Milton called ití ìmiddle flightîí. Heaney goes further explaining how
this is ëa fullness [which] rebounds back upon itself, or it rebounds off
someone or something else and thereby creates a wave capable of
lifting the burden of our knowledge and experience to a new,
refreshing plane.í^74 This ërefreshing planeí of ëoursí is the middle
passage, ëmiddle flightí, a space in-between or crossing at the edge of
representation, that is ëabove the brimí.
The image of the spirit-level, evoked by the title of Heaneyís
most recent collection, also provides a metaphorical bridge for
potential crossings. The spirit-level is hardly mentioned in the poems
themselves, yet it is a poignant image that haunts the collection as a
whole, connecting with the notions of balance that are explored in
ëMaking Strangeí and ëThe Other Sideí. In his essay ëCultureís In-
Betweení (1996), Homi Bhahba comments that ëthe translation of
cultures, whether assimilative or agnostic, is a complex act that
generates borderline effects and identifications [...]í.^75 This is an effect
that is initiated in Seeing Things. Heaneyís translation of the Aeneid
writes of a crossing between the real world and the underworld, and it
instigates a negotiation between languages or between his version of
the myth and the myth proper.^76 In this way, translation provides a
transformation from one story to another; crossing between realms, it
is an ëact that generates borderline effectsí bringing attention to
cultural borders and their possible transgression. As Heaney notices in
the conclusion of his essay ëThe Impact of Translationí (1988), (which
once again draws on a plural pronoun or communal sense of
readership), ë[w]hen we read the translations of the poets of Russia
and Eastern Europe, we are on the very edge [...]í.^77
The poem ëSettingsí imagines: ëAir and ocean known as
antecedents/ Of each other. In opposition with/ Omnipresence,
74 Heaney, ëAbove the Brimí, p.286.
75 Homi Bhabha, ëCultureís In-Betweení in Questions of Cultural Identity, eds.,
Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London: Sage, 1996), p.54.
76 This oscillation between real and imaginary worlds can be understood in
relation to the death of Heaneyís father whereby the ghostly world of the
deadparent invades upon the everyday with the effect that the poetic speaker
ësees thingsí.
77 Heaney, ëThe Impact of Translationí, The Government of the Tongue, p.44.