Seamus Heaney’s Sense of Place: Towards a Definition of Irish Identity 1956 – 2006
Dissertation
zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophie an der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Karl Franzens Universität Graz
eingereicht von Mag. Verena Brunner
am Institut für Anglistik
Begutachter: Ao. Univ.-Prof. Univ.-Doz. Mag. Dr. Walter Bernhart Zweitbegutachter: Ao. Univ.-Prof. Univ. Doz. Mag. Dr. Hugo Keiper
Graz, 2008
Acknowledgement
Thank you to my family and friends for their support and patience. I want to thank Prof. Walter Bernhart and Prof. Hugo Keiper for their fruitful discussions and helpful advice.
Contents
1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..…1
2. Seamus Heaney – Poet and Critic…………………………………………………………6 2. 1. Place and History………………………………………………………………………11 2. 2. Myth…………………………………………………………………………………….15 2. 3. Sense of Place…………………………………………………………………………...19 2. 4. Postcolonial Experience………………………………………………………………..24
3. Poetry - Forging an Irish Identity……………………………………………………….28 3. 1. Identity and Sense of Place……………………………………….…………………...33 3. 2. Poetry as a Source of Identity…………………………………...…………………….38
4. Heaney´s Early Work – Finding a Voice………………………………………………..41 4. 1. From Landscape to Soundscape………………………………………..……………..44 4. 2. Words – Representing a Country……………………………………………………..52 4. 3. Place Poems…………………………………………………………………………….63
5. Finding a Metaphor………………………………………………………………………69 5. 1. North – ‘A More Mature Voice’………………………………………………………75 5. 2. Word Field……………………………………………………………………………...82 5. 3. A Comment on the North of Ireland………………………………………………….87
6. Manifestation of a Theme………………………………………………………………..90 6. 1. Field Work ……………………………………………………………………………...94 6. 2. Elegies and Sonnets……………………………………………………………………99 6. 3. Images: Merged, Revised and Reversed…………………………………………….104
7. Station Island …………………………………………………………………………….109 7. 1. Mythology……………………………………………………………………………..114 7. 2. Sweeney Astray : An Irish Myth………………………………………………………119
8. ‘Going-In-Between’……………………………………………………………………..124 8. 1. The Haw Lantern ……………………………………………………………………..128 8. 2. An Allegorical Place………………………………………………………………….134 8. 3. Terminus – Borders and Boundaries……………………………………………….138
9. Seeing Things ………………………………………………………………………….....143 9. 1. Dante`s “Inferno”……………………………………………………………………..148 9. 2. Longitude and Latitude………………………………………………………………153
10. The Spirit Level …………………………………………………………………………158 10. 1. Return to Place Names……………………………………………………………...162 10. 2. Re-visiting Myth, Images, ‘Word–Hoard’…………………………………………167
11. Electric Light – ‘Lux Perpetua’………………………………………………………..172 11. 1. Eclogues……………………………………………………………………………....178 11. 2. Memory and Place ...……………………………………………………………….. 183
12. Inheritance of a Theme………………………………………………………………...188 12. 1. District and Circle …………………………………………………………………....194 12. 2. The Prodigy of an Irish Poet………………………………………………………..200
13. Display, Renewal and Change – A Summary………………………………………...204
14. Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………….209
15. Appendix………………………………………………………………………………..218 15. 1. Word Fields…………………………………………………………………………..218 15. 1. 1. Word Field “Nature” – Death of a Naturalist …………………………………...218 15. 1. 2. Word Field “Nature” – Door into the Dark ……………………………………...221 15. 1. 3. Word Field “Nature” – Wintering Out …………………………………………...225 15. 1. 4. Word Field “Place” – North ……………………………………………………....230 15. 2. Poems………………………………………………………………………………….236 15. 2. 1. Death of a Naturalist ………………………………………………………………236 15. 2. 2. Door into the Dark ………………………………………………………………...243 15. 2. 3. Wintering Out ……………………………………………………………………...250 15. 2. 4. North ……………………………………………………………………………….258 15. 2. 5. Field Work …………………………………………………………………………278 15. 2. 6. Station Island ……………………………………………………………………....284 15. 2. 7. The Haw Lantern ………………………………………………………………….293 15. 2. 8. Seeing Things ……………………………………………………………………...300 15. 2. 9. The Spirit Level ……………………………………………………………………307 15. 2. 10. Electric Light ……………………………………………………………………..314 15. 2. 11. District and Circle ………………………………………………………………..322
Seamus Heaney, 2007, Dun Laoghire, Poetry Now Festival
Seamus Heaney signing my copy of District and Circle
1. Introduction
Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 and grew up on a farm, called Mossbawn, in the rural county of Derry. This experience shaped him immensely because in his poems there is a connection to the local place throughout his writing career. This thesis provides an analysis of Seamus Heaney’s poetry with respect to one main feature of his work; his interest in place. Seamus Heaney’s poems are characterised by a particular relation to places. The purpose of this analysis is to define the features of a ‘sense of place’ that contributes to shaping a feeling of belonging to a place. In the poems, this ‘sense of place’ is represented mainly through images. His complete poetic work needs to be examined in order to identify this specific aspect and to reconstruct and interpret the development of this theme in its cultural and historical context. On the one hand, such an analysis provides an insight into one special characteristic of Heaney’s own poetic voice. The poetic voice of a poet is unique, and sometimes it is a feature that allows the reader to recognise the poet’s work. Heaney’s poetic voice is characterised and represented through symbols and metaphors, themes, form and technique. On the other hand, such a cultural and historical interpretation reveals a common Irish context of ‘sense of place’, which describes the interaction between country, people, the Irish and an individual human being, the poet, as an ongoing process of creating an identity of a whole nation. This process implies that the perception of the nation’s identity changes.
In his poetic discourse, Seamus Heaney contributes to shaping a national identity. An analysis of his works, therefore, reveals the individual approach and strategies used in this process and it identifies the importance of literature, i. e. poetry in a social and political context. Heaney’s work is a rich source of critical investigation and a lot of different approaches have been taken towards his work. Heaney’s poetic voice has been identified and analysed according to its dominant features. Renowned critics such as Edna Longley, Neil Corcoran, Peter McDonald and Fran Brearton have examined Heaney’s work relating to various artistic and poetic aspects and have detected dominant poetic devices – metaphors and themes. For instance, Helen Vendler discusses Heaney’s work in her book Seamus Heaney , where she reconstructs the development of his poetic voice from Death of a Naturalist (1966) to The Spirit Level (1996). Vendler gives an insight into Heaney’s verse through her sensitive examination of the work in connection with the poet. According to Vendler, Heaney defines himself through his poems and is always closely related to the speakers in the poems. For example, Vendler interprets the dream sequence in the section “Station Island” as a biographical poem (cf.
1 Vendler, 2000: 78). The approach chosen in this doctoral thesis is inspired by Helen Vendler’s approach of reading and interpreting the poems in connection with the poet himself and uses the works, i. e., of Corcoran, Longley, McDonald and Duffy as a framework for an analysis of Seamus Heaney’s poetry in regard to the representation of place and the way he establishes his own myth as well as a poetic myth of Ireland and Irish identity. The theories of Joseph Campbell, Roland Barthes, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Seymour Chatman provide the theoretical background for defining, identifying and analysing Heaney’s ‘sense of place’ in this dissertation. Heaney himself interprets his poems as part of his identity as a poet in several critical essays. This means the poet and his work are closely connected because he is present in the poem through his self-reflective tendency.
Neil Corcoran examines Heaney as poet, critic and translator and points out that Heaney’s poetry is influenced by different literary sources. Corcoran also explains that Heaney is aware of his responsibility as a poet and that this awareness is a major feature of his work. In addition, Corcoran explores the development of Heaney’s style and the change of forms and techniques of poetry in his books. The change of form contributes to an altering of meaning in poetry. The poet’s work has not only been analysed according to its formal features, it has also been interpreted in the context of the political discourse of that time. Thus, Heaney’s work has been analysed regarding its involvement in the political discourse of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Peter McDonald points out that poets in the North of Ireland tend to assume the role of a passive witness of violence by taking over the role of a poet as wise spectator (cf. McDonald, 1997: 52). It can be said that Heaney participated in the political discourse of the Troubles by shaping the bog poems in North . This volume established an imagery rooted in the ground of rural Ireland, as a matter of fact, words such as ‘bog’, ‘mould’ and ‘turf’ became emblematic terms to describe the Irish experience during the Troubles. In this dissertation, an examination of his early poetry collections was made. Word fields were examined according to certain features. The outcome of the analysis establishes the hypothesis of this study, which shows that Heaney’s work is characterised by a language rooted in the Irish ground.
To provide a coherence for the narrative of his poems, Heaney uses history or tradition. The historical facts are embedded in the local landscape (cf. McDonald, 1997: 52). Heaney uses the local landscape as a background for the historical facts. The representation of Irish place in literature is part of Patrick J. Duffy’s field of expertise as he investigates the influence of
2 art, painting and writing on the perception of a place identity (cf. Duffy, 1997: 64). According to Duffy, features of the landscape provide a corpus of images and symbols to become representations of sentiments suggested by the historical fact. For example, the reference to the rebel rising in 1798 embedded in the landscape of Derry implies the oppression of the Irish inhabitants by the British sovereignty. Duffy further points out that
[w]riters and artists are both witnesses to our world but also products of it, possessing qualities of insight which can be mustered in helping to understand the diversity of place and the contested meanings that can be attributed to it. Because they can express sublime emotions like love, hate or fear and are similarly capable of articulating manifestations of place, society rewards and honours its artists, who are seen as interpreters of national culture. (Ibid.)
Duffy points out that artists and writers have the ability to promote a better understanding of the diversity of place. Writers can give an insight into the competing meanings that can be attached to a place. The writer is able to provide these insights because he has the ability to express sublime emotions. A poet further can voice manifestations of place and by doing so he can be regarded as an interpreter of national culture. Taking this into account, Heaney, as a poet, is able to voice sublime emotions and can therefore articulate the different manifestations of place. By doing so, Heaney can be seen as an interpreter of national culture.
Heaney’s poetry is multi-layered, which will be explored by this thesis. This analysis deals with one aspect of his work, his poetic voice which is inspired by the rural county of Derry. Heaney grew up on a farm in Mossbawn, and this experience influenced him deeply. The landscape shapes his imagery and is still part of his poetry. Downs and Stea coined the term “innate room” which means that the environment is geographically imprinted in the mind of every human (cf. Downs and Stea, 1982: 21). Downs and Stea further point out that the world, as we perceive it, is a synthesis of different kinds of information that is defined by our senses, such as the eyes, the ears and the nose, and also the perception of movement (cf. ibid.: 41). This can be seen as a definition of place how we perceive it according to its geographical features. Heaney does not so much represent the real geographical place in his poems, he rather uses features of the local landscape to evoke a feeling of belonging to the place and uses his senses to re-create the local place.
The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the impact of poetry on the general perception of a country by providing imagery rooted in the local landscape. This analysis is interested in the different features that provide the basis for the manifestation of place. These features are
3 history, memory and images inspired by the landscape of rural county Derry. These features are recurrent themes in the individual chapters, because Heaney’s work is not only chronologically organised but also according to these features. In this analysis, ‘sense of place’ is identified as a feature of a poet’s poetic voice and especially as a significant means for the definition of Seamus Heaney’s work. Through defining his poetic voice, his ‘sense of place’ is defined as well. In order to do so, certain characteristics have to be chosen to being able to analyse the various poems from the different decades. The similarities and the differences highlight the change of the perception and the display of identity throughout the years. This will allow me to interpret the output according to the cultural and historical changes, and to analyse how far these changes are manifested in Heaney’s poetry.
Determining factors of the analysis are the representations of geographical place, for example, what words or word fields are used in the poems. In addition, the analysis will show which metaphors represent a certain area and which semantic fields are attached to it, for example, moss, turf, digging, potato, or bog. Another characteristic will be aspects of language such as the use of local idioms in order to imprint on the poem a certain locality. Heaney mentions that he was inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins and his use of words (cf. Heaney, 1980: 44). In Heaney’s case, it means that he is influenced by the Northern Irish accent, which can be described as an accent which is heavily driven by consonants (cf. ibid.). Regarding language, poetic devices such as onomatopoeia and repetition are interesting fields of investigation of Heaney’s work.
Other interesting questions, discussed in this thesis, include the influence and representation of tradition, religion and myth. According to Campbell, myth manifests itself in a cultural way, and the prime function of mythology is “to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward” (1993: 11). Heaney cleverly uses different representative figures of different myths in order to create his own Irish myth. Heaney has different sources for this act of creation. One source is the Celtic past of Ireland. For example, he uses Celtic emblems to charge a place with a certain meaning and so he gives the place a new connotation and creates an identification between the reader and the poem. Heaney also creates vivid images in the mind of the reader through his imagery inspired by the local place. By reading his critical essays, it becomes clear that for Heaney it is very important to express his poetic voice appropriately in order to be able to take a stance towards life. He further defines himself, his poetry and his poetic voice through the horizon of his chosen imagery, the local place of rural
4 county Derry. By doing so, he very often chooses mythical figures from the Greek mythology to re-use them for his own purpose: to create an Irish myth. This myth provides a basic framework for a definition of an Irish national identity. Last but not least, this dissertation examines in how far Seamus Heaney has kept his poetic voice, and in how far he altered it and entered into the realms of an imagery of the twenty-first century.
5 2. Seamus Heaney – Poet and Critic
Seamus Heaney found his profession and his passion in writing poetry, and this can best be seen when Heaney cites Kavanagh to show the dedication of a poet because “a man dabbles in verses and finds they are his life” (Heaney, 1980: 34). At the beginning of his career, he was not always certain about his achievements. Heaney writes in the essay “Feeling into Words” that, when looking back to his early beginnings, “I knew the thing was only word-play, and I hadn’t even the guts to put my name to it. I called myself Incertus , uncertain, a shy soul fretting and all that” (ibid.: 45). From the beginning of his career onwards he had a special interest in words and the creation of poems. He mentions that “I was in love with words themselves, but had no sense of a poem as a whole structure and no experience of how the successful achievement of a poem could be a stepping stone in your life” (ibid.). The act of creating poems and achieving the right form became his ‘stepping stones in his life’. These ‘stepping stones’ are also mentioned in his famous poem “Terminus” from The Haw Lantern , where he writes: “Baronies, parishes met where I was born./ When I stood on the central stepping stone” (ll. 19 – 20). He was born into a sectarian, divided Ulster, where “[b]aronies, parishes met” (l. 19), which means that he was born in a country that was torn between two allegiances. His personal sympathies were Irish, ‘parishes’, and his nation was British, ‘baronies’. Through this duality an inner conflict developed. This conflict can be seen as one of Heaney’s sources for writing poetry. Poems were his ‘stepping stones’, and the reason for writing poetry was the fact that he grew up as a Catholic in a sectarian, divided Ulster.
He wrote more than eleven volumes of poetry and developed different styles, tones and ideas of writing poetry, such as sonnets, elegies and parables throughout his incredible writing career. The only consistency throughout his poems is his affinity to place and rural Ireland, which became his main themes. Taking rural Ireland as a main theme for poetry was very liberating for Heaney. Through the example of Kavanagh, Heaney acknowledged that rural Ireland, along with the experience of work, is an adequate subject for poetry written in the English language (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 5). Heaney himself pointed out that he never felt obliged to write a poem dedicated to Patrick Kavanagh; instead, he wrote Death of a Naturalist (cf. ibid.).
In his work, Heaney deals also with a lot of different questions concerning poetry. For example, he wanted to define the determining factors of poetry, which he did in his critical
6 essays but also in his poems. An answer to this question of what poetry means to Heaney can be found in his essay “Belfast” from Preoccupations , where he states that “[p]oetry is out of the quarrel with ourselves and the quarrel with others is rhetoric. It would wrench the rhythms of my writing procedures to start squaring up to contemporary events with more will than ways to deal with them” (Heaney, 1980: 34). Taking into account that Heaney views poetry as an active interchange between poet and the world surrounding him, he participates through his poems in a dialogue between himself and the world. As a matter of fact, he takes a “stance towards life” (ibid.: 47). Furthermore, he points out that he writes about topics he is concerned with and participates through this in the contemporary social and political discourse. Heaney explicitly says that “I have always listened for poems, they come sometimes like bodies come out of the bog, almost complete, seeming to have been laid down a long time ago, surfacing with a touch of mystery” (ibid.: 34). Heaney very often uses bog imagery to refer to Ireland and the situation in Northern Ireland. In Wintering Out (1972), he started a whole cycle of bog poems which continually appeared throughout his work but had its culmination in North (1975). Here, he uses this imagery to exemplify his attitude towards poetry and the source of poetry.
Seamus Heaney voices his feelings towards being a poet and what makes a poet in his poem “The Diviner” (see Appendix, p. 242). It shows his personal attitude which is very professional but sometimes insecure: “Cut from the green hedge a forked hazel stick/ That he held tight by the arms of the V:/ Circling the terrain, hunting the pluck/ Of water, nervous, but professionally” (ll. 1 – 4).The diviner can be compared with the poet who creates the poem with imagery taken from the local place because the poet ‘circles the terrain’ in the poem. The poet searches for a source of inspiration that stirs his imagination because he is “hunting the pluck” (l. 3). Heaney describes the writing process in the second stanza of this poem. The poet can sense the hidden source of life, and he is the one who can mediate it to the community: “Unfussed. The pluck came sharp as a sting./ The rod jerked with precise convulsions,/ Spring water suddenly broadcasting/ Through a green hazel its secret stations.” (ll. 5 – 8) These lines deal with the ‘spontaneous overflow’ of passion which is mentioned by Wordsworth in his “Preface” to the Lyrical Ballads . Campbell points out that “[t]he divine being is a revelation of the omnipotent Self, which dwells within us all. The contemplation of the life thus should be undertaken as a meditation on one’s own immanent divinity” (1993: 319). Heaney also shows that only the Diviner is able to ‘stir the hazel’ and to articulate and grasp what lies hidden in the subconsciousness. The poet has the ability of articulating what
7 lies beneath the surface and what is latent in the community’s mind: “The bystanders would ask to have a try./ He handed them the rod without a word./ It lay dead in their grasp till nonchalantly/ He gripped expectant wrists. The hazel stirred.” (“The Diviner”, ll. 9 – 12) These lines point out that only a poet, a person who can sense the hidden source, is able to articulate it because a poet “is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul” (Wordsworth, 1967b: 361). Heaney explains in his essay “Feeling into Words” from his book Preoccupations that “[t]he poem was written simply to allay an excitement and name an experience, and at the same time to give the excitement a perpetuum mobile in language itself” (Heaney, 1980: 48). Heaney writes about his personal experiences of writing poetry and feeling this excitement, but he also expresses the role of a poet by stating that “[t]he diviner resembles the poet in his function of making contact with what lies hidden, and in his ability to make palpable what was sensed or raised” (ibid). In “Feeling into Words”, Heaney mentions that the Renaissance poet Philip Sidney remarks in his Apologie for Poetry that the Romans called their poets Vates, who also had the function of a Diviner (cf. Heaney, 1980: 48). Reading this passage, it seems as though Heaney believes that a poet and a diviner have the ability to reflect on the hidden sources of life and express them for the community (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 8). Heaney points out that the unique genius and ability of a poet are able to communicate the fears and hopes of his community. With that special position in society, a poet is able to define identity through being able to articulate the hidden sources of life, which can be seen as a Romantic feature in Heaney’s poetry. Heaney is very much influenced by Wordsworth and his Romantic ideas such as ‘supernaturalizing’ the natural: “ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect” (Wordsworth, 1967b: 358). Wordsworth was one of the first poets who advocated the rural life: “humble and rustic life was generally chosen” (ibid.) as a topic for poetry, which became the core of Heaney’s poetry.
The act of creating a poem is very important for Heaney in his writings. He differentiates between two kinds of creating a poem. By doing so, he refers to great predecessors such as Gerard Manley Hopkins. Heaney explains his aspirations as follows:
I wanted to explore the notion that the artist’s idea of the artistic act, conscious or unconscious, affected certain intrinsic qualities of the artefact. I hope I have clarified my sense of the artistic act in Hopkins as a masculine forging rather than a feminine incubation, with a consequent intentness rather than allure his style. His idea of the Creator himself as father and fondler is central to the
8 mastering, design-making rhetoric and fondling of detail in his work. And just as Christ’s mastering descent into the soul is an act of love, a treading and melting, so the poetic act itself is a love-act initiated by the masculine spur of delight. (Heaney, 1980: 97)
As Heaney explains here, the act of creating a poem is a masculine act and can be compared with the religious notion of creation, while engaging in a topic and finding the adequate expression for one’s thoughts is more feminine: “I suppose the feminine element for me involves the matter of Ireland, and the masculine strain is drawn from the involvement with English literature” (ibid.: 34). This means that his way of writing poetry is also influenced by the English literary tradition. He became familiar with this literary tradition in school, but Heaney also points out that “I speak and write in English but do not altogether share the preoccupations and perspectives of an Englishman. I teach English literature, I publish in London, but the English tradition is not ultimately home” (ibid.). Although he is influenced by English literature, he does not reflect its literary conventions. Moreover, he points out that he has his roots in Ireland and the Irish tradition.
In his book Mistaken Identities , Peter McDonald points out that Heaney protested against being called a British poet in a British anthology. To protest against this overgeneralization Heaney wrote the ‘pamphlet-poem’ An Open Letter (1983): “You´ll understand I draw the line/ At being robbed of what was mine,/ My patria, my deep design/ To be at home/ In my own place and dwell within/ Its proper name –“ (qtd. McDonald, 1997: 195). Heaney rejects the attribute British meaning that English and British are synonymously used. By doing so, he engages in the contemporary discourse of defining identity. Heaney has always been eager to define things properly and to attach the right names to them. By protesting against the overgeneralization of being British in the sense of being English, he made his point of view clear in An Open Letter (cf. ibid.: 194). Heaney has a preoccupation with proper naming and is aware of his roots by insisting on defining his place in the world in a very ‘proper’ way. Heaney is sensitive to the cultural differences in the North of Ireland and the tendency of poets engaging in the discourse of shaping identity. Heaney wrote about John Hewitt’s poetry that
[…] the matter of cultural, historical and religious divisions in the North of Ireland enters the poetry at a personal or dramatic level, never as opinion. A number of these poems reveal a quest for personal identity that must strike many of Hewitt’s fellow-countrymen as a remembrance, full of a stubborn
9 determination to belong to the Irishry and yet tenaciously aware of a different origin and cast of mind. (Heaney, 1980: 208)
Some things Heaney wrote about Hewitt’s poetry can be applied to his own poetry as well. Heaney was also influenced by the conflict and the tension that arose in the course of the cultural and religious segregation in Ireland. Heaney was influenced by the violent situation in the North of Ireland because he grew up in an atmosphere of sectarian division, which is why his poems are also a quest for identity. The poet wanted to define himself with characteristics typical of the area he comes from. By doing so, he did not only find attributes which fitted him but, thereby, also created images that defined the community he comes from.
Heaney was influenced by different writers and poets, and this can be seen in his first poetry collection, Death of a Naturalist , which was mainly inspired by Wordsworth’s poetry. In this collection, Heaney wrote poems with the purpose of heightening the awareness of the reader and of connecting the mind of the reader with the beauty of nature (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 5). Heaney shares Wordsworth’s romantic interest in place. As in Romanticism, nature triggers off the imagination in Heaney’s poetry. Furthermore, Heaney draws parallels between his childhood experiences and his experiences of writing poetry. In Death of a Naturalist , Heaney is in search of his voice as a poet and tries out different styles and modes in order to develop and define his poetic voice (cf. ibid.: 7). In his first collection of poetry, he discovered the ‘digging metaphor’, which became a theme throughout his whole work. According to Corcoran, the pen as spade is a basic metaphor, and when this metaphor is seen in a broader poetic context, poetry becomes a means of archaeology. The poem works as a means of cultural and historical recovery (cf. ibid.: 9). Poetry is a means to dig for the buried things in life, and Heaney as a poet is able to retrieve those hidden treasures. An example is “Gifts of Rain” from Wintering Out (see Appendix, pp. 250 – 251), where he writes about the river Moyola: “A swollen river,/ a mating call of sound/ rises to pleasure me, Dives,/ hoarder of common ground.” (ll. 59 – 62) Heaney sees himself as a “hoarder of common ground” (l. 62) and he digs for the hidden sources and retrieves the beauty and the pleasure of common ground. A poet is a diviner, who is able to voice the inarticulate issues in a cultural way.
10 2. 1. Place and History
If we must suffer, it is better to create the world in which we suffer, and this is what heroes do spontaneously, artists do consciously, and all men do in their degree. (Richard Ellmann, qtd. Murray, 1991: 61)
Place and history are very important features in Seamus Heaney’s writing because the place Heaney is writing about or referring to is coloured with history. Every place has its particular history and, by referring to that history, a certain characteristic is attached to that place. Heaney expresses this experience of place as “a conscious and unconscious tension” (Heaney, 1980: 131) that exists in our perception of the place. He articulated this feeling as follows:
I think there are two ways in which place is known and cherished, two ways which may be complementary but which are just as likely to be antipathetic. One is lived, illiterate and unconscious, the other learned, literate and conscious. In the literary sensibility, both are likely to co-exist in a conscious and unconscious tension. (Ibid.)
Heaney considers place as a constituting entity of life because by giving place a literary medium the articulated perception circulates and manifests itself in the mind of the reader. However, for him, the unconscious place that everybody experiences and the conscious place which is ‘coloured with imagination’ can be present in literature and form a unity.
The poet seems to follow a long tradition because place was already a crucial entity in early Celtic history. The Celts had not a unified belief; on the contrary, “the Celt never formulated a religion. The very extravagance with which his imagination peopled this life with glorious, half-mortal beings tells us that though he could sublimate this world he could not transcend it. His idea of Heaven is free of Time but it is rooted in Place” (O’Faolain, 1980: 32). The Celtic tradition of being rooted in a certain place can be seen in very early accounts of poetry. These accounts can be dated back to the pre-tenth century where motifs like the open air, the hunt, and the changing seasons were mentioned (cf. ibid.: 33). These are also motifs which continually re-appear in Heaney’s poetry. Heaney cleverly takes over these motifs of nature and spins them around and gives them a new verve by using them to take a ‘stance towards life’. Heaney is also struggling to define his position as a poet. In his book The Irish , O’Faolain points out the role of a poet as a personal genius because when he creates a poem “[t]he synthesis is a personal one; the achievement is individual; but this will not be the only place in which the heart-beat of personal genius seems to be the best interpreter of race” 11 (ibid.: 37). In O’Faolain’s opinion, a poet voices the habits and the constituting characteristics of a race; moreover, he tries to give the reader a medium to identify with these characteristics.
This was the role of a poet in the early Celtic times and it is still adequate because Heaney follows this tradition throughout his writing where he refers to place as a metaphor for the ‘matter with Ireland’. Place and, especially, bog became the governing metaphors. Heaney mentions in his essay “Feelings into Words” that he got the idea of bog as the memory of landscape – or as landscape that remembered everything that happened in and to it. Furthermore, he points out that most cherished things of material heritage of Ireland were found in a bog (cf. Heaney, 1980: 54). This highlights the connection between the Irish people and the bog. In his poems in general, but particularly in his poems from North , Heaney wanted to find a proper way to air the reason for the sectarian Irish division by referring to the source of the division, the country. Heaney wants to make the reader and, in particular, the Irish reader aware of the problems and the roots of the division. He writes that “I had a tentative unrealized need to make a congruence between bogland and, for the want of a better word, national consciousness” (ibid.). Heaney wants to heighten the national consciousness of the Irish people and, by doing so, creates a myth which the Irish people can identify with. This can be seen in his poem “Bogland” (see Appendix, pp. 247 – 248): “We have no prairies/ To slice a big sun at evening –/ Everywhere the eye concedes to/ Encroaching horizons” (ll. 1 – 4). He got the idea for this poem when he “taught modern literature at the Queen’s University, Belfast, and read about the frontier and the west as an important myth in the American consciousness” (ibid.: 55). It can be said that Heaney contributes to creating an Irish consciousness by making the people aware of their roots and their rich historical tradition.
History is a very important feature in Heaney’s writing because the poet sometimes uses historical facts or references to point to the present situation of the ‘matter with Ireland’. This is a process described in the essay “Lost Nation Psychology”, where it says that “[t]he most striking aspect of national identity has to do with its historicity: nationhood involves a sense of historical destiny. To be part of a nation is to be part of something which stretches back to an immemorial past and, perhaps even more importantly, forward to an unlimited future” (Reicher, Hopkins, Condor, 1997: 75). In his poem “For the Commander of the ‘Eliza’”, which is based on an account of Cecil Woodham-Smith’s book The Great Hunger , he deals with the sighting of starving Irish inhabitants on the coast of Mayo. The historical account is
12 part of the poem, as a matter of fact, it is the poem’s epigraph. The poem begins with a “[r]outine patrol off West Mayo; sighting/ A rowboat heading unusually far/ Beyond the creek, I tacked and hailed the crew/ In Gaelic.” (“For the Commander of the ‘Eliza’”, ll. 1 – 4, see Appendix, p. 236) The coast guard officer reported his sighting to Sir James Dombrain, who in the end of the poem points out that “’[t]he Coast Guard with their zeal and activity/ Are too lavish’” (ll. 35 – 36). The end of the poem refers to a line in Woodham’s account where Sir James says “very inconveniently […] interfered” (qtd., “For the Commander of the ‘Eliza’) . The historical account represents the sentiment and mischief the Irish inhabitants endured under the British sovereignty.
Seamus Deane, a poet and critic, articulated a theory of history and the validation of historical events. As McDonald points out, Seamus Deane argues that the basis for historians is that certain events actually took place (cf. 1997: 42). But Seamus Deane questions this deterministic perception by saying that:
[…] historical facts or events are artefacts. Once an event is characterized as ‘historical’, it has entered into the world of historical discourse. Even discourse itself is an event, but it is often the case – in recent historical writing in Ireland at any rate – that the written word, when treated as historical evidence, has a very peculiar relation to action, especially action of the revolutionary kind. (Qtd. ibid.)
Seamus Deane points out that written accounts of historical events, especially in Ireland, triggered off some kind of revolutionary action. The written sources were taken literally and so caused a violent reaction to them. This shows the importance of the written word because the written account of history can colour the perception of the Irish people. Reicher, Hopkins and Condor quote Billig, a contemporary psychologist, who states that too faultless historical writings are mainly fictitious and selected by the writer (cf. 1997: 75). They further point out that “to see oneself in terms of nationality is not only to imagine oneself as part of a community, but alo to define the community of which one forms a part as national” (ibid.).
Heaney uses in his poems historical facts, and through this he also takes part in the historical discourse. Considering that the written word has such an impact on people in Ireland, Heaney’s poems can also be seen as means to depict historical events. By doing so, it can be said that in a context of mutual exchange between the poet and the reader, Heaney’s poetry can influence the perception of certain historical events. Seamus Deane furthermore questions
13 the objective recollection of history. He argues that the written account is coloured by the writer’s attitude. McDonald quotes him in connection with history and a rejection of ‘revisionism’ in history (cf. 1997: 43). Deane assumes that it is not possible to get a historical account based on real facts because these accounts are mostly tainted by different kinds of mythologies. These mythologies were made up by national, religious or political groups according to their purpose of use. Deane concludes that there does not exist anything like an objective account of history, moreover, he is of the opinion that “[a]ll history and literature, as far as I understand them, are forms of mythology. This is not to take away other functions from literature and not to deny it its specific features, but to make the point that all literature is linked to various forms of historical mythology” (ibid.). Deane points out that any literary account of history is a kind of mythology because every historical account is influenced by some kind of mythology and, therefore, is invented by any political, national or religious group according to its purpose. Heaney uses historical material in order to refer to actual historical events and to exemplify the situation in the North of Ireland. By doing so, he also shapes the perception of events in Northern Ireland. Historical mythology describes in a way the poetic voice of Heaney’s writing. The poet continually refers to historical events and uses history to add to his poems a mythical dimension. For example, he uses past historical events as basis and puts them in the context of the actual sectarian situation in the North of Ireland. By doing so, he depicts the present violent atmosphere on a mythological level. Through mythology, he contributes to shaping a national identiy.
14 2. 2. Myth
Myth is created by human beings to understand the hidden human mechanisms of the world. Joseph Campbell, who examined the underlying patterns of folk stories to find a common ground, wrote in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces : “Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, the myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind” (Campbell, 1993: 3). Myth has triggered off the imagination and created an explanation for the processes of the world. Myth is a part of society and consequently a part of culture, and as Campbell puts it:
It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth. (Ibid.)
Almost every discipline, be it religion or art, is influenced by myth and the icons it has created, moreover, “[i]t has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward [...]” (ibid.: 11). Taking this into account, myths carry the symbols that shape the spirit of human kind – which is a source of inspiration for the human mind. Myth has many different topics and motifs but “[f]or a culture still nurtured in mythology, the landscape, as well as every phase of human existence, is made alive with symbolical suggestion” (ibid.: 43). In myth, the landscape and human existence are linked and re-created in symbolic figures. The landscape becomes animated and the evolution of mankind is made alive. In the course of myth, the creative hero will re-fresh the symbols of myth (cf. ibid.: 391). The poet can be seen as a creative hero who has “extraordinary powers from the moment of birth” (ibid.: 319) and will shape symbols to renew the myth and its meaning.
Myth is part of Seamus Heaney’s place because place is the basis of his writing, of his language and of his themes. Heaney consciously uses place and the myths and stories connected with a particular place for his own purpose: to create an Irish consciousness and heighten the awareness of his community concerning contemporary issues. Heaney exemplified his associations with place in his essay “Mossbawn” from Preoccupations , where he remembers a childhood experience. He liked to dig in the black earth and the sensation he
15 felt when he discovered beneath the surface a pale layer of sand (cf. Heaney, 1980: 20). He connected that experience with the memory of men digging to erect a pump in the garden. In Heaney’s view, the pump is a link between sand, gravel and water, and therefore the pump is the connection between earth, sand, gravel and water, moreover, “[i]t centred and staked the imagination, made its foundation the foundation of the omphalos itself” (ibid.). Omphalos means ‘navel’ and the ‘navel of the world’. For Heaney the meaning of omphalos as the navel of the world is connected with the native ground. His justification of his interest in place is based upon a superstition related with his name, Heaney.
In Gaelic times, the family was involved with ecclesiastical affairs in the diocese of Derry, and had some kind of rights to the Stewardship of the monastic site at Banagher in the north of the country. […] and there is also a belief that sand lifted from the ground at Banagher has beneficent, even magical, properties, if it is lifted from the site by one of the Heaney family name. (Ibid.: 21)
This statement has to be examined critically. On the surface it seems a simple and blunt superstition to justify Heaney’s interest in place. However, below the surface it is also a very clever creation of one’s own myth by using the same ingredients as in his poems. For example, Heaney points out one’s rootedness in the native ground, which is the consistent theme throughout all his poems. Furthermore, he uses a superstition about the Heaney name from the Gaelic times and thereby connects his past with his present. Heaney is very concerned with proper names and even uses various Gaelic language terms in many of his poems. By attaching his name to the place and the mythical story, he creates a myth about himself rooted in the native ground. It is quite interesting that Seamus Heaney himself contributes to the creation of such a myth. This analysis is especially compelling because the story quoted above serves my purpose of explaining the importance of place in poetry very well. Through this story, Seamus Heaney points out the connection between people and place. In a way, he uses the folk tale tradition to manifest this old belief of being part of the place where one grows up. Here he exercises the creation of a consciousness of his community by using himself as an example. This tale nicely underlines Heaney’s preoccupation with the local place.
Heaney describes the process of writing “Bogland” from Door into the Dark as follows: “I had been vaguely wishing to write a poem about bogland, chiefly because it is a landscape […] one with associations reaching back into early childhood” (Heaney, 1980: 54). Heaney remembered stories where the bog was a means to preserve things, for example, butter or the
16 skeleton of an elk (cf. ibid.). This triggered off his imagination and he “began to get an idea of bog as the memory of landscape, or as landscape that remembered everything that happened in and to it” (ibid.). For example, the National Museum in Dublin features a lot of material heritage which was found in a bog. When Heaney writes poetry he uses symbols and metaphors related with bog. He explains that he “had a tentative unrealized need to make a congruence between memory and landscape and, for the want of a better word, our national consciousness” (ibid.: 54 – 55). To create ‘our national consciousness’, Heaney was influenced by the myth of the American frontier and “so I set up – or rather, laid down – the bog as an answering Irish myth: ‘We have no prairies…’ – but we have bogs” (ibid.: 55). Heaney himself laid down the features of his poetry and, in a way, the features of this analysis. He pointed out his position as a poet, which is that of a forger, who can communicate the hidden issues of a community; moreover, he is a forger who can connect landscape with the consciousness of a race by forging a myth based on these features.
In order to explain and interpret myth, the theory of Claude Levi-Strauss, the French anthropologist, will be used. He tried to explain the interpretation of myth with structuralist features. By doing so, Levi-Strauss meant that an individual tale (‘parole’) from a series of myths did not convey meaning on its own; instead, its meaning could be found in relation to the whole cycle of myths (‘langue’). The meaning is conveyed in its position within the cycle and the similarities and differences between the different tales (cf. Barry, 2002: 46). When an individual tale is set in context of a whole cycle, repetitions of motifs and contrasts can be detected. Taking this as the basis of interpretation, the different stories of one cycle are composed of basic oppositions such as male and female (cf. ibid.). These oppositions are put in a context of a larger structure and the underlying larger structure is then taken as the general “network of ‘dyadic pairs, which have obvious symbolic, thematic and archetypal resonance” (ibid.). Generally, a structuralist approach begins at the particular and extends it to the general. For instance, the general can be defined as the whole corpus of the work of a writer or poet (cf. ibid.). Taking this as a basis for this analysis, individual poems by Seamus Heaney will be examined according to their significance in each particular poetry collection and then the collection will be set in the larger context of his whole corpus of work.
Levi-Strauss tried to apply certain features to the interpretation of myth. He found parallels between the structures of language and literature. He analysed the recurrence of these themes and according to the frequence of the repetition it can be seen as a component of myth. He
17 called the smallest meaning-giving unit of a narrative ‘mytheme’ (cf. ibid.: 49) which is, for example, one action. In the course of the poem, Heaney repeats several images and through this repetition these images become part of his set of references to the outer world. By defining these images, the theme of the myth can be defined. Interpretation is an individual and active process considering that meaning changes through time and place (cf. Hall 1997: 32). Roland Barthes, the French critic, took a semiotic approach in order to read and interpret popular culture. By doing so, he treated objects and activities as signs that convey meaning (cf. ibid.: 36). In his essay “Myth Today” from Mythologies , he writes that “for a proper semiotic analysis you must be able to outline precisely the different steps by which this broader meaning has been produced” (ibid.: 39). According to Barthes, representation takes place on two different though related levels. At the first stage, the descriptive level, the signifier and the signified unite to form a sign with a simple denoted message. In the second step, the message of the first one will be put in a broader, ideologically tainted context. By doing so, the message becomes the signifier and the broader context provides a set of signifieds. This second level of meaning is called the level of myth (cf. ibid.).
To conclude, the cultural text, for example a poem, is the means to convey myth. In this analysis, place is considered as the motif of the myth and the symbols that inspire the human spirit are here called a ‘sense of place’. The individual poem will be read in the context of the particular poetry collection, and each collection will be analysed in the larger context of history and culture. The representation of place in each collection will be put in context with the significant historical perspective. The outcome of this reading will be a cultural account of a certain display and representation of identity rooted in place.
18 2. 3. A Sense of Place
Not only is Seamus Heaney an acclaimed poet but also a great critic of poetry, and in his critical essays he often describes his perception of place. He defines his understanding of place according to other people’s poetry. In the following example he writes about Patrick Kavanagh. Heaney describes two kinds of places in The Government of the Tongue ´s essay “A Placeless Heaven”. One is the real place, which Seamus Heaney describes in a childhood memory. He exemplifies his ideas of place through his identification with a chestnut tree. Heaney tells an anecdote which draws a connection between Patrick Kavanagh and himself. In 1939, two events took place in Dublin: Kavanagh came to town and in the same year Heaney was born. It was also the year when Heaney’s aunt planted a chestnut in a jam jar. In the course of time, the chestnut began to grow and it became bigger and bigger, and so his aunt decided to break the jar. She dug a hole under a hedge in front of the house and planted it there. The little seedling became a young and strong tree. The tree became taller, and soon it could be seen above the boxwood hedge (cf. Heaney, 1988: 3). In this anecdote, the tree represents Heaney, “[a]nd over the years I came to identify my own life with the life of the chestnut tree” (ibid.). Heaney considered the tree as a symbol for his life, a symbol connected with the place he grew up in.
The rest of the hedges and trees round the house were all mature and appeared therefore like given features of the world: the chestnut tree, on the other hand, was young and was watched in much the same way as the other children and myself were watched and commented upon, fondly, frankly and unrelentingly. (Ibid.)
In his essay, Heaney differentiates between the real place and the imagined space which is recollected in memory. Further on in the essay, he recollects the way he came to remember this tree. He and his family moved away, and his aunt sold the house. The new owners decided to cut down all the trees which grew in the garden. This included the trees in the front yard, the lane and the chestnut tree. For a while, he had absolutely no thought on the tree but then, suddenly, a few years ago, he remembered “the space where the tree had been or would have been” (Heaney, 1988: 3). In his memory, he envisaged it in a way as “luminous emptiness, a warp and a waver of light” and he started to identify with that space as he had identified with the young tree many years before (cf. ibid.: 3 – 4).
19 It is interesting that Seamus Heaney did not only identify himself with the living thing, the tree, but he also identified with the space the tree had been rooted in. The memory of the tree and the space and him feeling attached to it can be regarded as an analogy: a person being rooted in a certain area. Heaney once quoted Carson McCullers, who stated that “to know who you are, you have to have a place to come from” (Heaney, 1980: 135). This quote points out that belonging to a place shapes the perception of the individual identity. The place attributes features to the individual identity, for example, nationality. This further implies that the area shapes the identity of the person and that the person picks the images that represent a certain place. These images manifest themselves in the minds of the people and through repetition a majority identifies with them which can further be seen as a way of representing this place.
This time it was not so much a matter of attaching oneself to a living symbol of being rooted in the native ground; it was more a matter of preparing to be unrooted, to be spirited away into some transparent, yet indigenous afterlife. The new place was all idea, if you like; it was generated out of my experience of the old place but it was not a topographical location. It was and remains an imagined realm, even if it can be located at an earthly spot, a placeless heaven rather than a heavenly place. (Ibid.: 4)
This “placeless heaven” (ibid.) or imagined place is a manifestation of a memory of a certain place. The place in this case is represented through the image of the chestnut tree. Heaney continues his explanation by stating that Kavanagh’s early poetry is like his childhood tree. Heaney links Kavanagh’s poetry with place and says that his poetry is situated in its home ground; moreover, it conveys an almost tangible physical force. This poetry communicates “the recognitions which existed between the poet and his place. […] all of the early Monaghan poetry gives the place credit for existing, assists at its real topographical presence, dwells upon it and accepts it as the definitive locus of the given world” (ibid.).
Heaney recognises the connection between poet and place and that a poet interacts in his personal framework of images and symbols. Place has many different dimensions in the process of writing, for example, place becomes important as the place being written about, and also as the place a poet lives in, and the place where he writes.
The horizons of the little fields and hills, whether they are gloomy and constricting or radiant and enhancing, are sensed as the horizons of consciousness. Within those horizons, however, the poet who utters the poems is alive and well as a sharp critical intelligence. He knows that the Monaghan
20 world is not the whole world but the only one for him, the one which he embosses solidly and intimately into the words of poems. (Ibid.: 4 – 5)
Through that the definition of real place and imagined place becomes obvious. Real place is the space the poet experiences, and so it becomes a physical reality, for example, the reality of Monaghan life. As a matter of fact, the poet writes about an entity of life that triggers off images upon the poet’s consciousness that he consequently creates himself, his poetic identity and “his poems in relation to that encircling horizon of given experience” (ibid.: 5). The imagined place is defined as an array of places which is the source of inspiration for the poet; in that particular moment, they are luminous places in the imagination of the poet. These places have lost their role as background texture and as a documentation of geography and nature. As a matter of fact, they have changed into “images, sites where the mind projects its own force” (ibid). This allows the poet to re-create the place and shape it according to his or her imagination. Through this it is possible to attach a universal component to one place which makes this particular place unique. These ideas are also connected with Romanticism, where poets recollected experiences in tranquillity.
This analysis deals not only with the unique features of place; moreover, it is about a definition of the ‘sense of place’. Heaney formulates his idea of a ‘sense of place’ in his essay “Sense of Place” in Preoccupations , where he states that
irrespective of our creed or politics, irrespective of what culture or subculture may have coloured our individual sensibilities, our imaginations assent to the stimulus of the names, our sense of the place is enhanced, our sense of ourselves as inhabitants not just of a geographical country but of a country of the mind is cemented. It is this feeling, assenting, equable marriage between the geographical country and the country of the mind, whether that country of the mind takes its tone unconsciously from a shared oral inherited culture, or from a consciously savoured literary culture, or from both, it is this marriage that constitutes the sense of place in its richest possible manifestation. (Ibid.: 132)
Seamus Heaney assumes that the name of a place triggers off the imagination of this particular place. Furthermore, he places individuals as inhabitants of the actual place but also of the imagined place. By combining the geographical place and the “country of the mind” (ibid.) with its unconsciously perceived oral culture and the consciously read literary culture, a ‘sense of place’ is created. For instance, Heaney creates such a ‘sense of place’ in his poems through combining place and history with an oral culture. By doing so, he turns the oral inherited culture into a literary culture.
21 Taking this into account, place is the geographical, historical and natural basis of the features used to create a ‘sense of place’. A general definition of place as a characteristic of identity is crucial for an analysis of Heaney’s poetry, in order to be able to identify a ‘sense of place’. While place is the common denominator, a ‘sense of place’’ is a concept subsuming characteristics and terms connected with place, such as certain word fields, for example, all words related to ‘bog’. Continuing the analysis of Heaney’s work, the use of these words in relation to metaphors has to be analysed, as well as the semantic fields that are connected with them. As mentioned in the introduction, the use of words has to be examined on the semantic level because these are words which manifest the images to convey a ‘sense of place’. Therefore, ‘sense of place’ consists of metaphors and symbols using a certain kind of diction in order to represent place. Such an analysis identifies specific features in poetry. Another feature is language such as local colour, for example, the description of features of a Northern Irish accent. Language and poetic devices are linked through repetition and onomatopoeia. These features on the word and language level are also connected with an Irish literary tradition of evoking a feeling of belonging to the place, and this tradition is reflected in the theme, topic and title of the poem through the choice of the words of the poet. The choice of words is inspired by the local place.
Features of poetry such as repetition and onomatopoeia can be regarded as the basis for an analysis of Heaney’s work regarding identity and its cultural impact on it. Metaphors and symbols representing the local place shape the consciousness of his community in a cultural way; they reveal the features of identity encoded by the poet. It can be said that poetry consists of different metaphors which represent and create a ‘sense of place’. Place and the metaphors used to display place are the determining factors providing a basis for an analysis of identity in Seamus Heaney’s work.
The outcome of this analysis will formulate the features of identity used by Heaney. Heaney’s quest for identity was a personal one because through defining himself and his place in the world he shaped a set of images a broader community could identify with. As McDonald said in Mistaken Identities , “[t]o discover and define an ‘identity’ for the self, and beyond that for a broader community, is also to flirt with ultimately determinist conceptions of character” (McDonald, 1997: 39). Heaney had to identify his characteristics such as being Irish, being Catholic and being male, and, by defining his attributes, a more general reading of his poems could be achieved. Identity in a more general definition means ‘same and same’. Generally,
22 one can say that identity has several meanings, but two definitions are important here. One is that identity means a vital equivalence or basic quality in different examples, and the second one is the unique character or personality of an individual 1. There are also different types of identity, for instance, there is ‘social identity’ which means that the concepts of individuality and social identity are contrasted. The attributes and the idea of selfhood are contrasted to a group’s social categories that a person belongs to (cf. Reicher, Hopkins, Condor, 1997: 63). This is important in the context of nation because a person belongs to a country’s greater social community.
Identity and nation are two terms which are related with each other. The idea of a nation can be described in several different terms. One proposes that one belongs to a nation when the culture is shared, which means that, for example, a set of ideas, signs and ways of communication is common. Another example is that two individuals acknowledge each other as belonging to the same nation, which means that here solidarity is the underlying principle (cf. Eriksen, 2001: 277 – 281). According to Gellner, the best way to define a nation is to look at the underlying cultural processes (cf. 1983: 6 - 7). Another approach is that if someone belongs to a nation a spatial and temporal dimension is given which is not a feature of other identities. To Heaney, place is very important and the feeling of being part of it. This is described by Reicher, Hopkins and Condor, who state that “[t]he homeland is part of naturalizing identity – the characteristics of a people being legitimated by reference to the very landscape – but it also provides people with a ‘sense of place’, a domain of safety and of rights, and a means of orientation in the face of globalization” (1997: 84). When Heaney’s poems are read in a broader context of defining a general national identity, place constitutes the dominant characteristic. The nation is the cultural space where individual identities come together and blend into a display of one identity rooted in place.
1 Cf. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/identity 23 2. 4. Postcolonial Experience
Ireland experienced the colonial power of England for several hundreds of years. The process of decolonisation took place gradually. The Irish mind had to find its own consciousness. This could only happen when Ireland became industrialized because “industrial society produces the economic conditions for national consciousness – which it consolidates politically through the supervisory agency of the nation-State” (Gellner 1983: 141). By shifting from rural Ireland to industrial Ireland, it emancipated itself from the governing power of England. The definition of a nation was not only of interest for political parties and groups, as a matter of fact, it went together with a cultural resistance in order to define national identities (cf. Said, 1993: xiii). One medium for this resistance was literature. The emancipation from imperial power is manifested in literature because
[...] literature compensates for the inadequacies of the world, the poetic imagination and creative faculty, are now endowed with the political energies necessary for the work of social transformation. The poet/writer […] is fashioned as a revolutionary par excellence. (Ghandi 1998: 160)
The role of the poet or writer is to articulate the inadequacies of the particular situation in the oppressed country. In a way, Heaney also became the voice of a troubled community, which is very nicely summed up by Edna Longley, who describes his early poetry, from Death of a Naturalist to Wintering Out, as “poetry-as-protest or protest-as-poetry” (Longley, 1994: 70).
Heaney united the emancipation from the oppressor with a search for the almost forgotten Gaelic language. This can be seen best in the ‘language and place-name’ poems where “Heaney finds a role within his own profession. A unique brand of revolutionary action, linguistic decolonisation, takes on the English language itself, with mixed declarations of love and war” (ibid.: 69). Heaney uses Irish place names to refer to the Gaelic meaning of the place which is included in the Irish term. By using the Irish place name, Heaney gives the place its old identity back and decolonises the area from the English. In “A New Song” (see Appendix, p. 253), Heaney writes that “I met a girl from Derrygrave/ And the name, a lost potent musk” (ll. 1 – 2). Here the poet refers to the lost Irish name of the town Derrygrave and emphasises its beauty by saying “[a]nd Derrygrave, I thought, was just,/ Vanished music, twilit water” (ll. 9 – 10). Heaney points out the beauty of the Irish language, especially, its melodic rhythm, and so he suggests that “But now our river tongues must rise/ From licking deep in native haunts/ To flood, with vowelling embrace,/ Demesnes staked out in consonants” (ll. 13 – 16).
24 Heaney juxtaposes the Irish-English dialect as vowels to the Northern Irish accent as consonants. According to postcolonial theory, “colonial discourse typically rationalises itself through rigid oppositions” (Ghandi 1998: 32). Language is an important vehicle to articulate the sensibilities of the postcolonial experience. Irish people, through being colonised, “speak a dialect, Irish-English, which is neither purely Irish nor purely English” (McGuinness, 1994: 135).
Through the period of colonisation, Irish people did not only lose their land – they almost lost their language, oral history and tradition. Seamus Deane, a poet and critic from the North of Ireland, sums it up by saying that
[Ireland is] a country which has had its own language destroyed by a combination of military and economic violence and another imposed by a coercive educational system. The linguistic virtuosity of Irish writers and the linguistic quaintness, to English ears, of the Irish mode of speech in English, are the product of a long political struggle – one still audible in the poetry […] of Seamus Heaney. Irish literature tends to dwell on the medium in which it is written because it is difficult not to be self-conscious about a language which has become simultaneously native and foreign. (Deane, 1985: 13)
Irish people had to take over the English language because of English sovereignty, but the Irish people had a unique way of speaking English. A language also expresses certain features of a culture and Heaney explains the tension between English and Irish by pointing out that although English is the language of his poems and that his poems are published in London and that he is a teacher of English, he does not see himself as an Englishman (cf. Heaney 1980: 34). He finds his roots in the Gaelic literary and oral traditions. The poet uses the medium English but makes it his own by dwelling on the Irish inheritance of the Gaelic language. Language is his medium to articulate his ideas and thoughts and, by doing so, to create a broader consciousness of a community.
Not only is language a main feature of postcolonial discourse, but also place and displacement belong to it. The issue of place is a main feature of postcolonial identity because the re- occupation of the place is an important aspect in the process of decolonisation and, as Ashcroft points out, “postcolonial identity is governed by the issues of place and displacement” (1989: 8 – 9). The identification with the native ground is also a very important theme in Heaney’s poetry. As a matter of fact, in Heaney’s view, place and language have to go together because the one describes the other. Place is the source of inspiration for the poet;
25 moreover, the poet gets the faculty of words by experiencing a place and recreating the imagined place through words.
Certainly the secret of being a poet, Irish or otherwise, lies in the summoning of the energies of words. But my quest for definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of the landscape I was born into. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading. I think of the personal and Irish pieties as vowels, and the literary awareness nourished on English as consonants. My hope is that the poems will be vocables adequate to my whole experience. (Heaney, 1980: 37)
In the paragraph above, Heaney describes what being a poet means to him. He is influenced by the place he grew up in as well as by his education; therefore, he wants to combine his roots with his education. The poet then is stimulated by two major influences. His first influence is his background of growing up in the rural county of Derry, and his second influence is the literature he studied. As Heaney always points out, the landscape renders his choice of words because it is the first thing he experienced. It is this experience that makes his poetry so popular, as by sticking to the basic component of life his poetry becomes universal. This universal aspect allows the reader to identify with his poems. Heaney was only able to create such poetry through his education because in a postcolonial definition this means that the “access to the means and making of knowledge” (Ghandi 1998: 43) is the key to get self- awareness and gain power over the oppressor.
Culture expresses the sensibilities of a state and, as Matthew Arnold states in Culture and Anarchy , “[c]ulture suggests the idea of the State” (qtd. Ghandi 1998: 50). Poetry, as a part of literature, is also part of a culture of a state. By taking this into account, Heaney renders a certain cultural perception of Irish identity. Heaney continues in the postcolonial discourse when remembering the past, for example, his childhood experiences. Homi Bhabha, the cultural critic, writes that remembering “is never a quiet act of introspection or retrospection. It is a painful remembering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the present” (Bhabha 1994: 63). In his first three poetry collections, Heaney remembers how it was to grow up in the county of Antrim. Heaney tries to comprehend the present through indulgence in the past. By doing so, he somehow rewrites the past. As Ghandi quotes Hegel, “[h]istory is the vehicle of rational self-consciousness through which the incomplete human spirit progressively acquires an improved sense of its own totality” (qtd. Ghandi 1998: 105).
26 Heaney’s experience of growing up in a divided area can also be read in a postcolonial discourse where “a notion of in-between-ness derives from the hybridity of one’s identity” (ibid.: 112). Seamus Heaney expresses the feeling of ‘in-between-ness’ in “Terminus” (see Appendix, p. 293), where he states that “Two buckets were easier carried than one./ I grew up in between” (ll. 15 – 16). He has the feeling of having a double-consciousness because through his experience of growing up in the North of Ireland, he feels obliged to choose the proper patria, Ireland. This act of replacing “the twofold citizenship of colonial culture with a radically unified counter-culture” (Ghandi 1998: 112) can also be seen in Heaney’s poetry. In “Traditions” (see Appendix, p. 256) from Wintering Out , he refers to James Joyce’s Ulysses by writing “’What ish my nation?’/ And sensibly, though so much/ later, the wandering Bloom/ replied, ‘Ireland’, said Bloom,/ ‘I was born here. Ireland’.” (ll. 32 – 36) Heaney declined being British by individually choosing to be Irish because in the North of Ireland both citizenships were available to the inhabitants.
Heaney is absolutely aware of the fact that poetry is an active part of culture and describes the role of poetry that “my point of view involved poetry as divination, as a restoration of the culture to itself” (Heaney, 1980: 60). To point this out, he refers to Ireland’s famous poetic figure Yeats, who used the past to interpret the present. Furthermore, Heaney is of the opinion that this attempt should be re-established because “to forge a poem is one thing, to forge the uncreated conscious of the race, as Stephen Dedalus put it, is quite another and places daunting pressures and responsibilities on anyone who would risk the name of poet” (ibid.). Heaney is a forger of poetry, and by creating a poem he also forges an awareness of his community by creating an identity rooted in the place, memory and the past. As a matter of fact, Heaney is absolutely aware of the responsibility which such forging requires.
27 3. Poetry – Forging an Irish Identity
Poetry, if it is not written for art’s sake, can be seen as an expression of social allegiances, political loyalties and personal feelings. The urge to shape an identity mostly develops in times of social and civil unrest. This was the case in Ireland and motivated many poets from the North of Ireland had to voice their attitude during the Troubles. The roots for the violence can be seen in the social differences of the Irish inhabitants. Ireland never became a province of Britain for several reasons. One reason was that it was too far removed from the British mainland. Another reason was that Ireland had a completely different culture, which was rooted in the Celtic past. The Gaelic heritage was one reason why Ireland only slightly adjusted to a British identity. The Irish inhabitants maintained a separate identity because of their different cultural background. For instance, most of the Irish were Roman Catholics and lived in rural areas (cf. Chubb, 1992: 7). These are also the reasons why in Northern Ireland the Catholic farmers held their allegiances with the Republic of Ireland; moreover, they defined themselves in the same mindset.
Heaney once mentioned that during the Troubles he felt the urge to find “befitting emblems of adversity” (Heaney, 1980: 57) to express the sectarian killings. This is underlined by Graham, who states that an emblematic landscape as an explicit signifier of landscape can have a uniting potential (cf. Graham, 1997: 206). As a matter of fact, it can be said that Ireland “profoundly demonstrates, [that] power cannot be conceived outside a geographical context; social power requires space, its exercise shapes space, and this in turn shapes social power” (Harris 1991: 678). In order to shape a social awareness, a set of references needs to be established, and this set of reference is limited through the geographical place. By using images from the local geography, they become symbols synonymous with the local place. By establishing an allegiance with the local place, the awareness of the people is heightened and therefore social power is supported.
Due to the increasing violence in Northern Ireland, Heaney forged a consciousness of the Irish inhabitants concerning their local place. Heaney used images related with rural Ireland because this is the place where most Irish people lived and could identify themselves with. In the poem “Broagh”, Heaney used as subject of this poem a piece of land that bordered to their farm, and which was situated in the townland of Broagh on the banks of the River Moyola (cf. Heaney, 2002: 351). Heaney alludes in the poem to the three different languages that are
28 rooted in the local place of his childhood: Irish, Elizabethan English, and Ulster Scots. He further draws a connection between the different languages and the different political and cultural heritages of that area (cf. ibid.). Heaney aimed to create a cultural awareness concerning the local place. According to Raymond Williams, culture is a very broad concept that covers a lot of different ideas, but it can be explained as a signifying system through which “a social order is communicated, reproduced, experienced and explored” (Williams, 1982: 13). Heaney uses landscape as a means to reproduce, to experience and to explore a consciousness of the race. In relation to “Broagh”, Heaney further mentions that “[t]he poem, in other words, was just one tiny move in that big campaign of our times which aims to take cultural authority back to the local ground, to reverse the colonising process by making the underprivileged speech the normative standard” (Heaney, 2002: 351). Heaney refers to Irish history and the colonisation of Ireland by the English during the time of Elizabeth I. He points out that in Northern Ireland existed a feeling of being colonised because a sense of identity was not established.
Place can be seen as a source of images to reproduce experience and explore order. Heaney defined nature and landscape as the horizon of his poetry and of his poetic voice, moreover, he defined himself in these terms because “I was like turned turf in the breath of God” (“The Tollund Man in Springtime”, l. 25). Place as an entity of the self and the community is also explained by Cosgrove, who points out that culture is part of conscious and unconscious dealings of people living in places and shaping places (cf. Graham, 1997: 2). These dealings are a means to provide meaning for their lives and to communicate meaning to themselves, “each other and to the world beyond” (qtd. ibid.). Graham refers to Gibbons to point out that agreed depictions of culture are and have been part of social changes in Ireland because they were a means of shaping and changing social experience (cf. ibid.). It almost seems that Heaney refers to this passage because he says in the poem “Settings XIX” (see Appendix, p. 305) from Seeing Things that “[a]ncient textbooks recommended that/ Familiar places be linked deliberately/ With a code of images” (ll. 9 – 11). Heaney links “Familiar places”, for Irish inhabitants, with “a code of images”. For example, in North he uses the wetland and the bog as a set of references. It can also be said that North is the poetry collection where Heaney most obviously shapes a cultural awareness concerning place. As a matter of fact, it can be said that in his poetry, he forges an identity based on ‘a code of images linked with familiar places’. Baker supports the lines of the poem because according to him there are
29 two essential ways in which cultural landscape becomes a framework through which ideologies and discourses can be constructed and contested. First, manipulated depictions of landscape offer an ordered, simplified vision of the world. Secondly, the sacred symbols of a landscape, rich in signs of identity and social codes, act as system of signification supporting the authority of an ideology and emphasising its holistic character. (Baker, 1992: 4 – 5)
Baker points out that a certain depiction of place provides a structured idea of the world. A ‘code of images’ taken from landscape provides meaning which maintains the concept of beliefs. Heaney uses symbols of a landscape to give meaning to them in his poems. In his essay “The Sense of Place” from Preoccupations , he writes about Wordsworth’s poem “Michael” that “[t]his Lake District was not inanimate stone but active nature, humanized and humanizing” (Heaney, 1980: 145). Heaney’s ‘code of images’ taken from the local place was “humanized and humanizing” in the bog poems, for example “The Grauballe Man” (North , see Appendix, pp. 266 – 267), “[t]he grain of his writs/ is like bog oak” (ll. 6 – 7), or in “Bog Queen” ( North , see Appendix, pp. 265 – 266) where “[m]y sash was a black glacier” (l. 29).
Place can be seen as a means to contribute to a definition of the individual and, by doing so, defines the collective experience of history. Place can be regarded as a tool that shapes individual and social traditions. These traditions constantly add cultural meaning to nature (cf. Graham, 1997: 4). A cultural landscape develops through adding cultural meaning to nature, which becomes an important means of communicating emotions, ideas and values. At the same time, this cultural landscape becomes a place of political discourse and action which nurtures the change of culture (cf. Graham, 1997: 4). These cultural landscapes are often linked with historical events which support the idea that landscapes can be a bearer of memory by using features from the landscape and attaching to these features historical event. Heaney sometimes refers to historical events in his poems to express his allegiance with the Irish inhabitants. For example, in the poem “At Toombridge” (see Appendix, p. 318) from Electric Light , he refers to the rebellion of the United Irishmen in 1798. Heaney refers to the place “[w]here the rebel boy was hanged in `98” (l. 7). Heaney’s landscape depicts a nationalist emblem, the rebellion of 1798. This historical fact represented through features of the landscape can be read in a political context as a displayal of Irish oppression.
Manipulated landscapes are those landscapes that become the symbol of the historical event that is associated with it. Graham quoted Gruffudd, who points out that
30
[t]he notion that landscapes embody memory in discourses of inclusion and exclusion is closely linked to the idea that manipulated geographies also function as symbols of identity, validation and legitimation. Thus there are archetypal national landscapes, which draw heavily on geographical imagery, memory and myth. (Qtd. Graham 1997: 196)
According to Gruffudd, archetypal national landscapes consist of geographical imagery, memory, and myth. And these archetypal landscapes are charged with symbols of identity which are legitimized by images taken from the landscape. Heaney uses rivers and hills and history and legends to create an archetypal national landscape and therefore contributes to a perception of national identity. In a discourse of exclusion, it can be said that these images function as a means to contrast the self with the other. For instance, in his early poetry collections he created a landscape of exclusion in order to heighten the awareness of his community, for example, “Bogland” from Door into the Dark , where he uses words such as “bog” (l. 7), “Irish elk” (l. 10), “kind, black butter” (l. 16) to represent the landscape. These words include features which are assigned to the Irish inhabitants. This can be seen as an expression of exclusion of the Protestant British inhabitants because the ‘bog’ stands for the Irish heritage. In a discourse of inclusion, landscape can be seen as a common ground that unifies the people and bridges the gap between them, for example, in “Terminus” from The Haw Lantern , where he points out that he grows up ‘in between’. As already mentioned (see chapter 2), he refers through the landscape of the local river to images of baronies and parishes, which stand for the Celtic and the British heritage. He finds a common ground in the nature of the landscape.
According to Heaney, the poet in the North of Ireland is torn between politics and transcendence which results from the feeling of being displaced because he is affected by many different positions. The feeling of displacement and the sectarian division in Northern Ireland can be seen as a source of explanation why so many of Heaney’s poems are set in a remote time and distance. These poems often contain mythological figures and historical characters (cf. Heaney, 2002: 119). Heaney also sets his poems in a remote time and distances them through a foreign setting, for example, through his allusions to Greek mythology in the poem “Antaeus” from North , or the Divine Comedy as a source for the pilgrim theme of Station Island . Heaney even alludes to Latin writers such as Tacitus, who mentions the goddess Nerthus in his Germania . The goddess Nerthus becomes the basis for his poem “Bog
31 Queen” from North . Heaney also wrote a poem called “Nerthus”, which is included in Wintering Out : “For beauty, say an ash-fork staked in peat,/ Its long grains gathering to the gauged split;/ A seasoned, unsleeved taker of the weather,/ Where kesh and loaning finger out to heather.” (ll. 1 – 4) Heaney describes the place of Nerthus, the earth goddess, the ground. The poem can be seen as an emblem of the ground which incorporates the goddess Nerthus.
Heaney consciously and unconsciously links the representation of the ground with the cultural awareness of the community. He creates images, or as Heaney expresses it, they are “befitting emblems of adversity” (Heaney, 1980: 57) to represent a landscape that shapes the identity of his community. He uses the local geography and represents it through typical features such as “kesh” (“Nerthus”, l. 4), “loaning” (l. 4) and “heather” (l. 4). He further uses idioms that are connected with the local place. For example, ‘kesh’ is a Gaelic word. Heaney points out that on the verge to the twenty-first century in a “context of politically approved themes, post- colonial ‘backlash’ and ‘silence-breaking’ poetry is understandably pressed to give voice to much that has hitherto been denied expression in the ethnic, social, sexual and political life” (Heaney, 1998: 5). Heaney explains that in a modern discourse of interpretation, poetry has become a means to express dimensions of the ethnic, social and political life.
32 3. 1. Identity and Sense of Place
A ‘sense of place’ was already defined by the rhyming weaver poets of the counties of Antrim and Down. They wrote a great amount of their poetry in the years between 1750 and 1850. At that time Ulster consisted mainly of a rural society (cf. Herbison, 1991: 63). The rhyming weavers belonged to the rural society and their environment was shaped by it. They earned their living through weaving and some of them also had smallholdings to boost their income. These rhyming weavers were also called “bards of their townland” (ibid.). The works of these rhyming weavers expressed a “deep attachment to the notion of community and a sense of local identity” (ibid). The ‘sense of place’ is just one aspect of their work – another aspect is the experience of displacement. These two aspects created a tension in their poetry. The feeling of displacement was enhanced by industrialisation and urbanisation which took place at that time (cf. ibid.: 64). Generally, it can be said that a ‘sense of place’ develops through a feeling of displacement, a feeling of being in-between (cf. Heaney, 2002: 49). Heaney grew up in-between, and that might be one reason for his preoccupation with the local place. The displacement of the local ground evoked his ‘sense of place’.
The weaver poets used imagery taken from the landscape to reflect on the experience of being displaced, which also nurtured a feeling of loss. This was paired with a reminiscence of the native rural area (cf. ibid.: 65). This can also be said for Heaney who felt displaced in his country because emotionally he held his sympathy for the Celtic heritage but officially his nationality was British. Heaney takes images from his childhood place, rural Derry to express this feeling of displacement. The rhyming weavers experienced also a feeling of displacement because of the industrialisation. In their poetry, they wanted to evoke a feeling of belonging and a means to express a sense of locality was the use of local idioms. Some of their poems combined style with subject-matter and these poems “speak of a whole community: the language, the landscape and the people are united in a single vision of their identity” (Herbison, 1991: 66). The rhyming weavers can be regarded as a role model for Heaney who took over their means of establishing a feeling of belonging. He also combined language, landscape and people to heighten the awareness of his community and to shape a consciousness of his community. This can be seen in the poem “Gifts of Rain” (see Appendix, pp. 250 – 251), where he describes the river Moyola, which is part of the rural area: “The tawny guttural water/ spells itself: Moyola/ is its own score and consort,/ bedding the locale/ in the utterance” (ll. 51 – 55).
33 David Herbison, one of the rhyming weavers, was “[u]nable to keep in equilibrium his Ulster- Scots and Irish identities, he attempts to find a common ground. In choosing to write about the landscape and people of his local district Herbison is seeking to create an intimate personal identification with his own ‘country’” (Herbison, 1991: 73). Heaney also points out the problems of this duality in the poem “Terminus”, where he describes a certain feeling of being in-between. He creates a personal account of his relation to the local place in the poem “Personal Helicon” (see Appendix, p. 239) from Death of a Naturalist : “As a child, they could not keep me away from water/ And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.” (ll. 1- 2) Heaney begins with a recollection of a childhood memory which continues with a description of his fascination with the local place because he loved “the smells/ Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss” (ll. 3 – 4). The poem ends with a reference to the first lines of the same poem: “Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime” (l. 17). The poet defines his roots by being rooted in the local ground and in order to define himself: “I rhyme/ To see myself” (ll. 19 – 20). Heaney points out that the horizon of the nature is his given horizon of definition. He creates a personal identification with the place through the first-person singular.
One of the rhyming weavers turned to this restricted sense of identity which allowed him to become “the voice of his country side and community. His familiarity with his subject matter, and his ability to capture the character of his rural landscape gives his verse a particular intimacy” (Herbison, 1991: 73). Heaney also wrote of rural Ireland which was a subject matter he was close to, and through his knowledge of the landscape and the familiarity with the local people he was able to evoke a feeling of intimacy as though he communicated with the local people. The weaver poets used words from the local dialect in their poetry which was rooted in the familiar details of life in rural Ireland. As a matter of fact, they create a rural idyll and by doing so they express political and social changes, which is emphasised through the use of local idioms (cf. ibid.: 75).
The local place as a source of imagery, local dialect and details of rural life are the components of a ‘sense of place’ created by the rhyming weavers. This ‘sense of place’ is also evident in modern poetry, for example, in poems of Frost, Yeats and Hardy. Heaney points out, by referring to these three poets, that “there is a corroborative relation between a landscape and a sensibility. The words on the page can function in a way that is supplementary to their primary artistic function. They can have a window effect and open blinds of language on to subjects and places before or behind words” (Heaney, 2002: 38). The
34 poetry of these poets contains more than a mere description of landscape, these poets open a door to places through verbal images. They heighten the awareness of the reader through conveying meaning in images of landscape. Heaney also explores every possible meaning of words to convey a multifaceted description of a place. He further repeats these images and attaches meaning to them by shifting the context. Heaney conveys images of landscape, which he either experiences or re-collects from memory. According to Duffy, “[t]he ‘sense of place’ accruing from the ways in which people experience representations of present and past landscapes is a fundamental part of territorial identity and of geographical understanding” (Duffy, 1997: 64). Heaney gives a personal account of the landscape of his childhood; moreover, he represents the present and the past landscape. This can be seen as a means to shape a territorial identity and to heighten a geographical understanding of his community.
The workings of a ‘sense of place’’ can be examined in a semiotic approach: according to Saussure, every sign consists of two components. One is the vehicle, or the signifier, which is the part of the sign that represents it. The other component is the signified which is the concept that is in one’s mind when the signifier is perceived (cf. Biguell, 1997: 11 – 12). Saussure’s semiotic method points out the way we are surrounded and influenced by sign systems. The influence of the sign system allows the conclusion that consciousness and experience are influenced, for example, by language. Language provides us with the signs with which we speak and write (cf. ibid.: 7). The purpose of semioticians is to define the systems which transports meaning in society through words and images. These signs are divided in different groups which are called codes (cf. ibid.: 9). In this analysis, the poem can be seen as the signifier that triggers off the signified. The poem is the entity that establishes the set of references. The words that build a sentence establish a meaning in the poem. That is the first subjective reading of a poem. For example, on this level Heaney’s poem “Digging” may be read as an account of how his father digs in the turf. But there is also a second level of meaning which is expressed through words as metaphors and symbols. Both, symbols and metaphors create a ‘sense of place’.
To grasp the meaning of the ‘sense of place’, Barthes’ concept of myth provides a framework of explanations because Barthes interprets culture. In Mythologies , semiotics is the predominant means of analysing aspects of everyday culture. Barthes was influenced by semiotics and applied its features of a sign to a concept of reading culture. According to Barthes, in a myth, the first signifier is a meaning and its signified is a concept. In Barthes’
35 definition myth contains a tri-dimensional pattern which is based on the definition of Saussure who established the terms: signifier, signified and sign (cf. Barthes, 1984: 3). Barthes further points out that a semiotic system expresses cultural, political, social and economic myths in a society. In Barthes’ opinion, myths are a product of society and created through a constant repetition of ideologies (cf. 1977: 165). Barthes provided a conceptual framework by defining the different components of myth. In this analysis, these components are taken over as tools to identify the different features of myth in Heaney’s poetry. In the case of Heaney, the sign is the poem, the signifiers are the words inspired by the local landscape, and the signified is a concept of identity created through these images taken from the local ground.
A ‘sense of place’ is defined as a representation of place that evokes a feeling of belonging. In order to evoke this feeling, images are needed to convey them. Therefore, a ‘sense of place’ is the consciously created meaning that is conveyed through deliberately chosen symbols and metaphors. This allows us to say that a ‘sense of place’ is also a dominant feature of the poetic voice of the poet because the poet deliberately chooses his metaphors and images. Considering Heaney’s poetry, it can be said that his poetic voice is defined by rural Ireland and the landscape of Derry. Through a repetition of words such as ‘turf’, ‘moss’ and ‘mould’, Heaney conveys a landscape rooted in the local ground. These words are also components of the ‘sense of place’ because these words have become a symbol of representation for the local landscape. To achieve a full understanding of the meaning of the poems, they have to be read in a historical and social context. The words which stand synonymously for the place have to be read in the context of the Troubles where an Irish minority was searching for a definition of identity. Heaney’s poems can be seen as conveying an identity through evoking a ‘sense of place’. This is underlined by Chatman who coined the term ‘naturalization’ which means that literary conventions become accepted conventions of reality:
Audiences come to recognise and interpret conventions by ‘naturalizing’ them […]. To realize a narrative convention means not only to understand it, but to ‘forget’ its conventional character, to absorb it into the reading-out process, to incorporate it into one’s interpretative net, giving to it no more thought than to the manifestational medium, say the English language. (Chatman, 1980: 49)
36 Heaney reinforces his images through their repetition and, by doing so, the images are naturalized in the process of interpreting them. The narrative conventions of the poem become reality and are incorporated into “one’s interpretative net” (ibid.). Heaney’s paradigms of landscape are accepted as a narrative convention which becomes part of “one’s interpretative net” (ibid.).
