« Grown transparent now, and inestimable » : Éloge de la transparence dans Seeing Things de Seamus Heaney
Pascale Amiot
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Heaney's Seeing Things pursues sight and vision in physical, mental, imaginary, hallucinatory, and mystical dimensions, using transparency to move past material appearances and disclose the "inscape" of beings and objects. Contends that the collection's visionary poems reveal the numinous within ordinary experience and reject "blind certitudes." |
Abstract
Composed by Seamus Heaney in 1991, Seeing Things is devoted to sight and vision in their physical, mental, imaginary, hallucinatory and mystical dimensions. A new creative energy is at play in the work of the artist, who transcends the perception of material realities in order to unveil the invisible. Indeed, in this collection, transparency both enables the viewer to peer through materiality and endows things with a potential of « fathomableness », thus offering the poet and the reader a new way of envisaging the world. Denouncing «blind certitudes», some poems grant us access to a different plane of consciousness, while disclosing the inscape of beings and objects beneath the surface of appearances. Thus, Seeing Things offers mystical, visionary poems that reveal the numinous within the ordinariness of daily experience.