The situation in the Roman world at the close of the first century BC was "not unlike" that in the smaller world of Northern Ireland at the end of the 20th century AD, the Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, said in Galway last night.Delivering a millennium lecture at NUI Galway, the poet said that in both places there was a feeling that some respite from violence was due, and that old warring factions had worked themselves into a situation where a new political structure was the only way forward.
He said he had been struck by the parallels upon reading a new translation of Virgil's Eclogues. he said. At this point in time in both worlds, "peace was still only a possibility". "But it was nevertheless the only conceivable path for all parties to pursue." Virgil's fourth Eclogue, composed just before the beginning of the Christian era, was a work which was understood both by its original Roman audience and subsequent Christian one as a millennial poem. he said. It expressed a hope that better times were on the way in the image of a child _ a marvellous boy whose birth would initiate a second golden age. Heaney went on to note noted that this the poem was in fact a response to contemporary political reality in the late pagan world. What interested him most, however, was the inspiration that such an ancient work could still provide for a poet in a contemporary situation.
He had been inspired by it in his search for a millennium poem - subject which he initially believed to be too vast and too "unpinnable down". He had decided to try a dialogue between himself and Virgil, in which the theme of the original poem would be echoed and the contemporary reality of the North would also be admitted.
Reading from the poem, he said it was dedicated to a child due to be born in the North in the new year, and dealt with all the hopes and anxieties which were awakened by the Belfast Agreement. Referring to the university, Mr Heaney said that a cultural heritage gave people a symbolic language in which to gain a perspective on their experience. It was thanks to the research and constant reinterpretation of the past in the various humanities departments of universities that something like a shared idiom was still available. He noted the commitment to the Irish language which distinguished the academic tradition of NUI Galway. The Irish heritage remained an indispensable resource -"a dream bank as well as a memory bank, one that will continue to be drawn upon by poets and writers".
However, he warned that the humanist heritage of Europe was in danger of "being slighted in favour of a new technological culture". While this new culture could speed up exchange of information, it could "never quite establish a perspective upon it". Poetry, and the cultural heritage in general, did provided a view-finder for the individual self.