37 3. 2. Poetry as a Source of Identity
Heaney defines his poetic self within the given horizon of his poetic voice, the landscape of rural Derry. Heaney’s poetry is a source of identity; it identifies him, his poetic voice, and shapes the conscious of his community. Joseph Brodsky once wrote that “[p]oets’ real biographies are like those of birds […] their real data are in the way they sound. A poet’s biography is in his vowels and sibilants, in his metres, rhymes and metaphors […] With poets, the choice of words is inevitably more telling than the story they tell” (qtd. Heaney, 2002: 347). Heaney’s choice of words is inspired by the local ground; moreover, it provides him with a set of images that become synonymous with an Irish identity. For example, in his early poetry collections, Heaney uses images connected with the local ground: ‘ploughlands’, ‘cows’, ‘hedge’, ‘turf’, ‘humus’, ‘mould’, ‘creek’, ‘wheat’ and ‘willow’. These are only some words he uses to re-create in his poems a virtual landscape. This virtual landscape is shaped by the choice of words inspired by the local ground of Heaney’s home in Derry. Heaney’s choice of words shows that rural Ireland is the area of definition in which he moves. He even points out that “[o]ne half of one’s sensibility is in a cast of mind that comes from belonging to a place, ancestry, a history, a culture” (Heaney, 1980: 13). Heaney’s cast of mind evokes this feeling of belonging through his imagery inspired by the local place which further shows his rootedness in a place, his familiarity with his ancestry, history, and culture.
This can be seen in poems such as “Blackberry-Picking”, “At a Potato Digging” and “In Small Townlands” from Death of a Naturalist . It can be said that in his early poems, Heaney tries to re-create the real place, which changes throughout his career. In his more recent poems, his childhood’s place is used as a source of images that stirs the imagination. For example, in “Blackberry-Picking” (see Appendix, pp. 238 – 239) from Death of a Naturalist , he describes the hunger for the first blackberries: “Sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam- pots/ Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots./ Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills” (ll. 9 – 11). It can be pointed out that Heaney uses these images to create a common ground for a definition of Irish identity because the rural Irish inhabitants could relate to the experience of landscape Heaney describes. According to Duffy, “[t]he role of the artist as witness and interpreter of place, landscape and identity, can be broadened beyond mere reflection or revelation. To a very significant extent our past and present views of Ireland and Irishness have been shaped by readings of literature and art” (Duffy, 1997: 65). Heaney, as a poet, observes the landscape and interprets the place by using images taken from
38 the landscape of the local place to define identity. Therefore, it can be said that Heaney’s account of the local place is not just a reflection of the place, it is rather an account of landscape that is used to evoke a feeling of belonging to the place.
Heaney uses an account of Venerable Bede from his Ecclesiastical History of the English People to point out that a different description of landscape can imply political and social differences as well. Monk Venerable Bede writes about the reason of Ireland being favoured over Britain because of Ireland’s mild and healthy climate. In this account he recalls incidents that snakes were brought on English ships to the shore of Ireland and when the snakes breathed the air they expired (cf. Heaney, 2002: 382). Heaney explains what this passage means to him, saying that “it is an example of a writer calling upon a fiction in order to cope with differences between two islands linked and separated in various degrees by history and geography, language and culture” (ibid.). Heaney chose rural Ireland as his source of inspiration, but it is also the background of the minority of the inhabitants of Northern Ireland.
Heaney returns to the images inspired by the local ground in his most recent poetry collection, District and Circle . Heaney is not so much trying to define a landscape of exclusion, which he wanted during the Troubles in order to heighten the awareness of the Irish community – on the contrary, he tries to define a landscape of inclusion which is characterised by images from his childhood place embedded in a modern day setting: “First it went back to grass, then after that/ To warehouse and brickfields (designated/ The Creagh Meadows Industrial Estate)” (“The Aerodrome”, ll. 1 – 3). Heaney playfully deconstructs an industrial area in Ireland by returning to its roots – grass. Graham points out that “human landscapes and other cultural artefacts are defined through the meanings attached to them, they are narratives and allegories that will be renegotiated and transformed as societies are renegotiated” (Graham, 1997: 10). Graham explains that human landscapes are defined through the meaning that is associated with them; as a matter of fact, these landscapes are allegories that will be altered and changed. Heaney changed his human landscape and adopted means of modern everyday life. Heaney accustomed his poetry to the transformations of society. He regenerated his set of images inspired by the local ground and transformed their meaning by putting them in a modern everyday context.
39 To conclude, Heaney uses poetry as a means to convey his national identity. When Heaney was included in an anthology of British writers he felt he had to take a “stance towards life” (Heaney, 1980: 47) by pointing out that his sympathies and personal allegiance lie in his Irish heritage. Heaney points out that “what I was out to do was to dispute use of the word British as a description of my nationality” (Heaney, 2002: 368). Heaney further mentions that he maybe could have ignored it and adjusted to it if he had lived in Northern Ireland. One reason why he chose to take a stance was that the question of being British or Irish was the reason for the civil atrocities and violence. Another reason was that he was an Irish citizen because when he and his family moved to Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland he already had an Irish passport. For Heaney, it was a way to find a congruence between who he was and where he was living (cf. ibid.: 369). This can be seen in his outspoken answer to the fact that he is included in a British anthology. Heaney wrote a poem, “An Open Letter”, which dealt with the circumstance that he did not have his allegiance with the meaning of the term British equalling English: “A British one – is characterized/ As British. But don’t be surprised/ If I demur, for, be advised,/ My passport’s green./ No glass of ours was raised/ To toast The Queen” (qtd. ibid.: 370). Heaney defined himself and used poetry as a means to convey his allegiance. He had to draw a line because he sees himself as Irish, but in Northern Ireland he is characterised as “British subject living in Ulster” (Heaney, 1990: 23). Heaney wanted to make clear that he defines himself as Irish and that his allegiance and sympathies are with Ireland. By doing so, Heaney points out that he is not longer part of the British enterprise of colonisation. According to Graham the “diversity of Ireland’s past […is] characterised by the meshing and interaction of a variety of cultural influences, conflicts, invasions, colonisations, trade, social contacts and ideas. The nature of Irishness is to be found in the specific delineation of these inputs” (Graham, 1997: 9). Heaney is influenced by the past experience of colonisation and had to voice his difference and his personal allegiance, which was Irish. Heaney strips every layer of these cultural influences and for him “it seems camped on before/ The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage./ The wet centre is bottomless” (“Bogland”, ll. 26 – 28, see Appendix, pp. 247 – 248). Heaney seems to suggest that the search for the self and an Irish identity is like the Irish bog – it is bottomless. After defining himself as Irish, he is able to find features to establish a feeling of belonging to the Irish community.
40 4. Heaney’s Early Work – Finding a Voice
Early in Heaney’s career it was very important for him to go beyond the ‘word play’ and find a voice as a poet. In his essay “Feeling into Words”, Heaney references to Wordsworth and explains why he chose the digging metaphor by citing Wordsworth. Through that he legitimizes his legacy as a writer of poetry and why he writes poetry. Wordsworth wrote in The Prelude about the “hiding places”:
The hiding places of my power Seem open; I approach, and then they close; I see by glimpses now; when age comes on, May scarcely see at all, and I would give, While yet we may, as far as words can give, A substance and a life to what I feel: I would enshrine the spirit of the past For future restoration. (Qtd. Heaney, 1980: 41)
In the lines above, Wordsworth says that words express our feelings and that a substance and life are given to feelings by bringing them to paper. Heaney found his basic ideas of poetry and place in this paragraph; moreover, these lines express a view of poetry which is also reflected in Heaney’s poetry. This allows Heaney to comment on the purpose of poetry. For example, poetry is described as a divine thing that reveals the self to the self and restores culture to itself by being itself a part of a cultural process. Poems often remain centuries as means of conveying a certain continuity in time. By doing so, they transport “the aura and authenticity of archaeological finds, where the buried shard has an importance that is not diminished by the importance of the buried city; poetry as a dig, a dig for finds that end up being plants” (ibid.).
‘Digging’, in fact, was the name of the first poem I wrote where I thought my feelings had got into words, or to put it more accurately, where I thought my feel had got into words. Its rhythms and noises still please me, although there are a couple of lines in it that have more of the theatricality of the gunslinger than the self-absorption of the digger. I wrote it in the summer of 1964, almost two years after I had begun to ‘dabble in verses’. This was the first place where I felt I had done more than make an arrangement of words: I felt that I had let down a shaft to real life. (Ibid.)
Heaney is very explicit in the choice of his vocabulary, even when he writes about poetry he uses images from nature. In “Digging”, Heaney himself says that this “was the first place”
41 where he had written poetry. For Heaney, writing poetry seems to be a process of re-creating a place, for example, the place of his childhood – the farm in Derry. The imagined place is based on the landscape of the real place and expressed through the choice of words that is inspired by the local landscape. It can be said that the poem gives an account of the real place recollected in memory.
Heaney was always interested in the distinctive feature of the proper name, and this feature becomes essential in his later poetry. He is not an anonymous voice anymore; on the contrary, he turns to historical specificity when “writing as an adult man of a particular place in a particular time” (Vendler, 2000: 14). But before being specific he needed to identify his poetic voice. Words are an important factor for Heaney. To write poetry is a process and a certain choice of words “means that you can get your own feeling into your own words and that your words have the feel of you about them” (Heaney, 1980: 43). Heaney is very peculiar about the proper choice of words. In the first place, a poet does not need a metaphor to bring his feelings into words; instead, Heaney suggests that a poetic voice is ultimately linked with the speaking voice of the poet – the voice he hears reading the lines he is inventing (cf. ibid.). Heaney’s point is that “there is a connection between the core of a poet’s speaking voice and the core of his poetic voice, between his original accent and his discovered style” (ibid.). In Heaney’s case, his speaking voice is rooted in rural Derry, which underlines his point that the language spoken in an area influences the poet as well as the poetry he writes. To find a voice to express feelings is as important to Heaney as expressing his feelings for a place. Heaney has found his places. On the one hand, it is the place of writing poetry which is the place of expressing himself and, on the other hand, his place of inspiration which is the place where he grew up.
Heaney differentiates between technique and craft, as “technique, as I would define it, involves not only a poet’s way with words, his management of meter, rhythm and verbal texture; it involves also a definition of his stance towards life, a definition of his own reality” (ibid.: 47). Heaney states that a poet must broaden his horizon and that he has to leave already trodden paths and discover means to go out of the normal cognitive bounds and air the inarticulate. To articulate the inarticulate means for him “a dynamic alertness that mediates between the origins of feeling in memory and experience and the formal ploys that express these in a work of art” (ibid.: 47).
42 Heaney found a way to express his feelings in words in Death of a Naturalist , but when he wrote Door into the Dark he wanted to define poetry as a “point of entry into the buried life of the feelings or as a point of exit for it. Words themselves are doors. Janus is to a certain extent their deity, looking back to a ramification of roots and associations and forward to a clarification of sense and meaning” (ibid.: 52). Through words Heaney creates a unique verbal landscape while being on his quest for identity and meaning. In Door into the Dark , he creates “a number of poems that arise out of the almost unnameable energies that, for me, hovered over certain bits of language and landscape” (ibid.). In Wintering Out , he had found his voice, which can be seen in “A Northern Hoard”, where he recalls a memory from his childhood when he tried to make fire with flints. The poet uses this memory as a symbolical reaction to the present situation in Ireland in the early 1970s (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 30) He describes these flints as “Cold beads of history and home/ we fingered” (“A Northern Hoard”, ll. 5 – 6). Here the picture of a rosary is evoked, created with “names and words from Heaney’s own local place, in order to evoke it now in its historical, political, and linguistic complexity” (Corcoran, 1998: 30). By doing so, Heaney creates poems which have more than one meaning; thus, they can be read literally, symbolically, allegorically or politically. Through that he connects with “his people and a people to their history” (ibid.). In Wintering Out , Heaney avoids to mention the Troubles directly, however, he references to the background of the conflict (cf. ibid.: 28). Heaney never states an opinion openly; instead, he is a collector of stories and hidden sources. Heaney, the collector, is able to put these stories into words because of the fact that he is a poet. As defined in the poem “The Diviner” from Death of a Naturalist , a poet can voice the hidden sources of life.
43 4. 1. From Landscape to Soundscape
As already pointed out above, Heaney distinguishes between ‘craft’ and ‘technique’, where craft implies a poet’s way with words (cf. Heaney, 1980: 47). Heaney knows his way and he is certain about his craft by choosing an extraordinary vocabulary. Philip Hobsbaum describes Heaney’s craft that “at times it seems to support itself, to go on speaking under the impetus of language. There is a kind of Heaneyspeak that borders self-parody” (1994: 37). One example for ‘Heaneyspeak’ is apparent in “Blackberry-Picking” (see Appenidx, pp. 232 – 233): “Then red ones inked up and that hunger/ Sent us out with milk cans, pea-tins, jam-pots/ Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots” (ll. 8 – 10). Heaney creates a verbal image of the blackberry-picking in the mind of the reader. This situation seems almost visual and tangible. Heaney achieves this extraordinary visual effect by using simple childhood experiences. This effect is not only achieved by using memories from the past, moreover, Heaney leaves a verbal impression in the mind of the reader by using a language rooted in his native ground. As Hobsbaum points out, “[i]t is this sort of writing that associates itself with tractors hitched to buckrakes, hands scuffled over the bake-board, the dulse-brown shroud, the bleb of the icicle, badgers dunting under the laurels, and a burnished bay-tree hung with the reek of silage” (1994: 37).
However, it is not ‘silage’ but the achievement of a clever poet who studied literature and took those lectures about Hopkins, Hardy and Frost to heart. Artistically, he uses the acquired knowledge to create an account of the country of his mind and “[i]t is the snap-crackle-pop of diction; the very cud of memory” (ibid.) that achieves this unique style. “At a Potato Digging” combines ‘Heaneyspeak’ and the ‘cud of memory’ because in this poem Heaney refers to the period of 1845 to 1852, which is better known as the Great Irish Famine, or Great Hunger. While the people in Ireland starved to death because of the failure of the potato crop, food was exported to Britain. Even during this period of starvation Britain did not stop the export of food from Ireland. For a very long time, this fact remained a very sensitive issue between Ireland and Britain, and it is manifested in the memory of a people (cf. Kinealy, 1995: 354).
Heaney associates the act of potato digging with the historical event of the potato plight. According to Graham, these manipulated landscapes – landscapes which are loaded with historical facts – contribute to a heightened awareness of the people (cf. Graham, 1997: 206). The landscape becomes a symbol of the sentiments involved in the historical fact. The
44 landscape linked with the potato plight becomes a representation for the oppression of the Irish people and the hardships they had to endure during the Great Hunger.
Heaney sets the scene of the poem in a dark tone with a dragging rhythm. The poem starts with the mechanical work of digging potatoes: “A mechanical digger wrecks the drill,/ Spins up a dark shower of roots and mould.” (“At a Potato Digging”, ll. 1 – 2, see Appendix, pp. 241 – 242) Here the choice of words is very significant for many reasons. One reason is that the words’ literal meanings evoke despair, for example, when the digger is so desperate that he destroys the drill and only roots and earth surface. The desperate feeling is exaggerated by the lines: “Labourers swarm in behind, stoop to fill/ Wicker creels. Fingers go dead in the cold.” (ll. 3 – 4) In these lines, the labourers are presented like a swarm of bees that follow up to fill their baskets, but there is nothing to pick. The humiliating situation is also emphasised in the vocabulary because the labourers humiliate themselves through stooping “to fill/ Wicker creels” (ll. 3 – 4).
Another reason is that through the onomatopoetic choice of words a vivid image of the despair and humiliation appears in the mind of the reader. A dark ground envisages a swarm of people digging to survive. Interestingly, Heaney exaggerates that impression of swarming by continuing: “Like crows attacking crow-black fields, they stretch/ A higgledy line from hedge to headland” (ll. 5 – 6). In the words used to create this feeling of despair lies the power to envisage the misery of a people because they cover the ground like a hungry swarm of birds in search for food, which is a quite strong and disturbing picture.
Heaney, as a poet, articulates through vowels and consonants the blunt reality of the great famine, for example, when he describes the ritual of digging potatoes: “Heads bow, trunks bend, hands fumble towards the black/ Mother. Processional stooping through the turf” (ll. 11 – 12). In this passage, Heaney conjures up Catholic rituals in order to point out the suffering of the Catholic people in Ireland. Moreover, it shows “how deeply the sufferings of Irish historical experience are inscribed in the landscape itself and in the human psyche” (Corcoran, 1998: 27). Heaney points out that the suffering of the Irish people is connected with the native ground, for example, “[c]enturies/ Of fear and homage to the famine god/ Toughen the muscles behind their humbled knees,/ Make a seasonal altar of the sod.” (“At a Potato Digging”, ll. 13 – 16) Heaney uses “black/ Mother” (ll. 11 – 12) and the “famine god” (l. 14) to refer to Ireland. It can be seen that Heaney replaces the nationalist icon Cathleen
45 NiHoulihan with more grounded figures such as ‘black mother’ or ‘famine god’. Heaney creates, in the Romantic tradition, a figure to represent Ireland. This metaphor will be significant in his later poems, where he creates the goddess Nerthus, who becomes a more mythologized representation of Ireland (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 27). But Heaney also refers to a more universal goddess who appears to people under various disguises. These disguises combine positive and negative aspects of an earth goddess – she nurtures the people but can also starve them to death, as in the poem “At a Potato Digging”. According to Campbell, in myths, the different masks imply the various forms of creation which are almost incomprehensible to the world that is created. Interestingly, the mother of life is also the mother of death, who comes under the demonic disguises of famine and disease (cf. Campbell, 1993: 302 – 303).
In its second section, the poem continues with a description of potatoes in their drill: “Flint- white, purple. They lie scattered/ like inflated pebbles. Native/ to the black hutch of clay” (“At a Potato Digging”, ll. 17 – 19). Potatoes were the main nourishment in Ireland in the 19 th century. They are native to the ground because “these knobbed and slit-eyed tubers seem/ the petrified hearts of drills.” (ll. 21 – 22) By saying “hutch of clay” (l. 19), Heaney does not only form a strong verbal image, moreover, he onomatopoetically visualizes a heap of clay in the mind of the reader. Heaney creates a connection between the potato and the ground by using “Native” (l. 18) as attribute for potato, which he extends in the line: “whose solid feel, whose wet inside/ promises taste of ground and root.” (ll. 28 – 29) Potatoes and the Irish are connected and their common basis is the ground where potatoes grow, Ireland. Irish people are rooted to their native place even in suffering. Heaney, as McHugh, points out, was a native in Ireland and by “[p]lanting his feet on the land he continued to deepen his awareness of the historical and mythical possibilities of place” (1982: 318). By planting his feet on the land, he did not only heighten his awareness, but also the consciousness of a people, the Irish.
In the third section, Heaney describes the degree of suffering in a very vivid image: “Live skulls, blind-eyed, balanced on/ wild higgledy skeletons” (“At a Potato Digging”, ll. 31 – 32). Potatoes turned into “[l]ive skulls, blind-eyed” (l. 31) from the earlier “slit-eyed” (l. 21). Heaney seems to conjure up the ghost of the famine out of the ground. But his impressive account of the event is based on the Great Hunger of 1845 which he also refers to: “scoured the land in ’forty-five,/ wolfed the blighted root and died.” (ll. 32 – 33) Heaney uses a very emphatic vocabulary, for example ‘scour’ and ‘wolf’ and creates a living image in the mind.
46 He also personifies the danger of the famine, so the impact seems to multiply because the danger is not abstract but very concrete, for example, it “wolfed the blighted root and died” (l. 33). Heaney turns to the effect of the potato blight by stating that “A people hungering from birth,/ grubbing, like plants, in the bitch earth,/ were grafted with a great sorrow.” (ll. 43 – 45) He roots the Irish people to their ground on several levels. First, he compares them to plants; second, he uses words such as ‘graft’, which is normally used in the context of plants, and, last but not least, he associates the female term ‘bitch’ with the earth and so he animates the ground. He turns from the figure of the ‘black mother’ who contains something soothing, to the plain and pejorative term “bitch earth” (l. 44). By doing so, he also creates a national consciousness because, according to Billig, “every nation needs a homeland” (qtd. Reicher, Hopkins, Condor, 1997: 75). Heaney uses the ground as a basis for creating a national awareness, which is also elaborated by Billig, who argues that “nationalism further extends to what all share in common. The very idea presupposes that it is natural for everybody to be defined in terms of the country they belong to” (qtd. ibid.: 76). According to Billig, the local ground can be seen as a means to define a national identity. Heaney uses images inspired by the local ground to contribute to an awareness of the local place.
In the last section, help in the disguise of British landlords was “thankfully breaking timeless fasts” (l. 56). Government had introduced working releases where people had to dig ditches and roads in order to get something to eat. Heaney refers to that event when he writes: “The rhythm deadens, the workers stop./ Brown bread and tea in bright canfuls/ Are served for lunch.” (ll. 52 – 54) Through the fasting the people were not used to food and so they “stretched on the faithless ground, spill/ Libations of cold tea, scatter crusts.” (ll. 57 – 58) As the rhythm of the digging deadens, so the rhythm of the poem becomes slower, and it seems gentler than before. In the consonants of the last two words, “scatter crusts” (l. 58), Heaney creates the image of people lying on the ground and twitching in pain but the poem ends with an image of the earth how it puts on crust.
In the context of his early work, which includes Death of a Naturalist , Door into the Dark , and Wintering Out , “At a Potato Digging” is exemplary for several aspects. First of all, Heaney refers to a past historical event, the Great Famine. As Vance points out, “Heaney the Catholic farmer’s son, native rather than colonist, had no need to talk his way into relationship with the land: for better or worse, his traditions were deeply rooted in it” (Vance, 1990: 242). Heaney uses a past event and links it to the present; moreover, he uses this event
47 to add to the native ground a mythological component inherent in the past. By doing so, he heightens the awareness of his community regarding the unique historical aspects of their place. To achieve this effect, Heaney uses different styles and techniques, for example, the dramatic monologue. He often uses this form to give an actual account of the feelings and motifs of the persona in the poem. One example for this is “For the Commander of the ‘Eliza’”, which deals with a captain’s sighting of a boat of starving Irish people at the coast of Mayo, based on an account of Cecil Woodham-Smith, an expert on the famine in Ireland, in her book The Great Hunger. It is part of Heaney’s voice as a poet to adapt “in these poems for their own purposes pre-existent documentary sources” (Corcoran, 1998: 25).
The mythological dimension can be evaluated, according to Levi-Strauss, in the smallest meaning-giving unit, which is the smallest action. This component of Levi-Strauss’s theory of myth is taken as a basis to assess a creation of myth in this poem. According to Levi-Strauss, the repetition of actions reveals the motif of the myth. Through the recurrence of an action the motif of the myth can be detected. “At a Potato Digging” begins with “A mechanical digger wrecks the drill” (l. 1), which describes the hopeless act of digging for potatoes. The digger destroys the drill on his search for potatoes. The poem continues by saying that the digger “[s]pins up a dark shower of roots and mould” (l. 2), which is the next action addressed in the poem. The digger does not find anything because only roots and mould would surface. In the third line it says: “Labourers swarm in behind, stoop to fill/ Wicker creels.” (ll. 3 – 4) The next lines describe how the labourers cover the area from behind very quickly and try to fill their baskets as fast as possible. By analysing the smallest actions, the despair and hopelessness of the situation of the Irish people is highlighted for the reader. Heaney situates his actions in the ground of the place. The digging and the picking of potatoes are the actions in the first stanza. In the second stanza, “they stretch/ A higgledy line from hedge to headland” (ll. 5 – 6), which means that the labourers cover almost a whole field in their attempt to dig for potatoes. The next actions of the poem appear when “[s]ome pairs keep breaking ragged ranks to fetch/ A full creel to the pit and straighten, stand// Tall for a moment but soon stumble back/ To fish a new load from the crumbled surf” (ll. 7 – 10). In this passage, first the diggers leave their ranks, then they bring the baskets full of potatoes to the pit, where they are kept for the winter. The next actions are that the labourers “straighten” (l. 8) and “stand// Tall” (ll. 8 – 9), but not for long, and soon they return to their regular position of stooping. In the poem, the labourers are not allowed to ‘stand tall’ very long because soon they have to return to the act of digging and picking. So far, it can be said that digging and
48 picking are the main actions of the poem. The next actions indirectly describe the labourers: “Heads bow, trunks bend, hands fumble towards the black/ Mother. Processional stooping through the turf” (ll. 11 – 12). The labourers are turned towards the ‘black mother’, which shows their dependence on it because “[c]enturies/ Of fear and homage to the famine god/ Toughen the muscles behind their humbled knees,/ Make a seasonal altar of the sod” (ll. 13 – 16). Heaney strategically uses words which are connected with the native place. He roots the people in the ground through almost making them part of it. Nearly every action in the first section of the poem is linked with digging the ground, the potato drills and the ‘black mother’. As mentioned before, the ‘black mother’ incorporates character traits of a demonic reincarnation of the universal goddess who is responsible for a good crop. By digging in the ground, the labourers pay homage to the goddess. By using words connected with the ground, Heaney creates a relation between the goddess and the labourers in the poem. Through having associated the place with the historical fact of the famine, the place can be identified as Ireland. Words such as ‘digging’, ‘black mother’, and ‘potato drills’ read in the context of the famine can be seen as means to represent Ireland. By doing so, these words become synonymous with Ireland. These words contribute to an image of Ireland based in the local ground. The image these words create by repeating the act of ‘digging’ and ‘stooping’ contributes to a myth based on the local ground.
While in the first section digging and picking turf are repeated actions, in the second section the potatoes are at the centre of the reader’s attention because “the halved seed shot and clotted” (l. 20). The potatoes grow, and when they are “[s]plit/ by the spade, they show white as cream” (ll. 22 – 23). The potatoes are delicious, and “[g]ood smells exude from crumbled earth” (l. 24). The next actions described in the poem refer to the potatoes by pointing out what makes them so delicious. The earth “erupts” (l. 25) potatoes and gives them a “clean birth” (l. 26). The poet compares the act of growing potatoes with the act of giving birth to a child. The earth takes on the role of a mother and the potatoes’ “wet inside/ promises taste of ground and root.” (ll. 27 – 28) The word ‘potato’, through the context of the sentence, becomes a symbol of ground and root. Regarding the context of the poem, the potatoes are a means contributing to the definintion of an Irish identity because Heaney once more humanizes the ground through animated attributes.
In the third section, the potato blight and its consequences are dramatised. For example, the people died of hunger: “wild higgledy skeletons/ scoured the land in ‘forty-five,/ wolfed the
49 blighted root and died.” (ll. 31 – 33) The people were so hungry that they ate the infected potatoes and died. These actions show the despair of the Irish people during the Great Famine. In the next line, “[t]he new potato, sound as stone,/putrefied” (l. 34) – these potatoes could not be kept in pits because they rotted and “[m]illions rotted along with it.” (l. 37) The people had to suffer from the blight and “[m]ouths tightened in, eyes died hard,/ faces chilled to a plucked bird.” (ll. 38 – 39) The poet shows what happens to people who have to suffer hunger: the Irish people were dependent on the potato crop and through the blight the famine pocked at their stomach. The pits with the potatoes harmed the Irish people and those pits turned into stinking holes with pus and sore: “you still smell the running sore” (l. 50). The actions in this section are linked with the rotting of the potato crop and the people dying of hunger and eating rotten food. The single actions are described with words connected with ‘clay pits’, ‘plants’, ‘the bitch earth’ and ‘digging’.
In the last section of the poem, the measures of the sovereignty are explained, such as the situation of hungering people who build roads for food: “The rhythm deadens, the workers stop” (l. 51). The next action is the routine of getting the food: “they flop/ Down in the ditch and take their fill” (ll. 53 – 54). The end of the poem deals with the acts of being again on the ground, because the labourers “stretched on the faithless ground” (l. 56). This is a parallel to the first section where the labourers stooped through the drills. Summarizing, in general, “At a Potato Digging” contains a lot of different actions such as stooping, giving birth, hungering and digging. Digging can be seen as a central metaphor in Heaney’s work. In the context of the other poems of the poetry collection, digging is a crucial metaphor because it is also a means of establishing and conveying a myth about Ireland. Digging is the recurrent action in the poem which is characterised by a diction that is based on the local ground; moreover, the ground is a major recurrent theme, that ‘gives birth’ and controls the lives of the Irish inhabitants who are dependent on the ground.
Another aspect of Heaney’s poems is that he uses a very rich and dense diction in order to create verbal monuments of the Irish past. Heaney generally uses words which are connected with the earth and planting. Heaney personalises the ground and the potato crop and dehumanises the Irish people by comparing them to crows. Through this the place becomes more powerful and the wretched position of the Irish people during British sovereignty is emphasised. By blending in the description of the landscape historical facts and human metaphors, the place becomes an account of the people’s memory.
50 Heaney further differentiates through language the belonging to the Irish community and the British colonial power. Language itself is a very important feature in his poetic voice for several reasons. He sometimes uses Gaelic words to emphasise his point, for example in “For the Commander of the ‘Eliza’”, his “first use of an Irish word should be, […], ‘bia’, […] the word for ‘food’” (Corcoran, 1998: 25). The poem deals with the potato blight and the effects it had on the Irish population. To show the Irish suffering, he had to use the Irish word for food to point out the Irish experience.
To conclude, language and history are two main features of Heaney’s early poetic voice. He uses ‘Heaneyspeak’ to create wordscapes, and he uses Gaelic words to make his community aware of an almost lost treasure of their past, the Gaelic language, which is rich in meaning and tradition. This is extended in Wintering Out and especially in “Bogland”, where the search for history and the search for identity go hand in hand. Poetry acquires the function of archaeology; for example, poetry is symbolic for digging for the hidden treasures and histories of Ireland. As Corcoran suggests, “’[w]e’ look ‘inwards and downwards’, into the bottomless centre of our own history, recovering there the traces and treasures of previous cultures and peoples, just as the bogland of Ireland literally preserves historical and prehistorical deposits which may be released by archaeology” (ibid: 19). Concerning Corcoran’s point, archaeology becomes poetry and through the digging – metaphor it becomes a search for history in poetry. Heaney artistically combines the search for identity with a search for history in poetry. Through that Heaney is on an archaeological quest for identity in the past of a place, Ireland. As a matter of fact, it can be said that he creates new symbols to represent the place based on character traits of mythological figures such as the universal goddess. He uses the motif of the goddess as earth goddess and demonic figure to contribute to a creation of a new myth about Ireland and, moreover, he takes historical events for the narrative situation of the poem.
51 4. 2. Words Representing a Country
Generally, it can be said that Heaney’s poetry is concerned with language and especially the Irish language. Heaney often compares the Gaelic language with vowels and the English language with consonants. He shows this in the naming of Gaelic place names such as Moyola in “A New Song” (see Appendix, p. 253): “But now our river tongues must rise/ From licking deep in native haunts/ To flood, with vowelling embrace,/ Demesnes staked out in consonants” (ll. 13 – 16). The Gaelic language is described as “river tongues” (l. 13) and “native haunts” (l. 14) which are connected with words expressing affection while the demesne, Protestant areas in Northern Ireland, are quite harshly described. For Heaney, the Gaelic names are like music and the soft vowels should surround the hard language spoken in the North of Ireland. Heaney once said that “[i]t is true that the Ulster accent is generally a staccato consonantal one. Our tongue strikes the tangent of the consonant rather more than it rolls the circle of the vowel” (Heaney, 1980: 45). In these lines, it can be said that Heaney wants to enforce the “vowelling embrace” (“A New Song”, l. 15) of the Gaelic language. Heaney is inspired by the vowel-ridden Gaelic language and therefore, he tries to mimic it by using onomatopoeia, which is also known as ‘Heaneyspeak’.
These word fields 2 show that Heaney uses a diction inspired by the local place and that this diction provides the basis for his imagery throughout his whole work. Heaney’s diction emphasises the local place – his words become images representing the local place. The rhetoric of the image is affirmed by the reading of the image (cf. Biguell, 1997: 6). The images acquire meaning through the reading of the words in a cultural context. As Biguell points out, Saussure says that “our perception and understanding of reality is constructed by the expressions and other signs which we use in a social context” (qtd. ibid.). Biguell further states that our reality is formed by language and sign systems (cf. ibid.). Poetry operates within language and acquires meaning through the combination of different words. These words become images through their reading in a cultural and historical context. Within the poem, words establish a reality constructed by words and images read in a cultural context. By analysing Heaney’s poems according to certain word fields, the ability to convey meaning through these words is evaluated – moreover, it is evaluated in how far it is possible to contribute to a definition of identity. According to Saussure, the sequence of words establishes meaning, and if the sequence is altered the meaning changes. This is part of the
2 See Appendix, pp. 218 – 229. 52 syntagmatic level of a message but “[e]ach linguistic sign in the syntagm could also be replaced by another sign which is related to a similar signified. These related signs are called ‘paradigms’” (ibid.: 13). By making a word field analysis, one can evaluate in which paradigms Heaney’s poems operate. Furthermore, it can be assessed the aspect of how meaning is established within the paradigms of the different word fields.
Through naming the place, Heaney develops a connection between the name and the history of the place. To create a mental image of the place in the mind of the reader, he uses words from the word field nature; moreover, he describes a place with words taken from that particular word field. By describing the place, he indirectly describes the people living in this place. In this analysis, the poetry collections Death of a Naturalist , Door into the Dark , and Wintering Out are examined as to the word field ‘nature’. This word field is chosen because of the general topics of the three volumes. In these poetry collections, Heaney deals with his childhood memories and experiences at the farm Mossbawn and the rural area of Derry. The word field ‘nature’ includes features such as components of nature, animals, agriculture, water, plants and landscape. Every individual poem is evaluated according to these characteristics. The features were chosen because of Heaney’s preoccupation with the local place. This preoccupation is expressed in a language which is characterised by rural Ireland. Heaney’s poetry is full of words related with rural Ireland and the places he grew up in.
Through his references to nature Heaney expresses his relation with the local ground as a determining factor of his choice of words. In Death of a Naturalist , he almost literally digs in the ground because words such as ‘mould’, ‘turf’, ‘mud’, ‘muck’ and ‘peat’ are frequently used in his poems to describe the area. By describing the area, he also describes the people living there. ‘Mould’ and ‘turf’ have a very long and important history in Ireland. ‘Turf’ was the main source to keep fire in the house and so ‘turf’ is quite typical of Ireland. By using this typical feature of rural Ireland, Heaney indirectly draws a connection between turf and Ireland in the mind of the reader. He also refers to other writers who were inspired by Ireland, and in “Gravities”, he refers to the “Irish mould” (l. 12) which was part of Joyce throughout his life: “Joyce named the shops along O’Connell Street/ And on Iona Colmcille sought ease/ By wearing Irish mould next to his feet.” (ll. 10 – 12)
Heaney uses Joyce as an example that someone is attached to one place. Although Joyce lived in exile all his life, the most prominent theme in his writing is Ireland. Even more interesting is the fact that in Heaney’s description the “Irish mould” (l. 12) is a feature that makes him
53 Irish. The place can define a person. Heaney also talks about the Irish ground more metaphorically, for example, in some poems he refers to it as ‘black mother’, ‘black hutch of clay’, ‘crumbled earth’ or ‘patchwork earth’. The ground has something very intimate for Heaney because in “At a Potato Digging” he calls it “black/ Mother” (ll. 11 – 12) but in the same poem he also refers to it as anonymous “black hutch of clay” (l. 19). Heaney is ambiguous about the ground because the people depend on the crops and the good or bad soil. It seems that Heaney works his way through the different layers of the ground. He uses also words such as ‘gravely ground’, ‘sod’, ‘mulch’, ‘humus’ and ‘mush’. These words are used to describe the ground and the area but he draws a much more colourful picture in his poems. He sets the scene by adding words such as ‘hedge’, ‘meadow’ and ‘grass-seed’ in order to describe rural Ireland. In the course of his digging, he also comes across ‘rocks’ and ‘stones’ and natural resources such as ‘granite’ and ‘crystal’. Through describing rural Ireland in a colourful way, the reader can visualize the muddy earth, stones and meadows in rain, sunshine or in the morning with a gleam of dew. Heaney creates a certain atmosphere of rural life through words such as ‘sun’, ‘rain’ and ‘dew’, as in “Blackberry–Picking”: “Late August, given heavy rain and sun/ For a full week, the blackberries would ripen” (ll. 1 – 2). He explicitly mentions ‘ground’ and ‘land’ in some poems, for example, in “Follower” (see Appendix, p. 240), where he recollects a childhood memory of his father: “with a single pluck/ Of reins, the sweating team turned round/ And back into the land. His eye/ Narrowed and angled at the ground,/ Mapping the furrow exactly.” (ll. 8 – 12) Heaney remembers the father accurately mapping the furrow. Thereby, he shows the importance of the ground in a rural environment where people work for the ground which provides them with the basic food to maintain life.
In Door into the Dark , Heaney also uses words related with the ground but he focuses on new natural features in his poetry. He adds the stone-level of the ground and so he uses words such as ‘stone’, ‘flint’, ‘basalt’ and ‘rock’ in “Whinlands” (see Appendix, p. 249), where he describes the wild vegetation of whin in rural Ireland: “This stunted, dry richness/ Persists on hills, near stone ditches,/ Over flintbeds and battlefield.” (ll. 22 – 24) He describes the typical stone ditches of Ireland, which are means to fence in one’s land. It is a border between the different fields and farms. Heaney uses a typical feature of rural Ireland to create a vivid image in the mind of the reader. Thereby, the stone ditches become a representation of rural Ireland. On the level of interpretation it can be seen as a hint to the situation in Northern Ireland because of the use of the term “battlefield” (l. 24). Different sectarian groups fence
54 their area in against the other ones. To get to the core, the poet strips every layer of the country even in his poetry. He also uses words such as ‘sand’, ‘silt’, ‘clay’, ‘mud’ or ‘mud coronas’ and ‘webbed marsh’, such as in “Setting”, where he writes: “A line goes out of sight and out of mind/ Down to the soft bottom of silt and sand“ (ll. 1 –2). Heaney describes a fisher at work when he lowers the line to catch a fish. These words trigger off our imagination and allow us to envisage an idyllic rural Ireland. Heaney’s poetry is grounded in the landscape, and so his choice of words is influenced by his early childhood experience of rural Ireland. It seems that he creates a soundscape with the metaphorical expressions of ‘core of old dark’ and ‘cobweb of grass-dust’. Ingredients to stir the mind and to colour the imagination are ‘wood’, ‘forest’, ‘rain’, ‘clouds’ and ‘air’. Heaney sometimes describes the weather in his poems in order to express and emphasise the mood of the poem. Sometimes he indicates a soft airiness and lightness, and sometimes he paints a dark and detached picture. Concerning his metaphors and language, the last poem of this poetry collection, “Bogland”, foreshadows the beginning of his next collection, Wintering Out.
In Wintering Out , Heaney combines the features of digging in the ground and stripping off the layers from the first two books. He uses words such as ‘mould’, ‘mud’ and ‘moss’ and he adds words like ‘earth sac’, ‘dump’, ‘morass’ and ‘loam’ to the list. For example, in the first poem of the “A Northern Hoard” poems, “Roots”, he writes: “Earth sac, limb of the dark;/ And I wound its damp smelly loam” (ll. 18 – 19). This poem is quite interesting for several reasons. First, the poet refers to the North as a hoard, which is a treasure and should be handled with care. The country should be appreciated. Another reason is that the subtitle “Roots” refers to the roots of a human being or the roots of sectarian division, the country. Through these words Heaney creates a dark and gloomy picture which might have been a result of the sectarian tensions at the time the country was rocked by a civil war. Here Heaney works on two different levels: first, he directly refers to features of the landscape and the ground, and indirectly he uses these features to point to the political aspects of the country. In the poem, Heaney contrasts the beauty of the landscape with the political and social situation of that area; moreover, the tensions are reflected in the gloomy description of the landscape. But Heaney never leaves the common ground of his home country, and to describe the bumpy features of the area he uses words such as ‘glacial rock’, ‘flints’, ‘cobbles’, ‘gravel’, ‘basalt’, ‘granite’ and ‘cairn’. For instance, in “Cairn-Maker” he writes: “But he piled up small cairn after cairn/ And dressed some stones with his own mark” (ll. 8 – 9). Here human beings have to leave a mark in nature in order to show that they belong to it. Through these words he also
55 creates sound effects such as ‘nesting ground’, ‘meadowsweet’, ‘gravel beds’, ‘lugs of leaf’, ‘vowel-meadow’ and ‘cauldron bog’. He creates images that literally visualize in the mind of the reader. For example, in the poem “Anahorish” Heaney writes: “Anahorish, soft gradient/ of consonant, vowel-meadow” (ll. 7 – 8). He attaches to the features of a language the features of landscape. Through that he insinuates that the native language is connected with the land. In this volume, he starts to describe features of “dugouts”, which means that he describes the features of human beings with earth– related words: “mound-dwellers”, “peat-brown face” and “stained face”. One example for this is “The Tollund Man” where he writes: “Some day I will go to Aarhus/ To see his peat-brown head,/ The mild pods of his eye-lids” (ll. 1 – 3, see Appendix, pp. 254 – 255). He describes relics found in bogs which were religious sacrifices to the earth goddess and uses words linked with the native ground for his description.
In all his three early poetry collections, Heaney refers to animals which are not as dominant as features of nature, but he nicely links animals to nature and the landscape he writes about. The category animals is divided into three subcategories: animals which are herded at a farm or which can be found in the country side, animals that can fly, and animals that live in the water. Mainly, Heaney describes animals which can be associated with rural areas and agriculture, for example, cows, hens, rats, goat, oxen, horses, calves, mare, rabbits, turkey, frogs and cats. In “The Early Purges” (see Appendix, pp. 239 – 240) from Death of a Naturalist , he describes the necessity to keep down pests in the countryside: “When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot cows,/ Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens’ necks” (ll. 14 – 15). Heaney continues to explain that “’Prevention of cruelty’ talk can cut ice in town/ Where they consider death unnatural,/ But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.” (ll. 19 – 21). He points out the difference between city life and rural life. On a farm, animals are kept for a living and dangers to these animals are eradicated. Heaney does not only write about animals linked with rural areas, but he also writes about animals that live in the water, such as ‘trout’, ‘swan’, ‘eel’, ‘cockle’, ‘clam’, ‘oyster’, ‘mackerel’, ‘porpoises’, ‘razor shell’, ‘crab’, ‘whale’, and ‘salmon’.
In “Shore Woman” (see Appendix, pp. 257 - 258) from Wintering Out , Heaney uses some of these words: “And I’m walking the firm margin. White pocks/ Of cockle, blanched roofs of clam and oyster/ Hoard the moonlight” (ll. 3 - 5). This poem is headed by a Gaelic proverb that says that women should go to the shore and men to the hills. Heaney describes dunes and the idyllic picture that unfolds before his eyes. Last but not least, Heaney refers to birds and
56 flying insects such as ‘dragonflies’, ‘bat’, ‘swans’, ‘snipe’, ‘gulls’, ‘crows’, ‘moths’, ‘pigeons’, ‘hawk’, ‘flies’, ‘wild goose’, ‘kingfisher’, ‘Irish nightingale’ and ‘owl’. For example, in “Serenades” (see Appendix, p. 257), he starts with “The Irish nightingale/ Is a sedge-warbler,/ A little bird with a big voice/ Kicking up a racket all night./ Not what you’d expect/ From the musical nation.” (ll. 1 – 6) He paints a very idyllic picture of the Irish nightingale. But the bird does not sing, on the contrary, it kicks up “a racket all night” (l. 4), and so this is symptomatic for the North of Ireland. Later on in the poem, the singing of the sedge-warbler is compared with the gun-fire of the tensions in the North of Ireland.
Agriculture also plays an important part in Seamus Heaney’s poetry because he often reminiscences about his childhood experiences on a farm. By doing so, he describes farm life so vividly that the reader can visualize the individual incidents. Words connected with agriculture vary in the different poetry collections, but generally it can be said that he focuses on the field, the crop and the tools to plough the field. In Death of a Naturalist , he writes about ‘potato drills’, ‘fields’, ‘hayfields’ and ‘cornfields’ in poems such as in “Blackberry– Picking”, where he uses these words: “Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills/ We trekked and picked until the cans were full” (ll. 11 – 12). Heaney describes a memory from his childhood when he was picking blackberries. He describes the activity which is rendered by the description of a rural idyll. An agricultural dimension is expressed when he writes in “The Barn” about “threshed corn” (l. 1) and “piles of grain” (l. 16). The acres that grow the corn are referred to with words such as ‘ploughlands’, ‘byre’, ‘furrow’ and the ‘farm’. The fields which are ploughed are mentioned in “Dawn Shoot” (see Appendix, pp. 242 – 243), where Heaney writes: “This was the den they all would be heading for now,/ Loping under ferns in dry drains, flashing/ Brown orbits across ploughlands and grazing.” (ll. 20 – 22) He describes a scene from his childhood when he was running across fields and got caught by rain.
While he described the agricultural side of rural Ireland in Death of a Naturalist through fields and farm, in Door into the Dark , he uses words such as ‘stall’, ‘byre’, ‘stable’ and ‘flail’. These words are used in poems such as “Mother”, where he describes the daily routine of feeding the cows: “Half an hour at a time, the cows,/ Guzzling at bowls in the byre” (ll. 8 – 9). Heaney uses his association with rural life to describe the familiar sounds on a farm. In his poems, he harvests ‘hay’, ‘straw’, ‘barley’, ‘wheat straw’, ‘brassy grain’ and ‘yeast’. This can be seen in poems such as “The Wife’s Tale” (see Appendix, pp. 248 – 249), where he
57 describes the situation when the wife brings the labourers on the farm something to drink: “The hum and gulp of the thresher ran down/ And the big belt slewed to a standstill, straw/ Hanging undelivered in the jaws.” (ll. 3 – 5) In the poem, he once again uses words connected with harvest time which are words he continuously uses throughout his whole corpus of work.
In Wintering Out , Heaney uses words such as ‘crop’, ‘fodder’, ‘hay’, ‘grass-seed’, ‘grain’ or ‘harvest’. The buildings he refers to in the country side are ‘stack’, ‘henhouse’, ‘thatch’ and ‘bawn’, for example, in “Traditions”, where he points out the difference in language between “bawn” (l. 24) and “mossland” (l. 24). The land that is ploughed and sowed he describes with the following words: ‘barrows’, ‘sowed-out ground’, ‘outlying fields’ and ‘cropping land’. An example for this is “Land” (see Appendix, pp. 253 – 254), where he says: “I opened my right- of-way/ through old bottoms and sowed-out ground/ and gathered stones off the ploughing” (ll. 3 – 5). Heaney says that he belongs to this land because he has walked upon it perch by perch and he has “composed habits for these acres” (l. 10). He creates a picture of fields and acres that are imprinted in the landscape of rural Ireland. Heaney likes to blend words and uses these to create soundscapes such as ‘scraggy acres’, ‘long slope of stubble’, ‘swathes of grass’, ‘green clearings’ and ‘harvest bow’. A poem that exemplifies this is again “Land”, where he writes: “This is in place of what I would leave/ plaited and branchy/ on a long slope of stubble:/ a woman of old wet leaves” (ll. 14 – 16). Heaney personalizes the ground as woman and he even continues to refer to human anatomy when he talkes about “her breasts an open-work/ of new straw and harvest bows.” (ll. 19 – 20) Heaney feels connected to the ground and intimately attributes features of a woman to it.
In Door into the Dark , Heaney refers to water as a feature of landscape and nature in his poetry. In “Bann Clay” (see Appendix, p. 247), he writes about labourers straightening a river. The poem deals with an account of the river digging its way through the land: “Sunk// For centuries under the grass/ It baked white in the sun,/ Relieved its hoarded waters/ And began to ripen.” (ll. 8 – 12) Heaney compares the river with a fruit that ripens in the sun and reveals its full beauty to the eye of the observer. Water also has a mythological dimension for Heaney, as he refers to the magic powers of water in “Relic of Memory”, also from Door into the Dark (see Appendix, pp. 244 – 245): “The lough waters/ can petrify wood:/ Old oars and posts/ Over the years/ Harden their grain,/ Incarcerate ghosts// Of sap and season.” (ll. 1 – 6) Heaney refers to an ancient myth about the special powers of Lough Neagh because “the landscape was sacramental, instinct with signs, implying a system of reality beyond the
58 visible realities” (Heaney, 1980: 132). These lines are based on a memory from his childhood where he recounts that “somebody had found an old sword, deemed to be a Viking sword […] there was a bit of wood that had been turned to stone by the action of the waters of Lough Neagh” (ibid.: 133). He repeats in the early poetry collections words such as ‘river’, ‘creek’, ‘lough’, ‘water’, ‘geyser’, ‘sea’, ‘swamps’, ‘shallows’, ‘Atlantic’, ‘running streams’, ‘ocean’, ‘current’, and ‘fords’. Heaney uses different kinds of waters for different situations, whether he describes the inland of Ireland with its currents and shallows, or whether he describes the whole Island which is bordered by the Atlantic and the sea. A poem that shows that he makes a genealogy of different states of water is “The Return”, which is part of the “Lough Neagh Sequence”. To depict the water’s movement, he uses words such as ‘tide’, ‘waves’, ‘ebb’ and ‘breakers’, ‘undertow’ and ‘undulation’. This can also be seen in “Beyond Sargasso” (see Appendix, p. 245), which is the second poem of “A Lough Neagh Sequence”. There he writes: “Against/ ebb, current, rock, rapids/ a muscled icicle/ that melts itself longer/ and fatter, buries/ his arrival beyond/ light and tidal water” (ll. 12 – 18). Heaney describes the workings of a current that becomes “longer” (l. 15) and “fatter” (l. 16) and has its end in the sea.
For Heaney, not only the water and the workings of rivers and currents are an important part of the landscape, he also describes the area surrounding water. By doing so, he uses words such as ‘coastline’, ‘strand’, ‘western shore’, ‘ashore’, ‘landfall’, ‘bank’, ‘riverbank’, ‘dunes’, and ‘bay’. Water in every form is an ingredient of Heaney’s poetry, and to refer to tamed water he uses words such as ‘ditches’, ‘wells’, ‘pumps’, ‘drains’ and ‘ponds’. These words are mainly used in context of agriculture and rural Ireland. He refers to the ditches that are typical of Irish farmland or he refers to the pump in the yard. Heaney creates out of the ordinary extraordinary metaphors. As a matter of fact, he creates phrases such as ‘water’s gravity’, ‘water’s choreography’, ‘salt sud’, ‘throat of the river’, ‘water unravel over gravel beds’, ‘haphazard tidal craters’, ‘blue cream’, and ‘hoarded waters’. Such phrases can be found in “The Salmon Fisher to the Salmon” (see Appendix, pp. 243 – 244) from Door into the Dark , where Heaney writes: “your exile in the sea/ Unconditionally cancelled by the pull/ Of your home water’s gravity.” (ll. 2 – 4) Heaney describes the return of the salmon to its birthplace and the journey the fish takes on to return to it. But he does not only point out the influence of water on the salmon, he also points out that he feels a certain belonging to it: “The current strumming water up my leg,/ Involved in water’s choreography/ I go, like you, by gleam and
59 drag” (ll. 14 – 16). The water is part of the land, and by standing in the current he becomes a part of the current and follows its natural rhythm.
Through the feature ‘plants’ Heaney describes the vegetation of an area. In this analysis, the term ‘plants’ is used as a general term including trees, flowers, bushes, fruits and even fungus. The feature ‘plants’ is divided into different subcategories, such as fruits, trees and bushes, flowers and plants that grow in bog areas. In the first three collections, Heaney uses different fruits such as ‘blackberries’, ‘dark ivy berries’, ‘bleyberries’, ‘rhubarb-plates’, ‘plums’ and ‘wild cherry’ to either portray a childhood memory of, for example, blackberry picking or to describe the seasonal vegetation, as in “Summer Home” from Wintering Out : ”my arms full/ of wild cherry and rhododendron” (ll. 11 – 12). Through including these wild cherries, Heaney paints a vivid and colourful picture in the mind of the reader. Trees and bushes are also prominent features to describe landscape in his poetry. To do so, he uses words such as ‘broom’, ‘alder tree’, ‘catkin’, ‘ash-plant’, ‘willow’, ‘whin’, ‘firs’, ‘mistletoe’, “mandrake”, ‘tinder’, and ‘boortrees’. “The Outlaw” from Death of a Naturalist is a good example for the use of trees describing the landscape: “Once I dragged a nervous Friesian in a tether/ Down a lane of alder, shaggy with catkin” (ll. 4 – 5). Heaney makes this description vivid through incorporating the landscape. In the mind of the reader the landscape is visualized through the words.
To make his descriptions lively, Heaney adds flowers to his images and so he writes about ‘bluebottles’, ‘snowdrops’, ‘poppy’, ‘foxgloves’, ‘toadstools’ and ‘lady’s smock’. In “Cairn- Maker” from Wintering Out , he uses flowers to bring some movement in the poem: “Rush and ladysmock, heather bells/ Blowing in each aftermath of wind.” (ll. 15 – 16). These lines can be compared to Wordsworth’s poem “I wandered lonely as a Cloud”, where daffodils were “[b]eside the lake, beneath the trees,/ Fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (ll. 5 – 6). By using the word ‘aftermath’, Heaney suggests a much stronger movement than the delicate “dancing in the breeze” (l. 6) of Wordsworth’s poem.
He also refers to vegetables as part of the crop, which is typical for Ireland, for example, ‘potatoes’ in “At a Potato Digging”, but he also compares the rotting of a “marrow” (l. 46) to the rotting of hope. Additionally, he uses words such as ‘spring onions’, ‘tuber’, ‘mushroom’ and ‘marigolds’. As before, Heaney uses these words to describe the landscape and its vegetation. He varies the words according to the effect he wants to achieve. Either he wants to
60 evoke a picture of wildness, as in “The Other Side” from Wintering Out , where he writes “Thigh-deep in sedge and marigolds/ a neighbour laid his shadow” (ll. 1 – 2), or he compares human features with plants, such as in “For the Commander of the ‘Eliza’” from Death of a Naturalist , where he writes: “Six grown men with gaping mouths and eyes/ Bursting the sockets like spring onions in drills.” (ll. 8 – 9) Heaney likes to compare human beings with features of landscape and of plants. In this respect, the first three poetry collections seem to be a training ground for his next collection, North (1975), in which he uses these features as eminent metaphors to link human beings to the country. Heaney refers to bog by using plants that grow there to describe this landscape, for example, by using words such as ‘fern’, ‘heather’, ‘dank moss’, and ‘watercress’. In “Personal Helicon” from Death of a Naturalist , he writes that “I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells/ Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss” (ll. 3 – 4). Heaney remembers his early affection for the grounded side of his homeland. He creates a soundscape that makes the place he builds with his words visible in the mind of the reader. Through this the description becomes a synonymous representation of the childhood place of Heaney’s memory.
Last but not least, the feature ‘landscape’ is discussed to identify its impact on the description and representation of place in Heaney’s poetry. ‘Landscape’ includes features such as hills, mountains, towns, cities and place names. Heaney uses words such as ‘hill’, ‘townlands’, ‘mountain’, ‘peninsula’, ‘land’, ‘ground’, ‘island’, ‘our own country’, and ‘unfenced country’ to refer to features of landscape. In “The Peninsula” from Door into the Dark , he writes that “when you have nothing more to say, just drive/ For a day all around the peninsula” (ll. 1 – 2). Heaney refers to the limited ground of the area that you can go around in one day, and he continues: “The land without marks so you will not arrive” (l. 4). These lines foreshadow in a way the poem “Bogland”, where he describes Ireland’s limited ground with “we have no prairies/ To slice a big sun at evening –” (ll. 1 – 2). This can also be seen in his earlier poetry collection Death of a Naturalist where he refers to ‘land’ such as in “Lovers on Aran” and poses the questions: “Did sea define the land or land the sea?” (l. 7). Heaney tries to find an answer to the question of what made the Aran Islands what they are, a rough rural area cut off from Irish mainland. He finds an answer in the last line where he writes: “Sea broke on land to full identity” (l. 9). The Aran Islands are a very rural area with no infra-structure and so life is based on nature. Heaney refers in his poem to the extreme geography of the area and that the position in the middle of the rough sea made it an area with extreme living conditions.
61 Taking the line of the poem into account, the area defines the way of living of its inhabitants, above all as they have to brave the elements.
It seems that Heaney feels pleasure in mentioning place names in his poetry for several reasons. The place names either refer to historical events or they incorporate ancient Gaelic myths. He refers to Irish places as diverse as West Mayo, O’Connell Street, Aran, Vinegar Hill, Antrim, Moher, Wicklow, Strangford, Arklow, and Carrickfergus. For example, in “Requiem for the Croppies” from Door into the Dark , he mentions Vinegar Hill, which is the place where the 1798 rebellion, initiated by Wolfe Tone, took place. In “Shoreline” (see Appendix, pp. 246 – 247) from the same poetry collection, it seems as if he walks along the shore of Ireland naming places “[a]ll round Antrim and westward/ Two hundred miles at Moher/ Basalt stands to” (ll. 9 – 10). Heaney describes the geographical features of Ireland and by doing so he continues: “Both ocean and channel// Froth at the black locks/ On Ireland. And strands/ Take hissing submissions/ Off Wicklow and Mayo” (ll. 12 – 16). Heaney maps out the geographically unique features of Ireland. The place names he mentions abroad are Paris, Iona Colmcille, Italy, Beauvais, Montreuil and Abbeville. He either connects the place names with Joyce’s life in exile or he refers to “each place granting its name’s fulfilment” (l. 8). This can be seen as a reference to the old history of European cities and their names, which is not true for Ireland because most of the old Gaelic names were replaced by English place names.
To conclude, Heaney employs a very dense language based on features from his native landscape. Through his vocabulary, he does not only create places in the mind of the reader, he also creates soundscapes which emphasise the imagined landscape. He uses words from different areas of landscape. He makes use of words from agriculture to refer to the rural part of Ireland. He expresses through the weather the mood of the poem and the landscape. The flowers and the trees show the rich vegetation of Ireland. Heaney artistically makes a connection between the place and the features of landscape, and by doing so he defines the place through features such as nature, landscape, plants and water.
62 4. 3. Place Poems
In his essay “Mossbawn”, Heaney depicts the farm his parents owned in Derry. In the essay, his personal attitude towards place and the importance of place for his creative craft can be detected. Heaney writes about the place that defined his poetic voice as he once called Derry “the country of the mind” (Heaney, 1980: 132). The place from his childhood is the source of his inspiration as he vividly recollects it. Mossbawn gave him the faculty and the background of writing his poetry. When describing his native place he “would begin with the Greek word Omphalos, meaning the navel, and hence the stone that marked the centre of the world” (ibid.: 17). To emphasise a word, he would say it again and again until the repetition of the word and its sound became the image of somebody pumping water at the pump outside his back door (cf. ibid.). Omphalos is also a key word in mythology because of the connection with the Arcadian god Pan who is benevolent to those who worship him and surrender to the benefit and beauty of the godly order of nature. He is the patron of farmers, herders and fisherfolk who pay homage to him through devoting to him the first fruits. Pan was also the herder of the wisdom of Omphalos, the World Navel. In mythology, the hero has to cross this threshold to enter the holy region of the universal source (cf. Campbell, 1993: 81).
For Heaney, Omphalos means the first actual recognition of place that surrounds one, the one image that triggers off a set of memories representing the childhood place. Omphalos for him is the pump which is located in his backyard and is “a slender, iron idol, snouted, helmeted, dressed down with a sweeping handle, painted a dark green and set on a concrete plinth, marking the centre of another world” (Heaney, 1980: 17). He continues his tale with the memory of five households drawing water from it, and that made it the centre of his world in his childhood. Mainly women came to the pump to get water, came “to rattle between empty enamel buckets, went evenly away, weighed down by silent water. […] the man pumped and pumped, the plunger slugging up and down, omphalos, omphalos, omphalos” (ibid.). Heaney differentiates between the pumping of men and women. The one thing both have in common is the place of the pump.
In this description of Mossbawn, which is linked with himself and his own experience and memories, Heaney also refers to the communal life, “the country of community, it was also the realm of division. […] the lines of sectarian antagonism and affiliation followed the boundaries of the land” (ibid.: 20). The boundaries were also reflected in the names of the
63 fields and the land surrounding them. The names of the land were characterised by the fusion of Scottish, Irish and English origins. In this part of the world, the history of the country is reflected in the personal history of its owners. “Broagh, The Long Rigs, Bell´s Hill; Brian´s Field, The Round Meadow, the Demesne; each name was a kind of a love made to each acre” (ibid.: 20). This way of presenting the names separates the places and makes them “what Wordsworth once called a prospect of the mind. They lie deep, like some script indelibly written into the nervous system” (ibid.: 20). Place is a very eminent issue for Heaney, as are the boundaries, places are defined by. Sometimes a place is rather defined through its boundaries than its features. It seems to be much easier to define something by its opposite than the actual thing. However, according to Heaney every place is special because of its characteristics; moreover, uniqueness of its characteristics is also a means to define those boundaries.
Heaney does not only connect to the place itself, he also connects to the name of the place. He traces back the origin of the word “Mossbawn”, which is the name of their farm: “ Moss, a Scots word probably carried to Ulster by the Planters, and bawn , the name the English colonists gave to their fortified farmhouses” (ibid.: 35). So Mossbawn can be translated as the “planter’s house on the bog” (ibid.). But his family pronounced it as “Mossbann and bán is the Gaelic word for white. So might not the thing mean the white moss, the moss of bog- cotton? In the syllables of my home I see a metaphor of the split culture of Ulster” (ibid.). Heaney links the place to its name and the name to its language, and so he traces back the origin of the place, how it became what it is now.
Heaney had two major influences concerning his affection with the local place: “On the one hand, following Kavanagh, Heaney believes that poetry can find something greater than the particular in the local; on the other hand, from another Irish poetic source – the ancient native Irish poetic tradition of dinnseanchas” (Murphy, 1996: 23). The Irish poetic tradition is important for Heaney in several ways. Through dinnseanchas Heaney “derives a sense that the language of local naming bears within itself a kind of compressed narrative of local history” (ibid.). The Irish name tells an ancient story about the name, and so the poet searches for the roots of the place through the etymology of the place’s original name. Heaney underlines this point by describing dinnseanchas as “poems and tales which relate the original meanings of place names and constitutes a form of mythological etymology” (Heaney, 1980: 131). Heaney exemplifies this in the recitation of an early epic called Taon bo Cuailgne , which contains many dinnseanchas.
64
[This epic] connects various incidents on the journey of the Connacht armies from Cruachan to Carlingford with the names of places as we now know them, or at least as they were known in the Gaelic past. Ardee, for example, the town in Co. Louth. In Irish, Ardee means Ferdia’s Ford, and it was at this point (at a ford on River Fane) that Cuchullain and Ferdia, brothers in arms in their youth, fought their great single combat by day and tended each other’s wounds by night until Cuchullain slew Ferdia with his magical weapon, the gae bolga . It is a story that would have been current in everybody’s mind when Irish would have been the lingua franca and it is still one of the best loved legends in the Ulster cycle. So the place name, Ardee, succinctly marries the legendary and the local. (Heaney, 1980: 131)
Heaney follows the Irish epic and reconstructs in his poems the early history of Ireland. By combining the name, especially the Irish name, with the place, he creates a mythical place rooted in Irish history. By doing so, he shapes the self-awareness of his community through the significant place names of the landscape.
Heaney’s place poems nicely exemplify two main features of his poetry, namely language and place. Heaney is preoccupied with the proper naming and by searching for the proper Irish name he creates a mythological and etymological account of Irish history. In Heaney’s opinion, the Irish language is extraordinary, concerning its distinctiveness and unique vocalic quality; what is more, Heaney is interested in “the sad history of English efforts to suppress the language, especially the suppression of Irish place-names. From early childhood Heaney lived in places with beautifully resonant Irish names – Moyola, Anahorish, Mossbawn, Toome, Broagh” (McGuiness, 1994: 142). In Wintering Out , he used this early childhood experience and his interest in the proper name and expressed it in poems such as “Anahorish” and “Broagh”. But it was not only Heaney that had this interest in place because
as we pass south along the coast from Tory to Knocknarea, we go through the village of Drumcliff and under Ben Bulben, we skirt Lissadell and Innisfree. All of these places now live in the imagination, all of them stir us to responses other than the merely visual, all of them are instinct with the spirit of a poet and his poetry. (Heaney, 1980: 132)
Heaney suggests that poets before him, for example, Yeats, Kavanagh or McNeice, have touched certain areas with their imagination and that people remember the place because of these vivid descriptions in poetry. As mentioned before, the name stirs up an image of the place and fosters a “sense of ourselves as inhabitants not just of the geographical country but of a country of the mind” (ibid.). Thereby, Heaney implies that through the poetic process the
65 inhabitants of the place described can identify with the place and create through that a vision of themselves. Heaney gives several examples of myths connected with places in his essay “Sense of Place” from Preoccupations . For example, he points out that a piece of wood was turned into stone by the powers of Lough Neagh (cf. ibid.: 133), moreover, he points out that “[s]uch naming of examples is a pleasure to me, and that is, I believe, itself an earnest of the power of place” (ibid.: 134). Heaney connects not only the religious and mythological tales with place but sees in them the power of place. By connecting these tales with the place, a mythological dimension is attached to place. Heaney is not the first one who indulges in the pleasures of naming places. As Corcoran suggests, Heaney was maybe influenced by Wordsworth’s Poems on the Naming of Places, which is included in the Advertisement of Lyrical Ballads . Corcoran quotes Wordsworth: “By person resident in the country and attached to rural objects, many places will be found unnamed or of unknown names, where little Incidents will have occurred, or feelings been experienced, which will have given to such places a private and peculiar interest” (qtd. Corcoran, 1998: 44, ftn.). Thus, Wordsworth pointed out that unnamed or unknown places can trigger off the imagination and that these places will be associated with unique experiences. By doing so, the place acquires a distinct flair and atmosphere.
The features mentioned above can be found in Seamus Heaney’s poem “Broagh” (see Appendix, pp. 252 – 253), which combines aspects of Irish language and history. “Broagh” begins with an explanation of what the word means: “Riverbank, the long rigs/ ending in broad docken/ and a canopied pad/ down to the ford” (“Broagh”, ll. 1 – 4). Broagh is the anglicised version of the Irish word ‘bruach’, which means riverbank. The place Broagh is situated on a river and therefore the name of the place tells us about its location. Heaney creates an intimacy with the place by referring to its meaning and by using local dialect. He writes a poem in the English language, spiced up with local Irish dialect. For example, he uses local words such as ‘rigs’, ‘docken’ and ‘pad’ (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 46 – 47). Evaluating the roots of the words, one finds a mixed heritage of Scottish and English words: “rigs” (l. 1) means ‘furrows’, “docken” (l. 2) means ‘dock-leaves’ and “pad” (l. 3) is used for ‘path’. All these words came to the North of Ireland either by Scottish planters or they are English and Scottish dialect words (cf. ibid.: 47). Heaney creates a verbal etymology of the roots of the place name. He digs with his pen for the ancestors of that place and, by doing so, he shows the diversity of the roots. By searching for the etymology of a particular word in his poem, poetry becomes an archaeological means. The real place and the place described in the poem
66 become synonymously attached to each other because the place itself and the place described are not identical and therefore oneplace can be replaced by the other. Through the poem the place is preserved and imitated. Heaney uses onomatopoeia to suggest the sounds of falling leaves and rushing waters, he moreover, uses vegetation to create a visual image. He also points out the weather to emphasise the atmosphere of the poem.
Heaney creates a vision of the place in the mind of the reader by describing its pronunciation with images taken from the local place: “The garden mould/ bruised easily, the shower/ gathering in your heelmark/ was the black O// in Broagh” (“Broagh”, ll. 5 – 9). As mentioned above, it seems that he tries to mimic the word “Broagh” by using words such as “mould” (l. 5), “bruised” (l. 6) and “shower” (l. 6) until the poem climaxes in the pronunciation of “Broagh ” (l. 9) with a “black O” (l. 8). Heaney refers to the unique way of pronouncing this place name, which is typical of the North of Ireland. By using words such as “mould”, “shower” and “gathering in your heelmark” (l. 7), Heaney connects the word with the place. “Broagh” is a poem about language and the importance of naming things properly. The structure of the poem and the words used mimic the act of pronouncing the word ‘Broagh’. Moreover, Heaney plays with the pronunciation of the word and the imitation of the place. In the last three lines, Heaney points out that “that last/ gh the strangers found/ difficult to manage (ll. 14 – 16). Through pointing out that strangers found it difficult to pronounce, Heaney creates an intimacy with his community and excludes the foreign reader. By describing it in such a way, he attaches the Gaelic language and the image of mould to the area he comes from. He expresses the unique features of that community in the poem, and so he voices a certain identity based on the place he comes from by using a dialect typical for that area (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 47). Murphy states that
[l]inguistically, then, the correct pronunciation of ´Broagh` serves simultaneously to unite the divided communities of the North and to set them apart from the alien community of the English, divided from them by sea and sound, as it were. What Heaney seems to be offering is an image of the union of the two territories of the North – an internal union which detaches the territory from its union with England. (Murphy, 1996: 27)
Heaney created a version of a united Northern Irish community by separating it from England. The pronunciation and the heritage of ‘Broagh’ determined its meaning and the community one belonged to. Corcoran quotes Heaney from his pamphlet Among Schoolchildren , where Heaney declared that the word “‘Broagh’ is a ‘sound native to Ireland,
67 common to Unionist and Nationalist, but unavailable to an English person’” (qtd. Corcoran, 1998: 47). Through that Heaney establishes a discourse familiar to people from the North of Ireland. By doing so, he creates a unique feature of that particular area. In a way, he contributes to a definition of the identity of that community.
In Wintering Out , language and the native tongue play a major role. He echoes place names, such as “Anahorish”, “Toome” and “ Broagh” throughout the collection. Through the naming of the Gaelic place names he also refers indirectly to the sectarian division, which is shown in the differences of language. Through belonging to the Irish minority in Northern Ireland, he feels that he speaks a language that is not rooted in the place he comes from; moreover, he feels that English does not express the emotions and hopes of his native community (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 37 – 38). As a poet, he has the urgent feeling of voicing this lack of being able to communicate in the native language. As a matter of fact, Heaney searches for a linguistic etymology of a place name and by doing so, re-creates the history of the place. The poet, moreover, shapes a verbal impression of the place so the reader can almost visualize it through the pronunciation of single words. The real place is expressed poetically and verbally on paper. Through picking unique features of that area, he identifies the characteristics of the community living there. In “Broagh”, Heaney evaluates the distinctiveness of a proper naming and by doing so, “we are able to understand its meaning, its connection to its place of application, and its position of centrality. Beyond the geography of this linguistically demarcated place, we are able to catch a glimpse of its human history” (Murphy, 1996: 24). By defining the human history of a place, Heaney establishes an intimacy between the place described in the poem and the reader. The reader feels involved in that history. But he does not only draw the attention of the reader to the place, he also shapes characteristics which define a community living in a certain place. The community feels being addressed personally and, consequently, the poet heightens the awareness of the people considering their origin; moreover, he heightens their awareness of being rooted in the place. The people from a certain place identify themselves with the features of the place he writes about, and through that the poet shapes the identity of that community.
68 5. Finding a Metaphor
Heaney found his voice as a poet but he also needed to find an adequate dominant metaphor to express his voice. In search of this metaphor, he used various source materials throughout North which was a crucial development in his writing career. The finding of the metaphor, which implies for Heaney defining a metaphor, is very important because he creates in North his own myth to air the sectarian division in the North of Ireland (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 25). North was written in the wake of the Troubles and Heaney, who as a poet who must air the hidden sources of a community, had to make a “stance towards life” (Heaney, 1980: 47), as he describes it in “Punishment” (see Appendix, pp. 268 – 269) where he writes: “I am the artful voyeur// of your brain’s exposed/ and dark combs,/ your muscles’ webbing/ and all your numbered bones” (ll. 32 – 36). Heaney refers to the sectarian tension in Northern Ireland and the sensitive issue of increasing violence. He states:
From that moment the problems of poetry moved from being simply a matter of achieving the satisfactory verbal icon to being a search for images and symbols adequate to our predicament […] I felt it imperative to discover a field force in which […] it would be possible to encompass the perspectives of humane reason and at the same time to grant the religious intensity of the violence its deplorable authenticity and complexity. (Heaney 1980: 56)
In North , there are three elements that contribute to finding a metaphor, i.e. historical events and facts, literature, and figures from Greek mythology. Heaney’s reference to literature and historical events is a crucial element in his search for metaphors. Heaney found his metaphor when he read a book about findings of ritual victims in bogs in Jutland. The book was The Bog People by P.V. Glob. It can be said that Heaney was fascinated by Glob’s book because of the recurrence of sequences embedded in the past. Heaney gave an account of a “pre- Christian, northern European tribal society, in which ritual violence is a necessary part of the structure of life” (Murphy, 1996: 37). Heaney was fascinated by the fact that the Jutland bogs conserved the bodies which could be traced back to the Iron Age. These bodies, which were the victims of ritual killings for the earth goddess Nerthus, were catalogued by Glob (cf. ibid.).
Heaney was intrigued by the idea of bog as conserver and by the fact that sacrifices were made to the earth goddess Nerthus. He found both ideas very adequate for the situation in Northern Ireland. In his poems, he artistically connects the past with the present; moreover, he links the ground as earth goddess with the country, Ireland. Through that he repeats the past
69 cycles and connects it with the present, thereby creating a myth of Ireland. Furthermore, Heaney states in his essay “Feeling into Words” that he “got an idea of bog as the memory of the landscape, or as a landscape that remembered everything that happened in and to it” (Heaney, 1980: 54). Therefore, Heaney links the ritual victims of Glob’s book with Ireland’s bogs and continues in his essay that most of the historical accounts of the Irish past were found in a bog (cf. ibid.). He connects the bog of Jutland with the Irish bog and points out their cultural significance in both cultures. Heaney “had a tentative unrealized need to make a congruence between bogland and, for the want of a better word, national consciousness” (ibid.). Through the bog and the cultural heritage that it conserved, Heaney tried to shape a national consciousness concerning the situation in the North of Ireland. In “The Grauballe Man” (see Appendix, pp. 266 – 267), Heaney describes such a preserved victim of a sacrifice to the earth goddess: “As if he had been poured/ in tar, he lies/ on a pillow of turf” (ll. 1 – 3). He describes him as if he would sleep in the ground and belong to the ground. Heaney exaggerates this metaphor by continuing: “The grain of his wrists/ is like bog oak,/ the ball of his heel// like a basalt egg” (ll. 6 – 8). Heaney finds his metaphor in the bog of Ireland, and in his poems he resurrects the bodies and bones of the sacrifices out of the bog. As Corcoran also points out, “[t]he myth […] of North is made from such death-inflected identifications: Heaney constructs his ‘parables’ for the Irish present by contemplating objects, skulls and bodies retrieved from the ground and the grave” (Corcoran, 1998: 61). Heaney creates metaphors that are related with the ground and the country – the victims died for the erth goddess. Here, a parallel between these ritual killings and the killings of the Troubles can be drawn. The sacrifices were ritual gifts for Nerthus, and the people who died for Ireland, Kathleen NiHoulihan, also sacrificed their lives for the greater good of their cause, equality in Northern Ireland.
