M

The monogram represents iconic Russian poet and essayist Osip Mandelstam much admired by Heaney for resisting the repressive Eastern European political machines that sought to silence him. The poet allegorizes his conviction that men of Mandelstam’s stature will ensure that truth will always come out. Heaney’s publisher of messages, a magician/contradiction in terms (deaf phonetician), has developed a method of bringing his patient’s interior monologue to light despite the vocal silence imposed by outside forces. He smuggles out what cannot be heard using touch (his hand over the dome of a speaker’s skull) – his skill at unraveling speech formats (diphthong … vowel  by the bone vibrating to the sound) has made the unfeasible feasible and defeated censorship. Heaney’s speaker […]