谢默斯·希尼的圣礼诗学

Seamus Heaney's Sacramental Poetics

在20世纪世俗化的浪潮中,希尼放弃了天主教信仰。但天主教圣礼主义仍然影响了希尼的诗歌思想和实践。首先,圣礼影响了希尼的世界观尤其是语言观念,身体性语言以及圣礼意象和隐喻成为希尼诗歌的形式特点;其次,圣礼主义对身体的关注契合了希尼的人文关怀,诗人通过书写身体和爱欲,批驳爱尔兰天主教会的禁欲主义;再次,希尼诗中“人之链”的意象表达了普遍的人道意识,赋予诗歌以介入现实的道德潜能。希尼认为“诗歌即神恩”,一方面指诗歌的现实道德力量,另一方面强调了诗歌有超越现实的灵性本质。

Born into a devout Catholic family, Seamus Heaney openly acknowledges the impact of Catholicism on him. This paper specifically discusses how Catholic Sacramentalism influences Heaney’s poetry, including the physicality of language and sacrament as metaphor in Heaney’s poetry, Heaney’s celebration of body and sexuality contrary to the sexual morality of Irish Catholic Church, and Human Chain as a symbol of humanistic ethics. Heaney’s idea of poetry as grace, on one hand, refers to this ethical dimension of poetry, and on the other hand, attributes poetry to some transcendent origin and endows it with a spiritual essence.