Ritual sacrifices were also common in Celtic times. Heaney justifies his interest in bog through Celtic history and draws a connection between the ritual sacrifices and their representation. Heaney read a book about The Religion of the Pagan Celts by the Celtic scholar Anne Ross. She writes about Celtic pagan religious signs and explains that the sign that symbolizes the whole Pagan religion is the severed human head and “in all its various modes of iconographic representation and verbal presentation, one may find the hard core of Celtic religion. It is indeed […] a kind of shorthand symbol for the entire religious outlook of the pagan Celts” (qtd. Heaney, 1980: 59). Heaney cleverly draws upon it in his poem “The Grauballe Man”, where he describes the head of the found body: “The head lifts,/ the chin is a
70 visor/ raised above the vent/ of his slashed throat/ that has tanned and toughened.” (ll. 17 – 21) By using the Celtic representation and drawing on these ritual sacrifices for the earth goddess Nerthus, Heaney creates a myth about Northern Ireland where the land becomes a feminized and godlike space. Combining Saussure and Levi-Srauss, this myth is based on historical events, recurrence of actions and a specific use of words belonging to a certain word field. Through the repetition of words such as “bog oak” (l. 7) and “a wet swamp root” (l. 12), Heaney defines the paradigms of the poem. Within the paradigms, he operates in the poem, and creates an account of the local landscape by additionally referring to contemporary historical events. Through that the words become images and these images, read in a historical context, acquire meaning. By doing so, Heaney incorporates the violence of the Troubles in his representation of the country through a ‘grounded’ diction.
As pointed out above, there are three elements that contribute to finding a metaphor in North : historical events and facts, literature, and figures from Greek mythology. Heaney’s reference to literature and historical events is the basis of his search for metaphors. One of his source materials is literature because he refers to prominent poems such as Yeats’ “Easter 1916”, and he alludes to Walter Ralegh’s long poem “Ocean’s Love to Cynthia” in his poem “Ocean’s Love to Ireland”. By alluding in the title to Walter Ralegh’s poem, Heaney also incorporates Ralegh’s personal background and his involvement in Ireland. The personal background of Ralegh is incorporated, as his wide-ranging colonial interests in Ireland and the personal account of the incident where he raped a girl. “Ocean’s Love to Ireland” (see Appendix, p. 274) starts with an allusion to this incident: “Ralegh has backed the maid to a tree/ As Ireland is backed to England” (ll. 2 – 3). This implies the colonial power of England, the female sensibility of Ireland and the aggression of the colonial male oppressor. Heaney continues the poem with suggesting Ralegh’s involvement in the killing of a small Spanish force at Smerwick which was stationed in the south-west of Ireland in order to aid the Irish: “Smerwick sowed with the mouthing corpses/ Of six-hundred papists” (ll. 16 – 17). Heaney refers to the fact that although the Spanish soldiers had laid down their arms they were executed by the English. An explanation for the massacre is given by Edmund Spenser in his View of the Present State of Ireland (cf. Murphy, 1996: 45), which Heaney commented: “Iambic drums/ Of English beat the woods” (ll. 22 – 23). These lines resonate the drums of the Orange marches but they also imply what Heaney once said about the iambic line. Corcoran quotes an interview by Frank Kinahan where Heaney said that “at the time he thought that ‘the melodious grace of the English iambic line was some kind of affront, that it
71 needed to be wrecked’” (qtd. Corcoran, 1998: 63). This is also an example for the shift in Heaney’s language. The soft vowel which is used in Celtic languages inspired the first three poetry collections, but from North onwards, his diction shifted to a more precise one. The cultural implication of these lines is that Heaney refers, on the one side, to the drums of the Orange marches and, on the other side, to the justification of the killing of the people by Spenser. Through that he links the past killings with the present killings in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Heaney refers to the place and the history of the place to make a genealogy of the place and through that he creates a myth rooted in the past but being still valuable at the present.
When writing North, Heaney was influenced by some modern long poems, for example, David Jones’s “The Sleeping Lord” (1974) and John Montague’s “The Rough Field” (1972). This can also be seen in his prose work of that time (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 54). The poems by Jones and Montague linked personal experience with a cultural and historical context which, consequently, showed a wilful and intentional preoccupation in archaeology and etymology. Through this a kind of historical myth is produced which was used for the purpose of voicing the tensions of the present. By doing so, the poems are not seen as an individual statement but as a general account of the contemporary tensions (cf. ibid.: 54). This is also true for Heaney; he links personal experiences with historical accounts. Heaney refers to older literary accounts, for example, the Latin writer Tacitus who mentions Ireland in his Germania (cf. Murphy, 1996: 44). In the poem “Kinship” (see Appendix, pp. 270 – 273), the poet addresses Tacitus personally: “And you, Tacitus,/ observe how I make my grove/ on an old crannog/ piled by the fearful dead:/ a desolate peace.” (ll. 121 - 125) Heaney was also influenced by Tacitus’s Germania , which includes a chapter devoted to the cult of Nerthus . There Tacitus writes about the sacrificial killings to please the earth goddess Nerthus and secure a good crop for the next season (cf. Murphy, 1996: 44). Heaney expresses this in “Kinship” as follows: “Our mother ground/ is sour with the blood/ of her faithful,// they lie gargling/ in her sacred heart/ as the legions stare/ from the ramparts.” (ll. 126 – 132) Heaney links the sacrifices for Nerthus from the past with the sectarian killings in Northern Ireland. He makes a clever turn and says that the ground turned sour, which means that too many people were already killed.
The poetry collection North is divided into two parts and contains an opening sequence about Mossbawn, the farm Heaney grew up at as a child. Part I consists of bog poems and Part II is a reflection on voicing one’s own predicament and, especially, on the Troubles in Ireland.
72 Heaney unravels the history of Ireland in his bog poems. He alludes to diverse topics, from the Viking conquest of Ireland to the English colonisation. By doing so, he creates a history of Ireland’s conquest. But he does not only create a history, he also nurtures a myth by allegorizing the territorial conquest through figures from Greek mythology such as Hercules and Antaeus (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 54). The first part of North is framed by two poems about heroes from Greek mythology, Antaeus and Hercules. Part I begins with a poem called “Antaeus” (see Appendix, pp. 258 – 259), which refers to the mythological figure who got his strength from his connection with the ground: “When I lie on the ground/ I rise flushed as a rose in the morning./ In fights I arrange a fall on the ring/ To rub myself with sand// That is operative/ As an elixir.” (ll. 1 – 6) Heaney retells the story of Antaeus, who gathers enormous strength by touching the ground. Antaeus is a giant and the son of Poseidon and Gaia: “I am cradled in the dark that wombed me/ And nurtured in every artery/ Like a small hillock.” (ll. 10 – 12) Gaia is his mother and through these lines Heaney refers to the reason why Antaeus gathers his strength from the ground – because of his mother. He continues with the story that Antaeus wrestled with every new hero who wanted to pursue the Atlas: “He must wrestle with me before he pass/ Into the realm of fame” (ll. 15 – 16). Antaeus is invincible as long as he touches the ground “[b]ut let him not plan, lifting me off the earth,/ My elevation, my fall.” (ll. 19 – 20) In the context of the collection, this poem foreshadows the bog poems of Part I, where the tensions of the Troubles are voiced. “Antaeus” is a kind of allegory of why violence erupted in the North of Ireland. Antaeus’s living elixir is the ground which can be compared with the feeling of the Irish people for their country, who they intimately called Kathleen NiHoulihan during the 18 th and 19 th century. Gaia, the earth goddess, is Antaeus’s mother, who can be compared to Nerthus, the earth goddess, in the poetry collection. Antaeus can be seen as a symbol for the Irish people. When he is elevated from the ground he loses his strength as the Irish people lost their roots of the Celtic heritage which is connected with the local ground. This poem is the prologue of the poems that follow, while the last poem, “Hercules and Antaeus” (see Appendix, pp. 274 – 275), closes Part I of the collection, which also closes the cycle of stories included in this part. Heaney refers to the defeat of Antaeus through Hercules, who is described as: “Sky-born and royal,/ snake-shocker, dung-heaver” (ll. 1 – 2) who has “the measure/ of resistance and black powers/ feeding off the territory.” (ll. 5 – 7) Hercules is strong, and he has found the ultimate measure to defeat Antaeus, which Heaney described through a triumphant gesture of Hercules: “Hercules lifts his arms/ in a remorseless V” (ll. 25 – 26), and then he does the one thing that can defeat Antaeus, Hercules “lifts and banks Antaeus/ high as a profiled ridge,/ a sleeping giant,/ pap for the dispossessed.” (ll. 29 –
73 32) Heaney retells the myth of Hercules and Antaeus by adding the cultural dimension of colonization – territory as a source of strength. Hercules can be compared to the English sovereignty which is represented as an aggressive opponent defeating Antaeus, who represents the Irish, through removing him from the soil, the basis of his strength. Antaeus becomes the shape of a “sleeping giant”, who will come to free the oppressed people, which is an eminent motif in Celtic mythology. This myth is the source that gives a subjugated people hope on a very naïve level.
Heaney creates an allegory of colonization through the Greek myth of Hercules and Antaeus, which is the frame of Part I of the poetry collection (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 57). In “Antaeus” Heaney refers to the necessity that somebody belongs to a place; moreover, Heaney creates this myth of belonging to a place as a necessity of life. Through that he heightens the awareness of his community of its roots in the place, which is characterised through a rich Celtic heritage and the Gaelic language. Antaeus is also a figure in Dante’s Divine Comedy, where he is a giant and guards the ninth circle of hell, which is the place for traitors. Antaeus lowers Virgil and Dante to the iced over Cocytus, one of the five rivers surrounding the Hades (cf. “Inferno”, Canto 31, ll. 130 - 145). Dante’s Divine Comedy became an important part of Heaney’s later poetry collections, and “Antaeus” foreshadows this.
To summarize, Heaney was on a quest to find the appropriate metaphor to air the violence in Northern Ireland. Heaney, as a poet with the obligation to create ‘responsible art’, had to air the tension and the violence of the situation in the North of Ireland. He found his metaphor in the native ground through P.V. Glob’s account of preserved bodies from Jutland bogs. Heaney found this a quite adequate link to the sectarian killings in Northern Ireland. Heaney’s choice of words was mainly driven by these images, and consequently a ‘diction of the ground’ developed. This diction was used to create a landscape that represents the sentiments of the Irish inhabitants in Northern Ireland. The words become images for the violence, and these images acquire meaning in the political context of the Troubles. Through the figure of Antaeus a myth about Ireland was developed, which was influenced by history, literature, and Greek mythology.
74 5. 1. North – ‘A More Mature Voice’
“But bo g/ meaning soft,/ the fall of windless rain,/ pupil of amber.” (Heaney, “Kinship”, ll. 29 – 32)
Bog as an icon for Ireland – a soft “pupil of amber” (l. 32). Heaney once posed the question of how beauty and art can survive in such atrocities as the Troubles. As an answer, Heaney suggested using “befitting emblems of adversity” (Heaney, 1980: 57). Bog became such an ‘emblem of adversity’ in his poetry collection North , which can be regarded as a turning point in Heaney’s writing career. As a poet, he participates in a dialogue between poetry and politics. His main theme shifts from his childhood memories of rural Ireland to the increasing violence of Northern Ireland. He never states an opinion bluntly, instead, he reflects on the situation in Northern Ireland. In an interview with John Brown, he agrees with Nadezhda Mandelstam, who defines a poet as “an agent of world harmony and a source of truth” (Brown, 2002: 79). Heaney fulfils this task in his poetry collection North where he indirectly refers to the violence by using metaphors grounded in the Irish bog. But there was not always a feeling of diversity and segregation in Northern Ireland.
In the late 1960s, when the peace movement was very active in Ireland, Heaney remembered going on a tour from school to school with the slogan “Room for Rhyme”, which was a consequence of the newly developed self-reliance on the nationalist minority (cf. Heaney, 2002: 46). Heaney went on this tour together with Michael Hammon, a singer, and with the poet Michael Longley. This tour was even sponsored by the Northern Ireland Arts Council (cf. ibid.). It was a step towards an acceptance of the Irish minority in the official life of the North. This acceptance resulted in new contacts and concessions in various areas such as art, education and politics (cf. ibid.). But this was not a long-lasting development because in the 1970s the tensions and atrocities increased due to the violence of the Bloody Sunday in 1972. Heaney remembered that “as the years proceeded and the situation became more devastating, that kind of living exchange between the professional politicians and the cultural workers quickly became a thing of the past” (ibid.: 46). The daily situation became increasingly severe and the opinions got more and more blocked on both sides. At that time asked about the daily life in Belfast, Heaney replied “that things aren’t too bad in our part of the town: a throwaway consolation meaning that we don’t expect to be caught in crossfire if we step into the street” (ibid.: 41).
75 The crisis in the North of Ireland affected the cultural life – as a matter of fact, it found its way into contemporary art and was released, for example, in poetry. Seamus Deane, a poet and literary critic, interviewed Seamus Heaney about the connection of Ulster poets to the tensions in Northern Ireland. Longley quotes from that interview: “The root of the troubles may have something in common with the root of the poetry” (qtd. Longley, 1994: 66). Heaney further mentions that this common root is revealed in a poem called “Docker”. The poem deals with William of Orange, English tourists, and himself. Heaney has described this poem as a very clumsy kind of poem, but it was his first try to talk about the Northern sectarian problem in verse (cf. ibid.). Heaney continues in this interview that he put this approach aside and “became very influenced by Hughes and one part of my temperament took over: the private county Derry childhood part of myself rather than the slightly aggravated young Catholic male part” (ibid.). From the “private county Derry childhood” (ibid.), which is also the source of his vivid diction, he got his preoccupation with the native ground already expressed in Door into the Dark . As Edna Longley, Professor of Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, pointed out:
He opens his proper door into “the matter of Ireland”, by imagining history as an experience rather than a chain of events, by dramatising his own imaginative experience of history, by discovering within his home-ground a myth that fits the inconclusiveness both of memory and Irish history, and by fusing the psychic self-searching of poet and nation. (Ibid.: 68)
Longley nicely summarizes the corner stones of Heaney’s poetry, for example, personal experience connected with history based on his home-ground, which became the basis of a myth that turns into a means to comprehend the contradictory nature of memory and Irish history. Heaney, as a poet with a political and social consciousness, was on a quest for the self. The quest for the poet’s self became a quest for a self of a nation, which is due to his preoccupation with the home-ground. Heaney’s poetry is a soundscape that resurrected the bones and dead bodies of sacrifices for the Mother Goddess out of the Irish bog. Through the changes in his diction, which has become much more serious, the whole group of “poems insinuate the ghost of Gaelic, local idiom, the sound of the land itself, all united in Heaney’s own utterance, are compelling the tradition of Shakespeare and Spenser to go native” (ibid.: 70). Heaney is a forger of poetry and a master of language, and through his characteristic ‘Heaneyspeak’ he creates a dark and fearful image of Ireland which is very much alive in his poem “Bog Queen”.
76 The title “Bog Queen” itself is multi-layered because it refers to the cult of the earth goddess Nerthus, which Tacitus mentioned in his Germania, but Heaney does not bluntly take over the figure of the goddess, instead, he creates a mythological figure of his own. He bases the figure on Nerthus and creates a modern and more fearful Kathleen NiHoulihan, who was the icon in the nationalist movement of the late 19 th century. Concerning North and its political implications, Heaney once stated that he was in search of a “field of force” (Heaney, 1980: 56) which would allow him to include the different points of view of human reason. But he did not only want to reflect on the human reason, he also wanted to capture the religious power behind the violence; moreover he wanted to reflect the appalling realism and diversity of such a violent eruption (cf. ibid.). For Heaney the term ‘religious’ meant much more than sectarian segregation, which he explains by pointing out that
[t]o some extent the enmity can be viewed as a struggle between the cults and devotees of a god and a goddess. There is an indigenous territorial numen, a tutelar of the whole island, call her Mother Ireland, Kathleen Ni Houlihan, the poor old woman, The Shan Van Vocht, whatever; and her sovereignty has been temporarily usurped or infringed by a new male cult whose founding fathers were Cromwell, William of Orange and Edward Carson, and whose godhead is incarnate in a rex or Caesar resident in a palace in London. What we have is the tail-end of a struggle in a province between territorial piety and imperial power. (Ibid.: 57)
Here, Heaney describes the different representations of Ireland, be it Mother Ireland or Kathleen NiHoulihan. All these figures are female, while the heroes of the colonizers are mainly male. Heaney argues that the sovereignty of Kathleen NiHoulihan has been usurped by the male cult of the oppressor. These representations are symbols for the political tensions and the territorial interest of the two groups. Heaney also mentions that these figures are outdated in terms of economy and politics, but he argues that these figures and images are still present in the mind of the Irishmen and the Ulstermen, who engage in violence, and the images are still valuable for the mythologies which are included in the terms Irish Catholic and Ulster Protestant (cf. ibid.: 57).
The “speaker” of the poem is the bog queen, and Heaney begins the description of the area from her perspective: “I lay waiting/ between turf-face and demesne wall,/ between heathery levels/ and glass-toothed stone.” (“Bog Queen”, ll. 1 – 4, see Appendix, pp. 265 – 266) Heaney clearly separates the Catholic and rural part of Ireland from the Protestant and industrial part of Ireland. He uses words which are connected with the home-ground to
77 represent the Irish community and in order to refer to the Protestant community he applies a more industrialised imagery of walls and stones. Through that Heaney enhances a ‘sense of place’, as he represents the different groups through different areas, which was reality in Northern Ireland because the area ascribed certain features to the people living there. The most prominent example is Falls Road, which is a Catholic area, and Shankhill Road, which is a Protestant area. In the poem, the “demesne wall” (l. 2) and the glass-toothed stone (l. 4) are symbolical for the working-class Protestant area, and “turf-face” (l. 2) and “heathery levels” (l. 3) are representations of rural Irish Ireland. The rural landscape and the turf are features of the Irish inhabitants in Northern Ireland. As a matter of fact, turf was mainly used by Irish peasants to light fire in their houses. The Irish inhabitants can identify with the descriptions of landscape in Heaney’s poems. In his essay “Sense of Place”, Heaney points out that he was not only inspired by the religious aspect that had tainted the atmosphere of the place. He explains that the different sectarian groups were also ultimately connected with different locales. Heaney uses the depiction of a holy mountain as a symbol when describing the red, white and blue flag post at the Hillhead in the city of Belfast. But he also points out that the green chestnut tree at the entry to the Gaelic Association grounds seemed ‘greener’ on Easter and sports days when the tricolour decorated it (cf. Heaney, 1980: 134). Heaney uses images from both groups to create the figure of the bog queen, who through the choice of words becomes the personified landscape. Heaney gave the people “befitting emblems” (ibid.: 57) for their place and – enhanced through his metaphors and symbols – a ‘sense of place’. The ‘sense of place’ evokes a feeling of belonging and heightens the awareness of his community concerning the local place.
Heaney continues the poem with a description of the queen’s body: “My body was braille/ for the creeping influences:/ dawn suns groped over my head/ and cooled at my feet,// through my fabrics and skins/ the seeps of winter/ digested me” (“Bog Queen”, ll. 5 – 11). Heaney’s version of Kathleen NiHoulihan is part of the ground because she becomes the ground – by which she is digested. The influence of P.V. Glob’s accounts of the ritual victims can be seen in these lines. Heaney describes in a very iconographical way the workings of nature. The figure of the bog queen is resurrected from the bog and unveils its dark beauty to the reader. The poem begins with the bog queen waiting and with a description of her body being digested by nature. The poem continues with: “I lay waiting// on the gravel bottom,/ my brain darkening,/ a jar of spawn/ fermenting underground// dreams of Baltic amber.” (ll. 16 – 21) Heaney strips the layers of the bog and even includes a childhood memory which he had
78 already written about in the poem “Death of a Naturalist”. There he remembered that he gathered frogspawn as a child: “But best of all was the warm thick slobber/ Of frogspawn” (“Death of a Naturalist”, ll. 8 – 9) that he would put into jars: “I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied/ specks to range on a window-sills at home” (ll. 11 – 12). In these lines, the connection between his personal experiences of his county Derry childhood is eminent. Heaney uses this memory and connects it with the history of Ireland in his account of the bog queen: “My diadem grew carious,/gemstones dropped/ in the peat floe/ like the bearings of history.” (“Bog Queen”, ll. 25 – 28) History and the ground blend and based on these two features Heaney displays Ireland on a mythological level. He resurrects the goddess through his choice of words and describes her whole body with them: “My sash was a black glacier/ wrinkling, dyed weaves/ and phoenician stitchwork/ retted on my breasts’// soft moraines.” (ll. 29 – 33) Heaney grounds her in the earth and uses words related to the ground to represent her. The importance of the skull for the Celtic pagan religions is expressed in the lines: “My skull hibernated/ in the wet nest of my hair.// Which they robbed.” (ll. 39 – 41) The head – or any representation of the head – was a symbol for the Celtic pagan religions. The importance of the head as a symbol of the Celtic pagan religion can be compared to the cross in the Catholic belief.
The book The Bog People , which inspired Heaney, included accounts of preserved bodies of either sex who were found in the bog of Jutland. The bodies lay under a blanket of bog naked, strangled and even with their throats cut (cf. Heaney, 1980: 57). These accounts of the retrieved bodies can be found in the poems where he describes, for example, that the throat of “The Grauballe Man” was cut. Heaney also argues that these bodies were killed for the Mother Goddess. The victims were seen as bridegrooms for the goddess to guarantee a good crop in the following year.
These killings have to be seen in context of the tradition of martyrdom for political reasons among the Irish people. An icon for these martyrs is Kathleen NiHoulihan, and so Heaney associates that the killings cannot only be seen as a barbaric rite but as a typical pattern (cf. ibid.). Heaney combines the killings of the pagan cult with the killings in the Troubles, and therefore it can be said that both killings are committed to pay homage to the Mother Goddess or Kathleen NiHoulihan, as Heaney compares the Mother Goddess with the iconic representation of Ireland, Kathleen NiHoulihan. The bog queen was laid bare: “I was barbed / and stripped/ by a turfcutter’s spade// who veiled me again/ and packed coomb softly/
79 between the stone jambs/ at my head and my feet.” (“Bog Queen”, ll. 42 – 48) The turfcutter who feels a connection to the ground, veiled the bog queen. He protected her and he worshipped her by making her resting place more comfortable.
This act of respect can be compared to the worship of Pan, the god of nature, who was the protector of the farmers and the herders for the Greeks. The turfcutter did not dare to retrieve the queen from the bog which was her nesting ground, but “a peer’s wife bribed him./ The plait of my hair,/ a slimy birth-cord/ of bog, had been cut/ and I rose from the dark” (ll. 49 – 53). The connection of the bog queen to her native place – the bog – was cut. Heaney uses the image of birth where “the birth-cord” (l. 51) was separated and the bog queen rose. The bog queen was made by the bog – she was wombed by it – therefore the image of the “birth-cord/ of bog” (l. 51 – 52). The turfcutter was bribed and the bog queen rose from the dark combings of the bog. Heaney describes her as a kind of ghostly figure: “hacked bone, skull-ware,/ frayed stitches, tufts,/ small gleams on the bank.” (ll. 54 – 56) Heaney portrays her as a fearful figure that haunts Ireland. In terms of the Troubles, the territory was the reason for the conflict and in Heaney’s imagery it becomes the ghostly figure of the bog queen.
The poem includes a mythical dimension in the theme of the waiting of the goddess for her resurrection which Campbell terms as “rescue from without” (1993: 207 – 216). Campbell explains this through an oriental tale about the goddess Inanna, who was the highest goddess of the ancient Sumerian cuneiform temple-tablets. Inanna had different names, for example, Astarte, Aphrodite or Venus, throughout the preceding cultural epochs in the development of the Orient (cf. ibid.: 213 – 214). The unique thing about this goddess is that she was not so much linked to the sun but with the planet that carries her name. Her name was also connected with the moon, the heaven and – most important of all – the fruitful earth. In other cultures, for example, in Egypt she became the goddess Sirius, who signalled the time when the river Nile flooded the area and made the earth fruitful again (cf. ibid.: 214). The part of the story which is interesting for Heaney’s “Bog Queen” is when Inanna left heaven and went to her sister, the Death Queen, to hell. The goddess left behind a messenger who had the orders to rescue her if she did not come back. In hell she was transformed into a corpse (cf. ibid.). The bog queen in Heaney’s poem is described as a corpse who rests in the bog of Ireland for centuries. In the Inanna myth, this is the stage where the goddess has to be saved from hell. She has prepared her rescue by leaving behind the messenger (cf. ibid.). He is the agent to find support to rescue her. The goddess is rescued by two sexless creatures staffed with “the
80 food of life” (ibid.: 215) and “the water of life” (ibid.). By bringing these gifts to the goddess, she rises from the underworld (cf. ibid.). The bog queen rises from the bog because the turfcutter was betrayed by a woman. She comes back as a ghostly figure with “hacked bones” (“Bog Queen”, l. 54) and “skull ware” (l. 54). The ending of the poem can be compared with the ending of the myth, which says that Inanna was “[s]urrounded by this ghostly, ghastly crowd, Inanna wandered through the land of Sumer” (Campbell, 1993: 216). In the myth the goddess haunts the land with her ghastly crowd. In the poem, the bog queen is resurrected as a ghostly figure. Heaney uses traits from this myth to incorporate the violence of the Troubles haunting Northern Ireland. Both, the Troubles and the cult of the goddess, deal with issues of territory and place.
Heaney’s bog poems deal with the home-ground, and he creates his own figure that represents Ireland, the bog queen. It is a mythical figure based on the soil and based on archetypal patterns of old myths about earth goddesses, e. g. Inanna myth. McDonald categorises the bog poems as multi-layered and complex accounts of the situation in Northern Ireland. He argues that, although the poems contain the issue of violence, the general tone of the poem “Bog Queen” is that poetry connected with violence bares some dangers (cf. McDonald, 1997: 52). This statement is confirmed by Heaney who writes in “Feeling into Words” that he never wanted to express in his poems that citizens should feel to be forced to “murder one another or deploy their different military arms over the matter of nomenclatures such as British or Irish. I do not mean public celebrations or execrations of resistance or atrocity” (Heaney, 1980: 56). Heaney states that he never wanted to propagate a call for arms; rather, he feels like a chronicler of time who found the appropriate emblems to voice the atrocities that take place in Northern Ireland. He also wanted to create a metaphor for these murders and killings. By doing so, he created a figure that represents Ireland. Heaney’s choice of words and his interest in place can be best explained by a passage from his essay “Sense of Place”, where he describes that place and literature go together. This “is partly due to a new found pride in our own places that flourished suddenly in the late nineteenth century and resulted in a new literature, a revived interest in folklore, a movement to revive the Irish language, and in general a determination to found or re-found a native tradition” (ibid.: 134). Heaney refers to Yeats and his achievement of restoring a more mythical dimension in poetry because he created “a legendary and literary vision of a race” (ibid.: 135). He also wants to create a “literary vision of a race” (ibid.) and achieves it by creating a myth of Ireland, based on history and themes from legends.
81 5. 2. Word Field
In North , Heaney discovers the Irish bog as a metaphor for Ireland and uses words related with the Irish bog to describe the Irish sentiments in Northern Ireland. By doing so, he voices the history of a place and a period with words connected with that particular place. The Irish bog is a typical feature of Irish landscape, and by giving place a medium he creates a certain awareness concerning the place as a constituent of identity. As mentioned earlier, place can be seen as a contributing factor to defining identity in general. Heaney does not want to give a description of the place, but he wants to re-create the place as he sees it in his imagination. He wants to add to the place a feel about the place. An atmosphere of the place from his childhood is evoked, and a word field analysis shows that his use of words relates to the home-ground throughout the whole poetry collection. The word field 3 is altered compared to the analysis of the first three volumes because it contains two new categories such as ‘place’ and ‘place names’ to point out his preoccupation with the native place. In the analysis of Seamus Heaney’s first three poetry collections, nature was identified as the dominant feature of defining a feeling of belonging to a place. Thereby, he created a set of images which become important elements in his depiction of the local place in North and the subsequent volumes. Generally, it can be said that in the course of the analysis two dominant features developed, i. e. place and nature. The foregrounding of these features can be explained through his interest in place, especially in his home-ground. These features are the basis for Heaney’s paradigms of place that shape the diction of the poem and the images.
In Seamus Heaney’s poems, it can be seen that Derry, the place of his childhood, is the governing source of his language. He recreates a place with his choice of words. The place he describes is a real place but created through his imagination. The memory of the place is triggered off by a smell or an incident. To describe place he mainly uses words such as ‘bog floor’, ‘swampland’, ‘morass’, ‘bogland’, ‘colony’, ‘territory’, ‘ground’, or ‘bone vault’. An example for this is “Kinship”, where he writes ”Quagmire, swampland, morass:/ the slime kingdoms” (ll. 25 – 26). Heaney uses words connected with swampland and bog, which he calls “slime kingdoms” (l. 26). In these lines, he uses words connected with the ground while in “Act of Union” he writes that “the rain in bogland gathered head” (l. 2) and continues that “I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder” (l. 9). Heaney refers to England as the “tall kingdom” (l. 9) over Ireland’s shoulder, “your shoulder” (l. 9), and therefore “bogland” (l. 2)
3 See Appendix, pp. 230 – 235. 82 can be seen as a representation of Ireland. Through the use of these words, he uses bog as a means to display Ireland. By doing so, he creates a ‘sense of place’ through the symbols attached to bog. The ground is defined by Heaney through different attributes and shapes. Interestingly, he uses a lot of different variations of ground, for example, ‘mother ground’, ‘nesting ground’, ‘hatching ground’ and ‘opened ground’. These words express his preoccupation with place. These words describe the place as feminised space, as a nesting place, and as marks in the landscape, as in “Antaeus and Hercules”, where he mentions “the hatching grounds of cave and souterrain” (ll. 20 – 21). In these lines, Heaney refers to the highlights of landscape of cave and low lands. In “Kinship”, he uses “mother ground” (l. 126) as a personal address of the Irish ground as a mother or goddess. In the North of Ireland there were too many sacrifices, therefore the ground turned sour because of the blood that was spilled. “Nesting ground” (“Kinship”, l. 47), he uses to refer to the ground as a source of inspiration for his mind: “outback of my mind” (l. 48). The ground inspires his imagination and his way with words. In this poetry collection, place is used to refer to an entity that inspires the poet in many ways. In Heaney’s case, the place that inspires him, which he once called the ‘country of his mind’ (cf. Heaney, 1980: 132), is the County Derry, his childhood place. Furthermore, the place is also the source of his vocabulary, which is deeply influenced by the landscape. Through describing a certain landscape, and because of his closeness with the home-ground, he creates an image of Ireland as mother earth, as earth goddess. By creating this image, he also adds a mythical level to the image which further shapes a mythical representation of Ireland based on the home-ground. By representing Ireland through bog and words connected with the place, he contributes to creating an identity rooted in the place.
Nature is an attribute of place, and Heaney uses features of nature, for example, flowers, trees, stones, rivers and lakes, and weather, to attach a certain characteristic to the place. In Heaney’s poetry, nature defines a place through plants and rivers. The vegetation and the natural qualities of an area are features which make a place unique. Heaney uses these features to create a place with his words. He very often uses words such as “mud”, “peat”, “gemstone”, “black river”, “berries”, “fox’s brush”, “riverbed”, “spring water”, or “sweetbriar” to define a place. In the poem “Come to the Bower” (see Appendix, pp. 269 – 270), he describes the area and the body that is found in a bog: “My hands come, touched/ By sweetbriar and tangled vetch” (ll. 1 – 2) to the queen of the bower. Heaney uses words such as “sweetbriar” (l. 2) and “vetch” (l. 2) to describe the area where the queen is found. The
83 description of the area sets the tone for the poem, because in general, Heaney evokes a darker picture of Ireland than he used to do in Death of a Naturalist . When reading the poems, the reader gets a brown, peat and turf-ridden picture of Ireland. The poem continues with “Out of the black maw/ Of the peat, sharpened willow/ Withdraws gently.” (ll. 7 – 9) He feminises the space by referring to the peat as maw. The bog has swallowed the bog queen and blurs her out again. It is described as a cycle that repeats itself: the bog takes the body, conserves it, and then it gives back.
Place names are also important in this poetry collection, for example, he refers to places as diverse as Iceland, Orkney, Dublin, Mayo, Mossbawn, England, and Ireland. On the one hand, the place names have the purpose of drawing a genealogy of the Irish colonisation, first by the Vikings and later by the English people. On the other hand, it is also a means to enhance the mythological dimension because by referring to the past he creates the history of the present. The past events are a symbol for the present ones. Generally, it can be said that distancing the events from the home-ground can be seen as a means of creating a more acceptable account of the events. An example for place names is “Berlderg” (see Appendix, pp. 259 – 260), where Heaney writes about “A landscape fossilized,/ Its stone-wall patternings/ Repeated before our eyes/ In the stone walls of Mayo.” (ll. 16 – 19) By referring to Mayo, Heaney implies the early history of this place, which was a settlement of farmers and herders. It is also a place of a lot of archaeological finds, “landscape fossilised” (l. 16), of the cultural heritage of early Irish civilised life. In ancient times, 3000 B.C., the people had to leave the settlements because bogs developed in that area. The only signs of human settlement that are left over are the stone walls, “stone-wall patternings” (l. 20), that surround the fields, which are still a feature of the landscape. Heaney refers to these early finds of human settlement which were preserved by the bog. Mayo also implies the colonial aspect because during the Christianisation Vikings invaded the newly established monasteries on a regular basis, and in the middle of the seventeenth century the English started to develop an interest in Ireland 4.
Landscape expresses special features of a country, and Heaney uses these features to refer to special sites of a landscape, for example, in the poem “Bone Dreams” (see Appendix, pp. 262 – 265), in which he mentions “Hadrian’s wall” and “Maiden Castle”: “I have begun to pace/
4 Cf. http://www.museumsofmayo.com/ceide.htm .
84 the Hadrian’s Wall/ of her shoulder, dreaming/ of Maiden Castle” (ll. 77 – 80). He paces the landscape and feminises the place by attributing a female pronoun to it; by doing so, he alludes to a sensual dimension because he writes “I am screes/ on her escarpements,/ a chalk giant// carved upon her downs.“ (ll. 58 – 61) Heaney refers to the short life of human beings compared to the workings of the earth. He also uses the word “downs” (l. 61) to refer to moorland. It seems as though Heaney woes for Ireland and finally “we end up/ cradling each other/ between the lips/ of an earthwork.” (ll. 65 – 68) By referring to Hadrian’s Wall and Maiden Castle, he takes two prominent points of the English landscape which were famous for their archaeological finds. Maiden Castle is a fortification built in the Iron Age, and Hadrian’s Wall is also a fortification and was built in Roman times. Both fortifications were built by colonial powers and were used to protect them from the native people. Heaney further refers to ‘hills’, ‘mountains’ and ‘eastern coast’, ‘hillock’ and ‘coomb’. In “Belderg” (see Appendix, pp. 259 – 260), he describes the findings of human settlements in a bog: “There were the first plough-marks,/ The stone-age fields, the tomb/ Corbelled, turfed and chambered,/ Floored with dry turf-coomb.” (ll. 12 – 15) In these lines, Heaney refers to the development of bog and its quality to preserve things, because through this quality cultural heritage from the Stone Age survived and gives hints about the way of life of early civilisation. These finds show that the Stone Age people were mainly farmers, “plough- marks” (l. 12).
Language is also mentioned as a characteristic of a people in a certain place, for example, Heaney uses Gaelic words in some poems. But he does not only use Gaelic words, he also refers to Latin, English, and Norse. He mentions words such as ‘moss’, ‘bawn’, ‘Elizabethan canopies’, ‘ivied Latins of churchmen’, ‘Norman devices’, ‘vowel of earth’, ‘ban-bus’, *hushed’, and ‘lulled’. His medium to articulate the hidden sources of a people is poetry, and language is his force: “I push back/ through dictions” (“Bone Dreams”, ll. 21 – 22). He uses “Norman devices” (l. 24), and “Elizabethan canopies” (l. 23) to make ground in the colonial battle of place by using the different influences of language he experienced in the course of his education. An example for the use of local colour is provided in “The Ministry of Fear”, where he “innovated a South Derry rhyme/ With hushed and lulled full chimes for pushed and pulled ” (ll. 26 – 27). Heaney uses these words which are typical for the area he comes from to
85 point out the difference in pronunciation because [u] is used instead of [ Λ]. Language is connected with place, as the way people speak is usually typical for a region. Therefore, language is a feature of a place because the local dialect identifies the place and the speaker. By using this kind of language, the place is indirectly implied as well. Through the aspect of local colour, the connections between people and place are even more evident.
86 5. 3. A Comment on the North of Ireland
“While the Constabulary covered the mob/ Firing into the Falls, I was suffering/ Only the bullying sun of Madrid.” (Heaney, “Summer 1969”: ll. 1 – 3)
Heaney comments on the sectarian tensions in the North of Ireland in some of his poems. The sectarian tensions were based on a territorial conflict which goes back to colonial times, where the roots of the conflict were buried. As a matter of fact, he directly refers to events that took place during the Troubles. He also mentions that poets in Northern Ireland had to undergo a learning process because “[a]lthough in no way personally responsible for the violence that occurred, they comprehended its causes and effects and have been inclined to make their poetry a process of self-healing, neither deliberately provocative nor culpably detached” (Heaney, 2002: 133). Heaney explains that poets had to write about the violence that happened in the North of Ireland in order to understand it. The second part of the poetry collection North deals with the connection between poetry and public life (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 60). In poems such as “Whatever You Say Say Nothing”, “The Unacknowledged Legislator’s Dream”, or “Freedman” he discusses the poet’s need to bring about a congruence between the political situation and the personal experience. These poems point out that Heaney intentionally took part in the political discourse through his poems. As a matter of fact, the sectarian tensions are mentioned overtly in these poems: he addresses the sectarian and cultural division in his poems. An example for this is “Whatever You Say Say Nothing” (see Appendix, pp. 275 – 277), where he points out the inadequacies of name and address: “Subtle discrimination by addresses/ With hardly an exception to the rule// That Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled Prod/ And Seamus (call me Sean) was sure-fire Pape.” (ll. 67 – 70) Heaney argues that English names are associated with political aspirations of Protestants and that Irish names are associated with Catholic political ideas. Being Catholic involves much more than a religious aspiration. Heaney defined it in an interview in the Guardian of 2 nd November 1974 by pointing out that the term Catholic is used like a racist term which includes certain kinds of cultural implications (cf. Corcoran 1986: 15). Heaney expresses this through the direct address: “O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod” (“Whatever You Say Say Nothing”, l. 71). The land has become a land of different group codes which are manifested in the marches of the different sectarian groups – this urged Heaney to take a stance towards the violence that evolved in Northern Ireland.
87 In North , Heaney used several documentary sources such as history, mythological tales and figures to encode references to the increasing violence. Helen Vendler points out that Heaney used an archaeological myth that nurtured violence, and this violence was a means to foster tribal conflicts, “which fundamentally was neither colonial nor secular, neither economic nor class-caused, but rather deeply cultural” (Vendler, 2000: 50 – 51). Vendler argues that violence was a means to ensure the tribal conflict and that this violence was deeply rooted in the minds of the pagan people. In Northern Ireland, the violence increased in the early 1970s which may be a product of the nationalist and unionist thinking that caused the split of the island into the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. In the poem “Funeral Rites” (see Appendix, pp. 260 – 262), Heaney writes: “Quiet as a serpent/ in its grassy boulevard/ the procession drags its tail/ out of the Gap of the North/ as its head already enters/ the megalithic doorway.” (ll. 55 – 60) Heaney refers in these lines, on the one side, to the funeral processions which are a result of the violence. On the other side, he refers to the marching season of the unionist and nationalist groups that always caused the violence. The “Gap of the North” (l. 58) manifested itself in the violence that erupted in the early 1970s. As Helen Vendler explains, Heaney implied in the phrase of entering “the megalithic doorway” (l. 60) to dig in the ground by going back to the Iron Age. In the Iron Age he found an Ireland that was much more archeo-cultural than rural and “Heaney was brought to his archaeologies in North , as we shall see, by the violence unleashed in Ireland from 1972 on” (Vendler, 2000: 38).
In the poems of Part II, Heaney offers an explanation why he wrote the bog poems and commented on the violence in Ireland because, generally, people from the North of Ireland say nothing even if they say something: “Northern reticence, the tight gag of place/ And times: yes, yes. Of the ‘wee six’ I sing/ Where to be saved you only must save face/ And whatever you say, you say nothing.” (“Whatever You Say Say Nothing”, ll. 61 – 64) In these lines, Heaney implies that in Northern Ireland, in general, nothing is said even if something is said. He also exaggerates the theme by attaching a certain landscape to it; as a matter of fact, he invents a landscape through words. He processes in the creation of the verbal landscape the violence he experiences. The landscape also incorporates the historical fact of the Troubles, which are part of Irish history. As mentioned before, history attributed to places contributes to shaping a national identity. Vendler indicates that the bog poems are a means to replicate the poet’s self “as a symbolic representation of history” (2000: 48). By giving an account of his personal experience, Heaney involves himself in the process of creating a historical account of that place at that time. He describes this process in the last poem, “Exposure” (see
88 Appendix, pp. 267 – 268), as “I walk through damp leaves,/ Husks, the spent flukes of autumn,/ Imagining a hero/ On some muddy compound” (ll. 11 – 14). In these lines, Heaney refers to the invention of the poet’s self which is determined by the poet’s poetic voice. In the case of Heaney, his poetic voice is expressed through the bog imagery. But Heaney continues that he is “neither internee nor informer;/ An inner émigré, grown long-haired/ And thoughtful; a wood-kerne// Escaped from the massacre” (ll. 30 – 33). Heaney describes his own experience of the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. As a poet, he can voice the violence and the situation in the North. The individual experience of the poet, expressed in the poem, is an account of the Troubles from the perspective of an individual. Through giving the violence a resonance in the poem, the poem becomes an account of historical events. O’Faolain states that “Irish literature may, like the Greek epics, reflect remote historical facts. Like them, it supplies none. Its value and its delight is the light it throws on the Irish mind, on the early constituents of the Irish dye” (O’Faolain, 1980: 21). O’Faolain expresses the core of Heaney’s poetry. He reflects on historical events, but, as a matter of fact, he also expresses the sentiments of Irish inhabitants. Heaney links the sectarian violence and the political history with the place and creates an earth goddess. By doing so, he voices the corner stones of the Irish mind because the Irish people are rooted in their home-ground.
89 6. Manifestation of a Theme
“Where the sally tree went pale in every breeze,/ where the perfect eye of the nesting blackbird watched,/ where one fern was always green” (Heaney, “Field Work I”, ll. 1 – 3)
Field Work was written in 1979 at the peak of the violence in Northern Ireland. Heaney was already living in Wicklow, in the Republic of Ireland, but he was still influenced by his roots, the home-ground of the county of Derry (cf. Vendler, 2000: 59). In the poem “Oysters”, Heaney writes about the persuasive power of landscape upon his life and, especially, upon his use of words as a poet. In “Oysters”, he draws a connection between the landscape and his poetry. He also points out that landscape nurtures his poetry: “I ate the day/ Deliberately, that its tang/ Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.” (ll. 23 – 25) His preoccupation with place is still eminent in his poems although he has to come to terms with the new circumstance – he has to find a way to bridge the new environment of rural Wicklow with the experiences and memories of Northern Ireland (cf. Vendler, 2000: 59). Curtis quotes Heaney from an interview from Ploughshares where Heaney says that “[t]he crossing of the border has a political edge to it because we were opting to go into the Republic. But I was quite content in a way to accept and undergo that political dimension because I have never considered myself British” (Curtis, 1994: 105). Heaney moved to Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland, and he made this move final even on a political level – he took on an Irish passport. Heaney is rooted in Catholic rural Ireland even in his diction. His choice of words is still governed by the memory of rural county Derry. His diction is rooted in the ground – and so is he: “Fetch me the sandmartin/ skimming and veering/ breast to breast with himself/ in the clouds in the river.” (“Homecomings”, ll. 1 – 4, see Appendix, p. 282) Heaney returned to a more personal form and so it can be said that he is like the sandmartin in his poem. He tries to define himself through the landscape of his childhood, and, by doing so, he defines the area he comes from, for instance, he creates a verbal image of place. The poem reflects on the place and the images used in the poem in order to define the place and, as mentioned before, the definition of a place is contributing to a definition of the people living there because both are closely connected with certain features of the people living there, e. g. their religion and even their political allegiance is defined by the territory.
The theme of rural Ireland is inscribed in the words he uses; moreover, he ends the poem “Homecomings” with “Mould my shoulders inward to you./ Occlude me./ Be damp clay pouting./ Let me listen under your eaves.” (ll. 13 – 16) Heaney moves within the paradigms of
90 place, which can be seen in the choice of his words that is closely connected with the local ground. Heaney wants to be surrounded by the earth, which is his source of inspiration. He wants to hibernate in the damp clay but he also wants to preserve his poetry through the choice of his words. His poetry preserves the place and gives an account of the place coloured by imagination recollected from memory. The last lines are formulated like requests to the place. He tries to find a way to achieve a congruence between the new rural place of Wicklow and the place of Derry. He is in search of words to express the new environment of the county of Wicklow. The word “inwards” reminds one of the poem “Bogland”from Door into the Dark : “Our pioneers keep striking/ inwards and downwards” (ll. 23 – 24). The paradigms of place acquire meaning through being read in a personal and historical context. By doing so, it can be said that these paradigms can be seen as contributing features to a definition of identity. This is underlined by Heaney’s personal attitude because he wants to create responsible art. According to Corcoran, Heaney mentioned in some interviews that in Field Work he tried to “bring a sense of his ordinary social self into his poetry” (Corcoran, 1998: 83). This sense of the self is also evident in the lines of the poem. The form reflects the mood of the poet, which is pointed out by Heaney himself. In 1982, Heaney stated in an interview in Critical Inquiry that “[t]he line and the life are intimately related” (qtd. McGuinness, 1994: 153). After the short lines of North , which expressed a tightness of the poet, Heaney returned to a longer iambic line in Field Work (cf. ibid.). He mentions that “[b]ack then I thought that that music, the melodious grace of the English iambic line, was some kind of affront, that it needed to be wrecked” (ibid.). Heaney ‘wrecks’ the “classical, hung with the reek of silage” (“Glanmore Sonnet IX”, l. 7). According to Corcoran, the poems incorporating the iambic line are forged as a means of communication between the poet’s self and the audience (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 83). Heaney communicates with the reader through a diction rooted in the landscape itself. According to Corcoran, Heaney adds to his poetry a new dimension through the first person singular and historical life; in addition, Corcoran points out that Heaney thinks that the particular situation of a time and the personal resentment of a man are part of his art. As a matter of fact, he is of the opinion that history, personal experience and the state of affairs “are all part of the forcefulness of the utterance” (ibid: 86). These factors contribute to the power of an utterance, what is more, the personal poetic voice of Field Work is equipped with an understanding of the close connection between the individual and the political or historical (cf. ibid.).
91 Field Work , the title itself is rooted in agriculture, but it also refers to anthropology, where it is quite common to do field work. So it can be said that the title foreshadows an exploration of culture, or at least the poet distances the events by setting it in the past (cf. Vendler, 2000: 58). In a way, Heaney continues his quest of the self and to shape the consciousness of his community in Field Work . As mentioned above, Seamus Deane refers to literary accounts of history as being generally subjective. Heaney once pointed out the example of Yeats in an interview in the newspaper Ploughshares .
I think Yeats’s example as a man who held to a single vision is tremendously ennobling – he kept the elements of his imagery and his own western landscape, the mythological images, and he used those and Coole Park, he used those as a way of coping with contemporary reality. I think that what he learned there was that you deal with public crisis not by accepting the terms of the public’s crisis, but by making your own imagery and your own terrain take the colour of it, take the impressions of it. (qtd. Curtis, 1994: 125)
What Heaney said about Yeats can also be applied to his own poems because he used images from his home-ground to express the tensions of that time, the Troubles. Field Work “constructs an Irish landscape at once politically-charged, shared and relevant” (Curtis, 1994: 126). Through imprinting historical events in the landscape of the poem, the landscape becomes a symbol of what the historical event stands for. An example is “The Singer’s House” (see Appendix, pp. 281 – 282), where he connects the mainly Northern Protestant salt-mining culture of the seaport Carrickfergus to the singer’s house in Gweebarra, the bay in Donegal (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 107). Heaney conjures up an image of Carrickfergus “When they said Carrickfergus I could hear/ the frost echo of saltminers’ picks./ I imagined it, chambered and glinting,/ a township built of light.” (ll. 1 – 4) When hearing the name, Heaney creates a verbal picture of the place; he combines the fact that Carrickfergus used to be a salt-mining area with a picture that appears before his inner eye. He connects with the name a certain image of the place and he echoes this image in the poem. “Gweebarra” (l. 13), he says to himself, “and its music hits off the place/ like water hitting off granite” (ll. 14 – 15). These lines echo the dinnseanchas of Wintering Out , where he indulged in the pleasure of naming places by their Gaelic names. Gweebarra is a Gaelic place name, and the place is situated in a bay in the county of Donegal – the name is music in his ears. He connects the name with the place by referring to its position in a bay where the water hits stone. In the poem, there is a difference between the descriptions of the two places. Carrickfergus, the Protestant place, belongs to the Protestants because “they said Carrickfergus” (“The Singer’s House”, l. 1), while he writes about Gweebarra, the place in Ireland, “I say to myself
92 Gweebarra” (l. 13). The opposition of “they” (l. 1) and “I” (l. 13) alludes to the belonging of the lyric I to the Irish place. Through differentiating between ‘I’ and ‘they’, a feature of a definition of identity is contributed to the discourse of shaping an identity - it also reminds one of the postcolonial tradition of shaping identity through oppositions. Seamus Heaney combines both places in the last stanza, where he remembers “[w]hen I came here first you were always singing,/ a hint of the clip of the pick” (ll. 29 – 30). In the song, Heaney reconciles the two places by referring to the pick of the salt-mining Carrickergus and through the singer to Gweebarra. Poetry becomes a form of reconciliation, as the poet is able to express the soothing words. This refers to what Heaney has said before – the poet is able to voice the hidden sources of life, and he is able to give people a feeling of comfort and hope.
This poetry collection, Field Work , is divided in sonnets and elegies, which fulfil their purpose of praise and commemoration. The manifestation of the theme is expressed in Heaney’s choice of words. His sources of inspiration changed in this poetry collection – he moved towards the myth of Dante’s Divine Comedy , which according to Campbell, bears “magnificent cosmic metaphors” (1993: 257). These metaphors sustained all human life and inspired different kinds of art, for example, philosophy and poetry. These metaphors inherited symbols which were used by “masters of the spirit as a vehicle of the profoundest moral and metaphysical instruction” (ibid.). The mythological figures of tales like Dante’s Divine Comedy are important in many ways, for example, they are signs of the unconscious. But they are not just a sign of the unconscious, they also have power over spiritual principles which they propose through the definition of their character (cf. ibid.). Dante is very important for the further development of Heaney’s poetic voice because Dante, as a poet, is able to enter the sublime and to communicate with the dead (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 85). The motif of entering the underworld is part of Heaney’s Station Island (1984). The Divine Comedy is also a source of advice for Heaney, the poet, because the Divine Comedy is a source of instruction concerning the development of poetry (cf. ibid.). The Divine Comedy can be seen as source for poetic invention and as a source for mythological figures. Both are corner stones of Heaney’s poetry. Heaney is a poet who searches for new ways in poetry and to express his predicament, the hidden sources of life.
93 6. 1. Field Work
Heaney altered his poetry in Field Work (1979) and moved towards a search of the self. This search of the self revealed the characteristics of his community based on an individual experience as representative for the many. Field Work is a composition of poems which have relevance for one another because the structure of the book is revealed when each poem is seen in the context of all the other poems. Again, Heaney voices his predicament in life and expresses his personal experiences of loss and alienation during times of sectarian division (cf. Curtis, 1994: 102). The individual experience becomes exemplary for the communal experience, and in the structure of Field Work this can be recognised. The purpose of the book is to clarify the poet’s role of being able to sooth the pains of a country in crisis. The book is divided into three parts, beginning with the poem “Oyster” and followed by ten poems. Then there are ten “Glanmore Sonnets”, and finally there are fourteen poems which include “Field Work”, the volume’s title poem (cf. ibid.: 102 – 103). In Field Work , Heaney also returns to the places of his childhood in Derry, and the language that is enshrined in his verbal cavity is deeply influenced by this place. He once more combines history and the idyllic setting of rural Ireland to dress his experience in words.
Heaney moved from the general tone evoking a myth about the home-ground in North to the first person singular. He expresses his experiences of the violence in Northern Ireland in poetry. Poetry becomes a means of conveying the history of that time. The poems reflect the violence in the Troubles, but they also catch the feelings of loss and alienation of an individual. Through poetry Heaney voices these personal experiences for the good of his community, who can identify with his feelings. Heaney compared the gift of forging a poem with the gift of a diviner who is able to articulate the ‘inarticulate’. Heaney can also be seen as a diviner because he voices the ‘inarticulate’ – the atrocities of the violence in the North of Ireland. He tries to find an understanding for the reason of the Troubles, which is at its core a dispute about territory. Appropriately, Heaney uses words inspired by his home-ground to express this conflict. By doing so, he links the place with the words and the conflict. He creates a verbal image of the place and the place becomes an image for the crisis. As a matter of fact, through that he becomes a chronicler of time; he is an anthropologist who searches for the underlying motif of historical events in a cultural and social context. The motif of such events becomes the motif of his poetry dressed in words rooted in the landscape.
94 In the poem “The Toome Road” (see Appendix, p. 280), Heaney combines the images of troubled Northern Ireland with his childhood memories of that place. The poem starts with an account of soldiers coming down Toome Road: “One morning early I met armoured cars/ In convoy, warbling on powerful tyres,/ All camouflaged with broken alder branches” (ll. 1 – 3). The cars are hidden behind broken alder branches. These lines combine words representing violence, “armoured cars”, with words from his paradigms of place, “alder branches” (l. 3). When these lines are read in a cultural context, the words “alder branches” (l. 3) acquire the meaning of belonging to the place, while “armoured cars” (l. 1) represent the intruders.
It can also be said that Heaney alludes to the god Pan, who invented the shepherd’s pipe and animated the nymphs to dance and was accompanied by satyrs as his male companions (cf. Campbell, 1993: 81). Pan was the protector of nature and he punishes human beings who cross the threshold to his area ruthlessly.
The emotion that he instilled in human beings who by accident adventured into his domain was “panic”, fear, a sudden, groundless fright. Any trifling cause then – the break of a twig, the flutter of a leaf – would flood the mind with imagined danger, and in the frantic effort to escape from his own aroused consciousness the victim expired in a flight of dread. (Campbell, 1993: 81)
This can be seen as a foreshadowing of the punishment of the soldiers who enter Toome Road because Heaney describes the approaching of the cars: “How long were they approaching down my roads/ As if they owned them?” (“The Toome Road”, ll. 5 – 6). According to the poem, they crossed the border of nature without paying respect to the area. They do not belong to the area, they are intruders and therefore cannot appreciate the beauty of the landscape. They do not have a connection to the place, as they have camouflaged their cars with “broken alder branches” (l. 3). As in the passage quoted above, Pan punishes human beings who break a twig or “flutter a leaf” (Campbell, 1993: 81). They have violated nature, and because of that Pan is going to instil a “groundless fright” (ibid.) in them. By reading the poem in the context of the Pan myth, it can be interpreted that Heaney creates a myth about Toome Road, which becomes the sacred area of Pan’s protection.
As expressed in the lines “[w]hole country was sleeping” (l. 6), the whole country sleeps in hope to overcome the fearful time – it is sleeping and waiting until the time when civil unrest will be over. It can be said that in the poem Heaney uses the motif of hibernation to express the stasis of the situation in Ireland. The country hibernates in order to survive the Troubles.
95 The poem also implies a mythical dimension in the line “I had rights-of-way, fields, cattle in my keeping” (l. 7), because Pan “was benign to those who paid worship, yielding the boons of the divine hygiene of nature: bounty to the farmers, herders, and fisherfolk who dedicated their first fruits to him, and health to all who properly approached his shrines of healing” (Campbell, 1993: 81). Heaney alludes to the farmers and herders who are under the protection of Pan because they pay homage to Pan. Farmers and herders are connected with nature and they appreciate the beauty of nature because it is part of their lives. Heaney even elaborates that rural image by stating: “Tractors hitched to buckrakes in open sheds,/ Silos, chill gates, wet slates, the greens and reds/ Of outhouse roofs” (“The Toome Road”, ll. 8 – 10). Heaney creates an idyllic rural scenery which evokes the soundscapes of his early poetry collections. By doing so, he evokes a picture of rural Ireland.
In the last few lines of “The Toome Road”, Heaney addresses both the farmers and herders, and the intruders, the soldiers: “Sowers of seed, erectors of headstones…/ O charioteers, above your dormant guns” (ll. 14 – 15). He addresses the farmers and soldiers as “sowers of seed” (l. 14) and as “erectors of headstones” (l. 14). Heaney refers to the civilian casualties that are caused by the soldiers in Northern Ireland. Through their invasion the balance in the country is disrupted. Heaney places this conflict on a mythological level. He closes the poem by saying: “It stands here still, stands vibrant as you pass,/ The invisible, untoppled omphalos.” (ll. 16 – 17) Heaney alludes to another duty of Pan because he was also the herder of wisdom: “the wisdom of Omphalos, the World Navel, was his to bestow; for the crossing of the threshold is the first step into the sacred zone of the universal source” (Campbell, 1993: 81). The soldiers crossed the threshold to the sacred zone of the universal source, nature. By breaking the alder branches, the boundaries of the universal zone are violated and so the source of wisdom, the omphalos, is hidden to them. Pan has the function of a threshold guardian. The threshold guardian’s purpose is to protect, and “[o]ne had better not challenge the watcher of the established bounds. And yet – it is only by advancing beyond those bounds, provoking the destructive other aspect of the same power, that the individual passes, either alive or in death, into a new zone of experience” (ibid: 82). This crossing of the threshold is also a theme of Dante’s Divine Comedy , which is also a prologue for Field Work . Heaney, like Dante in the Divine Comedy, has to pass the threshold in his poetry. He has to articulate his predicament in order to take ‘a stance towards life’; it elevates the poet to a new zone of experience because the poet has to find a congruence between personal experience and a land in crisis.
96 In the last two lines of the poem, Heaney states that “[i]t stands here still, stands vibrant as you pass,/ The invisible, untoppled omphalos” (“The Toome Road”, ll. 16 – 17). For Heaney, the omphalos expresses the feeling of belonging to a place. He expressed this in his essay “Mossbawn” from Preoccupations , where – as was already addressed – he wrote “ omphalos , meaning the navel, and hence the stone that marked the centre of the world, and repeat it, omphalos, omphalos, omphalos , until its blunt and falling music becomes the music of somebody pumping water at the pump outside our back door” (Heaney, 1980: 17). Heaney was aware of the meaning of omphalos as the source of wisdom, and he connects the source of wisdom with the pump in the backyard of their house in Mossbawn: “There the pump stands, a slender, iron idol, snouted, helmeted, dressed down with a sweeping handle […]” (ibid). Heaney also links the wisdom of omphalos with the appreciation of place; moreover, he implies that a part of wisdom is an understanding of the different features of a place. The feeling of belonging to a place reveals the wisdom of a place, which is expressed in the “invisible, untoppled omphalos” (l. 17). In “Mossbawn”, he also writes that “[i]t is Co. Derry in the early 1940s. The American bombers groan towards the aerodome at Toomebridge, the American troops manoeuvre in the fields along the road” (Heaney, 1980: 17). Heaney implies the manoeuvre of the American troops in his description of the invasion of the soldiers: “One early morning I met armoured cars/ In convoy, warbling along on powerful tyres” (ll. 1 – 2). He distances the events of the crisis in Northern Ireland by referring to the past invasion of the American soldiers, which allows him to establish a better understanding of the present state of affairs. But all the military actions do not have an effect on the landscape, which Heaney explains in “Mossbawn”, as “all of that great historical action does not disturb the rhythms of the yard” (Heaney, 1980: 17). The wisdom is inherent in local understanding of a place because all “great historical action” (ibid.) has no influence on the feeling of belonging to a place. The feeling of belonging to a place nurtures the omphalos, and the people who belong to a place have this inherent wisdom. Heaney creates an awareness of place and shapes at the same time the consciousness of his community through awakening a feeling of belonging to a place.
Heaney returned to creating soundscapes like in the first three volumes – he returned to his childhood places. Heaney describes his initiation of place in “Mossbawn”, where he depicts his secret retreat. It was an old hallow willow with a hole standing at the end of the farmyard. The tree had knobbly and spreading roots, a soft and damp bark, and a small inside. He compared the entrance to the inside of the tree with the neck of a horse. He had to squeeze
97 himself through the hole to get inside (cf. Heaney, 1980: 18). But when you were inside the tree,
[a]bove your head, the living tree flourished and breathed, you shouldered the slightly vibrant bole, and if you put your forehead to the rough pith you felt the whole lithe and whispering crown of willow moving in the sky above you. In that tight cleft, you sensed the embrace of light and branches, you were a little Atlas shouldering it all. (Ibid.)
In this passage, Heaney exemplifies his affection to the place of his childhood, which is also a source of inspiration for the choice of his words. It is the childhood place of the county of Derry that inspired his poetic voice. This can also be seen in “The Toome Road”, where he evokes the beauty of the landscape of his childhood. Heaney uses the phrase “I had rights-of- way, fields, cattle in my keeping” (l. 7) in this poem, which is an allusion to a poem from Wintering Out, “Land”, where he writes: “I opened my right-of-way/ through old bottoms and sowed-out ground” (ll. 3 – 4). By alluding to the poem, he also alludes to the childhood place of his memory which he has absorbed in his mind. Therefore, Heaney does not only allude to the childhood place, he also refers to the poem on an intertextual level. “Land” deals with his intimate belonging to the place of his childhood, county Derry, the “country of his mind” (Heaney, 1980: 132). With these poems, he creates an awareness of place based on history, myth, and the feeling of belonging to a place. By doing so, he contributes to shaping an understanding of the local place, which contributes to a definition towards an identity of his community.
98 6. 2. Elegies and Sonnets
Heaney turned to a more elegiac mode in Field Work . In fact, he became a great elegist. He had to accommodate his style of writing to this task carefully, because in his earlier collections he caught the ‘immemorial and immobile’ which shifted in his elegies to the living people before their ‘annihilation’. In Vendler’s opinion, the main issue of an elegy is that the poet has always to remember to achieve a balance between the visitations of death and life (cf. Vendler, 2000: 60). In Field Work , Heaney wanted to base his poetry on events from everyday life, and he even wanted to use everyday life as a basis for his elegies, which usually have a tendency towards apotheosis (cf. ibid.: 74). Field Work is not so much based on the notion of the bog and the re-creation of an earth goddess, as North is; instead, the poetry collection is a modernist attempt to re-shape the classical elegy, which had the heroic, the sublime and the religious as topics. The elegy should be adjusted to the beliefs of the modern world (cf. ibid.).
Heaney’s elegies and sonnets have a certain flair of early nature poems which have been widely acknowledged and translated. These poems have a distinctive purity of line, and the words reveal a unique transparency of an immaculate world expressed in a language that implies woods, water and birdsong (cf. Heaney, 1980: 181). When reading the elegies and sonnets in the collection, the language influenced by woods and water is obvious. The topics of these early poems were very diverse, they were rooted in religion or in Celtic mythology. One topic of these early Celtic poems was that Patrick praised the life in a cloister where the massbell and plainsong sounded like music. Another topic was that Oisin, the great hero of Irish mythology, points out the earthly joys of hunt and battle. This kind of poems originated in the thirteenth century and developed further in the following centuries. At the same time, a tradition of praising a certain place came into fashion. Furthermore, a particularity of the Celtic tradition is the love of place and the expression of grief against exile from an enchanting territory, while the overall tone of these poems was elegiac (cf. ibid.: 184). Heaney uses the notion of expressing a feeling of loss through words connected with nature to commemorate people he lost during his life. He creates a landscape to reflect in the features of the landscape the characteristics of the people.
The poetry collection contains six elegies. One is written for Heaney’s cousin, Colum McCartney, one is written for his friend Sean Armstrong, who was a social worker, one is
99 written for the composer Sean O’Riada, and one is written for his friend, the poet Robert Lowell. He also wrote an elegy for an acquaintance, Louis O’Neill, and another one for the young Catholic poet Francis Ledwidge, who was killed in action during WWI where he fought for England (cf. Vendler, 2000: 60). All these elegies have a different purpose, but, in general, it can be said that they exemplify the loss of people one has to overcome in a lifetime (cf. Curtis, 1994: 103). “The Strand at Lough Beg” is an example for the balance between life and death. Lough Beg has in its centre Church Island,
a spire rising out if its yew trees, a local mecca. St. Patrick, they said, had fasted and prayed there fifteen hundred years before. The old graveyard was shoulder- high with meadowsweet and cow parsley, overhung with thick, unmolested yew trees and, somehow, those yews fetched me […] All I could ever manage for my bows were tapering shoots of ash or willow from a hedge along the stackyard, but even so, to have cut a bough from that silent compound in Church Island would have been a violation too treacherous to contemplate. (Heaney, 1980: 19)
Lough Beg was one source of inspiration for Heaney, and he termed it as “the imagination’s nesting ground” (ibid.). In “The Strand at Lough Beg” (see Appendix, pp. 280 – 281), Heaney also refers to Lough Beg and Church Island as a mecca: “Along the road a high, bare pilgrim’s track” (l. 5). As mentioned in the passage above, Lough Beg is a place for pilgrims because it is also the birthplace of Irish Christianity where St. Patrick fasted. Lough Beg is a place of initiation and mythical value. The quoted passage deals with an island and the strand where rushes grow, which again nicely links to Church Island. Heaney mentions Church Island: “The lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg,/ Church Island’s spire, its soft treeline of yew.” (ll. 15 – 16) Heaney refers to the yew trees and his fascination of the beauty of the landscape. Heaney tries to recreate the place of Lough Beg – “Across that strand of yours the cattle graze/ Up to their bellies in an early mist” (ll. 29 – 30). The poem also evokes the spirit of the place. It is a mythical place with a religious flair, and in the poem Heaney mentions that “we work our way through squeaking sedge/ Drowning in dew. Like a dull blade with its edge/ Honed bright, Lough Beg half shines under the haze.” (ll. 32 – 34) Heaney and his companion are on a pilgrimage to Church Island, the sacred place of religious initiation. Mentioning a place that is associated with such a religious connotation is also characteristic of the early Celtic pastoral poems. Heaney once suggested that this early kind of poetry had an inherent sense of the “old mysteries of the grove, even while ardently proclaiming its fidelity to the new religion. After all, there is no reason why literature should not bear these traces as well as the architecture” (Heaney, 1980: 186). Heaney combines in his elegies the architecture
100 of the place, nature, with the task to commemorate the loss of a beloved one. Furthermore, he uses a place for reference that is highly laden with religious connotations. It seems, therefore, that a place can also fulfil the task of commemoration. Through the characteristics attached to the place, Heaney articulates the feeling of loss. Heaney, furthermore, implies that the lost person is Catholic and the person “[s]poke a language of conspirators/ And could not crack the whip or seize the day” (“The Strand at Lough Beg”, ll. 24 – 25). This means that the person was of Irish descent and spoke Gaelic, which was the “language of conspirators” (l. 24), those who subsumed the powers of the colonial power. Heaney uses the local myth of the place to attach it to a human being. The early Celtic religion’s gods are found in trees and stones, as a matter of fact, they did look like human beings (cf. Heaney, 1980: 186). Heaney reverses this in the poem. The place has a sacred flair and by setting the scene on Church Island the person commemorated is elevated to a mythical level.
In the “Glanmore Sonnets”, Heaney indulges in the rustic life of Ireland, and he deliberately refers to Wordsworth and takes over certain features of Wordsworth’s poetic diction. Generally, Heaney wishes that the “Glanmore Sonnets” will “continue, hold, dispel, appease” (“Sonnet II”, l. 13) and through that he intends to silhouette an innovative and hard edged form of pastoral (cf. ibid.). The Elizabethan sonnet contains three quatrains and ends with a couplet. The topic of sonnets is usually the praise of a woman’s beauty (cf. Rotter-Bendl, 1984: 77). Heaney varies his topics, which range from life in rural Wicklow to domestic life and the life as a husband. Interestingly, Heaney uses in all the poems words connected with the place to make his point. He describes his affection for place, which is rooted in his childhood’s place of Derry because “[t]o this day, green, wet corners, flooded wastes, soft rushy bottoms, any place with the initiation of watery ground and tundra vegetation […] possesses an immediate and deeply peaceful attraction” (Heaney, 1980: 19).
The “Glanmore Sonnets” consist of ten poems which are distinguished by different topics. “Glanmore Sonnet I” (see Appendix, p. 283) begins with an image of sounds ploughing: “Vowels ploughed into other: opened ground” (l. 1). Heaney ploughs with words in the ground and, by doing so, he ‘opens’ the ground. This also reflects on the metaphor from “Digging” from Death of a Naturalist , where he writes: “Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat pen rests./ I’ll dig with it.” (ll. 29 – 31, see Appendix, p. 237) Heaney modifies his metaphor from pen as a means of digging to vowels as means of ploughing. He more openly admits that words are his means of creating a verbal landscape rooted in his home-ground
101 because “art [is] a paradigm of earth” (“Sonnet I”, l. 7). Heaney returns to the natural world; he even takes over a Wordsworthian approach of super-naturalizing the natural: “Our road is steaming, the turned-up acres breathe.” (“Sonnet I”, l. 5) Heaney personifies nature by attaching to it human characteristics such as breathing. In “Glenmore Sonnets II”, Heaney remarks that “Sensings, mountings from the hiding places,/Words entering almost the sense of touch” (“Sonnet II”, ll. 1 – 2, see Appendix, p. 283). Heaney senses the words and creates a ‘sense of place’ which is a recollection of the place from memory and carved in the words of a poem. The “hiding places” (l. 1) are memory, and through recollection in silence the words can acquire the feel of touch. Heaney alludes to Wordsworth and his idea of writing poetry which he postulated in the “Preface” to the Lyrical Ballads . Heaney refers to his rural descent “[a]nd from the backs of the ditches hoped to raise/ A voice caught back off slug-horn and slow chanter” (ll. 10 – 11). Heaney was a farmer’s son, native to rural Ireland. Through access to education he found a voice as a poet but his voice is still rooted in the place of his childhood. The poem ends with a couplet: “Vowels ploughed into other, opened ground,/ Each verse returning like the plough turned round” (ll. 13 – 14). In the couplet, Heaney combines an allusion to the forging of a literal ‘verse’ which is also reflected in the turning of the plough: the words mimic the image. Heaney also draws a connection to the first sonnet which starts with the line “Vowels ploughed into other, opened ground.” (“Sonnet I”, l. 1) Heaney repeats the ploughing of vowels into other grounds and, by doing so, he creates an opened ground. One word connects with the other and so he shapes a verbal landscape.
In “Sonnet V” (see Appendix, pp. 283 – 284) Heaney recalls a childhood memory when he begins with “[s]oft corrugations in the boortree’s trunk” (l.1) and continues: “It was our bower as children, a greenish, dank/ And snapping memory as I get older.” (ll. 3 – 4) Heaney forges a sonnet in the tradition of Wordsworth. He writes about nature recollected in silence – he even alludes to childhood memory, which was another feature of Romanticism. Heaney ‘breathes’ a ‘sense of place’ which becomes a natural pasture of rural idyll. He also refers to his education because, in English, boortree means elderberry: “And elderberry I have learned to call it” (l. 5) and although he has opened new ground with vowel ploughing: “I fall back to my tree-house and would crouch/ Where small buds shoot and flourish in the hush.” (ll. 13 – 14) Heaney is rooted in the ground as well as his diction because he falls back to his tree- house. He falls back to his imagination of place. Heaney tries to draw a connection between place and identity and calls himself in the poem an “etymologist of roots and graftings” (l. 12). Like a farmer, Heaney ploughs for the roots and tries to find an etymology of place in the
102 ‘sense of place’ he tries to conjure up in his poetry. He points out the importance of his childhood place, first, as a source of his choice of words, and, second, as a source of inspiration from which he re-collects his childhood memories. He defines himself through his ‘nesting ground’, and by giving it a voice in a poem he generalises the topic. The reader can identify with the poem and gains a ‘sense of place’ through the vowels ploughing; moreover, members of his community gather an awareness of the self rooted in the ground because they can relate to the places he visualises in his poems.
103 6. 3. Images: Merged, Revised and Reversed
“In the middle of the way/ under the wet of late September/ the ash tree flails“ (Heaney, “September Song”, ll. 1 – 3)
The first line, “In the middle of the way”, of the poem “September Song” can be seen as a variation of the beginning of the Divine Comedy, which Corcoran pointed out: “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita […]” (qtd. Corcoran, 1998: 85). Heaney uses a line from the Divine Comedy and merges it with his own diction to create the picture of a rainy September day. Heaney uses words typical of his earlier poems such as “ash tree” (l. 3) and “under the wet of late September” (l. 2). Heaney merges, revises and reverses images from literature and history in his poems. These procedures become a part of his poetic voice and a part of forging his poems. By referencing to history, by alluding to literary texts, he takes the meaning of the images and emphasises them in his poems. In Field Work , Heaney alludes to literary works from Shakespeare, Lowell, Joyce and Dante. All four poets are significant for Heaney’s poetic voice, and their works influenced Heaney’s development as a poet.
Heaney is also influenced by Greek mythology as can be seen in “Tryptich”, where he alludes to the great seer of mythology, Sybil. In the poem “Sybil”, which is part of the trilogy “Tryptich”, Heaney draws a connection to Virgil’s Aeneid , where the Cumaean Sibyl is mentioned: Aeneas consults the prophetess before going down to the underworld to see his father Anchises (cf. Aeneid, VI, l. 10). This reference to the Cumaean Sibyl reappears in Seeing Things , where Heaney translates this passage, under the heading “The Golden Bough”, at the beginning of the collection. Virgil describes how Aeneas breaks a branch in order to decorate an altar with it, but Aeneas is terrified because blood drops from the broken branch like from a wound (cf. Aeneid, III, ll. 25 – 30). The breaking of the twig was already part of “The Toome Road”. This can also be seen as a parallel to the myth of the god Pan, who instils a fright in the person who violates nature. Heaney describes this as follows: “Unless forgiveness finds its nerve and voice,/ Unless the helmeted and bleeding tree/ Can green and open buds like infants’ fists” (“Sybil”, ll. 9 – 12, see Appendix, pp. 279 – 280). The passage from Virgil also influenced Dante, who alludes to it in the “Inferno” (cf. Canto 13). Here, Dante and Virgil are in the seventh circle of hell, in the “Wood of Thorns”, and Dante breaks a twig from a tree and the tree bleeds. The trees are human beings kept in a tree because they turned violence against themselves (cf. “Inferno”, Canto 13, ll. 33 – 48). Heaney expresses his
104 Irish myth through his references to the different sources such as the Divine Comedy. Motifs of the Divine Comedy are used in Heaney’s poems, for example, the association with the bleeding tree and the violence in the North of Ireland, i.e. his predicament with the native place in times of troubles. In the context of the Northern Ireland crisis, the allusion to Dante’s Divine Comedy can be seen as a reference to the blood that has already been spilled in the atrocities for the sake of the country. It can also be seen as an alternative symbol of the dark rose that may bloom again in red, which was a nationalist emblem.
