Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Giel Vanthournout
The Rhythm of Trauma
Prison trauma in selected poems of Bobby Sands, Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron: a comparative analysis.
Supervisor: prof. dr. Stef Craps
Master dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of “Master in English-Dutch”
Academic year 2013-2014
Acknowledgements
So many books, so little time. Frank Zappa
Thanks to Koenraad Claes for introducing me to the prison poetry of Bobby Sands over a year ago; Prison Poems will most likely never cease to intrigue me. Thanks to Stef Craps for the guidance and valuable feedback, which has been a great and appreciated help. I would also like to thank Toby Smethurst for the equally profitable feedback, which included interesting references to war poetry. Special thanks to Mathias Rosseel for informing me about the art of
Egon Schiele, a small though cherished contribution to this thesis. Special thanks to my friends, parents and girlfriend for patiently listening while I was rambling on about prison trauma and psychological research. It is greatly appreciated, and I hope I am forgiven.
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1
1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………...... 2
2. Bobby Sands ….…………………………………………………………………………...4
2.1. Context of imprisonment and writing ..………………………….……….………. 4
2.2. Prison trauma in Bobby Sands’s Prison Poems…………….…………..……….... 6
2.2.1. Trauma causes and consequences…………………………………………….. 6
2.2.2. Attempting to relieve trauma: life rafts in prison……………………………. 27
3. Oscar Wilde.………………………………………………………………..……………34
3.1. Context of imprisonment and writing.……….…………….……….…………….34
3.2. Prison trauma in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’….……………… 36
3.2.1. Perception of the prison trauma of the other…………………………….……36
3.2.2. Individual and collective trauma……………………………………..……….39
3.2.3. Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde: kindred poets with kindred poetics?...... 56
4. Lord Byron ……………………………………………………………………………...59
4.1. A different perspective of prison trauma: Byron’s motivation behind ‘The Prisoner
of Chillon’………………………………………………………………………...59
4.2. Prison trauma in Lord Byron’s ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’………….…….………61
4.3. Prison trauma as a vessel for Byron’s Romantic poetics? ……...... 72
5. Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………76
6. Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………...... 80
7. Appendix……………………………………………………………...... 85
Number of words: 27126
2
1. Introduction
“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation
should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”
- Nelson Mandela
This statement by Nelson Mandela concerning his imprisonment rose to international fame and recognition from the very second it was uttered. After roughly 27 years of incarceration for being a direct threat to the apartheid regime, Mandela had experienced some, if not all, of the predicaments that involved being a South-African prisoner (Sampson 223-225). Hence, he never ceased to emphasize the problem of poor imprisonment during his later career
(Sampson 231). Considering this individual testimony is one of the many, it does not exactly come as a surprise that prisoners worldwide have difficulties in processing the divergent horrors they face in jail. Prison and academic reports, for example, frequently mention mental instability, trauma disorders or even suicides as direct consequences of incarceration.1 When daily life in prison becomes too depleting on physical or mental levels, inmates quite logically seek for a way to relieve this enduring stress. Luckily not all of them took such dramatic steps and found a different way of expressing their inner dysphoria; writing. Literary works constituted during or after imprisonment not only contain interesting commentary on the atrocities and maltreatment in some facilities, they also provide an insightful view into the often burdened psyche of the writer. As a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”, poetry can debatably reflect these traumatic experiences on an even deeper level than prose
(Wordsworth 18). This thesis will therefore provide a thorough analysis of the prison trauma and its manifestation in some poetry, more specifically in the work of three poets who differ on the scale of time and social circumstances. First of all, the poetry that Irish Republican
1 This statement is based on my personal lecture of psychological trauma studies for this thesis. For further information concerning these works, see: 6. Cited Works, p. 80-84. 3
Army member Bobby Sands composed during his hunger strike in Maze prison will be analyzed with a focus on its manifestation of traumatic experiences. This includes a discussion of thematic elements, motifs, poetic techniques and everything else in the poetry that is significant for trauma analysis. Consequently, Oscar Wilde’s lengthy poem ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ and Lord Byron’s ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ will be tackled using the same working method. Although Byron’s poem focuses on the reflections of a prisoner in his isolated environment, Byron has never been a prisoner himself. This lack of personal incarceration experience should, however, not be regarded as a disadvantage, since it contributes to three divergent angles on imprisonment in this analysis: Bobby Sands: the prisoner who never left prison and wrote his poetry on site, Oscar Wilde: the prisoner who did leave prison and wrote his poem shortly afterwards, and Lord Byron: the freeman who composes a poem on imprisonment. Therefore, it is safe to say that these three accounts of prison trauma will only enrich the findings of the analysis and provide a broader picture of the poetic approach on the subject in the nineteenth and twentieth century.
Moreover, my thesis will ultimately try to obtain this broader picture by also comparing these three poetic testimonies mutually. In order to ensure an accurate and candid analysis, the conclusions in the poetry analysis are supported by apt academic psychological research on trauma theory and incarceration. Since literary studies often are complex by their range of divergent interpretations, an interdisciplinary research that involves reputed psychological work will without a doubt obtain a clearer picture in the psycho-analysis of the poetry, and will therefore also contribute to more convincing conclusions. To facilitate the accessibility of this paper and in order to provide extra context for certain statements on excerpts, all major poems that are discussed in the analysis can also be found in appendix.2
2 See: 7. Appendix, p. 85. 4
2. Bobby Sands
2.1. Context of imprisonment and writing
Bobby Sands was born in 1954 and grew up as a young Catholic in Rathcoole, a
Newtownnabbey neighborhood in Northern Ireland. While in the other parts of the island the birth of the new republic nursed mutual peace among the population, the unrest in the North did not cease to exist. Starting from the late sixties with the Bogside riots in Derry, the three decades that followed were characterized by chaos in Northern Ireland: the Troubles were born (Whyte).3 The omnipresent dichotomy between loyalist Northern Irishmen, mostly
Protestants in favour of maintaining the strong bond with the United Kingdom and Catholic nationalists striving for equal social rights and the union with the Irish Republic, determined the course of his life. Sands and his relatives were often confronted with intimidation and violence from the Protestant camp. In his youth, two men attacked him with a knife and later on his family was forced to move after threats by the Ulster Defence Force, or UDA, a
Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary force (Hanke 19). After this series of incidents, Sands slowly began to consider the law-enforcing authorities an enemy of the Catholics. Like many others in the Catholic community, he expressed a need for self-defence against the threats that endangered his life and the lives of Catholics in Ireland every day. Since everything else he had tried before had been to no avail, he decided to join the Provisional IRA as a volunteer in his adolescence (Sands 5-11). After actively participating in IRA operations, Sands was arrested for the first time in 1972, when the authorities discovered four handguns in the house in which he lived. Shortly after his release in 1976, he contributed to social improvement in his neighbourhood. His social engagement involved community work, establishing a taxi service for his housing estate, publishing his personal republican newsletter Liberty, and hosting cultural and social evenings (Beresford 44). Nonetheless Bobby Sands also
3 A picture of the Bogside riots during The Troubles is included in appendix: p. 113, image 1. 5 maintained his connections with the IRA, and was arrested again and subsequently sentenced to fourteen years for the possession of an illegal firearm after a bomb attack (Hanke 21).
Confined within the prison walls, the environment where he would spend the rest of his days, he started writing the poetry that would eventually constitute Prison Poems.
