What is it about a writer's final posthumous work that so haunts us? Perhaps because it offers one last glimpse of mastery, or helps unify the writer's oeuvre, or offers the gift of a parting embrace, we grant such writings special significance. But are we obliged to read such works differently than those that kindled our desire and affection when the writer was living? When the dead speak, should we judge what they say, or simply be grateful that they have spoken?
When Seamus Heaney died in 2013, he left behind a Nobel Prize-winning body of lyric poems, essays, and translations. Readers mourned the loss of his consonant-crusted music, his unflinching self-scrutiny, his evocative landscapes, and his deft handling of the religious and political conflict in Northern Ireland.
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