In the same poem, another influence is Shakespeare. In the last line of “Sibyl”, “Our island is full of comfortless noises” (l. 20), Heaney alludes to Shakespeare’s The Tempest , where Caliban says: “Be not afraid: the isle is full of noises,/ Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not” (qtd. Corcoran, 1998: 90). As a matter of fact, Heaney reverses the line. The figure of Caliban is the child of a witch and the devil who is described through several characters in the play. Prospero says that he does not have a human shape ( The Tempest , I, 2, ll. 285 – 286). Caliban is a figure of interest because, on the one hand, he is seen as a natural man and, on the other hand, he is defined as a beast because he has no human shape and his instinct overrules his rationality. Caliban also represents a concept of Elizabethan times, for example, Erasmus of Rotterdam pointed out the struggle of man as a paragon of beast.
The figure of Caliban is also used in several other literary works. For example, Robert Browning wrote dramatic monologues from the point of view of Caliban. Browning’s “Caliban upon Setebos” (cf. 2005: 161 – 174) presents Caliban as a natural man according to Rousseau’s definition: A natural man is a human being that acts like an animal which is self- centred and not part of the treacherous dealings of society. Ernest Renan, the philosopher and writer, wrote a play where Caliban represents the inadequacies between the aristocratic and democratic ideas (cf. Renan, 1971). In his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray , Oscar Wilde mentioned that the nineteenth century’s dislike of realism is the wrath of Caliban who sees his own face in the mirror, and the nineteenth century’s dislike of romanticism is the wrath of not seeing Caliban in the mirror (cf. Wilde, 2004: 7). Finally, in James Joyce’s Ulysses , Stephen Dedalus is compared to Caliban by Mulligan. Reading this passage in a political context, the reference implies a political dimension because Stephen feels oppressed in his own house, which can be compared with the Irish wish for Home Rule. In Joyce’s Ulysses , Caliban is a symbol for the colonial victim, in Browning’s dramatic monologues Caliban is a natural man. Heaney compares all these images and puts them in the context of
105 his poem. He pleads for a better understanding of the colonizer and the colonized and demands that both sides have to come to terms with their past. In the case of Browning, Heaney implies that violence and a self-centredness is not the solution to a conflict like that in Northern Ireland. Heaney uses these literary references to link the events in Northern Ireland with symbols created in a literary genre. The literary sources provide Heaney with figures and images which he uses for his sense of place. Through using them in the poems in such a way, they acquire meaning and develop a narrative in the poem. When read in a political and social context, these images and settings are used as representations of Heaney’s predicament.
The last line of the poem “Sybil” can also be read in the context of King Lear , where Gloucester is blinded and left all “dark and comfortless” (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 90). Gloucester experiences an initiation in nature and returns as a new man. It can be seen that Heaney suggests that Irish people should heighten their awareness concerning their country. Heaney also draws a connection to the beginning of the poem where the Sibyl, inspired by the powers of the earth, begins to speak, “as forgotten water in a well might shake/ At an explosion under morning/ Or a crack run up a gable” (“Sibyl”, ll. 3 – 5, see Appendix, pp. 279– 280). The lines point out the connection of the Sibyl to the earth as source of her telling gift. Gloucester experiences an act of initiation in the storm. Heaney combines the intertextual references with his own choice of words: “The ground we kept our ear to for so long/ Is flayed or calloused, and its entrails/ Tented by an impious augury.” (ll. 17 – 19) Heaney gattaches a mythical dimension to his statement and, by doing so, distances the poem in time. It seems like an ancient account, but it is a reflection of the violence in Northern Ireland based on the ground that is the source of the conflict. The poem also shows that Heaney tries to come to terms with rural Wicklow and the experience of the Troubles. He finds his metaphors in mythology and bases the words on the landscape of rural Ireland.
Heaney also refers to Boris Pasternak’s “Hamlet”, which ends with a Russian proverb. Lowell translates it in Imitations : “To live a life is not to cross a field”, which is reversed in Heaney’s “Glanmore Sonnets”. In the opening sonnet, he mentions that “[n]ow the good life could be to cross a field” (qtd. Corocoran, 1998: 103). Heaney reversed the translated proverb and turned it into: “Now the good life could be to cross a field/ And art a paradigm of earth new from the lathe/ Of plougs. My lea is deeply tilled.” (“Sonnet I”, ll. 6 – 8) The image of crossing a field becomes the paradigm of art, where nature is conserved and recreated. Heaney alludes to the
106 act of forging a poem and his fulfilment of life in writing poetry. He found a voice as a poet and he found his metaphor, both being deeply rooted in the landscape of Derry.
In “Sonnet II”, Heaney alludes to the hedge-schools, which were “the only means the native Irish had of gaining an education during the period of the Penal Laws” (Corcoran, 1998: 104). In this poem, Heaney writes, “[t]hen I landed in the hedge-school of Glanmore/ And from the backs of ditches hoped to raise/ A voice caught back off slug-horn and slow chanter” (ll. 9 – 11). These lines can almost be seen as autobiographical because Heaney comes from a rural area and, as a Catholic, he had limited access to education. Through his education, he was able to become a poet whose poetic voice still remembers the ditches of the hedge-school. His poems are full of references to his home-ground because it is the source of his inspiration. Nature also played an important role in Romanticism, as manifested in Wordsworth’s The Prelude. Heaney refers to the ‘hiding places’ of Wordsworth’s Prelude in “Sonnet II”: “Sensings, mountings from the hidden places,/ Words entering almost the sense of touch/ Ferreting themselves out of their dark hutch – “ (ll. 1 – 3). Heaney shows a Wordsworthian approach towards poetry, as he senses the experiences from the “hidden places” (l. 1) of his childhood memory. Words become almost tangible entities, and the childhood experiences are re-created with words inspired by the native ground. In Sonnets IV, V, and VI, there are also hints at Wordsworth and the importance of childhood experiences in Romanticism in the way “they seek out moments analogous to the ‘spots of time’” (Corcoran, 1998: 103). In the “Sonnet IX” of the “Glanmore Sonnets”, Heaney alludes to Sir Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry , where Sidney states that poets have the responsibility to advance learning through their art. Heaney questions: “What is my apology for poetry?” (l. 11) Thereby, Heaney poses the question what his art’s responsibility is which is important for Heaney, as a poet. He used the classical sonnet, turned its diction and topic and “hung [it] with the reek of silage” (“Sonnet IX”, l. 7) that it may “continue, hold, dispel, appease” (“Sonnet II”, l. 12).
Dante becomes a part of Heaney’s poetry in Field Work and remains a presence throughout his subsequent work. The Divine Comedy is alluded to in several poems, for example, in “The Strand at Lough Beg”, where the epigraph is taken from the “Purgatory”. The poem is enclosed by the “Purgatory”. The ending of the poem mimics the scene where “the poet wipes his murdered cousin’s face with dew and moss, as Virgil wipes Dante’s at the opening of the Purgatorio ” (Corcoran, 1998: 85). Heaney describes the scene where he wipes his cousin’s face: “Then kneel in front of you in brimming grass/ And gather up cold handfuls of the dew/
107 To wash you, cousin. I dab you clean with moss/ Fine as the drizzle out of a cloud.” (“The Strand of Lough Beg”, ll. 38 – 41, see Appendix, 280 – 281) Heaney creates a mythological frame for the poem while he describes the murder of his cousin during the Troubles. By doing so, Heaney distances the incident and alludes to the incident through the symbols from Dante’s “Purgatory” and adds to them the dimension of the violence in Northern Ireland. The poem “An Afterwards” (see Appendix, p. 278) is set in the “ninth circle” (l. 1) of hell, being part of the “Inferno”: “ She would plunge all poets in the ninth circle” (l. 1). The “ninth circle” (l. 1) is the innermost circle and the closest to Lucifer. In this circle the worst punishments take place; furthermore, it is surrounded by legendary giants. Dante and Virgil, the two protagonists of the Divine Comedy , are set down to the ninth circle of hell by the giant Antaeus. This is also a place for betrayers who have either betrayed their country, their community or guests. The story in the Divine Comedy is based on a real account where Count Ugolino betrayed his country and then was betrayed by his companion, Archbishop Ruggieri. In Canto 32, lines 21 to 25, Dante describes a scene where Ugolino and Ruggieri are frozen in the lake Cocytus. They are so close together that Ugolino could gnaw on the head of the other. Heaney alludes to this in “An Afterwards”, where he writes: “Jockeying for position, hasped and mounted/ Like Ugolino on Archbishop Roger.” (ll. 7 – 8) This allusion is completed in the last piece of Field Work , “Ugolino”, which is a translation of Canto 32 and Canto 33 from the “Inferno” (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 85). Heaney’s translation starts with: “I walked the ice/ And saw two soldered in a frozen hole/ On top of other, one’s skull capping the other’s,/ Gnawing at him where the neck and head/ Are grafted to the sweet fruit of the brain/ Like a famine victim at a loaf of bread.” (“Ugolino”, ll. 1 – 6, see Appendix, pp. 278 – 279) Heaney translates the story of Ugolino who is imprisoned with his sons and has to starve to death. It is said that he ate his children, and therefore he is often portrayed as eating his own fingers, which he did in despair of hunger: “I bit on my two hands in desperations” (l. 74). Ugolino betrayed his country: “For the sins/ Of Ugolino, who betrayed your forts” (ll. 101 – 102). Ugolino is punished for having eaten his own children and having betrayed his country. In a way, the translation foreshadows the next poetry collection, Station Island , but it also sets the pieces of Field Work in the context of a poet’s struggle to come to terms as a poet in exile. Having experienced the beauty of the landscape of Derry and the violence of the Troubles, he writes about it in exile in the Republic of Ireland. In “An Afterwards”, he describes it as follows: “’You weren’t the worst. You aspired to a kind,/ Indifferent, faults-on- both-sides tact./ You left us first, and then those books, behind’.” (ll. 22 – 24)
108 7. Station Island
Station Island is divided into three parts. The first part contains poems which are inspired by events of everyday life and memories. The second part, “Station Island”, reflects on the dead and, finally, the third part, “Sweeney Redivivus”, is written for Sweeney, a king from the seventeenth century who was transformed into a bird. Heaney translated the story of Buile Suibhne as Sweeney Astray (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 110). The influence of this translation can be seen in Station Island , where the figure of Sweeney is the coherent theme of the collection. Heaney once more questions and defines identity, first of all his own. According to Vendler, he has defined his identity in terms of being a son of an agricultural worker and in terms of being Irish in his poetry collections (cf. Vendler, 1998: 78). Station Island is inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy , which is also a kind of borrowed setting for the second part of the collection, in the poem “Station Island”. Heaney’s fascination with Dante is expressed in the following where Heaney says that “Dante could turn values and judgments into poetry, the way the figure of the poet as thinker and teacher merged into the figure of the poet as expresser of a universal myth that could unify the abundance of the inner world and the confusion of the outer” (Heaney, 2002: 174 – 175). What Heaney says about Dante can also be applied to himself because Heaney wants to create with his poems a balance between the inner world and the outer world codified by themes and motifs from universal myths. Heaney can also be seen as a poet who, through repeating his images, conveys a universal myth based on his own experience. This myth is rooted in the language of rural Ireland. Heaney wants to express his personal pedicament in his poetry, similar to Dante who turned “values and judgements into poetry” (Heaney, 2002: 174). He defines his role as a ‘vates’ in the poem “Diviner” in Death of a Naturalist and he questions his responsibility as a poet in Field Work , where he quotes from Sidney’s Apology for Poetry . Heaney is a thinker and teacher in the role of a poet who creates a myth by giving his sentiments a “perpetuum mobile in language itself” (1980: 48). By doing so, his personal experiences become universal through being dressed in words related with the country. Heaney generally relates experiences and historical events to the landscape. By doing so, he creates a historical account tainted with his own imagination.
Heaney returns to a more elaborated line in his recent poetry collections, moreover, he returns to the iambic line, which Heaney has previously linked with the British oppression of the Irish inhabitants in the North of Ireland. Heaney’s awareness is heightened by Joyce in the second part of the poetry collection, i.e. in the poem “Station Island XII” (cf. McGuinness, 1994:
109 137). Heaney points out that reading A Portrait of the Artist was like an epiphany because “there is a moment in Stephen’s diary” (“Station Island XII”, l. 35, see Appendix, pp. 290 – 291) which “has been a sort of password in my ears,/ the collect of a new epiphany” (ll. 38 – 39). This was a point of initiation of Heaney concerning his use of the English language, as he did no longer feel imprisoned by the use of English as the language of the oppressor. Moreover, in the course of the poem, Joyce gives the advice that “it’s time to swim/ out on your own and fill the element/ with signatures on your own frequency,/ echo soundings, searches, probes, allurements,/ elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea.” (ll. 48 – 52) The English language belongs to those who are able to give the language a personal touch and to inscribe a personal note upon it (cf. McGuinness, 1994: 143).
Station Island is also influenced by Heaney’s friendship with the poet Robert Lowell. Heaney was inspired by Lowell’s style, and so some of Lowell’s characteristics of writing can also be found in Heaney’s poems. For example, he uses more adjectives in a line and poses rhetorical questions. In addition, Heaney takes over the question of the self and the definition of the self in his poems (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 84). However, it can be said that Heaney wants to create a universal myth based on his individual experiences which are shared with members of his community. As a poet, he has the gift to voice his experiences and, therefore, to create a visual image of them based on words rooted in the home-ground.
The section “Station Island” is based on the real Station Island, which is a rocky isle in the middle of Lough Derg in the County Donegal. Station Island is also called St. Patrick’s Purgatory, which has been a place of pilgrimage for Irish Catholics since medieval times (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 115). The collection’s second part can be seen as a literal pilgrimage to Station Island, and it also mimics Dante’s Divine Comedy. On his way, the poet encounters “ghosts of the type Dante meets in the Purgatorio : friendly, sad, self-defining, exemplary, admonitory, rebuking” (ibid.: 115 – 116). Heaney was influenced by Dante, which he pointed out in the essay “Envies and Identifications: Dante and the Modern Poet”:
What I first loved in the Commedia was the local intensity, the vehemence and fondness attaching to individual shades, the way personalities and values were emotionally soldered together, the strong strain of what has been called personal realism in the celebration of bonds of friendship and bonds of enmity. The way in which Dante could place himself in an historical world yet submit that world to scrutiny from a perspective beyond history, the way he could accommodate the political and the transcendent, this too encouraged my attempt at a sequence of poems which would explore the typical strains which the consciousness
110 labours under in this country. The main tension is between two often contradictory commands: to be faithful to the collective historical experience and to be true to the recognitions of the emerging self. I hoped that I could dramatize these strains by meeting shades from my own dream-life who had also been inhabitants of the actual Irish world. They could perhaps voice the claims of orthodoxy and the necessity to recognize those claims. They could probe the validity of one’s commitment. (Heaney 1985: 18 - 19)
Heaney was fascinated by the local intensity of the Divine Comedy , i.e., the passion and affection which is attributed to the description of single shades. This is also Heaney’s preoccupation because he wanted to communicate in his poetry with a personal note that is unique for his poetic voice. Another aspect that fascinated Heaney in Dante’s Divine Comedy is the way the different figures bond throughout the story – bonds of friendship and bonds of hostility are rendered. Heaney also tried to come to terms with his past and the sectarian division he experienced in Northern Ireland. Dante was a great source of inspiration and Heaney paid special attention the way the Divine Comedy contains political as well as transcendental aspects. Interestingly, Dante set the story of the Divine Comedy in the historical context of the Middle Ages and so examined historical aspects of the world. Heaney also places his poems in a historical context and examines also the historical events and takes on his responsibility as a poet. He creates a historical account tainted by myth. Heaney alludes to Dante’s Divine Comedy in his poems as well, for example, “The Loaning” (see Appendix, pp. 286 – 287), where the beginning of the poem is set in the limbo: “As I went down the loaning/ the wind shifting in the hedge was like/ an old one’s whistling speech. And I knew/ I was in the limbo of lost words.” (ll. 1 – 4) In these lines, Heaney mimics Dante’s descent to the Inferno, but he descends down a “loaning”(l.1), which is a lane in British dialect. As mentioned before, Heaney makes the English language his own by using attributes uniquely recognizable as Heaney’s poetic voice. He compares the “wind shifting in the hedge” (l. 2) with the “whistling speech” (l. 3) of an old person. Heaney builds a connection between place and speech. The wind in the hedge is like a “whistling speech” (l. 3). The landscape inspires the words he uses in his poems. The poem continues with Heaney saying that the words “rose in smoky clouds in the summer sky/ and settled in the uvulae of stones/ and the soft lungs of the hawthorn.” (ll. 11 – 13) His inspiration of the place is manifested in the creation of phrases, such as the “uvulae of stones” (l. 12) and the “soft lungs of hawthorn” (l. 13). As described in the passage above about Dante and the intensity of the local colour, Heaney also creates an intense local colour of the place by using the image of the descent to the Inferno as main setting. Heaney once more combines images from literary sources and makes them his own through his unique choice of words, which are rooted in the landscape. Heaney points
111 out that most of the time natural noises are not actively perceived; only when they are not there something is missing: “You can hear/ everything going on. High tension cables/ singing above cattle, tractors, barking dogs,/ juggernauts changing gear a mile away./ And always the surface noise of the earth/ you didn’t know you’d heard till a twig snapped/ and a blackbird’s startled volubility/ stopped short.” (ll. 30 – 38) Heaney draws a connection from the “limbo of lost words” (l. 4) to the real world. He tries to bridge the tensions of the inner world with those from the outer one, which Heaney also attributed to one of Dante’s encouragements concerning his poetry. In the poem, Heaney even explains his return to a diction rooted in the home-ground: “When you are tired or terrified/ your voice slips back into its old first place/ and makes the sound your shades make there…” (ll. 39 – 41). For Heaney this is a natural process which cannot be controlled because it happens automatically. This can also be seen in Heaney’s translation of a passage of Dante’s “Inferno” in Field Work. In the last poem from Field Work , “Ugolino”, there is a line which points out that Dante is recognized through his speech: “I know you come from Florence by your accent” (l. 26). Dante, like Heaney, emphasises the belonging to a place through language. Dante’s character is indirectly described by attributing to him the speech of Florence, which tells the reader that he speaks a kind of dialect and that he is from Florence. This section points out that the local dialect belongs to a certain region, which is also part of Heaney’s poetry.
Heaney further refers to Dante’s account of the bleeding tree in “The Wood of Thorns”, which Heaney describes in “The Loaning” as follows: “When Dante snapped a twig in the bleeding wood/ a voice sighed out of the blood that bubbled up/ like sap at the end of green sticks on a fire.” (ll. 42 – 44) In a political, context these images acquire the meaning of being an allusion to the violence in Northern Ireland where people kill each other for the sake of territory. They commit violence against themselves by participating in the killings. Heaney combines the political with the transcendental by using Dante’s Divine Comedy as a framework while referring to political and historical events of contemporary Ireland.
The third part of the poetry collection, Sweeney Redivivus, is dominated by Sweeney, a medieval king who is turned into a bird. In the poem “Changes” (see Appendix, p. 285), Heaney mixes images from his memories with the Sweeney story. Heaney begins the poem with his memory of the pump in the backyard of their farm in Mossbawn: “As you came with me in silence/ to the pump in the long grass” (ll. 1 – 2). Heaney starts with his roots and what he associates with his roots, the pump which was situated at the farm Mossbawn in Derry.
112 Heaney refers to his beginnings through the implied digging metaphor: “I heard much that you could not hear:/ the bite of the spade that sank it,// the slithering and grumble/ as the mason mixed his mortar” (ll. 3 – 6). But he does not only refer to the digging metaphor, he goes one step further and combines the rural idyll with the violence of the Troubles, “the mason mixed his mortar”. By doing so, he combines the memory with actual historical events, which is spiced up by the bird perspective that becomes important in the third part of Station Island . Heaney chooses the medieval king as an alter ego to have the opportunity to present the perspective of Sweeney. Heaney goes on a pilgrimage in Station Island . First, he is the pilgrim who has to face the shades of a dream world in the second part, “Station Island”, and in the third part, “Sweeney Redivivus”, he is Mad Sweeney, who is also a pilgrim, as Vendler points out: “Heaney reinvents himself, as a bird, the King Sweeney of Middle Irish legend” (Vendler, 1998: 91). As Vendler describes it, Heaney takes up “a new alter ego, the vigilant and tart Sweeney, whose bird’s-eye-view” (ibid.: 99) is a source of inspiration for Heaney for adding a new perspective to his poems. Heaney describes this new point of view in the poem “Changes” as follows: “I had a bird’s eye view of a bird,// finch-green, speckly white,/ nesting on dry leaves, flattened, still// suffering the light (ll. 12 – 15). Heaney is not yet used to this new perspective, but it opens a new horizon in his poetry, and when he looks back “[i]t will be good for you to retrace this path// when you have grown away and stand at last/ at the very centre of the empty city.” (ll. 24 – 26) Heaney looks back on his beginnings and his development as a poet. He has altered his style, but he always returns to his roots, the language rooted in his native place – Heaney still operates in the paradigms of place such as landscape, place, nature, water, and animals.
113 7. 1. Mythology
This chapter deals with the myths Heaney uses in Station Island . While the focus of this chapter is mainly on Heaney’s references to Dante’s Divine Comedy, Heaney also refers to other poets, for example, to Horace. The general theme of Station Island is ‘going on a pilgrimage’. Through the title of the poetry collection, Heaney implies that he goes on a virtual pilgrimage to Station Island. In the notes of this collection Heaney explains that part two is a series of dream-like encounters with well-known ghosts (cf. Heaney, 1984: 122 – 123). Heaney’s dream sequence has also a mythical character because when dreaming, people incorporate myths and adjust them to their personal experiences. Campbell describes this phenomenon as follows: “Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind” (Campbell, 1993: 19). When dreaming, people tend to incorporate figures from myths in order to comprehend the unconscious experiences, while myth generalizes the unconscious mechanisms of the human psyche.
As mentioned above, Heaney was inspired by Dante’s ability to balance historical events, politics and the transcendental. Heaney combines these three features and creates his own myth by borrowing images from Dante. “Sandstone Keepsake” uses Dante’s “Inferno” (Canto XII, ll. 118 – 120) as source of reference (cf. Heaney, 1984: 122). “Sandstone Keepsake” refers to the seventh circle of hell where the violent are punished. The way to the seventh circle is described as rugged and it is also the place where hell’s river Phlegethon, the river of blood, is situated. In “Sandstone Keepsake” (see Appendix, pp. 284 – 285), Heaney collects a stone which is blood red: “It was ruddier, with an underwater/ hint of contusion, when I lifted it,/ wading a shingle beach on Inishowen.” (ll. 5 – 8) Heaney combines the idea of the red stone with being reddened in the Phlegethon: “A stone from Phlegethon,/ bloodied on the bed of hell’s hot river?”(ll. 10 – 11). Heaney continues to compare his hand with the figure of Guy de Montfort, who was condemned to the river of blood. The figure of Guy de Montfort in the Comedy is based on the historical figure that killed Henry, the son of Richard, who was the brother of Henry III of England. Heaney alludes to this incident in his poem: “Evening frost and the salt water// made my hand smoke, as if I’d plucked the heart/ that damned Guy de Montfort to the boiling flood – “ (ll. 12 – 14). Heaney refers to the scene in the Comedy but
114 adds his personal note through his typical choice of words rooted in the home-ground. Heaney combines the literary account with a real account from his memory. He turns the personal into something universal and, by doing so, creates a myth about the landscape. It is said that in order to remember this deed the heart of Henry was placed in a cup and put on a column at London Bridge. It was a keepsake for the mischief the English had to endure because of the slaying of Henry. Heaney also creates a keepsake and turns the situation around: “but not really, though I remembered/ his victim’s heart in its casket, long venerated.” (ll. 15 – 16) The casket with the heart is compared to the red stones of the shingle beach because “there I was with the wet red stone” (l. 20). The red stones can be seen as keepsakes for Irish murders. Heaney compares his hand with that of the murderer of Guy de Montfort. He turns this statement in the last stance because he is “not about to set times wrong or right,/ stooping around, one of the venerators.” (ll. 23 – 24) Heaney returns to the imagery he used in his early volumes, for example in “At a Potato Digging” from Death of a Naturalist . In the poem, the Irish labourers are generally characterised as ‘stooping, bending towards the ground’. The last line of “Sandstone Keepsake” can be seen as an ironic comment on the long sufferings inflicted by the English on the Irish – the speaker of the poem is portrayed as a ‘venerator’. The English placed the heart of Henry on a stake to commemorate his death. Indirectly, Heaney suggests that the Irish people need a whole shore to commemorate their dead because the Inishowen is situated at the other side of Lough Foyle, where the internment camp Magilligan was situated (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 114).
The poems of part two are set on Station Island on Lough Derg in County Donegal. It is said that Patrick fastened and prayed on the island and so he established the custom of a three-day- pilgrimage with fasting and praying to Lough Derg. This is one reason why Station Island is also called St. Patrick’s Purgatory (cf. Heaney, 1984: 122). ‘Going on pilgrimage’ is the underlying theme of the poems in this collection. Again, Heaney was inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and transformed the shadow area of Dante’s underworld to Station Island, which is Heaney’s place of revelation. Campbell points out that the Comedy contains some general motifs of myth. Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is a very good source for the adventures of a hero because the journey beyond the usual is a recurrent theme in mythology: “These deeply significant motifs of the perils, obstacles, and good fortunes of the way […] The crossing first of the open sewer, then of the perfectly clear river flowing over grass, the appearance of the willing helper at the critical moment, and the high, firm ground beyond the final stream” (Campbell, 1993: 22). Dante includes motifs which can be found in various
115 forms in myths. The motif of undergoing a change and to cross a threshold is a core of myth. These features are also part of Heaney’s dream sequence in Station Island . Heaney emphasises this by repeating images with words inspired by the local area. By doing so, the act of crossing becomes a recurrent theme of Heaney’s myth. Heaney again uses figures and settings from a literary source and uses them to create a sense of place. He creates a cultural landscape which becomes a symbol of representation read in a political context.
As the Latin poet Virgil was a source of inspiration for Dante – Dante admired Virgil, the Latin poet – Virgil guides not only the literary figure of Dante through the “Inferno” and the “Purgatory” but also Dante in real life . The Latin poet was a kind of guide to write the Divine Comedy ; therefore, a lot of similarities can be found in Virgil’s Aeneid, for example, the crossing of the threshold where Aeneas descends into the underworld to meet his dead father. Campbell describes the connection of the divine world and the human world that “[t]he two worlds, the divine and the human, can be pictured only as distinct from each other – different as life and death, as day and night. The hero adventures out of the land we know into darkness” (Campbell, 1993: 217). Heaney adventures into a world where he faces his past and ghosts from his past.
In Part Two, the poem “Station Island VI” (see Appendix, pp. 287 – 288) expresses Heaney’s typical ‘Heaneyspeak’ with the first lines starting with: “Freckle-face, fox-head, pod of the broom,/ Catkin-pixie, little fern-swish” (ll. 1 – 2). These lines remind one of the diction of his early poetry collections but also of the depiction of the bog bodies. Heaney continues by pointing out that the Basilica’s floor is “[l]ike a tramped neolithic floor/ Uncovered among dunes where the bent grass/ Whispers” (ll. 10 – 12). The basilica is a relict from early Christian times which is found under the grass that also bends as the pilgrims bend down to pray. These lines can also be seen as a variation of a passage from the poem “Funeral Rites” from North , where “the procession drags its tail/ out of the Gap of the North/ as its head already enters/ the megalithic doorway.” (ll. 53 – 56, see Appendix, pp. 260 – 261) Religion is a very sensitive issue in Northern Ireland and even a source of violence, which manifested itself in the Troubles. Heaney describes the duties of the pilgrims who have to fulfil certain tasks: “Each unit of the contemporary pilgrim’s exercises is called ‘station’, and a large part of each station involves walking barefoot and praying around the ‘beds’, stone circles which are said to be the remains of early medieval monastic cells” (Heaney, 1984: 122). Heaney describes the pilgrimage to Lough Derg in this poem and refers to the monastic cells: “On the beds of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory” (“Station Island VI”, l. 19). He connects religion with the
116 country and the landscape. Heaney defines the landscape by attributing Christianity to its features because the basilica is part of the ground and laid bare like the bog queen. In the middle of the stanza, Heaney changes the topic and proposes to “[l]oosen the toga for wine and poetry/ Till Phoebus returning routs the morning star ” (ll. 21 – 22). Here, Heaney quotes a line from Horace’s Odes . In this ode, Horace addresses his friend Corvinius and suggests to him to be his guest until morning. Horace says that wine will be served and muses on the good qualities of the wine to honour his friend Corvinius (cf. Horace, Odes , “Book III”, XXI). As mentioned before, Heaney contrasts the self with the historical consciousness of the community. By defining himself as an individual against the common Catholic community, he also renders the place as more than simply a place for pilgrimage. He also heightens the awareness of his community to go beyond the communal borders of Catholicism.
In poem IX from the section “Station Island”, Seamus Heaney “gives a voice to one of the ten IRA hunger strikers who died in Long Kesh prison between March and September 1981” (Corcoran, 1998: 118). The portrayal of the starving body in section IX alludes to the depiction of the body in his poem “The Tollund Man” from Wintering Out. The poem “Station Island IX” is written from the perspective of the hunger striker who describes himself: “My brain dried like spread turf, my stomach/ Shrank to a cinder and tightened and cracked” (“Station Island IX”, ll. 1 – 2, see Appendix, pp. 288 – 290). The hunger striker is characterised by turf – a description which is synonymous with Irish in Heaney’s poetry collection.
The Irish hunger striker is described like the victims of ritual killings in Jutland, which Heaney describes in North . This description can be compared with the depiction in “The Tollund Man”, which begins with a depiction of his head, “his peat-brown head” (l. 2) and continues with the meal that is conserved in his stomach, “His last gruel of winter seeds/ Caked in his stomach” (ll. 7 – 8). Heaney turned the image around from the conservation of the last meal to starvation where the stomach becomes the form of a cinder. But both are bridegrooms to the goddess. In section IX of “Station Island” the hunger striker, also known as blanket man, who Heaney refers to as “[u]nder the prison blanket” (l. 5), becomes “a white- faced groom” (l. 11), while “The Tollund Man” is “bridegroom to the goddess” (l. 12). Both died for the earth goddess, who can be seen in Heaney’s poems as a representation of Ireland.
117 The hunger striker died for Ireland and became “a white-faced groom” (“Station Island IX”, l. 11) who “mouthed at my half-composed face” (l. 61). In these lines, Heaney implicitly refers to the ritual sacrifices that were found in the bogs and retrieved by Heaney in the poems which are part of his collection North. Heaney created in North a representation of Ireland rooted in the bog. The portrayal acquired its features from the ritual sacrifices found in bogs. By referring to the depiction of the victim of the ritual killings, Heaney mythologizes the representation of Ireland. These descriptions also acquire additional meaning by reading them in a political context. Through this context, the depictions of the victims become a means to represent the violence in the North of Ireland.
Heaney had to face real ghosts from the present and the past during his pilgrimage in the dream sequence of Station Island . He merges the real world with the unconscious one, the world of the gods, and according to Campbell, “a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol – the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know” (Campbell, 1993: 217). In myths, the hero has to enter “[t]he realm of the gods” (ibid.) in order to achieve a better understanding of the real world – to connect to the unconscious. The hero has to finish this adventure and returns to the real world with an altered perspective on the real world (cf. ibid.). Heaney as a pilgrim, like the hero in the myths, had to face his past in order to achieve a better understanding of the world – to connect to the unconscious side of his life. Through having been in that ‘yonder zone’, “[t]he hero has died as a modern man; but as eternal man – perfected, unspecific, universal man, he has been reborn. His second solemn task and deed therefore […] is to return then to us, transfigured, and teach the lesson he has learned of life renewed” (ibid.: 20). Heaney has faced the unconscious and returned to the real world. He has been reborn as a man with a greater understanding of the mechanisms of the world. Heaney, the poet, has to hand over his knowledge in his poems and by re-telling his experiences he heightens the awareness of his community. His experiences become universal, and through that they contribute to the myth Heaney creates inspired by the home-ground of Ireland.
118 7. 2. Sweeney Astray : An Irish Myth
The third part of Station Island , Sweeney Redivivus, is inspired by Sweeney, a medieval king who fought at the Battle of Moira (AD 637) where he went mad. Through a curse of St. Ronan, Sweeney was transformed into a bird (cf. Vendler, 1998: 92). Sweeney is based upon a real historical figure, although it is not proven if the figure was actually called Sweeney. As Heaney mentions in the introduction to his translation, “Sweeney Astray”, Sweeney – as an image – is part of the tension between Christianity and the headstrong Celtic temperament (cf. Heaney, 2001: v – vi). Heaney suggests in the introduction to the translation that Buile Suibhne is a significant work for several reasons. One reason is that because “Sweeney is also a figure of the artist, displaced, guilty, assuaging himself by his utterance, it is possible to read the work as an aspect of the quarrel between the free creative imagination and the constraints of religious, political, and domestic obligation” (ibid.: vi). Heaney is also in search for his personal creative freedom, and the duties he has to fulfil as being part of society are political, religious and domestic. As Heaney mentions in his introduction, the reason for indulging in the task of translating the work was that it “could be regarded as a primer of lyric genres – laments, dialogues, litanies, rhapsodies, curses” (ibid.: vii).
Sweeney is the consistent theme of the poetry collection and can be found in all three parts. The poem “The King of the Ditchbacks” belongs to the first part and already foreshadows the poems of Sweeney Redivivus. Heaney points out his relation with Sweeney, the medieval king, in the introduction to his translation Sweeney Astray :
My fundamental relation with Sweeney, however, is topographical. His kingdom lay in what is now south County Antrim and north County Down, and for over thirty years I lived on the verges of that territory, in sight of some of Sweeney’s places and in earshot of others – Slemish, Rasharkin, Benevenagh, Dunseverick, the Bann, the Roe, the Mournes. (Ibid.: viii).
Seamus Heaney’s connection to Sweeney is based on the topography where the kingdom of Sweeney was situated. For thirty years, Heaney lived on the threshold to those places and, therefore, has a personal connection to those places. He is rooted in the landscape, and his relation with Sweeney is determined by a feeling of belonging to a place. Heaney had moved to Wicklow when he started to work on the translation. The place where he lived was not far away from Sweeney’s final resting place, St. Mullins. According to Heaney, Wicklow is a place of woods and hills which reminded him of the green of the hedges of his home-ground.
119 The setting of his home-ground came to life in Sweeney, who “had first been embodied for me in the persons of a family of tinkers, also called Sweeney, who used to camp in the ditchbacks along the road to the first school I attended. One way or another, he seemed to have been with me from the start” (ibid.: viii). The poem’s title, “King of the Ditchbacks”, refers to this early association with Sweeney, where Heaney links the medieval king with the memory of a family of tinkers who camped in the ditchbacks along the road to his school.
The poem “The King of the Ditchbacks” (see Appendix, p. 287) is divided into three parts meditating on Sweeney and the process of translation and the lesson Sweeney taught Heaney. The poem begins: “As if a trespasser/ unbolted a forgotten gate/ and ripped the growth/ tangling its lower bars –” (ll. 1 – 4). Sweeney is a trespasser between two worlds: first, he lives a life as a human being and then he becomes a bird and so part of nature. In the next stanza, Heaney refers to the spirit of the green hedges in which Sweeney lives: “just beyond the hedge/ he has opened dark morse/ along the bank,/ a crooked wounding// of silent, cobwebbed/ grass” (ll. 5 – 10). Heaney combines the nature-grounded figure of Sweeney with his memory of the family camping in the ditchbanks, “along the bank” (l. 7). Heaney is also in his element of indulging in the beauty of nature and landscape. He uses words which are typical for his diction and which are rooted in his memory of Derry: “cobwebbed/ grass” (ll. 9 – 10). Heaney points out that he felt that in some ways Sweeney was with him from the start, which he describes in the poem: “If I stop/ he stops/ like the moon.” (ll. 10 – 12) Heaney develops associations from which the “bird-self of Sweeney – one of Heaney’s most successful alter egos – will arise” (Vendler, 1998: 92). Sweeney becomes an alter ego for Heaney and this goes so far that Heaney changes the perspective to the perspective of a bird: “so my vision was a bird’s/ at the heart of a thicket/ and I spoke as I moved/ like a voice from a shaking bush.” (“The King of the Ditchbacks”, ll. 48 – 51) In this passage, Heaney refers to the translation of Sweeney Astray where Sweeney “was a hurtling visitant of plain and field, bare mountain and bog, thicket and marshland” (Heaney, 2001: 8). According to Vendler, the “bird’s-eye view inspires lyric poems as satiric and acerbic as any Heaney has ever written, while also providing new forms of lyric solace” (Vendler, 2000: 99).
The “new forms of lyric solace” (ibid.) can be found in Sweeney Redivivus, the third part of Station Island . Heaney develops metaphors of flight and exile inspired by Sweeney. The influence of these metaphors is evident in titles of poems such as “The First Flight” (see Appendix, pp. 292 – 293), where he describes how he has to acquire his voice as a poet. He
120 has to free himself from his local dialect: “the ties and knots running through us/ split open/ down the lines of the grain.” (ll. 4 – 6). Heaney has to split himself from the ties “running through us” (l. 4), and he has to come to the core of his voice as a poet. In “Field Work I” (see Appendix, p. 284) from Field Work , he found his voice as a poet, “[w]here the sally tree went pale in every breeze,/ where the perfect eye of the nesting bird watched,/ where one fern was always green” (ll. 1 – 3) which he renounces in the poem “The First Flight”: “As I drew close to pebbles and berries,/ the smell of wild garlic, relearning/ the acoustic of frost// and the meaning of woodnote,/ my shadow over the field/ was only a spin-off” (ll. 7 – 12). Heaney alludes to Sweeney, or his translation of the Sweeney story, “Sweeney Astray”, who found refuge in Glen Bolcain: “It is nature’s pantry/ with its sorrels, its wood sorrels,/ its berries, its wild garlic” (Heaney, 2001: 11 – 12). Sweeney’s refuge can be compared with Heaney’s beginnings as a poet because he has to relearn the acoustic of nature. Heaney, the poet, reinvents himself through the bird-self of Sweeney. Sweeney’s imagination is assigned to nature, which Heaney points out: “[Sweeney’s] imagination is beautifully entangled with the vegetation and the weathers and animals of the countryside” (Heaney, 1980: 188). Heaney’s imagination is also inspired by the vegetation and the rural life. Heaney argues that “I have confined myself to poems that have had an enhancing effect on my own imagination and have simply tried to account for the peculiar nature of that effect” (ibid.). The flight alludes to the magical flight, which is part of mythology. Generally, the motif of the magical flight implies that a hero has fulfilled his task and that he wants to return to the real world. The problem is that for some reason the goddess does not allow this return and so the hero has to flee magically (cf. Campbell, 1993: 196 – 206). Sweeney is also a threshold figure who is punished and transformed into a bird, and through his consolation with Christianity he is able to return to the real world. According to Campbell, the aim of myth is to show human success of return from the threshold because first “[w]e shall consider it in the superhuman symbols and then seek the practical teaching for the historic man” (ibid.: 207). Heaney, as a poet, voices the practical teachings of Sweeney’s story. Heaney, like the poets in the Celtic Twilight, turns to the legends of the Celtic past to emphasise a feeling of belonging to the local place.
Heaney uses the figure of Sweeney to re-create himself and sometimes he uses images from Sweeney Astray and turns them around, for example, in the poem “The First Kingdom” (see Appendix, pp. 291 – 292). In this poem, he reverses the image of kingdom: “The royal roads were cow paths./ The queen mother hunkered on a stool/ and played the harpstrings of milk/
121 into a wooden pail.” (ll. 1 – 4) Through this inversed image of a kingdom Heaney describes his roots in the rural area of Derry. The poem continues that “[u]nits of measurements were pondered/ by the cartful, barrowful and bucketful.” (ll. 7 – 8) Heaney also reverses the units of measurements and bases them on measurements used on a farm. As mentioned above, Sweeney Astray is a story that dramatizes the imagination inspired by the vegetation and the weather. By dramatizing his rural heritage, Heaney creates an objective account of life in rural Ireland during the 1950s. He closes the poem with: “they are holding on, every bit/ as pious and exacting and demeaned.” (“The First Kingdom”, ll. 17 – 18) Heaney says that people living in rural Ireland are rooted in their traditions. As described in “The First Flight”, Heaney freed himself from the traditions of rural Ireland through access to education, which is important in a postcolonial reading of his poems. As a matter of fact, through gaining an education the suppressed minority is able to give their predicament a voice. In this way, Heaney points out his predicament of translating Sweeney Astray in the essay “Earning a Rhyme” from Finders Keepers that “[m]y hope was that the book might render a Unionist audience more pervious to the notion that Ulster was Irish, without coercing them out of their cherished conviction that it was British” (Heaney, 2002: 61). In the essay, Heaney continues to point out the reasons for his engagement with Sweeney, the medieval king. The story is set in a pre-colonial time when Christianity and Celtic kingship developed. Heaney hoped that the British claim of Ulster as being British might be complicated “[b]y extending the span of their historical memory into pre-British time, one might stimulate some sympathy in the Unionists for the Nationalist minority who located their lost title to sovereignty in the Gaelic dream-place” (ibid.). By referring to indigenous texts, the colonised people often try to reaffirm their identity and to define themselves through stories from a pre-colonial period. Heaney explains that “I simply wanted to offer an indigenous text that would not threaten a Unionist […] but that would fortify a Nationalist (after all, this old tale tells us we belonged here always and that we still remain)” (ibid.). Heaney points out that the text of Sweeney is set in an area which is claimed by the British as belonging to the British Empire through colonisation and victories in battles. By going back to a pre-colonial time, Heaney points out the Irish sovereignty of the place, which is manifested in the Celtic king Sweeney. The poet emphasises that through the tale the rights of the sovereignty of the territory is aligned to the Irish minority.
Heaney uses the figure of Sweeney to change the perspective in his poems. He changes his framework and chooses the story of ‘Mad Sweeney’ as a new framework for his poems.
122 Through the change of the tone and the form of the poem, poetry provides an answer to the world – as a matter of fact, “poetry’s answer to the world is not given only in terms of the content of its statements. It is given perhaps even more emphatically in terms of metre and syntax, of tone and musical trueness; and it is given also by its need to go emotionally and artistically ‘above the brim’, beyond the established norms” (Heaney, 1995: 25). Heaney points out that the diverse forms of poems in “Sweeney Redivivus” are means to create a connection between the reader and the poem. Moreover, the artistic creation is part of the communication between the poet and the reader.
Although he changes the framework, Heaney does not change his sources of imagination: nature, the weather and rural Ireland. The figure of Sweeney offers images connected with places in Ireland, which was also a reason for Heaney’s fascination with Sweeney. Generally, it can be said that Heaney creates a myth about rural Ireland according to the framework of the Sweeney story. The continuous motif of the poems is Sweeney and the way he has to come to terms with the area he has to live in. Sweeney has to adjust to the situation that he was transformed into a bird and through this transformation he learns to acknowledge nature. Sweeney is also a threshold figure because he enters the other world of nature and returns in a consolation with the Christian belief. Through that Sweeney has undergone a change, and he has heightened his awareness about himself and his country. For Heaney, Sweeney is the mythical figure, through that he can enter the realms of myth.
123 8. ‘Going-In-Between’
In the poetry collection The Haw Lantern , Heaney points out the duality of growing up in an area with two different cultural heritages. Heaney describes this duality through two different places: “Castledawson was a far more official place altogether, more modern, more a part of the main drag. The very name of the place is from the orderly English world of the eighteenth century, whereas Bellaghy is from an older, more obscure origin in Irish” (Heaney, 2002: 50). Heaney embraces the duality of heritage, and once he said “in a poem called ‘Terminus’ – I grew up in between” (ibid.). Heaney also reflects on the sectarian division that arose from this duality of cultural heritage. The volume, The Haw Lantern , was published in 1987 in the aftermath of the hunger strike in Northern Ireland, when violence belonged to the daily routine of living in Belfast. The Haw Lantern deals with the cultural differences in Northern Ireland and is an answer to the situation in the province.
Heaney’s predicament as a poet was to create a responsible form of art which is a topic he already referred to by posing the question of what his apology for poetry is. In his essay “Frontiers of Writing”, Heaney quotes George Seferis, who said about the Greek poet Makriyannis that poetry is “strong enough to help” (Heaney, 1995: 191). Heaney explains the phrase “strong enough to help” (ibid.) through Seferis’ explanation of Makryannis’ poetry, which is “an adequate response to the conditions in the world at a moment when the world was in crisis and Greece was in extremis ” (ibid.). Heaney found an appealing metaphor for the situation in Northern Ireland, which was also a country in crisis, and he expresses this moment of crisis in the poem “The Disappearing Island”, where he says that “[t]he land sustaining us seemed to hold firm/ Only when we embraced it in extremis .” (ll. 7 – 8) Heaney suggests that the land can only “hold firm” (l. 7) when the people living there “embraced it in extremis ” (l. 8), which, according to Seferis, can be done in poetry.
Heaney turns from the first-person singular to the first-person plural in this poetry collection. As pointed out above, as a poet Heaney has the ability to voice the communal experience. This is expressed in the poem “Spoonbait”, where he says: “Like the single drop that Dives implored/ Falling and falling into a great gulf.” (ll. 9 – 10) In these lines, Heaney also refers to his poem “The Diviner” from Death of a Naturalist , where the diviner is “hunting the pluck/ Of water” (ll. 3 – 4). Heaney confirms his position as diviner who can uncover the hidden sources of life and shape the consciousness of his community, as one drop falls “into a
124 great gulf” (“Spoonbait”, l. 10). The experience of the individual is part of the experience of the community. Poetry can help and be an answer “and the idea of an answering poetry as a responsible poetry, and the idea of poetry’s answer, its responsibility, being given in its language rather than in the language of the world that provokes it, that too has been one of my constant themes” (Heaney, 1995: 191). Heaney had to find a proper way to express his predicament, which is a matter of finding “befitting emblems of adversity” (Heaney, 1980: 57). The process of finding such emblems in English was a gradual development for several reasons. First, Heaney felt that the English language was not his home because it was the language of the colonizers and therefore forced upon him. Second, Heaney felt that he was robbed of his native language, Gaelic, and that he could not express his predicament according to his feelings. He expressed this by associating the English language with consonants, while Gaelic was more a “vowel-meadow” (“Anahorish”, l. 8). Last but not least, Heaney acquired a use of the English language which expressed his unique poetic voice. The consistency throughout his quest in language was that his diction was characterised by the places of his childhood in Derry. A place created in the mind through words inspired Heaney’s early experiences with rural Ireland. Heaney expresses his sense of Irishness based on the fact that he grew up in Northern Ireland and belonged to a minority while being educated in the prevailing British culture:
My identity was emphasized rather than eroded by being maintained in such circumstances. The British dimension, in other words, while it is something that will be resisted by the minority if it is felt to be coercive, has nevertheless been a given of our history and even of our geography, one of the places where we all live, willy-nilly. It’s in the language. And it’s where the mind of many in the republic lives also. So I would suggest that the majority in Northern Ireland should make a corresponding effort at two-mindedness, and start to conceive of themselves within – rather than beyond – the Irish element. (Heaney, 1995: 202)
Heaney points out that the circumstances of growing up in between heightened his awareness concerning his identity. Although he experienced the British dimension, it was never a part of his language. In language, Heaney creates pictures of different landscapes which are landscapes of the mind and which are alive through his ‘Heaneyspeak’. Heaney suggests that the people in Northern Ireland should embrace the Irish heritage and define themselves within its borders. Heaney refers to this duality in his poem “From the Republic of Conscience” (see Appendix, p. 294), where “[t]he old man rose and gazed into my face/ and said that was official recognition/ that I was now a dual citizen.” (ll. 31 – 33) Heaney is part of the two- mindedness but defines his identity in terms of opposing the one with the other. By doing so,
125 he can embrace the duality and see it as an advancement instead of a hindrance. Heaney acknowledges his duality and continues in the poem that “[h]e therefore desired me when I got home/ to consider myself a representative/ and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue.” (ll. 34 – 36) Here, Heaney points out that as long as one has one’s language, one can re-create a ‘country of the mind’. The language is the determining factor that shows to which part of the border a person belongs. Heaney illustrates this with the different names of Ulster because some say that Ulster is British and others say that Ulster is Uladh, an ancient province of Ireland. The feature that differentiates those two names is that “on one side of the march drain, you say potato. On the other side, I say pottato” (Heaney, 2002: 51). Heaney defines the difference in the language which defines where you come from.
This duality is also part of literature and poetry because it also finds its way into the work of writers from the North. According to Heaney, this two-mindedness means that writers from the North of Ireland have to come to terms with the experience of “being in two places at once” (ibid.: 115) and feel obliged to bridge the two opposing cultures in their work. The writers from Northern Ireland “belong to a place that is patently riven by notions of belonging to other places. Each person in Ulster lives first in the Ulster of the actual present, and then in one or other Ulster of the mind” (ibid.). The “Ulster of the mind” (ibid.) is manifested in emblems, for example, a nationalist cannot identify with the Union Jack as a sign for his place to the world. As a matter of fact, a nationalist cannot identify with the message that is inherent in that sign (cf. ibid.). Heaney plays with the different images from the two opposing groups in the poems contained in this collection. This can be seen in the poem “The Old Team” (see Appendix, p. 295), which begins with a description of the area: “A railed pavilion/ Formal and blurring in the sepia/ Of (always) summery Edwardian/ Ulster.” (ll. 1 – 4) Heaney describes Ulster in Protestant terms, as “Edwardian” (l. 3) and always “summery” (l. 3). The poet also refers to the Protestant area which is industrialized and has a railroad (cf. Heaney, 2002: 49). Heaney further mentions that any colonial territory is interchangeable because it “could be India/ Or England. Or any old parade ground/ Where a moustachioed tenantry togged out/ To pose with folded arms” (“The Old Team”, ll. 5 – 7). Generally, Heaney plays with the different images of colonial England. The colonial power is expressed in parades. The reference in the poem can also be seen as a hint to the parades in Ulster which are usually the reason of civil unrest because the Protestants tend to march through Catholic areas. The poem continues with referring to the local emblems, for example, the football team of Castledawson. The local football team is a symbol for the Protestant area because it is “up
126 past the Orange Hall and the Protestant Church, up past the entrance to Moyola Park, where the Castledawson soccer team had its pitch” (Heaney, 2002: 49). In the poem, Heaney exaggerates the claims of support in the poem: “ Moyola Park FC! Sons of Castledawson!” (“The Old Team”, l. 9). For Heaney, the soccer team belonged to the Protestant area and in his imagination the Catholic area represents “the much older Gaelic order of cattle herding and hill forts” (Heaney, 2002: 50). The poem continues with the statement that the soccer team, the parkland and the linen mill “have, in your absence, grown historical” (“The Old Team”, l. 12). Heaney moved to the Republic of Ireland and he has to acknowledge that the country has changed in his absence because “[t]he steady coffins sail past at eye-level.” (l. 14) In Northern Ireland the old rivalries and differences climaxed in the Troubles. Heaney uses images connected with the place to represent, for example, the Protestant area. Heaney chooses soccer as a token to represent the Protestant area, which is a token the Protestant community can identify with. The tokens of the Protestant area are a means to highlight the social and cultural differences between the Irish and the Protestant community. By doing so, Heaney defines the Irish community through constrasting it with the British Protestant community in Ulster. Heaney takes himself as an example and says that
I grew up between the predominantly Protestant and loyalist village of Castledawson and the generally Catholic and nationalist district of Bellaghy. In a house situated between a railway and a road. Between the old sounds of a trotting horse and the newer sounds of a shunting engine. On a border between townlands and languages. (Heaney, 2002: 50)
As pointed out above, Heaney grew up between a Protestant and loyalist village and a Catholic and nationalist district. This experience manifests itself in his poems, but it also shows his attraction with the local place.
127 8. 1. The Haw Lantern
The poems in The Haw Lantern are very diverse, as the volume contains parables, elegies and sonnets. One theme of this poetry collection is space – not space in its literal meaning but the absence of space – the absence of space a person leaves behind when she or he dies. The Haw Lantern contains elegiac pieces which are written in order to commemorate Heaney’s mother and his father, as both died in the 1980s. In “The Stone Verdict”, Heaney allegorizes his father by using the vignette which he already used in his allegories in Field Work . The vignette is used to identify his father as an individual (cf. Vendler, 1998: 75). To do so, Heaney has to create circumstances which define his father and typical features of him. He invents an environment that represents his father.
Heaney returned to myth and landscape to describe features of his father, as he had done in Station Island and Field Work . Heaney borrowed images from W.K.C. Guthrie’s book The Greeks and Their Gods. There he found an account of Hermes, the ancient god of the country side. Hermes meant in Greek a cairn or a heap of stones, which was Hermes’ verdict of having killed Argos. The gods threw their voting pebbles to his feet (cf. ibid.). Heaney combines the myth of the god of the country with features of a farm. In the poem “The Stone Verdict” (see Appendix, p. 295), Heaney buries his father under a heap of stones: “piling up around him/ Until he stood waist deep in the cairn” (ll. 10 – 11). Heaney’s father was a farmer, a herder, and he worked with nature and was rooted in the landscape. In the poem, he becomes “maybe a gate-pillar/ Or a tumbled wallstead where hogweed earths the silence” (ll. 12 – 13). Heaney roots his father in the place and describes him through the place, moreover, he compares him to a wallstead surrounded by hogweed. The person rests in a place and is described through the landscape.
In the elegiac sequence of “Clearances”, Heaney commemorates his mother. It is a sequence of poems characterised by absence, which can be seen in “Clearances 7”, where Heaney describes the death of his mother and the moment the family stood around her: “The space we stood around had been emptied/ Into us to keep” (ll. 11 – 12). This line is taken up in the next poem, “Clearances 8” (see Appendix, pp. 293 – 294), and altered: “I thought of walking round and round a space/ Utterly empty, utterly a source” (ll. 1 – 2). The place where his mother used to be is empty but this empty place becomes like the chestnut tree Heaney once mentioned in the essay “A Placeless Heaven” from The Government of the Tongue . The poem
128 continues: “Utterly a source/ where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place/ In our front hedge above the wallflowers.” (“Clearances 8”, ll. 2 – 4) These lines can be compared to his account in the essay, where he writes that his aunt planted a chestnut tree in a jam jar in the year he was born. The tree sprouted, and the aunt planted the tree in front of the house (cf. Heaney, 1988: 3). The Heaneys moved away, and the new owner cut down the tree. After some time, Heaney remembered the tree and in his “mind’s eye I saw it as a kind of luminous emptiness” (ibid.). Heaney refers to it in the poem: “my coeval/ Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole,/ Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere” (“Clearances 8”, ll. 10 – 12). The “luminous space” becomes a “bright nowhere” (l. 12). Heaney has identified himself with the chestnut tree, and in this poem he identifies the absence of his mother with the absence of the tree. He connects her with the ‘luminous emptiness’ of the chestnut tree. As he re-creates the image of the chestnut tree, he also re-creates the image of his mother. Heaney ascribes features of the chestnut tree from his childhood in the rural county Derry, which is also an inspiration for his choice of words. Heaney roots his mother in this place and, by doing so, he defines her through the place.
Heaney moves from the singular allegories to a vision of a people, which is expressed through a diction inspired by his home-ground. In “Mud Vision”, Heaney creates an account of a people rooted in the ground but he also uses contemporary images such as satellite link-ups to represent Northern Ireland. According to Corcoran, the “Mud Vision” echoes a tone of cynical sarcasm which should de-mask the continual controversy of Irish historical writing (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 153). To do so, Heaney uses the contemporary icons and symbols of Protestant and Catholic loyalties. The “Mud Vision” (see Appendix, pp. 296 – 298) is a cynical account of the codes and signs of Northern Ireland, which Heaney tries to unify in a vision of a country based on its common entity – the ground, the mud. In the first stanza of the poem, Heaney paints a realistic account where “[s]atellite link-ups/ Wafted over us the blessing of popes, heliports/ Maintained a charmed circle for idols on tour” (ll. 5 – 7). It is a description of a plain city with no hope, but it can also be read in the context of the Troubles, as Heaney goes on to describe Ulster and the situation between Protestants and Catholics. Heaney paints a pessimistic picture of the sectarian division because the pope’s blessing is propagated over the heads of people and heliports keep a “charmed circle” (l. 7) for the marches of the Protestants and Catholics. The “idols on tour” (l. 7) can be seen as a reference to the parades where each group marched with their banners through the town. When crossing the territory of the other group, it usually caused a violent uproar: “And casualties on their
129 stretchers” (l. 8). The banners and signs were seen as an insult because they represented the ideas and ideology of the other – either the colonizer or the colonized. Through the violence, the people and the city were paralyzed: “We sleepwalked/ The line between panic and formulae” (ll. 8 – 9). People adjusted to the sectarian tensions and the killings, and their feelings ranged from panic to reaffirmation of the ideology of each group. In the following lines, Heaney refers to the circulation of the two different self-defined representations of Ireland because in these images the people had “screentested/ Our first native models and the last of the mummers” (ll. 9 – 10). The word “screentested” (l. 9) refers to the extensive broadcast coverage in Northern Ireland, but Heaney also refers to the poem “The Last Mummer” from Wintering Out . “The Last Mummer” deals with a mythical figure who “[c]arries a stone in his pocket,/ an ash-plant under his arms” (ll. 1 – 2). The figure is connected with nature because it carries an “ash-plant” (l. 2) – like Heaney the poet. “The Last Mummer” is a metaphor for a poet and his role in society as well as his role as vates. Heaney combines pagan and Catholic symbols in the description of the mummer. The line from “Mud Vision” has to be read in context of the poem “The Last Mummer”, and so ‘the first native models’ refer to the pagan Celtic times of social order while ‘the last mummer’ refers to the models propagated by poets, for example, Synge’s depiction of rural life on the Aran Islands.
The tone of the poem suddenly shifts in the second stanza: “And in the foggy midlands it appeared,/ Our mud vision” (“Mud Vision”, ll. 15 – 16). The tone shifts with the appearance of the mud vision – it is a transition between dream and waking state. The dream sequence is a motif of myth, as it could be seen in the dream sequence of Station Island . In dreams, the unconscious reveals itself to the mind; through this transcendental state the unconscious can teach the mind a lesson. Heaney returned from the Dantean setting of Station Island with new insights. This time, Heaney changes the setting and makes allusions to folk stories of creation. According to Campbell, symbolic figures of folk tales of creation and the world they inhabit are a source of “greater revelations: the world and the age between sleep and waking consciousness” (Campbell, 1993: 295). In the first stanza, there is a certain stasis because the people just watch from outside ‘ourselves’, which can be seen as an allusion to Sinn Fein which means ‘we ourselves’. Heaney compares their paralysis with “a man on a springboard/ Who keeps limbering up because the man cannot dive.” (“Mud Vision”, ll. 12 – 13) Heaney speaks for the community and recognises that history is repeating itself in the North of Ireland. The phrase “limbering up” (l. 13) is quite interesting because both meanings of the
130 phrase, either ‘to warm up’ or ‘to attach a limber to a canon’, are possible in the context of Northern Ireland. Heaney plays with propagandistic phrases and symbols from both groups, Catholic and Protestant, to point out that the division is also based on cultural differences.
The poem is written in the first-person plural and therefore reflects a communal experience. It reminds one of the creation story from the Bible where Adam is made out of clay. The poem reflects on this motif because it draws a parallel between God as the creator and the poet as the forger of a poem. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the poet fulfils his duty of providing an answer to the communal sentiments. The poem continues by describing the shape of the mud vision: “A gossamer wheel, concentric with its own hub/ Of nebulous dirt, sullied yet lucent.” (ll. 18 – 19) The description of the vision is inspired by a piece of art from the English conceptual artist Richard Long. The work was “a huge display of concentric circles high in a whitewashed wall, each circle made up of hand prints and each hand print made with mud” (Corcoran, 1998: 153). The piece of art provided the image for Heaney’s mud vision and for his predicament to voice the hidden sources of life – it is a perfect ‘emblem of adversity’. Furthermore, it echoes Heaney’s earlier attempts of representing Ireland in the bog and the moss from which he conjured figures such as the “Bog Queen” or the “Tollund Man”. It also supports Heaney’s rootedness in the place and his unique diction which is inspired by his native place.
Heaney’s vision continues in the mode of a creation story because “we were vouchsafed/ original clay, transfigured and spinning.” (“Mud Vision”, ll. 20 – 21) Heaney refers to the idea that man is created out of clay, which is part of many folk stories of creation. In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces , Campbell provides an example for this with a creation story from the Blackfeet Indians. In this story, “[o]ne day Old Man determined that he would make a woman and a child; so he formed them both – the woman and the child, her son – of clay. After he had moulded the clay into human shape, he said to the clay, ‘You must be people’” (Campbell, 1993: 290). In this passage, Heaney draws a connection between the mud vision and the people. In a way, it can be said that Heaney tries to re-create a creation story – it is like beginning anew. With his poetry, Heaney is an archaeologist and an anthropologist who searches in the ground for the beginnings of human life – but he also searches for the development of human life. By doing so, Heaney, on the one side, shows that “we” (“Mud Vision”, l. 20) belong to the ground because it is where “we” (l. 20) come from. On the other side, he shows that human beings were “transfigured” (l. 21) and changed as the order in the
131 country changed because “[o]n altars bulrushes ousted the lilies” (l. 29). Christianity spread over the country, and the word of God replaced the pagan religions which were rooted in nature.
In the third stanza, Heaney returns to the diction of his first poetry collection and uses words such as “furrow” (l. 35) and “mould” (l. 34). He refers to a time when “we stood in umber dew and smelled/ Mould in the verbena, or woke to a light/ Furrow-breath on the pillow” (ll. 33 – 35). Heaney reaffirms the belonging to the place through words that enhance a vision of a brown mouldy place covered in dew. It seems like an initiation. Heaney describes this initiation in his essay “Mossbawn” from Preoccupations , where he remembers that “thirty years ago, when another boy and myself stripped to the white country skin and bathed in a moss-hole, treading the liver-thick mud, unsettling a smoky muck off the bottom and coming out smeared and weedy and darkened” (Heaney, 1980: 19). This account can be seen as a source of inspiration for Heaney’s description in the poem. Heaney also refers to the smell of the mould, “Furrow-breath” (“Mud Vision”, l. 35) in his essay because on their way home the boys smelled “of the ground and the standing pool, somehow initiated” (Heaney, 1980: 19). This explains Heaney’s preoccupation with place and the native place but it is also a point of reference for the lines in the poem, where he describes the communal experience through images from his personal ones. Heaney offers a communal spirit based on the metaphors of the ground. He creates a spirit of belonging to the place by accepting being part of it. In a Northern Irish context, this means that a mutual understanding could be achieved through the recognition of the place of the other. Heaney extends this mutual understanding with pointing out that “only ourselves/ Could be adequate then to our lives” (“Mud Vision”, ll. 37 – 38). In these lines Heaney explains that through a definition of the community, the Irish people, “we”, can live the life “we” want. In these lines, Heaney refers to the ‘consciousness of the race’ – only by having an awareness who you are and where you belong to, the ‘we’ can be defined and an individuality can be developed. Heaney points this out in his essay “The Frontier of Writing”, where he says that he reflects on
de Valera’s dream of transforming the local customs and folk Catholicism of rural Ireland in the middle of the twentieth century into something more self- conscious and purposeful his dream of founding a culturally distinct and spiritually resistant Irish republic, a dream which has been gradually abandoned without ever being replaced by any alternative vision of the future, certainly not by anything as ardent or self-born. (Heaney, 1996: 10)
132 Heaney puts the vision of de Valera in words and, musing on this idea, creates the images in “Mud Vision”. In the poem, Heaney expresses the idea and adds that “we forgot that the vision was ours,/ Our one chance to know the incomparable/ And dive to a future.” (ll. 52 – 54) Heaney points out that the Irish people forgot that there was once a chance of defining Irishness, which he uses as a starting point for his poem because he takes up de Valera’s idea of creating a culturally independent Ireland and fulfils the task of promoting cultural awareness in the poem. The repeated use of ‘ourselves’ can be seen as a suggestion to accept the Celtic heritage which Sinn Fein stands for.
In the fourth stanza, Heaney changes the enthusiastic mood of the third stanza. The poem continues with “[w]e lived, of course, to learn the folly of that” (l. 43). De Valera’s dream of a culturally independent Ireland was never achieved and so “[t]he clarified place/ Had retrieved neither us nor itself – except/ You could say we survived.” (ll. 55 – 57) The people in Northern Ireland survived and missed the chance to “be mud-men” (l. 58). This time, Heaney uses mud as an image to heighten the awareness of his community concerning their cultural identity. As Heaney created the bog queen to represent Ireland, he created the vision of the mud man to shape an awareness of his community. The features of this awareness are grounded in the place, which shows that a place can define a cultural awareness of a community. The cultural identity could have been a “[f]igure in our own eyes for the eyes of the world” (l. 58). Through defining themselves by a “figure” (l. 58) they would have a “figure” (l. 58) of representation to the outer world.
133 8. 2. An Allegorical Place
In The Haw Lantern , Heaney engages in new modes of poetry, for example, in parables. The starting point for forging parables was that Heaney was asked by a branch of Amnesty International to write a poem for the United Nations Day, but he could not think of anything (cf. Brown, 2002: 84). When he turned down the offer, he felt free to write the poem because then “I began to think up images to suggest the landscape and weather of conscience” (ibid.). The poem that developed out of this was “From the Republic of Conscience”, where “[f]og is a dreaded omen there but lightning/ spells universal good” (ll. 13 – 14). Heaney uses features of nature to create a “Republic of Conscience”, which shows that for him forging a poem is connected with creating an imaginary landscape – Heaney embeds conscience in a landscape.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, Heaney opens a new space which is described in the poem “From the Frontier of Writing”, where Heaney develops a “nilness around that space” (l.1). Generally, it can be said that Heaney’s poetry reflects on space and place, and Heaney uses parables to reflect the outside on the inside (cf. Vendler, 1998: 117). Heaney’s source of inspiration to write parabolic and allegorical poems were writers from Eastern Europe who invented a mode of allegorical writing in order to avoid censorship. Poets such as Zbigniew Herbert and Vasko Popa are mentioned throughout Heaney’s work because they influenced him to write parables. Heaney does not have to fear censorship; Heaney’s parables are written to “escape the topicality of political journalism, on the one hand, and to define the realm of the invisible, on the other. The invisible, in Heaney’s upbringing, was the prerogative of either nationalist politics or the Catholic religion” (Vendler, 1998: 117). Heaney’s poetry is influenced by his cultural background and by his personal experiences such as growing up in Northern Ireland as a Catholic. In his poetry, Heaney tries to find a balance between his cultural background and his experiences of being a Catholic in Northern Ireland. The means to express this balance is his choice of words which is inspired by Derry.
An example for this is the poem “From the Canton of Expectation” (see Appendix, pp. 295 – 296), which consists of three parts, each of which deals with a different perspective on the situation in Northern Ireland. The first stanza begins with the description of the status quo where “[w]e lived deep in a land of optative moods,/ under high, banked clouds of resignation.” (ll. 1 – 2) These lines allude to Heaney’s essay “Extending the Alphabet” from Redress of Poetry where he describes the poetry within the body politic by referring to the Czech poet Miroslav Holub, who sees
134
the function of drama, and so by extension the function of poetry and of the arts in general, as being analogous to that of the immunity system within the human body. Which is to say that the creative spirit remains positively recalcitrant in face of the negative evidence, reminding the indicative mood of history that it has been written in by force and written it over the good optative mood of human potential. (Heaney, 1995: 24).
Holub points out that history forces itself upon the “good optative mood of human potential” (ibid.). Heaney takes up this idea and creates a landscape for the optative moods of his country which is overshadowed by “banked clouds of resignation” (“From the Canton of Expectation”, l. 2). The first passage continues with an account of rural life “where children sang / songs they had learned by rote in the old language.” (ll. 7 – 8) In the rural area, Gaelic is still spoken although it is not learned at school but “by rote” (l. 8). Heaney continues the poem by referring to the “brotherhood” (l. 9) which stands for Catholic nationalist sentiments rooted in Irish history of the independent movement of Ireland. As it could be seen in the word field analysis of his early poetry collections, Gaelic language was and still is part of his poetic voice.
In the next section, a “change of mood” (l. 18) takes place and the old optatives are changed to “a grammar/ of imperatives” (l. 24 – 25). The “grammar/ of imperatives” (l. 24 – 25) is introduced by “paving stones/ of quadrangles” (l. 23 – 24). It opens a new space to a courtyard paved with stones. Heaney turns the inner sentiments outside by expressing them in a language inspired by his native ground, for example, he uses the word “causeways” (l. 22). In Northern Ireland, there is the Giant’s Causeway, which is part of Irish legend because it was built by a giant as a connection between Scotland and Northern Ireland. So it can be said that Heaney uses typical features of the landscape to attach to his poems a certain sense of locality which includes the attachment of myth to the local place.
In the third passage, Heaney refers to the weather of the “Canton of Expectation” because the speaker of the poem stands “bareheaded under the banked clouds” (l. 39). This line refers to the “banked clouds of resignation” (l. 2). The speaker of the poem has given in to his fate but there is a sign of hope in the poem because the clouds are “edged more and more with brassy thunderlight” (l. 40). The image of thunderlight is taken from the poem “From the Republic of Conscience”, where lightning is seen as a good sign. The image of resignation is rendered by the positive sign of lightning. In his poem, Heaney expresses his hopes for a peaceful future
135 of Northern Ireland. Vendler points out that the “three parts – nationalist exhausted optatives, youthful imperatives and the yearning for an indicative – sketch the state of the Northern Catholic population, and its competing discourses, without ever mentioning it by name” (Vendler, 2000: 125). Heaney participates in the contemporary discourses by alluding to them in his poems. Through that he shapes the perception of the readers and heightens the awareness of his community. Heaney uses well-known images from the competing discourses to turn “the material world of politics into the immaterial world of cultural habits [which] is one of the strategies of these poems” (ibid.). Heaney turns the political into the cultural, and through the cultural he contributes to shaping the awareness of his community. In the immaterial world of cultural habits, he defines the identity of the community he belongs to.
Heaney creates landscapes to express cultural habits which are also eminent in “Parable Island” (see Appendix, pp. 298 – 299), where Heaney refers to the notion that Northern Ireland is an island because though their “only border is an inland one/ they yield to nobody their belief/ that the country is an island.” (ll. 2 – 4) These lines set the scene for the poem, which is Northern Ireland because the border is inland to the Republic of Ireland. These lines also reflect, on the one hand, the loyalist attitude of belonging to Great Britain and justifying the separation from the Republic of Ireland. On the other hand, they show that Northern Ireland does not belong to either side because its historical experience is neither shared by Britain nor by Ireland.
In the following lines, Heaney returns to the naming of places. Vendler points out that in “Parable Island” all names are questioned and that the poem is about the metaphysics of naming (cf.Vendler, 2000: 125). Heaney turns from his pleasure of naming places in Wintering Out to questioning the place names. This can be seen as an allusion to the place poems, dinseannchas, in Wintering Out , where he refers to the Gaelic names of places. Moreover, he creates an etymology of the place rooted in its name. Heaney alludes to the “far north, in a region/ every native thinks of as ‘the coast’” (“Parable Island”, ll. 5 – 6). Heaney draws a nice connection to the first lines of the opening sequence. Heaney questions the place names by pointing out that in the far north “there lies the mountain of the shifting names.// The occupiers call it Cape Basalt./ The Sun’s Headstone, say farmers in the east.” (ll. 7 – 9) In the poem, Heaney operates within the competing discourses by distinguishing between the occupiers and the farmers, who are considered as ‘natives’. Heaney describes the one through the other, which is part of a postcolonial strategy of defining identity. The place is lost
136 between the two groups and in order “[t]o find out where he stands the traveller/ has to keep listening –” (ll. 11 – 12). The only way for the traveller to find out where he is, is to listen because the different accents and dialects will reveal where he is. As mentioned in the chapter headed ‘Going-In-Between’, in Heaney’s opinion, the place is defined through language. In Heaney’s poetry, language is one feature of place, and the people who live in a certain area speak a certain language. It can be said that this local dialect is one means to contribute to the feeling of belonging to an area. – It shows that the area contributes to defining the people by attributing to them a certain way of speaking.
The importance of speech is pointed out in “From the Land of the Unspoken” where Heaney states: “When or why our exile began/ among the speech-ridden, we cannot tell” (ll. 10 – 11). Heaney points out that when a people loses its native tongue, they are in exile in their own country. But he refers to the sentimental identification and solidarity “when we hear their legends of infants discovered/ floating in coracles” (ll. 12 – 13). Heaney alludes to the Celtic legends and the solidarity the people feel when they hear the stories.
Heaney’s attempts of heightening the consciousness of his community can be compared to Yeats’ attempts in the Celtic Twilight, a literary movement that ensured a revival of Celtic folk tales. Heaney points out that the Celtic Twilight belonged to a campaign that was nurtured for a very long time. The campaign included fields such as journalistic, political, poetic, and dramatic areas of life. The aim of this movement was the idea of conquest, not in its literal meaning of territorial conquest but as a conquest of the imagination. Through a flourishing initiation of the people’s imagination, the people could recover their territory with new confidence (cf. Heaney, 1980: 104). In the ideas of the Celtic Twilight movement, there is the key to Heaney’s poetry because through stirring the imagination of a people concerning their territory Heaney could initiate a new awareness concerning their territory.
137 8. 3. Terminus – Borders and Boundaries
The poem “Terminus” is inspired by a memory from Seamus Heaney’s childhood where the River Moyola flows south-east from a source in the Sperrin Mountains down through County Derry where it enters Lough Neagh. This is only a few miles away from the place where Heaney grew up. At Lower Broagh, there was a ford where “a trail of stepping stones led across from one bank to the other, linking the townland of Broagh to the townland of Bellshill. […] I always loved venturing out from one stepping stone to the next, right into the middle of the stream” (Heaney, 2002: 48). This memory, which triggered off the poem, is also reflected in the lines, where he describes how he “stood on the central stepping stone” (l. 20). However, the memory did not only trigger off the poem, it also explains Heaney’s occupation with place.
Heaney points out the reason why he called the poem “Terminus” and explains that it is due to the fact that “I think of that child rooted to the spot in midstream, I see a little version of the god the Romans called Terminus, the god of boundaries. The Romans kept an image of Terminus in the Temple of Jupiter on Capitol Hill and the interesting thing is that the roof above the place where the image sat was open to the sky” (Heaney, 2002: 48). Terminus, the god of boundaries, is the perfect emblem for Heaney and Heaney’s poetry. Heaney is characterised by the experience of growing up ‘in between’, which is also hinted at in his poetry. Terminus, who is represented through the open place, is a nice metaphor for The Haw Lantern because the open space can be seen as a motif of this collection. The place re-created in poetry is one of Heaney’s predicaments which could be seen in “Clearances 8” from Station Island , where he compared the emptiness caused by the death of his mother with the emptiness of the chestnut tree from his childhood. The empty space becomes a kind of luminous presence in Heaney’s poetry.
