[lit-ideas] Re: Seamus Heaney dies
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2013 21:36:18 -0400 (EDT)
As McEvoy wrote,
"Seamus Heaney dies"
I added that Seamus was British AND/OR Irish (or "He was Irish or not", as
Geary may prefer).
I added that it may do to compare Heaney's not being Irish (or British)
with Geary not being Memphian.
Geary now writes that he feels
"so Memphian that I walk like an Egyptian"
and recalls a French writer who wrote, translated,
"I read in this morning paper that Edward Stelman had died.
Interestingly, I didn't know he had even been born."
--
It may be argued that, unlike Heaney, Edward Stelman _was_ British.
----
Geary reminds us again of Wittgenstein's point:
"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death [...]
Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits."
--- which is a profundity that is seldom minimised by allegedly sharp
comments, as per by McEvoy, when he notes that
"only a philosopher ... would think [it] worth adding" that Heaney had
been born before he died.
--- The point, McEvoy seems to be suggesting, is tautological.
In the context of the source for McEvoy's statement,
"Seamus Heaney dies"
rather than 'is dead', or 'is dying'
we may take that to be a newspaper.
And newspaper, sometimes, do focus on births, rather than deaths.
Indeed, it would have been strange that back in
14 April 1939
any newspaper -- unless the Chronicle of Castledawson and Toomebridge --
would have carried the news:
"A baby was born to Patrick Heaney and Margaret Kathleen McCann. They
named him "Seamus"".
---
BUT, as the recent son of the duke of Cambridge testifies, birth notes are
VERY appropriate.
It may do to revise the editorial ways to deal with this:
Seamus Heaney dies.
seems the correct one.
But Le Figaro preferred a more circumlocutionary way (but then it's
French).
Similarly, few newspapers ran,
"Son of Duke of Cambridge is born".
----
In the case of the son of the Duke of Cambridge -- George, as a matter of
fact -- there was the further asymmetry that the baby was born, literally,
without a name -- whereas it would be almost self-contradictory to assume
that a Nobel prize winner could die without one -- a name I mean.
Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
----
In memoriam Edward Stelman
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