Prison Poems was published in 1981, shortly after Bobby Sands’s death in the same year. All of the poetry it contains was written during his H-Block imprisonment in the Maze, and most of it had never been published before.4 Sands had, however, appeared in Republican
News with a few of these poems under the pen name Marcella -a reference to his sister’s name (Sands 7). The poetry is written from a prisoner’s point of view, as it sketches the horrors and oppression the narrator lives through day by day. Prison Poems therefore also indirectly tells the story of the blanket protestors, who derived their name from the only piece of improvised clothing they had left to cover themselves up. The ultimate goal of their hunger strike was to contest their abuse in prison and to revive the special category status for IRA prisoners, which had been ended by the authorities five years before, comparable to that of political prisoners in wartime. The strikers had five main demands, namely “the right to wear their own clothes at all times, the right to free association within a block of cells, the right not to do prison work, the right to recreational and educational facilities and the restoration of lost remission of sentence” (Hanke 21). Since Prime Minister Thatcher and the British government did not want to agree to any of those terms, they continued their protest until eventually ten hunger strikers died, including Bobby Sands. Sands had played a prominent role in the course of this situation as he had been chosen to be the commanding officer of the strike by his fellow republican prisoners (Hanke 22). Hence, Sands’s poetry is a poetic testimony to the inferior treatment of these IRA prisoners, and is therefore also an interesting subject for an analysis concerning prison trauma. In the current chapter, the thesis will tackle
4 A picture of the H-Block, the section of the Maze prison where Sands’s cell was located, is included in appendix: p. 113, image 2. 6 the manifestation of prison trauma in some of Sands’s major poems. Because of the length and versatility of these poems, it is safe to say they represent Prison Poems in general. If relevant, cross-references to other poems in the book will be made.
2.2. Prison trauma in Bobby Sands’s Prison Poems
Depression, friend, it did extend
In waves through every cell,
Crept up behind and bit the mind
Like shock from bursting shell.
(‘The Torture Mill - H-Block’ 85-88)
2.2.1. Trauma causes and consequences
Before the term trauma can be used, it is necessary to map out what it actually entails in the field of psychology. Recent psychological studies agree that at its core, trauma is “a physical or psychological threat or assault” to a person’s “physical integrity, sense of self, safety or survival or to the physical safety of another person of significance” to them (Moroz 2). When applied to a prison setting, trauma generally involves physical or psychological violence by either staff or inmates that endangers the mental and physical well-being of another prisoner.
It is important to check whether this kind of diagnosis can also be applied to the content of
Bobby Sands’s poetry, and thereby determine which events in particular can be classified as traumatic. In order to make sure, it is only relevant to ask whether such experiences can be derived from Prison Poems, since the poetic work will always remain the primary focus. ‘The
Crime of Castlereagh’, the opening poem as well as one of the longest, already reveals the core of the poetry in Prison Poems: an account of life in the Maze prison during Bobby
Sands’s detention.5 The maltreatment facing Catholic prisoners, the direct cause of prison
5 The full poem is included in appendix: p. 85. 7 trauma in Sands’s case, instantly stands out as a central theme. The British authorities not only protected Northern Irish society from IRA volunteers by locking them up in prison, but they were also looking for insights into the plans and members of the organization through the detainees (Hanke 15). The poem offers numerous references to the lengthy and unorthodox interrogations captive republicans were frequently subjected to, during which human rights were barely respected. The following excerpt shows one of the prisoners with sensitive information being taken away from his cell. When he is brought back, the contrast with his previous physical condition is remarkable:
I heard the moans and dreadful groans
They rose from some man’s cell.
And knew I then that this poor friend
Had something big to tell.
I’d heard him go some hours ago
His step was smooth and light,
But he’d come back like crippled wreck
Or one who’d lost a fight.
(‘The Crime of Castlereagh, 41-47)
By applying these drastic techniques, the prison staff did more than inflict physical injury on the prisoners. Perhaps even more importantly, they instilled a constant fear of being the next one in line for these interrogations, especially after intentionally showing the consequences to the prisoners in the way Sands’s poem portrays. A few lines later, the poem confirms the perturbation it causes among the inmates: “It tore our ears and primed our fears / This man’s tormenting groans / It made men reel for all could feel / The hurt on this man’s bones” (53-
56). Sands’s poetry reveals more of the staff’s meticulous techniques for breaking a prisoner’s will. ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ gives the reader an impression of “The Watcher” (98); a 8 guard who goes further than simply keeping an eye on the inmates. These watchers carried out the task of extensively observing the prisoner, both inside and outside of his cell area, and consequently reported anything that could be used against him (Hanke 37). As can be derived from the poem in question, they even went as far as to watch them take a shower or change clothes and monitor them during their toilet visits. The Watchers’ frequent sudden appearances and disappearances as part of the daily routine in the Maze prison is effectively reflected by a repeated stanza in the poem:
I heard the clink of metal link
The Watcher was abroad.
He squeaked and creaked, tip-toed and sneaked
On shoes that were not shod.
N’er e’r he spoke and still unbroken
The silence hung in awe.
He watched you quake and watched you shake
And told them all he saw. (97-104)
While the interrogations were often dominated by daunting physical violence, the watchers never laid a hand upon prisoners. Nonetheless, their form of mental violation was an equally heavy burden to carry.
One would expect that night time would bring some rest for the prisoners after their turbulent days; a hopeful assumption that Prison Poems disproves. The cell lights are consistently switched on and off all day long, so it becomes practically impossible for the prisoners to distinguish what time of day it actually is. ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ contains a revealing expression of the cell’s general discomfort: “who could sleep in sweltering heat /
With rattle of the vent. / ‘Pon canvas sheets caked firm in pleats / With sweat that men had spent. / The bright white light gave no respite / And cut the eyes to shreds, / And left an ache 9 to devastate / Already bursting heads” (113-120). Nonetheless, this discomfort seems only the slightest problem, since Sands states in the same stanza: “who cared of such in hell, / For who knew when or there again / Just who knew if at all, / If the next creak or creeping sneak /
Was death’s breath come to call” (26-30). This excerpt effectively assures the reader that there was never a chance of letting your guard down as a prisoner in Maze, as there was the possibility of being taken from your cell at any time. The omnipresence of this fear can also be inferred from Sands’s numerous repetitions; just as it haunts the prisoner’s mind, so the thought of violence lurking around the corner also dominates the poetry on regular occasions.
The following stanza from ‘The Torture Mill- H-Block’ is another convincing example:
“We’d get it too was what we knew / When night time would unwind, / ‘Cause each man knew just what was due / For each man wasn’t blind” (273-276). 6
Perhaps the most ghastly combination of physical and mental abuse is the suspicious death of Brian Maguire, also depicted in ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ where the narrator admits he “had cried a tearful tide / In mourning of Maguire” (751-752). While the authorities claimed he committed suicide by hanging himself on the air vent of his cell, later reports in fact revealed murder. An examination of the scene proved that the vent lacked sufficient strength to carry the weight of a human body. Ever since, the assumption has lived that he was killed during a lengthy interrogation and after a sequence of chokings in order to make him talk, partly because other prisoners experienced a similar treatment (Morrison 8). This phenomenon is described as homicidal hanging by forensic pathologists; a modus operandi they often encounter in prison situations, especially because of the known high suicide rate among inmates (Leth 65). The Maze prison staff performed as the extended arm of the British authorities in questioning and consequently gaining information from IRA prisoners . They were given a degree of carte blanche; if these interrogations went wrong, they did not expect
6 The full poem is included in appendix: p. 92. 10 this to result in a demanding investigation, if any at all. Moreover, the British government still holds back documents dating from the time of Bobby Sands’s incarceration and the hunger strike (An Phoblacht).7 The Maze prisoners knew all too well what happened, note that Bobby
Sands writes “murdered Brian Maguire” and not just died (‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ 728), and the death of Brian Maguire once more showed them what the British authorities were capable of doing.
The awareness of the fact that prisoners could be killed by the regime as collateral damage during interrogations, likely had a severe psychological impact. Sands’s words in a smaller poem called ‘Wing Shift in H-Block’ of a striking response to this tactical violence:
“We knew their terror game alright, / And they our trembling fright” (21-22).8 Naturally, this rate of efficient and planned violence is not what one would expect from a state prison in a fully-developed Western European country like the United Kingdom, at least on the surface.
Certain psychological and literary studies however point out that these conditions of maltreatment in prison and traumatized convicts are for the greater part determined by contemporary social and political factors.9 More specifically, Sands’s time of writing prison poetry matches a suggested template of intensified political polarization, growing intolerance of the regime and more drastic punishments for dissidents (Van Vuuren 42). The H-Block department of the Maze prison in which Bobby Sands and the other republican hunger strikers were confined, located in a violent and torn Northern Irish society, is an environment that encompasses all three of Van Vuuren’s conditions. As an arrested member of the Irish
Republican Army, a rebellious organization considered the enemy of the state, Sands experiences the harshest treatment British prisoners could go through.
