Giant passed by when Seamus Heaney died

It is too early, yet, to think about the literary meaning of the unexpected passing of poet Seamus Heaney nearly a year ago says Thomas McCarthy.

IT was a catastrophe that fell upon us all, the day Seamus Heaney died. I attended his removal at Donnybrook church that Sunday night and the funeral Mass the next day. I didn’t travel north to Co Derry, but a huge contingent of Southern poets did make the journey across the border behind the Presidential cavalcade. A long line of poets, journalists, politicians and rock stars crowded round his coffin and hospitality was shown to all strangers by his beloved Bellaghy GAA club. The quality of the huge crowd at his funeral mass in Donnybrook — the grandeur of the audience, as Micheál Mac Liammóir used to say, was proof that something prodigious in Irish life had passed away. It had the atmosphere of a state funeral, but with Seamus as a kind of matinee idol, the Valentino, the John MacCormack or Jack Doyle; as well as a man of the people, always a Bellaghy GAA man.

What a beautiful life he had, and what a beautiful adventure in poetry he and his beloved Marie had together; an adventure from which we all received postcards and were made to feel included. It is too early, yet, to think about the literary meaning of his sudden passing nearly a year ago. It may take decades for the full force of his work to be absorbed. Slowly, it dawns upon us what a giant passed by. A Yeats has died, certainly. Each generation seems to need a true adventurer, a knight who will ride out and slay all the dragons of the literary world, while we stay at home in Eire and do little chores about the house. Heaney was the dragon-slayer, bringing entire poetry scenes from Oxford to Harvard within his dominion.