The Force of Law in Seamus Heaney's Greek Translations

Abstract

This essay examines the use of law in Heaney’s Greek translations: The Burial at Thebes, and The Cure at Troy. For Derrida,, the founding moment of law, in a society or culture, is never a moment ‘inscribed’ in the history of that culture since it ‘rips it apart with one decision’, a decision which Derrida sees as a ‘coup de force’, a ‘performative and interpretative violence’ which is in itself ‘neither just nor unjust’. In Heaney’s quest for adjudication, for saying the law, he looks at the performative nature of violence in originary contexts and finds the symbols adequate to his society’s predicament in these translations .