Seamus Heaney's Northern Irish 'Ugo lino' : an 'original reproduction' of the Dantean episode

Abstract

In Heaney's Field Work, published in 1979, Dante's presence is pervasive. Nevertheless, in the sixteen years which separate us from that collection, it has never been really studied in depth. Field Work is a triptych: the central sequence entitled 'Glanmore Sonnets' divides the book into thirds. Heaney's following collections, Station Island and The Haw Lantern, are also neatly divided in three parts: this tripartition, then, perhaps owes something to Dante's tripartite structure of the Commedia. Field Work is also characterised by a multiplication of voices within some of the poems by means of a more extended use of dialogues, the poetic device which gives shape to Dante's Commedia. Most of the dialogues are carried on by Heaney and 'his own' dead who, nevertheless, seem to be posthumously alive, just like the ghosts that Dante meets during his journey in the three kingdoms of death.