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First edition. However, they are interrupted by soldiers hunting Sweeney and he rushes off alone.
Heaney is wonderful but the tale lost whatever tragic potential it carried long ago and works best as a kind of early travelogue of the Irish countryside. Or maybe just because people liked the sounds of the verses, which are necessarily lost in this English translation.
Image provided by: CDC/ Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAM Sweeney, the King of Dal-Arie, becomes involved in a territorial dispute with the priest Ronan.
Sweeney is a not too interesting king who offends a priest, as Ireland sits on the cusp of Christian supremacy, and is turned mad (and into a kind of bird).
England, UK. A version from the Irish. A+ Customer service! Softcover
Condition: Good. Soft cover. With a long, free afternoon with nothing to do, I was happy to find myself involved and lost with tales Sweeney that would have stirred fireside tales 1000 years ago.I came across a segment in Heaney’s collected poems years ago and found out that the original inspired a portion of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds- a text on mental illness that pre-dates Lear and posits the old Irish warrior class against the priestly class - elegant and mournful. Sweeney Astray is a version of the Irish poem Buile Shuibhne written by Seamus Heaney and published in 1983.
Paperback. Start by marking “Sweeney Astray” as Want to Read: Sweeney seems on his way to recovery, and a local woman felt sorry for him and would leave him milk and food. Sweeney's plight seems to me an awkward clash between old Celtic paganism and early Christianity; those who refuse to accept the latter are outcast, and are doomed to wander alone and bare, away from their tribe or clan.
("Buile Suibhne") Seamus Heaney A Field Day Publication 1983 Derry "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. At one level there is the story of the poem as it unfolds, at another level there are forces in ancient Ireland that seem to be at play. . "Sweeney Astray" is a masterpiece on many levels: for the complex weave of its themes to the lyrical quality of its prose--accentuated greatly, of course, by Seamus Heaney's virtuoso translation. Be the first to ask a question about Sweeney Astray Eliot used his name for a series of poems, he has a few cameos in Neil Gaiman's "American Gods", and one senses the influence on Italo Calvino's "The Baron in the Trees" and on Joseph Heller's naked, reluctant Yossarian.
Thus, without dealing with the problem of the original medieval poem and Heaneys translation/retelling, I will sketch the marvelous story in store for any who read this delightful and challenging poem. Condition: Good. Seamus Heaney on Mad Sweeney the king cursed by a saint and condemned to live as a bird until his death. After Sweeney killed one of Ronan's priests, the cleric cursed the king, who, at the battle of Moria suddenly lost his wits and courage and fled, the text says, like a bird, literally. Finally he encounters a holy and decent priest, Moling, who wants to help him back to his senses. Paperback. Sweeney's story has been taken up by a wide variety of modern writers, none of them Irish beside Heaney: T.S.
Heaney's skill with language is clear throughout, but even that was not enough to keep me interested all the way through.After reading Heaney's translation of Beowulf, I was excited to read his narrative/verse translation of the Irish legend of "mad" Sweeney, based loosely on events from 600-700 AD. Thus for my notes on the text I simply have to ignore that question, I have no way of knowing. Your Web browser is not enabled for JavaScript. I especially value how this story has been told through the ages, tying back to old Celtic history from the 600s. Softcover poetry book, with no marks or writing in book. However some weeks on he is discovered and Lynchseachen is set to see him.