There are a couple of ways to read The Letters of Seamus Heaney (2024). In one sense, they are formidable examples of one poet’s unremitting life of public and private good works and of a literary citizen whose output made far-reaching ripples from his initial small pond. But the letters can also be read as a parable on the dangers of fame. When Heaney died in 2013, he was Ireland’s national poet and the country’s second Nobel laureate. Such was his fame by then that his final texted words, “Noli timere” (Be not afraid), from the Vulgate translation of Matthew 14:27, went into immediate circulation. They became a neon-lit sign on a Seamus Heaney museum and instantly entered into English usage to the degree that the quote is often associated more with Heaney than with the original citation of the Gospel.

There’s no such thing as a free Nobel prize.