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  3. Being with Seamus Heaney was like being with two people at once. On the one

Being with Seamus Heaney was like being with two people at once. On the one

游客2023-11-01  29
问题     Being with Seamus Heaney was like being with two people at once. On the one hand, he was noble, statesmanlike, slightly formidable: That monumental head could happily have taken its place among the classical emperors that ring the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. On the other, with his shambling gait(蹒跚步态), unruly hair and bred-in-the-bone jocundity(欢乐), he remained always the farmer’s son from Co. Derry.
    I met him first nearly 20 years ago, when I interviewed him for Harpers & Queen on the publication of "Seeing Things". He spoke about the duty he felt to respond to letters from admirers, and of how this maddened his wife—"Marie always says, ’For God’s sake!’, but the relationship between one’s ethical commands and one’s whole reality is very complex." He reflected on the need sometimes for a poet to be political, and stern: "Sometimes it’s immoral not to put the boot in and cause a bit of bother: sometimes acquiescence(默认)is a failure." He mused on his Catholic upbringing which—though he was no longer a churchgoer—had left him feeling he had "a right to joy".
    Ahead of the interview, I’d been terrified of getting out of my depth, so as well as buying all Heaney’s poetry: I’d bought a volume of A-level notes on his work. When we’d finished speaking, he offered to sign the books and, to my horror, at the bottom of the tower, he discovered my notes. He roared with laughter. I laughed too. We parted on the merriest terms.
    But that evening, when he gave a reading at the Royal Society of Literature, he was recollected, and grave. Demonstrating Ted Hughes’s belief that "poetry derives from the place of ultimate suffering and decision", he recited "Mid-Term Break", about the tragic death of his younger brother, aged four:
    "In the porch I met my father crying—"
    We were brought together again by another poet, and mutual friend, George Mackay Brown. Embarking on Brown’s biography, I wrote to Heaney to ask whether he might share his memories and thoughts. He responded with a fax I will treasure forever: four pages of precise, perfectly turned reflections that I stitched through my book like golden thread.
    Then, last September, Heaney gave a reading in Stirling. He allowed me to interview him for "Seven Wonders", speaking in rich, graceful sentences that made their way unedited from the recorder to the page. At a dinner in his honour, he told us how thrilled he’d been by the neighbouring farmer who dropped in to see him after he returned from receiving the Nobel Prize. "Ah, Seamus," the farmer said. "Welcome home. And congratulations on the winnings!"
    At the reading itself, he seemed frail, but radiant. He spoke of his desire "to rise up and make poetry move—to make art and humanity worth something".
    Then there were questions. A Stirling student, as awkward and shy as my 20-something self, asked whether Heaney had anything interesting left to say, now that he was so old. Unabashed, and twinkling with amusement, Heaney referred him to his early poem "Digging". "I might not have too much more digging ahead," he admitted, "but I hope there’s a good bit of hoeing". If only there had been more. [br] Which of the following can NOT be learned from the first paragraph?
选项 A、It is a memorable experience being with Seamus Heaney.
B、Most poets are complex creatures with double personalities.
C、Images of both an emperor and a farmer can be seen in Seamus Heaney.
D、Seamus Heaney is an old man with optimistic spirit about life.
答案 B
解析 推断题。第一段讲述诗人Seamus Heaney身上兼具皇帝的高贵威严和农民的乐天、淳朴及不拘小节，但不能就此推断大部分诗人都有双面性格，故[B]为答案。
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