And decently relapse into the wrong
Grammar which kept us allied and at bay.^62The only way to relate to the mother is on her own terms and this is no
real conversation in the Latinate sense of conversing, meaning ëto turn
around the otherí or ëto keep company with anotherí. It is rather a
conversation that remains converse as the son pretends to be converted
or ëwell-adjustedí simply in order to keep them ëat bayí from one
another. The ëdecentí and ëadequateí bridge he builds between them is
both a ëbetrayalí that keeps them apart and a mediation that keeps
them in company. The speaker risks being a traitor within his own
class but at the same time, he cannot change back and erase his
education as this has made him estranged from his original ëwrong
grammarí.
In ëMaking Strangeí the speaker can be ëcunningí and attempt to
deflect attention from the gap between the two people by turning their
and our attention to the landscape which becomes the centre of
interest as the speaker tries to smooth over the difference between the
characters. The optimistic poetic speaker attempts to be ëboldí in the
face of a cultural rift and turns to the landscape for healing. The
speakerís perspective of the landscape becomes discontinuous and
ëstrangeí; the final feeling is of a ërecitationí or incantation that results
in estrangement between the people described, and defamiliarization
between the speaker and the land he observes. Any attempt at balance
or reconciliation is demonstrated as being far more precarious than
Redmond cares to acknowledge.
Of course, the title ëMaking Strangeí relates to the Russian
Formalist Victor Shklovskyís theories regarding ostranenie or
ëdefamiliarizationí. Shklovsky believed that it was the duty of the poet
to startle us into ëa new way of seeingí that would also be ëa new way
of sayingí. Using the example of Tolstoy, he claimed that
ëdefamiliarizationí allows us to appreciate the novelty of new ways of
seeing ëagainst what is habitual and expected in any given contextí.
As ëdefamiliarizationí questions established ways of seeing it takes on
an implicitly political agenda which may have been what brought this
philosophy into conflict with the official ideology of post-
62 Heaney, The Haw Lantern (London: Faber, 1987), p.28.