Sweeney's Flight

by Seamus Heaney (translator), Rachel Giese Brown

Thirty-four exceptional photographs by Giese of Northern Ireland, which Heaney has matched with extracts and quotations from Sweeney Astray, revised especialy for this book. Heaney has written a preface to this joint work, and the second half contains the complete revised poem.

Genres: Poetry, Ireland

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Works of Irish poet Seamus Justin Heaney reflect landscape, culture, and political crises of his homeland and include the collections Wintering Out (1972) and Field Work (1979) as well as a translation of Beowulf (1999). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995.

This writer and lecturer won this prize "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."

Heaney on Wikipedia.

Reviews

[T P Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very nice photographs and extracts from a longer translated poem. The books works but it feels partial. It's more a nice artefact than a book of poetry with illustrations.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful photography accompanies the lovely poems. Perfect reading for a quarantined winter, makes me dream of the days when we can travel again and enjoy nature in maybe Ireland or France.

[Lanea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book pairs sections of Heaney's translation of Buile Suibhne (Sweeney Astray) with black and white photographs of Donegal by Rachel Giese (now Rachel Brown). Poetry and black and white photography share a special connection in my head. I don't know when the link formed, but I know that each art's interest in compression and precision raises the hairs on the back of my neck. Each art, done correctly, results in something akin to religious ecstasy. For someone with a fractured belief system like mine, such art allows me to get closer to faith than I otherwise could. Connecting poetry and photography to Irish mythology forces my reaction that much closer to apotheosis. So yeah, I wanted this book. It lives with Triur Ban and An Leabhar Mor on an imaginary alter-like book table in my mind.

Heaney reworked parts of his translation, and happily the entire text is included in the back of the book, so those who have not yet read Heaney's Sweeney Astray have it all here. I don't think Sweeney's Flight works if you don't read the full text--this isn't meant to be just another coffee table book. So if you're lucky enough to get hold of a copy, do yourself a favor and read the full text. I'm always both excited and jealous to read Heaney's translations, because he's one of the precious few who are getting to do what I wish I could for a living. Thankfully, he's doing it so very well. Buile Suibhne tells the story of a seventh-century pagan Ulster King who is cursed with madness by a bishop. T.S. Eliot, Neil Gaiman, and Flann O'Brien have all used Sweeney in their work. The tale is generally considered to be the most poetic of any of the old Irish texts, and many translators and writers play at trying to do it justice. Heaney cracked it in the 1970s, and I don't know who can match him.

[Denis Deasy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The christianised version that was written down by monks obviously tells the story from that point of view. However, if read from the pre-christian Celtic perspective, Suibhne was the last of the chieftains to hold out against forced 'conversion', and as a last resort, escaped this fate, at the battle of Mag Rath (Moira), by shape shifting to become a bird, the highest and most difficult of shamanistic skills.
The nature poetry in this narrative poem is lyrical, spare & bittersweet - Suibhne, not surprisingly, often yearns to return to being a chieftain and to the bed he shared with Eorann, but then soars off into the hills and valleys, revisiting sacred places and revelling in the gift of flight.
This edition juxtaposes wonderful black & white shots of some of the locations mentioned in the text, alongside the relevant extract . It also shows a sample of the original Irish text alongside its translation - this shows the rhythmic, alliterative style of the original, which is almost impossible to recreate in translation. The full text of Sweeney Astray is also included.