Terminus was not only the god of boundaries, but the word also refers to the Gaelic word ‘tearmann’, which often appears in Gaelic place names. ‘Tearmann’ means “the glebe land belonging to an abbey or a church, land that was specially marked off for ecclesiastical use” (ibid.: 49). In the Moyola district, there were no places that were called Termon, which is a form of tearmann, Heaney felt instinctively that the river Moyola was a terminus (cf. ibid.). For Heaney, the river Moyola is a marker of borders. Heaney recognised that the Moyola was a terminus when he stood on the stepping stone in the middle of the river (cf. ibid.).
138 Heaney turned from the collective to the individual because the poem is written in the first person singular. “Terminus” (see Appendix, p. 293) begins with a description: “When I hoked there, I would find/ An acorn and a rusted bolt.” (ll. 1 – 2) The first line contains a word that is, in a way, the key to the poem because in his essay “Something to Write Home About” from Finders Keepers Heaney explains that when he hears somebody saying the word ‘hoke’ he feels like returning to “the very first place in myself. It’s not a Standard English word and it’s not an Irish-language word either, but it’s undislodgeable there, buried in the very foundations of my own speech. […] The word means to root about and delve into and forage for and dig around, and that is precisely the kind of thing a poem does as well” (Heaney, 2002: 50). This word explains Heaney’s poetry but also his attempts of writing poetry because Heaney also digs in the ground and delves into the native place in order to create a soundscape of the place. By doing so, he enhances the consciousness of his community. The first two lines of “Terminus” also point out his rootedness in the place because he “hoked there” (“Terminus”, l. 1) and he found an acorn and a bolt, moreover, he shows that he is deeply rooted in his home-ground.
In the next lines, Heaney refers to the two different areas, the Protestant area of Castledawson and the Catholic area of Bellaghy. These were the two areas that bordered each other. In Castledawson, the family of his mother lived in a modern terrace house with a vegetable garden. The house of his grandparents “could have been in any spick-and-span English mill village, any working-class terrace where the factory workers came and went to the sound of the factory horn” (ibid.: 49). In Castledawson, there was a linen mill and “a factory chimney/ And a dormant mountain” (ll. 3 – 4). The “dormant mountain” (l. 4) is part of Bellaghy, or also called Ballyscullion. This is the area where the family of Heaney’s father lived. They lived in thatched houses and the kitchens had opened fires. The houses were also situated in the middle of fields, and the sound the inhabitants heard were grazing cattle. Heaney explains that there was not only a difference in living conditions but that this rural side of his life represented “a different cultural location as well” (Heaney, 2002: 49). Heaney points out that if he listened he would hear “an engine shunting/ And a trotting horse” (“Terminus”, ll. 5 – 6). In these lines, Heaney exemplifies the differences between the industrialized Protestant area and the rural Catholic area.
These differences and the experience of growing up ‘in between’ caused “second thoughts” (l. 8). Heaney states that one growing up in the North consequentially has second thoughts
139 because “[w]ith so much division around, people are forever encountering boundaries that bring them up short. Second thoughts are an acknowledgement that the truth is bounded by different tearmanns , that it has to take cognizance of opposing claims” (Heaney, 2002: 51). Heaney shows the physical borders of the area which are visible through the different physiognomy of the landscape. But the differences in the landscape also reflect the cultural differences. In his poem, Heaney expresses the cultural differences of Protestants and Catholics in the metaphor of the two different places.
He continues to point out through himself the inherent duality of growing up between these two places which represent two different cultures. Heaney says that “I was the march drain and the march drain’s bank/ Suffering the limit of each claim.” (ll. 13 – 14) In his essay “Something to Write Home About”, Heaney explains that ‘march’ has a special meaning for him because when he was young the word was not yet assigned to Orange marches or Apprentice Boy marches. In that area, the word intended the meaning “to meet at the boundary, to border by, to be matched up to and yet marked off from; one farm marched another farm” (Heaney, 2002: 51). Through the explanation of the word ‘march’, the lines of the poem become clearer. Heaney incorporates the ideals of both territories and through that he was limited in his understanding of the self. Through the distinguished meaning of the words at that time in that particular place, the poem acquires a different meaning. Heaney further points out that in order to understand the poem one must know the meaning of the word ‘march’ because although the word marked a boundary it proposed a coexistence alongside (cf. ibid.: 52). Heaney explains that this “march drain” (“Terminus”, l. 13) was the Sluggan, which was a boundary stream. The Sluggan finds its way through meadows and plantations before it finally flows into Lough Beg. The Sluggan is the border between the townlands of Creagh and Leitrim (cf. ibid.: 54). Heaney shows in the allusion to the Sluggan that a march drain can be a border between different cultures and national aspirations. The topography of a country defines the sensibilities of its inhabitants.
In the last passage of “Terminus”, Heaney refers to the differences he pointed out before because “[t]wo buckets were easier carried than one./ I grew up in between.” (ll. 15 – 16) Heaney mimics the image of a scale that has to be balanced and therefore two buckets keep the pendulum equal. Heaney refers to his double-mindedness in the lines: “My left hand placed the standard iron weight./ My right tilted a last grain in the balance.” (ll. 17 – 18) The iron weight in the left hand symbolises the Protestant industrial side and the grain in the right
140 hand symbolises the Catholic side, which keeps everything balanced. As a matter of fact, Heaney declares his allegiances with the Catholic side, which is also visible in his poems because he is inspired by the rural Catholic area of his childhood.
Heaney points out that the place where he was born was between baronies and parishes, which means that it was between the Protestant and Catholic areas. He goes back to a time when Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, was the “last native leader to hold out against the Tudor armies of Queen Elizabeth I, the last earl to make a stand, and one of the first to suffer within himself the claims of the two different political allegiances” (Heaney, 2002: 54). The two different political allegiances were shown in his descent. O’Neill was the Earl of Tyrone, and through the English Law he had to keep his allegiances with Queen Elizabeth I. He was seen as the loyal representative of Her Majesty, the Queen. He was also of Irish descent, and it is said that he belonged to the family of a mythic Irish leader, Niall of the Nine Hostages. In the view of the Irish people, he was the rightful successor of the Gaelic O’Neills and therefore it was his duty to defend the Irish cause against the English (cf. ibid.: 55). Heaney uses O’Neill as an example to point out that the conflict of the duality has been inherent in the mind of the people from Northern Ireland since the occupation by the British. Heaney was fascinated by one event that took place on a day, early in September 1599. O’Neill’s forces and the English army were in the woods of Louth and Armagh. The leader of the English expedition was the favourite courtier of Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Essex. O’Neill persuaded the Earl of Essex to come for a parley to the River Glyde in County Louth (cf. ibid.).
In the poem, Heaney combines the memory of his childhood being out on the stepping stone with the historical event where O’Neill talked to the Earl of Essex. O’Neill was on horseback in midstream and his horse stood in the water up to the belly. Behind him were his Irish soldiers listening to him speaking English to the Earl of Essex, who stood on the other side of the river (cf. ibid.). Heaney describes the scene: “When I stood on the central stepping stone// I was the last earl on horseback in midstream/ Still parleying, in earshot of his pears” (ll. 20 – 22). Heaney uses O’Neill as an alter ego to point out the situation of growing up ‘in between’. Heaney points out that through politics the situation became more and more complicated, which is also reflected in history because Essex had the order to arrest O’Neill as traitor. Essex and O’Neill stood on opposing sides although they were friends (cf. Heaney, 2002: 54.). For Heaney, the meeting of the two represents a ‘terminus’ because through their
141 political allegiances their positions were determined, and in such a situation there was no place for two truths (cf. ibid.).
The poem deals with place as a feature of division because the march drain marked the division and defined the people on either side. The one side is defined in opposition to the other. In this poem, Heaney shows that the cultural division is inherent in the place and that the place is the source of the division. The poem was written in the mid 1980s, at a time when violence belonged to the daily routine in Northern Ireland, and when the government in London “adjusted to an acceptable level of violence” (ibid.: 56).
Heaney explains that the poem points out that the heritage of two worlds can be a hindrance because it blocks the inhabitants and places them in predetermined positions. Further, it limits their free will and is a barrier for a creative expression of the self “[b]ut before that moment and since that moment, things nevertheless were and have been different” (ibid.: 60). Heaney’s poems are his ‘stepping stones’, and through his heritage of growing up ‘in between’ he compares himself with O’Neill in the poem, who was the last earl on horseback. Although Heaney moved to the Republic of Ireland, he still parleys “in [the] earshot of his pears” (“Terminus”, l. 22). He still participates in the discourses of the time because, being a poet, it is his obligation to voice the sentiments of his peers. But much more interesting is the way he is saying this. Heaney uses the land itself as an allegory for the division. The place defines the division and the people living there.
142 9. Seeing Things
„The immanent hydraulics of a land/ Of glar and glit and floods at dailigone./ My silting hope. My lowlands of the mind” (Heaney, “Fosterling”, ll. 6 – 8).
Seeing Things deals with Heaney’s affection with place and his unique gift of re-creating the place in his poems. He mentions that the land and the landscape are his sources of inspiration, his “silting hope” (“Fosterling”, l. 8), his “lowlands of the mind” (l. 8). Seeing Things is Heaney’s eighth poetry collection, not counting the translations, such as Sweeney Astray . It was published in 1991, at a time when peace seemed a possibility in Northern Ireland. Heaney returned from the phenomenal space which had been the motif of The Haw Lantern , to the real world. Heaney’s starting point for Seeing Things is the depiction of the real world from “an almost posthumous perspective” (cf. Vendler, 2000: 136). This ‘posthumous perspective’ derives from the framework of the volume because the poems are embedded in a translation of “The Golden Bough” from Virgil’s Aeneid and a translation of a passage from Dante’s “Inferno” (Canto III) which Heaney calls “The Crossing”. Through this framework, the poems have a ghostly touch because the real world is depicted from an underworld’s perspective. The story is about Aeneas who approaches the Sibyl of Cumae in order to find a way to the underworld where he wants to meet his father (cf. Murphy, 196: 77). The Sibyl gives in and says that if he wants to return, he needs the golden bough which is “[h]idden in the thick of a tree” (“The Golden Bough”, l. 44) with leaves and flexible twigs made of gold. The tree “is roofed in by a grove, where deep shadows mass” (l. 47). Nature is the key to heighten the awareness of consciousness. Aeneas has to find the golden bough hidden in a tree in order to be able to return from the underworld.
Heaney uses the ‘golden bough’ as a source of inspiration for his poems. In order to achieve an understanding of the mechanisms of life, one has to combine the conscious world with the unconscious one. Heaney mimics the structure of Dante’s Divine Comedy , where the poet has to go to the underworld to find answers about the hidden sources of life. It can be said that Heaney creates his own poetic Comedy, which can also be seen in the translation of the “Inferno” (Canto III, ll. 82 – 129). Heaney calls this translation, “The Crossing”. The passage deals with Charon denying Dante permission to the ship of death (cf. Vendler, 2000: 137), which Heaney translates: “And you there, you, living soul, separate/ Yourself from these others who are dead.” (“The Crossing”, ll. 7 – 8). Both passages contain descriptions of landscapes which are a source of inspiration for Heaney. The passage from the Aeneid
143 describes the tree and the moss and the grove, while the passage from the “Inferno” contains images such as water, ice and fire. Generally, it can be said that water and nature are consistent motifs in this poetry collection.
The collection is divided into two parts, Part I contains the poem “The Pulse” (see Appendix, pp. 303 – 304). He uses words such as “water” and “river” to imitate the repeated rhythm of blood circulating in a human being. Water is the living elixir of the poem, as crossing the river means entering the underworld. Heaney presents the real world from the perspective beyond. Heaney uses water, an image from the “Inferno” , to represent life. Heaney begins the line with the image of the pulse, starting that “the pulse of the cast line/ entering water/ was smaller in your hand” (ll. 11 – 13). “The Pulse” deals with the rhythm of life and its echoing in nature because the river forges its way continually through the landscape and is the life line for the vegetation as the pulse is the steady rhythm of human life. Heaney compares the pulse in your hand to “the remembered heartbeat/ of a bird” (ll. 14 – 15). In the poem, Heaney points out that he mimics the flow of nature and that in the hand it is smaller because the greatness of nature cannot be completely reflected in poetry. It is only an image of the represented place. This can also be seen as an allusion to art as a representation of life. Water as a source of life can be found in several of Heaney’s poems. For instance, in “Bann Clay” from Door into the Dark , he refers to the development of a river which was “[s]unk// for centuries under the grass/ It baked white in the sun,/ Relieved its hoarded waters/ And began to ripen.” (ll. 8 – 11) These two passages from poems written at different stages in Heaney’s life reflect his development as a poet because in the earlier volume of Door into the Dark the river has to ripen, as the poet and his craft has to ripen but, as it can be seen, his diction remains the same.
In Seeing Things , it seems that Heaney achieved this gradual process of acknowledging one’s place in life, as he is “in place at last and for good” (“The Settle Bed”, l. 1, see Appendix, pp. 301 – 302). Heaney found his own metaphor and his own poetic voice to express his predicament. He also begins to feel at ease within the movements of his poetry. For example, in “The Settle Bed”, he accepts that his art mimics the movements of the river – that in his poems he only imagines “a dower of settle beds tumbled from heaven” (l. 23). He further points out that “whatever is given// Can always be reimagined” (ll. 25 – 26). In these lines, Heaney echoes the image of the chestnut tree from his essay “A Placeless Heaven” from The Government of the Tongue . This chestnut tree left a luminous space in his memory. This
144 luminous space is described in the poem “Gifts of Rain” from Wintering Out , where he writes that he cocks his ear “at an absence” (l. 41).
In Seeing Things , Heaney shows that he is grounded in the native place and that he feels at ease with his choice. He nears himself to the place he creates in his poems but at the same time he distances himself by saying that all this is created from his imagination. Heaney also adds a political dimension to his poems; moreover, he explains the reason for having chosen the ‘golden bough’ as introduction of this volume. Heaney points out in his essay “From the Frontiers of Writing” that John Hume
has for years been subject to the taunt shoneenism and sell-out by the Republican movement. In seeking to moderate the Republican Army’s campaign by negotiating with Sinn Fein, he has been assailed by accusations of collusion in violence from the loyalist side. Neither his long record of political probity nor his large peace-seeking purpose was sufficient to constitute the political equivalent of a golden bough that would guarantee him a safe return from the underground of secret talks into the daylight of the old banal repetitions. (Heaney, 1995: 188)
Heaney explains that not even politicians can fulfil the expectations of every party because political leaders in Ireland have to manoeuvre between two different systems of loyalty. When being on the edge of either side, resentment is developed on both sides concerning political aspirations. Therefore, it is impossible that the achievements of a political leader will be valued on both sides. This duality is also eminent for the poet who is responsive to two cultural backgrounds. Both work in a matrix of the Irish place which is “invoked under two different systems of naming” (ibid.). Heaney points this out through a well-known example from English literature, William Wordsworth. Heaney compares the Irish situation to Wordsworth’s experience when England declared war upon revolutionary France. Wordsworth was trapped between his ideological sympathies for France and his belonging to the English nation. Wordsworth admitted that no experience since and before “equalled the disorienting force of this sudden fissure that had opened in his loyalties” (ibid.: 189). According to Heaney, Wordsworth reflects on this traumatising experience in The Prelude, which is an attempt of consciously combining both sides in voicing the inherent conflict. It can also be said that poets and writers from the North of Ireland tried to voice the feeling of being torn between two sides. In Heaney’s opinion, the effort of forging a poem about this crisis “is a mode of integration, of redistributing the whole field of cultural and political force into a tolerable order” (ibid.). In Heaney’s case – what could be a more adequate order than
145 nature? Heaney re-distributes the gap between the two political and cultural forces into the beauty of nature and landscape. The land is the key to a restoration of civil order, which echoes on the Pan myths where a harmonious coexistence between man and nature guarantees a protection by the place through the god Pan.
Part II, “Squarings”, is divided into four different parts, “Lightnings”, “Settings”, “Crossings”, and “Squarings”. Helen Vendler explains the reason for the sequence’s title, “Squarings”, and states that it is called “Squarings” because poems have the form of “five beats wide and twelve beats long” (Vendler, 2000: 136). It seems that in “Squarings”, Heaney created his own Divine Comedy, musing on poetry and life rooted in the landscape of his mind, the source of his inspiration, the rural county Derry. This can be seen in the Poem “Settings XIX” (see Appendix, p. 305), where Heaney reflects on poetry as architecture. He takes up the idea of creating order in poetry by comparing memory to “a building or a city/ Well lighted, well laid out” (ll. 1 – 2). The city of memory is well structured and well articulated in poetry. The city is decorated with statues, “ones wearing crowns, ones smeared with mud or blood” (l. 5). Heaney refers to earlier poems, where he used the images of crowns, mud, and blood to refer to the different loyalties of England and Ireland. An example for this is “A Peacock’s Feather” (see Appendix, pp. 299 – 300) from The Haw Lantern , where he says: “May tilth and loam,/ Darkened with Celts’ and Saxons’ blood,/ Breastfeed your love of house and wood –“ (ll. 32 – 34). Heaney points out that the love of your home and nature, which is a source of violence, is “[d]arkened with Celts’ and Saxons’ blood” (l. 33), may be nurtured by the land itself. This can be seen as an attempt by Heaney to heighten the awareness of his community concerning their country. He plays with the possible interpretations of his poems and points out in “Settings XIX” that “the mind’s eye could haunt itself// With fixed associations and learn to read/ Its own contents in meaningful order” (ll. 6 – 8). Heaney says that he repeats the associations so that they become inscribed in the inner eye and, by doing so, they become a representation of the place the reader can identify with. Through that Heaney creates a consciousness of the Irish people. In the poem, it is explained that the places are deliberately connected with a code of images because “[a]ncient textbooks recommended that// Familiar places be linked deliberately/ With a code of images.” (ll. 9 – 11) Heaney points out that he created a representation of a place through repetition of deliberately chosen images in connection with a well-known place.
146 To conclude, it can be said that in his poem “Settings XIX” Heaney explicitly points out that he tries to restore a cultural order which he expresses through the landscape of his mind, the County Derry. He wants to heighten the awareness of his community towards a definition of a unique cultural identity. In the poem, he mentions that he repeats the same images again and again so that they are kept in the mind of the reader. Further, he points out that these images are associated with fixed meanings which allow the reader to interpret the images’ contents in a meaningful way. Heaney uses the same images in the same context again and again, and therefore, the reader can learn to read their meaning. By doing so, Heaney creates the consciousness of his community because through repeating the images they manifest themselves in the mind of the reader, and when reading them the reader automatically connects them with Ireland, the land and the ground. This is due to Heaney’s diction, which is inspired by nature and the landscape of his childhood’s place. Heaney returns to this particular choice of words throughout his work, and it becomes a determining factor of his poetry.
147 9. 1. Dante’s “Inferno”
Dante became a part of Heaney’s poetry in Field Work (1979). While in Field Work Dante can be seen as a framework he refers to, a dominant motif of Dante’s Divine Comedy also became a motif for the dream sequence of Station Island – ‘going on a pilgrimage’. In Seeing Things , Dante is important for Heaney because he “like[s] to remember that Dante was very much a man of a particular place, that his great poem is full of intimate placings and place- names, and that as he moves round the murky circles of hell, often heard rather than seen by his damned friends and enemies, he is recognised by his local speech or so recognizes them” (Heaney, 1980: 136 – 137). Heaney likes Dante for several reasons. One reason is that Dante was also rooted in a particular place, as the Divine Comedy contains a lot of allusions to place names and familiarly refers to different places. Another reason is that Dante also uses language as a distinguishing feature of people. Language and place are the two main features which are constant motifs of his poems. The language which is spoken in a distinct area defines the person according to its heritage, i. e. where he or she comes from. According to Heaney, Eliot pointed once out that the Florentine speech of Dante, which also implies a connection to the local place, the city of Florence, is a means to “emphasize the universality, because it cuts across the modern division of nationality” (Heaney, 2002: 169).
In Seeing Things , Heaney deliberately uses images taken from the Divine Comedy to link them to a known place or he recreates settings of the Comedy . In the second part, in “Crossings XXV”, there is a line where Heaney is “in the middle of the road” (l. 5). This line echoes the beginning of the Divine Comedy , which he quotes in the poem “The Schoolbag”: “nel mezzo del cammin”(l. 2), which means ‘in the middle of the way’. Heaney further sets the poem in the landscape of travelling south. He travels south “[t]hrough high-up stone-wall country, the rocks still cold,/ Rainwater gleaming here and there ahead” (“Crossings XXV”, ll. 2 – 3). Heaney uses words which he also used in the translation of Dante’s passage from the “Inferno” which is enclosed at the end of the poetry collection. Heaney is also inspired by the idea of crossing as a motif in his poems, for instance, in “Crossings XXV” he has “to cross back through that startled iris” (l. 12). In his poetry, Heaney indulges in the underworld, but he also has to return through his iris to the real world. Heaney points out that “[p]oetry is more a threshold than a path, one constantly approached and constantly departed from, at which the reader and writer undergo in their different ways the experience of being at the same time summoned and released” (Heaney, 1989: 108). Heaney points out that poetry is not
148 a source of universal knowledge but a threshold that can be crossed. It gives an account of the unconscious side and the state of being awake – it shows both sides of the human mind. The idea of poetry as threshold is inspired by the Divine Comedy because the “Inferno” contains an account of a human being crossing the threshold to the underworld. No other human being can enter the underworld except the poet, who is accompanied by another poet, Virgil. Dante is the only one who can return from the ‘yonder zone’ of the dead to the real world, which is a distinctive feature of the Comedy because, in the Aeneid , Aeneas cannot return without a symbolic object, the golden bough (cf. Murphy, 1994: 84). The poet has special abilities, and only he can return from hell. Heaney points out that “the oldest evidence for this attitude appears in the Greek notion that when a lyric poet gives voice, ‘it is a god that speaks’” (Heaney, 1989: 93). Heaney once more emphasises his position as a poet who is like a vates able to voice the hidden sources of life and to articulate the unconscious. Heaney constructs the order of life in nature by combining the real world and the underworld.
Heaney explains that poetry has an authority within itself because the reader surrenders to the command of the form of the poem. Although the form of the poem is not accomplished through moral or ethical predicaments, it is the plant of inspiration (cf. ibid.: 92). Heaney refers to a special kind of inspiration defined by Anna Swir, also a poet, who says that inspiration is like a “psychosomatic phenomenon” (ibid.: 93) where the “poet becomes then an antenna capturing the voices of the world, a medium expressing, his own subconscious and the collective subconscious. For one moment he possesses wealth usually inaccessible to him, and he loses it when that moment is over” (ibid.). Anna Swir sees the poet as an antenna that is able to perceive the “voices of the world” (ibid.). Swir compares the poet to a medium that is able to express the individual subconscious and the communal subconscious. This can be seen as an allusion to the description of the Sibyl of Cumae at the beginning of the volume Seeing Things, where “from the back of her shrine the Sibyl of Cumae/ Chanted fearful equivocal words and made the cave echo/ With sayings where clear truths and mysteries/ Were inextricably twined.” (“The Golden Bough”, ll. 1 – 4) The Sibyl did not say her prediction straightforwardly, as a matter of fact, she chanted “equivocal words” (l. 2), which can be compared to the rhythm and diction of a poem. She is depicted as medium in the back of the sacred zone, which resembles Swir’s definition of a poet’s inspiration – the poet in a state of trance when creating poetry. Similar to Heaney, who repeats his images, the words of the Sibyl echo in the cave. Heaney points out that the audience is keen to grant poetry a useful hoard of imagination. In his opinion, the poet is attributed with a gift of opening “unexpected
149 and unedited communications between our nature and the nature of the reality we inhabit” (Heaney, 1989: 93). Heaney is able to voice the subconscious of the self and the subconscious of the collective by being a poet. Through voicing the subconscious of the collective Heaney is able to contribute to a definition of identity. Heaney chooses symbols rooted in the ground and the landscape which he continually repeats in his poems.
The poetry collection is closed by “The Crossing”, which is a translation of a passage from the “Inferno” (Canto III, ll. 82 – 129), where the poet encounters Charon, the mythical boatman who carries the souls of the dead over the River Styx to the underworld. Water becomes one of the dominant features of Heaney’s poetry in this volume, which signifies the transition between the realms of an awakening consciousness and the realms of unconscious experience. In Heaney’s case, water is a symbol of initiation because in “Crossings XXV” (see Appendix, p. 305) he says: “Let rebirth come through water” (l. 10). Another example of his use of the word water is “A Retrospect”. Heaney creates a kind of doomsday setting where “[t]he whole county [is] apparently afloat:/ Every road bridging or skirting water,/ The land islanded” (ll. 1 – 3, see Appendix, pp. 302 – 303). This shows that the county is distinctly separated from the other counties because it is an island. Heaney alludes to a description of Northern Ireland being an island bordering inland in the poem “Parable Island” from The Haw Lantern . In the last lines of the poem, he mentions that a man went to bed convinced that “the cutting of the Panama Canal/ would mean the ocean would all drain away/ and the island disappear” (ll. 43 – 45). Heaney uses this image from the poem “Parable Island“ to create an imaginative setting of a county that becomes an island. Heaney continues to repeat images and states that “I had to wade barefoot over spongy, ice-cold march/ (Soft bottom with bog water seeping through// The netted weeds)” (“A Retrospect”, ll. 4 – 7). Heaney alludes to an image from the poem “Anahorish” from Wintering Out , where he says that “those mound- dwellers/ go waist deep in mist/ to break the light ice” (ll. 13 – 15). He varies the scene of “Anahorish” in “A Retrospect”, where he repeats images already used in other poems and adds their meaning to a place, Northern Ireland.
In the poem “Crossings XXXII” (see Appendix, p. 304), Heaney points out the different meanings of water for him, for example, “Running water never disappointed./ Crossing water always furthered something/ Stepping stones were stations of the soul.” (ll. 1 – 3) He points out that running water and rivers are the pulse of the landscape and therefore never a sign of disappointment. “Running water” (l. 1) brings change and secures the cycle of life. The next
150 line, “Crossing water always furthered something” (l. 2), can be read as a reference to the function of the River Styx which brings the dead to the underworld, for that reason, crossing water means to cross a threshold and to gain new insights. Taking into account that a poet voices the subconscious, poems can be seen as the stepping stones of the soul.
Heaney also changes his perspective on the landscape because he enters the landscape from the perspective of an adult, which he points out in “Settings XIII”, where he mentions “[r]e- enter this as the adult of solitude” (l. 10). The re-entering of the landscape as an adult reflects on Wordsworth’s ideas of imagination. Heaney used Wordsworth as an example to point out the forces a creative mind has to endure when faced with two opposing loyalties. Heaney also re-uses images from other poetry collections, or at least he alludes to a previously used theme by varying the original image. Repeating the images constantly in his poems is a means of maintaining their manifestation in the mind of the reader. Heaney re-enters the image of the river in “Squarings XLI” (see Appendix, p. 306), where he says that “[b]efore/ I knew river shallows or river pleasures/ I knew the ore of longing in those words.” (ll. 1 – 3) He points out that he indulged in the pleasure of these images before his mind could grasp their full impact. He further mentions that “[t]he places I go back to have not yet failed/ But will not last.” (ll. 4 – 5) He explains that the places he visits in his memory have been a good source of inspiration, but he describes them how he perceived the places in his childhood and now he revisits the memory from the perspective of an adult, and so “waist-deep in cow-parsley,/ I re- enter the swim, riding or quelling// The very currents memory is composed of” (ll. 5 – 7). Heaney re-enters “the swim” (l. 6) of English language and dwells upon the streams and currents memory is made of.
He dwells in his language upon these places as a source of inspiration. For instance, in his poems, he repeatedly uses images inspired by the bog. An example for this is “Settings XIV”, where Heaney returns to a ‘Heaneyspeak’ which visualises the landscape in the mind of the reader. In the poem, the speaker “stood on the railway sleepers hearing larks,/ Grasshoppers, cuckoos, dogbarks, trainer planes” (ll. 2 – 3). Heaney uses animals to point out the rusticity of the area which is disturbed through the “trainer planes” (l. 3). Heaney altered his account of rural county Derry and added a contemporary image of “trainer planes” (l. 3) which had become part of the landscape since the Troubles. Heaney uses the “trainer planes” (l. 3) to break the idyllic atmosphere conceived through the grasshopper and the cuckoos. In the poem “Crossings XXXI” (see Appendix, pp. 304 – 305), Heaney says that “[y]ou drive into a
151 meaning made of trees” (l. 7) because the poem begins with an description of “where the county road/ Is running straight across North Antrim bog,/ Tall old fires line it on both sides.” (ll. 2 – 4) Heaney also suggests that the feature that defines this area are the trees – therefore, the line “meaning made of trees” (l. 7). In these lines, Heaney points out that he deliberately chooses the trees as an image for the road across North Antrim bog. He gives meaning to the place through attaching to it the deliberately chosen image of the tree. Heaney uses a diction inspired by the local place to define the features of the landscape.
152 9. 2. Longitude and Latitude
The sequence of the “Squarings” poems is quite different from the rest of the poetry collection, Seeing Things , because they are pieces about sound and music. Heaney points out in an interview that “[t]here was something up and away about the movement in those ‘Squarings’ pieces that was new for me. Each poem was a twelve-line sprint” (Brown, 2002: 81). Heaney created a unique atmosphere in his poems; moreover, he related images to sound and hearing. By doing so, Heaney returned to sound effects through which he mimics the thing itself. Heaney said in the interview that the poems were written quite quickly, and even in the process of creating them they gathered a power of their own (cf. ibid.). Heaney uses the senses of sight and hearing to create an effect of lightness because the two mandatory senses of sight and hearing never touch the objects they describe (cf. Vendler, 2000: 139). His own sense of sight was inspired by Dutch painters, which he points out in his interview with John Brown, where Heaney says that the “[p]ainting comes into the poems because it’s inscribed […] in my nervous system” (Brown, 2002: 82). He explains that he uses different inputs from everyday life which he turns into images in his poems.
Especially in the poems from the “Squarings” section, Heaney turns from the supernatural of the underworld to the natural world. He shows that the natural world must be something luminous and miraculous for an angel (cf. Vendler, 1998: 136). Heaney changes the perspective and gives an account of the natural world from beyond. The perspective from beyond represents the wholly other for Heaney, so to speak, “the imagined, the hitherto- inconceivable” (Vendler, 2000: 136). Heaney is torn between two allegiances, and through his account of the other he presents both sides, and, by doing so, he sees beyond the visible and creates an elevated vision of what is hidden beneath.
An example for this two-sidedness and the turn to a certain lightness can be seen in two poems from Seeing Things . An account of how to measure a place is given in “Markings” (see Appendix, pp. 306 – 37), where Heaney verbally creates a soccer pitch. The poem begins with “We marked a pitch: four jackets for four goalposts,/ That was all.” (ll. 1 – 2) Heaney uses the soccer pitch as an allegory for marking a territory, which is elaborated in: “The corners and the squares/ Were there like longitude and latitude/ Under bumpy thistly ground” (ll. 2 – 4). Heaney compares the corners of the pitch to the longitude and latitude of a territory. It can be said that Heaney alludes to the poem “Terminus”, where he elaborates on the significance of
153 division when living in a divided place. The soccer pitch signifies the territory of ‘the other’, the Protestants, because on the Gaelic side there was no pitch. Heaney uses the image of a soccer game to point out the territorial division in Northern Ireland. As a matter of fact, Heaney uses the image of soccer to emphasise his point. Through the words “longitude” (l. 3) and “latitude” (l. 3), Heaney adds the dimension of territory and borders to the poem. Furthermore, he points out that the righteousness of the markings will be contested in the game: “to be/ Agreed about or disagreed about/ When the time came.” (ll. 4 – 6) With his account of a soccer game, Heaney shows that the division is rooted in the place because by drawing a border the territory is marked. The team was chosen and they “crossed the line our called names drew between us.” (l. 7) Heaney points out that through naming things are labelled and the different names of the teams were put between them. Heaney allegorises that through the different territories and the different attributes, such as Protestant and Catholic, the basis of division was set. In “Markings”, Heaney shows the inherent tension of two loyalties. He provides an account of both sides and therefore credits the full impact of the situation. Heaney continues the poem with the actual game and then shifts the setting because “the actual kicked ball came to them/ Like a dream heaviness” (ll. 11 – 12). The actual ball becomes like a dream, it immaterializes and becomes “a game that never need/ Be played out” (ll. 15 – 16). The game is continued in the head of the kids. When these lines are read in a political and social context it can be said that the images of sectarian division are transferred to the next generation. Heaney points out that people hinder themselves to develop and reach beyond their horizon because through borders manifested in the heads of people, they are limited to these convictions. The borders are passed on to their children who also start to think in these labels.
In the next passage, Heaney builds a house with his words, and to do so, he returns to the digging metaphor of his earlier volumes. Heaney muses on the different ways of borders, for example, when talking about “[t]he spade nicking the first straight edge along/ The tight white string.” (ll. 20 – 21) Heaney returns to the metaphor of digging, through which he creates a connection to the ground. Heaney digs with his poetry along the borders in order to create a basis of a communal understanding of the place and to heighten the awareness of the community of the duality of the place. The poem continues by pointing out that the “string stretched perfectly/ To mark the outline of a house foundation” (ll. 21 – 22). Heaney shows that borders can also be markings of a house foundation. In the poem, the poet points out that place can be the foundation for a mutual understanding of each other’s sentiments and
154 predicaments. In his poems, he wants to create a foundation for this mutual understanding because he returned to the approach of poetry as archaeology. He repeats the metaphor of digging so that it manifests itself in the mind of the reader. By creating a foundation for a mutual understanding, he contributes to creating a consciousness of his community, which he does through the repetition of his images. In his essay “Frontiers of Writing” from Finders Keepers , Heaney provides an explanation for the affirmation of the self because “within our individual selves we can reconcile two orders of knowledge which we might call the practical and the poetic; to affirm also that each form of knowledge redresses the other and that the frontier between them is there for the crossing” (Heaney, 1995: 203). Heaney points out that every individual can adjust to two orders, and that each newly gained knowledge redresses the older one, but it depends on the individual to cross this threshold and gain knowledge by embracing both sides. Heaney expresses this idea in the poem “Markings”, where “the imaginary line [goes] straight down/ A field of grazing, to be ploughed open/ From the rod stuck in one headrig to the rod/ Stuck in the other.” (ll. 26 – 29) Heaney creates latitude and longitude lines from his imagination. He bases these lines in the diction of the landscape of his rural county Derry. Through that Heaney also creates a connection to place. Vendler points out that “[t]hese imagined grids and lines are the latitude and longitude lines […] by which mentality orders the world” (Vendler, 1998: 139). Heaney says that the individual approach renders the personal experience. The duality and the tension between two loyalties could be either embraced or seen as a source of division. Heaney is supported by Duffy who says that “[w]riters and artists are both witnesses to our world but also products of it, possessing qualities of insight which can be mustered in helping to understand the diversity of place and the contested meanings that can be attributed to it” (Duffy, 1997: 64).
In the last part of the poem, Heaney points out that “[a]ll these things entered you/ As if they were both the door and what came through it.” (“Markings”, ll. 30 – 31) In these lines, he alludes to images from poems from Door into the Dark, where, for example, in “The Forge” he writes that “[a]ll I know is a door into the dark” (l. 1). “The Forge” can be seen as an allegory of forging poetry, and so Heaney uses the image of the door to say that his poems open a door. His poems show the threshold; moreover, “they marked the spot, marked the time and held it open.” (“Markings”, l. 28) A poem marks a particular time and place and opens the door to this place and keeps it open because the time and the place are inscribed in the poem through language. As Graham points out, “the concept of socially constructed place is intrinsic to renditions of individual and group identity” (1997: 3). Heaney also mentions
155 that “[a] windlass hauled the centre out of water” (l. 34), which is a version of the last line from “Bogland” from Door into the Dark : “The wet centre is bottomless.” (l. 28) Again, he uses the image of the centre and attaches to the word a new meaning by using it in a new environment. Heaney points out that poetry is a door to the subconscious of both the individual and the collective – it opens the place to an understanding of both sides.
In “Lightnings III”, Heaney alludes to the poem “Markings”. While “Markings” deals with a soccer game, “Lightnings III” (see Appendix, p. 304) is about a game of marbles. Heaney shifts the topic from the human to the place of playing a game of marbles. He explains the rules of the game through a distinctive choice of words. Heaney begins the poem with: “Squarings? In the game of marbles, squarings/ Were all those anglings, aimings, feints and squints/ You were allowed before you’d shoot” (ll. 1 – 3). Heaney uses the game of marbles to allegorise the process of forging poetry. He also returns to the creation of soundcapes, which he frequently used in his first three poetry collections and builds verbal places through words and sounds. Heaney says that forging a poetic voice is a gradual development which depends on different perspectives, different approaches, tactics and allusions. He returns to the game of marbles from childhood and, according to Vendler, “landscape is for Heaney a powerful repository of memory, many ‘Squarings’ represent returns as a conscious adult to some scene from youth” (Vendler, 1998: 138). Heaney returns to the game of marbles and points out that all the different pressures of thumb and all the different tries and “pull-backs, re-envisagings,/ All the ways your arms kept hoping towards// Blind certainties” (ll. 5 – 7) are important in this game. These lines can be interpreted as a description of forging a poem, where there are different ways to formulate its message which are defined by re-creations of memories, “re-envisagings” (l. 5). The poet hopes to create a consciousness “[b]eyond the one-off moment of the pitch” (l. 8). In his poems, Heaney repeats images in order to create an awareness concerning the native place. By doing so, these images become naturalized, as a matter of fact, these images become part of “one’s interpretative net” (Chatman, 1980: 49). Heaney hopes that his images will manifest themselves in the minds of his community and that they will endure its meaning beyond the context of the poem. Agnew agrees with Heaney on this point because “the embodiment of the public memory in landscape provides a robust example of the ways in which representations of place are intimately related to the creation and reinforcement of official constructions of identity and power” (Agnew, 1987: 35).
156 It can be interpreted that Heaney creates a longitude and latitude in the poems “Markings” and “Lightnings III”. In “Lightnings III”, he says that the “space/ [is] Marked with three round holes and a drawn line” (ll. 10 – 11). With “Lightnigs III”, Heaney creates a map for the consciousness of his people. Heaney hopes that he can heighten the awareness of his community towards a cultural identity. In his poems, he builds a foundation of a better understanding. The foundation is rooted in the ground of the place. In the transcendental poems of “Squarings”, Heaney further exemplifies his aim of poetry and what he defines as responsible art by taking a stance towards life. Heaney is rooted in the ground, which can be seen in his choice of words which is still inspired by the rural Derry. Language becomes a means of representing place, and through this representation Heaney creates a cultural awareness. He also reflects on this process of creating a cultural awareness of the Irish people in his poems.
157 10. The Spirit Level
The Spirit Level was published in 1996, five years after Seeing Things, which had been a critical success, and one year after Seamus Heaney had received the Nobel Prize for literature. The Spirit Level “moves the act of translation a stage further into Heaney’s original poems by including it in various ways” (Corcoran, 1998: 189). Translations cross Heaney’s poems in a way that he combines images from various literary texts in his poems with his own experience of rural Ireland. For instance, in The Spirit Level , Heaney alludes to Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Homer’s Odyssey . Heaney also returns to place-name poems such as “Whitby-sur- Moyola”, where he references to Caedmon who was a poet-herdsman from the seventh century living in Yorkshire (cf. ibid.: 191). The Spirit Level is also characterised by a feeling of hope because the IRA Provisionals and the Ulster Paramilitaries agreed on a ceasefire. This happened in September 1994, at a time when Seamus Heaney and his wife were staying in Tollund, the place of the discovery of the Tollund Man, which inspired Heaney to his series of bog poems (cf. Vendler, 1998: 155). Heaney’s poems in The Spirit Level try to express something great, the accommodation of daily life to the spirit of a period of post-Troubles (cf. ibid.).
Heaney points out his occupation with place remembering that when he went home from St. Columb’s College at Halloween his mother waited for him at the bus station Magherafelt. When the bus station was blown up because of the atrocities during the Troubles in the 1980s, he felt connected to the place and wrote a sestina, “Two Lorries”, for The Spirit Level . In the essay “Counting to a Hundred: Elizabeth Bishop” from Finders Keepers , Heaney writes about a “Sestina” written by Elizabeth Bishop. He says that in her sestina Bishop establishes “gradually and insistently a second realization [which] is forced into consciousness by the inexorable formal recurrences within the poem itself” (Heaney, 2002: 332). The recurrence is also evident in the title of the poem: “Two Lorries”. He described the event: “The plain reality of explosion and obliteration got mixed up with the underlying untold reality of the memory. So the ‘umbilical link’ […] is in that poem, but it’s also – as you say ‘none too literal’” (Brown, 2002: 76). The poem begins with the line: “It’s raining on black coal and warm wet ashes.” (“Two Lorries”, l. 1, see Appendix, pp. 307 – 308) Heaney continues the poem by describing the lorry and the lorry driver “[w]ith his Belfast accent’s sweet-talking my mother” (l. 4). Heaney sets the scene of the poem on a rainy day when the lorry driver chats with his mother who is waiting for him. Heaney combines the memory of his youth, when his mother
158 was waiting for him, with the place. He creates an invocation of Magherafelt because the fourth stanza begins with “Oh Magherafelt!/ Oh, dream of red plush and a city coalman/ As time fastforwards and a different lorry/ Groans into shot, up Broad Street, with a payload/ That will blow the bus station to dust and ashes…” (ll. 19 – 23). He combines the place with a historical fact and adds to the place a particular meaning. In the poem, the blowing up of the bus station can be seen as a reflection on the violence caused by the IRA during the Troubles. The poem also contains a temporal aspect because the ‘coalman city’ becomes a place of “red plush” (l. 20). Heaney connects the present and the past and thereby invokes an awareness of place. He tries to find the common ground of these two events, the coal city and the violence, and the common ground is the place, Magherafelt. Heaney also uses the lorry as a recurrent motif, which earlier in the poem is connected with home and her mother, and, in the end, it becomes the vehicle that causes the explosion at the bus station.
Heaney also refers to the poet as architect, which is a quality he detected in Rilke’s poetry, who “imagines the god Orpheus building [a temple] inside the consciousness of the listening creatures” (Heaney, 2002: 236). Heaney takes this idea as a starting point in his poem “An Architect”. In this poem, he again describes the process of creating poetry. The poem begins with: “He fasted on the doorstep of his gift,/ Exacting more, minding the boulder/ And the raked zen gravel.” (“An Architect”, ll. 1 – 3, see Appendix, p. 309) Heaney refers to his definition that poems are ‘doors into the dark’ and that poems are thresholds. This image is an allusion to Archimedes, who said to give him a lever and an adequate point and he would lift the world from its boulder. These lines can be read in connection with “A Daylight Art” from The Haw Lantern , which deals with a man’s indulgence in the right art “whose nights are dreamless;/ whose deep-sunk panoramas rise and pass” (ll. 20 – 21). The poet pauses on the doorstep to reflect on his work where he defines what is important in life – the equilibrium between one’s rootedness, the “boulder” (“An Architect”, l. 2), and the spiritual level, the “raked zen gravel” (l. 3). In Station Island , Heaney entered a dreamworld, and in Seeing Things , he saw the things from a perspective beyond. In The Spirit Level , he has to talk “his way back into sites and truths/ The art required” (“An Architect”, l. 11 – 12). When thinking back “his life came down to:// Blue slate and whitewash, shadowed-lines, projections,/ Things at once apparent and transparent,/ Clean-edged, fine-drawn, drawn-out, redrawn, remembered…”(ll. 12 – 15). Heaney reflects on his own achievement as a poet by defining his different poetry collections: his first poetry collections are “[b]lue slate and whitewash” (l. 13), Station Island is “shadowed-lines” (l. 13), The Haw Lantern is “projections” (l. 13) and
159 Seeing Things is “[t]hings […] apparent and transparent” (l. 14). The art of his poems is “[c]lean-edged” (l. 15), “fine-drawn” (l. 15), “redrawn”(l. 15), and “remembered” (l. 15). Heaney uses an analogy to painting to point out that the topics of his poems are “[c]lean- edged” (l. 15), that he ‘fine-draws’ the language in them, that he ‘redraws’ the images, and that he uses memories from his childhood, “remembered” (l. 15) from an adult perspective. In the essay “The Place of Writing” from Finders Keepers , Heaney points out that “[o]ne of the first functions of a poem, after all, is to satisfy a need in the poet. The achievement of a sufficient form and a fulfilling music has a justifying effect within his life” (Heaney, 2002: 234). It can be said that he reflects on the role of a poet, and so he echoes his own poems. Heaney points out that a poet is like an architect who builds a foundation with certain ingredients and then varies and re-adjusts them, and in the end a foundation is built. In a way, Heaney states that poets are architects of the mind. A comparison of poetry and architecture can also be found in Heaney’s discussion of W. B. Yeats’s art:
That sense of a temple inside the hearing, of an undeniable acoustic architecture, of a written vaulting, of the firmness and in-placeness and undislodgeableness of poetic form, that is one of Yeats’s great gifts to our century; […] it was due in no small measure to […] an old Norman castle in Ballylee, a place that was nowhere until it was a written place. (Heaney, 2002: 237)
Yeats attached to the landscapes of Sligo images which are inscribed in the mind of the reader. In the tradition of Yeats, Heaney’s poetry is inspired by the landscape of rural Derry, and he uses it to create a landscape of the mind.
Heaney returned to ‘Heaneyspeak’, which is exemplified in “The Gravel Walks” (see Appendix, pp. 308 – 309), where he turned to the river gravel as a metaphor for the home- ground. The poem begins with “River gravel. In the beginning, that.” (l. 1) Heaney suggests that in the beginning there was the shallow riverbed, which echoes on the poem “The First Words” (see Appendix, p. 308), which is a translation from the Rumanian of Manu Sorescu. It says that “[t]he first words got polluted/ Like river water in the morning/ Flowing with the dirt” (ll. 1 – 3). In the context of the ceasefire in Northern Ireland, the poem says that every new beginning is like river gravel, grey. Heaney continues the poem with “[t]he flints and sandstone-bits/ Worked themselves smooth and smaller in a sparkle// Of shallow, hurrying barley-sugar water” (“The Gravel Walks”, ll. 7 – 9). He points out that the stones adjusted to the river and that the river smoothed the edges of the stones like the differences between the
160 sectarian groups in Northern Ireland. At first, they are big, but in the course of time they adjust to each other. Heaney further combines the gravel of the river with cement: “An eternity that had ended once a tractor/ Dropped its link-box in the gravel bed/ And cement mixers began to come to life/ And men in dungarees, like captive shadows/ Mixed concrete, loaded, wheeled, turned, wheeled” (ll. 11 – 15). In these lines Heaney mixes images from the country with images from the city. The cement becomes part of the river bed. Through these oppositions Heaney shows that differences can blend and create something new, “as if/ The Pharaoh’s brickyards burned inside their heads” (ll. 15 – 16). The poem carries on with the suggestion of “[h]oard and praise the verity of gravel./ Gems for the undeluded. Milt of earth” (ll. 17 – 18). Heaney’s metaphors are rooted in the ground, in the river bed. In the context of the peace process in Northern Ireland, it can be said that he points out that the land itself is the source of reconciliation, which must be treasured because it is “[b]eautiful in or outside the river,/ The kingdom of gravel was inside you too –“ (ll. 21 – 22). Heaney says that the beauty of landscape is “inside you too” (l. 22). Considering the sentiments of a divided Northern Ireland, the feeling of division based on territory, language and faith, is reconciled in the beauty of the landscape – the common ground of both groups. The feeling of belonging to a place is inherent in everyone – it was maybe just “[d]eep down, far back, clear water running over/ Pebbles of caramel, hailstone, mackerel-blue.” (ll. 23- 24) This can be seen as an allusion to “Crossings XXXII” from Seeing Things , where he says that “[r]unning water never disappointed” (l. 1). The running water is a sign of positive change towards a mutual understanding of the two opposing groups in Northern Ireland. In the last stanza, Heaney proposes that the people should establish “yourself somewhere in between/ Those solid batches mixed with grey cement/ And a tune called ‘The Gravel Walks’ that conjures green” (“The Gravel Walks”, ll. 30 – 33). Heaney says that there is a position somewhere ‘in between’. This can also be seen as an allusion to his poem “Terminus”, where he pointed out that he grew up ‘in between’ and that he feels an inherent tension through the duality he experienced in growing up in Northern Ireland. In the poem “The Gravel Walks”, he suggests that the duality should be embraced and that an identity should be defined between the grey cement and the images of the rebel song “The Gravel Walks”, which was meant to evoke a feeling of belonging to the Irish nation. Heaney tries to propose a common ground for the identity of people from the North of Ireland. His ‘gravel walk’ consists of images from both sectarian groups and, therefore, he attempts to define a common ground, which is evident through the allusion to the song that promoted nationalistic images.
161 10. 1. Return to Place Names
In Wintering Out , Heaney developed place-name poems in order to create an etymology of a place. Heaney created these place-poems in the spirit of the Irish poetic tradition of dinnseanchas which promoted the idea that the local is an adequate source for poetry (cf. Murphy, 1996: 23). In these, poems he developed the approach of digging for the roots in the local place. The dinnseanchas can be seen as a dense description of the local (cf. ibid.). In his poems, Heaney was on a quest for the origin of a place through retracing its original Irish name. According to Heaney, the etymology of a place can be found in the Irish place name. Therefore, in The Spirit Level , Heaney returns to the place-name poems. Heaney has developed his poetic voice, which can be seen in his poems – he turned from the rural pastoral of his early volumes to a more reflective voice that reflects on the responsibility of the poet and of poetry in general.
In Heaney’s recent poetry collections, his poems became more complex, which can be seen in the variation of the framework of his poems. Heaney has various sources of inspiration; in The Spirit Level , he turned to Greek mythology, to Dante’s Divine Comedy , and to Virgil and Homer, from whom he borrowed sometimes the setting or the motif of his poems. One constant in his poetry is a diction that is inspired by the local place. In his more recent poems Heaney repeats the images of his poems but alters the mode of telling about events. The poems become more complex, and the mode varies from the Dantean terza rima to the sestina and the sonnet. Heaney states that Elizabeth Bishop’s writing “has a sense of justice being done to the facts of a situation even as the situation is re-imagined into poetry” (Heaney, 2002: 332). This can also be said about Heaney and his altered approach towards poetry.
In The Spirit Level , Heaney returns to place-name poems, for example, in “Whitby-sur- Moyola”, which contains references to Caedmon, who spent “most of his time as a hardworking yardman” (Vendler, 2000: 157). In the poem “Whitby-sur-Moyola” (see Appendix, pp. 309 – 310), Heaney does not only create a pastoral idyll, which he uses to reflect on poetry and the responsibility of a poet, he also refers to some of his earlier poems. The poem begins with the image of Caedmon, who was also a known figure for the poet. Caedmon can be seen as an alter ego of Heaney through whose eyes he looks back, which is also evident in the use of the past tense in the poem. In the poem, Caedmon is “[b]ack in situ there with his full bucket/ And armfuls of clean straw, the perfect yardman” (ll. 2 – 3).
162 Heaney describes how Caedmon returned to his place with a full bucket and an ‘armful’ of straw. The poem “The First Kingdom” from Station Island deals with Heaeny’s childhood in rural County Derry. Heaney mentions the measurements of his kingdom: “the cartful, the barrowful and the bucketful” (l. 8). In “Whitby-sur-Moyola”, Heaney returns to the place of his ‘first kingdom’, the farm in Derry. He uses ‘bucket’ and ‘straw’ to emphasise the rural locality. The figure of Caedmon can also be seen as a parallel to the god Pan, who protects the shepherd and the farmer when they pay homage to him. It can be said that Heaney pays homage in his poetry by creating ‘soundscapes’. He re-creates in his poems places from his childhood with a choice of words that is deliberately coloured by the inspiration of the native place. Heaney moves within the discourse of the Pan myth to add a mythical dimension to the place. He also points out that he is “just bogging in/ As if the sacred subjects were a herd/ That had broken out and needed rounding up.” (“Whitby-sur-Moyola”, ll. 9 – 11) Heaney changes the noun ‘bog’ into a verb which describes the process of attaching to the place an imagery of bog. The word “bogging” (l. 9) echoes the imagery of the poems from North , where he creates “sacred objects” (l. 10) out of the bog; moreover, he suggests that he has to redefine these images. The situation in the North has changed, as a ceasefire was established, and the “sacred subjects” (l. 10) from the bog of the North are no longer valid, so Heaney has to redefine them in order to provide an adequate representation of the place.
The poem “At Banagher” (see Appendix, p. 310) dwells on an old tale that the Heaney name is connected with – a legend which says that earth taken from the ground at Banagher, a monastic site, has magical powers when one of the Heaney family picks it up (cf. Heaney, 1980: 20). By telling this legend, Heaney points out his rootedness in the place, that a piece of the ground taken up by one with the Heaney name can be seen as a good sign. The poem alludes to this story and begins with a vision where “all of a sudden there appears to me/ The journey man tailor who was my antecedent” (ll. 1 – 2). Through the vision the magical dimension is incorporated. Another enforcement of the vision is that the antecedent is described like Buddha: “Up on a table, cross-legged, ripping out” (l. 3), which is also mentioned at the end of the poem: “My Lord Buddha of Banagher” (l. 23). Heaney says that his rootedness in the place is the balance for his spirit. Heaney also refers to a point in the story where the sand lifted from the ground is a good sign: “Admitted into kitchens, into clothes// His touch has the power to turn to cloth again” (ll. 9 – 10). The metaphor of ‘turning to cloth again’ can be interpreted as a variation of his own art where he tries to re-create the place from his childhood through a choice of words that is inspired by the home-ground of
163 rural Derry – a return to the real place which is not illumined through imagination. The poem also contains a certain tone of stoicism which means by definition undramatic (cf. Vendler, 1998: 158). The stoic atmosphere of the poem is reflected in several aspects of Heaney’s poetry. First, his choice of words is inspired by the rustic landscape of Derry. Second, it deals with the undramatic scenery of his local ground and, finally, Heaney deliberately and repeatedly uses a rural scenery in his poems, which he describes in a diction inspired by his local ground. This is emphasised in the poem through a second vision which echoes the first one: “All of a sudden he appears to me,/ Unopen, unmendacious, unillumined” (ll. 11 – 12). Heaney depicts the real place – this time he turns the transcendent into something real, which is commented on in the poem through wishing “more power to him on the job there” (l. 13). This can be regarded as an allegory to Heaney’s own poetry because he turned the natural to something luminous and returned to the real thing the landscape of his local place. As Vendler points out, “[t]his is the poetry of sitting at one’s work, standing forgetful of self […] singing, like Caedmon, in the intervals between one’s duties” (Vendler, 1998: 158).
“Tollund” is the last piece of the collection, and it is the most interesting piece because it directly refers to the bog poem “The Tollund Man” from Wintering Out. Heaney and his wife were in Tollund in Denmark when the ceasefire between the IRA Provisionals and the Protestant Paramilitaries was announced. In the poetry collection The Spirit Level , Heaney repeatedly mentions that the images he attached to place in his poems have to be altered and new meaning has to be given to them. Heaney takes the prominent image of Tollund and begins with this task: “Tollund” (see Appendix, pp. 310 – 311) should become an image of hope through the newly established ceasefire. The poem begins with a reference to the journey to Tollund – “[t]hat Sunday morning we had travelled far.” (l. 1) Heaney uses the past perfect tense to create an atmosphere of ‘being-over’ in the poem. It is written like a personal account, which is emphasised through the first-person plural: “We stood a long time out in Tollund Moss:/ The low ground, the swart water, the thick grass/ Hallucinatory and familiar.” (ll. 2 – 4) Heaney describes the place as a low ground with shallow water and thick vegetation of grass. The place appears to be imagined, but at the same time it evokes feelings of being familiar. It is the place that inspired his imagination and where he conjured up the figure of the Tollund Man with “mild pods of his eye-lids,/ His pointed skin cap” (“The Tollund Man”, ll. 3 – 4, see Appendix, pp. 254 – 255) who was “naked except for/ The cap, noose and girdle” (ll. 9 – 10). The poem “Tollund” continues with echoing his early volumes’ language: “A path through Jutland fields. Light traffic sound./ Willow bushes; rushes; bog-fir grags” (“Tollund”,
164 ll. 5 – 6). Heaney describes the landscape and the vegetation in a similar way to his early collections. He uses words such as “rushes (l. 6), “[w]illow bushes” (l. 6) and “bog-fir” (l. 6). As a matter of fact, he uses the same words which he used to describe the landscape of his local place. Heaney returns to describing the beauty of the landscape in order to evoke a picture in the mind of the reader. Through the words of “rushes” (l. 6) and “bushes” (l. 6), he creates a soundscape of the landscape. The poem creates a rustic idyll: “bog-fir grags/ In a swept and gated farmyard; dormant quags./ And silage under wraps in its silent mound.” (ll. 6 – 8) Heaney creates a pastoral idyll based on a memory of the local place of his childhood. He attaches to the place Tollund a positive meaning altering the old meaning of “man-killing parishes” (“The Tollund Man”, l. 42). In “The Tollund Man”, images of “scattered, ambushed/ Flesh of labourers,/ Stockinged corpses/ Laid out in the farmyards” (ll. 25 – 28) were attached to the place. Heaney wants to eradicate that meaning and, to do so, he draws a picture of a peaceful Tollund with his choice of language: “It could have been a still out of the bright/ ‘Townland of Peace’, that poem of dream farms/ Outside all contention.” (“Tollund”, ll. 9 – 11) The poem creates its own context by refering to a townland of peace where no conflict is apparent. “Tollund” can be seen as the ‘dream of farms’. Heaney uses the image of farm to give the images of the bog a new connotation to turn the meaning from a farmyard as a graveyard to a farm as a “townland of peace” (l. 10) with “rushes” (l. 6) and “bushes” (l. 6).
Heaney uses images from the farm and combines them with images from a city: “The scarecrow’s arms/ Stood wide open opposite the satellite// Dish in the paddock” (ll. 11 – 13). In his essay “Something to Write Home About” from Finders Keepers , Heaney points out that the Protestant side of the town was industrialised with terraced houses while the Catholic side lived in thatched farmhouses surrounded by cattle (cf. Heaney, 2002: 49). Heaney combines images from both groups in the description of the farm; moreover, the position of opposition is taken away through the ‘wide open arms of the scarecrow’. It can be said that Heaney tries to forge an image of embrace by suggesting that the duality of the place has to be accepted. In his essay “Cessation 1994” from Finders Keepers , Heaney also mentions that the Ulster Protestants “renege on their sense of separate identity. But it is neither stupid nor insulting to ask them to consider consenting to some political adjustments that would give the nationalist minority equally undisputed rights to the grounds of their Irish identity” (ibid.: 47). In order to contribute to a definition of a common identity, he uses images from the skyline of the place to represent either side. Heaney uses the satellite and the paddock to refer to the Protestant community because these two things belong to an urban industrialized community. The
165 ‘farm’ and the ‘scarecrow’ are part of a life in the countryside, which is the background of the Irish inhabitants, and therefore he uses these images to refer to the Catholic community. By taking images from the place, he attaches the people to the place; moreover, he shapes symbols which display the place and the community living in that particular place. Corcoran claims that “’Tollund’ is a self-corrective poem and gesture, a revisiting of the old ground to possess it newly and differently, to turn it outwards from terror and ‘man-killing’ towards an alternative that is, in several senses, ‘not bad’” (Corcoran, 1998: 205). According to Corcoran, Heaney tries to adjust the old ground to the new situation of the ceasefire in Northern Ireland, so that Tollund becomes an emblem of a mutual understanding between the two different groups living in the North of Ireland.
Heaney also refers to the recognition of the Gaelic language because the scarecrow and the satellite dish are situated “where a standing stone/ Had been resituated and landscaped,/ With tourist signs in futhark runic script/ In Danish and in English.” (“Tollund”, ll. 14 – 16) In the poem, a tourist sign is envisaged with runic script, which alludes to the Celtic heritage of the Irish inhabitants. The name of the place is mentioned in both languages. Heaney alludes to the importance of the native language which is also inherent in the place. Through this allusion Heaney describes a peaceful coexistence accepting the difference and embracing it, which is also seen by Corcoran, who says that “’Tollund’ becomes, thereby, a poem of cautious optimisms, convinced in its attitude and gesture, but tentative in statement and assumption” (Corcoran, 1998: 205). Heaney’s “Tollund” proposes a place “[w]here we stood footloose, at home beyond the tribe” (l. 20). The poem points out that belonging to a tribe is not longer a determining factor, as a matter of fact, the place becomes the common ground. The poem ends with a hopeful assumption: “Ourselves again, free-willed again, not bad.” (l. 24) As Corcoran points out, the poem “may be thought to mark the mood of a constitutionally nationalist position in Northern Ireland of the mid 1990s” (Corcoran, 1998: 205). Heaney uses “[o]urselves” (“Tollund”, l. 24) as a term that includes the fact that the native language is regained and the place is reconciled in peace. Heaney attributes to “Tollund” a positive imagery of rural vegetation. “Tollund” also shows “how continuously renegotiated landscapes of memory are implicated in the construction and maintenance of cultural identities” (Graham, 1997: 194).
166 10. 2. Re-visiting Myth, Images, ‘Word-Hoard’
Heaney takes common images from different literary texts and uses them in his poetry; moreover, he borrows motifs and settings from these texts. Heaney’s sources for inspiration are very diverse, for example, he uses Dante’s Divine Comedy and the motif of pilgrimage in Station Island . He also refers to Virgil and Homer, who he relates to through different translations he has done in recent years. He translated, for example, Sophocles’ Philoctetes for the Field Day Theatre in Dublin. Through translating it, he became interested in Greek drama, and so he turned to images from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in his volume, The Spirit Level . He takes motifs, figures and images from these sources and includes them in his poems. He does not merely copy them; instead, he makes them his own by adding his unique choice of words inspired by his local place. Heaney re-visits the images from myths to re- create the local place in poetry and to attach to the place the meaning of the image from myth.
Heaney returns to using an alter ego from the poem “The Watchman’s War” in the poem “His Dawn Vision” (cf. Vendler, 1998: 156) which are both part of the poem “Mycenae Lookout”. “His Dawn Vision” can be seen as a poem that exemplifies features of Heaney’s poetry. One feature is language which is inspired by his local place. The poem begins with three short statements that determine the place: “Cities of grass. Fort Walls. The dumbstruck palace.” (“His Dawn Vision”, l. 1, see Appendix, pp. 312 – 313) Heaney returns to the imagery of his early volumes, where he describes the idyll of rural pastoral. He repeats these images, and in the changed context of the political situation in Northern Ireland, he gives them new meaning. He continues the poem with “[t]he little violet’s heads bowed on their stems,/ The pre- gossamers, all dew and scrim/ And star-lace, it was more through them// I felt the beating of the huge time-wound” (ll. 13 – 16). Heaney echoes the image of Wordsworth’s daffodils that also bow their heads in the wind. It can be said that there is an additional allusion to the “Mud Vision” from The Haw Lantern , where a gossamer wheel appears in mid-air. Heaney connects the place with time, which hints to the past experience of the Troubles. This is evident in the following lines: “My soul wept in my hand/ When I would touch them” (“His Dawn Vision”, ll. 17 – 18). However, he could not use them as a positive image because he has used these images for the place of sectarian violence. Towards the end of the poem, he looks back on the different places he created in his poems: “I saw cities of grass,/ Valleys of longing, tombs, a wind-swept brightness” (ll. 19 – 20). Heaney envisaged so many different places which he re- created from his memory, and now it is a “wind-swept brightness” (l. 20). By using the Greek
167 drama as a frame, he attaches to the place a sense of tragedy because he is “contamining the most innocent action with the stain of tragedy” (Vendler, 2000: 172).
Another example of Heaney’s incorporation of literary sources is “His Reverie of Water”, which is also part of the “Mycenae Lookout”. Heaney uses Greek legends as a setting for his poem which is explained by the following statement: “Kinsella deliberately embarks upon the mythic method of Pound’s early cantos, where psychic and literary faring forth is commingled with the venturings of Homeric and Ovidian heroes” (Heaney, 2002: 242). Heaney uses figures and settings from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon to build an allegory for his local place in the poem. His local place is Northern Ireland, and he begins the poem with a water image: “At Troy, at Athens, what I most clearly/ see and nearly smell/ is the fresh water.” (“His Reverie of Water”, ll. 1 -3, see Appendix, pp. 311 – 312) As in the poems from Seeing Things , water is again a prominent metaphor in his poem; it is a metaphor that Heaney connects with the senses of seeing and smelling. Water is described as a means to clean off the stains of war, when the hero comes “stripped to the skin, blood-plastered, moaning/ and rocking” (ll. 10 – 11). The water imagery is continued in the poem by referring to “the well at Athens too./ Or rather that old lifeline leading up / and down from the Acropolis/ to the well itself” (ll. 13 – 16). In this poem, water can be regarded as an image for life and supporting life by leading to the well the beginning of this water-line: “a set of timber steps/ slatted in between the sheer cliff face/ and a free-standing, covering spur of rock” (ll. 16 – 18). In these lines, the image of ‘in-between-ness’ is evoked through the images of “sheer cliff face” (l. 17) and “covering spur of rock” (l. 18). Heaney uses the image of rocks to create an image of opposition that is bridged by “timber steps” (l. 16). It can be argued that this is an image of consolation and encouragement where two opposing entities come together. Further, it can be said that Heaney uses Greek mythology to draw an analogy to the situation in Northern Ireland. By using mythology, he distances the events in time and through that a level of myth is attached to the poem.
Heaney uses the Greek setting to attach to the poem a dimension of mythology which he turns to a personal account in stanza ten by changing the third-person plural to the first-person plural: “And then this ladder of our own that ran/ deep into a well-shaft being sunk/ in broad daylight, men puddling at the source” (ll. 28 – 30). It can be said that these lines refer to the peace process in Northern Ireland where a “well-shaft [is] being sunk” (l. 29). Heaney uses the well as an image of foundation and origin, which echoes the idea of omphalos. Heaney
168 continues the poem with saying that the people have found themselves in puddling “through tawny mud” (l. 31). This can be seen as an allusion to the “Mud Vision” from The Haw Lantern , where he mentions the option of becoming “mud-men” (l. 58). Heaney again links the place with the people by using an image from the ground, mud, as a means of representation. Through Heaney’s repeated use of mud in context with rural Ireland, it can be said that it has in a way become synonymous with it. The poem sums up the new possibilities of “finders, keepers, seers of fresh water/ in the bountiful round mouth of iron pumps/ and gushing taps” (“His Reverie of Water”, ll. 34 – 36). The pump is once more a representation for the local place, the home-ground. In his essay “Mossbawn” from Preoccupations , Heaney mentions that the pump marks “the centre of another world” (Heaney, 1980: 17). Heaney does not only use the pump as a sign of the omphalos, but he also uses the ‘gushing tap’ which can be seen as the industrialized modernized version of his childhood pump. Heaney also refers to the children’s game Finders Keepers, which suggests an allusion to the place of his childhood which was untainted by political and social tensions. The recovery of this place is the key of a common mutual understanding.
Another example of re-visiting myth is “Flight Path”, where Heaney does not only re-visit myth but also words – words he already used in his early volumes. The poem, “The Flight Path”, “is a summary of several of the topographical ‘translations’ of Heaney’s own biography – Derry, Belfast, the United States, the Dordogne” (Corcoran, 1998: 190). Heaney begins with re-visiting Derry, the place of his childhood. Heaney links with Derry a memory of his father making a paper boat. He uses the word ‘soggy’ to refer to the experience when the boat sinks. The word ‘soggy’ he also used in the poem “Digging” from Death of a Naturalist , where he made an analogy between his father digging “the squelch and slap/ Of soggy peat” (ll. 25 – 26) and himself digging with the “squat pen” (l. 30). Heaney uses the word ‘soggy’ to refer to his experience as a child, which can be interpreted as an account of the experience of his home-ground in the landscape of Derry which defined his choice of words. In the second stanza, he echoes a line from “The Forge” from Door into the Dark , where he states that words open “a door into the dark” (l. 1). In “The Flight Path” (see Appendix, pp. 313 – 314), he writes that “I’m in the doorway” (l. 24) because he stands in “for all of those/ The stance perpetuates” (l. 25 – 26). The next step in his topography is Glanmore, “oak, bay, sycamore” (l. 49) where he goes “[a]cross and across and across” (l. 50). The idea of crossing was taken up from Dante’s Divine Comedy , which he translated in Seeing Things . Heaney uses the image of crossing between different places. The passage
169 closes with “Sweeney astray in home truth out of Horace:/ Skies change, not cares, for those who cross the seas” (l. 54 – 55). The translation from Horace echoes the idea of crossing from some lines before. Heaney alludes to the Gaelic legendary tale of Buile Suibhne , which he translated as Sweeney Astray . In Station Island , the figure was one of his alter egos. Heaney re-visits the myth of Sweeney Astray and attaches to it the new aspect of Horace. He attaches to the place certain images, for example, with Glanmore he connects bay and sea and the idea of crossing, but he also links Glanmore with his poetic work of translating Sweeney Astray . Then he returns to Belfast, which is linked with “the sea/ At Skerries, the nuptial hawthorn bloom” (ll. 61 – 62). Heaney links a specific image with each place. In this passage, he also refers explicitly to Dante’s hell, “[l]ike something out of Dante’s scurfy hell” (l. 92), and Virgil as a source of inspiration: “I too walked behind the righteous Virgil” (l. 94). Then Heaney continues by citing from his translation of a passage from Dante’s Comedy which he called “Ugolino” and which is the last piece of Field Work . Heaney creates an intertextual- referentiality between his different volumes and explicitly points out that the translation was meant to contain political allusions: “The red eyes were the eyes of Ciaran Nugent” (“The Flight Path”, l. 91) who started the ‘dirty protest’ in the internment camp Long Kesh, which consequently triggered off the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981 (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 190). Heaney continues with images connected to pilgrimage and the via crucis: “In a breath of air, a lime-green butterfly/ Crossing the pilgrim’s sunstruck via crucis .” (“The Flight Path”, ll. 114 – 115)
For Heaney, language is a key to bring feelings into words, and he once pointed out that English was not ultimately home for him (cf. Heaney, 1980: 34). But he changed his opinion by saying that “persons who sound equally at home in their hearth speech and their acquired language, persons who seem to have obliterated altogether the line between self-conscious and unselfconscious usage, and to have established uncensored access to every coffer of the word-hoard” (Heaney, 2002: 276). Heaney’s “word-hoard” (ibid.) is inspired by the remembrance of his local place. In The Spirit Level , Heaney returned to the sounding effects of his early volumes which can be seen in “Butter Print”. The poem alludes to “Churning Day” from Death of a Naturalist , which deals with the smell and procedure of making butter. The poem “Butter Print” begins with a question: “Who carved on the butter-print’s round open face/ A cross-hatched head of rye” (ll. 1 – 2). These lines can be seen as references to lines from “Churning Day”, where “the butter/ in soft printed slabs was piled on the pantry
170 shelves” (ll. 29 – 30). So there is a repetition of the theme from “Churning Day”; what is more, Heaney returns to the settings of his childhood.
However, Heaney’s approach towards this scenery has changed. Once he said about Thomas Hardy’s home in Dorset that it is “set among the trees, deep at the centre of a web of paths and by-roads, in the matured stillness of an old garden, small-windowed, dark-ceilinged, stone-floored, hip-thatched, the Hardy birthplace embodies the feel of a way of life native to the place” (Heaney, 2002: 232). The birthplace of Hardy is embedded in the landscape – the birthplace is in a balance between the location and the way of life. Heaney’s description of “Churning Day” embodies the feel of a way of life native to a farm in Derry. The poem “Butter Print” continues with the statement that “[w]hen I was small I swallowed an awn of rye” (l. 5). Heaney uses the word “awn” (l. 5) “twice in the poem […] which is the Northern Irish dialect word, no longer in common use in England, for one of the bristles on an ear of barley or rye” (Corcoran, 1998: 207).
Heaney looks back at his childhood, and this perspective is reinforced through the word ‘awn’ (cf. ibid.). But he also reinforces the feeling that he looks back on the child’s memory from an adult perspective. Heaney turns the stinking of a sulphur mine (cf. l. 27 – 28) from “Churning Day” into “[m]y breathing came dawn-cold, so clear and sudden/ I might have been inhaling airs from heaven” (“Butter Print”, ll. 9 – 10). Heaney returns to images he already used in earlier collections and re-visits them in The Spirit Level. He points out that his local place is still connected with his childhood place. The poem is embedded in the legend of St. Agatha, who was tortured before she died as a martyr (cf. Corcoran, 1998: 206). Corcoran also suggests that “the power of the legendary and its persistence as a means of imaginative analogy and instance become the source of poems which themselves raise the usual or the quotidian to a higher power” (ibid.). Heaney elevates the daily life in rural Ireland to the subject-matter of poetry, and through his development as a reflective poet he returns to the early purges of his poetry to re-visit his images and to attach new meaning to them or to reaffirm their validity.
171 11. Electric Light – ‘Lux Perpetua’
Electric Light (2001) contains a very diverse variety of poems. It includes elegies, eclogues, parables, sonnets and short pieces, ‘glosses’. Electric Light can be seen as a volume that supports the idea that the poetic composition derives its pleasure from doing-in-language certain things as creating a verbal landscape. Heaney quoted Ezra Pound who says that “the thing that matters in art is a sort of energy, something more or less like electricity or radio activity, a force of transfusing, welding and unifying. A force rather like water when it spurts up through very bright sand and sets it in swift motion. You may make what image you like” (Heaney, 1995: 24). The idea of poetry as electricity is the basic assumption for the collection. Poetry, as an energy that can transfuse, weld and unify, can be appropriated to Heaney’s art. In Heaney’s case, the energy of his art is rooted in the local place which is mentioned in the poem “The Loose Box” (see Appendix, pp. 316 – 317), where he refers to an old recording of Patrick Kavanagh who “states/ That there’s health and worth in any talk about/ The properties of land.” (ll. 6 – 8) Heaney continues by describing the properties of land: “Sandy, glarry,/ Mossy, heavy, cold, the actual soil/ Almost does not matter; the main thing is/ An inner restitution” (ll. 8 – 11). Heaney uses words such as “mossy” (l. 9), “glarry” (l. 8) and “sandy” (l. 8) to describe the features of the place. But he continues by pointing out that the real constitution of the place is not important – the image that is created from the memory is much more important.
In “The Loose Box”, Heaney deals with the question what the ‘box’ Northern Irish Catholic poet includes. He places himself in the context of his poetry and his heritage; furthermore, he questions in how far the local place influenced his art. Heaney uses words such as “fodder- chute” (l. 62), “hay-floor” (l. 60) and combinations of words such as “[b]loom-drifted” (l. 57) to express Michael Collins’s connection with the local place who falls “[w]illingly, lastly, foreknowledgeably deep/ Into the hay-floor that gave once in his childhood/ Down through the bedded mouth of the loft trapdoor” (ll. 59 – 61). He applies these words in connection with the word “childhood” (l. 60) – the place where Collins lived as a child is still imprinted in his memory.
