Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 3. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 29)

Péter Dolmányos: An Outline of the Relationship Between Romanticism and Contemporary Irish Poetry

14 PÉTER DOLMÁNYOS Heaney uses all but one sensory fields (it is only taste that is missing)

—and there is an interesting relationship between hearing and seeing, senses preferred by Wordsworth as well. The wells and pumps offer primarily sounds but time after time he balances these sounds with sights. The 'dark drop' is followed and balanced by the 'trapped sky', the 'rich crash' is paired by the reflection (though in the second stanza it is 'no reflection'), the echoes of the fourth stanza add a 'clean new music' to the original voice and the rat crosses his reflection. The most captivating instance of this balance comes at the end of the poem: 'I rhyme / To see myself, to set the darkness echoing'

—the voice creates vision as well as echo. Heaney's descriptive details are exact, which is another instance of Wordsworthian influence. The external phenomena are introduced from the point of view of their significance for the observer, focusing the emphasis on the imagination rather than on the phenomena themselves. The resolution at the end is at once a rejection of the 'old' way of looking at the world and the assertion of a higher level of consciousness through poetry. From among other elements of affinity between the two poets their childhood influences are of great significance. The rural background of their childhood has a formative influence for both of them, the natural scenery provides an important stimulus for their poetry. Just as The Prelude contains episodes of careless happiness as well as of threatening moments, Heaney's account of his relationship with his childhood environment includes a variety of episodes covering a similar range of experience. Politics is yet another issue which may connect the two poets. Wordsworth was deeply affected by the French Revolution, deeply enthusiastic at first, even more deeply disappointed later. His disappointment kept forcing him to find redemption in poetry by an attempt to integrate the experience in his world view.' Similarly, the Ulster Troubles are a haunting political presence in Heaney's poetry

—his bog poems show the attempt of finding a mythic framework for the interpretation of the violence

—and his painful recognition of the futility of any such at3 Cf. Wiley, B. The Eighteenth-century background. Studies on the Idea of Nature in the Thought of the Period. London: Chatto and Windus, 1946, Chapter XII. Nature in Wordsworth, pp. 253-293.