從膽怯到膽壯：倫理；政治；奚尼

From the Timorous to the Bold: Ethics, Politics, Heaney

本文旨在探討奚尼自覺「人我」差異之餘，如何在政治詩中經營表述之道。第一部份由他對作品被選入英國詩集的回應切入，梳理英愛兩國在語言和文學長年的糾葛關係後，導入北愛爾蘭作家的困境。第二部份探討奚尼如何在英國體制監控之下，運用他者的聲音與形象，經營迂迴書寫。第三部份則以創傷書寫的角度，重新檢視奚尼的迂迴書寫，藉此分析他中期詩作常見的自省主題以及政治與創作之間的兩難，進而探討他如何藉由英國抒情詩傳統，逐漸鬆解自己對人我分際的成見。第四部份則由奚尼的晚期詩作和《貝爾武夫》翻譯，觀看他對人我倫理的新體認，如何讓他終於擺脫二元對立思維，由膽怯地欲言又止，到膽壯地暢所欲言。

This paper proposes to explore Seamus Heaney's strategy of articulation in his political poems, which stems from a keen awareness of 'I-thou' difference. Part one begins with Heaney's response to his inclusion in an anthology of English poetry, proceeds to inspect the long-standing entanglement in language and literature between England and Ireland, and concludes with a speculation on Northern Irish writers' dilemma. Part two focuses on the ways Heaney mobilizes the other's voice and image to formulate a circuitous writing in order to evade the surveillance of the state apparatus. Part three reconsiders Heaney's circumlocutory strategy as symptoms of trauma to analyze the theme of introspection that prevails in his poems in the mid-1970's and the 1980's. The poet's dilemma between politics and writing, I will argue, is responsible for this theme, but it also helps him unwind his received idea about the 'I-thou' relation through the English lyric tradition. Part four is devoted to 'Mycenae Lookout' and Heaney's translation of Beowulf, which demonstrate a new vision of ethics as the poet comes to terms with binary oppositions, thereby shedding his timorous impulse to govern his tongue to become a bold writer who exercises the government of the tongue.