An enthusiastic crowd gathered last Thursday in the cortile of the American Academy in Rome to hear Irish Nobel Laureate and William B. Hart Poet-in-Residence Seamus Heaney read a selection of poems illuminating the wide span of his distinguished career. Heaney, who has been called “the most important Irish poet since Yeats” has produced thirteen collections of poetry, the most recent of which is entitled Human Chain (2010). This former professor at Harvard and Oxford is also a translator and playwright who won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 2000 for his translation of Beowulf and has adapted Sophocles' Philoctetes as The Cure at Troy (1990) and Antigone as The Burial at Thebes (2004).
This occasion represented the only major public reading in Rome by the poet from his own work and the final episode in a series of public events orchestrated by Andrew Heiskell Arts Director Karl Kirchwey, FAAR’95, during the poet’s sojourn. These included a two-day symposium on Ovid Transformed: The Poet and the Metamorphoses and Stone from Delphi, an exhibition at the AAR Gallery. Before, during, and after Heaney’s reading, visitors were invited to browse through the adjacent exhibition, which will remain open to the public until June 3rd, and which presents the fruits of a rewarding collaboration between the Irish poet and American Academy Arts Advisor Wendy Artin.
What had begun as an ominously damp and dreary day cleared up auspiciously as the evening events approached. Indeed the sun emerged and a gentle chorus of bird song from within the flowering jasmine in the McKim, Mead and White cortile accompanied the poet in his reading. Welcoming the many guests, Academy Director Christopher S. Celenza, FAAR’94, acknowledged the continuing support of Nancy O’Boyle and William B. Hart before introducing the poet. Heaney extended his own thanks to the AAR where, in the words of W.B. Yeats, the “spiritual intellect’s great work” is being done. Heaney read from a broad selection of works including “Personal Helicon” from Death of a Naturalist (1966), “Mossbawn Sunlight” from North (1975), “The Skunk” from Field Work (1979), “The Underground” from Station Island (1984), “Alphabets” composed as the Phi Beta Kappa poem for Harvard in 1984, “The Haw Lantern” (1987), the chorus from The Cure at Troy (1990), “The Death of Orpheus” from The Midnight Verdict (1993), and “Two Lorries” from The Spirit Level (1996). With each poem Heaney offered the audience a brief personal aside, narrating his changing attitudes and those inspirations drawn from indelible childhood memories, ageless classical themes and the coexisting beauties and blackness of an Irish experience.
This panoramic retrospective from the poet’s work was followed by a lively post-reading reception, graciously hosted by the nearby Irish Embassy, where the AAR community and its invited guests were given a warm welcome by Ambassador Patrick Hennessy. The elegant Villa Spada seemed to resound with Ovid’s final word in The Metamorphoses, “vivam.” The guests who celebrated another great poet for the ages in its manicured gardens perhaps appreciated the sense of that word, that art endures.