ABSTRACT

This article examines the echoes of Theodore Roethke in Seamus Heaney’s 1960s poetry. Heaney first read Roethke when he was teaching at Queen’s University Belfast and was exploring American writing to an extent not acknowledged by his critics, who tend to depict his 1970–71 Berkeley residency as his first confrontation with US poetry. Consideration of Roethke’s verse alongside Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist (1966) brings into focus several shared features that distinguish Heaney’s poetry from that of his British-Irish contemporaries, with whom he was more typically compared in this phase. Though Roethke’s “In Praise of Prairie” is now considered by some critics to be the source of Heaney’s “Bogland”, this level of comparative close reading has not been extended to the two poets’ other work. When the childhood pastorals of each poet are read side by side, many other significant points of connection emerge, such as the psychological grammar of the frightened child speaker and the contemplation of a daunting father figure. A strangely overlooked figure in the Heaney pantheon, Roethke was, like Frost, an American poet who was instrumental in the emergence of Heaney’s early voice.

摘要

本文考察了西莫斯·海尼（Seamus Heaney）1960年代诗歌中西奥多·罗斯基（Theodore Roethke）的回声。希尼（Heaney）在贝尔法斯特女王大学（Queen's University Belfast）任教时首先阅读了罗斯基（Roethke），并在他的批评家们不认可的程度上探索了美国写作，这些批评家通常将他在1970-71年伯克利的居留权描绘成他与美国诗歌的首次对峙。将罗斯克的诗句与希尼的《自然主义者之死》（1966年）一起考虑时，将几个共同的特征集中到了一起，这些特征使希尼的诗歌与他的英爱尔兰当代画家的诗歌区别开来，在这一阶段，他经常与他作比较。尽管一些评论家现在将罗特克的《大草原的赞美》视为海尼·《波兰》的出处，但这种比较近距离的阅读水平并未扩展到两位诗人的其他著作。并排阅读每位诗人的童年牧民时，就会出现许多其他重要的联系，例如受惊吓的儿童说话者的心理语法和对一个令人生畏的父亲形象的沉思。Roethke是Heaney万神殿中一个被忽视的人物，就像Frost一样，他是美国诗人，在Heaney早期声音的出现中起了重要作用。