It may be useful to verify whether the prison poetry of Bobby Sands also reflects the three factors mentioned in the aforementioned socio-literary study by Van Vuuren. Indeed, a
7 Taken from an archived article from An Phoblacht. For further information, see: 6. Cited Works: p. 82. 8 The full poem is included in appendix: p 97. 9 This includes Van Vuuren’s study, which will be discussed in the current paragraph. 11 closer reading of some poems does reveal a concordance with the psychological research. The poetry itself, as an account of prison violence and terror, is a testimony to the political polarization of the Northern Irish society and its division between republican nationalists and unionists. Sands’s Northern Ireland is controlled by a political climate where unionist prison staff deals with republican prisoners ”like hunters stalking deer” (‘The Crime of Castlereagh’
172). The actual polarization however, is emphasized by Sands’s words of protest as a reaction to the regime. His poem ‘Rodai MacCorlai’, for example, tells the story of Rody
McCorly, a historical (albeit mythologized) figure who participated in a rebellion against
British reign over Ireland in 1798 (Bartlett 12). Although the poem suggests a sense of a long gone and faded freedom, the speaker assures the reader that “the spirit of freedom knows no end, nor ever shall decay” (34) and that it will one day thrive again as it did in the glorious past of Ireland. Another remarkable feature of Prison Poems that corresponds with this continuing republican struggle against the British authorities can be found in certain formal elements. ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’, for instance, contains 96 stanzas which all fit the
ABCBDEFE pattern. This rhyme pattern can also be found in the traditional ballad, usually a long poetic narrative which was often supported by music. It is striking how several traditional Irish rebel songs, such as ‘Follow Me up to Carlow’, were written in the same ballad form (McCall 22). From this perspective, Bobby Sands in the first place composed a poetic prison testimony, but perhaps more importantly made sure to attune it to the Irish republican heritage by connecting the content, and in some cases even the structure, with the unbreakable spirit of freedom of traditional Irish folklore. His poetry, although full of grim incidents, equally functions as republican propaganda. Therefore, it clearly represents Van
Vuuren’s template of political polarization, nationalism versus unionism, growing intolerance of a regime, and more drastic punishments for dissidents, in this case the harsh policies of the
British authorities regarding republican prisoners. Thus, it is safe to say Bobby Sands’s poetry 12 vividly recreates an atmosphere that causes traumatic experiences in circumstances of incarceration.
Now that the political climate, the circumstances of Sands’s incarceration, and therefore also the cause of trauma have been sufficiently clarified, it can be relevant to offer a deeper insight into the consequences the poetry reveals. In terms of emotions, the constant fear of gratuitous violence during interrogations has already been discuss. However, the prison staff’s policy and the prison traumas not only evoke feelings of terror among the inmates. Prison Poems also provides bleak poetic evidence of the prisoners’ hatred regarding the inflictors of the trauma. ‘A Tribute to Screws’ (a short poem aimed at the prison guards or
“screws” in Irish slang), for example, contains these unforgiving lines: “They will be saluted with hatred, they’ll be acknowledged by scorn / And our ghosts will haunt them, and theirs not yet born” (81-82). Another apt example of this hatred is ‘The Torture Mill – H-Block', a poem in which the death of one of the prison guards is a central theme. He is found murdered on his doorstep with “his deathly eyes in fool’s surprise” (15). The narrator describes how the news of his murder is passed on from cell to cell, and how “each soul smiled like naughty child / at what he had to tell” when hearing “a dirty Screw / had got his dues somewhere”
(111-118). Despite his death, Sands’s narrator does not cease resentfully ridiculing the prison guard, for example in the following lines: “So bury him and let him lie / And play your brass tattoo, / But write above his marble stone / ‘Here lies a stinking Screw’” (55-58). Poems like these in particular seemingly justify the hatred for the other side in the conflict, because of their horrific actions and the traumas they inflicted upon the writer and his companions. After going through long-term maltreatment, the traumas not only turn the prisoners into anxious beings, but also into vengeful individuals that would eagerly do to others what they had done to them. Although the prisoners’ hatred can partly be understood as a logical reaction to the maltreatment they experience on a daily basis, they also seem to lose a large part of their 13 moral awareness, a phenomenon that is not unfamiliar in psychology. Several studies on trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, indicate a degree of emotional numbing, also known as EN, within the victims. More specifically, the patient suffers from “a cluster of debilitating symptoms involving problems in the experience and expression of emotion” (Litz et al. 607). These problems in experiencing emotions also affect the moral awareness of the patients in question (Litz et al. 610). Another catalyst for EN is the recurrence of strong feelings of fear; one of the possible symptoms of the disorder is in fact the “chronic avoidance of environmental and experiential reminders of the trauma” (Litz et al. 609). The similarities between the psychological diagnosis and Sands’s situation and poetry are striking. Hatred and bitter mockery are in fact useful tools in suppressing the emotions evoked by death. Although their hatred comes across as justified because of the immoral behaviour of the prison staff, the fact that the prisoners are completely untouched by a murder could be a way to avoid the memory of the traumatic events the prisoners themselves encountered.
Sands even seems to be aware that these are only masked feelings; despite the acrimonious words that determine the poem’s atmosphere, he still realizes that “all men’s blood is red” and that “King and Knave must have a grave / And poorest are the dead” (‘The
Torture Mill-H-Block’ 5-6). This part, among others, proves he still considers his oppressors as beings with a core of humanity after all, despite the mutual loathing. While he most certainly does not deny or forgive the individual acts of brutality towards the prisoners, he also clarifies that the unfortunate political climate caused the clash of perpetrators and victims rather than the intrinsic qualities of an individual. Psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton has a relevant theory for this observation. In a discussion of the United States’ more recent wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, he mentions the impact of an “atrocity-producing situation”: “an environment so structured, militarily and psychologically, that an average person entering it, no better or worse than you or [him], could be capable of committing 14 atrocities” (Lifton 1).10 From this perspective, the meticulously planned criminalization program of Northern Ireland corresponds to a large extent with the military and psychological structure of US warfare in the way Robert Jay Lifton describes it. The policies of the Northern
Irish regime, which include the prison maltreatment and the traumas it produces, were established on a higher level than the prison staff’s authority and are therefore equally to blame for these feelings of hatred and emotional numbing. The aforementioned excerpts could therefore be considered a jab at the highest directors in the hierarchy of British authority in
Northern Ireland, because the traumas are inflicted, nevertheless by individuals, under their command. However, the traumas in Maze prison are not only just inflicted directly by human beings. Prison Poems offers plenty of grim descriptions of the cell areas in which the blanket protesters are confined; they spend nearly all twenty-four hours of the day within the
“nightmarish walls” of their scanty cells (‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’ 126). The following excerpt from ‘The Torture Mill – H-Block’ quite ironically gives an impression of the circumstances: “That eight foot space ‘twas freedom’s grace. / To exercise the bones, / With every step the body wept / In awful moans and groans, / And sounded like the gnawny grind /
Of some one rubbing stones” (199-204).11 It is no surprise that protracted imprisonment in such a depressing environment eventually becomes physically and mentally draining. As
Bobby Sands confirms in ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’, there are even days where “a man’s mind spent all its time / On when he’d leave the cell” (27-28). The small area devoid of any possibility of the slightest physical exercise, human contact, and natural light without a doubt contributes to a feeling of depression among the prisoners. The poem that is perhaps most striking in its characterization of the cell area is ‘A Tribute to Screws’, which is surely some
10 These insights are gained from the following article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-jay-lifton/war- atrocity_b_1490147.html. 11 As an addition, the prison sketches of Egon Schiele -included in appendix: p. 114-115, image 4 and 5- are an interesting visual portrayal of the cramped prison cells. 15 of the grimmest poetry in the collection.12 Certain stanzas could just as well come out of an
Edgar Allan Poe story; even if unintentional, there is a conspicuous resemblance between the content and wording of stories like The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Premature Burial, and
Sands’s ‘A Tribute to Screws’. To give a clarifying example, Bobby Sands describes the prisoner’s situation regularly by using imagery related to death. In ‘A Tribute to Screws’, the narrator wakes up from his sleep in complete darkness, like “a corpse in the grave” (1). Next to that, the cell is now “a tomb” or even an “ungodly dungeon[…]” (6, 17). From this perspective, the macabre style of Poe’s American Romanticism is an effective literary approach for Sands to adopt in order to emphasize the terror of the events in the poem and to help the reader to easily visualize it at the same time. The horror becomes even more confronting when the reader realizes that, while there is indeed a poetic shell, there is also a major core of realism. The terror of the prisoner’s experience is, unlike Poe’s material, far from fictional. The following stanza for instance, shares the blanket protestor’s view on his cell: “Four bare walls make this prison cell / The eight by eight space the prisoners call hell, /
A concrete burden that is borne on the back / And some call it ‘bird’ and some call it ‘wack’.”
