셰이머스 히니의 『북쪽』: 문화의 뿌리 찾기와 폭력의 역사 탐구

Abstract

North is the fourth collection of poetry by Seamus Heaney, which was borne of his move to Southern Ireland. This collection of poems is about Northern Ireland viewed from a foreign perspective. This fact is very important in understanding the poems in this collection because it implies that many poems in this collection approach Northern political and cultural problems from an objective viewpoint. Seamus Heaney in North made an imaginative journey to the national memory bank in which Heaney believes the culture and history are preserved to seek the undiscovered consciousness of Ireland. Most of his journey is made of digging into the origins of words, speculating on the names of historical places, sympathizing with the mummies dug from the bog, or daydreaming about the archeological relics. Through this journey, Heaney makes sure of the fact that every national culture in Northern Europe had been mixed up with each other and had similar ‘growth rings’, and the vikings who had invaded Ireland had a connection with Heaney as one of his ancestors. The civilized violence in modern times has its origin in the violence of old fathers and it has the same repeated pattern from ancient times. North is most tragic among Heaney’s collections because it refuses to give any positive vision about the progress of history that could be found in Heaney’s previous collections. It merely shows a strong fear that we may not escape from the anxious fate that we might be condemned to repeat this violent tradition.