[In the following article, Clarity reports Heaney's reactions to winning the Nobel Prize.]

Seamus Heaney, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, arrived home last night and was welcomed not only as a great poet in a land that loves writers and writing, but also as a symbol of hope for lasting peace in Northern Ireland.

Mr. Heaney, who was born in Northern Ireland 56 years ago but now lives in Dublin, was on vacation in Greece when his award was announced on Thursday. For a full day, neither his children nor the scores of reporters seeking interviews could find him. He was invited to a dinner party on Friday at the residence of the American Ambassador, Jean Kennedy Smith, but did not appear.

But when he arrived at Dublin's airport on Saturday night, after cutting his trip short upon learning about the prize, Prime Minister John Bruton was there to praise him as a literary symbol of the Northern peace effort, and to have the poet autograph a book of his lectures.

Asked at the airport how he felt about joining the other Irish Nobel winners, William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett, he said: "It's like being a little foothill at the bottom of a mountain range. You hope you just live up to it. It's extraordinary." He did not mention Ireland's literary giant, James Joyce (a figure in his poetry), who never won the Nobel.

Mr. Heaney and his wife, Marie, were whisked from the airport to the residence of President Mary Robinson for champagne and more praise. He has been the main story on national television since Thursday, and he read three of his poems on the radio today at the start of the main afternoon news program.

"It was entirely bewildering," he said in an Irish television interview before he left the Greek port of Kalamata, "and still a bit incredible. It's an awesome dimension." Asked how he felt about being considered a peace symbol, he showed none of the annoyance of some of his friends, who thought he should have won solely as a poet. Mr. Heaney has dealt with Northern Ireland in his work and acknowledges that his point of view supports Roman Catholic charges of harsh discrimination by the Protestant majority. He left the British-ruled province in the early 1970's after he was threatened by Protestant paramilitary guerrillas.

"There has been a new mood in the country since last year," he said, clearly referring to the peace effort that accelerated when the Irish Republican Army declared a cease-fire more than 13 months ago. "It's a very precious mood because it promises new energy. I'm also gratified that I've been honored as part of that. I've a very strong sense of belonging to the North, and of course I insist on being Irish." Referring to the province of his birth and the 25 years of sectarian warfare between Catholics and Protestants there, he added, "One doesn't want one's identity coerced. But I've said the British Irish in the North shouldn't be coerced out of their identity, either."

When the award was first announced, Mr. Heaney's childhood friend, John Hume, the Roman Catholic political leader instrumental in starting the current peace effort, said he hoped the prize was for poetry, not politics. Mr. Hume has been nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, as has former Prime Minister Albert Reynolds, also for his work toward peace.

The Irish Times said in an editorial: "No doubt there will be mutterings from many quarters that the Nobel committee has once again made a political choice by awarding the prize to an Irishman at the end of a year which has been one of the most hopeful yet perilously balanced periods in the history of our two states. Such begrudgery, though typical of us as a nation, will only shame us in the eyes of an admiring world."

At the airport, Prime Minister Bruton said that in the peace effort, "I draw encouragement and inspiration from Seamus's writing."

Mr. Heaney, recognized in the streets of Dublin by his frizzy white hair, spoke about growing up in the North, where his friends, in addition to Mr. Hume, included the playwright Brian Friel and the poet Seamus Deane, who is now a lecturer at Notre Dame University in Indiana. "Teen-age lads rampant," he said. "There was a lot of energy, but there was no sense of a future of destiny or anything like that.

"I'm very moved to hear about the pleasure in the country at home. I feel myself part of something. Not only being part of a community, but part of an actual moment and a movement of Irish writing and art. That sense of being part of the whole thing is the deepest joy."