The idea of place imprinted in a mind is explained by Heaney. To him it means to become the voice of the spirit of the region: “The writing is infused with the atmosphere, physical and emotional, of a certain landscape or seascape, and while the writer’s immediate purpose may
172 not have any direct bearing upon the regional or national background, the background is sensed as a distinctive element in the work” (Heaney, 2002: 232). The poem continues and points out that a biographer of Collins retold this account differently: “One of his boy-deeds/ Was to enter the hidden jaws of that hay crevasse/ And get to his feet again and come unscathed/ Through a dazzle of pollen scarves to breath the air.” (“The Loose Box”, ll. 65 – 68) This ‘coming to the feet’ echoes on an experience of Heaney where he points out his feelings when the warm skin touches the cold floor, which is the floor of the kitchen in his family’s house in Derry. This feeling of touching the floor is described as “immediate sensation of surprise; and then something deeper, more gradual, a sensation of a consolidation and familiarity, the whole reassuring foundation of the earth coming up into you through the soles of your feet. It was like a knowledge coming home to you” (Heaney, 2002: 52). This is an account of the place from a distance where “[t]hat drop through the flower-floor lets him find his feet/ In an underworld of understanding” (ll. 71 – 72). Heaney refers to how his feet of poetry found their basis in the underworld of nature, which also offered him to imprint on his poems a natural order and understanding. Heaney once said that poetry “cannot afford to lose its fundamentally self-delighting inventiveness, its joy in being a process of language as well as a representation of things in the world” (Heaney, 1995: 5). Thereby, he considers poetry as a source of delight through the engagement with language and its sound effects but also poetry as a representation of the natural world visualised through language – place as a source of inspiration because he “was in two places at once. Once was a small square of kitchen floor and the other was a big knowledgeable space I had steeped into deep inside myself, a space I can still enter through the memory of my warm soles on the cold cement” (Heaney, 2002: 52). Heaney creates images to represent the place and in order “[t]o create an origin myth there must also be developed an iconography that highlights a cultural separation” (Graham, 1997: 207).
The poem “Clonmany to Ahascragh” exemplifies how memory of landscape and places is used to commemorate a friend. This alludes to the poem “The Strand at Lough Neagh” from Station Island , where Heaney commemorates his cousin. He creates a landscape for the dead man, Rory Kavanagh, by returning to the vegetation of a landscape: “Willows standing out in Leitrim Moss/ Wounds that ‘wept’ in the talk of those before you” (“Clonmany to Ahascragh”, ll. 3 – 4, see Appendix, pp. 314 – 315). Heaney uses the moss as an image of preserving the dead, a description which he already used in North . This time he turns the image of ritual sacrifice to an image of preservation, as a site of remembrance. Heaney uses
173 the place to create a memory for the person. The poem suggests that when “tears are to be wiped away,/ It will be in river country” (ll. 30 – 31). The echoing of the river evokes the image of the river Styx which carries the dead to the last resting place. The poem continues by pointing out that the tears are swept away “[i]n that confluence of unmarked bridge-rumped roads/ Beyond the Shannon, between the River Suck/ And the Corrib River” (ll. 32 – 34). Heaney points out that his friend will always be remembered in the beautiful landscape of the river country. Heaney echoes his friend in the landscape in the way Niobe became part of the landscape.
In “Sruth”, Heaney also commemorates Mary O’Muirithe. He uses the Gaelic dinnseanchas to describe her. She rests in the Gaelic language of these “guttural” (l. 9) places, which refers to Irish place names. Heaney also used the image of a river to commemorate her, as mentioned above, the river as expression of the energy in poetry. Heaney uses place as a frame of reference to define certain characteristics of the person. In “Sruth” (see Appendix, pp. 315 – 316), Heaney refers to her bilingual heritage: “The bilingual race/ And truth of that water/ Spilling down Errigal” (ll. 1 – 3). By referring to the “bilingual race” (l. 1), Heaney points out that O’Muirithe was of Gaelic descent which is also emphasised by describing her through a place poem. The poem continues by pointing out that “[y]ou in your dishabills/ Washing your face in the guttural glen” (ll. 7 – 9). Heaney uses Gaelic words to describe this person; moreover, he points out that the local language spoken in an area defines a person and is part of her identity. Heaney returns to images such as the “guttural glen” (l. 9) to express locality.
Self-reflexivity of poetry and landscape and imagery is a major part of the poem “Electric Light” (see Appendix, pp. 319 – 320), which is the title poem of this collection. It is the last poem of the collection and sums up the motif of all the poems in Electric Light . Heaney uses the image of electric light to refer to the energy of poetry. Heaney returns to images from earlier poems to exemplify his point. Heaney also returns to the question of “’there-you-are- and-where-are-you?// Of poetry itself’” (ll. 21 – 22). This shows that he questions his art and his ‘place of writing’, it is a question of returning to the places of his childhood as a scenery for his poems, or to use the places as a source for his creative faculty and to re-imagine a place in the mind. This shows a self-reflexive approach towards poetry and a poet who is aware of his responsibility and, therefore, deliberately forges the meaning of the images in his poetry. In his essay “Through-Other Places, Through-Other Times: the Irish Poet and Britain” from Finders Keepers , Heaney points out that the poetry of Rodgers, a Northern Irish poet,
174 “associates something original in himself with the lyrical element in the Irish countryside” (Heaney, 2002: 365). It can be said that the beginning of the poem “Electric Light” echoes the image of ‘digging with his thumb’ from “Digging” from Death of a Naturalist . The poem varies the image of the thumb: “The smashed thumb-nail/ Of that ancient mangled thumb was puckered pearl,// Rucked quartz, a littered Cumae” (“Electric Light”, ll. 2 – 4). It can be said that the poem forms an analogy of the early poem “Digging”. The poet questions his art and the aspect of digging in the ground as a metaphor for his predicament with the place. The poem further points out that Heaney’s writing is “[r]ucked quartz” (“Electric Light”, l. 4), which can be seen as an analogy to “Glanmore Sonnet IX” from Field Work , where he says that he turned the classical sonnet to “[c]lassic hung with silage” (l. 7). Heaney continually returns to images from earlier poetry collections and echoes on them, or varies them. The use of the word “silage” (l. 7) reverberates in the word “littered” (“Electric Light”, l. 4) which is used to describe the Sibyl of Cumae, who is a figure in poems from Station Island and Seeing Things . This can be seen as another analogy to earlier poems. He defined the poet as diviner in his poem “Diviner” from Death of a Naturalist . Here, the poet is a littered Cumae who uses the rural life as subject matter in his poetry; he also uses words inspired by the local place in his poems. Language as a medium to convey meaning through images becomes also a part of his poetry, which is eminent in the repetition of several images in his poems and the change of meaning that took place during his career. Heaney also accommodated to the English language because he enters the “[e]ddy of sybilline English” (“Electric Light”, l. 16) and “it’s time to swim/ out on your own and fill the element” (“Station Island XII”, ll. 48 – 49). Heaney feels at home in the English language and can explore every field of the ‘word- hoard’. The poet uses the language instinctively and can express his feelings in words. He metaphorically conquers the English language and makes it his own by creating a rural Irish idyll with his words.
The poem “Electric Light” continues with a description of the landscape that passes by when crossing England: “An allotment scarecrow among patted rigs,/ Then a town-edged soccer pitch, the groin of distance,/ Fields of grain like the Field of the Cloth of Gold.” (“Electric Light”, ll. 25 – 27) Heaney combines images of the rural country with those of the industrialised part of it; the scarecrow and the patted rigs. Then the image of a “soccer pitch” (l. 26) appears in sight of the by-passer, which is seen as a sign of estranged-ness and relates to what Heaney pointed out in “Something to Write Home About”, where the soccer pitch is generally seen as associated with the Protestant area of Castledawson (cf. Heaney, 2002: 49).
175 The line “fields of grain like the Field of the Cloth of Gold” (“Electric Light”, l. 27) alludes to Sir James Frazer’s book The Golden Bough. Frazer tried to evict “the mystery from the old faiths and standardize and anatomize the old places” (Heaney, 1980: 135). Heaney draws an analogy between the plain landscape of England and the descriptions in the book by Frazer. He opposes the abundant and wild vegetation of Ireland to the organized and standardized landscape of England.
The poem contains the old woman with her fur-felt slippers as a repeated theme. The poem begins with the phrase that “I saw electric light,/ She sat with her fur-lined slippers unzipped” (“Electric Light”, ll. 5 – 6). This line is repeated at the end of the poem. Heaney alters the line a little by beginning with the image of the woman: “She sat with her fur-lined felt slippers unzipped,/ Electric light shone over us” (ll. 41 – 42). Heaney links the image of the woman with electric light. As pointed out above, electric light can be seen as a metaphor for the energy in poetry. The energy of Heaney’s own poetry is connected with the female character because Heaney refers in the middle of the poem to “[b]acks of houses/ Like the back of hers” (ll. 22 – 23). Heaney compares the back of the skyline with the “back of hers” (l. 23) which can be seen as an allusion to the woman with her “fur-lined felt slippers” (l. 41). In Heaney’s poem, the woman correlates to a representation of Ireland, the Shan van Voucht, the poor old woman who inspired Heaney to write poetry and now becomes part of his poetry. In the poem, she is the source of the energy of his poetry, displayed through the image of electric light.
In the end, Heaney returns to the recent past of Northern Ireland, which was the reason for writing poetry, as Edna Longley states: “unjust Ulster hurt him into poetry” (Longley, 1994: 70). But the statement above can also be seen as an allusion to the bog poems which were written under a new feeling of fear, and in order to fulfil the task he “was simply invoking dangers for myself” (Heaney, 1980: 58). This statement is echoed in the last paragraph where he concludes: “I feared// The dirt-tracked flint and fissure of her nail,/ So plectrum-hard, glit- glittery, it must still keep/ Among beads and vertebrae in the Derry ground.” (“Electric Light”, ll. 42 – 45) The word “fissure” (l. 43) appears again and can be regarded as an allusion to Wordsworth’s experience of the tension during the war between revolutionary France and England. Wordsworth was trapped between his sympathy for the French ideology
176 and the belonging to the British nation (cf. Heaney, 1995: 189). The “fissure” (“Electric Light”, l. 43) and “dirt-tracked flint” (l. 43) are references to the violent past of Northern Ireland which was triggered off by the sectarian division. This division must be kept sealed and remembered in the Derry ground, the poems of North .
177 11. 1. Eclogues
The Latin eclogues are related with the Greek bucolica which deal with rural topics such as cattle herding. The Latin poet Virgil wrote ten eclogues which deal with rural life, the herdsmen and the farmers, but he altered Theocritus’ original Bucolica by chosing a revolutionary setting. Heaney undertook many different translations from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon to Sophocles’ Oedipus ; he translated the Irish folk legend Sweeney Astray and the English long poem Beowulf . It can be said that translating is a source of inspiration for him because sometimes he uses figures from these translations as alter egos in his poems or settings of their work as settings for his own poems. This time he uses the tradition of pastoral poems for his own poetry. Heaney, of course, alters the tradition and makes it his home. In Electric Light , Heaney loosely translates Virgil’s Eclogues : sometimes he only echoes on one of their themes, sometimes he uses the rustic language and topic as a source of inspiration.
Heaney is familiar with Virgil because he has already used images from Virgil’s Aeneid as a framework for his poems before. The “Bann Valley Eclogue” is a loose translation of Virgil’s “Eclogue IV”, which deals with a prophesy that a child will be born and that an Augustan time of change and abundance is coming. This was a good prophesy because the people were tired of war. Heaney alters the form of the tradition and creates the eclogue like a dialogue between the poet and Virgil. Heaney follows in the footsteps of Virgil, which can be seen as an allusion to the poem “The Flight Path” from The Spirit Level , where he writes that “I too walked behind the righteous Virgil” (l. 94). Virgil’s eclogue is arranged in the life circle of the maturation of the child, which will be a consoling figure that brings a mutual understanding between man and man and nature and man.
Heaney created a trilogy of eclogues which can exist on their own, but read together they contain a comprehensive narrative. The first eclogue in the volume is “Bann Valley Eclogue” (see Appendix, pp. 320 – 321), which begins with an invocation of the muses: “Bann Valley Muses, give us a song worth singing” (l. 1). In Virgil’s time, the role of the poet has changed because the poet does no longer want to be seen as a servant to the muses but wants to be acknowledged as a ‘vates Romanus’ who sings visionary songs for the Roman people. This can be regarded as a correlation with Heaney’s personal perspective on the role of the poet as diviner. Heaney alludes to the source of his inspiration Virgil: “Help me to please my hedge- schoolmaster Virgil/ And the child that’s due” (ll. 4 – 5). With this, Heaney acknowledges the
178 art of Virgil, who was famous for his eclogues, and he alludes to the content of Virgil’s “Eclogue IV” which closes with well-wishes for the child. Heaney also refers to an earlier poem, “Glanmore Sonnet II” from Field Work , where “I landed in the hedge-school of Glanmore/ And from which I hoped to raise/ A voice” (ll. 9 – 11). Heaney refers to Virgil as his master who guides him through the task of poetry to the point where he acquires Virgil’s professionalism. Virgil’s eclogue points out that poets should not depict the real landscape; moreover, they should elevate the topic and create an imagery wood which is worth for a king (“Eclogue IV”, l. 3). Heaney also alludes to his access of education through which he was able to sing poetry. As mentioned before, the ‘hedge schools’ were the only way to acquire education for the Catholic inhabitants during the Penal Laws. In Virgil’s eclogue, the child is a boy (cf. “Eclogue IV”, l. 15 – 20) but Heaney makes a significant change because the poem continues: “Maybe, heavens, sing/ Better times for her and her generation” (“Bann Valley Eclogue”, ll. 5 – 6). Heaney suggests that the coming child, the sign of renewal and change, is a female child.
The next section is Virgil’s answer where the poet has to make sense of the words: “ Carmen, ordo, nascitur, saeculum, gens ” (l. 8), which Virgil explains that “[t]heir gist in your tongue and province should be clear” (l. 9). The meaning of these words should be clear for the poet because the words mime with their possible English equivalents: “Poetry, order, the times,/ The nation, wrong and renewal, then an infant birth/ And flooding away of all the old miasma.” (ll. 10 – 12) Every word is separated by a comma, but when the comma is left out, the sentence can be interpreted in a way that poetry orders the times and that the nation’s wrong is restored through an infant birth which causes the flooding away of all the old mist. The poem continues by pointing out that “[w]hatever stains you, you rubbed it into yourselves:/ Earth mark, birth mark” (ll. 13 – 14). In the poem, “[e]arth mark” (l. 14) and “birth mark” (l. 14) are equalled so it can be said that the earth marked the birth and the heritage. The birth mark became “mould, like the bloodied mould/ On Romulus’s ditch back” (ll. 14 – 15). These lines refer to the slaying of brothers, which can be seen as an allusion to the Troubles. Heaney returns to the word “mould” (l. 14) to use it as an image of rootedness in the ground. The local ground defines the heritage. In the poem, water appears as a means of cleaning the place from its blood stains because “when the waters break/ Bann’s stream will overflow, the old makings/ Will avail no more to keep east bank from west.” (ll. 15 – 17)
179 The poet answers again by referring to the meaning of the Latin word “ orbem ” (l. 19) by questioning “[w]hat on earth can match it?” (l. 20). The answer to the question is given through a “noon-eclipse” (l. 21) where no wind, no bird was there, but there was a “millennial chill” (l. 22). The experience of the “noon-eclipse” (l. 21) was for the poet an experience where “[a] firstness steadied, a lastness, a born awareness/ As name dawned into knowledge: I saw the orb” (ll. 23 – 24). The moment is described like an epiphany and name takes on meaning. This can be seen as an allusion to the earlier dinnseanchas where Heaney tried to establish meaning through drawing an etymology of a place name.
Virgil answers the poet that a “noon-eclipse” (l. 21) is not the right image for the child because “[b]ig dog daisies will get franked up in the spokes./ She’ll lie on summer evenings listening to/ A chug and slug going on in the milking parlour.” (ll. 27 – 29) The image of the “milking parlour” (l. 29) is a variation of the image that goats will give milk in abundance. Virgil turns the image from the noon-eclipse to images of nature and rural idyll. The simple life of rusticity is appropriate as a symbol for this child. So it can be said that the poem provides images that represent the child appropriately. The child can be seen as a metaphor for the newly born peace in Northern Ireland because Virgil commands: “Let her never hear close gunfire or explosions” (l. 30). With his remarks, Virgil gives guidelines for appropriate symbols to represent the future child.
The poet remembers the morning of St. Patrick’s day when the mother sent him to the railway line “[f]or the little trefoil, untouchable almost, the shamrock/ With its twining, binding, creepery, tough, thin roots/ All over the place” (ll. 33 – 35). According to Graham, “[t]he function of memory is defined by the present, its connection with history and place vestered in emblematic landscapes and places of meaning that encapsulate public history and official symbolism” (Graham, 1997: 194). In the poem, the image of the ‘shamrock’, which is a well- known symbol of Ireland, grows at the railway line. The poem combines the shamrock with the railway line, which can be seen as a hint at the peaceful situation in Northern Ireland where the Irish Catholic minority blooms along the Protestant majority. It can be said that the image of the shamrock is a representation of the identity of the Irish minority which starts slowly to bloom and to spread around. The poem ends with an affirmation of the child that “it won’t be long until/ You land among us. Your mother’s showing signs,/ Out for her sunset walk among big round bales.” (ll. 37 – 39) The word ‘land’ echoes the meaning of the lines because a newly established awareness of the Irish minority and their identity will be rooted
180 in the land. Heaney adds to his repertoire of images a new one to contribute to a creation of a representation of an Irish identity: the shamrock.
The second eclogue in the book is a translation of Virgil’s “Eclogue IX”, which deals with the fact that a new land act divided and reordered the ownership of the land. Virgil’s farm was confiscated by a Roman called Arrius and Virgil had to move to the city where he lived at his teacher’s house. There, he wrote the ninth eclogue to persuade the emperor that the re- organisation of the land could not be his intention. The eclogue points out that a land without a poet is a sad and dull land because “[w]ho would there be to sing/ Praise songs to the nymph? Who hymn the earth/ To grow wild flowers and grass, and shade the wells/ With overbearing green?” (ll. 22 – 25). These lines point out the role of a poet who animates nature in his poetry so that it almost seems to come to life. The place of rhyming is “[t]he old green hedge, here’s where we’re going to sing” (l. 77). The poet can be seen as preserver of the beauty of the landscape, a pastiche of a rural idyll. The importance of the poet is pointed out in this eclogue, which also underlines Heaney’s idea of a poet as vates. In these lines, it can be said that the role of the poet as a preserver of the rural idyll is manifested. It seems as though Heaney has found his place of writing.
The last eclogue in the collection, “Glanmore Eclogue” (see Appendix, pp. 321 – 322), describes the interaction between the figure of the farmer Myles and the poet. Myles points out that the poet has everything a man longs for: “A house and ground. And your own bay tree as well/ And time to yourself.” (ll. 1 – 2) These lines set the basis for a contented life where a poet can ‘land’ his feet on the ground. The poet answers that a woman changed his life: “Call her Augusta/ Because we arrived in August, and from now on/ This month’s baled hay and blackberries and combines/ Will spell Augusta’s bounty.” (ll. 4 – 7) In the summer of 1972, Heaney moved to a house in Wicklow. The season and the landscape of the place in August is imprinted in his memory. The vegetation is an image for the place at that time, for example, “hay and blackberries” (l. 6). In these lines, the topic of poetry is determined because the bounty of the poet’s imagination is nourished by the landscape and the vegetation.
Myles answers by pointing out that “[y]ou’re Augusta’s tenant/ And that’s enough. She has every right,/ Maybe more right than most, to her quarter acre.” (ll. 10 – 12) The poet can only reflect on the beauty of nature, and it is an appropriate topic for poetry – the poet’s duty is to
181 praise nature. Heaney was inspired by the landscape of Wicklow in August, therefore, therefore this memory represents nature for him. The place could have any name – it is the specific situation and vegetation in August that inspired his imagination. The poet further points out that he gets inspired by “the first drop before thunder,/ A stranger on a wild night, out in the rain falling ./ His spirit lives for me in things like that.” (ll. 30 – 32) The poem alludes to nature as a source of inspiration; a poet does not need more than a “first drop before thunder” (l. 30) to trigger off his imagination and to send him off in the vegetation of the landscape. According to the poem, the spirit of the poet is inscribed in the poem through the subject matter of the poem. It can be said that Heaney proposes that nature is the source of inspiration and that a poet can re-create the landscape in his poems.
The poem ends with a summer song where Heaney returns to words such as “bog-pillow” (l. 45) and “heather” (l. 44) and “cuckoo” (l. 42). These words were frequently used in his early poems to describe the landscape and nature of his childhood place, rural Derry. Heaney creates a positive image of the landscape; moreover, he changes the meaning of “bog” (l. 45) – which was through his earlier poems associated with a place of bloodshed. The landscape is portrayed as a place where “[h]eather breathes on soft bog-pillows./ Bog-cotton bows to moorland wind.” (ll. 44 – 45) Heaney takes over the position of the poet in Virgil’s time, whose duty it was to praise the landscape. He further re-creates the meaning he has attached to these words through collections like North . Heaney returns to the “[t]ufts of yellow- blossoming whins.// Bogbanks shine like ravens’ wings” (ll. 49 – 50) and to the memory of his early local place which inspired his poetry. Heaney also returns to his typical onomatopoeia in lines like: “A little nippy chirpy fellow” (l. 54). He is at ease with his place of writing, which is inspired by the local place, and the poem ends with: “Summer, shimmer, perfect days.” (l. 57)
182 11. 2. Memory and Place
Heaney’s determining features of poetry are memory and place. As pointed out in the chapters above, Heaney dwells on the memory of his childhood place in Derry and uses it as a source of inspiration for his poetry. By doing so, he creates a landscape illustrated with vegetation and seasoned with sunshine or rain. But Heaney does not only create a beautiful landscape, he also connects events in history with certain places. Therefore, it can be said that “Heaney’s historical accounts are given the solidity of a local habitation and a name, and involve personal experience. The cultural heritage is made concrete” (Westendorp, 1991: 141). Heaney names the cultural heritage of his local area by imprinting historical events in its landscape. By doing so, Heaney creates and re-creates images and attributes new meaning to them. His predicament with place has changed in his recent volumes, as place is no longer a place on which to imprint the violence of the area – it becomes more a return to the place of his childhood. Heaney also found reassurance in the eclogues of Virgil that the rural can be an appropriate topic for poetry. He further takes over the idea of the poet as bard who praises the idyll of rural landscape in his poems.
In the poem “At Toombridge” (see Appendix, p. 318), Heaney refers to the Bann River as a place “[w]here the checkpoint used to be” (l. 6) and “[w]here the rebel boy was hanged in `98.” (l. 7) Heaney uses these two historical events to point to the long history of tension between the colonizer and the colonized. He imprints the history onto the landscape of the place; the landscape becomes a metaphor for the event and thus bears its meaning. According to Graham, the use of historical facts associated with the local landscape “can thus become an inner directed mnemonic symbol” (Graham, 1997: 194) for the oppression of the Irish people, first by the British landlords and then by the soldiers of the British constabulary. So it can be said that the Bann River becomes a marker of British sovereignty and oppression in the landscape; moreover, it can be seen as a marker of Irish defeat because the Irish rebel boy was hanged as a sign of threat for the Irish community so that they obey the British sovereignty. So the landscape becomes an emblematic representation of Irish history.
Heaney mentions in the poem that this is a place “[w]here negative ions in the open air/ Are poetry to me.” (ll. 8 – 9) This reflects what Edna Longley once said about Heaney’s poetry, for example, that the unjust situation in Ulster caused Heaney to write poetry (cf. Longley, 1994: 49). Heaney alludes to a sequence of poems, “A Lough Neagh Sequence” from Door
183 into the Dark , having “eels” as a continual metaphor for the sectarian tensions, which is referred to in the poem “[a]s once before/ The slime and silver of the flattened eel” (“At Toombridge”, ll. 9 – 10). The eels have their life-circle in the river “[w]here the flat water/ Came pouring over the weir out of Lough Neagh” (l. 1 – 2). These lines hint at the “A Lough Neagh Sequence” from Door into the Dark .
The first poem from “A Lough Neagh Sequence”, “Up the Shore”, begins with “[t]he lough will claim a victim every year” (l. 1) and continues with “At Toombridge where it sluices towards sea/ They’ve set new gates and tanks against the flow” (ll. 5 – 6). Heaney refers to the Bann River, which is divided into two distinct parts, as a symbol for the division in Northern Ireland. The Lough Neagh with its “new gates and tanks” (l. 6) is a symbol of the newly built gates that divided the Catholic and the Protestant districts in the city of Belfast. Heaney uses landscape to create an analogy between the social and political tension which is displayed in the feature of the divided Bann River. The upper Bann has its origin in the Mourne Mountains, and it flows northwest to Lough Neagh, “[w]here the flat water/ Came pouring over the weir out of Lough Neagh” (“At Toombridge”, ll. 1 – 2). Heaney describes the features of the Bann River and so uses them as an analogy to the social situation in the North of Ireland. Heaney points out that there are still signs of division, which is due to the different heritage.
The poem continues “[a]s if it had reached an edge of the flat earth/ And fallen shining to the continuous/ Present of the Bann.” (ll. 3 – 5) The Bann River is a feature of the landscape, and by using it as an analogy to the social situation, the division in the mind of the people is still valid. In the poem, Heaney points out that through the continuous presence of the Bann the Irish minority is reminded of the British oppression. The landscape echoes the social situation, which can be seen as means of creating a cultural awareness concerning the place. In the landscape, Heaney found “emblems of adversity” (Heaney, 1980: 57) to voice the sectarian tension and the colonial experience in Northern Ireland. Through the reference to the past of the place, the Bann River becomes an ‘emblem of adversity’ for the duality of the place but also for the oppression of the Irish minority. Through adding to the landscape the meaning of historical events from the Irish past, Heaney creates a symbol manifested in the landscape that represents the sectarian tension. The Bann River, through its two separate parts, becomes a means of representation for the dual experience in Northern Ireland of the
184 Catholic minority because their personal allegiance lies in the cultural Gaelic heritage although their nationality is British.
In “Perch”, Heaney alludes to the poem “At Toombridge” with the reference to the Bann River. The poet repeats the word ‘perch’ in the first few lines and plays with its different meanings, because ‘perch’ can be a fish or an uneven barrier in a river. The poem begins with: “Perch on their water-perch hung in the clear Bann River/ Near the clay bank in alder-dapple and waver” (“Perch”, ll. 1 – 2, see Appendix, p. 318). The river is situated near spots of alder, faltering. Heaney indulges in language and explores every “coffer of the word-hoard” (Heaney, 2002: 276), which is eminent through the word play of ‘perch’. Heaney made the English language his own and imprinted in the English rhythm a ‘vowelling embrace’ from his Gaelic heritage. The sound effects of Heaney’s language are part of his poetic voice; the development of a unique poetic voice has been important for him throughout his career. Heaney combines the features of language and place and refers to a local idiom for place that was used in his community: “Perch we called ‘grunts’, little flood-slubs, runty and ready” (“Perch”, l. 3). In the poem, the division of the Bann River is symbolically represented in the description of the words “perch” (l. 3) and “grunts” (l. 3). The word ‘grunts’ is like an uneven section in a yarn in the flood. When the first two lines of the poem are compared to the third line, an explanation of the word “grunts” (l. 3) can be found. In the poem, the “Bann River” (l. 1) is answered with the word “flood” (l. 3) and the word “waver” (l. 2) is answered with “ready” (l. 3). The description of the place can be read as a symbolic representation of the two different cultural backgrounds in the North of Ireland. Heaney draws parallels between the landscape and the attitude of the people, moreover, Heaney points out that Northern Ireland is an entity of its own because neither British nor Irish people have shared the Northern Irish experience of communal violence.
Interestingly, Heaney uses the past tense and the present tense in one sentence to point out that the physiognomy of the Bann River reflects the situation of an ‘in-between-ness’. It can be said that Heaney suggests that the divided part of the river is an emblem for the division in Northern Ireland which “I saw and I see in the river’s glorified body” (l. 4). The Bann River has two different origins, but they mix in the water of Lough Neagh, and then the lower Bann carries the water of Lough Neagh to the sea. This can be regarded as an analogy to the different cultural backgrounds of the people in Northern Ireland who have the possibility to find their common ground in the place. Heaney points out that Northern Ireland is still
185 considered as a part of Britain because although it “is passable through” (l. 5), which can be interpreted that there is a possibility to cross the city, as there are no longer road blocks – “but they’re bluntly holding the pass,/ Under water-roof, over the bottom, adoze” (ll. 5 – 6). The poet points out that the river is, and has been, a symbol of British sovereignty – an aspect which he takes up towards the end: “Guzzling the current, against it, all muscle and slur/ In the finland of perch, the fenlend of alder, on air” (ll. 7 – 8). The poem functions as an analogy for the situation in Northern Ireland. It can be said that Heaney uses the Bann River as a symbolic representation of the cultural situation in the North. Heaney gives an account of Northern Irish heritage imprinted in features of the Bann River. Graham points out by referring to the scholars Tunbridge and Ashworth, that “the contrived nature of heritage, which can be defined, not as artefacts and traditions inherited from the past, but by the contested modern meanings that are attached to these objects” (Graham 1997: 193 - 194). Heaney attaches to the objects of landscape, to alder, to the Bann River, and to the perch, historical events and social sentiments. By doing so, he attributes in his poems a certain meaning to them, and therefore they become “emblems of adversity” (Heaney, 1980: 57).
Another example of memory and place is “The Augean Stables”, where a bas-relief is the starting point of the poem. This bas-relief of Athene and Heracles sets the scene for the poem. Heaney applies images and motifs from Greek mythology to draw an analogy between the twelve labours of Hercules and the death of a young Irish athlete. He uses figures from Greek mythology to attach to the historical event a deliberately chosen meaning. He establishes the frame of Greek mythology to create a narrative of the event which is loaded with the meaning of single events from mythology. Heaney also uses myth as a means to construct a discourse of place (cf. ibid.: 208). The poem distances the event and becomes an allegory for a mutual killing by creating an account of human mischief. The poem alludes to the story of Heracles and the fulfilment of his twelve labours. Heaney takes the fifth labour, cleaning the Augean Stables, as a frame for this poem. Heracles’ task was to clean the stables of king Augeas, who was the keeper of the biggest livestock in all of Greece, in one day. The poem begins with its source of inspiration, Heaney’s favourite bas-relief: “Athene showing/ Heracles where to broach the river bank/ With a nod of her high helmet” (“The Augean Stables”, ll. 1 – 3, see Appendix, p. 318). To clean the stables, Heracles had the idea of re-directing the river Alpheus towards the Augean stables, and Athene showed him the point where to broach the river because “her staff sunk/ In the exact spot, the Alpheus flowing/ Out of its course into the deep dung strata/ Of King Augeas’ reeking yard and stables.” (ll. 3 – 6) Heracles combined
186 the rivers Alpheus and the river Peneus in order to clean the stables and “[s]weet dissolutions from the water tables/ Blocked doors and packed floors deluging like gutters…” (ll. 7 – 8). The filth was washed away “[a]nd it was there in Olympia, down among green willows,/ The lustral wash and run of river shallows,/ That we heard of Sean Brown’s murder in the grounds/ Of Bellaghy GAA Club.” (ll. 9 – 12) The story echoes the story of Heracles, who is said to be the founder of the Olympic Games because after he had fulfilled the twelve labours he returned to Augeas and killed him. Heracles had an agreement with Augeas that if he manages to clean the stables in one day he would give him one tenth of his livestock. After Heracles had finished the task, Augeas did not want to fulfil the agreement. Heracles finished the twelve labours and after that returned to Augeas and killed him. In the poem, the river is the Bann River and Olympia becomes the Irish district of Bellaghy where the young athlete was killed. The death of the athlete is echoed in the death of Augeas. Olympia is a symbol for the Bellaghy Gaelic Athletic Association Club, which is the local sports club of the Irish community. The turn from Greek mythology to the local place is evident in the change of the description of the place – Bellaghy. The description of Olympia becomes the description of Bellaghy. In the end, the poem returns to the image of water as a means of cleaning the area from the filth: “And imagined/ Hose-water smashing hard back off the asphalt/ In the car park where his athlete’s blood ran cold.” (ll. 12 – 14) The water that cleaned the Augean Stables from the filth can also sweep away the blood from the young athlete who became a victim of a sectarian-motivated killing. Agnew, a scholar, poses the idea that the depiction of public memory in landscape is connected with representing place, which can be seen as a contribution to creating and enhancing constructions of identity (cf. Agnew, 1996: 36). Heaney uses myth to create a discourse of place; furthermore, he creates a landscape that serves as a public memory. Heaney once wrote about Lowell that he “was searching for a way of writing that would be an anatomy of his own predicament and of the age” (Heaney, 2002: 202). This can also be said of Heaney, who takes on the role of a poet acting as the consciousness of his community.
187 12. Inheritance of a Theme
Place is not only part of Heaney’s poetic voice; place as a source of inspiration, place as a theme of poetry, and place as a means of identification is also used by other poets from the North of Ireland. One example is Patrick Kavanagh, who spoke for a whole generation in The Great Hunger , which deals with life in Monaghan, where “[t]he horizons of the little fields and hills, whether they are gloomy and constricting or radiant and enhancing, are sensed as the horizons of consciousness” (Heaney, 1989: 4). For Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh’s poetry allowed him to enjoy the known landmarks of Monaghan life without having to experience a cultural anxiety (cf. ibid.: 9). The early poetry of Kavanagh pays tribute to the place, reinforces its features as part of the landscape, and acknowledges the place as an entity of the world (cf. ibid.: 4). Monaghan becomes a defining entity for the poet because it is part of the poet’s awareness which allows him to define himself, his poetic voice and his work within the boundaries of the experience of the place (cf. ibid.: 5). What Heaney wrote about Kavanagh can also be said about himself, because the experience of rural Ireland on a farm in Derry was the given horizon of his poetic identity, his poems, and even himself. His poems further deal with the landscape of the marshland, the little rushes, bushes and birch trees of the farm he grew up on. Heaney also celebrates the local place and mimics its topographical features in his poems. Kavanagh’s poetic voice and Heaney’s voice are influenced by the topography of rural Ireland, and when looking at Kavangh’s poetry it can be said that Heaney inherited a theme.
In the course of Kavanagh’s writing career, his perception of place changed in his later poems because “now the world is more previous to his vision than he is previous to the world. When he writes about places now, they are luminous spaces within his mind. These places are no longer a documentary geography but they exist as transfigured images” (Heaney, 1989: 5). Heaney’s perception of place changed as well. While the reality of the place in his early volumes was inspired by the real place, the images of place in his later volumes are part of his imagination which shaped “a country of the mind” (Heaney, 1980: 132). In District and Circle , Heaney turns to the topics of his early volumes. He writes seemingly easily comprehensible poems which contain something for everybody, but the meaning of the words is beyond the line (cf. Kirsch, 2006a: 58).
188 In District and Circle , Heaney seems to be reassured of his early poetic voice which is grounded in the local place of county Derry. District and Circle contains different pieces on the formal level. He uses the quatrain and the 12-line “Squarings” from Seeing Things but, generally, it can be said that in this collection Heaney also returned to the sonnet form as a domineering one.
Heaney returns to the topic of rural idyll of his early collections, which can be seen in poems such as “The Turnip-Snedder” (see Apendix, pp. 305 – 306), where he re-visits several images he used throughout the different volumes. The poem begins “[i]n an age of bare hands/ and cast iron” (ll. 1 – 2). After having visited the Megalithic time in North and the Neolithic time in Field Work , Heaney returns to the “age of bare hands/ and cast iron” (ll. 1 – 2). Heaney also returns to a form of ‘Heaneyspeak’, which can be seen in sounding lines such as: “the clamp-on meat-mincer,/ the double-flywheeled water-pump” (ll. 3 – 4). Heaney creates a tour-de-force for the tongue to pronounce the words in one line. He constructs the object through the sound of the words which seem to mimic the object. Another image that is re-visited is the water pump, which appears continually throughout his whole writing – the water pump as a symbol for home and the feeling of belonging to a place that “dug its heels in among wooden tubs/ and troughs of slops” (ll. 5 – 6). In the poem, Heaney describes the place of the pump which is among wooden tubs and pig feet. It is the setting of a farm and can be seen as a metaphor for Heaney’s return to his early theme of the farm Mossbawn in rural Derry. The pump also “dug its heels” (l. 5) in the ground, which can be regarded as an analogy to the digging metaphor of Heaney’s poem “Digging”. This line is as a reassurance of the poet’s rootedness, but it may also be an affirmation of his poetic voice which digs “its heels in among wooden tubs/ and troughs of slops” (l. 5 – 6). The achievement of the poem and the volume can be measured in the last sentence: “bucketful by glistering bucketful.” (l. 20)
District and Circle also contains some prose pieces, which are headed by the title “Found Prose”, but also divided into separate pieces such as “Lagans Road”. In “Lagans Road”, Heaney remembers his first school day when he had to face a new situation and a new environment which he experienced with a certain feeling of insecurity and fear. Heaney describes his way to school where he had to walk along Lagans Road, which “ran for about three quarters of a mile across a country of wetlands. It was one of those narrow country roads with weeds in the middle, grass verges and high hedges on either side, and all around it marsh
189 and rushes and little shrubs and birch trees” (Heaney, 2006: 36). Heaney remembers a childhood experience and tries to re-create the place of his memory. He places the road amidst “a country of wetland” (ibid.), he describes a road with “grass verges” (ibid.) and “high hedges” (ibid.) surrounded by ‘marsh’, ‘rushes’, ‘shrubs’ and ‘birch trees’. These are words he continually used to describe place in his early volumes. The vegetation of the place reflects a rural idyll and is depicted from the perspective of an adult who re-creates from memory the place of his childhood. Heaney also returns to a means of representing landscape from his early volumes. He starts at the ground with the features of the road which has “weeds in the middle, grass verges and high hedges” (ibid.). He continues with a description of the environment: marsh, rushes, shrubs and birch trees. Heaney makes a follow-up of these words and intensifies their meaning in the mind of the reader so that the road seems almost visible. Heaney once said about Kavanagh that his “fidelity to the unpromising, unspectacular countryside of Monaghan and his rendering of the authentic speech of those parts gave the majority of Irish people, for whom the experience of life on the land was perhaps the most formative, an image of themselves that nourished their sense of themselves” (Heaney, 1980: 137). This is also true for Heaney, who seems to be newly encouraged in the topic of rural county Derry in his recent poetry. Heaney portrays a local piece of landscape which most of the Irish inhabitants of his generation can relate to. By doing so, he nurtures a ‘sense of place’ in his community because Heaney is a regionalist who tries to establish a regional consciousness in his writing.
One reading of “Out of Shot” (see Appendix, p. 325) can be that Heaney refers to the attack of the London underground in 2005 (cf. Kirsch, 2006a: ): “Norse-raids, night-dreads and that ‘fierce raiders’ poem/ About storm on the Irish Sea” (ll. 7 – 8). The poem reflects on the attack but it can also be regarded as a reference to his earlier poems, the “‘fierce raiders’ poem” from North dealing with the violence in Northern Ireland, which can be seen as a “storm on the Irish Sea”. The poem continues with “thinking shock/ Out of the blue or blackout” (l. 9 – 10). In the poem, it is not clear if the attack was planned; it seemed just to happen. In the final lines, the poem suggests that it is a possibility not to turn to violence: “In the bazaar district, wandering out of shot” (l. 13). The poem is set in the bazaar district, which is a means to distance the event and to comment on it without being explicit like a journalistic instance.
190 In general, every kind of violence can be seen as an allusion to the Troubles and Heaney, as a poet, who has to create responsible art, wrote the poem mentioned above. Heaney contributed to shaping the consciousness of his community through his poetry. The idea of creating a cultural awareness concerning an Irish identity developed during the Troubles because the Irish minority was considered as British subjects living in Ulster (cf. Heaney, 1990: 23). For instance, John Hewitt’s aim of poetry was to contribute to a definition of a national identity. Hewitt mentioned in 1985 that the reason for becoming a regionalist is based in the war years. The North of Ireland had no connection to Britain, which highlighted their difference and their identity. However, John Hewitt was mistaken – the North of Ireland contained many different areas and his model of regionalism had the idea of combining pieces which were all too different (cf. McDonald, 1997: 25). In his poem “Terminus” from The Haw Lantern , Heaney points out that Northern Ireland is torn between the two different loyalties they experience in their cultural background and their belonging to Great Britain. Hewitt’s solution to the problem of bridging the gap was the idea to “establish a regional consciousness for the North of Ireland […] [which] would give us something to cling to, a kind of key to our identity” (qtd. McDonald, 1997: 25). In his poetry, Heaney also tries to create a landscape that reflects the regional consciousness of the Irish inhabitants; moreover, he hopes that his poems are thresholds for an identity.
The poem “Moyulla” echoes on the poem “Gifts of Rain” from Wintering Out , where Heaney recreates with words the river Moyola. “Gifts of Rain” contains the lines: “The tawny guttural water / spells itself: Moyola” (ll. 51 – 52), which becomes in “Moyulla” from District and Circle : “as if her name/ and addressing water// suffered muddying” (ll. 19 – 21). Heaney created a lot of place-name poems to point out his predicament with the proper naming. Heaney also echoes in the place-name poems the geographical place, as a matter of fact, he tries to mime the flow and the vegetation of the river in his poems. The reality of the place is the driving force in the poems. Heaney once pointed out that
Montague’s [places] are rather sounding lines, rods to plumb the depths of a shared and diminished culture. They are redolent not just of his personal life but of the history of his people, disinherited and dispossessed. What are most resonant and most cherished in the names of Montague’s places are their tribal etymological implications. (Heaney, 1980: 141)
Here, place is described as a source of “shared and diminished culture” (ibid.) and as an expression of the “history of his people” (ibid.), and place names as the dig for etymological
191 meaning. This is also true for Heaney who, like an archaeologist, digs for the roots of the place in the ground of the place.
District and Circle contains the poem “A Shiver” which echoes on the poem “The Forge” from Door into the Dark. Both poems echo, through their imagery of forging, on the process of creating a poem through the images of the hammer and the sledge. The poem begins with a description of how you have to do it, for example, “[t]he way you had to stand to swing the sledge” (“A Shiver”, l. 1, see Appendix, p. 325). The poem is composed like a manual because it continues with: “The way you had to heft and then half-rest/ Its gathered force like a long nursed rage/ About to be let fly” (ll. 7 – 9). The sledge accumulates force and is released in “[a] first blow that could make air of a wall,/ A last one so unanswerably landed/ The staked earth quailed and shivered in the handle?” (ll. 12 – 14). Heaney alludes to the poem “Electric Light” from Electric Light , where energy is the dominant force of a poem, and it does not matter what metaphor expresses this energy – in “A Shiver”, it is the sledge hammer.
In “Quitting Time” (see Appendix, pp. 325 – 326), Heaney looks back to his poetry and his achievements in poetry. The poet changes his imagery and begins with a description of a concrete place before he switches off the light: “On the cleaned-up yard, its pails and farrowing crate,/ And the cast-iron pump immobile as a herm/ Upstanding elsewhere, in another time.” (ll. 3 – 5) Heaney looks back on his poetry, changes his imagery completely and points out that the iron pump, his omphalos, his connection to the place of his childhood, is far away – elsewhere. At its end, the poem takes a turn and points out that “a home-based man at home/ [has] In the end little. Except this same/ Night after nightness” (ll. 10 – 12). Heaney does not want to be based at home in the concrete of a cleaned-up yard. He wants to say to himself again and again: “My head is light” (l. 8). With this poem, Heaney affirmed himself of his predicament with place and place as a source of his inspiration because he wants to keep his ‘head light’. Heaney’s poetry is rooted in the local place, and he is at ease with it, and as Theodor Roethke was inspired by the greenhouse of his father, Heaney was inspired by the landscape of rural Derry. Roethke wrote the ‘greenhouse’ poems, which were part of the second section of The Lost Son, which Heaney describes as “canticles to the earth,
192 if you like, written in a line that has exchanged its ‘barbaric yawp’ for a more civil note of benediction” (Heaney, 1980: 193). This can also be said of Heaney who turned from the reality of the real geographical place to the place in his mind that lives from the images that imprinted the real place in his memory.
193 12. 1. District and Circle
“Spoken for in autumn, recovered speech/ Having its way again, I gave a cry:/ ‘Not beechen green, but these shin-deep coffers/ Of copper-fired leaves, these beech boles grey.” (Heaney, “In a Loaning”, ll. 1 – 4)
In the poem mentioned above, Heaney writes about having found his voice as a poet again – he returns to the images from Death of a Naturalist . Heaney has recovered his ‘sense of place’ in language and he also voices it immediately. He mixes his imagery with “shin-deep coffers/ Of copper-fired leaves” (“In a Loaning”, l. 3 – 4) and “beech boles grey” (l. 4). This can be seen as a poetic equivalent of Heaney’s poetic voice, rooted in the local place, which met the twenty-first century. Heaney again nurtures his poetry with images from the local place and engages in the pleasure of exploring every possible meaning of “copper-fired leaves” (l. 4). He returns to the place of his childhood, and through his imagination re-visits the place in his mind. Place is not only a potential metaphor in Heaney’s writing – it also provides a vivid landscape for the predicament of a poet. Contemporaries of Heaney and poets from a younger generation, such as Derek Mahon, Michael Longley and Paul Muldoon, use the local place as a source of reference in their poetry. Heaney refers to the use and meaning of place in the work of poets from the North:
In the work of Derek Mahon, Michael Longely and Paul Muldoon place symbolizes a personal drama before it epitomizes a communal situation. Mahon’s bleak Glengormley and bleaker still North Antrim, Longley’s botanically abundant west of Ireland and his nostalgically apprehended bleaching greens, Muldoon’s rivery and appledappled Armagh, are all places that do not have to be proved or vindicated in the way Kavanagh’s Monaghan […]. They exist to serve the poet and not vice versa. None of these poets surrenders himself to the mythology of his place but instead each subdues the place to become an element in his own private mythology. (Heaney, 1980: 148)
In this statement, Heaney explains that place is a source of inspiration in writings from poets from the North of Ireland, although place has different functions in their poetry. For instance, place can be a symbol for the personal experience which exemplifies the collective communal situation. Mahon gives a bleak account of Glengormley, Longley indulges in the abundant vegetation of west Ireland, and Muldoon recreates a land of rivers and apples. All three poets have in common that their places manifest themselves in their poems and are vehicles for the poets to express their predicament. Heaney dwells on the local place of his childhood and
194 once again, in District and Circle , creates a landscape that dwells on known places, but he also enters the millennium by adding to his natural idyll technical inventions which are part of everyday life.
The bog of Jutland was the source of inspiration for his bog poems inspiring Heaney to compose poems such as “The Tollund Man” and “Tollund”. To round up the trilogy, Heaney returns in “The Tollund Man in Springtime” to the imagery of the bog and again indulges in its rich imagery of “bog-dough” (l. 15), “weed leaf” (l. 79) and “turf mould” (l. 79). However, this time Heaney is aware of the meaning he attached to the bog and refers, and plays with it, throughout the poem in a conscious and self-reflexive way. Heaney modulates the meaning he attached to ‘moss’, ‘turf’ and ‘mould’, for example, in North , by using them in a completely new environment; he uses them in the context of the contemporary modern world. The poem begins like a descent to the underworld: “Into your virtual city I’ll have passed/ Unregistered by scans, screens, hidden eyes” (“The Tollund Man in Springtime”, ll. 1- 2, see Appendix, pp. 323 – 325). In these lines, Heaney alludes to two poems. One poem is “Settings XIX” from Seeing Things , which begins with: “Memory as a building or a city” (l. 1). The other poem is “Tollund” from The Spirit Level , where the poem begins on a “Sunday morning we had travelled far./ We stood a long time out in Tollund Moss” (ll. 1 – 2). Both poems begin with an imagery of travelling or entering a city or area. But the beginning can also be seen as an allusion to Dante’s Divine Comedy when the speaker of the poem descends to the underworld. Heaney enters the virtual city without being detected by ‘screens or scans’. In these lines, Heaney embeds developments of the contemporary modern world within the landscape of the virtual city.
The poem continues by looking back in time: “Lapping myself in time, an absorbed face/ Coming and going, neither god nor ghost/ Not at odds or at one, but simply lost/ To you and yours” (“The Tollund Man in Springtime”, ll. 3 – 6). Here, in the “absorbed face” (l. 3), Heaney refers to the imagery of “his peat-brown head,/ The mild pods of his eye-lids,/ His pointed skin cap” (“The Tollund Man”, ll. 2 – 4, see Appendix, pp. 254 – 255) from the poem “The Tollund Man” from Wintering Out . Heaney points out that he found in the bog an appropriate emblematic landscape to express his predicament because he was simply lost to the retrieved bodies from the bog which inspired poems such as “The Grauballe Man” and “Bog Queen”. These poems became synonymous with the violence in Northern Ireland, moreover, they became a representation of the atrocities the people had to endure.
195 Again, Heaney suggests that he is rooted in the place although it is “[c]oming and going” (“The Tollund Man in Springtime”, l. 4) in probably different disguises of “sphagnum moss” (l. 7). For him, it is the basis of his poetic voice and it is his poetic reality because it is “neither god nor ghost” (l. 4). He reassured himself in recovering his local place which he found “out under seeding grass/ And trickles of kesh water, sphagnum moss,/ Dead bracken on the spreadfield, red as rust./ I reawoke to revel in the spirit” (ll. 6 – 9). Heaney found a new reassurance in the local place and he once more ‘revels in the spirit’ because his poetic voice is nurtured by “kesh water” (l. 7) and “[d]ead bracken” (l. 8). In “The Tollund Man in Springtime”, Heaney returns to the place of his early poetic voice. It is a return to the real entities of the landscape such as “rushes” (l. 72), “seeding moss” (l. 6) and “kesh water” (l. 7), but it is also an imagery that is heavily loaded with meaning and that stands for itself. As analysed in the word fields of the chapter, “Words Representing a Country”, Heaney returns to the words of his early poetry collections. He tries to alter these meanings by using the images for a self-reflection of his art and his source of poetic imagination. Heaney’s places are not longer descriptions of the topography of his childhood place, they have become more and more a source of inspiration in his mind which spreads on paper as an imagery for Heaney’s predicament as a poet. Heaney describes this development of his use of imagery in the following lines: “Scone of peat, composite bog-dough/ They trampled like a muddy vintage, then/ Slabbed and spread and turned to dry in sun –/ Though never kindling-dry the whole way through –/ A deadweight, slow-burn lukewarmth in the flue,/ Ashless, flameless, its very smoke a sullen/ Waft of swamp-breath…” (ll. 15 – 21). Heaney points out that he formed images from the bog, “composite bog-dough” (l. 15), but first these images were grounded in the actual place so they “trampled like a muddy vintage” (l. 16). In order to elevate the images, he turned to a more transcendent image so they “[s]labbed and spread and turned to dry in sun” (l. 17). But the images were attached to the dead bodies of the sacrificial killings and they were only “a sullen/ Waft of swamp-breath” (ll. 20 – 21). It can also be said that the “sullen/ Waft of swamp-breath” (ll. 20 – 21) refers to the bog poems, where he wrote about the atrocities in the North of Ireland; moreover, it can be said that he points out that the poet dug in the ground to establish a communal consciousness but it was just “a sullen/ waft of swamp-breath” (ll. 20 – 21).
In the next lines, Heaney returns to his art and takes up the imagery of digging and retrieving something from the ground: “And me, so long unrisen,/ I knew that same dead weight in joint and sinew/ Until a spade-plate slid and soughed and plied/ At my buried ear” (ll. 21 – 24). In these lines, Heaney draws allusions to the poem “Digging” from Death of a Naturalist .
196 ‘Digging’ can be seen as a metaphor for Heaney’s poetry when “the spade sinks into gravely ground” (“Digging”, l. 4). Here, the poetic process of writing is compared to sinking the spade into the ground. Heaney artistically takes words from “Digging” to vary them in “The Tollund Man in Springtime”, which can be seen in several lines. The word “levered” appears in both poems: “and the levered sod/ Got lifted up” (“The Tollund Man in Springtime”, ll. 24 – 25), which can be compared to “the shaft/ Against the inside knee was levered firmly” (“Digging”, ll. 10 –11). It can be said that in District and Circle Heaney returns to the beginning of his writing career. As a matter of fact, he returns to the local place and re-writes his early poems from a perspective distant from his childhood place in County Derry.
Heaney points out that he had found his poetic voice and a metaphor to express his poetic voice because it can be interpreted that he was “bog-bodied on the sixth day, brown and bare” (“The Tollund Man in Springtime”, l. 27). Heaney turns to the first-person singular, and it seems as though he moulds himself out of the bog as he once moulded the “Bog Queen” and “The Grauballe Man” in North . Heaney’s phantom arm and shoulder “felt pillowed/ As fleshily as when the bog pith weighed” (“The Tollund Man in Sringtime”, ll. 32 – 33). These lines can be compared to “The Grauballe Man”, in which the protagonist “lies on a pillow of turf/ and seems to weep” (ll. 3 – 4). Heaney alludes to words he used in the context of the bog poems and varies them in their meaning. He uses the word “pillow” (“The Grauballe Man”, l. 3) and combines it with “the bog pith weighed” (“The Tollund Man in Springtime”, l. 33), which can also be seen as a variation of the lines from “The Grauballe Man”, who lies there “with the actual weight/ of each hooded victim,/ slashed and dumped” (ll. 46 – 48). The author links “The Grauballe Man” with the imagery from “The Tollund Man in Springtime”, alluding to the implied meaning as a representation for the violence and the victims killed in that violence through the reference to the weighing of the bog pith.
Heaney’s poetic voice can be described as “[e]ar to the ground./ My eye at turf level” (“The Tollund Man in Springtime”, ll. 29 – 30). Heaney returns to the place of his childhood and re- creates through a dense language verbal images where he points out his newly re-affirmed preoccupation with place: “To mould me to itself and it to me” (l. 34). Heaney’s horizon of consciousness is his childhood place which incorporates wetland and bog. The place establishes the given boundaries of defining his poetic voice, his poetry and himself. Heaney’s poetry was “[d]isembodied” (l. 38) until he re-found his voice in the local place of his childhood. This can be seen, as “in the end I gathered/ From the display-case peat my
197 staying powers” (ll. 45 – 46). Heaney found a strength in poetry in the “display-case peat” (l. 46), which reassured his poetic voice and his paradigms of place because he returned to his beginnings – the place of his childhood because “[t]he early bird still sang, the meadow hay/ Still buttercupped and daisied, sky was new.” (ll. 51 – 52) Heaney points out that the source of his inspiration is still there, the nature and the landscape of his local place – only the sky appears to be new because “transatlantic flights stacked in the blue.” (ll. 56) Heaney’s poetry also acknowledges the technical inventions of the modern world and incorporates in his childhood place “transatlantic flights” (l. 56). The poet engages in a “[n]ewfound contrariness” (l. 67). He even mentions this newly found opposition, for example, “check-out lines” (l. 68) and “cash-points” (l. 68). But he kept his source of inspiration with him because “through every check and scan I carried with me/ A bunch of Tollund rushes – roots and all–” (ll. 71 – 72). In these lines, Heaney states that he – although he developed throughout his writing career – has always been inspired by the landscape of his childhood place because the “Tollund rushes” (l. 72) are his roots. Heaney further points out that he had put them away and hoped that they would keep fresh until “transplanted” (l. 75), but they did not endure: “Every green-skinned stalk turned friable,/ The drowned-mouse fibres withered and the whole/ Limp, soggy cluster lost its frank bouquet/ Of weed leaf and turf mould.” (ll. 76 – 79) The poem continues by asking if the poet should turn to another imagery “[o]r mix it with spit in pollen’s name/ And my own?” (ll. 81 – 82). Heaney answers the question: “As a man would, cutting turf,/ I straightened, spat on my hands, felt benefit/ And spirited myself into the street.” (ll. 83 – 84)
“The Tollund Man in Springtime” is in District and Circle what “Digging” was in Death of a Naturalist – a symbol for poetry that has its roots in the local place of Derry. Heaney confirms his rootedness in the local place as an entity of his poetry and his consciousness as a poet. Heaney once said about the impact of Patrick Kavanagh’s poetry that
Kavanagh’s poetry did have political effect. Whether he wanted it or not, his achievement was inevitably co-opted, north and south, into the general current of feeling which flowed from and sustained ideas of national identity, cultural otherness from Britain and the dream of a literature with a manner and a matter resistant to the central Englishness of the dominant tradition. (Heaney, 1989: 9 – 10)
Kavanagh’s poetry maintains and nurtures ideas of national identity and establishes a set of images that highlights a cultural otherness from Britain. Heaney’s poetry is also grounded in
198 the local place, and it can be said that Heaney provides a set of images to nurture the Irish identity. This is even more evident in this poem because he uses words such as ‘moss’, ‘turf’ and ‘mould’ to describe the virtual city. By doing so, the meaning attached to these words in the bog poems is altered. These words become the components of the virtual city. This can be seen as Heaney’s contribution to shaping a cultural otherness. Heaney uses the same words he used in North to create a social awareness concerning an Irish identity. Thereby, these words become the basic set of imagery heightening the awareness of his community concerning the local place. He further provides a set of images within which he is able to define identity.
199 12. 2. The Prodigy of an Irish Poet
Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points, Options, obstinacies, dug heels and distance, Here and there and no and then, a stance (Heaney, “The Aerodrome”, ll. 30 – 32)
In his essay “Feeling into Words”, Heaney defines the two terms craft and technique in relation to poetry. For Heaney technique includes “a poet’s way with words, his management of metre, rhythm and verbal texture; it involves also a definition of his stance towards life” (Heaney, 1980: 47). In the same essay, Heaney also writes that he “was getting [his] first sense of crafting words and for one reason or another, words as bearers of history and mystery began to invite me” (ibid.: 45). These two statements can be seen as an explanation for the lines of the poem quoted above. Heaney digs in the ‘word-hoard’ and expresses his predicament in his poems. Through his choice of words and their role as bearers of history and mystery, Heaney uses the place of his childhood as a border for the consciousness of his race.
The poem “District and Circle”, which is also the title poem of his most recent poetry collection, reflects the different sources of inspiration of his poetry and playfully engages in the ‘word-hoard’ by serving a wide range of images from the Celtic heritage to images from the contemporary technical world. “District and Circle” (see Appendix, pp. 326 – 327) explores in retrospect Heaney’s poetry. The poet enters the underground when he hears “[t]unes from a tin whistle underground” (l. 1) and he walks to a place “where I knew I was always going to find/ My watcher on the tiles, cap by his side” (ll. 3 – 4). Heaney sets the scene of the poem in the underground, which echoes the underworld of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Another allusion to the Comedy can be seen in the figure of the “watcher”, which can be compared to Virgil, Dante’s companion. The poem continues to mention that “both were out to see/ For ourselves.” (ll. 7 – 8) These lines can be read as expressing a quest for the self because they “were out to see for ourselves”, which will be revealed in the course of the poem. In District and Circle , Heaney returns to an imagery used in North – and especially in the bog poems – and puts them in a completely new environment. By doing so, these images acquire a new meaning when read in a contemporary cultural context. Heaney renews and changes the meaning of his repertoire of images. The poet still operates within his paradigms of place, creating soundscapes by using words inpired by the native ground, but he enters the new millennium by using them in the context of going by underground.
200 The poem continues with evoking an image of handling a gun: “I’d trigger and untrigger a hot coin/ Held at the ready, but now my gaze was lowered/ For was our traffic not in recognition?” (ll. 10 – 12). Heaney uses words which are generally used in the context of handling a gun to describe the routine of paying for an underground ticket. Heaney draws an allusion of the gun “held at ready” (l. 11), and then the gun is lowered and it is “re- pocket[ed]” (l. 13). This can be regarded as an imitation of being at gun point created through the words “trigger” (l. 10), “untrigger” (l. 10) and “held at ready” (l. 11). Then the flow of the traffic is mentioned, which is a sign of peace in Northern Ireland. During the Troubles cars were hijacked and used as roadblocks, and a continual flow and ebb of traffic was impossible. By the sight of a car that seemed to be turned off, people panicked and tried to get away as fast as they could (cf. Patterson, 2006: 166 – 167). In these lines, Heaney refers to the newly established peace in Northern Ireland. He already used traffic as a metaphor of peace in “Tollund” from The Spirit Level where he wrote: “A path from Jutland fields. Light traffic sound” (l. 5). The poem was written as an answer to the established ceasefire in Northern Ireland in September 1994. Heaney also used the imagery of the street as a river throughout The Haw Lantern .
Heaney descends and ascends “[t]o a monotonous slight rocking in the works” (“District and Circle”, l. 17). He refers to his poetry and that he adjusted to a certain routine of poetry which can be described as “[r]umbled, quickened, evened, quieted.” (l. 20) This can be put in opposition to his sonnets from Field Work , where he wrote that his poetry “might continue, hold, dispel, appease” (“Glanmore Sonnet II”, l. 12). Heaney ‘rumbled’ in the earth and ‘quickened’ the lines and straightened his diction, and in the end his poetic voice was quiet because he “missed the light” (“District and Circle”, l. 22). This can be seen as an allusion to his collection Electric Light , where light was a metaphor for the energy of a poem. Heaney is moving through the different levels of the earth because in “District and Circle” he virtually enters the ground. Through the movement between the different levels it can also be seen as an allusion to the different stages in Dante’s journey in the Divine Comedy .
Heaney re-enters “the safety of numbers” (l. 30), which can be interpreted as a return to the iambic line which he refused because he linked the iambic line with the English oppression of the Irish language (cf. McGuinness, 1994: 137). Heaney is not sure about his poetry and his responsibilities as a poet because he asks: “Had I betrayed or not, myself or him?” (l. 36) Heaney refers to his watchman, who is possibly his inspirational guide Virgil, the Latin poet,
201 who was already his guardian in the eclogues of Electric Light . The poem continues with “[s]tepping on to it across the gap” (l. 42). The word “stepping” reminds one of the stepping stones in his poem “Terminus”. He further mentions the word “across” (l. 42) which he has used in Seeing Things as a metaphor for crossing a threshold between the Celtic heritage and the notion of being regarded as a subject belonging to Britain. This is also a theme in “Terminus”, where he describes this experience as growing up ‘in-between’. The poem continues by pointing out that “I reached to grab/ The stubby black roof-wort and take my stand/ From planted ball of heel to heel of hand” (ll. 43 – 45). The last line is an allusion to the poem “The Grauballe Man” from North where he wrote: “[t]he grain of his wrists/ is like bog oak,/ the ball of his heel/ like a basalt egg” (ll. 6 – 9). Heaney points out that he had to voice the sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland because it was his responsibility as a poet to do so. He explains his feelings of responsibility towards an audience in an interview: “I suppose I did feel a certain ‘public’ pressure always. […] ‘Being responsible’ and what it means, what it demands, have indeed preoccupied me – maybe too much. But this is it, this is the thing, this is what you’re up against” (Kirsch, 2006b: 55). In his poems, he transformed the pictures of the buried ritual sacrifices of Jutland bog to images for the sectarian killings in the North of Ireland. In the line “[m]y back to the unclosed door” (l. 50), he varies the image he created in “The Forge” from Door into the Dark , where all he knows “is a door into the dark” (l. 1). In the poem “The Forge”, he wanted to open with his poems a ‘door into the dark’ and to explore the subconscious because Heaney considers poetry as a threshold to the subconscious.
The poem, “District and Circle”, digs deeper: “My lofted arm a-swivel like a flail,/ My father’s glazed face in my own waning/ And craning…” (“District and Circle”, ll. 57 – 59). These lines can be regarded as an allusion to the poem “Digging”, where he writes that “I’ve no spade to follow men like them” (l. 28). Heaney incorporates the world of his father in his poetry, and his spade is the pen. Heaney mirrors the image of digging in the choice of his words. The poem – like the underground – continues in its journey through the ground: “Again the growl/ Of shutting doors, the jolt and one-off treble/ Of iron on iron” (“District and Circle”, ll. 60 – 62). This can be seen as another allusion to “The Forge”, where he opened a door into the dark and, where he used a Hephaestus imagery of hammer and anvil as a metaphor of forging poetry. The poem ends with being transported underneath the surface “the only relict/ Of all that I belonged to, hurtled forward,/ Reflecting in a window mirror- backed/ By blasting weeping rock-walls/ Flicker-lit.” (ll. 65 – 69) These lines express that his
202 poetic voice, which is inspired by the local ground, is “[r]eflecting in a window mirror- backed” (l.67). The place was recollected from the perspective of an adult and it became a luminous space in his mind, his source of inspiration, and the horizon of what he belonged to. In his essay “The Sense of Place” from Preoccupations , Heaney writes that “[w]e are dwellers, we are namers, we are lovers, we make homes and search for our histories. And when we look for the history of our sensibilities I am convinced, […] that it is to what we called the stable element, the land itself, that we must look for continuity” (Heaney, 1980: 148 – 149). Heaney’s most recent poetry collection is a self-reflection on his poetry, his poetic voice, and his source of inspiration. Heaney returns to where it all started, the place of his childhood. District and Circle is a reassurance of the poetic self and the poetic voice which is rooted in the native place. The place, as an instance of defining the given horizons of poetry and self, is affirmed through a look over the shoulder to the roots of his poetry. Heaney returns to the digging metaphor, digging as archaeology with the pen. Seamus Heaney digs in the district and comes to full circle.
203 13. Display, Renewal and Change – A Summary
“Poetry, order, the times,/ The nation, wrong and renewal” (Heaney, “Bann Valley Eclogue”, ll. 10 – 11)
In general, poetry is a form of artistic expression that is created to evoke a feeling of pleasure in the reader. There are different forms of poetry, for example, pastoral poetry, love poetry and poetry that express the predicament of the poet. Seamus Heaney is a poet who feels a certain responsibility towards his audience. This responsibility is grounded in his role as a poet who can voice the hidden meanings of life. Poetry is his means to express his predicament and to explore the hidden sources of life. As a matter of fact, he uses poetry as a means to express his attitude towards life. His poetry is significantly influenced by his childhood place, the rural county Derry. This particular place is his source of inspiration; moreover, it provides the images for most of his poetry – especially features of the local landscape. The local landscape is also the horizon which defines Heaney’s poetic voice, his identity as a poet, and even himself as a person. As suggested by the “Bann Valley Eclogue”, for Heaney the local landscape is a means to order the times and the nation and to express its wrongs and to renew the idea of a nation.
Heaney is not only a poet, he is also a critic who interprets and evaluates the work of other poets. He also commented on his own poems in some essays, for example, in “Feeling into Words” from Preoccupations. Because of the choice of their topics, many of these critical essays can be regarded, and used, as guidelines for interpreting his own poems. Some of the aspects he emphasised in the work of, for example, W. B. Yeats can also be found and analysed in his own poetry. These aspects include the creation of a landscape in poetry that exemplifies the predicament of a poet – the landscape as an ‘emblem of adversity’. To create his unique landscape, Heaney uses figures, motifs, and themes from other literary works in his poems. These literary figures are used to provide a basic setting for his poems. Another means to provide a setting is history; for example, he incorporated historical facts and events in his poems. According to Duffy, these historical facts can become ‘emblems of adversity’ through attaching them to a local landscape (cf. 1997: 65). By doing so, the landscape becomes synonymous with the historical event and, therefore, it represents the sentiments that are included in the historical event (cf. ibid.: 66). For example, a river associated with the killing
204 of a rebel boy in 1798 becomes an emblematic landcape that expresses the Irish oppression through the British sovereignty.
Another cornerstone of Heaney’s poetry is memory. In Heaney’s opinion, memory can be regarded as the faculty that governs the imagination. This idea was inspired by Romanticism and, especially, by Wordsworth’s “Preface” to the Lyrical Ballads . The poet’s work is inspired by the romantic notions of the importance of childhood, which represents the state of man uncorrupted by society. Heaney further incorporates the idea that nature is an appropriate source of inspiration for poetry. Using semiotics as a basis for this literary analysis, words such as ‘bog’, ‘turf’ and ‘mould’ acquire special meanings in the context of the poems. When reading a poem in a cultural, political or social context the first meaning is altered, and a second-level meaning is acquired. In such a reading, the individual words become a code of imagery. The newly-gained meaning of words through their reading in a cultural context contributes to finding a cultural definition of identity. Heaney uses the paradigms of place to contribute to such a shaping of identity. This urge to contribute to the formation of an identity is developed for several reasons. One reason is that Heaney belonged to the minority of the Irish Catholic inhabitants in Northern Ireland. Another reason is that the Troubles furthered the definition of ‘we’ in opposition to ‘them’. In a postcolonial discourse, Heaney defines the Irish inhabitants who mainly live in rural areas through a depiction of a rural landscape they can identify with.
Heaney’s early work is inspired by his childhood place, the local county Derry. In his early poems, Heaney dwells on the local place and re-counts incidents from his childhood. In these poems, Heaney’s poetry is acknowledged for its sound effects which have also been called ‘Heaneyspeak’. This is a feature that is characteristic for his poetic voice. Heaney creates soundscapes and imitates the sounds of the places. Generally, Heaney is concerned with the development of a diction that reflects all possible meanings of a word. The poet does not only use language to re-create features of the place through the sound of the word, it is also a means to come to terms with the Gaelic inheritance. In his poems, Heaney creates a ‘vowelling-embrace’ of the English language. Vowels are a typical feature of the sound of the Gaelic language, which he explores in the dinnseanchas, i. e. place-name poems. In these place-name poems, Heaney points out his preoccupation with the ‘proper’ naming of places. He tries to bridge the gap between his Celtic heritage and his writing in the English language. Heaney uses the Gaelic tradition of the dinnseanchas to create an etymology of a place. He
205 tries to trace back the roots of the place by defining the different meanings of the Gaelic place name. For Heaney, his Gaelic heritage is important, which is also eminent in his poetry because he uses Gaelic words throughout his work. For a long time, Heaney did not feel at home in the English language because for him it is the language of the colonizer who has robbed the Irish inhabitants of their language. Heaney describes the clash between these two different languages by referring to the Irish language as ‘vowel-meadow’ and the English one as a ‘consonant staccato’.
Heaney’s poetry developed gradually: his first poetry collections depict the local ground of Derry, but the focus shifts in his recent collections. In these recent volumes, he emphasises the local place as a source of inspiration. Memory, as a feature of the place, is triggered off by a smell, and this evokes the image of the place in his mind. Heaney re-visits these places from an adult perspective, for example, in Seeing Things . Heaney’s poetic voice is rooted in the local place of Derry, but he has been very innovative in the choice of the form of his poems. He has written sonnets, parables, and even developed “Squarings”. He also tried the Dantean terza rima. According to Heaney, the form also contributes to the meaning of the poem. The poem as a complex construct of form, words, and meaning is an important topic in his poetry. Heaney reflects on the process of creating a poem, which can be observed throughout his work. In Death of a Naturalist , in the poem “Digging”, Heaney created an analogy between turf digging and ‘digging with the pen’. He develops this motif in Door into the Dark with the poem “The Forge”, where he draws a parallel between a smithy and the creation of a poem. The poem describes the process of forging that ‘opens a door into the dark’ which works as a threshold to the things that are buried in the human subconscious. This becomes a significant topic in his collections Station Island and Seeing Things . In these volumes, Heaney reflects on his poetic voice and his source of inspiration, which is the place of his childhood, the farm Mossbawn. Heaney further re-creates a luminous space which is triggered off through his memory of the local place.
History and a diction rooted in the ground are the basis for Heaney’s contribution to defining an identity. He also uses figures and settings from mythology to embed them in his poetry. These mythological figures provide a set of references that is frequently used in his poems to create a narrative situation. These narratives contribute to the meaning of single words such as ‘mould’, ‘clay’ and ‘rushes’. These words embedded in the Greek setting of the tale of Antaeus, the mould dweller, provide the background of pointing out the rootedness in the
206 local ground. Heaney uses the motif of the Divine Comedy , ‘to go on a pilgrimage’, in his dream sequence Station Island . Heaney further uses the Dantean idea of entering the underworld in various forms in poems from Seeing Things and District and Circle . Through these borrowings of settings, figures, and motifs Heaney attaches a mythical dimension to the poems. In his poems, he provides a new setting for his depiction of place. By doing so, the images, conveying a ‘sense of place’, acquire a new meaning in a new setting. According to Duffy, a poet, as a witness and part of society, is able to explain the different meanings attached to a landscape (cf. 1997: 64). Heaney’s poetry deals with landscape and place which are the dominant features for a definition of an Irish identity in his poems. There he creates an environment which the Irish inhabitants can identify with.
Heaney contributes to a definition of identity by using a diction rooted in the local landscape and by varying his settings. Heaney’s poems are linked up with one another, and in his recent collections he refers to images from his earlier collection. For example, he re-creates the image of the process of forging poetry from “The Forge” from Door into the Dark in “A Shiver” from District and Circle . Heaney dwells on his early images and re-shapes them in a new environment. Heaney also re-shapes these images from an adult perspective, whereby they acquire a new meaning. The meaning attached to images is altered, and the feeling of belonging to a place becomes a dynamic force which is dependent on the broader cultural context. Heaney engages in the discourse of the modern city and by doing so the ‘sense of place’ acquires a dynamic force of contributing to the shaping of an identity. Therefore, it can be said that in his poems Heaney enters the new millennium based on a poetic voice rooted in the local ground.
To conclude, like all forms of cultural and artistic expression poetry performs several functions in society. While certain genres and forms of poetry are mainly designed to communicate feelings and thoughts and to entertain the audience, others give the predicament of the poet a voice as well. As the present analysis has shown, Seamus Heaney’s poetry is written with the intention of creating responsible art. In Heaney’s poems, a tendency of contributing to a development of national identiy through the creation of a ‘sense of place’ can be detected. In order to achieve this, Heaney makes conscious use of an array of poetic, artistic and critical strategies. These strategies are part of the development of the poet, while the thematic range of his poems has been shaped by his childhood and his local heritage.
207 On the one hand, Heaney’s poetry relates not only to the poet’s own history but also to the histories and myths of ancient times. The historical events and myths provide a framework of experiences which describe and symbolise the Irish experience in the twentieth century. As pointed out in this study, Heaney contributes to the creation of a contemporary Irish myth by defining a poetic paradigm. This poetic paradigm, including language, symbols and metaphors, is dominantly shaped by place. Through the paradigms of place a ‘sense of place’ is established which provides the basic references of identification for the Irish people.
On the other hand, Heaney’s critical writings provide the key to de-code the predominant meanings of his own poetry. In his writings on poets such as Dante, Yeats and Kavanagh, he develops ideas and aspects of interpretation which can be applied to his own poems. These ideas and aspects provide the background for identifying the theme of place as a dominat one in Heaney’s whole corpus of writing. The new insights gained by this study include the strong inter-textual relations between Heaney’s individual poems as well as the development of the thematic range of the individual poetry collections. The analyses presented have demonstrated the creation and continual reinforcement of poetic references to places, landscapes and nature which contribute to the development of a ‘sense of place’ in Seamus Heaney’s poetry. The images used to create a feeling of belonging to a place play a crucial role in defining the Irish place and identity in poetry. This also has a political and social impact, as Heaney proposes that poetry can make a significant contribution to shaping the identity of a nation through establishing a relation to place. For instance, with the bog poems and the bog theme, Seamus Heaney created a new metaphor and myth which are explicitly based upon the ground. Through elevating the landscape and the ground as a set of references, Heaney has created a unique sense of Irish place. The place takes on a mythical dimension through incorporating themes and motifs of ancienct times and myths. This aspect is explained in this study, among others, through the connection of the Arcadian god Pan and the meaning of the omphalos. Through the reading of the poems in connection with motifs of themes of myths, the imagery itself acquires a mythical level.