(‘A Tribute to Screws’ 9-12). No matter what slang term they use, it will not make confinement in this dreary room any more pleasant.
Another aspect that contributes significantly to the incarceration trauma is the constant isolation of the prisoner. Psychological studies on patients processing a traumatic event point out that they often have a remarkable “feeling of being alone”, described by the patients “in negative terms such as ‘scared’ or ‘frightened’” (O’Brien 219). When the supporting medical staff and trauma team joined the patients in the room, however, “these negative emotions associated with being alone were allayed” (O’Brian 219). Studies like these point out the importance of human contact in processing a trauma; victims need someone to tell the story to
12 The full poem is included in appendix: p. 99. 16 in order to relive the trauma and eventually understand how to cope with it. Bobby Sands and his fellow blanket protesters spend their days in isolation with no prospect of any helping hand or human contact. Hence, after what he has been through it is no wonder that he also contemplates the burden of isolation in his poetry. “There is no place more lonely than the prison cell”, Sands concludes in ‘A Tribute to Screws’ (65). This mentally depleting feeling of loneliness reaches one of its climaxes in a stanza taken from ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’:
“Pitiful is the lonely man / Who watches night go by, / To hear the screams from comrades’ dreams / The gentle sob or sigh. / But wretched is that lonely man / Who knows that he must die” (73-78). Maze prison itself already is an isolated bastion, even from the adjacent
Northern Irish society and its Troubles, a place that firmly adheres to its procedures and thereby also keeps the stories of the prisoners in quarantine. The thought that the terrible events will never see the light of day, let alone reach the public through news agencies, for instance, must have been all the more daunting for the prisoners. In this respect, it could even be one of Bobby Sands’s main reasons for confiding all the injustice done to the then non- existent readers of his poetry. Because he still has the slight faith, as he states near the end of
‘A Tribute to Screws’, that if the public only “knew but the torture [sic], that the prisoners know well”, they would “storm these dungeons” and “tear down this hell” (75-76).
Among the key distinguishing features of psychological trauma and PTSD, there is another phenomenon that offers an interesting point of view for reading Sands’s Prison
Poems: dissociation. According to psychologists, “the construct of dissociation focuses on three clinical entities: alterations in memory (e.g. aspects of the trauma not consciously accessible); in identity (e.g. disengagement between the self and environment); and in consciousness” (Feeny et al. 491). Although Sands’s poetry gives revealing and detailed descriptions of the traumatic events, and therefore does not correspond with the first aspect, it does contain disengagement between the self and the environment and alterations in 17 consciousness linked to trauma. Near the end of ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’, the narrator experiences a hallucination in his cell. The ordinary shapes of the concrete walls that surround him turn into haunted shadows and patterns that move around: “The shadows crept and figures lept / Across the murky beams […] Then dearest Christ! As if enticed / They danced around the wall / And peered at me so hauntingly / With faces white and small” (639-646).
Because of the beards and blankets that are mentioned in the following stanzas, it becomes clear that these ghosts are the explicit representation of prisoners in Maze. Each one of them
“knew torture’s rack” (654) and glares at his bed “with tortured stares” (649), an unambiguous link with the trauma of the interrogations. The narrator transcends his actual environment and is subjected to delusions of his own mind. The horror in this part of the poem is so lively and intense that the emotions these “painful shapes” carry are passed onto the hallucinating narrator (680). The illusion even continues until “the quaking cell as if in spell / Began to winge and weep” and a series of horrifying monsters surface (689-690). It will of course never be confirmed whether Bobby Sands personally experienced hallucinations or nightmares to such a fierce extent, but this does not give cause to question the sincere impact of the events on the consciousness of the prisoners, as the poem portrays.
Rather, it is a powerful literary approach to convey the mental chaos and incoherence a distorted psyche can cause. In ‘The Torture Mill – H-Block’ Sands describes another prisoner who obviously suffers from dissociation: “he stared upon nightmarish walls / As if they held the key / To some dark secret of his soul / That would not set him free” (127-130). One of the following stanzas emphasizes his insanity, when he laughs “aloud behind a shroud / Of yellow skin and beard, / His blazing eyes burned with despise, / And madness of the weird”
(139-142). To Sands, however, this behaviour is nonetheless far from abnormal, because he knows all too well that “in this dark hell […] torture does such things, / And leaves the brain like bare terrain / From which but madness springs” (145-148). Of course, Bobby Sands was 18 no psychological expert and was likely unfamiliar with any kind of psychological research.
Nevertheless his poetry, despite being partly metaphorical, proves that he was not oblivious to the consequences of the exhausting imprisonment and the toll it took upon both him and his fellow inmates. On the contrary, the numerous references to this kind of mental distress in his poetry show that it had an impact that cannot be neglected.
There is, however, one conscious, and therefore remarkable, reference to the terminology of psychological trauma in Prison Poems. It can be found in ‘The Crime of
Castlereagh’, where Sands unmistakably alludes to the shell shock: “Depression, friend, it did extend / In waves through every cell, / Crept up behind and bit the mind / Like shock from bursting shell” (85-88). Shell shock, known as Combat Stress Reaction in modern psychology, is the behaviour of certain soldiers in World War I as a reaction to the trauma of war (MacLeod 2). It is at least curious that Sands applies terminology related to war trauma to a prison setting. A look at the syndrome’s symptoms, however, points out there is obviously more to it. Because of the intense bombardments and without the means of fighting back directly, the soldiers developed an anxiety of being helpless which disrupted their ability to sleep, speak, and reason (MacLeod 4). When one compares these causes and symptoms to the situation of the prisoners in Maze, the similarity is striking. They also experience long-term violence and, in their powerless positions as convicts, are incapable of resisting or fighting back. The symptoms of anxiety, sleeping difficulties, and dissociation are equally represented in the poetry, as has been proven by the analysis so far. Sands’s Prison Poems contains a lot of descriptions referring to panic attacks, moments when “the tension snapped like grizzly trap” and gripped the narrator “by the throat”, his “thoughts capsized” and “drowned [him] in fear” (153-158). Moreover, the sleeplessness due to the cell’s discomfort and the lurking violence, along with the dissociation of the hallucinations, form two other motifs in his poetry that make a convincing connection with shell shock. Besides that, there is one more 19 interesting symptom of the syndrome that Sands’s poetry is reminiscent of. In wartime, the days of fighting took their toll on the soldiers, and a lot of them suffered from physical as well as mental exhaustion. The things they had seen on the battlefield often left such an impression that some of them developed what is colloquially known as the thousand-yard stare: the soldier’s unfocused gaze into the distance, as captured by a lot of wartime photographs.13 The ghostly silhouettes from the previously mentioned hallucinations in ‘The Crime of
Castlereagh’ that peer “so hauntingly / With faces white and small” and “moved around / Just staring at the bed” (645-648), strongly evoke the shell shock victims with the thousand-yard stare. The same goes for the gaze of a prisoner earlier in the poem, who is brought back to his cell after an interrogation in which he most likely gave away confidential information: “I caught his eye, as he passed by, / His terror stricken form / Search out the air for nothing there
/ Like blind man in a storm” (363-366). It should not be considered that surprising that Bobby
Sands was familiar with the phenomenon of shell shock, since it had already entered into popular culture and memory, and was a well-known psychological injury of war. The vast amount of poetry as a result of the two world wars definitely had an influence on the popularity of shell shock. In his poem ‘Mental Cases’, for example, war veteran Wildred
Owen gives a description of shell shock victims that resembles the image of the hallucinated silhouettes in Sands’s poem:
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, - but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
13 A picture of a soldier with the thousand-yard stare is included in appendix: see p. 114, image 3. 20
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
(‘Mental Cases’ 1-8)
From this perspective, Sands’s poetic reference to shell shock could be based on earlier war poetry that gives an equally ghastly picture of traumatized soldiers. Moreover, his references to shell shock suggest that he was aware of his own traumatic experiences and their impact on his psyche.
