Chapter 3 - Eastern Europe

Summary

This chapter frames Heaney’s long investment in Eastern Europe in the intersecting contexts of the Cold War and the Troubles. From 1970 on, Heaney read, promoted and translated poets from behind the Iron Curtain. The same Anglo-American poetic and academic climate that alerted Heaney to the presence of Eastern European poets also led him to turn to these poets to resolve problems he had with the Anglo-American lyric in the context of Irish history and politics. The chapter pays particular attention to the influences of Osip Mandelstam and Czesław Miłosz on Heaney’s poetry from North to Electric Light, a volume that includes multiple elegies for Eastern European poets and Heaney's only poem set in Eastern Europe, 'The Known World'. Finally, this piece takes stock of the enduring impact of Eastern Europe on Heaney's imagination at the end of his life.