... / and gathered speed and cursed the hellish roads.). 

In the second canticle, during the purgatorial next morning, the farmers who are working in the fields on both sides of the road wave at him. Their rural labour brings him memories of his childhood in Ireland. (Next morning on the way to Piedras Blancas / I felt like a soul being prayed for, / ...). In the third and last stanza, he arrives at a paradise of rivers under sunlight. (At San Juan de la Arena / it was a bright day of the body. / Two rivers flowed together under sunlight. / ...). The final words (of distant Compostela, stela, stela) emulate the Italian stelle which also finish the three canticles of Dante´s masterpiece.

Seamus Heaney, Nobel Prize in 1995, and one of the most productive, lauded and beloved of the living poets, has passed away. Ireland, Asturias and the whole world mourn his death. Life is ephemeral, we know,  but let's remember poetry is not. Cherished and celebrated, his verses will remain forever.