On a different note, the wording of Sands’s poetry is worth discussing in greater detail as well, since it often makes starker the connection between the traumatic events and the setting of Maze prison. The lifeless prison building is given a satanic connotation in the following excerpt from ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’:
This Citadel, this house of hell,
Is worshipped by the law,
It’s built upon a rock of wrong
With hate and bloody straw.
Each dirty brick holds some black trick
Each door’s a door of pain
‘Tis evil’s pen, a devil’s den,
And Citadel of Shame. (753-760)
By associating the prison with a devilish lair, even the descriptions of the setting in the poetry suggest the traumas the building conceals. Sands asserts that even the most common brick in the wall triggers the memory of what happened before. Simply being there and observing the environment already is an insuppressible process of reliving the trauma repeatedly. Moreover, the prison staff are often described as Satan’s offspring or vile biblical creatures. The British authorities become the “Demagogue” who “blasphemed to God / In mocking disrespect” 21
(723-724), while the prison staff are portrayed as “the devil’s sons and evil ones / Gathered round like fire” (725-726), who learned their devious policies “in devil’s school” (‘The
Torture Mill-H-Block’ 490). Just as Biblical tradition disapproves of the evil of the devil,
Sands does not condone the inhumanity of the prison policy, and his specific wording reinforces the traumatic effect. The same goes for the metaphorical use of imagery related to predators and their prey in some of the poems. Sands’s comparison of the prison guards and prisoners with “hunters stalking deer” has already been mentioned, but more references can be found in Prison Poems (‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ 172). In ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’ for instance, the prisoners are metaphorically on “a tortured way” like “frantic screaming prey” (392-394), surrounded by prison guards who stir them up like animals.
Another relevant and religiously loaded poem that relates to trauma is Sands’s ‘Poetic
Justice’, which, despite its frankness, is not at all without a humorous touch.14 The poem opens with the narrator confessing “the strangest dream” (1) he ever had. The central character in this dream, and poem, is a man named Roy. In this poem, Bobby Sands actually refers to Roy Mason, the leader and supervisor of Operation Demetrius: the criminalization programme in Northern Ireland from 1976 to 1979 (Sands 74). This programme involved the direct imprisonment of every individual with suspected ties to paramilitary organizations in the Northern Irish conflict without any form of trial (Moen 1).15 This violation of fundamental human rights went hand-in-hand with the dubious interrogation policy of these convicts in prison, as earlier discussed. Sands’s poem can be considered a direct literary accusation and condemnation of the directors of this crooked system. As the creators of the rules that shaped the previously mentioned atrocity-producing situation, they are the ones responsible for the torture and therefore also the initial inflictors of the trauma. Mason is blatantly guilty as he is accused by God on Judgment Day, another association with religious sinning: “Roy, you
14 The full poem is included in appendix: p. 101. 15 Bobby Sands’s poem ‘Diplock Court’, also in Prison Poems, is an interesting personal account of this crooked justice system. 22 tortured them / And you held them all those years, / Naked and suffering / They wept a million tears” (55-58). At the same time, the poem can be read as a representation of the prison trauma of the blanket protestors, who had their share “of torture pain and suffering”
(29). The last line of the poem, “Send him down to H-Block Five!” (62), is not only an apt and ironic punch-line, but is also the ultimate proof of his guilt. A person capable of committing such severe crimes towards prisoners ought only to receive the same treatment.
Sands also realizes that through his imagery and wording, the events described may have an unsettling effect on the reader. He affirms this halfway through ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’, as he addresses the reader directly: “Shocked you are, by far […] Perhaps you say this poet’s way / Is crude and very low?” (23-25). Consequently, he seems to justify his explicitness because the reader does not know the true horror of prison behind the curtain: “but shocked you do not know” (24). The following three stanzas give a concise portrayal of some of the prison’s horror, touching upon themes of fear, violence and death, so that the reader would at least understand the burden of it all. According to Sands, there is no need to be euphemistic about the truth, even in poetry. As Wildred Owen puts it, “the poetry is in the pity”; in
Sands’s case that of his misfortunes in the Maze prison (Owen 266).
The abundance of causes for the mental distress of the imprisoned has already been demonstrated by the length of my analysis concerning the manifestation of prison trauma in
Prison Poems. It is hardly any wonder, then, that some prisoners under these circumstances eventually collapsed and attempted to put an end to their suffering by committing suicide.
Official reports back up this statement by speaking of a suicide rate “estimated at approximately four times that of the general population” in prisons around the United
Kingdom from 1972 until 1987 (Dooley 40). The phenomenon of hunger striking, in which
Bobby Sands and over twenty other prisoners participated until some of them died, is however no thoughtless approach to committing suicide. These prisoners started refusing food in order 23 to protest against their inferior treatment and the removal by the British authorities of the
Special Category Status for IRA prisoners. However, the 1981 hunger strike was also an organized and planned protest, since the prisoners joined and left the strike in staggered intervals in order to carry on as long as possible and arouse maximum public attention (Taylor
237). Of course, one could wonder why they chose for such a slow way of suicide. However, the success of the hunger strike lies in its substantial coverage in contemporary newspapers and thereby reached a broader public, while a ‘regular’ suicide in prison would go by rather unnoticed (Taylor 250-251). With this in mind, it seems that the hunger strikers were motivated by a certain duality between the will to give up on life and the will to still publicly challenge the prison policy by any means necessary. This suicidal vacillation between life and death is also reflected in Prison Poems. Near the end of ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’, for example, Sands’s portrayal of the courtyard, on the way from the interrogation room back to the cell, seems almost a Romantic celebration of life and nature:
As dawn converged the world emerged
Into a brand new day.
I stepped out to a sky of blue
Where silver fleeces lay.
The chirp of bird I plainly heard
And as the breeze went by,
I drank the air in thirsty tear
With greed upon my eye.
I drank the day o’er Castlereagh
Like one back from the grave,
And feasted high upon that sky 24
Like one with awful crave.
Each soothing breeze was laced with ease
Each golden ray with life,
Each little bird that chirped a word
echoed sweet as fife. (583-598)
In excerpts like this one the reader can immediately grasp the strong urge to live, to survive life in prison and enjoy all that freedom has to offer. The landscape is peaceful, almost bucolic, and forms a stark contrast with the usual setting of Maze prison. This lust for life, however, is strongly opposed by other fragments from Sands’s poetry that share a feeling of world-weariness under the burden of trauma and a hopeless future. Sands’s short poem ‘A
Place to Rest’ shows this desire to “gladly rest where the whin bush grow […] In Carnmoney
Graveyard ‘neath its hill / Fearing not what the day may bring!” (17-20).16 In certain passages of ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’, Sands portrays a prisoner “who knows that he must die” (78).
It remains ambiguous whether this death will be caused by the so-called accidents during interrogations, or by the self-inflicted hunger strike. The fact is that Sands often gives impressions of how deep the scars of the torture are for some prisoners. In ‘The Crime of
Castlereagh’ he mentions that the guards only handed out plastic cutlery to the prisoners, “so wrists could not be carved” (196). Next to this, the prisoners had to walk on stockings; boots were “forbidden things”, because “tortured men seek death’s quick end” and “one might die if one might tie / A noose with lacing strings” (34-37). Moreover, the noose’s role as a recurrent element in the poem only contributes to the suicidal atmosphere. It also appears in the hallucination scene, where the monsters “spun a cord […] To make a noose that would induce
/ A tortured soul within” (‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ 709-712). Given the contrast between these excerpts and those in which Sands lusts for life, it is clear that the poetry draws a lot of
16 The full poem is included in appendix: p. 102. 25 its dramatic effect and persuasiveness from the opposition between fighting fate and giving up on life.
