{"id":7899,"date":"2012-01-13T09:41:44","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T14:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=7899"},"modified":"2012-08-19T15:34:18","modified_gmt":"2012-08-19T19:34:18","slug":"seamus-heaney-the-republic-of-conscience-questions-for-a-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=7899","title":{"rendered":"Seamus Heaney, The Republic of Conscience (questions for a discussion)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Below is the text of Seamus Heaney, &#8220;From the Republic of Conscience,&#8221; which was commissioned by Amnesty International and published on Human Rights Day, 1985. The text is from David Pierce (ed.), <em>Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Reader<\/em> (Cork University Press, 2000), p. 1033. It makes an excellent stimulus for reflecting on your relationship to the political world, ideally in conversation with peers.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.peterlevine.ws\/images\/Heaney.bmp\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.peterlevine.ws\/images\/Heaney.bmp\" alt=\"Seamus Heaney, The Republic of Conscience\" width=\"290\" height=\"900\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<strong>Questions:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What literally happens in the poem? What is the plot?<\/p>\n<p>Why do the immigration authorities show the narrator a picture of <em>his<\/em> grandfather and ask him for <em>his<\/em> traditional cures and charms?<\/p>\n<p>What would it be like to have citizenship <em>only<\/em> in the Republic of Conscience?<\/p>\n<p>Where do the salt and seawater that they hold sacred (and use for writing) in the Republic of Conscience come from originally?<\/p>\n<p>Why is lightning good and fog, bad?<\/p>\n<p>What shows that the Republic is &#8220;frugal,&#8221; and why is it so?<\/p>\n<p>Why were the visitor&#8217;s arms different lengths when he arrived?<\/p>\n<p>What is the significance of the Republic&#8217;s &#8220;sacred symbol,&#8221; the boat?<\/p>\n<p>I think the language of the poem is beautiful, and it describes beautiful things. What is the relationship between aesthetics and conscience? Can you have a conscience and not appreciate beauty or express yourself beautifully? (Does it matter that this statement is a poem?)<\/p>\n<p>What does the visitor think about power? Is the Republic of Conscience actually an anarchy?<\/p>\n<p>What does it mean that the ambassadors are never &#8220;relieved&#8221;? Is that a good thing for them, or a bad thing? (or both?)<\/p>\n<p>Are <em>you<\/em> a dual citizen of the Republic of Conscience?<\/p>\n<p>(One final note about this poem, which is generally free of specialized vocabulary. Apparently, curlews are impressively migratory birds, traveling across continents and oceans. <em>The Call of the Curlew<\/em> is also the title of a novel, which I do not know, by Taha Hussein.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Below is the text of Seamus Heaney, &#8220;From the Republic of Conscience,&#8221; which was commissioned by Amnesty International and published on Human Rights Day, 1985. The text is from David Pierce (ed.), Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Reader (Cork University Press, 2000), p. 1033. It makes an excellent stimulus for reflecting on your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fine-arts","category-notes-on-poems"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7899"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9495,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7899\/revisions\/9495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}