Kings, Dreams and Death Scenes

In a recent BBC Arena documentary, poet and student extraordinaire of Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, discussed Heaney’s interest in the world beyond, its force and pressure on poetry. Some writers refer to this energy as the unconscious – the subconscious drives which shape the writing process, determining a great deal of what the writer commits to the page. According to Muldoon, poetry -- its mystical elements, its power to seduce and wield listeners -- requires the writer to touch something transcendental, something deep and prescient.

Seamus Heaney’s poem, ‘A Daylight Art’, signals some level of discussion on this topic. Heaney writes about self-belief and spiritual energy, focusing on some familiar figures to illustrate his thoughts on the artist’s power in society.

The artist’s strength comes from spiritual vigour; powers beyond us pre-determining the artist’s creative inclinations. To make this point clear, Heaney focuses on Greek literary culture.

[Socrates] tells his friends the dream had kept recurring

all his life, repeating one instruction:

Practise the art, which art until that moment

he always took to mean philosophy.

Happy the man, therefore, with a natural gift

for practising the right one from the start –

poetry, say, or fishing [.]

By nature’s decree, the artist is bound to create. For Heaney, art is a matter of self-belief, reliant on the artist’s foreknowledge and faith in their work, that it will (in time) offer something meaningful to the world. He recounts a Greek philosopher’s lifelong obsession - his reoccurring dream - to illustrate a vital matter: the beyond manifests itself in unconsciousness.

The dream-world, often forgotten, usually leaves the bearer with patterns of emotions and moods, rather than the exact details of what happened. Dreams and their interpretations have the potential to go anywhere – definitively, they are irrational and thus open to opinion. But a reoccurring dream, with Heaney’s words in mind, can also act as a sort of prophecy. ‘[He] always took it to mean philosophy’ is how Socrates reacts in the poem. Dreaming about art, Socrates’ dream compels him to interpret and act upon his unconscious impulses, dedicating himself to philosophy in waking life.

Another interesting idea appears in the following line. Talent is a contested term. One school of thought argues that talent is something gained, or acquired, through practice (e.g. Practise the art). The other claims that talent is a natural phenomenon. (The argument is nature versus nurture incarnate.) When Heaney professes, ‘Happy the man, therefore, with a natural gift’, it is living in itself – the very act of existing and wielding experiences – which determine the shape of the artist to come. The satisfied artist is the natural one, whose core desire has always been to create, to act upon an intuitive desire. It is in one’s bones, their hearts and minds. Some are sensitive to art, some are apathetic. To make peace with this idea is to accept reality.

Source: Heaney, S., ‘The Daylight Art’ in Seamus Heaney, The Haw Lantern (Faber & Faber: 1987), p. 10.

Seamus Heaney by Ross Wilson,
ink and watercolor, 1994
© National Portrait Gallery, London