Heaney contributes to shaping an Irish identity based on a set of imagery which is inspired by rural Derry. He uses myths and historical facts as a framework for his poems and creates an Irish myth within the known paradigms of place. Through this myth, Heaney creates a ‘sense of place’ – a feeling of belonging to a place – which contributes to a definition towards an Irish identity.
208 14. Bibliography
Primary Sources:
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217 15. Appendix
15.1. Word Field
15. 1. 1. Word Field “Nature” – Death of a Naturalist
Nature Animals Agriculture Water Plants Landscape Digging gravelly digging, potatoes Toner’s ground, potato drills, bog turf, sod, rooted out mould, tall tops soggy peat
Death of a flax-dam, Dragon- fields, grass bluebottles Naturalist sods, sun, flies, hedges, butterflies, sods, mud frogspawn, tadpoles, bullfrog, mammy frog, frogs The Barn bats, birds, threshed blind rats corn, farmyard, piles of grain An sky Dirty- Hen-coop embankment Advancement keeled path, bridge, of Learning swans, rat, river, water, snubbed bank rodent Blackberry- heavy rain wet grass, blackberries, Picking and sun hayfields, briars, thorn cornfields, pricks, potato-drills berries, rat- grey fungus, bush, fruit Churning limestone, hot water Day birchwood bowl, coagulated sunlight, gilded gravel The Early kittens, dunghill, Purges paws, rats, summer rabbits, dung crows, hen’s neck, pupy
218 Follower sod, land, horses, furrow, farm ground Ancesrtal cattle turnip Photograph Mid-Term snowdrops, Break poppy Dawn Shoot clouds, cows, ploughlands, broom, Hill stones, snipe, grazing, gorse, ferns, hedges, cock, mare stables ash tree medow, coiling roots, track, hole At a Potato hedge, crows, drill, shower surf tuber, Digging headland, plucked of roots and potatoes, pit, turf, bird, gulls mould, potato, ‘black crow-black plants, mother’, fields, marrow sod, black halved seed hutch of clay, crumbled earth, bark, humus, ground, root, land For the flock of drills creek spring West Commander starving onions Mayo, of the Eliza gulls, dogs Westport The Diviner green water, hedge, spring water forked hazel stick, terrain, rod, green hazel, hazel Turkeys claw- turkey, Beef, Observed flecked half-cow mud, Cow in Calf Calves byre, bag of seed Trout grass- Moths throat of the plums seed, river, water stones unravels over gravel- beds Docker
219 Gravities Irish Pigeon Paris, mould O`Connell street, Iona Colmcille Twice Shy air, sky, swan, quiet river, mushroom hawk, embankment thrush walk, waters Valediction strand, sea
Lovers on rocks, waves, tide, Americas, Aran land ebb, sea Aran Poem sods, Hen Sow digging, muck, yard-long garden, layer of sods, clay, mush, rain Honeymoon patchwork fields, lough, landscape, Flight earth, coastline, hems of water, hedge, geyser road, villages, earth, air, sky, cloud Scaffolding sure and solid stone In Small hogshair, heather townlands, Townlands granite, mountain clay, crystal, rock, outcrops of stone, dew, cloud, rain, bald earth Personal roots, soft Rat wells, waterweed, Helicon mulch, pumps, dry fungus, stone ditch, dank moss, aquarium, ferns, tall spring foxgloves
220 15. 1. 2. Word Field “Nature” – Door into the Dark
Nature Animals Agriculture Water Plants Landscape Night- Hay Piece Gone cobweb of Stable Place grass-dust Dream hacking, stalk, air The road, lane, bull, cows, stall, straw alder, Outlaw load of sand, sire catkin, ash-plant The flies, Flail upstream, dark ivy Inland Salmon garden sea, home berries Fisher … worms, fly water’s gravity, river, ripples, strumming water, water’s choreography The Forge unicorn outside, inside Thatcher Honeycomb, wheat- hazel, rods, straw, willow bundled rods, straw The sky, runway, leggy ploughed landfall, sea, log peninsula, Peninsula rock, ground birds field foreshore, land, hill, breakers, islands, water landscapes In turfstack, sea this place, Gallarus “core of old barrow Oratory dark”, stone, grass Girls swell, strand, Bathing, western Galway shore, breakers, crests, sea, “salt sud”, wave, ashore Requiem Hedges barley, Ditches “our own for the cattle country”, Croppies Vinegar Hill, hillside Rite of winter, wheat pump, ice, Spring straw, wet Undine Roots brassy ditches, river, briar grain drains, grey silt
221 The hedge, straw, ground, land Wife’s grass, air stubble, Tale field, seed, sowing Mother rain, air cows, calf Byre pump, rope of water, well, my waters Cana Yeast Water Revisited Elegy for seed-flesh, rook mountain white waves, mound, a Still- star, cloud fields wintry lough ground, pole, born Child globe Victorian Guitar Night rain, woods, Hay, seeds France, Drive air Montreuil, Abbeville, Beauvais, place, Italy At Ardboe air, pollen, smoke of Chaff lough shore, Point forests, flies swamps empyrean Relic of wood, sap, lough waters, Memory season, to shallows, stalagmite ablutions dead lava, star diamond, coal, burnt meteor, piece of stone A Lough Neagh Sequence 1. Up the wood, stone, eel lough, water, Isle of Man, Shore storm sea, flow, Toombridge, shore Antrim, Tyrone, land 2. Beyond mud, icicle, a scale of inland, orbit Sargasso rock, silt, water, sand, sleek estuaries, root Atlantic, ocean, ebb, rapids, current, tidal water, undulation
3. Bait grass, mud field whirling, leaf, blade Ground
222 coronas, prow, bay clay 4. Setting silt, sand, air worm, eel, Water gulls 5. Lifting eel, Flail morning Antrim, “spawned” water, lough 6. The Grass Spawn ponds, Malin, Tory Return drains, dead canals, sea, trenches, pipes, swamps, running streams, lough, river, mid-water, weltering dark, current 7. Vision grass, wind, eels Fields water, Place birch trunk riverbank fields The Given dry-stone, mid-Atlantic Blasket, Note air island Whinlands spring, bird stone ditches whin, Hills underfoot blossom, bushes, green shoot, dead thorns The wood, birch toadstools, Mountains Plantation trunks, bleyberries stumps, hedging the road, Shoreline hedge, Fish, corn, sea, puddles, hill, County basalt, sand black grazing, haphazard Down, hawk fields tidal craters, Antrim, ocean , Moher, channel, Ireland, strands, tide, Wicklow, cliffs Mayo, Strangford, Arklow, Carrickfergus, Belmullet, Ventry Bann Clay pits, grass, bank, blue Valley sun, webbed cream, marsh, hoarded Mesolithic waters, river,
223 flints, slick, drain, water, humus, to glut roots Bogland prairies, sun, tarn, Atlantic firs Unfenced bog, peat, seapage country, air, ground, underfoot, inwards, coal, downwards, waterlogged bottomless trunks,
224 15. 1. 3. Word Field “Nature” – Wintering Out
Nature Language Animals Agriculture Water Plants Land- scape PART ONE Fodder mucky Fother fodder, stall gaps, stack, meadow- swathes of sweet grass, hay Bog Oak rain, Carrion thatch, mistletoe, ‘oak groves’ sunlight, creel-fillers, watercress woods, cart track, glennes ruts, green clearings Anahorish shiny Anahorish Yards, pails, springs, hill, grass, barrows, cobbles, Anahorish vowel- dunghills wells meadow, mound- dwellers, mist, ice Servant snow trail, fodder fair- Boy hills
The Last stone, tongue, cricket, lawn, straw ash-plant, country, Mummer fog, stick, civil cockroach mask, slabs holly trees cross- road, tongues of a yard, roads, lane- snow, hearth, ends moon, hearthstone, dark grazing tracks, dewy path, summer Land grass, Pads perch, sowed-out drains rushes, cairn, stones, hares ground, clover phantom hedges, ploughing, ground dawn, outlying wet fields, acres, leaves, long slope rush- of stubble, bands, straw, grass, air harvest bows Gifts of cloud- utterance, mammal, straw- flood, flower, Atlantis, Rain burst, vowels, a spoors footed, fords, tresses ground, steady mating stepping water, Moyola, down- call of stones, basin, locale, pour, sound fields, drills, ford, common mud, cropping spouts, ground
225 uproot- land, crops shore, ting, river mud, mud, sky, tawny rains, guttural gravel water, beds, river clay floor, mists Toome loam, slab of the Elvers bogwater, Toome flints, tongue, tributaries mud alluvial Broagh garden rigs, riverbank, boortrees, mould, docken, ford rhubarb- shower pad plates Oracle trunk, fields willow mossy woody tree places cleft The air, language, snipe, Backward nesting dialect goat, wild Look ground, goose nature reserves, air Traditions mosland guttural wild hares bawn muse, alliterative tradition, uvula, furled consonats A New native river Kingfisher bawn river, ford, alder trees Derrygrave Song haunts, tongues, whirlpool, Moyola, grass consonant twilit Demesnes, svocable, water Castle- rath, dawson, bullaun Upper-lands The leafage, tongue of fallow, stream sedge, ground, hill Other lea, moss chosen scraggy marigolds, Side people, acres, rushes, patriarchal furrows, black- dictum hay, rut, thorn, grass-seed marsh weeds, pollen The vowels, Flocks shear, bale, streams, Hills Wool language, bleach, card, water- Trade lost spools, wheels syntax, looms, gallery of spindles the tongue
226 Linen tidal tang Town Lagan
A glacial barrow tidal leaf Gomorrah, Northern rock, membrans Hoard dawn, mendrake 1. Roots earth sac, loam 2. No stream- thorn Man’s ing webs, Land 3. Stump sooty wash 4. No harvest Sanctuary 5. Tinder flints, Canine leaf, Tundra cave pollen, mouth tinder flame, stick, stone, charred linen, iron Midnight rain, pads, carrion, heather Kildare parkland, tongue wolf, moor, dogs, forests, wolfhound turf-bank, den, basalt, vermin granite, moss, boughs The peat- Tongue winter Aarhus, flat Tollund brown seeds, country, Man head, fen, farmyards, holy ground, honey- tumbril Tollund, combed, Grauballe, stained Nebelgrad, face, Jutland, old cauldron man-killing bog parishes
Nerthus peat, kesh grains ash-fork, heather Cairn- stone’s Hives rush, hillock, Maker nests, lady’s bogland, rock, smock, Burren cairn, heather- stones bells,
227 Navvy shale, lake- bark, dwellings drill, morass, macadam dug-outs Veteran’s horses, cankered Dream maggots ground Augury silt, sun fish, rat current, weed great lakes PART TWO Wedding Day
Mother of the Groom Summer wind, larval grains water wild Home dumps, cherry, summer, rhododend nest, air, ron, rocks flowers, blooms Serenades Irish no man’s nightin- land gale, sedge warbler, bird, owl, cow, bats, tramp corn- Cracke Somnam gossamer bulist
A winter cattle Winter’s Tale Shore sand, air, cockle, fallow shore, timber hills Woman rocks, clam, dunes, pale sud oyster, bay, mackerel, under- porpoises, tow, tide, razor water, shell, brine, crab, water, whales, strand, fathom wave Maighdean air straw-must, under- wort
228 Mara thatch, tow, mildew undulant, sea- wracks, waves Limbo gravel, salmon, waters, Bally- spawnings shannon Bye- cobwebs Rodent henhouse, Child roosts
Good- puddle, night cobble- stones First Calf hedge cow, calf, bush hide May smither- Trout spa-well, lady’s ground, eens, coping smock, village stones, grassy celandine green pendent, stems, spring lugs of leaf, marsh- lights, summer Fireside meadow goat, watery art, bushes fishes black pelt of the stream, current, eddy Dawn cobbles pigeons, sea shrub, winkle, mint of cockle green leaves, Travel sun, Oxen nelons hill scorched grass Westering cobbles, Frogskin shining Donegal summer waters
229 15. 1. 4. Word Field “Place” – North
Place/Space Place Nature Language Landscape Names Mossbawn: Two yard, space sun, water Poems in honeyed, dedication… goose 1.Sunlight
2. The Seed hedge, Cutters wind, seed cutters, leaf sprout, seed potatoes, straw, root, broom PART ONE Antaeus ground, rose, sand, hillock, earth’s long river-veins, contour, root, rock, cave, lifting golden me off the apples, earth Belderg stone walls, Mayo, quernstones, moss , bog, stone- home, Mossbawn peat, Norse, age fields, ground, neolithic bawn, Irish dry turf- English wheat, coomb, fort, plough landscape mound, marks, fossilized, grounds stones, iron, bogland flint, bronze, root, tree Funeral Rites tainted Boyne, black hill, Carling rooms, Strange, glacier, fjords corner, cupmarked blinded stones, home, serpent, country, grassy emptied boulevard, kitchens, tail, mounds, megalithic, burial moon mound, north North geography Iceland, strand, swimming Atlantic pathetic hammered tongue, colonies of shod of a word-hoard Greenland, bay, stone Orkney, ships, gravel Dublin of thawed
230 streams, ocean- deafened voices, aurora borealis Viking Dublin: ford, slip of Liffey, jaw-bone, child’s hill Trial Pieces the bank, Dublin rib, eel, tongue mother-wet swimming caches, nostril, ambush, foliage, town, city burial clays, of Dublin, mud cobbled quays, skull- capped ground The Digging dusty earth, sedge, slobland Skeleton quays, unrelenting crates, soil, autumn barns, leaves, clay boneyard Bone Dreams strange England, grass, stone, Language, downs, fields, Provence, flint-find, tongue’s old passes, roofspace, Devon nugget of dungeons, Pennines centre, chalk, Elizabethan bone’s lair, benches, canopies, Hadrian’s wattle, Norman Wall, grass, scree, devices, Maiden escarpment, erotic Castle, mole, dew mayflowers, love-nest, ivied latins fosse, a pelt of of grass and churchmen, grain, south scops twang, consonants, coffered riches of grammar, ban-bus Come to the Bower sweetbriar, vetch, maw of the peat, willow, fox’s brush, spring water, riverbed
231 Bog Queen turf-face, dawn suns, illiterate demesne seeps of wall, winter, heathery roots, levels, amber, glass- berries, toothed gemstones, stones, peat floe, cavings, black gravel glacier, bottom, moraines, under- winter, ground, stone, birth- fjords, wet cord of bog nest, coomb The Grauballe Man bog oak, pillow of wet swamp, turf, black elderberry river, grain, place, basalt egg, mussel, eel, mud, peat Punishment bog, combs weighing stone, boughs, sapling, oak-bone, black corn, flaxen- haired, Strange Fruit gourd, prune- skinned, prune- stones, wet fern, coil, turf clod Kinship spreadfield, hieroglyphic vowel of bog floor, peat, earth, ground, bracken, crannog bank, water, quagmire, rushes, swampland, heather, morass, turf-face, slime spring, kingdoms, moon- domains of drinker, the cold- mollusc, blooded, seed-pod, mud pads, turf-spade, bog, bracken, ruminant rain, flow,
232 ground, sun, stones, pollen bin, pearded earth- cairn, pantry, catkin, bog- bone-vault, cotton, oak- sun-bank, limb, a bag nesting of waters, ground, mothers of sump, autumn, seedbed, husk, leaf, melting mosses, grave, flowers, fields, haw- snow, lit hedges, weeping grove, willow, turf- mother cart wheels, ground, turf mould ‘island of the ocean’ Ocean’s Love to inland, Ireland, water, speaking Ireland strands, England, ocean, scarf broad woods, Lee, of weed, Devonshire, ground Black- wave, Irish, iambic water, rivers, drums of London, mushroom- English Smerwick flesh, dew Aisling hazels, stag wind’s vowel Act of Union bogland, rain, ferny eastern heaving bed, water coast, province, gradual hills kingdom, shore, borders, colony, opened ground The Betrothal of South Cavehill basalt Cavehill Hercules and territory, sky-born, Antaeus gullies, snake- hatching chocker, grounds, dung- cave, heaver, souterrain, golden ridge apples, mould- hugger, river-veins
PART TWO
233 The world, Bastille tree Unacknowledged… place Whatever You winter Bally- stony civil tongue, Say… quarters, murphy flavours, Celtic, fork- blasted drouth, tongued, street and shoals, tongue home, dykes, tide, border bit, fresh clay, gag of trees place, land of password, low ground
Freedman lamprays, mouldy brow, earth- starred denizens Singing School birthplace, hay-loft 1. The Ministry of important Brandy- hare, vowels, Mountain Fear places, scarp well, sycamores, hushed, of Belfast, lawns of lulled, St.Columb’s Berkeley, elocution, accents, College, South ivy, ‘svelte Bogside, Derry, moonlight, dictions’ houses at the Ulster scent of hay, Lecky Road, black cattle home 2. A Constable sunlight, Calls tillage, perches, root crops, mangolds, marrow- stems, seed, potato field, turnip 3. Orange Drums, Tyrone 4. Summer 1969 the Falls, Madrid bullying Hill plains, sun, flax- Prado, bog dam, water 5. Fosterage Royal Belfast Avenue, 6. Exposure muddy Wicklow alders, conducive compound birches, ash voices tree, comet, sunset, haw, rose-hips
234 damp leaves, husks, rain, wood-kerne, bole, bark, wind
235 15. 2. Poetry
15. 2. 1. Death of a Naturalist
For the Commander of the ‘Eliza’
.. the others, with emaciated faces and prominent, staring eyeballs, were evidently in an advanced state of starvation. The officer reported to Sir James Dombrain ... and Sir James, 'very inconveniently', wrote Routh, 'interfered'. (Cecil Woodham-Smith: The Great Hunger)
1 Routine patrol off West Mayo; sighting 2 A rowboat heading unusually far 3 Beyond the creek, I tacked and hailed the crew 4 In Gaelic. Their stroke had clearly weakened 5 As they pulled to, from guilt or bashfulness 6 I was conjecturing when, O my sweet Christ, 7 We saw piled in the bottom of their craft 8 Six grown men with gaping mouths and eyes 9 Bursting the sockets like spring onions in drills. 10 Six wrecks of bone and pallid, tautened skin. 11 'Bia, bia, 12 Bia'. In whines and snarls their desperation 13 Rose and fell like a flock of starving gulls. 14 We'd known about the shortage, but on board 15 They always kept us right with flour and beef 16 So understand my feelings, and the men's, 17 Who had no mandate to relieve distress 18 Since relief was then available in Westport--- 19 Though clearly these poor brutes would never make it. 20 I had to refuse food: they cursed and howled 21 Like dogs that had been kicked hard in the privates. 22 When they drove at me with their starboard oar 23 (Risking capsize themselves) I saw they were 24 Violent and without hope. I hoisted 25 And cleared off. Less incidents the better.
26 Next day, like six bad smells, those living skulls 27 Drifted through the dark of bunks and hatches 28 And once in port I exorcised my ship, 29 Reporting all to the Inspector General. 30 Sir James, I understand, urged free relief 31 For famine victims in the Westport Sector 32 And earned tart reprimand from good Whitehall. 33 Let natives prosper by their own exertions; 34 Who could not swim might go ahead and sink. 35 'The Coast Guard with their zeal and activity 36 Are too lavish' were the words, I think.
236 Digging
1 Between my finger and my thumb 2 The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
3 Under my window, a clean rasping sound 4 When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: 5 My father, digging. I look down
6 Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds 7 Bends low, comes up twenty years away 8 Stooping in rhythm through potato drills 9 Where he was digging.
10 The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft 11 Against the inside knee was levered firmly. 12 He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep 13 To scatter new potatoes that we picked, 14 Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
15 By God, the old man could handle a spade. 16 Just like his old man.
17 My grandfather cut more turf in a day 18 Than any other man on Toner's bog. 19 Once I carried him milk in a bottle 20 Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up 21 To drink it, then fell to right away
22 Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods 23 Over his shoulder, going down and down 24 For the good turf. Digging.
25 The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap 26 Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge 27 Through living roots awaken in my head. 28 But I've no spade to follow men like them.
29 Between my finger and my thumb 30 The squat pen rests. 31 I'll dig with it.
Death of a Naturalist
1 All year the flax-dam festered in the heart 2 Of the townland; green and heavy headed 3 Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. 4 Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. 5 Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles 6 Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. 7 There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
237 8 But best of all was the warm thick slobber 9 Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water 10 In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring, 11 I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied 12 Specks to range on window-sills at home, 13 On shelves at school, and wait and watch until 14 The fattening dots burst into nimble- 15 Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how 16 The daddy frog was called a bullfrog, 17 And how he croaked, and how the mammy frog 18 Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was 19 Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too 20 For they were yellow in the sun and brown 21 In rain.
22 Then one hot day when fields were rank 23 With cowdung in the grass, the angry frogs 24 Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges 25 To a coarse croaking that I had not heard 26 Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus. 27 Right down the dam, gross-bellied frogs were cocked 28 On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped: 29 The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat 30 Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting. 31 I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings 32 Were gathered there for vengeance, and I knew 33 That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
Blackberry-Picking
For Philip Hobsbaum
1 Late August, given heavy rain and sun 2 For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. 3 At first, just one, a glossy purple clot 4 Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. 5 You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet 6 Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it 7 Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for 8 Picking. Then red ones inked up, and that hunger 9 Sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots 10 Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. 11 Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills, 12 We trekked and picked until the cans were full, 13 Until the tinkling bottom had been covered 14 With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned 15 Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered 16 With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
17 We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. 18 But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
238 19 A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. 20 The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush, 21 The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. 22 I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair 23 That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. 24 Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
Personal Helicon
For Michael Longley
1 As a child, they could not keep me from wells 2 And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. 3 I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells 4 Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
5 One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top. 6 I savoured the rich crash when a bucket 7 Plummeted down at the end of a rope. 8 So deep you saw no reflection in it.
9 A shallow one under a dry stone ditch 10 Fructified like any aquarium. 11 When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch, 12 A white face hovered over the bottom.
13 Others had echoes, gave back your own call 14 With a clean new music in it. And one 15 Was scaresome for there, out of ferns and tall 16 Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
17 Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, 18 To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring 19 Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme 20 To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
The Early Purges
1 I was six when I first saw kittens drown. 2 Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits', 3 Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,
4 Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din 5 Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout 6 Of the pump and the water pumped in.
7 'Sure isn't it better for them now?' Dan said. 8 Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced 9 Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.
239 10 Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung 11 Round the yard, watching the three sogged remains 12 Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung 13 Until I forgot them. But the fear came back 14 When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows 15 Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens' necks.
16 Still, living displaces false sentiments 17 And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown, 18 I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'. It makes sense:
19 'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts ice in town 20 Where they consider death unnatural, 21 But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.
Follower
1 My father worked with a horse-plough, 2 His shoulders globed like a full sail strung 3 Between the shafts and the furrow. 4 The horses strained at his clicking tongue.
5 An expert. He would set the wing 6 And fit the bright steel-pointed sock. 7 The sod rolled over without breaking. 8 At the headrig, with a single pluck
9 Of reins, the sweating team turned round 10 And back into the land. His eye 11 Narrowed and angled at the ground, 12 Mapping the furrow exactly.
13 I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake, 14 Fell sometimes on the polished sod; 15 Sometimes he rode me on his back, 16 Dipping and rising to his plod.
17 I wanted to grow up and plough, 18 To close one eye, stiffen my arm. 19 All I ever did was follow 20 In his broad shadow round the farm.
21 I was a nuisance, tripping, falling, 22 Yapping always. But today 23 It is my father who keeps stumbling 24 Behind me, and will not go away.
240 At A Potato Digging
I 1 A mechanical digger wrecks the drill, 2 Spins up a dark shower of roots and mould. 3 Labourers swarm in behind, stoop to fill 4 Wicker creels. Fingers go dead in the cold. 5 Like crows attacking crow-black fields, they stretch 6 A higgledy line from hedge to headland; 7 Some pairs keep breaking ragged ranks to fetch 8 A full creel to the pit and straighten, stand
9 Tall for a moment but soon stumble back 10 To fish a new load from the crumbled surf. 11 Heads bow, trunks bend, hands fumble towards the black 12 Mother. Processional stooping through the turf
13 Recurs mindlessly as autumn. Centuries 14 Of fear and homage to the famine god 15 Toughen the muscles behind their humbled knees, 16 Make a seasonal altar of the sod.
II 17 Flint-white, purple. They lie scattered 18 like inflated pebbles. Native 19 to the black hutch of clay 20 where the halved seed shot and clotted, 21 these knobbed and slit-eyed tubers seem 22 the petrified hearts of drills. Split 23 by the spade, they show white as cream.
24 Good smells exude from crumbled earth. 25 The rough bark of humus erupts 26 knots of potatoes (a clean birth) 27 whose solid feel, whose wet insides 28 promise taste of ground and root. 29 To be piled in pits; live skulls, blind-eyed.
III 30 Live skulls, blind-eyed, balanced on 31 wild higgledy skeletons, 32 scoured the land in 'forty-five, 33 wolfed the blighted root and died.
34 The new potato, sound as stone, 35 putrefied when it had lain 36 three days in the long clay pit. 37 Millions rotted along with it.
38 Mouths tightened in, eyes died hard, 39 faces chilled to a plucked bird.
241 40 In a million wicker huts, 41 beaks of famine snipped at guts.
42 A people hungering from birth, 43 grubbing, like plants, in the bitch earth, 44 were grafted with a great sorrow. 45 Hope rotted like a marrow. 46 Stinking potatoes fouled the land, 47 pits turned pus into filthy mounds: 48 and where potato diggers are, 49 you still smell the running sore.
IV 50 Under a gay flotilla of gulls 51 The rhythm deadens, the workers stop. 52 Brown bread and tea in bright canfuls 53 Are served for lunch. Dead-beat, they flop
54 Down in the ditch and take their fill, 55 Thankfully breaking timeless fasts; 56 Then, stretched on the faithless ground, spill 57 Libations of cold tea, scatter crusts.
The Diviner
1 Cut from the green hedge a forked hazel stick 2 That he held tight by the arms of the V: 3 Circling the terrain, hunting the pluck 4 Of water, nervous, but professionally
5 Unfussed. The pluck came sharp as a sting. 6 The rod jerked with precise convulsions, 7 Spring water suddenly broadcasting 8 Through a green hazel its secret stations.
9 The bystanders would ask to have a try. 10 He handed them the rod without a word. 11 It lay dead in their grasp till, nonchalantly, 12 He gripped expectant wrists. The hazel stirred.
Dawn Shoot
1 Clouds ran their wet mortar, plastered the daybreak 2 Grey. The stones clicked tartly 3 If we missed the sleepers, but mostly 4 Silent we headed up the railway 5 Where now the only steam was funnelling from cows 6 Ditched on their rumps beyond hedges, 7 Cudding, watching, and knowing. 8 The rails scored a bull's-eye into the eye 9 Of a bridge. A corncrake challenged
242 10 Unexpectedly like a hoarse sentry 11 And a snipe rocketed away on reconnaissance. 12 Rubber-booted, belted, tense as two parachutists, 13 We climbed the iron gate and dropped 14 Into the meadow's six acres of broom, gorse and dew.
15 A sandy bank, reinforced with coiling roots, 16 Faced you, two hundred yards from the track. 17 Snug on our bellies behind a rise of dead whins, 18 Our ravenous eyes getting used to the greyness, 19 We settled, soon had the holes under cover. 20 This was the den they all would be heading for now, 21 Loping under ferns in dry drains, flashing 22 Brown orbits across ploughlands and grazing.
23 The plaster thinned at the skyline, the whitewash 24 Was bleaching on houses and stables, 25 The cock would be sounding reveille 26 In seconds. 27 And there was one breaking 28 In from the gap in the corner.
29 Donnelly's left hand came up 30 And came down on my barrel. This one was his, 31 'For Christ's sake,' I spat, 'Take your time, there'll be more.' 32 There was the playboy trotting up to the hole 33 By the ash tree, 'Wild rover no more,' 34 Said Donnelly and emptied two barrels 35 And got him.
36 Another snipe catapulted into the light, 37 A mare whinnied and shivered her haunches 38 Up on a hill. The others would not be back 39 After three shots like that. We dandered off 40 To the railway; the prices were small at that time 41 So we did not bother to cut out the tongue. 42 The ones that slipped back when the all clear got round 43 Would be first to examine him.
15. 2. 2. Door into the Dark
The Salmon Fisher to the Salmon
1 The ridged lip set upstream, you flail 2 Inland again, your exile in the sea 3 Unconditionally cancelled by the pull 4 Of your home water's gravity.
5 And I stand in the centre, casting. 6 The river cramming under me reflects
243 7 Slung gaff and net and a white wrist flicking 8 Flies well-dressed with tint and fleck.
9 Walton thought garden worms, perfumed 10 By oil crushed from dark ivy berries 11 The lure that took you best, but here you come 12 To grief through hunger in your eyes.
13 Ripples arrowing beyond me, 14 The current strumming water up my leg, 15 Involved in water's choreography 16 I go, like you, by gleam and drag
17 And will strike when you strike, to kill. 18 We're both annihilated on the fly. 19 You can't resist a gullet full of steel. 20 I will turn home, fish-smelling, scaly.
The Forge
1 All I know is a door into the dark. 2 Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting; 3 Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring, 4 The unpredictable fantail of sparks 5 Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water. 6 The anvil must be somewhere in the centre, 7 Horned as a unicorn, at one end square, 8 Set there immovable: an altar 9 Where he expends himself in shape and music. 10 Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose, 11 He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter 12 Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows; 13 Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick 14 To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.
Relic of Memory
1 The lough waters 2 Can petrify wood: 3 Old oars and posts 4 Over the years 5 Harden their grain, 6 Incarcerate ghosts
7 Of sap and season. 8 The shallows lap 9 And give and take: 10 Constant ablutions, 11 Such drowning love 12 Stun a stake
244 13 To stalagmite. 14 Dead lava, 15 The cooling star, 16 Coal and diamond 17 Or sudden birth 18 Of burnt meteor 19 Are too simple, 20 Without the lure 21 That relic stored--- 22 A piece of stone 23 On the shelf at school, 24 Oatmeal coloured.
Beyond Sargasso
1 A gland agitating 2 mud two hundred miles in- 3 land, a scale of water 4 on water working up 5 estuaries, he drifted 6 into motion half-way 7 across the Atlantic, 8 sure as the satellite's 9 insinuating pull 10 in the ocean, as true 11 to his orbit. 12 Against 13 ebb, current, rock, rapids, 14 a muscled icicle 15 that melts itself longer 16 and fatter, he buries 17 his arrival beyond 18 light and tidal water, 19 investing silt and sand 20 with a sleek root. By day, 21 only the drainmaker's 22 spade or the mud paddler 23 can make him abort. Dark 24 delivers him hungering 25 down each undulation.
The Return
1 In ponds, drains, dead canals, 2 she turns her head back, 3 older now, following 4 whim deliberately 5 till she's at sea in grass 6 and damned if she'll turn so 7 it's new trenches, sunk pipes, 8 swamps, running streams, the lough,
245 9 the river. Her stomach 10 shrunk, she exhilarates 11 in mid-water. Its throbbing 12 is speed through days and weeks. 13 Who knows now if she knows 14 her depth or direction? 15 She's passed Malin and 16 Tory, silent, wakeless, 17 a wisp, a wick that is 18 its own taper and light 19 through the weltering dark. 20 Where she's lost once she lays 21 ten thousand feet down in 22 her origins. The current 23 carries slicks of orphaned spawn.
Shoreline
1 Turning a corner, taking a hill 2 In County Down, there's the sea 3 Sidling and settling to 4 The back of a hedge. Or else
5 A grey foreshore with puddles 6 Dead-eyed as fish. 7 Haphazard tidal craters march 8 The corn and the grazing.
9 All round Antrim and westward 10 Two hundred miles at Moher 11 Basalt stands to. 12 Both ocean and channel
13 Froth at the black locks 14 On Ireland. And strands 15 Take hissing submissions 16 Off Wicklow and Mayo.
17 Take any minute. A tide 18 Is rummaging in 19 At the foot of all fields, 20 All cliffs and shingles.
21 Listen. Is it the Danes, 22 A black hawk bent on the sail? 23 Or the chinking Normans? 24 Or currachs hopping high
25 On to the sand? 26 Strangford, Arklow, Carrickfergus,
246 27 Belmullet and Ventry 28 Stay, forgotten like sentries
Bann Clay
1 Labourers pedalling at ease 2 Past the end of the lane 3 Were white with it. Dungarees 4 And boots wore its powdery stain.
5 All day in open pits 6 They loaded on to the bank 7 Slabs like the squared-off clots 8 Of a blue cream. Sunk
9 For centuries under the grass, 10 It baked white in the sun, 11 Relieved its hoarded waters 12 And began to ripen.
13 It underruns the valley, 14 The first slow residue 15 Of a river finding its way. 16 Above it, the webbed marsh is new,
17 Even the clutch of Mesolithic 18 Flints. Once, cleaning a drain, 19 I shovelled up livery slicks 20 Till the water gradually ran
21 Clear on its old floor. 22 Under the humus and roots 23 This smooth weight. I labour 24 Towards it still. It holds and gluts.
Bogland for T. P. Flanagan
1 We have no prairies 2 To slice a big sun at evening--- 3 Everywhere the eye concedes to 4 Encroaching horizon,
5 Is wooed into the cyclops' eye 6 Of a tarn. Our unfenced country 7 Is bog that keeps crusting 8 Between the sights of the sun.
9 They've taken the skeleton 10 Of the Great Irish Elk
247 11 Out of the peat, set it up 12 An astounding crate full of air. 13 Butter sunk under 14 More than a hundred years 15 Was recovered salty and white. 16 The ground itself is kind, black butter
17 Melting and opening underfoot, 18 Missing its last definition 19 By millions of years. 20 They'll never dig coal here,
21 Only the waterlogged trunks 22 Of great firs, soft as pulp. 23 Our pioneers keep striking 24 Inwards and downwards,
25 Every layer they strip 26 Seems camped on before. 27 The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage. 28 The wet centre is bottomless.
The Wife’s Tale
1 When I had spread it all on linen cloth 2 Under the hedge, I called them over. 3 The hum and gulp of the thresher ran down 4 And the big belt slewed to a standstill, straw 5 Hanging undelivered in the jaws. 6 There was such quiet that I heard their boots 7 Crunching the stubble twenty yards away.
8 He lay down and said 'Give these fellows theirs, 9 I'm in no hurry,' plucking grass in handfuls 10 And tossing it in the air. 'That looks well.' 11 (He nodded at my white cloth on the grass.) 12 'I declare a woman could lay out a field 13 Though boys like us have little call for cloths.' 14 He winked, then watched me as I poured a cup 15 And buttered the thick slices that he likes. 16 'It's threshing better than I thought, and mind 17 It's good clean seed. Away over there and look.' 18 Always this inspection has to be made 19 Even when I don't know what to look for.
20 But I ran my hand in the half-filled bags 21 Hooked to the slots. It was hard as shot, 22 Innumerable and cool. The bags gaped 23 Where the chutes ran back to the stilled drum 24 And forks were stuck at angles in the ground
248 25 As javelins might mark lost battlefields. 26 I moved between them back across the stubble.
27 They lay in the ring of their own crusts and dregs 28 Smoking and saying nothing. 'There's good yield, 29 Isn't there?'---as proud as if he were the land itself--- 30 'Enough for crushing and for sowing both.' 31 And that was it. I'd come and he had shown me 32 So I belonged no further to the work. 33 I gathered cups and folded up the cloth 34 And went. But they still kept their ease 35 Spread out, unbuttoned, grateful, under the trees.
Whinlands
1 All year round the whin 2 Can show a blossom or two 3 But it's in full bloom now. 4 As if the small yolk stain
5 From all the birds' eggs in 6 All the nests of the spring 7 Were spiked and hung 8 Everywhere on bushes to ripen.
9 Hills oxidize gold. 10 Above the smoulder of green shoot 11 And dross of dead thorns underfoot 12 The blossoms scald.
13 Put a match under 14 Whins, they go up of a sudden. 15 They make no flame in the sun 16 But a fierce heat tremor
17 Yet incineration like that 18 Only takes the thorn--- 19 The tough sticks don't burn, 20 Remain like bone, charred horn.
21 Gilt, jaggy, springy, frilled, 22 This stunted, dry richness 23 Persists on hills, near stone ditches, 24 Over flintbed and battlefield
249 15. 2. 3. Wintering Out
Gifts of Rain
I 1 Cloudburst and steady downpour now 2 for days. 3 Still mammal, 4 straw-footed on the mud, 5 he begins to sense weather 6 by his skin. 7 A nimble snout of flood 8 licks over stepping stones 9 and goes uprooting. 10 He fords 11 his life by sounding. 12 Soundings.
II 13 A man wading lost fields 14 breaks the pane of flood: 15 a flower of mud- 16 water blooms up to his reflection 17 like a cut swaying 18 its red spoors through a basin. 19 His hands grub 20 where the spade has uncastled 21 sunken drills, an atlantis 22 he depends on. So 23 he is hooped to where he planted 24 and sky and ground 25 are running naturally among his arms 26 that grope the cropping land.
III 27 When rains were gathering 28 there would be an all-night 29 roaring off the ford. 30 Their world-schooled ear 31 could monitor the usual 32 confabulations, the race 33 slabbering past the gable, 34 the Moyola harping on 35 its gravel beds: 36 all spouts by daylight 37 brimmed with their own airs 38 and overflowed each barrel 39 in long tresses. 40 I cock my ear 41 at an absence--- 42 in the shared calling of blood
250 43 arrives my need 44 for antediluvian lore. 45 Soft voices of the dead 46 are whispering by the shore 47 that I would question 48 (and for my children's sake) 49 about crops rotted, river mud 50 glazing the baked clay floor.
IV 51 The tawny guttural water 52 spells itself: Moyola 53 is its own score and consort, 54 bedding the locale 55 in the utterance, 56 reed music, an old chanter 57 breathing its mists 58 through vowels and history. 59 A swollen river, 60 a mating call of sound 61 rises to pleasure me, Dives, 62 hoarder of common ground.
The Last Mummer
I 1 Carries a stone in his pocket, 2 an ash-plant under his arm.
3 Moves out of the fog 4 on the lawn, pads up the terrace.
5 The luminous screen in the corner 6 has them charmed in a ring
7 so he stands a long time behind them. 8 St. George, Beelzebub and Jack Straw
9 can't be conjured from mist. 10 He catches the stick in his fist 11 and, shrouded, starts beating 12 the bars of the gate.
13 His boots crack the road. The stone 14 clatters down off the slates.
II 15 He came trammelled 16 in the taboos of the country
251 17 picking a nice way through 18 the long toils of blood
19 and feuding. 20 His tongue went whoring
21 among the civil tongues, 22 he had an eye for weather-eyes
23 at cross-roads and lane-ends 24 and could don manners
25 at a flutter of curtains. 26 His straw mask and hunch were fabulous
27 disappearing beyond the lamplit 28 slabs of a yard.
III 29 You dream a cricket in the hearth 30 and cockroach on the floor,
31 a line of mummers 32 marching out the door
33 as the lamp flares in the draught. 34 Melted snow off their feet
35 leaves you in peace. 36 Again an old year dies
37 on your hearthstone, for good luck. 38 The moon's host elevated
39 in a monstrance of holly trees, 40 he makes dark tracks, who had
41 untousled a first dewy path 42 into the summer grazing.
Broagh
1 Riverback, the long rigs 2 ending in broad docken 3 and a canopied pad 4 down to the ford.
5 The garden mould 6 bruised easily, the shower 7 gathering in your heelmark 8 was the black O
252
9 in Broagh , 10 its low tattoo 11 among the windy boortrees 12 and rhubarb-blades
13 ended almost 14 suddenly, like that last 15 gh the strangers found 16 difficult to manage.
A New Song
1 I met a girl from Derrygarve 2 And the name, a lost potent musk, 3 Recalled the river's long swerve, 4 A kingfisher's blue bolt at dusk
5 And stepping stones like black molars 6 Sunk in the ford, the shifty glaze 7 Of the whirlpool, the Moyola 8 Pleasuring beneath alder trees.
9 And Derrygarve, I thought, was just, 10 Vanished music, twilit water, 11 A smooth libation of the past 12 Poured by this chance vestal daughter.
13 But now our river tongues must rise 14 From licking deep in native haunts 15 To flood, with vowelling embrace, 16 Demesnes staked out in consonants.
17 And Castledawson we'll enlist 18 And Upperlands, each planted bawn--- 19 Like bleaching-greens resumed by grass--- 20 A vocable, as rath and bullaun.
Land
I 1 I stepped it, perch by perch. 2 Unbraiding rushes and grass 3 I opened my right-of-way 4 through old bottoms and sowed-out ground 5 and gathered stones off the ploughing 6 to raise a small cairn. 7 Cleaned out the drains, faced the hedges 8 often got up at dawn 9 to walk the outlying fields.
253 10 I composed habits for those acres 11 so that my last look would be 12 neither gluttonous nor starved. 13 I was ready to go anywhere.
II 14 This is in place of what I would leave 15 plaited and branchy 16 on a long slope of stubble:
17 a woman of old wet leaves, 18 rush-bands and thatcher's scollops, 19 stooked loosely, her breasts an open-work
20 of new straw and harvest bows. 21 Gazing out past 22 the shifting hares.
III 23 I sense the pads 24 unfurling under grass and clover:
25 if I lie with my ear 26 in this loop of silence
27 long enough, thigh-bone 28 and shoulder against the phantom ground,
29 I expect to pick up 30 a small drumming
31 and must not be surprised 32 in bursting air
33 to find myself snared, swinging 34 an ear-ring of sharp wire.
The Tollund Man
I 1 Some day I will go to Aarhus 2 To see his peat-brown head, 3 The mild pods of his eye-lids, 4 His pointed skin cap.
5 In the flat country nearby 6 Where they dug him out, 7 His last gruel of winter seeds 8 Caked in his stomach,
254 9 Naked except for 10 The cap, noose and girdle, 11 I will stand a long time. 12 Bridegroom to the goddess,
13 She tightened her torc on him 14 And opened her fen, 15 Those dark juices working 16 Him to a saint's kept body,
17 Trove of the turfcutters' 18 Honeycombed workings. 19 Now his stained face 20 Reposes at Aarhus.
II 21 I could risk blasphemy, 22 Consecrate the cauldron bog 23 Our holy ground and pray 24 Him to make germinate
25 The scattered, ambushed 26 Flesh of labourers, 27 Stockinged corpses 28 Laid out in the farmyards,
29 Tell-tale skin and teeth 30 Flecking the sleepers 31 Of four young brothers, trailed 32 For miles along the lines. III 33 Something of his sad freedom 34 As he rode the tumbril 35 Should come to me, driving, 36 Saying the names
37 Tollund, Grabaulle, Nebelgard, 38 Watching the pointing hands 39 Of country people, 40 Not knowing their tongue.
41 Out there in Jutland 42 In the old man-killing parishes 43 I will feel lost, 44 Unhappy and at home.
255 Traditions
For Tom Flanagan
I 1 Our guttural muse 2 was bulled long ago 3 by the alliterative tradition, 4 her uvula grows 5 vestigial, forgotten 6 like the coccyx 7 or a Brigid's Cross 8 yellowing in some outhouse
9 while custom, that 'most 10 sovereign mistress', 11 beds us down into 12 the British isles.
II 13 We are to be proud 14 of our Elizabethan English: 15 'varsity', for example, 16 is grass-roots stuff with us;
17 we 'deem' or we 'allow' 18 when we suppose 19 and some cherished archaisms 20 are correct Shakespearean.
21 Not to speak of the furled 22 consonants of lowlanders 23 shuttling obstinately 24 between bawn and mossland.
III 25 MacMorris, gallivanting 26 round the Globe, whinged 27 to courtier and groundling 28 who had heard tell of us
29 as going very bare 30 of learning, as wild hares, 31 as anatomies of death: 32 'What ish my nation?'
33 And sensibly, though so much 34 later, the wandering Bloom 35 replied, 'Ireland,' said Bloom, 36 'I was born here. Ireland.'
256 Serenades
1 The Irish nightingale 2 Is a sedge-warbler, 3 A little bird with a big voice 4 Kicking up a racket all night.
5 Not what you'd expect 6 From the musical nation. 7 I haven't even heard one--- 8 Nor an owl, for that matter.
9 My serenades have been 10 The broken voice of a crow 11 In a draught or a dream, 12 The wheeze of bats
13 Or the ack-ack 14 Of the tramp corncrake 15 Lost in a no man's land 16 Between combines and chemicals.
17 So fill the bottles, love, 18 Leave them inside their cots. 19 And if they do wake us, well, 20 So would the sedge-warbler.
Shore Woman
Man to the hills, woman to the shore. Gaelic proverb
1 I have crossed the dunes with their whistling bent 2 Where dry loose sand was riddling round the air 3 And I'm walking the firm margin. White pocks 4 Of cockle, blanched roofs of clam and oyster 5 Hoard the moonlight, woven and unwoven 6 Off the bay. At the far rocks 7 A pale sud comes and goes.
8 Under boards the mackerel slapped to death 9 Yet still we took them in at every cast, 10 Stiff flails of cold convulsed with their first breath. 11 My line plumbed certainly the undertow, 12 Loaded against me once I went to draw 13 And flashed and fattened up towards the light. 14 He was all business in the stern. I called 15 'This is so easy that it's hardly right,' 16 But he unhooked and coped with frantic fish 17 Without speaking. Then suddenly it lulled, 18 We'd crossed where they were running, the line rose
257 19 Like a let-down and I was conscious 20 How far we'd drifted out beyond the head. 21 'Count them up at your end,' was all he said 22 Before I saw the porpoises' thick backs 23 Cartwheeling like the flywheels of the tide, 24 Soapy and shining. To have seen a hill 25 Splitting the water could not have numbed me more 26 Than the close irruption of that school, 27 Tight viscous muscle, hooped from tail to snout, 28 Each one revealed complete as it bowled out 29 And under. 30 They will attack a boat. 31 I knew it and I asked him to put in 32 But he would not, declared it was a yarn 33 My people had been fooled by far too long 34 And he would prove it now and settle it. 35 Maybe he shrank when those sloped oily backs 36 Propelled towards us: I lay and screamed 37 Under splashed brine in an open rocking boat 38 Feeling each dunt and slither through the timber, 39 Sick at their huge pleasures in the water.
40 I sometimes walk this strand for thanksgiving 41 Or maybe it's to get away from him 42 Skittering his spit across the stove. Here 43 Is the taste of safety, the shelving sand 44 Harbours no worse than razor-shell or crab--- 45 Though my father recalls carcasses of whales 46 Collapsed and gasping, right up to the dunes. 47 But to-night such moving sinewed dreams lie out 48 In darker fathoms, far beyond the head. 49 Astray upon a debris of scrubbed shells 50 Between parched dunes and salivating wave, 51 I have rights on this fallow avenue, 52 A membrane between moonlight and my shadow.
15. 2. 4. North
Antaeus
1 When I lie on the ground 2 I rise flushed as a rose in the morning. 3 In fights I arrange a fall on the ring 4 To rub myself with sand
5 That is operative 6 As an elixir. I cannot be weaned 7 Off the earth's long contour, her river-veins. 8 Down here in my cave,
258 9 Girded with root and rock, 10 I am cradled in the dark that wombed me 11 And nurtured in every artery 12 Like a small hillock.
13 Let each new hero come 14 Seeking the golden apples and Atlas. 15 He must wrestle with me before he pass 16 Into that realm of fame
17 Among sky-born and royal: 18 He may well throw me and renew my birth 19 But let him not plan, lifting me off the earth, 20 My elevation, my fall.
Belderg
1 'They just kept turning up 2 And were thought of as foreign'--- 3 One-eyed and benign 4 They lie about his house, 5 Quernstones out of a bog.
6 To lift the lid of the peat 7 And find this pupil dreaming 8 Of neolithic wheat! 9 When he stripped off blanket bog 10 The soft-piled centuries
11 Fell open like a glib: 12 There were the first plough-marks, 13 The stone-age fields, the tomb 14 Corbelled, turfed and chambered, 15 Floored with dry turf-coomb.
16 A landscape fossilized, 17 Its stone-wall patternings 18 Repeated before our eyes 19 In the stone walls of Mayo. 20 Before I turned to go
21 He talked about persistence, 22 A congruence of lives, 23 How, stubbed and cleared of stones, 24 His home accrued growth rings 25 Of iron, flint and bronze.
26 So I talked of Mossbawn, 27 A bogland name. 'But moss?' 28 He crossed my old home's music
259 29 With older strains of Norse. 30 I'd told how its foundation
31 Was mutable as sound 32 And how I could derive 33 A forked root from that ground 34 And make bawn an English fort, 35 A planter's walled-in mound,
36 Or else find sanctuary 37 And think of it as Irish, 38 Persistent if outworn. 39 'But the Norse ring on your tree?' 40 I passed through the eye of the quern,
41 Grist to an ancient mill, 42 And in my mind's eye saw 43 A world-tree of balanced stones, 44 Querns piled like vertebrae, 45 The marrow crushed to grounds.
Funeral Rites
I 1 I shouldered a kind of manhood, 2 stepping in to lift the coffins 3 of dead relations. 4 They had been laid out
5 in tainted rooms, 6 their eyelids glistening, 7 their dough-white hands 8 shackled in rosary beads.
9 Their puffed knuckles 10 had unwrinkled, the nails 11 were darkened, the wrists 12 obediently sloped.
13 The dulse-brown shroud, 14 the quilted satin cribs: 15 I knelt courteously, 16 admiring it all,
17 as wax melted down 18 and veined the candles, 19 the flames hovering 20 to the women hovering
21 behind me. 22 And always, in a corner,
260 23 the coffin lid, 24 its nail-heads dressed
25 with little gleaming crosses. 26 Dear soapstone masks, 27 kissing their igloo brows 28 had to suffice
29 before the nails were sunk 30 and the black glacier 31 of each funeral 32 pushed away.
II 33 Now as news comes in 34 of each neighbourly murder 35 we pine for ceremony, 36 customary rhythms:
37 the temperate footsteps 38 of a cortège, winding past 39 each blinded home. 40 I would restore
41 the great chambers of Boyne, 42 prepare a sepulchre 43 under the cupmarked stones. 44 Out of side-streets and bye-roads
45 purring family cars 46 nose into line, 47 the whole country tunes 48 to the muffled drumming
49 of ten thousand engines. 50 Somnambulant women, 51 left behind, move 52 through emptied kitchens
53 imagining our slow triumph 54 towards the mounds. 55 Quiet as a serpent 56 in its grassy boulevard,
57 the procession drags its tail 58 out of the Gap of the North 59 as its head already enters 60 the megalithic doorway.
261 III 61 When they have put the stone 62 back in its mouth 63 we will drive north again 64 past Strang and Carling fjords,
65 the cud of memory 66 allayed for once, arbitration 67 of the feud placated, 68 imagining those under the hill
69 disposed like Gunnar 70 who lay beautiful 71 inside his burial mound, 72 though dead by violence
73 and unavenged. 74 Men said that he was chanting 75 verses about honour 76 and that four lights burned
77 in corners of the chamber: 78 which opened then, as he turned 79 with a joyful face 80 to look at the moon.
Bone Dreams
I 1 White bone found 2 on the grazing: 3 the rough, porous 4 language of touch
5 and its yellowing, ribbed 6 impression in the grass--- 7 a small ship-burial. 8 As dead as stone,
9 flint-find, nugget 10 of chalk, 11 I touch it again, 12 I wind it in
13 the sling of mind 14 to pitch it at England 15 and follow its drop 16 to strange fields.
262 II 17 Bone-house: 18 a skeleton 19 in the tongue's 20 old dungeons.
21 I push back 22 through dictions, 23 Elizabethan canopies. 24 Norman devices,
25 the erotic mayflowers 26 of Provence 27 and the ivied latins 28 of churchmen
29 to the scop's 30 twang, the iron 31 flash of consonants 32 cleaving the line.
III 33 In the coffered 34 riches of grammar 35 and declensions 36 I found ban-bus,
37 its fire, benches, 38 wattle and rafters, 39 where the soul 40 fluttered a while
41 in the roofspace. 42 There was a small crock 43 for the brain, 44 and a cauldron
45 of generation 46 swung at the centre: 47 love-den, blood-holt, 48 dream-bower.
IV 49 Come back past 50 philology and kennings, 51 re-enter memory 52 where the bone's lair
53 is a love-nest 54 in the grass.
263 55 I hold my lady's head 56 like a crystal
57 and ossify myself 58 by gazing: I am screes 59 on her escarpments, 60 a chalk giant
61 carved upon her downs. 62 Soon my hands, on the sunken 63 fosse of her spine 64 move towards the passes.
V 65 And we end up 66 cradling each other 67 between the lips 68 of an earthwork.
69 As I estimate 70 for pleasure 71 her knuckles' paving, 72 the turning stiles
73 of the elbows, 74 the vallum of her brow 75 and the long wicket 76 of collar-bone,
77 I have begun to pace 78 the Hadrian's Wall 79 of her shoulder, dreaming 80 of Maiden Castle.
VI 81 One morning in Devon 82 I found a dead mole 83 with the dew still beading it. 84 I had thought the mole
85 a big-boned coulter 86 but there it was 87 small and cold 88 as the thick of a chisel.
89 I was told 'Blow, 90 blow back the fur on his head. 91 Those little points 92 were the eyes.
264 93 And feel the shoulders.' 94 I touched small distant Pennines, 95 a pelt of grass and grain 96 running south.
Bog Queen
1 I lay waiting 2 between turf-face and demesne wall, 3 between heathery levels 4 and glass-toothed stone.
5 My body was braille 6 for the creeping influences: 7 dawn suns groped over my head 8 and cooled at my feet,
9 through my fabrics and skins 10 the seeps of winter 11 digested me, 12 the illiterate roots
13 pondered and died 14 in the cavings 15 of stomach and socket. 16 I lay waiting
17 on the gravel bottom, 18 my brain darkening, 19 a jar of spawn 20 fermenting underground
21 dreams of Baltic amber. 22 Bruised berries under my nails, 23 the vital hoard reducing 24 in the crock of the pelvis.
25 My diadem grew carious, 26 gemstones dropped 27 in the peat floe 28 like the bearings of history.
29 My sash was a black glacier 30 wrinkling, dyed weaves 31 and phoenician stitchwork 32 retted on my breasts'
33 soft moraines. 34 I knew winter cold 35 like the nuzzle of fjords 36 at my thighs---
265 37 the soaked fledge, the heavy 38 swaddle of hides. 39 My skull hibernated 40 in the wet nest of my hair.
41 Which they robbed. 42 I was barbered 43 and stripped 44 by a turfcutter's spade
45 who veiled me again 46 and packed coomb softly 47 between the stone jambs 48 at my head and my feet.
49 Till a peer's wife bribed him. 50 The plait of my hair, 51 a slimy birth-cord 52 of bog, had been cut
53 and I rose from the dark, 54 hacked bone, skull-ware, 55 frayed stitches, tufts, 56 small gleams on the bank.
The Grauballe Man
1 As if he had been poured 2 in tar, he lies 3 on a pillow of turf 4 and seems to weep
5 the black river of himself. 6 The grain of his wrists 7 is like bog oak, 8 the ball of his heel
9 like a basalt egg. 10 His instep has shrunk 11 cold as a swan's foot 12 or a wet swamp root.
13 His hips are the ridge 14 and purse of a mussel, 15 his spine an eel arrested 16 under a glisten of mud.
17 The head lifts, 18 the chin is a visor 19 raised above the vent 20 of his slashed throat
266 21 that has tanned and toughened. 22 The cured wound 23 opens inwards to a dark 24 elderberry place.
25 Who will say 'corpse' 26 to his vivid cast? 27 Who will say 'body' 28 to his opaque repose?
29 And his rusted hair, 30 a mat unlikely 31 as a foetus's. 32 I first saw his twisted face
33 in a photograph, 34 a head and shoulder 35 out of the peat, 36 bruised like a forceps baby,
37 but now he lies 38 perfected in my memory, 39 down to the red horn 40 of his nails,
41 hung in the scales 42 with beauty and atrocity: 43 with the Dying Gaul 44 too strictly compassed
45 on his shield, 46 with the actual weight 47 of each hooded victim, 48 slashed and dumped.
Exposure
1 It is December in Wicklow: 2 Alders dripping, birches 3 Inheriting the last light, 4 The ash tree cold to look at.
5 A comet that was lost 6 Should be visible at sunset, 7 Those million tons of light 8 Like a glimmer of haws and rose-hips,
9 And I sometimes see a falling star. 10 If I could come on meteorite! 11 Instead I walk through damp leaves, 12 Husks, the spent flukes of autumn,
267 13 Imagining a hero 14 On some muddy compound, 15 His gift like a slingstone 16 Whirled for the desperate.
17 How did I end up like this? 18 I often think of my friends' 19 Beautiful prismatic counselling 20 And the anvil brains of some who hate me
21 As I sit weighing and weighing 22 My responsible tristia. 23 For what? For the ear? For the people? 24 For what is said behind-backs?
25 Rain comes down through the alders, 26 Its low conducive voices 27 Mutter about let-downs and erosions 28 And yet each drop recalls
29 The diamond absolutes. 30 I am neither internee nor informer; 31 An inner émigré, grown long-haired 32 And thoughtful; a wood-kerne
33 Escaped from the massacre, 34 Taking protective colouring 35 From bole and bark, feeling 36 Every wind that blows;
37 Who, blowing up these sparks 38 For their meagre heat, have missed 39 The once-in-a-lifetime portent, 40 The comet's pulsing rose.
Punishment
1 I can feel the tug 2 of the halter at the nape 3 of her neck, the wind 4 on her naked front.
5 It blows her nipples 6 to amber beads, 7 it shakes the frail rigging 8 of her ribs.
9 I can see her drowned 10 body in the bog, 11 the weighing stone, 12 the floating rods and boughs.
268 13 Under which at first 14 she was a barked sapling 15 that is dug up 16 oak-bone, brain-firkin:
17 her shaved head 18 like a stubble of black corn, 19 her blindfold a soiled bandage, 20 her noose a ring
21 to store 22 the memories of love. 23 Little adulteress, 24 before they punished you
25 you were flaxen-haired, 26 undernourished, and your 27 tar-black face was beautiful. 28 My poor scapegoat,
29 I almost love you 30 but would have cast, I know, 31 the stones of silence. 32 I am the artful voyeur
33 of your brain's exposed 34 and darkened combs, 35 your muscles' webbing 36 and all your numbered bones:
37 I who have stood dumb 38 when your betraying sisters, 39 cauled in tar, 40 wept by the railings,
41 who would connive 42 in civilized outrage 43 yet understand the exact 44 and tribal, intimate revenge.
Come to the Bower
1 My hands come, touched 2 By sweetbriar and tangled vetch, 3 Foraging past the burst gizzards 4 Of coin-hoards
5 To where the dark-bowered queen, 6 Whom I unpin, 7 Is waiting. Out of the black maw 8 Of the peat, sharpened willow
269 9 Withdraws gently. 10 I unwrap skins and see 11 The pot of the skull, 12 The damp tuck of each curl
13 Reddish as a fox's brush, 14 A mark of a gorget in the flesh 15 Of her throat. And spring water 16 Starts to rise around her.
17 I reach past 18 The riverbed's washed 19 Dream of gold to the bullion 20 Of her Venus bone.
Kinship
I 1 Kinned by hieroglyphic 2 peat on a spreadfield 3 to the strangled victim, 4 the love-nest in the bracken,
5 I step through origins 6 like a dog turning 7 its memories of wilderness 8 on the kitchen mat:
9 the bog floor shakes, 10 water cheeps and lisps 11 as I walk down 12 rushes and heather.
13 I love this turf-face, 14 its black incisions, 15 the cooped secrets 16 of process and ritual;
17 I love the spring 18 off the ground, 19 each bank a gallows drop, 20 each open pool
21 the unstopped mouth 22 of an urn, a moon-drinker, 23 not to be sounded 24 by the naked eye.
II 25 Quagmire, swampland, morass: 26 the slime kingdoms,
270 27 domains of the cold-blooded, 28 of mud pads and dirtied eggs.
29 But bog 30 meaning soft, 31 the fall of windless rain, 32 pupil of amber.
33 Ruminant ground, 34 digestion of mollusc 35 and seed-pod, 36 deep pollen-bin.
37 Earth-pantry, bone vault, 38 sun-bank, embalmer 39 of votive goods 40 and sabred fugitives.
41 Insatiable bride. 42 Sword-swallower, 43 casket, midden, 44 floe of history.
45 Ground that will strip 46 its dark side, 47 nesting ground, 48 outback of my mind.
III 49 I found a turf-spade 50 hidden under bracken, 51 laid flat, and overgrown 52 with a green fog.
53 As I raised it 54 the soft lips of the growth 55 muttered and split, 56 a tawny rut
57 opening at my feet 58 like a shed skin, 59 the shaft wettish 60 as I sank it upright
61 and beginning to 62 steam in the sun. 63 And now they have twinned 64 that obelisk:
65 among the stones, 66 under a bearded cairn
271 67 a love-nest is disturbed, 68 catkin and bog-cotton tremble
69 as they raise up 70 the cloven oak-limb. 71 I stand at the edge of centuries 72 facing a goddess.
IV 73 This centre holds 74 and spreads, 75 sump and seedbed, 76 a bag of waters
77 and a melting grave. 78 The mothers of autumn 79 sour and sink, 80 ferments of husk and leaf
81 deepen their ochres. 82 Mosses come to a head, 83 heather unseeds, 84 brackens deposit
85 their bronze. 86 This is the vowel of earth 87 dreaming its root 88 in flowers and snow,
89 mutation of weathers 90 and seasons, 91 a windfall composing 92 the floor it rots into.
93 I grew out of all this 94 like a weeping willow 95 inclined to 96 the appetites of gravity.
V 97 The hand-carved felloes 98 of the turf-cart wheels 99 buried in a litter 100 of turf mould,
101 the cupid's bow 102 of the tail-board, 103 the socketed lips 104 of the cribs:
272 105 I deified the man 106 who rode there, 107 god of the waggon, 108 the hearth-feeder.
109 I was his privileged 110 attendant, a bearer 111 of bread and drink, 112 the squire of his circuits.
113 When summer died 114 and wives forsook the fields 115 we were abroad, 116 saluted, given right-of-way.
117 Watch our progress 118 down the haw-lit hedges, 119 my manly pride 120 when he speaks to me.
VI 121 And you, Tacitus, 122 observe how I make my grove 123 on an old crannog 124 piled by the fearful dead:
125 a desolate peace. 126 Our mother ground 127 is sour with the blood 128 of her faithful,
129 they lie gargling 130 in her sacred heart 131 as the legions stare 132 from the ramparts.
133 Come back to this 134 'island of the ocean' 135 where nothing will suffice. 136 Read the inhumed faces
137 of casualty and victim; 138 report us fairly, 139 how we slaughter 140 for the common good
141 and shave the heads 142 of the notorious, 143 how the goddess swallows 144 our love and terror.
273 Ocean's Love to Ireland
I 1 Speaking broad Devonshire, 2 Ralegh has backed the maid to a tree 3 As Ireland is backed to England
4 And drives inland 5 Till all her strands are breathless: 6 'Sweesir, Swatter! Sweesir, Swatter!'
7 He is water, he is ocean, lifting 8 Her farthingale like a scarf of weed lifting 9 In the front of a wave.
II 10 Yet his superb crest inclines to Cynthia 11 Even while it runs its bent 12 In the rivers of Lee and Blackwater.
13 Those are the plashy spots where he would lay 14 His cape before her. In London, his name 15 Will rise on water, and on these dark seepings:
16 Smerwick sowed with the mouthing corpses 17 Of six hundred papists, 'as gallant and good 18 Personages as ever were beheld.'
III 19 The ruined maid complains in Irish, 20 Ocean has scattered her dreams of fleets, 21 The Spanish prince has spilled his gold
22 And failed her. Iambic drums 23 Of English beat the woods where her poets 24 Sink like Onan. Rush-light, mushroom-flesh,
25 She fades from their somnolent clasp 26 Into ringlet-breath and dew, 27 The ground possessed and repossessed.
Hercules and Antaeus
1 Sky-born and royal, 2 snake-choker, dung-heaver, 3 his mind big with golden apples, 4 his future hung with trophies,
5 Hercules has the measure 6 of resistance and black powers
274 7 feeding off the territory. 8 Antaeus, the mould-hugger,
9 is weaned at last: 10 a fall was a renewal 11 but now he is raised up--- 12 the challenger's intelligence
13 is a spur of light, 14 a blue prong graiping him 15 out of his element 16 into a dream of loss
17 and origins---the cradling dark, 18 the river-veins, the secret gullies 19 of his strength, 20 the hatching grounds
21 of cave and souterrain, 22 he has bequeathed it all 23 to elegists. Balor will die 24 and Byrthnoth and Sitting Bull.
25 Hercules lifts his arms 26 in a remorseless V, 27 his triumph unassailed 28 by the powers he has shaken,
29 and lifts and banks Antaeus 30 high as a profiled ridge, 31 a sleeping giant, 32 pap for the dispossessed.
Whatever You Say Say Nothing
I 1 I'm writing just after an encounter 2 With an English journalist in search of 'views 3 On the Irish thing'. I'm back in winter 4 Quarters where bad news is no longer news,
5 Where media-men and stringers sniff and point, 6 Where zoom lenses, recorders and coiled leads 7 Litter the hotels. The times are out of joint 8 But I incline as much to rosary beads
9 As to the jottings and analyses 10 Of politicians and newspapermen 11 Who've scribbled down the long campaign from gas 12 And protest to gelignite and sten,
275 13 Who proved upon their pulses 'escalate', 14 'Backlash' and 'crack down', 'the provisional wing', 15 'Polarization' and 'long-standing hate'. 16 Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing,
17 Expertly civil-tongued with civil neighbours 18 On the high wires of first wireless reports, 19 Sucking the fake taste, the stony flavours 20 Of those sanctioned, old, elaborate retorts:
21 'Oh, it's disgraceful, surely, I agree,' 22 'Where's it going to end?' 'It's getting worse.' 23 'They're murderers,' 'Internment, understandably...' 24 The 'voice of sanity' is getting hoarse.
II 25 Men die at hand. In blasted street and home 26 The gelignite's a common sound effect: 27 As the man said when Celtic won, 'The Pope of Rome 28 's a happy man this night.' His flock suspect
29 In their deepest heart of hearts the heretic 30 Has come at last to heel and to the stake. 31 We tremble near the flames but want no truck 32 With the actual firing. We're on the make
33 As ever. Long sucking the hind tit 34 Cold as a witch's and as hard to swallow 35 Still leaves us fork-tongued on the border bit: 36 The liberal papist note sounds hollow
37 When amplified and mixed in with the bangs 38 That shake all hearts and windows day and night. 39 (It's tempting here to rhyme on 'labour pangs' 40 And diagnose a rebirth in our plight
41 But that would be to ignore other symptoms. 42 Last night you didn't need a stethoscope 43 To hear the eructation of Orange drums 44 Allergic equally to Pearse and Pope.)
45 On all sides 'little platoons' are mustering--- 46 The phrase is Cruise O'Brien's via that great 47 Backlash, Burke---while I sit here with a pestering 48 Drouth for words at once both gaff and bait
49 To lure the tribal shoals to epigram 50 And order. I believe any of us 51 Could draw the line through bigotry and sham, 52 Given the right line, aere perennius.
276 III 53 'Religion's never mentioned here,' of course. 54 'You know them by their eyes,' and hold your tongue. 55 'One side's as bad as the other,' never worse. 56 Christ, it's near time that some small leak was sprung
57 In the great dykes the Dutchman made 58 To dam the dangerous tide that followed Seamus. 59 Yet for all this art and sedentary trade 60 I am incapable. The famous
61 Northern reticence, the tight gag of place 62 And times: yes, yes. Of the 'wee six' I sing 63 Where to be saved you only must save face 64 And whatever you say, you say nothing.
65 Smoke-signals are loud-mouthed compared with us: 66 Manoeuvrings to find out name and school, 67 Subtle discrimination by addresses 68 With hardly an exception to the rule
69 That Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled Prod, 70 And Seamus (call me Sean) was sure-fire Pape. 71 O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod, 72 Of open minds as open as a trap,
73 Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks, 74 Where half of us, as in a wooden horse 75 Were cabin'd and confined like wily Greeks, 76 Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.
IV 77 This morning from a dewy motorway 78 I saw the new camp for the internees: 79 A bomb had left a crater of fresh clay 80 In the roadside, and over in the trees
81 Machine-gun posts defined a real stockade. 82 There was that white mist you get on a low ground 83 And it was déjà-vu, some film made 84 Of Stalag 17, a bad dream with no sound.
85 Is there a life before death? That's chalked up 86 In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain, 87 Coherent miseries, a bite and sup, 88 We hug our little destiny again.
277 15. 2. 5. Field Work
An Afterwards
1 She would plunge all poets in the ninth circle 2 And fix them, tooth in skull, tonguing for brain; 3 For backbiting in life she'd make their hell 4 A rabid egotistical daisy-chain.
5 Unyielding, spurred, ambitious, unblunted, 6 Lockjawed, mantrapped, each a fastened badger 7 Jockeying for position, hasped and mounted 8 Like Ugolino on Archbishop Roger.
9 And when she'd make her circuit of the ice, 10 Aided and abetted by Virgil's wife, 11 I would cry out, 'My sweet, who wears the bays 12 In our green land above, whose is the life
13 Most dedicated and exemplary?' 14 And she: 'I have closed my widowed ears 15 To the sulphurous news of poets and poetry. 16 Why could you not have, oftener, in our years
17 Unclenched, and come down laughing from your room 18 And walked the twilight with me and your children--- 19 Like that one evening of elder bloom 20 And hay, when the wild roses were fading?'
21 And (as some maker gaffs me in the neck) 22 'You weren't the worst. You aspired to a kind, 23 Indifferent, faults-on-both-sides tact. 24 You left us first, and then those books, behind.' from Ugolino
1 We had already left him. I walked the ice 2 And saw two soldered in a frozen hole 3 On top of other, one’s skull capping the other’s 4 Gnawing at him where the neck and head 5 Are grafted to the sweet fruit of the brain, 6 Like a famine victim at a loaf of bread […] 17 That sinner eased hia mouth up off his meal 18 To answer me, and wiped it with the hair 19 Left growing on his victim’s ravaged skull, 20 Then said, ‘Even before I speak 21 The thought of having to relive all that 22 Desperate time makes my heart sick; 23 Yet while I weep to say them, I would sow 24 My words like curses – that they might increase
278 25 And multiply upon this head I gnaw. 26 I know you come from Florence by your accent 27 But I have no idea who you are 28 Nor how you ever managed to descent. 29 Still, you should know my name, for I was Count 30 Ugolino, this was Archbishop Roger, 31 And why I act the jockey to his mount 32 Is surely common knowledge; how my good faith 33 Was easy prey to his malignancy, 34 How I was taken, held, and put to death. […] 66 They cried and my little Anselm said, 67 “What’s wrong?” Why are you staring, daddy?” 68 But I shed no tears, I made no reply 69 All through that day, all through that night that followed 70 Until another sun blushed in the sky 71 And sent a small beam probing the distress 72 Inside thise prison walls. Then when I saw 73 The image of my face in their four faces 74 I bit on my two hands in desperation 75 And they, since they thought hunger drove me to it, 76 Rose up suddenly in agitation 77 Saying, “Father, it will greatly ease our pain 78 If you eat us instead, and you who dressed us 79 In this flesh undress us here again.” […] 97 And since the neighbour states have been remiss 98 In your examination, let a huge 99 Dyke of islands bar the Arno’s mouth, let 100 Capraia and Gorgona dam and deluge 101 You and your population. For the sins 102 Of Ugolino, who betrayed your forts, 103 Should never have been visited on his sons.
Sibyl
1 My tongue moved, a swung relaxing hinge. 2 I said to her, 'What will become of us?' 3 And as forgotten water in a well might shake 4 At an explosion under morning
5 Or a crack run up a gable, 6 She began to speak. 7 'I think our very form is bound to change. 8 Dogs in a siege. Saurian relapses. Pismires.
9 Unless forgiveness finds its nerve and voice, 10 Unless the helmeted and bleeding tree 11 Can green and open buds like infants' fists 12 And the fouled magma incubate
279 13 Bright nymphs ... My people think money 14 And talk weather. Oil-rigs lull their future 15 On single acquisitive stems. Silence 16 Has shoaled into the trawlers' echo-sounders.
17 The ground we kept our ear to for so long 18 Is flayed or calloused, and its entrails 19 Tented by an impious augury. 20 Our island is full of comfortless noises.'
The Toome Road
1 One morning early I met armoured cars 2 In convoy, warbling along on powerful tyres, 3 All camouflaged with broken alder branches, 4 And headphoned soldiers standing up in turrets. 5 How long were they approaching down my roads 6 As if they owned them? The whole country was sleeping. 7 I had rights-of-way, fields, cattle in my keeping, 8 Tractors hitched to buckrakes in open sheds, 9 Silos, chill gates, wet slates, the greens and reds 10 Of outhouse roofs. Whom should I run to tell 11 Among all of those with their back doors on the latch 12 For the bringer of bad news, that small-hours visitant 13 Who, by being expected, might be kept distant? 14 Sowers of seed, erectors of headstones ... 15 O charioteers, above your dormant guns, 16 It stands here still, stands vibrant as you pass, 17 The invisible, untoppled omphalos.
The Strand at Lough Beg
In memory of Colum McCartney
All round this little island, on the strand Far down below there, where the breakers strive, Grow the tall rushes from the oozy sand. (Dante, Purgatorio, I, ll. 100-103)
1 Leaving the white glow of filling stations 2 And a few lonely streetlamps among fields 3 You climbed the hills towards Newtownhamilton 4 Past the Fews Forest, out beneath the stars--- 5 Along that road, a high, bare pilgrim's track 6 Where Sweeney fled before the bloodied heads, 7 Goat-beards and dogs' eyes in a demon pack 8 Blazing out of the ground, snapping and squealing. 9 What blazed ahead of you? A faked road block? 10 The red lamp swung, the sudden brakes and stalling 11 Engine, voices, heads hooded and the cold-nosed gun? 12 Or in your driving mirror, tailing headlights
280 13 That pulled out suddenly and flagged you down 14 Where you weren't known and far from what you knew: 15 The lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg, 16 Church Island's spire, its soft treeline of yew.
17 There you once heard guns fired behind the house 18 Long before rising time, when duck shooters 19 Haunted the marigolds and bulrushes, 20 But still were scared to find spent cartridges, 21 Acrid, brassy, genital, ejected, 22 On your way across the strand to fetch the cows. 23 For you and yours and yours and mine fought shy, 24 Spoke an old language of conspirators 25 And could not crack the whip or seize the day: 26 Big-voiced scullions, herders, feelers round 27 Haycocks and hindquarters, talkers in byres, 28 Slow arbitrators of the burial ground.
29 Across that strand of yours the cattle graze 30 Up to their bellies in an early mist 31 And now they turn their unbewildered gaze 32 To where we work our way through squeaking sedge 33 Drowning in dew. Like a dull blade with its edge 34 Honed bright, Lough Beg half shines under the haze. 35 I turn because the sweeping of your feet 36 Has stopped behind me, to find you on your knees 37 With blood and roadside muck in your hair and eyes, 38 Then kneel in front of you in brimming grass 39 And gather up cold handfuls of the dew 40 To wash you, cousin. I dab you clean with moss 41 Fine as the drizzle out of a low cloud. 42 I lift you under the arms and lay you flat. 43 With rushes that shoot green again, I plait 44 Green scapulars to wear over your shroud.
