Heaney and Muldoon: Omphalos and Diaspora

The essay argues that for Heaney, place is the primal and primary determinant - the ground, the omphalos - of identity, stability and continuity for both self and community. Displaced from origins, from family and community, from a traditional folkloric ethos and magical world-view, he reconstitutes himself in a literary culture through which he seeks to recuperate and re-enter the 'first place' of childhood, to re-discover the mythical centre, the omphalos, in the super-reality of the text. By contrast, Muldoon dispels the sacramental sense of place, essentialist notions of identity, and nostalgic visions of lost plenitude. His alter/native text relishes the dialogue of difference, creating a world of process in which language, identity, tradition, nation are scattered, and we are inducted into hybrid states and composite cultures.