Sean Walsh

I live in Dublin, Ireland. Sometimes. Most times I live in my head, quite unaware of my surroundings – if you know what I mean… If you succeed in tracking Sean Walsh, please let me know, ok? I've been searching for him for years…

Heaney on VEIL…

Published on Friday 19th August 2016 by Sean Walsh

Department of English, Queen’s University, Belfast. 1966.

“The idea of approaching the significance of the Passion obliquely,
through the experiences of those who might be regarded as enemies, is good theatre; and the actual denouement is all the more dramatic for not taking place in the presence of the Saviour.

In fact, the reality of the Incarnation seems to me properly realised in the movement – Christ’s life becomes dynamic and efficacious in the world…

The devil’s part, as ever in literature, comes off best here, I think…

Sadoc is a very consistent and interesting character whose
psychology, though not as inherently interesting as Azarias’s, is made concrete in his machinations.

Azarias is a rounded character whose development is at once true and inevitable: we watch a man finding some kind of grace in spite of himself, reaching fulfillment as much through circumstances as through personality – who sees the light in spite of himself, as it were.

Ruth, Veronica and Benjamin are all right as straight characters…

In the main, the speech is attractively dignified and in character. And I think that Misach’s outbreak in the end is the most exciting thing in the play, both as a dramatic device and as speech – after long silence.

Misach, incidentally, would be my nominee for the best dramatic figure in the cast.

Definitely a step well beyond the weeping women and the cowering apostles.

I was kept reading, which is the most important thing in the end…

– Seamus Heaney.

(At the time I knew little enough about Seamus Heaney – and he certainly knew nothing about me!)dfw-sw-veil-cover-mid

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