The Singer's House
1 When they said Carrickfergus I could hear 2 the frosty echo of saltminers' picks. 3 I imagined it, chambered and glinting, 4 a township built of light. 5 What do we say any more 6 to conjure the salt of our earth? 7 So much comes and is gone 8 that should be crystal and kept
9 and amicable weathers 10 that bring up the grain of things, 11 their tang of season and store, 12 are all the packing we'll get.
281 13 So I say to myself Gweebarra 14 and its music hits off the place 15 like water hitting off granite. 16 I see the glittering sound
17 framed in your window, 18 knives and forks set on oilcloth, 19 and the seals' heads, suddenly outlined, 20 scanning everything.
21 People here used to believe 22 that drowned souls lived in the seals. 23 At spring tides they might change shape. 24 They loved music and swam in for a singer
25 who might stand at the end of summer 26 in the mouth of a whitewashed turf-shed, 27 his shoulder to the jamb, his song 28 a rowboat far out in evening.
29 When I came here first you were always singing, 30 a hint of the clip of the pick 31 in your winnowing climb and attack. 32 Raise it again, man. We still believe what we hear.
Homecomings
I 1 Fetch me the sandmartin 2 Skimming and veering 3 Breast to breast with himself 4 In the clouds in the river.
II 5 At the worn mouth of the hole 6 Flight after flight after flight 7 The swoop of his wings 8 Gloved and kissed home
III 9 A glottal stillness. An eardrum. 10 Far in, featherbrains tucked in silence, 11 A silence of water 12 Lipping the bank.
IV 13 Mould my shoulders inward to you. 14 Occlude me. 15 Be damp clay pouting. 16 Let me listen under your eaves.
282 from Glanmore Sonnets
Sonnet I 1 Vowels ploughed into other: opened ground. 2 The mildest February for twenty years 3 Is mist bands over furrows, a deep no sound 4 Vulnerable to distant gargling tractors. 5 Our road is steaming, the turned-up acres breathe. 6 Now the good life could be to cross a field 7 And art a paradigm of earth new from the lathe 8 Of ploughs. My lea is deeply tilled. 9 Old ploughsocks gorge the subsoil of each sense 10 And I am quickened with a redolence 11 Of farmland as a dark unblown rose. 12 Wait then ... Breasting the mist, in sowers' aprons, 13 My ghosts come striding into their spring stations. 14 The dream grain whirls like freakish Easter snows.
Sonnet II 1 Sensings, mountings from the hiding places, 2 Words entering almost the sense of touch, 3 Ferreting themselves out of their dark hutch--- 4 'These things are not secrets but mysteries,' 5 Oisin Kelly told me years ago 6 In Belfast, hankering after stone 7 That connived with the chisel, as if the grain 8 Remembered what the mallet tapped to know. 9 Then I landed in the hedge-school of Glanmore 10 And from the backs of ditches hoped to raise 11 A voice caught back off slug-horn and slow chanter 12 That might continue, hold, dispel, appease: 13 Vowels ploughed into other, opened ground, 14 Each verse returning like the plough turned round.
Sonnet V 1 Soft corrugations in the boortree's trunk, 2 Its green young shoots, its rods like freckled solder: 3 It was our bower as children, a greenish, dank 4 And snapping memory as I get older. 5 And elderberry I have learned to call it. 6 I love its blooms like saucers brimmed with meal, 7 Its berries a swart caviar of shot, 8 A buoyant spawn, a light bruised out of purple. 9 Elderberry? It is shires dreaming wine. 10 Boortree is bower tree, where I played 'touching tongues' 11 And felt another's texture quick on mine. 12 So, etymologist of roots and graftings,
283 13 I fall back to my tree-house and would crouch 14 Where small buds shoot and flourish in the hush. from Field Work
I 1 Where the sally tree went pale in every breeze, 2 where the perfect eye of the nesting blackbird watched, 3 where one fern was always green
4 I was standing watching you 5 take the pad from the gatehouse at the crossing 6 and reach to lift a white wash off the whins.
7 I could see the vaccination mark 8 stretched on your upper arm, and smell the coal smell 9 of the train that comes between us, a slow goods,
10 waggon after waggon full of big-eyed cattle.
15. 2. 6. Station Island
Sandstone Keepsake
1 It is a kind of chalky russet 2 solidified gourd, sedimentary 3 and so reliably dense and bricky 4 I often clasp it and throw it from hand to hand.
5 It was ruddier, with an underwater 6 hint of contusion, when I lifted it, 7 wading a shingle beach on Inishowen. 8 Across the estuary light after light
9 came on silently round the perimeter 10 of the camp. A stone from Phlegethon, 11 bloodied on the bed of hell's hot river? 12 Evening frost and the salt water
13 made my hand smoke, as if I'd plucked the heart 14 that damned Guy de Montfort to the boiling flood--- 15 but not really, though I remembered 16 his victim's heart in its casket, long venerated.
17 Anyhow, there I was with the wet red stone 18 in my hand, staring across at the watch-towers 19 from my free state of image and allusion, 20 swooped on, then dropped by trained binoculars:
284 21 a silhouette not worth bothering about, 22 out for the evening in scarf and waders 23 and not about to set times wrong or right, 24 stooping along, one of the venerators.
Changes
1 As you came with me in silence 2 to the pump in the long grass
3 I heard much that you could not hear: 4 the bite of the spade that sank it,
5 the slithering and grumble 6 as the mason mixed his mortar,
7 and women coming with white buckets 8 like flashes on their ruffled wings.
9 The cast-iron rims of the lid 10 clinked as I uncovered it,
11 something stirred in its mouth. 12 I had a bird's eye view of a bird,
13 finch-green, speckly white, 14 nesting on dry leaves, flattened, still,
15 suffering the light. 16 So I roofed the citadel
17 as gently as I could, and told you 18 and you gently unroofed it
19 but where was the bird now? 20 There was a single egg, pebbly white,
21 and in the rusted bend of the spout 22 tail feathers splayed and sat tight.
23 So tender, I said, 'Remember this. 24 It will be good for you to retrace this path
25 when you have grown away and stand at last 26 at the very centre of the empty city.'
285 The Loaning
I 1 As I went down the loaning 2 the wind shifting in the hedge was like 3 an old one's whistling speech. And I knew 4 I was in the limbo of lost words.
5 They had flown there from raftered sheds and crossroads, 6 from the shelter of gable ends and turned-up carts. 7 I saw them streaming out of birch-white throats 8 and fluttering above iron bedsteads 9 until the soul would leave the body. 10 Then on a day close as a stranger's breath 11 they rose in smoky clouds on the summer sky 12 and settled in the uvulae of stones 13 and the soft lungs of the hawthorn.
14 Then I knew why from the beginning 15 the loaning breathed on me, breathed even now 16 in a shiver of beaded gossamers 17 and the spit blood of a last few haws and rose-hips.
II 18 Big voices in the womanless kitchen. 19 They never lit a lamp in the summertime 20 but took the twilight as it came 21 like solemn trees. They sat on in the dark 23 with their pipes red in their mouths, the talk come down 24 to Aye and Aye again and, when the dog shifted, 25 a curt There boy! I closed my eyes 26 to make the light motes stream behind them 27 and my head went airy, my chair rode 28 high and low among branches and the wind 29 stirred up a rookery in the next long Aye.
III
30 Stand still. You can hear 32 everything going on. High-tension cables 33 singing above cattle, tractors, barking dogs, 34 juggernauts changing gear a mile away. 35 And always the surface noise of the earth 36 you didn't know you'd heard till a twig snapped 37 and a blackbird's startled volubility 38 stopped short.
39 When you are tired or terrified 40 your voice slips back into its old first place 41 and makes the sound your shades make there ... 42 When Dante snapped a twig in the bleeding wood
286 43 a voice sighed out of blood that bubbled up 44 like sap at the end of green sticks on a fire.
45 At the click of a cell lock somewhere now 46 the interrogator steels his introibo, 47 the light motes blaze, a blood-red cigarette 48 startles the shades, screeching and beseeching. from The King of the Ditchbacks for John Montague
I 1 As if a trespasser 2 unbolted a forgotten gate 3 and ripped the growth 4 tangling its lower bars---
5 just beyond the hedge 6 he has opened a dark morse 7 along the bank, 8 a crooked wounding
9 of silent, cobwebbed 10 grass. If I stop 11 he stops 12 like the moon.
13 He lives in his feet 14 and ears, weather-eyed, 15 all pad and listening, 16 a denless mover.
17 Under the bridge 18 his reflection shifts 19 sideways to the current, 20 mothy, alluring.
21 I am haunted 22 by his stealthy rustling, 23 the unexpected spoor, 24 the pollen settling.
Part II: Station Island
VI 1 Freckle-face, fox-head, pod of the broom, 2 Catkin-pixie, little fern-swish: 3 Where did she arrive from? 4 Like a wish wished 5 And gone, her I chose at 'secrets'
287 6 And whispered to. When we were playing houses. 7 I was sunstruck at the basilica door--- 8 A stillness far away, a space, a dish, 9 A blackened tin and knocked over stool--- 10 Like a tramped neolithic floor 11 Uncovered among dunes where the bent grass 12 Whispers on like reeds about Midas's 13 Secrets, secrets. I shut my ears to the bell. 14 Head hugged. Eyes shut. Leaf ears. Don't tell. Don't tell.
15 A stream of pilgrims answering the bell 16 Trailed up the steps as I went down them 17 Towards the bottle-green, still 18 Shade of an oak. Shades of the Sabine farm 19 On the beds of Saint Patrick's Purgatory. 20 Late summer, country distance, not an air: 21 Loosen the toga for wine and poetry 22 Till Phoebus returning routs the morning star. 23 As a somnolent hymn to Mary rose 24 I felt an old pang that bags of grain 25 And the sloped shafts of forks and hoes 26 Once mocked me with, at my own long virgin 27 Fasts and thirsts, my nightly shadow feasts, 28 Haunting the granaries of words like breasts.
29 As if I knelt for years at a keyhole 30 Mad for it, and all that ever opened 31 Was the breathed-on grille of a confessional 32 Until that night I saw her honey-skinned 33 Shoulder-blades and the wheatlands of her back 34 Through the wide keyhole of her keyhole dress 35 And a window facing the deep south of luck 36 Opened and I inhaled the land of kindness. 37 As little flowers that were all bowed and shut 38 By the night chills rise on their stems and open 39 As soon as they have felt the touch of sunlight, 40 So I revived in my own wilting powers 41 And my heart flushed, like somebody set free. 42 Translated, given, under the oak tree.
IX 1 'My brain dried like spread turf, my stomach 2 Shrank to a cinder and tightened and cracked. 3 Often I was dogs on my own track 4 Of blood on wet grass that I could have licked. 5 Under the prison blanket, an ambush 6 Stillness I felt safe in settled round me. 7 Street lights came on in small towns, the bomb flash 8 Came before the sound, I saw country 9 I knew from Glenshane down to Toome 10 And heard a car I could make out years away
288 11 With me in the back of it like a white-faced groom, 12 A hit-man on the brink, emptied and deadly. 13 When the police yielded my coffin, I was light 14 As my head when I took aim.' 15 This voice from blight 16 And hunger died through the black dorm: 17 There he was, laid out with a drift of mass cards 18 At his shrouded feet. Then the firing party's 19 Volley in the yard. I saw woodworm 20 In gate posts and door jambs, smelt mildew 21 From the byre loft where he watched and hid 22 From fields his draped coffin would raft through. 23 Unquiet soul, they should have buried you 24 In the bog where you threw your first grenade, 25 Where only helicopters and curlews 26 Make their maimed music, and sphagnum moss 27 Could teach you its medicinal repose 28 Until, when the weasel whistles on its tail, 29 No other weasel will obey its call.
30 I dreamt and drifted. All seemed to run to waste 31 As down a swirl of mucky, glittering flood 32 Strange polyp floated like a huge corrupt 33 Magnolia bloom, surreal as a shed breast, 34 My softly awash and blanching self-disgust. 35 And I cried among night waters, 'I repent 36 My unweaned life that kept me competent 37 To sleepwalk with connivance and mistrust.' 38 Then, like a pistil growing from the polyp, 39 A lighted candle rose and steadied up 40 Until the whole bright-masted thing retrieved 41 A course and the currents it had gone with 42 Were what it rode and showed. No more adrift, 43 My feet touched bottom and my heart revived.
44 Then something round and clear 45 And mildly turbulent, like a bubbleskin 46 Or a moon in smoothly rippled lough water 47 Rose in a cobwebbed space: the molten 48 Inside-sheen of an instrument 49 Revolved its polished convexes full 50 Upon me, so close and brilliant 51 I pitched backwards in a headlong fall. 52 And then it was the clarity of waking 53 To sunlight and a bell and gushing taps 54 In the next cubicle. Still there for the taking! 55 The old brass trumpet with its valves and stops 56 I found once in loft thatch, a mystery 57 I shied from then for I thought such trove beyond me.
289 58 'I hate how quick I was to know my place. 59 I hate where I was born, hate everything 60 That made me biddable and unforthcoming,' 61 I mouthed at my half-composed face 62 In the shaving mirror, like somebody 63 Drunk in the bathroom during a party, 64 Lulled and repelled by his own reflection. 65 As if the cairnstone could defy the cairn. 66 As if the eddy could reform the pool. 67 As if a stone swirled under a cascade, 68 Eroded and eroding in its bed, 69 Could grind itself down to a different core. 70 Then I thought of the tribe whose dances never fail 71 For they keep dancing till they sight the deer.
XII 1 Like a convalescent, I took the hand 2 stretched down from the jetty, sensed again 3 an alien comfort as I stepped on ground
4 to find the helping hand still gripping mine, 5 fish-cold and bony, but whether to guide 6 or to be guided I could not be certain
7 for the tall man in step at my side 8 seemed blind, though he walked straight as a rush 9 upon his ash plant, his eyes fixed straight ahead.
10 Then I knew him in the flesh 11 out there on the tarmac among the cars, 12 wintered hard and sharp as a blackthorn bush.
13 His voice eddying with the vowels of all rivers 14 came back to me, though he did not speak yet, 15 a voice like a prosecutor's or a singer's,
16 cunning, narcotic, mimic, definite 17 as a steel nib's downstroke, quick and clean, 18 and suddenly he hit a litter basket
19 with his stick, saying, 'Your obligation 20 is not discharged by any common rite. 21 What you must do must be done on your own
22 so get back in harness. The main thing is to write 23 for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust 24 that imagines its haven like your hands at night 25 dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast. 26 You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous. 27 Take off from here. And don't be so earnest,
290 28 let others wear the sackcloth and the ashes. 29 Let go, let fly, forget. 30 You've listened long enough. Now strike your note.'
31 It was as if I had stepped free into space 32 alone with nothing that I had not known 33 already. Raindrops blew in my face
34 as I came to. 'Old father, mother's son, 35 there is a moment in Stephen's diary 36 for April the thirteenth, a revelation
37 set among my stars---that one entry 38 has been a sort of password in my ears, 39 the collect of a new epiphany,
40 the Feast of the Holy Tundish.' 'Who cares,' 41 he jeered, 'any more? The English language 42 belongs to us. You are raking at dead fires,
43 a waste of time for somebody your age. 44 That subject people stuff is a cod's game, 45 infantile, like your peasant pilgrimage.
46 You lose more of yourself than you redeem 47 doing the decent thing. Keep at a tangent. 48 When they make the circle wide, it's time to swim
49 out on your own and fill the element 50 with signatures on your own frequency, 51 echo soundings, searches, probes, allurements,
52 elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea.' 53 The shower broke in a cloudburst, the tarmac 54 fumed and sizzled. As he moved off quickly
55 the downpour loosed its screens round his straight walk.
The First Kingdom
1 The royal roads were cow paths. 2 The queen mother hunkered on a stool 3 and played the harpstrings of milk 4 into a wooden pail. 5 With seasoned sticks the nobles 6 lorded it over the hindquarters of cattle.
7 Units of measurement were pondered 8 by the cartful, barrowful and bucketful. 9 Time was a backward rote of names and mishaps,
291 10 bad harvests, fires, unfair settlements, 11 deaths in floods, murders and miscarriages.
12 And if my rights to it all came only 13 by their acclamation, what was it worth? 14 I blew hot and blew cold. 15 They were two-faced and accommodating. 16 And seed, breed and generation still 17 they are holding on, every bit 18 as pious and exacting and demeaned.
The First Flight
1 It was more sleepwalk than spasm 2 yet that was a time when the times 3 were also in spasm---
4 the ties and the knots running through us 5 split open 6 down the lines of the grain.
7 As I drew close to pebbles and berries, 8 the smell of wild garlic, relearning 9 the acoustic of frost
10 and the meaning of woodnote, 11 my shadow over the field 12 was only a spin-off,
13 my empty place an excuse 14 for shifts in the camp, old rehearsals 15 of debts and betrayal.
16 Singly they came to the tree 17 with a stone in each pocket 18 to whistle and bill me back in
19 and I would collide and cascade 20 through leaves when they left, 21 my point of repose knocked askew. 22 I was mired in attachment 23 until they began to pronounce me 24 a feeder off battlefields
25 so I mastered new rungs of the air 26 to survey out of reach 27 their bonfires on hills, their hosting
28 and fasting, the levies from Scotland 29 as always, and the people of art 30 diverting their rhythmical chants
292
31 to fend off the onslaught of winds 32 I would welcome and climb 33 at the top of my bent.
15. 2. 7. The Haw Lantern
Terminus
I 1 When I hoked there, I would find 2 An acorn and a rusted bolt.
3 If I lifted my eyes, a factory chimney 4 And a dormant mountain.
5 If I listened, an engine shunting 6 And a trotting horse.
7 Is it any wonder when I thought 8 I would have second thoughts?
II 9 When they spoke of the prudent squirrel's hoard 10 It shone like gifts at a nativity.
11 When they spoke of the mammon of iniquity 12 The coins in my pockets reddened like stove-lids.
13 I was the march drain and the march drain's banks 14 Suffering the limit of each claim.
III 15 Two buckets were easier carried than one. 16 I grew up in between.
17 My left hand placed the standard iron weight. 18 My right tilted a last grain in the balance.
19 Baronies, parishes met where I was born. 20 When I stood on the central stepping stone
21 I was the last earl on horseback in midstream 22 Still parleying, in earshot of his peers. from Clearances
8 1 I thought of walking round and round a space 2 Utterly empty, utterly a source
293 3 Where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place 4 In our front hedge above the wallflowers. 5 The white chips jumped and jumped and skited high. 6 I heard the hatchet's differentiated 7 Accurate cut, the crack, the sigh 8 And collapse of what luxuriated 9 Through the shocked tips and wreckage of it all. 10 Deep planted and long gone, my coeval 11 Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole, 12 Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere, 13 A soul ramifying and forever 14 Silent, beyond silence listened for. from From the Republic of Conscience
II 16 Salt is their precious mineral. And seashells 17 are held to the ear during births and funerals. 18 The base of all inks and pigments is seawater.
19 Their sacred symbol is a stylized boat. 20 The sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen, 21 The hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye.
22 At their inauguration, public leaders 23 must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep 24 to atone for their presumption to hold office---
25 and to affirm their faith that all life sprang 26 from salt in tears which the sky-god wept 27 after he dreamt his solitude was endless.
III 28 I came back from that frugal republic 29 with my two arms the one length, the customs woman 30 having insisted my allowance was myself.
31 The old man rose and gazed into my face 32 and said that was official recognition 33 that I was now a dual citizen.
34 He therefore desired me when I got home 35 to consider myself a representative 36 and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue.
37 Their embassies, he said, were everywhere 38 but operated independently 39 and no ambassador would ever be relieved.
294 The Stone Verdict
1 When he stands in the judgment place 2 With his stick in his hand and the broad hat 3 Still on his head, maimed by self-doubt 4 And an old disdain of sweet talk and excuses, 5 It will be no justice if the sentence is blabbed out. 6 He will expect more than words in the ultimate court 7 He relied on through a lifetime's speechlessness.
8 Let it be like the judgment of Hermes, 9 God of the stone heap, where the stones were verdicts 10 Cast solidly at his feet, piling up around him 11 Until he stood waist deep in the cairn 12 Of his apotheosis: maybe a gate-pillar 13 Or a tumbled wallstead where hogweed earths the silence 14 Somebody will break at last to say, 'Here 15 His spirit lingers,' and will have said too much.
The Old Team
1 Dusk. Scope of air. A railed pavilion 2 Formal and blurring in the sepia 3 Of (always) summery Edwardian 4 Ulster. Which could be India 5 Or England. Or any old parade ground 6 Where a moustachioed tenantry togged out 7 To pose with folded arms, all musclebound 8 And staunch and forever up against it.
9 Moyola Park FC ! Sons of Castledawson! 10 Stokers and scutchers! Grandfather McCann! 11 Team spirit, walled parkland, the linen mill 12 Have, in your absence, grown historical 13 As those lightly clapped, dull-thumping games of football. 14 The steady coffins sail past at eye-level.
From the Canton of Expectation
1 We lived deep in a land of optative moods, 2 under high, banked clouds of resignation. 3 A rustle of loss in the phrase Not in our lifetime, 4 the broken nerve when we prayed Vouchsafe or Deign, 5 were creditable, sufficient to the day.
6 Once a year we gathered in a field 7 of dance platforms and tents where children sang 8 songs they had learned by rote in the old language. 9 An auctioneer who had fought in the brotherhood 10 enumerated the humiliations 11 we always took for granted, but not even he
295 12 considered this, I think, a call to action. 13 Iron-mouthed loudspeakers shook the air 14 yet nobody felt blamed. He had confirmed us. 15 When our rebel anthem played the meeting shut 16 we turned for home and the usual harassment 17 by militiamen on overtime at roadblocks.
II 18 And next thing, suddenly, this change of mood. 19 Books open in the newly-wired kitchens. 20 Young heads that might have dozed a life away 21 against the flanks of milking cows were busy 22 paving and pencilling their first causeways 23 across the prescribed texts. The paving stones 24 of quadrangles came next and a grammar 25 of imperatives, the new age of demands. 26 They would banish the conditional for ever, 27 this generation born impervious to 28 the triumph in our cries of de profundis. 29 Our faith in winning by enduring most 30 they made anathema, intelligences 31 brightened and unmannerly as crowbars.
III 32 What looks the strongest has outlived its term. 33 The future lies with what's affirmed from under. 34 These things that corroborated us when we dwelt 35 under the aegis of our stealthy patron, 36 the guardian angel of passivity, 37 now sink a fang of menace in my shoulder. 38 I repeat the word 'stricken' to myself 39 and stand bareheaded under the banked clouds 40 edged more and more with brassy thunderlight. 41 I yearn for hammerblows on clinkered planks, 42 the uncompromised report of driven thole-pins, 43 to know there is one among us who never swerved 44 from all his instincts told him was right action, 45 who stood his ground in the indicative, 46 whose boat will lift when the cloudburst happens.
The Mud Vision
1 Statues with exposed hearts and barbed-wire crowns 2 Still stood in alcoves, hares flitted beneath 3 The dozing bellies of jets, our menu-writers 4 And punks with aerosol sprays held their own 5 With the best of them. Satellite link-ups 6 Wafted over us the blessings of popes, heliports 7 Maintained a charmed circle for idols on tour 8 And casualties on their stretchers. We sleepwalked 9 The line between panic and formulae, screentested
296 10 Our first native models and the last of the mummers, 11 Watching ourselves at a distance, advantaged 12 And airy as a man on a springboard 13 Who keeps limbering up because the man cannot dive.
14 And then in the foggy midlands it appeared, 15 Our mud vision, as if a rose window of mud 16 Had invented itself out of the glittery damp, 17 A gossamer wheel, concentric with its own hub 18 Of nebulous dirt, sullied yet lucent. 19 We had heard of the sun standing still and the sun 20 That changed colour, but we were vouchsafed 21 Original clay, transfigured and spinning. 22 And then the sunsets ran murky, the wiper 23 Could never entirely clean off the windscreen, 24 Reservoirs tasted of silt, a light fuzz 25 Accrued in the hair and the eyebrows, and some 26 Took to wearing a smudge on their foreheads 27 To be prepared for whatever. Vigils 28 Began to be kept around puddled gaps, 29 On altars bulrushes ousted the lilies 30 And a rota of invalids came and went 31 On beds they could lease placed in range of the shower.
32 A generation who had seen a sign! 33 Those nights when we stood in an umber dew and smelled 34 Mould in the verbena, or woke to a light 35 Furrow-breath on the pillow, when the talk 36 Was all about who had seen it and our fear 37 Was touched with a secret pride, only ourselves 38 Could be adequate then to our lives. When the rainbow 39 Curved flood-brown and ran like a water-rat's back 40 So that drivers on the hard shoulder switched off to watch, 41 We wished it away, and yet we presumed it a test 42 That would prove us beyond expectation.
43 We lived, of course, to learn the folly of that. 44 One day it was gone and the east gable 45 Where its trembling corolla had balanced 46 Was starkly a ruin again, with dandelions 47 Blowing high up on the ledges, and moss 48 That slumbered on through its increase. As cameras raked 49 The site from every angle, experts 50 Began their post factum jabber and all of us 51 Crowded in tight for the big explanations. 52 Just like that, we forgot that the vision was ours, 53 Our one chance to know the incomparable 54 And dive to a future. What might have been origin 55 We dissipated in news. The clarified place 56 Had retrieved neither us nor itself---except 57 You could say we survived. So say that, and watch us
297 58 Who had our chance to be mud-men, convinced and estranged, 59 Figure in our own eyes for the eyes of the world.
Parable Island
I 1 Although they are an occupied nation 2 and their only border is an inland one 3 they yield to nobody in their belief 4 that the country is an island.
5 Somewhere in the far north, in a region 6 every native thinks of as 'the coast', 7 there lies the mountain of the shifting names.
8 The occupiers call it Cape Basalt. 9 The Sun's Headstone, say farmers in the east. 10 Drunken westerners call it The Orphan's Tit.
11 To find out where he stands the traveller 12 has to keep listening---since there is no map 13 which draws the line he knows he must have crossed.
14 Meanwhile, the forked-tongued natives keep repeating 15 prophecies they pretend not to believe 16 about a point where all the names converge 17 underneath the mountain and where (some day) 18 they are going to start to mine the ore of truth.
II 19 In the beginning there was one bell-tower 20 which struck its single note each day at noon 21 in honour of the one-eyed all-creator.
22 At least, this was the original idea 23 missionary scribes record they found 24 in autochthonous tradition. But even there
25 you can't be sure that parable is not 26 at work already retrospectively, 27 since all their early manuscripts are full
28 of stylized eye-shapes and recurrent glosses 29 in which those old revisionists derive 30 the word island from roots in eye and land.
III 31 Now archaeologists begin to gloss the glosses. 32 To one school, the stone circles are pure symbol; 33 to another, assembly spots or hut foundations.
298 34 One school thinks a post-hole in an ancient floor 35 stands first of all for a pupil in an iris. 36 The other thinks a post-hole is a post-hole. And so on---
37 like the subversives and collaborators 38 always vying with a fierce possessiveness 39 for the right to set 'the island story' straight.
IV 40 The elders dream of boat-journeys and havens 41 and have their stories too, like the one about the man 42 who took to his bed, it seems, and died convinced
43 that the cutting of the Panama Canal 44 would mean the ocean would all drain away 45 and the island disappear by aggrandizement.
A Peacock's Feather for Daisy Garnett
1 Six days ago the water fell 2 To christen you, to work its spell 3 And wipe your slate, we hope, for good. 4 But now your life is sleep and food 5 Which, with the touch of love, suffice 6 You, Daisy, Daisy, English niece.
7 Gloucestershire: its prospects lie 8 Wooded and misty to my eye 9 Whose landscape, as your mother's was, 10 Is other than this mellowness 11 Of topiary, lawn and brick, 12 Possessed, untrespassed, walled, nostalgic.
13 I come from scraggy farm and moss, 14 Old patchworks that the pitch and toss 15 Of history have left dishevelled. 16 But here, for your sake, I have levelled 17 My cart-track voice to garden tones, 18 Cobbled the bog with Cotswold stones.
19 Ravelling strands of families mesh 20 In love-knots of two minds, one flesh. 21 The future's not our own. We'll weave 22 An in-law maze, we'll nod and wave 23 With trust but little intimacy--- 24 So this is a billet-doux to say
25 That in a warm July you lay 26 Christened and smiling in Bradley
299 27 While I, a guest in your green court, 28 At a west window sat and wrote 29 Self-consciously in gathering dark. 30 I might as well be in Coole Park.
31 So before I leave your ordered home, 32 Let us pray. May tilth and loam, 33 Darkened with Celts' and Saxons' blood, 34 Breastfeed your love of house and wood--- 35 Where I drop this for you, as I pass, 36 Like the peacock's feather on the grass.
15. 2. 8. Seeing Things from The Golden Bough (from Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI)
30 He was praying and holding on the altar 31 When the prophetess started to speak: 'Blood relation of gods, 32 Trojan, son of Anchises, the way down to Avernus is easy. 33 Day and night black Pluto's door stands open. 34 But to retrace your steps and get back to upper air, 35 This is the real task and the real undertaking. 36 A few have been able to do it, sons of the gods 37 Favoured by Jupiter Justus, or exalted to heaven 38 In a blaze of heroic glory. Forests spread half-way down 39 And Cocytus winds through the dark, licking its banks. 40 Still, if love torments you so much and you so much desire 41 To sail the Stygian lake twice and twice to inspect 42 The underworld dark, if you must go beyond what's permitted, 43 Understand what you must do beforehand. 44 Hidden in the thick of a tree is a bough made of gold 45 And its leaves and pliable twigs are made of it too. 46 It is sacred to underworld Juno, who is its patron, 47 And overtopped by a grove where deep shadows mass 48 Along far wooded valleys. No one is ever permitted 49 To go down into earth's hidden places unless he has first 50 Plucked this golden-fledged tree-branch out of its tree 51 And bestowed it on fair Proserpina, to whom it belongs 52 By decree, her own special gift. And when it is plucked 53 A second one grows in its place, golden once more, 54 And the foliage growing upon it glimmers the same. 55 Therefore look up and search deep and when you have found it 56 Take hold of it boldly and duly. If fate has called you 57 The bough will come away easily, of its own sweet accord. 58 Otherwise, no matter how much strength you muster, you won't 59 Ever manage to quell it or fell it with the toughest of blades.'
300 Fosterling
'That heavy greenness fostered by water' John Montague
1 At school I loved one picture's heavy greenness--- 2 Horizons rigged with windmills' arms and sails. 3 The millhouses' still outlines. Their in-placeness 4 Still more in place when mirrored in canals. 5 I can't remember not ever having known 6 The immanent hydraulics of a land 7 Of glar and glit and floods at dailigone. 8 My silting hope. My lowlands of the mind. 9 Heaviness of being. And poetry 10 Sluggish in the doldrums of what happens. 11 Me waiting until I was nearly fifty 12 To credit marvels. Like the tree-clock of tin cans 13 The tinkers made. So long for air to brighten, 14 Time to be dazzled and the heart to lighten.
The Settle Bed
1 Willed down, waited for, in place at last and for good. 2 Trunk-hasped, cart-heavy, painted an ignorant brown. 3 And pew-strait, bin-deep, standing four-square as an ark.
4 If I lie in it, I am cribbed in seasoned deal 5 Dry as the unkindled boards of a funeral ship. 6 My measure has been taken, my ear shuttered up.
7 Yet I hear an old sombre tide awash in the headboard: 8 Unpathetic och ochs and och hohs, the long bedtime 9 Sigh-life of Ulster, unwilling, unbeaten,
10 Protestant, Catholic, the Bible, the beads, 11 Late talks at gables by moonlight, boots on the hearth, 12 The small hours chimed sweetly away so next thing it was
13 The cock on the ridge-tiles. 14 And now this is "an inheritance"--- 15 Upright, rudimentary, unshiftably planked 16 In the long long ago, yet willable forward
17 Again and again and again, cargoed with 18 Its own dumb, tongue-and-groove worthiness 19 And un-get-roundable weight. But to conquer that weight, 20 Imagine a dower of settle beds tumbled from heaven 21 Like some nonsensical vengeance come on the people, 22 Then learn from that harmless barrage that whatever is given
23 Can always be reimagined, however four-square,
301 24 Plank-thick, hull-stupid and out of its time 25 It happens to be. You are free as the lookout,
26 That far-seeing joker posted high over the fog, 27 Who declared by the time that he had got himself down 28 The actual ship had stolen away from beneath him.
A Retrospect
I 1 The whole county apparently afloat: 2 Every road bridging or skirting water, 3 The land islanded, the field drains still as moats.
4 A bulrush sentried the lough shore: I had to 5 Wade barefoot over spongy, ice-cold marsh 6 (Soft bottom with bog water seeping through
7 The netted weeds) to get near where it stood 8 Perennially anomalous and dry, 9 Like chalk or velvet rooting in the mud.
10 Everything ran into water-colour. 11 The skyline was full up to the lip 12 As if the earth were going to brim over,
13 As if we moved in the first stealth of flood 14 For remember, at one place, the swim and flow 15 From hidden springs made a river in the road.
II 16 Another trip they seemed to keep repeating 17 Was up to Glenshane Pass – his ‘Trail of Tears’, 18 As he’d say every time, and point out streams 19 He first saw on the road to boarding school. 20 And then he’d quote Sir John Davies’ dispatch 21 About his progress through there from Dungannon 22 With Chichester in 1608:
23 ‘The wild inhabitants wondered as much 24 To see the King’s deputy, as Virgil’s ghosts 25 Wondered to see Aeneas alive in Hell.’
26 They liked the feel of the valley out behind, 27 As if a ladder leaned against the world 28 And they were climbing it but might fall back 29 Into the total air and emptiness 30 They carried on their shoulders.
31 The old road 32 Went up and up, it was lover country,
302 33 Their drive-in in the sky, where each parked car 34 Played possum in the twilight and clouds moved 35 Smokily in the deep of polished roofs 36 And dormant windscreens.
37 And there they were, 38 Astray in the hill-fort of all pleasures 39 Where air was other breath and grass a whisper, 40 Feeling empowered but still somehow constrainted: 41 Young marrieds, used now to the licit within doors, 42 They fell short of the sweetness that had lured them. 43 No nest in rushes, the heather bells unbruised, 44 The love-drink of the maountain streams untasted.
45 So when they turned, they turned with the fasted eyes 46 Of wild inhabitants, and parked in silence 47 A bit down from the summit, where the brae 48 Swept off like a balcony, then seemed to drop 49 Sheer towards the baronies and cantreds. 50 Evening was dam water they saw down through. 51 The scene stood open, the visit lasted,
52 They gazed beyond themselves until he eased 53 The brake off and they freewheeled quickly 54 Before going into gear, with all their usual old 55 High-pitched strain and gradual declension. from Three Drawings
2 The Pulse
1 The effortlessness 2 of a spinning reel. One quick 3 flick of the wrist 4 and you minnow sped away
5 whispering and silky 6 and nimbly laden. 7 it seemed to be all rise 8 and shine, the very opposite
9 of uphill going – it was pure 10 duration, and when it ended, 11 the pulse of the cast line 12 entering water
13 was smaller in your hand 14 than the remembered heartbeat 15 of a bird. Then, after all of that 16 runaway give, you were glad
303 17 when you reeled in and found 18 yourself strung, heel-tip 19 to rod-tip, into the river’s 20 steady purchase and thrum. from Lightnings
III 1 Squarings? In the game of marbles, squarings 2 Were all those anglings, aimings, feints and squints 3 You were allowed before you'd shoot, all those
4 Hunkerings, tensings, pressures of the thumb, 5 Test-outs and pull-backs, re-envisagings, 6 All the ways your arms kept hoping towards
7 Blind certainties that were going to prevail 8 Beyond the one-off moment of the pitch. 9 A million million accuracies passed
10 Between your muscles' outreach and that space 11 Marked with three round holes and a drawn line. 12 You squinted out from a skylight of the world. from Crossings
XXXII 1 Running water never disappointed. 2 Crossing water always furthered something. 3 Stepping stones were stations of the soul.
4 A kesh could mean the track some called a causey 5 Raised above the wetness of the bog, 6 Or the causey where it bridged old drains and streams.
7 It steadies me to tell these things. Also 8 I cannot mention keshes or the ford 9 Without my father's shade appearing to me
10 On a path towards sunset, eyeing spades and clothes 11 That turf-cutters stowed perhaps or souls cast off 12 Before they crossed the log that spans the burn. from Crossings
XXXI 1 Not an avenue and not a bower. 2 For a quarter-mile or so, where the county road 3 Is running straight across North Antrim bog,
4 Tall old fir trees line it on both sides.
304 5 Scotch firs, that is. Calligraphic shocks 6 Bushed and tufted in prevailing winds.
7 You drive into a meaning made of trees. 8 Or not exactly trees. It is a sense 9 Of running through and under without let,
10 Of glimpse and dapple. A life all trace and skim 11 The car has vanished out of. A fanned nape 12 Sensitive to the millionth of a flicker. from Crossings
XXV 1 Travelling south at dawn, going full out 2 Through high-up stone-wall country, the rocks still cold, 3 Rainwater gleaming here and there ahead,
4 I took a turn and met the fox stock-still, 5 Face-to-face in the middle of the road. 6 Wildness tore through me as he dipped and wheeled
7 In a level-running tawny breakaway. 8 O neat head, fabled brush and astonished eye 9 My blue Volkswagen flared into with morning!
10 Let rebirth come through water, through desire, 11 Through crawling backwards across clinic floors: 12 I have to cross back through that startled iris. from Settings
XIX 1 Memory as a building or a city, 2 Well lighted, well laid out, appointed with 3 Tableaux vivants and costumed effigies
4 Statues in purple cloaks, or painted red, 5 Ones wearing crowns, ones smeared with mud or blood: 6 So that the mind’s eye could haunt itself
7 With fixed associations and learn to read 8 Its own contents in meaningful order, 9 Ancient textbooks recommended that
10 Familiar places be linked deliberately 11 With a code of images. You knew the pertent 12 In each setting, you blinked and concentrated.
305 from Squarings
XLI 1 Sand-bed, they said. And gravel-bed. Before 2 I knew river shallows or river pleasures 3 I knew the ore of longing in those words.
4 The places I go back to have not failed 5 But will not last. Waist-deep in cow-parsley, 6 I re-enter the swim, riding or quelling
7 The very currents memory is composed of, 8 Everything accumulated ever 9 As I took squaring from the tops of bridges
10 Or the banks of self at evening. 11 Lick of fear. Sweet transience. Flirt and splash. 12 Crumped flow the sky-dipped willows trailed in.
Markings
I 1 We marked the pitch: four jackets for four goalposts, 2 That was all. The corners and the squares 3 Were there like longitude and latitude 4 Under the bumpy thistly ground, to be 5 Agreed about or disagreed about 6 When the time came. And then we picked the teams 7 And crossed the line our called names drew between us.
8 Youngsters shouting their heads off in a field 9 As the light died and they kept on playing 10 Because by then they were playing in their heads 11 And the actual kicked ball came to them 12 Like a dream heaviness, and their own hard 13 Breathing in the dark and skids on grass 14 Sounded like effort in another world… 15 It was quick and constant, a game that never need 16 Be played out. Some limit had been passed, 17 There was fleetness, furtherance, untiredness 18 In time that was extra, unforeseen and free.
II 19 You also loved lines pegged out in the garden, 20 The spade nicking the first straight edge along 21 The tight white string. Or string stretched perfectly 22 To mark the outline of a house foundation. 23 Pale timber battens set at right angles 24 For every corner, each freshly sawn new board 25 Spick and span in the oddly passive grass. 26 Or the imaginary line straight down
306 27 A field of grazing, to be ploughed open 28 From the rod stuck in one headrig to the rod 29 Stuck in the other.
III 30 All these things entered you 31 As if they were both the door and what came through it. 32 They marked the spot, marked time and held it open. 33 A mower parted the bronze sea of corn. 34 A windlass hauled the centre out of water. 35 Two men with a cross-cut kept it swimming 36 Into a felled beech backwards and forwards 37 So that they seemed to row the steady earth.
15. 2. 9. The Spirit Level
Two Lorries
1 It's raining on black coal and warm wet ashes. 2 There are tyre-marks in the yard, Agnew's old lorry 3 Has all its cribs down and Agnew the coalman 4 With his Belfast accent's sweet-talking my mother. 5 Would she ever go to a film in Magherafelt? 6 But it's raining and he still has half the load
7 To deliver farther on. This time the lode 8 Our coal came from was silk-black, so the ashes 9 Will be the silkiest white. The Magherafelt 10 (Via Toomebridge) bus goes by. The half-stripped lorry 11 With its emptied, folded coal-bags moves my mother: 12 The tasty ways of a leather-aproned coalman!
13 And films no less! The conceit of a coalman ... 14 She goes back in and gets out the black lead 15 And emery paper, this nineteen-forties mother, 16 All business round her stove, half-wiping ashes 17 With a backhand from her cheek as the bolted lorry 18 Gets revved and turned and heads for Magherafelt
19 And the last delivery. Oh, Magherafelt! 20 Oh, dream of red plush and a city coalman 21 As time fastforwards and a different lorry 22 Groans into shot, up Broad Street, with a payload 23 That will blow the bus station to dust and ashes ... 24 After that happened, I'd a vision of my mother,
25 A revenant on the bench where I would meet her 26 In that cold-floored waiting-room in Magherafelt, 27 Her shopping bags full up with shovelled ashes. 28 Death walked out past her like a dust-faced coalman
307 29 Refolding body-bags, plying his load 30 Empty upon empty, in a flurry
31 Of motes and engine-revs, but which lorry 32 Was it now? Young Agnew's or that other, 33 Heavier, deadlier one, set to explode 34 In a time beyond her time in Magherafelt ... 35 So tally bags and sweet-talk darkness, coalman. 36 Listen to the rain spit in new ashes
37 As you heft a load of dust that was Magherafelt, 38 Then reappear from your lorry as my mother's 39 Dreamboat coalman filmed in silk-white ashes.
The First Words
1 The first words got polluted 2 Like river water in the morning 3 Flowing with the dirt 4 Of blurbs and the front pages. 5 My only drink is meaning from the deep brain, 6 What the birds and the grass and the stones drink. 7 Let everything flow 8 Up to the four elements, 9 Up to water and earth and fire and air. (from the Romanian of Marin Sorescu)
The Gravel Walks
1 River gravel. In the beginning, that. 2 High summer, and the angler's motorbike 3 Deep in roadside flowers, like a fallen knight 4 Whose ghost we'd lately questioned: 'Any luck?'
5 As the engines of the world prepared, green nuts 6 Dangled and clustered closer to the whirlpool. 7 The trees dipped down. The flints and sandstone-bits 8 Worked themselves smooth and smaller in a sparkle
9 Of shallow, hurrying barley-sugar water 10 Where minnows schooled that we scared when we played--- 11 An eternity that ended once a tractor 12 Dropped its link-box in the gravel bed
13 And cement mixers began to come to life 14 And men in dungarees, like captive shades, 15 Mixed concrete, loaded, wheeled, turned, wheeled, as if 16 The Pharaoh's brickyards burned inside their heads.
17 Hoard and praise the verity of gravel. 18 Gems for the undeluded. Milt of earth.
308 19 Its plain, champing song against the shovel 20 Soundtests and sandblasts words like 'honest worth'.
21 Beautiful in or out of the river, 22 The kingdom of gravel was inside you too--- 23 Deep down, far back, clear water running over 24 Pebbles of caramel, hailstone, mackerel-blue.
25 But the actual washed stuff kept you slow and steady 26 As you went stooping with your barrow full 27 Into an absolution of the body, 28 The shriven life tired bones and marrow feel.
29 So walk on air against your better judgement 30 Establishing yourself somewhere in between 31 Those solid batches mixed with grey cement 32 And a tune called 'The Gravel Walks' that conjures green.
An Architect
1 He fasted on the doorstep of his gift, 2 Exacting more, minding the boulder 3 And the raked zen gravel. But no slouch either
4 Whenever it came to whiskey, whether to 5 Lash into it or just to lash it out. 6 Courtly always, and rapt, and astonishing,
7 Like the day on the beach when he stepped out of his clothes 8 And waded along beside us in his pelt 9 Speculating, intelligent and lanky,
10 Taking things in his Elysian stride, 11 Talking his way back into sites and truths 12 The art required and his life came down to:
13 Blue slate and whitewash, shadow-lines, projections, 14 Things at once apparent and transparent, 15 Clean-edged, fine-drawn, drawn-out, redrawn, remembered ...
16 Exit now, in his tweeds, down an aisle between 17 Drawing boards as far as the eye can see 18 To where it can't until he sketches where.
Whitby-sur-Moyola
1 Caedmon too I was lucky to have known, 2 Back in situ there with his full bucket 3 And armfuls of clean straw, the perfect yardman, 4 Unabsorbed in what he had to do 5 But doing it perfectly, and watching you.
309 6 He had worked his angel stint. He was hard as nails 7 And all that time he'd been poeting with the harp 8 His real gift was the big ignorant roar 9 He could still let out of him, just bogging in 10 As if the sacred subjects were a herd 11 That had broken out and needed rounding up. 12 I never saw him once with his hands joined 13 Unless it was a case of eyes to heaven 14 And the quick sniff and test of fingertips 15 After he'd passed them through a sick beast's water. 16 Oh, Caedmon was the real thing all right.
At Banagher
1 Then all of a sudden there appears to me 2 The journeyman tailor who was my antecedent: 3 Up on a table, cross-legged, ripping out
4 A garment he must recut or resew, 5 His lips tight back, a thread between his teeth, 6 Keeping his counsel always, giving none,
7 His eyelids steady as wrinkled horn or iron. 8 Self-absenting, both migrant and ensconced; 9 Admitted into kitchens, into clothes
10 His touch has the power to turn to cloth again--- 11 All of a sudden he appears to me, 12 Unopen, unmendacious, unillumined.
13 So more power to him on the job there, ill at ease 14 Under my scrutiny in spite of years 15 Of being inscrutable as he threaded needles
16 Or matched the facings, linings, hems and seams. 17 He holds the needle just off centre, squinting, 18 And licks the thread and licks and sweeps it through,
19 Then takes his time to draw both ends out even, 20 Plucking them sharply twice. Then back to stitching. 21 Does he ever question what it all amounts to
22 Or ever will? Or care where he lays his head? 23 My Lord Buddha of Banagher, the way 24 Is opener for your being in it.
Tollund
1 That Sunday morning we had travelled far. 2 We stood a long time out in Tollund Moss:
310 3 The low ground, the swart water, the thick grass 4 Hallucinatory and familiar.
5 A path through Jutland fields. Light traffic sound. 6 Willow bushes; rushes; bog-fir grags 7 In a swept and gated farmyard; dormant quags. 8 And silage under wraps in its silent mound.
9 It could have been a still out of the bright 10 'Townland of Peace', that poem of dream farms 11 Outside all contention. The scarecrow's arms 12 Stood open opposite the satellite
13 Dish in the paddock, where a standing stone 14 Had been resituated and landscaped, 15 With tourist signs in futhark runic script 16 In Danish and in English. Things had moved on.
17 It could have been Mulhollandstown or Scribe. 18 The byroads had their names on them in black 19 And white; it was user-friendly outback 20 Where we stood footloose, at home beyond the tribe,
21 More scouts than strangers, ghosts who'd walked abroad 22 Unfazed by light, to make a new beginning 23 And make a go of it, alive and sinning, 24 Ourselves again, free-willed again, not bad. from Mycenae Lookout
His Reverie of Water
1 At Troy, at Athens, what I most clearly 2 see and nearly smell 3 is the fresh water.
4 A filled bath, still unentered 5 and unstained, waiting behind housewalls 6 that the far cries of the butchered on the plain
7 keep dying into, until the hero comes 8 surging in incomprehensibly 9 to be attended to and be alone,
10 stripped to the skin, blood-plastered, moaning 11 and rocking, splashing, dozing off, 12 accommodated as if he were a stranger.
13 And the well at Athens too. 14 Or rather that old lifeline leading up 15 and down from the Acropolis
311 16 to the well itself, a set of timber steps 17 slatted in between the sheer cliff face 18 and a free-standing, covering spur of rock,
19 secret staircase the defenders knew 20 and the invaders found, where what was to be 21 Greek met Greek,
22 the ladder of the future 23 and the past, besieger and besieged, 24 the treadmill of assault
25 turned waterwheel, the rungs of stealth 26 and habit all the one 27 bare foot extended, searching.
28 And then this ladder of our own that ran 29 deep into a well-shaft being sunk 30 in broad daylight, men puddling at the source
31 through tawny mud, then coming back up 32 deeper in themselves for having been there, 33 like discharged soldiers testing the safe ground,
34 finders, keepers, seers of fresh water 35 in the bountiful round mouths of iron pumps 36 and gushing taps. for Cynthia and Dmitri Hadzi from Mycanae Lookout
His Dawn Vision
1 Cities of grass. Fort Walls. The dumbstruck palace. 2 I`d come to with the night wind on my face, 3 Agog, alert again, far less
4 Focused on victory than I should have been – 5 Still isolated in my old disdain 6 Of claques who always needed to be seen
7 And heard as the oracle Argives. Mouth athlestes, 8 Quoting the oracle and quoting dates, 9 Petitioning, accusing, taking votes.
10 No element that should have carried weight 11 Out of the grievious distance would translate. 12 Our war stalled in the pre-articulate.
13 The little violets’ heads bowed on their stems, 14 The pre-dawn gossamers, all dew and scrim
312 15 And star-lace, it was more through them
16 I felt the beating of the huge time-wound 17 We lived inside. My soul wept in my hand 18 When I would touch them, my whole being rained
19 Down on my self, I saw cities of grass, 20 Valleys of longing, tombs, a wind-swept brightness, 21 And far-off, in a hilly, ominous place,
22 Small crowds of people watching as a man 23 Jumped a freshearth-wall and another ran 24 Amorously, it seemed, to strike him down. from The Flight Path
1 The first fold first, then more foldovers drawn 2 Tighter and neater every time until 3 The whole of the paper got itself reduced 4 To a pleated square he'd take up by two corners, 5 Then hold like a promise he had the power to break 6 But never did. 7 A dove rose in my breast 8 Every time my father's hands came clean 9 With a paper boat between them, ark in air, 10 The lines of it as taut as a pegged tent: 11 High-sterned, splay-bottomed, the little pyramid 12 At the centre every bit as hollow 13 As a part of me that sank because it knew 14 The whole thing would go soggy once you launched it.
15 Equal and opposite, the part that lifts 16 Into those full-starred heavens that winter sees 17 When I stand in Wicklow under the flight path 18 Of a late jet out of Dublin, its risen light 19 Winking ahead of what it hauls away:
20 Heavy engine noise and its abatement 21 Widening far back down, a wake through starlight.
22 The sycamore speaks in sycamore from darkness, 23 The light behind my shoulder's cottage lamplight.
24 I'm in the doorway early in the night, 25 Standing-in in myself for all of those 26 The stance perpetuates: the stay-at-homes 27 Who leant against the jamb and watched and waited, 28 The ones we learned to love by waving back at 29 Or coming towards again in different clothes 30 They were slightly shy of. 31 Who never once forgot
313 32 A name or a face, nor looked down suddenly 33 As the plane was reaching cruising altitude 34 To realize that the house they'd just passed over--- 35 Too far back now to see---was the same house 36 They'd left an hour before, still kissing, kissing, 37 As the taxi driver loaded up the cases. [...]
89The gaol walls all those month were smeared with shite. 90 Out of Long Kesh after his dirty protest 91 The red eyes of Ciaran Nugent 92 Like something out of Dante’s scurfy hell, 93 Drilling their way through the rhymes and images 94 Where I too walked behing the righteous Virgil, 95 As safe as houses and translating freely: 96 When he had said all this, his eyes rolled 97 And his teeth, like dog’s teeth clamping round a bone, 98 Bit into the skull and again took hold.
15. 2. 10. Electric Light
Clonmany to Ahascragh in memory of Rory Kavanagh
1 Now that the rest of us have no weeping left 2 These things will do it for you: 3 Willows standing out on Leitrim Moss, 4 Wounds that ‘wept’ in the talk of those before you, 5 Rained-on statues from Clonmany to Ahascragh, 6 Condensation on the big windows 7 And the walls of a school corridor in Derry 8 Where I drew with warm fingers once upon a time 9 To make a face that wept itself away 10 Down cold black glass
11 Compose yourself again. And listen to me. 12 You were never up here in my attic study 13 Beyond the landing, up the second stairwell, 14 Step-ladder steep, and deep, and leading back 15 Down to the life going on. 16 Even so, appear 17 Till I tell you my good dream. 18 Be at the door 19 I opened in the sleepwall when a green 20 Hurl of flood overwhelmed me and poured out 21 Lithe seaweed and a tumult of immense 22 Green cabbage roses into the downstairs. 23 No feeling of drowning panicked me, no let-up 24 In the attic downpour happened, no
314 25 Fullness could ever equal it, so flown 26 And sealed I feared it would be lost 27 If I put it into words. 28 But with you there at the door 29 I can tell it and can weep.
30And if ever tears are to be wiped away, 31 It will be in river country, 32 In that confluence of unmarked bridge-rumped roads 33 Beyond the Shannon, between the River Suck 34 And the Corrib River, where a plentiful 35 Solitude floods everyone who drives 36 In the unseasonable warmth of a January afternoon 37 Into places battened down under oyster light, 38 Under names unknown to most, but available 39 To you and proclaimable by you 40 Like a man speaking in tongues, brought to his senses 41 By a sudden plout on the road into Ahascragh.
Sruth in memory of Mary O Muirithe
1 The bilingual race 2 And truth of that water 3 Spilling down Errigal,
4 The sruth like thr rush 5 Or its downpour translated 6 Into your accent:
7 You in your dishabills 8 Wahsing your face 9 In the gluttural glen.
10 Mountain and maiden. 11 The shard of a mirror. 12 Your head in the air
13 Of that childhood braec-Gaeltacht, 14 Those sky-maiden haunts 15 You would tell me about
16 Again and again – 17 Then asked me to visit: 18 If anything happened
19 Just to see and be sure 20 And not to forget 21 For your sake to do it.
315 22 Splash of clear water. 23 Things out in the open. 24 The spoken word ‘cancer’.
25 And now it has happened 26 I see what I saw 27 On the morning Ou asked me:
28 Neck-baring snowdrops –
29 Like you at the sruth – 30 First-footing the springtime,
31 Fit for what comes.
The Loose Box
1 Back at the dark end, slats angled tautly down 2 From a breast-high beam to the foot of the stable wall – 3 Silked and seasoned timber of the hayrack.
4 Marsupial brackets…And a deep littered silence 5 Off odourless, untainting, fibrous horsedung.
6 On an old recording Patrick Kavanagh states 7 That there’s health and worth in any talk about 8 The properties of land. Sandy, glarry, 9 Mossy, heavy, cold, the actual soil 10 Almost doesn’t matter; the main thing is 11 An inner restitution, a purchase come by 12 By pacing it in words that make you feel 13 You’ve found your feet in what ‘surefooted’ means 14 And in the ground of your own understanding – 15 Like Heracles stepping in and standing under 16 Atlas’s sky-lintel, as earthed and heady 17 As I am when I talk about the loose box
18 And they found the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes 19 And laid in a manger. 20 But the plaster child in nappies, 21 Bare baby-breasted little rigor vitae , 22 Crook-armed, seed-nailed, nothing but gloss and chill – 23 He wasn’t right at all. 24 And no hayrack 25 To be seen. 26 The solid stooping shepherds, 27 The stiff-lugged donkey, Joseph, Mary, each 28 Figure in the winter crib was well 29 And truly placed. There was even real straw 30 On the side-altar. And an out-of-scale, 31 Too crockery, kneeling cow. And fairy lights.
316 32 But no, no fodder-billowed armfuls spilling over…
33 At the altar rail I knelt and learnt almost 34 Not to admit the let-down to myself.
35 Stable child, grown stabler when I read 36 In adolescence Thomas dolens Hardy – 37 Not oddly enough, his Christmas Eve nnight-piece 38 About the oxen in their bedded stall, 39 But the threshing scene in Tess of the D’Urbevilles – 40 That maginified my soul. Raving machinery, 41 The thresher bucking sky, rut-shuddery, 42 A headless Trojan horse expelling straw 43 From where the head should be, the underjaws 44 Like staircases set champing – it hummed and slugged 45 While the big sag and slew of the canvas belt 46 That would cut your head off if you didn’t watch 47 Flowed from the flywheel. And comes flowing back, 48 The whole mote-sweaty havoc and mania 49 Of threshing day, the feeders up on top 50 Like pyre-high Aztec priests gutting forked sheaves 51 And paying them ungirded to the drum.
52 Slack of gulped straw, the belly-taut of seabags. 53 And in the stilly night, chaff piled in ridges, 54 Earth raw where the four wheels rocked and battled
55 Michael Collins, ambushed at Beal na Blath, 56 At the Pass of Flowers, the Blossom Gap, his own 57 Bloom-drifted, soft Avernus-mouth, 58 Has nothing to hold on to and falls again 59 Willingly, lastly, foreknowledgeably deep 60 Into the hay-floor that gave once in his childhood 61 Down through the bedded mouth of the loft trapdoor, 62 The loosening fodder-chute, the aftermath…
63 This has been told of Collins and retold 64 By his biographer: 65 One of his boy-deeds 66 Was to enter the hidden jaws of that hay crevasse 67 And get to his feet again and come unscathed 68 Through a dazzle of pollen scarves to breathe the air. 69 True or not true, the fall within his fall, 70 That drop through the flower-floor lets him find his feet 71 In an underworld of understanding 72 Better than any newsreel lying-in-state 73 Or footage of the laden gun-carriage 74 And grim cortege could ever manage to.
75 Or so it can be stated 76 In the must and drift of talk about the loose box.
317 At Toomebridge
1 Where the flat water 2 Came pouring over the weir out of Lough Neagh 3 As if it had reached an edge of the flat earth 4 And fallen shining to the continuous 5 Present of the Bann. 6 Where the checkpoint used to be. 7 Where the rebel boy was hanged in '98. 8 Where negative ions in the open air 9 Are poetry to me. As once before 10 The slime and silver of the fattened eel.
Perch
1 Perch on their water-perch hung in the clear Bann River 2 Near the clay bank in alder-dapple and waver,
3 Perch we called "grunts," little flood-slubs, runty and ready, 4 I saw and I see in the river's glorified body
5 That is passable through, but they're bluntly holding the pass, 6 Under the water-roof, over the bottom, adoze,
7 Guzzling the current, against it, all muscle and slur 8 In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air
9 That is water, on carpets of Bann stream, on hold 10 In the everything flows and steady go of the world.
The Augean Stables
1 My favourite bas-relief: athene showing 2 Heracles where to broach the river bank 3 With a nod of her high helmet, her staff sunk 4 In the exact spot, the Alpheus flowing 5 Out of its course into the deep dung strata 6 Of King Augeas’ reeking yard and stables. 7 Sweet dissolutions from the water tables, 8 Blocked doors and packed floors deluging like gutters… 9 And it was there in Olympia, down among green willows, 10 The lustral wash and run of river shallows, 11 That we heard of Sean Brown’s murder in the grounds 12 Of Bellaghy GAA Club. And imagined 13 Hose-water smashing hard back off the asphalt 14 In the car park where his athelete’s blood ran cold.
318 Electric Light
1 Candle-grease congealed, dark-streaked with wick-soot… 2 The smashed thumb nail 3 Of that ancient mangled thumb was puckered pearl,
4 Rucked quartz, a littered Cumae. 5 In the first house where I saw electric light, 6 She sat with her fur-lined felt slippers unzipped,
7 Year in, year out, in the same chair, and whispered 8 In a voice that at its loudest did nothing else 9 But whisper. We were both desparate
10 The night I was left to stay, when I wept and wept 11 Under the clothes, under the waste of light 12 Left turned on in the bedroom. ‘What ails you, child,
13 What ails you, for God’s sake?’ Urgent, sibilant 14 Ails, far off and old. Scaresome cavern waters 15 Lapping a boatslip. Her helplessness no help.
16 Lisp and relapse. Eddy of sybilline English. 17 Splashes between a ship and dock, to which, 18 Animula, I would come alive in time
19 As ferries churned and turned down Belfast Lough 20 Towards the brow-to-glass transport of morning train, 21 The very ‘there-you-are-and-where-are-you?’
22 Of poetry itself. Backs of houses 23 Like the back of hers, meat-safes and mangles 24 In the railway-facing yards of fleeting England,
25 An allotment scarecrow among patted rigs, 26 Then a town-edge soccer pitch, the groin of distance, 27 Fields of grain like the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
28 To Southwark too I came, 29 From tube-mouth into sunlight, 30 Moyola-breath by Thames’s ‘straunge stronde’.
31 If I stood on the bow-backed chair, I could reach 32 The light switch. They let me and they watched me. 33 A touch of the little pip would work the magic.
34 A turn of their wireless knob and light came on 35 In the dial. They let me and they watched me 36 As I roamed at will the stations of the world.
37 Then they were gone and Big Ben and the news
319 38 Were over. The set had been switched off, 39 All quiet behind the blackout except for
40 Knitting needles ticking, wind in the flue. 41 She sat with her fur-lined felt slippers unzipped, 42 Electric light shone over us, I feared
43 The dirt-tracked flint and fissure of her nail, 44 So plectrum-hard, glit-glittery, it must still keep 45 Among beads and vertebrae in the Derry ground.
Bann Valley Eclogue
Sicelides Musae, paulo maiora canamus (Virgil, Eclogue IV)
POET: 1 Bann Valley Muses, give us a song worth singing, 2 Something that rises like the curtain in 3 Those words And it came to pass or In the beginning . 4 Help me to please my hedge-schoolmaster Virgil 5 And the child that's due. Maybe, heavens, sing 6 Better times for her and her generation. VIRGIL: 7 Here are my words you'll have to find a place for: 8 Carmen, ordo, nascitur, saeculum, gens . 9 Their gist in your tongue and province should be clear 10 Even at this stage. Poetry, order, the times, 11 The nation, wrong and renewal, then an infant birth 12 And a flooding away of all the old miasma.
13 Whatever stains you, you rubbed it into yourselves: 14 Earth mark, birth mark, mould like the bloodied mould 15 On Romulus's ditch-back. But when the waters break 16 Banns stream will overflow, the old markings 17 Will avail no more to keep east bank from west. 18 The valley will be washed like the new baby. POET: 19 Pacatum orbem : your words are too much nearly. 20 Even "orb" by itself. What on earth could match it? 21 And then, last month, at noon-eclipse, wind dropped. 22 A millennial chill, birdless and dark, prepared. 23 A firstness steadied, a lastness, a born awareness 24 As name dawned into knowledge: I saw the orb. VIRGIL: 25 Eclipses won't be for this child. The cool she'll know 26 Will be the pram hood over her vestal head. 27 Big dog daisies will get fanked up in the spokes. 28 She'll lie on summer evenings listening to 29 A chug and slug going on in the milking parlour. 30 Let her never hear close gunfire or explosions. POET: 31 Why do I remember St. Patrick's mornings, 32 Being sent by my mother to the railway line 33 For the little trefoil, untouchable almost, the shamrock 34 With its twining, binding, creepery, tough, thin roots
320 35 All over the place, in the stones between the sleepers. 36 Dew-scales shook off the leaves. Tear-ducts asperging.
37 Child on the way, it won't be long until 38 You land among us. Your mother's showing signs, 39 Out for her sunset walk among big round bales. 40 Planet earth like a teething ring suspended 41 Hangs by its world-chain. Your pram waits in the corner. 42 Cows are let out. They're sluicing the milk-house floor.
Glanmore Eclogue
Myles: 1 A house and ground. And your own bay tree as well 2 And time to yourself. You’ve landed on your feet. 3 If you can`t write now, when will you ever write?
Poet: 4 A woman changed my life. Call her Augusta 5 Because we arrived in August, and from now on 6 This month’s baled hay and blackberries and combines 7 Will spell Augusta’s bounty.
Myles: 8 Outsiders own 9 The country nowadays, but even so 10 I don’t begrude you. You’re Augusta’s tenant 11 And that’s enough. She has every right, 12 Maybe more right than most, to her quarter acre. 13 She knows the big glen inside out, and everything 14 Meliboeus ever wrote about it, 15 All the tramps he met tramping the roads 16 And all he picked up, listening in a loft 17 To servant girls cologuing in the kitchen. 18 Talk about changed lives! Those were the days – 19 Land Commissions making tenants owners, 20Empire taking note at last too late … 21 But now with all this money coming in 22 And peace being talked up, the boot’s on the other foot. 23 First it was Meliboeus’ people 24 Went to the wall, now it will be us. 25 Small farmers here are priced out of the market.
Poet: 26 Backs to the wall and the empty pockets: Meliboeus 27 Was never happier than when he was in the road 28 With people in their uppers. Loneliness 29 Was his passport through the world. Midge-angels 30 On the face of water, the first drop before thunder, 31 A stranger on a wild night, out in the rain falling . 32 His spirit lives for me in the thigs like that.
Myles: 33 Book-learning is the thing. You’re a lucky man. 34 No stock to feed, no milking times, no tillage 35 Nor blisters on your hand nor weather-worries.
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Poet: 36 Meliboeus would have called me ‘Mr. Honey’.
Myles: 37 Our old langugae that Meliboeus learnt 38 Has lovely songs. What about putting words 39 On one of them, words that the rest of us 40 Can understand, and singing it here and now?
Poet: 41 I have this summer song for the glen and you: 42Early summer, cuckoo cuckoos, 43 Welcome, summer is what he sings. 44 Heather breathes on soft bog-pillows. 45 Bog-cotton bows to moorland wind.
46 The deer’s heart skips a beat; he startles. 47 The sea’s tide fills, it rests, it runs. 48 Season of the drowsy ocean. 49 Tufts of yellow-blossoming whins.
50 Bogbanks shine like ravens’ wings. 51 The cuckoo keeps on calling Welcome. 52 The speckled fish jumps; and the strong 53 Warrior is u running.
54 A little nippy chirpy fellow 55 Hits the highest note there is; 56 The lark sings out his clear tidings. 57 Summer, shimmer, perfect days.
15. 2. 11. District and Circle
The Turnip-Snedder
1 In an age of bare hands 2 and cast iron,
3 the clamp-on meat-mincer, 4 the double-flywheeled water-pump,
5 it dug its heels in among wooden tubs 6 and troughs of slops,
7 hotter than body heat 8 in summertime, cold in winter
9 as winter's body armor, 10 a barrel-chested breast-plate
11 standing guard 12 on four braced greaves.
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13 "This is the way that God sees life," 14 it said, "from seedling-braird to snedder,"
15 as the handle turned 16 and turnip-heads were let fall and fed
17 to the juiced-up inner blades, 18 "This is the turnip-cycle,"
19 as it dropped its raw sliced mess, 20 bucketful by glistering bucketful.
The Tollund Man in Springtime
1 Into your virtual city I'll have passed 2 Unregistered by scans, screens, hidden eyes, 3 Lapping time in myself, an absorbed face 4 Coming and going, neither god nor ghost, 5 Not at odds or at one, but simply lost 6 To you and yours, out under seeding grass 7 And trickles of kesh water, sphagnum moss, 8 Dead bracken on the spreadfield, red as rust. 9 I reawoke to revel in the spirit 10 They strengthened when they chose to put me down 11 For their own good. And to a sixth-sensed threat: 12 Panicked snipe offshooting into twilight, 13 Then going awry, larks quietened in the sun, 14 Clear alteration in the bog-pooled rain.
15 Scone of peat, composite bog-dough 16 They trampeled like a muddy vintage, then 17 Slabbed and spread and turned to dry in sun – 18 Though never kindling-dry the whole way through – 19 A dead-weight, slow-burn lukewarmth in the flue, 20 Ashless, flameless, its very smoke a sullen 21 Waft of a swamp-breath … And me, so long unrisen, 22 I knew that same dead weight in joint and sinew 23 Until a spade-plate slid and soughed and plied 24 At my buried ear, and levered sod 25 Got lifted up; then once I felt the air 26 I was like turned turf in the breath of God, 27 Bog-bodied on the sixth day, brown and bare, 28 And on the last, all told, unatrophied
29 My heavey head. Bronze-buffed. Ear to the ground. 30 My eye at turf level. Its snailskin lid. 31 My cushioned check and brow. My phantom hand 32 And arm and leg and shoulder that felt pillowed 33 As fleshily as when the bog pith weighed 34 To mould me to itself and it to me
323 35 Between when I was buried and unburied. 36 Between what happened and was meant to be. 37 On show for years while all that lay in wait. 38 Still waited. Disembodied. Far renowned. 39 Faith placed in me, me faithless as a stone. 40 The harrow turned up when the crop was sown. 41 Out in the Danish night I’d hear soft wind 42 And remember moony water in a rut.
43“The soul exceeds its circumstances". Yes. 44 History not to be granted the last word 45 Or the first claim ... In the end I gathered 46 From the display-case peat my staying powers, 47 Told my webbed wrists to be like silver birches, 48 My old uncallused hands to be young sward, 49 The spade-cut skin to heal, and got restored 50 By telling myself this. Late as it was, 51 The early bird still sang, the meadow hay 52 Still buttercupped and daisied, sky was new. 53 I smelled the air, exhaust fumes, silage reek, 54 Heard from my heather bed the thickened traffic 55 Swarm at a roundabout five fields away 56 And transatlantic flights stacked in the blue.
57 Cattle out in rain, their knowledgeable 58 Solid standing and readiness to wait, 59 These I learned from. My study was the wet, 60 My head as washy as a head of kale, 61 Sheding water like the flanks and tail 62 Of every dumb beast sunk above the cloot 63 In trampled gaps, bringing their heavyweight 64 Silence to bear on nosed-at sludge and puddle. 65 Of another world, unlearnable, and so 66 To believe by, whatever it was knew 67 Came back to me. Newfound contrariness. 68 In check-out lines, at cash-points, in those queues 69 Of wired, far-faced smilers, I stood off, 70 Bulrush, head in air, far from its lough.
71 Through every check and scan I carried with me 72 A bunch of Tollund rushes — roots and all — 73 Bagged in their own bog-damp. In an old stairwell 74 Broom cupboard where I had hoped they'd stay 75 Damp until transplanted, they went musty. 76 Every green-skinned stalk turned friable, 77 The drowned-mouse fibres dried up and the whole 78 Limp, soggy cluster lost its bouquet 79 Of weed leaf and turf mould. Dust in my palm 80 And in my nostrils dust, should I shake it off 81 Or mix it in with spit in pollen's name 82 And my own? As a man would, cutting turf,
324 83 I straightened, spat on my hands, felt benefit 84 And spirited myself into the street.
Out of Shot
1 November morning sunshine on my back 2 This bell-clear Sunday, elbows lodged strut-firm 3 On the unseasonably warm 4 Top bar of a gate, inspecting livestock, 5 Catching gleams of the distant Viking vik 6 Of Wicklow Bay; thinking scriptorium 7 Norse raids, night-dreads and that 'fierce warriors' poem 8 About storm on the Irish Sea - so no attack 9 In the small hours or next morning; thinking shock 10 Out of the blue or blackout, the staggered walk 11 Of a donkey on the TV news last night - 12 Loosed from a cart that had loosed five mortar shells 13 In the bazaar district, wandering out of shot 14 Lost to its owner, lost for its sunlit hills
A Shiver
1 The way you had to stand to swing the sledge, 2 Your two knees locked, your lower back shock-fast 3 As shields in a testudo, spine and waist 4 A pivot for the tight-braces, tilting rib-cage; 5 The way its iron head planted the sledge 6 Unyieldingly as a club-footed last; 7 The way you had to heft and then half-rest 8 Its gathered force like a long-nursed rage 9 About to be let fly: do you good 10 To have known it in your bones, directable, 11 Withholdable at will, 12 A first blow that could make air of a wall, 13 A last one so unanswerably landed 14 The staked earth quailed and shivered in the handle?
Quitting Time
1 The hosed-down chamfered concrete pleases him 2 He'll wait a while before he kills the light 3 On the cleaned-up yard, its pails and farrowing crate, 4 And the cast-iron pump immobile as a herm 5 Upstanding elsewhere, in another time 6 More and more this last look at the wet 7 Shine of the place is what means most to him--- 8 And to repeat the phrase "My head is light," 9 Because it often is as he reaches back 10 And switches off, a home-based man at home 11 In the end with little. Except this same 12 Night after nightness, redding up the work,
325 13 The song of a tubular--steel gate in the dark 14 As he pulls it to and starts his uphill work.
District and Circle
1 Tunes from a tin whistle underground 2 Curled up a corridor I’d be walking down 3 To where I knew I was always going to find 4 My watcher on the tiles, cap by his side, 5 His fingers perked, his two eyes eyeing me 6 In an unaccusing look I’d not avoid, 7 Or not just yet, since both were out to see 8 Four ourselves. 9 As the music larked and capered 10 I’d trigger and untrigger a hot coin 11 Held at the ready, but now my gaze was lowered 12 For was our traffic not in recognition? 13 Accorded passage, I would re-pocket and nod, 14 And he, still eyeing me, would also nod.
15 Posted, eyes front, along the dreamy ramparts 16 Of escalators ascending and descending 17 To a monotonous slight rocking in the works, 18 We were moved along, upstanding. 19 Elsewhere, underneath, an engine powered, 20 Rumbled, quickened, evened, quieted. 21 The white tiles gleamed. In passages that flowed 22 With draughts from cooler tunnels, I missed the light 23 Of all-overing, long since mysterious day, 24 Parks at lunchtime where the sunners lay 25 On body-heated mown grass regardless, 26 A resurrection scene minutes before 27 The resurrection, habitués 28 Of their garden of delights, of staggered summer.
29 Another level down, the platform thronged. 30 I re-entered the safety of numbers, 31 A crowd half straggle-ravelled and half strung 32 Like a human chain, the pushy newcomers 33 Jostling and purling underneath the vault, 34 On their marks to be first through the doors, 35 Street-loud, then succumbing to herd-quiet… 36 Had I betrayed or not, myself or him? 37 Always new to me, always familiar, 38 This unrepentant, now repentant turn 39 As I stood waiting, glad of a first tremor, 40 Then caught up in the now-or-never whelm 41 Of one and all the full length of the train.
42 Stepping on to it across the gap, 43 On to the carriage metal, I reached to grab
326 44 The stubby black roof-wort and take my stand 45 From planted ball of heel to heel of hand 46 As sweet traction and heavy down-slump stayed me. 47 I was on my way, well girded, yet on edge, 48 Spot-rooted, buoyed, aloof, 49 Listening to the dwindling noises off, 50 My back to the unclosed door, the platform empty; 51 And wished it could have lasted, 52 That long between-times pause before the budge 53 And glaze-over, when any forwardness 54 Was unwelcome and bodies readjusted, 55 Blindsided to themselves and other bodies.
56 So deeper into it, crowd-swept, stap-hanging, 57 My lofted arm a-swivel like a flail, 58 My father’s glazed face in my own waning 59 And craning… 60 Again the growl 61 Of shutting doors, the jolt and one-off treble 62 Of iron on iron, then a long centrifugal 63 Haulage of speed through every dragging socket.
64 And so by night and day to be transported 65 Through galleried earth with them, the only relict 66 Of all that I belonged to, hurtled forward, 67 Reflecting in a window mirror-backed 68 By blasted weeping rock-walls. 69 Flicker-lit.
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