LAUSR

Eugene O’Brien’s contemplation of Heaney’s prose takes in a vastly eclectic and very engrossing array of significant figures in what can broadly be referred to as the sphere of Continental philosophy or a tradition of European intellectualism that O’Brien sees as being firmly rooted in ancient Greek origins. O’Brien is well attuned to the various historical attempts to make differentiations and draw distinctions between poetry and philosophy in a specific intellectual tradition. He intertwines these in what he calls: “an equation between his own home place and ancient Greece” (50). O’Brien initially aligns Heaney with Derrida and Heidegger in how the poet sees the relationship between poetry and thinking stating that: