THE poet Seamus Heaney was given the French decoration of Commander of the Order of Letters in Paris yesterday by the French Culture Minister, Mr Philippe Douste Blazy, four months after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mr Heaney said he was being honoured as the representative of "the whole order of art and culture in Ireland".
"Last year in Stockholm I said I was walking on air," a beaming Mr Heaney said in French. "Today, that walk is continuing." The green medal was tied around his neck with a green ribbon, "the eternal green of Ireland," according to Mr Douste Blazy.
But as the poet launched from French into English the ribbon came undone, causing the minister to lunge forward to catch it. "I should be speaking French," Mr Heaney said wryly, casting his eyes upwards.
The French Republic's Order of Letters, established in 1957, mostly honours the cultural achievements of French people.
But among the foreign artists to receive it in the last two years have been the actress Lauren Bacall, the opera singer Marilyn Horne, writers John Updike and Muriel Spark, and film directors Franco Zeffirelli and Stanley Kubrik.
Several of Mr Heaney's works have been published in French, including a new edition by Gallimard of Poemes 1966 - 1984. Some of his books feature in the Irish stand at the Paris book fair which opened yesterday.
Mr Heaney is to read at the Maison de la Poesie in Paris tonight as part of the Imaginaire Irlandais festival of Irish culture. The 200 seater theatre was sold out almost as soon as tickets went on sale.
Yesterday Mr Heaney sympathised with his French readers and translators "because the genius of French is that it tends towards the ceiling whereas the genius of my language is that it tends towards the floor. It is a different timbre."