'About the only enmity I have is towards pride.' Seamus Heaney said this in an interview, and since we know him to be the most over-interviewed of living poets, perhaps he shouldn't be forced to say it again here. Put in its context, though, this too-worthy-sounding protestation has much to reveal about the disposition of Heaney's work so far, and can even be read as a riposte to those critics who complain that, for all its verbal richness and its moral courage, his work is strangely without personality.

LRB 1 October 1987 | PDF Download