The poetry, however, seemingly justifies the suicidal thoughts of Bobby Sands and the other prisoners of Maze, or at least tries to make them more understandable for the reader. It emphasizes that these convicts are no legendary heroes, but ordinary men with the most common hopes and fears. Sands’s narrator is under no illusion when he states in ‘The Torture
Mill-H-Block’: “For listen, friend, we don’t pretend, / There are no heroes here” (359-360).
Despite the republican cause they still spiritedly support in prison, they are as vulnerable as anyone else to the horrors and traumas they encounter. Near the beginning of the same poem, the prisoner is questioned by his own mind when waking up: “How much dare you to take? /
How much, how much, for pain is such / That even heroes quake” (70-72). By using such constructions, which apparently address the reader directly, Sands encourages them to contemplate what they would do in the same circumstances. Consequently, he questions the reader as to whether these suicidal thoughts are really that abnormal as they first appear to be.
Given everything they have been through, especially without the prospect of any improvement in the future, suicide could be regarded as a rather rational decision.
The stories in Prison Poems prove that these men are just as susceptible to trauma as any possible reader, and this portrayal of vulnerability is supported by another recurring element in the poetry: nudity. Bobby Sands mentions the prisoners are naked on various occasions, and this motif can be interpreted on both a literal and metaphorical level. In spite of their moniker, the blanket protesters actually had very few blankets to cover themselves up in the first place. As such, it seems obvious that Sands should refer to them as naked.
However, the emphasis on the nudity of the prisoners in specific contexts in the poems reveals a less straightforward explanation. When one looks for a deeper meaning behind the nudity, it becomes clear that Sands frequently opposes it to the horror of Maze prison. ‘The Torture 26
Mill-H-Block’ contains a few instances in which the nudity of the prisoners stands in stark contrast to their actions or environment, for instance in the following excerpts: “But bastards are the hated Screws / Who torture men in nude” (47-48), and “Each cell does smell within that hell / Where the naked cough and spit” (163-164). The prisoners, in both cases naked, are portrayed as victims of either violence or the deplorable circumstances in their cells. Next to the literal meaning of being naked, this could equally imply a deeper, mental form of nudity.
Under the burden of these traumatic events, the prisoners have become mentally fragile. Not only their clothes, but also their minds have been stripped down, and they are as unprotected as a naked man would be in a hostile environment. From this perspective, excerpts such as:
“’Tis a terrible feeling to be naked and down” (13) from ‘A Tribute to Screws’, as well as the previous ones given, can evoke a wholly different metaphorical meaning next to the literal interpretation. This point of view becomes even more interesting when one considers the phenomenon of victimization, which is characteristic of a prison environment and is often linked to prison trauma in psychological research (Hochstetler 436). According to actual studies in a prison environment, the selective process of singling out specific prisoners and violating them both mentally and physically “significantly predicts the occurrence of PTS symptoms and depressive symptoms” (Hochstetler 436). In modern Western correctional facilities, where the staff members are regularly inspected, prisoners are mostly victimized by fellow inmates. In Bobby Sands’s case, however, it was the prison staff who pulled the strings in an organized system of fierce interrogations and mind games in order to break prisoners of choice. Moreover, victimization by the prison staff is yet another factor in a long list of possible trauma causes described in Sands’s Prison Poems. His vulnerable portrayal of the naked prisoners, in combination with the unsettling character of the incidents in general, is an efficient representation of the victimization the convicts experienced on a daily basis.
Furthermore, nakedness and nudity gradually become synonymous with the prisoners of Maze 27 in ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’, because the presence of these words truly dominates the poem. When the news of the dead Screw is passed on from cell to cell, for example, “the whispered word” is heard by “the naked” (‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’ 115). Because of the repeated references to nudity, and perhaps the underlying image of innocent victims, the reader quickly makes the association with the prisoners. On top of this, Sands uses powerful metaphors to express the victimization by Maze prison’s staff: “They’ll let us know it’s time to go / And gauntlet they will form, / From wing to wing their blows will sting / Like hornets in a swarm, / And naked men must run its end / Like seabirds in a storm” (‘The Torture Mill-
H-Block 283-288). With the aim of expressing the prisoners’ impotence against the horrifying treatment they experience, Sands also uses other strongly polarized metaphors of innocence and evil power. As has been mentioned, he often refers to the prisoners as helpless prey wrought up by predators.17 In the same manner, they are described as for example a
“screaming child” on the run from “a horde of rats” (‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’ 367-368), symbolizing innocence confronted with terrible threats. Through this explicit imagery, Sands conveys an underlying division between right and wrong, which makes the prison traumas all the more dreadful and understandable.
2.2.2. Attempting to relieve trauma: life rafts in prison
In Castlereagh from day to day
A thought’s a battle fought.
And sinking men cling fast, my friend,
To hope within a thought.
A cherished smile or voice of child
Are life rafts to be caught.
(‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ 187-192)
17 See p. 20-21 in the paragraph about Sands’s wording and use of metaphor. 28
Next to the poetic reflection of the traumatic incidents in Maze prison and their aftermath,
Prison Poems can also be considered an account of how these men then dealt with the traumas in their attempts to alleviate them. As this section will illustrate, the poetry of Bobby
Sands contains many clues regarding how the prisoners dealt with trauma, both individually and collectively, in ways that were not always as dramatic as suicide. These “life rafts” (‘The
Crime of Castlereagh’ 192) are what strengthens them in difficult times and what provides them, to a certain extent, with the joie de vivre to make it through another day.
First of all, not every poem in the book gives a solely grim description of life in Maze prison. On the contrary, a surprising amount of hope sprouts from certain passages, and it is remarkable that religion plays a large role in this regard. A stanza from ‘The Crime of
Castlereagh’ offers an apt example. Although it may seem that the perpetrators of abuse in
Maze prison will never have to justify their actions and will walk free, the narrator assures them there will eventually be a price to pay after death: “So listen well, you pimps of hell / you beasts of Castlereagh! / Both law and man will meekly stand / ‘Fore God on Judgment
Day!” (796-800). Inspired by his faith, Bobby Sands considers the law of God, which stands above all secular laws that govern society, as the absolute standard. Strengthened by his confidence that justice will sooner or later be delivered, he manages to issue an explicit, almost threatening message to the inflictors of the trauma. This optimism, drawn from religion, alongside frequent Christian interjections such as “That God I nearly ran” (212),
“God forbid” (278), “dearest Christ!“ (‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ 643), underlines Bobby
Sands’s strong faith as a Catholic. The connection he felt with the Christian heritage and morals is prominent in Prison Poems. As can be concluded from the poetry, it also gave him strength in difficult times, and therefore it no doubt had an influence on the processing of trauma in Maze prison. Furthermore, there are other examples of the calming effect of religion in Sands’s poetry. As has been discussed before, one of the direct effects of the 29 traumatic incidents is an outspoken sense of hatred towards the inflictors of the trauma.18
However, one stanza from ‘A Tribute to Screws’ shares an interesting point of view that contradicts these feelings: “But it’s more pity that I hold for these exploiters of pain / Than a deep-scarred-revenge for to see them in flame, / For be it heaven or the republic, or what may come to pass / ‘Twill be woe to the devils of this murderous class” (77-80). Because of his religious principles, Sands understands the malicious nature of hatred and no longer allows it to determine the processing of his trauma. Instead, he reverts to pity because he knows they will eventually pay for their actions, whether in the afterlife or when Northern Irish independence is obtained.
Another remarkable ‘life raft’ that characterizes Sands’s poetry is a strong sense of freedom, albeit on a deeper level. Despite the fact that his physical freedom has been snatched away because of his incarceration, Bobby Sands resolutely continues to stress his free will.
