Gravity and Grace: Seamus Heaney and the Force of Light »

John F. Desmond (Ph.D. University of Oklahoma) is Mary A. Denny Emeritus Professor of English, Whitman College. He serves on the board of advisors for the Flannery O'Connor Society, and the editorial board of Literature and Belief. His publications include Walker Percy's Search for Community (2004), At the Crossroads: Ethical and Religious Themes in the Writings of Walker Percy (1997), and Risen Sons: Flannery O'Connor's Vision of History (1987).

In this thoughtful and carefully argued book, John Desmond uncovers Christian and transcendent elements in Seamus Heaney's poetry by reading it through the intellectual perspectives of the well-known poet Czeslaw Milosz and the French philosopher Simone Weil. Weil was a powerful influence on Milosz's thought and writing; Milosz, in turn, exercised considerable influence on Heaney's thought and poetry. Desmond utilizes these connections in order to show the way Weil's thought about Christianity and transcendence illuminates Heaney's complex relationship with Christianity. Desmond's sensitive readings of Heaney's poems through this new lens reveal previously unexplored depths in the work of the Nobel Prize-winning poet.

Introduction 1

1 Simone Weil and the Age of Imbalance 19

2 The Poet in the Age of Imbalance 33

3 The Spirit Level 49

Postscript 115

Notes 119

Works Cited 121

Index 125