Ghosts

Abstract So much of Irish literature is haunted that it can be hard to see one ghost from another. The source of these sensory disruptions has been identified in many places. Religion is a factor, as is folk belief, and history, each of which has its own ways of narrating deep social fissures. Added to this for the artist is a willingness to accept the boundaries of what is known, and what is not, and leave a door open between. Heaney’s late poetry visits this space often. He had never been afraid of the dark and as he aged the panorama of the future became unexpectedly brighter. His ghosts did not disappear in this light but took on different forms, of companionship and not rebuke. In this way he prepared to make a ghost of himself. How he did that is the subject of this chapter.