An excerpt from ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ adequately reflects this idea of a mental freedom that opposes his powerless position as a prisoner. Amidst the descriptions of a brutal interrogation, Sands concludes the following: “There is no height or bloody might / That a freeman can’t defy. / There is no source or foreign force / Can break one man who knows, /
That his free-will no thing can kill / And from that freedom grows” (553-558). The “foreign force” (a republican jab at the superfluous presence of the British authorities in Northern
Ireland), indeed has the power to incarcerate and violate Northern Irish citizens. Sands, however, stresses that he still possesses the free will to decide not to cooperate, which is perhaps the most precious thing he has left. In other words, although he is fully subjected to the vagaries of the interrogators on the outside, he is still free on this interior and far more personal level. This consciousness of inner freedom has an obvious effect on his perseverance during the interrogations, and the poetry confirms this by mentioning the “quite depressed”
18 See p. 12 in the paragraph on hatred and Emotional Numbing. 30 mood of the interrogators after he eventually “had not confessed” when leaving the room
(560-562). There is a certain inversion of the roles in this moment, where the trauma victim becomes victorious over the perpetrators, and the poem transmits the curative power of this reversal in its description of the feelings of relief and even pride when the interrogation is over.
Besides these methods of dealing with the traumas individually, the poetry also bears traces of solidarity among inmates who experience the same brutal treatment, particularly in
‘Comrades in the Dark’ one of the shorter pieces in the collection.19 The poem is an allegorical representation of the republican struggle and the misfortunes it experiences along the way. The republicans are pictured as “the fairest flowers of their kind” that “bloomed by country lane and town, / In freedom’s fragrant scent, […] When dark days came and went”
(9-15). Their strength lies in their collective will to keep growing “midst fortune cold and stark” (14), even when “some soldiers plucked the garden’s joy”, a metaphor for their imprisonment (21). These flowers consequently “weep in dank cold cells” and “suffer torture’s vilest scorn / To wither in their bloom” (25-28); thereby highlighting the horror of the incarceration once again. Despite their maltreatment, the narrator assures us that these flowers remain in hopeful solidarity. The outcome of his imprisonment is clear to Sands, when he claims that: “I care not should we freemen die”, as long as their death is for the sake of seeing “the garden flower”; that is, achieving the Northern Irish independence (33-34). In the last stanza, these flowers are even depicted as martyrs. The thought of the scads of flowers, (actually his fellow comrades in the dark that surround him in the prison cells and go through the same hell), seems to strengthen him, and also reduces his fear of dying. This solidarity also shimmers in other poems of the collection. In ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’, for instance, the prisoners’ collective empathy is intensified when one of them receives a beating.
19 The full poem is included in appendix: p. 101. 31
The other inmates can hear “this man’s tormenting groans” (54), and Sands further writes: “It tore our ears and primed our fears […] It made men reel for all could feel / The hurt on this man’s bones” (53-56). The beating in this part of the poem is not a matter of individual violence; rather, it becomes a collective physical abuse. As kindred spirits, the republican prisoners share and experience the traumas of Maze prison with one another, a thought that seemingly alleviates the individual burden, and from which hope and even optimism can sprout, as is proven by the two cited poems.
Even the poetry collection itself can be considered a form of collective trauma processing, of the prisoners pulling each other through and creating some distraction in their lives. Danny Morrison, a convicted member of the Irish Republican Army and former prisoner of Maze, has the same point of view on Prison Poems:
His poetry is the raw literature of the H-Block prison protest which hundreds of naked
men stood up against their cell doors […] to listen to and to applaud. It was their only
entertainment, it was a beautifully rendered articulation of their own plight. Out of
cruelty and suffering Bobby Sands harnessed real poetry, the poetry of a feeling
people struggling to be free. (Sands 10)
Thus, Prison Poems itself is in fact the combination of two ‘life rafts’ for the blanket protesters: the act of experiencing poetry as pleasant entertainment, and a way of seeking refuge and confirmation in the republican ideology. The latter is frequently emphasized in the poems. An apt example can be found in an exclamation of the desperate prisoners in ‘The
Torture Mill-H-Block’, where they “fought back tears and scorned [their] fears” in order to
“conquer their black fame” by loudly singing “A Nation once again!” (505-510). This ballad, composed by Thomas Osborne in the 1840s, is one of the best-known Irish nationalist songs ever written (Irish Music Daily). Around Bobby Sands’s time, this would have been popular because of the contemporary Troubles, although even more in particular because of the then 32 recent recordings by, for instance, the Irish Republican group The Wolfe Tones in 1972, as well as the internationally renowned The Dubliners (BBC News).20 The prisoners’ political principles as convinced republicans, in addition to them voicing their support for the cause, obviously helped them to fight their fears, as the excerpt shows.
Moreover, there is another poetic feature in which Bobby Sands, again individually, seeks refuge from the daily misery in Maze prison. Trapped in “dank cold cells, no sun to light the gloom”, he often expresses the necessity of escaping it all (‘Comrades in the Dark’
25-26). In some of the poems, the typically Romantic motif of escapism is used to convey the curative qualities of nature. By describing the tranquil scenery of nature, Sands creates an environment in stark contrast with his prison surroundings; a mental refuge he can rejoice in.
This desire to escape is prominent in ‘A Place to Rest’, for example, where Sands exclaims after a typically Romantic Natureingang in the first three stanzas: “Oh! And I wish I were with the gentle folk, / Around a hearthened fire where the fairies dance unseen, / Away from the black devils of H-Block hell, / Who torture my heart and haunt my dream” (13-16).
Although the atmosphere of nature brings solace, this feeling of freedom is only partly achieved, as suggested by the recurrence of prison imagery that also dominates these descriptions. The two following stanzas from ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’ form a perfect reflection of this clash between prison and nature: “Tis joyful thing in early spring / The morning lark to hear, […] But who may know if lark or crow / With bleeding busted ear?
[…] Or who may sniff the fragrant whiff of daffodils and rose, […] When worse the course you have to nurse / A broken bloody nose” (493-498). Although the narrator longs to escape to an environment characterized by purity, peace, and simplicity, his imprisonment prevents him from doing so. Perhaps the subtle references to classic Romantic poetry are an even more remarkable characteristic of this excerpt. The “early spring” and “daffodils” mentioned in the
20 This reference is a newspaper article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2591357.stm. 33 poem recall ‘Lines Written in Early Spring’ and ‘Daffodils’, two famous poems written by
William Wordsworth. Next to this, the recurring image of the lark can be linked to ‘To a
Skylark’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Both series of references confirm Sands’s attention towards certain features of Romantic poetry, such as the motif of escapism. In the same poem,
Bobby Sands finally also portrays this escapism as a logical reaction to the traumas of Maze prison: “And some ne’er see the flower or tree / Or know their lovely worth, / But in the gloom or prison tomb / Men crave for Mother earth” (207-210). Therefore one can consider it another life raft, albeit a troublesome one because of the difference of location and setting between nature and prison.
Finally, not every life raft which prisoners in Maze cling to has the high ideological value of republicanism and Romantic escapism. According to ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’, even the joy of smoking a simple cigarette already makes an invaluable difference in coping with the traumas. In order “to tame the killing dread” (304), a lot of prisoners developed such a craving for cigarettes that they even started smoking dust and the threads of their blankets when being denied tobacco. As a result, Sands’s poem contains absurd scenes where “some inhale to such avail / The smouldering blanket shred, […] So pale as death with burning breath / they drag each reddened thread” (301-306). Strange situations like this one exhibit how far prisoners went just to be able to soothe their distorted minds. To conclude, after a diverse summation of life rafts, Prison Poems also gives an image between the lines of both the grim and heart-warming ways in which the prisoners tried to alleviate the effects of prison trauma. It often even symbolizes the characteristic Irish perseverance in times of misery and the perpetual hope for better days.
