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.