34
3. Oscar Wilde
3.1. Context of imprisonment and writing
Oscar Wilde is the second Irish writer of the analysis who wrote poetry that incorporates prison as an explicit subject. His poem ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ had never existed if it was not for his sentence of hard labor in Her Majesty’s Reading Prison (Ellman 474).21 For a whole set of reasons, the context and writing process of this long poem differs considerably from Bobby Sands’s Prison Poems. This divergence is already shown by the reason of his imprisonment. Well-known for his flamboyant lifestyle and daring wit, Wilde often was the center of attention in his London area of activity (Ellman 59). This popularity also had a downside, since his homosexuality eventually caused a scandal that lead to a court trial. After being sued and openly accused of sodomy by the father of his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, a response to an earlier accusation of libel made by Wilde, he was convicted to two years in prison for this offence. Oscar Wilde’s spent his days in three different correctional facilities, from Pentonville to Wandsworth, and eventually to Reading Gaol, which is known to be the fiercest time of his incarceration (Ellman 463-479). It is there that he wrote an elaborate letter to Alfred Douglas, ‘De Profundis’, which contains a lot of interesting insights on Wilde’s position in society and the circumstances in prison (Holland 321). Because they contain concrete and personal information on his imprisonment, the following analysis will also refer to a couple of relevant excerpts of this letter in order to compare them to some aspects of the poetry.
The central focus, however, remains ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, the poem he wrote shortly after his release, written in exile in France. The poem consist of six chapters and it was first published in 1898 under the name c.3.3., a reference to cell block c, landing 3, cell 3.
Wilde’s choice for anonymous publication can be motivated by the negative connotation his
21 A contemporary 19th century print of Reading Gaol is included in appendix: p. 115, image 6. 35 own name carried at that time. Only seven prints later, in 1899, it was publicly acknowledged to be written by him (Ellman 526-531). The poem itself soon grew to international fame, already in its anonymous stage, and still is part of the contemporary Western canon; two major causes of the diversity of close-readings that each foreground particular aspects of the poem. A lot has been said about the motif of religion for instance, as a number of literary critics read the poem as a commitment to Christian values and a reflection of the purification of the sinning soul (Willoughby 127-133). However, as good as nothing about his portrayal of prison, and the opportunities this brings along for an analysis on trauma, has been discussed in depth. Because of the specific angle on prison trauma in this thesis, the analysis will not cover the vast amount of religious and other interpretations, since their relevance is questionable in this light, but will nonetheless refrain from too one-sided conclusions.
Finally, he wrote his poetry after the actual incarceration experience and in a different setting, which differs from Bobby Sands’s poetry ‘on site’. This spatial and mental distance between the scenery of the poem and Wilde’s environment may in fact be noticeable in ‘The
Ballad of Reading Gaol’. Moreover, his literary allegiance to Aestheticism, along with his position as a prisoner convicted of homosexuality in a completely different Victorian zeitgeist, are other factors that presume another poetic impression of prison trauma compared to Bobby Sands’s portrayal. Therefore, both remarkable differences and similarities will be emphasized and accompanied by suggested clarifications. Furthermore, the analysis of one poem in particular, compared to the study of several poems of Prison Poems, can be beneficial since it allows an in-depth analysis with eye for details.
36
3.2. Prison trauma in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’
3.2.1. Perception of the prison trauma of the other
In comparison to the narrator that represents Bobby Sands in Prison Poems and his close involvement with the traumas of Maze prison, the narrator in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ seems more detached, at least in the beginning of the poem.22 Next to an experiencer, Wilde’s narrator is an observer who watches “a man who looked / with such a wistful eye” at the sky in the prison’s yard (I, 14). As the poem gradually reveals, this man is waiting for his execution by hanging because he “had killed the thing he loved / And so he had to die (I, 35-
36). With great attention and even empathy, he studies the movements of the subject and tries to understand what he feels, which emotions control a man that knows he will die, “For none can tell to what red Hell / his sightless soul may stray” (II, 59-60). Therefore, the first part of the poem is completely focused on the traumas of another person. In the stanza that contains the famous lines “yet each man kills the thing he loves” (I, 37), Wilde puts the crime in perspective: everyone has the tendency to kill what he loves, or even love itself, although in different ways. It is only the “brave man” that does it “with a sword” (VI, 18). However, other men will not have to suffer to such an extent, unlike the prisoner. In a series of descriptive stanzas from the first part of the poem, the narrator gives a lively account of the horrors that the man must have experienced from the murder until his imprisonment. Wilde opposes these horrors to the other ‘murderers’ that society allows to walk freely; they will not have to go through what the prisoner experiences. As can be concluded from these stanzas, the days of this prisoner are characterized by the visits of “dread figures” that “throng his room” like the chaplain, the sheriff and the governor, who by their presence already remind him of the fact that he will soon die (I, 68-72). There even is no opportunity for him to let his emotions free, since “silent men […] watch him night and day”, “when he tries to weep” and “when he tries
22 The full poem is included in appendix: p. 103. 37 to pray” (I, 61-64). The sole purpose of the watchers in this stanza, who considerably resemble the Watcher figure from Bobby Sands’s Prison Poems, is preventing the prisoner from committing suicide. When the prisoner takes such a dramatic step, the narrator quite grimly adds, he robs “The prison of its prey” (I, 66). These stanzas from the first part of the poem show the humanity of the prisoner who, in spite of having murdered someone, still is as susceptible to the horror of prison and death as anyone else would be. The execution of the prisoner is one of the central events in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. At the time of Oscar
Wilde’s actual incarceration, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper of the Royal Horse
Guards, was executed in the same manner for murdering his wife (Holland 210). Wilde’s choice for this event in particular as the core of a poem that reflects his prison experiences, already proves that it triggered a lot of emotions.
Nevertheless, there is a lot more to say about the hanging in order to further explain its importance. When one looks back at Prison Poems, for example, it is interesting that Sands also mourns a hanging that had an obvious traumatic effect, more specifically the homicidal hanging of Brian Maguire.23 In both cases, the execution was performed by the respective authorities and stands out as at least a questionable punishment. The difference with the hanging that Wilde knows of, is its conscious completion. The incident with Brian Maguire is the supposed result of an escalated interrogation and therefore partly accidental, while in the case of Wooldridge, “Man’s grim Justice” (III, 187) was responsible for imposing the penalty and carrying it out. Therefore, the poem can be considered a subtle complaint on the crooked
Victorian judicial system, an institution that Wilde also criticizes in ‘De Profundis’: “society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realize what it has done” (Wilde 6). His incarceration led to the direct confrontation with the tragedy of a prisoner unable to fight his
23 See p. 9 in the paragraph on homicidal hanging in prison. 38 fate and the omnipotence of the authorities. The disgust he felt about this injustice, is also shared by the narrator in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’: the news that “that fellow’s got to swing” (I, 24) unsettles him to such an extent that “the very prison walls / Suddenly seemed to reel, /And the sky above [his] head became / Like a casque of scorching steel” (I, 25-28).
At the same time, Wilde contrasts this intense outburst of feelings with sentiments similar to
Emotional Numbing, one of the phenomena that psychologists also encounter in their study of trauma processing (Litz et al. 607). The narrator, “though […] a soul in pain” (I, 29), simultaneously is impervious to this distress. Instead, he gains an insightful view into the prisoner’s mind and finds an explanation for his wistful gaze and agitated behavior: he realizes what kind of burden that “hunted thought” must be (I, 31).
From this perspective, the poem also emphasizes the helpless position of the prisoner by comparing him to the figure of Jesus Christ, for instance in the following excerpt: “He does not pray with lips of clay / For his agony to pass; / Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek /
The kiss of Caiaphas” (I, 93-96).24 The first two lines can be considered a reference to the agony of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Olives, or Gethsemane, where he prays to God in agony to such extent that he “fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him” (Mk 14:32-36). Next to that, Caiaphas is a Biblical Jewish high priest that allegedly planned the arrest and execution of Jesus (Gil 4). The kiss therefore is given by
Caiaphas as much as by Judas. The prisoner therefore is symbolically betrayed by the crooked judicial and social system, just like Christ suffered from Judas’s betrayal. Another resemblance between the prisoner awaiting execution and Christ can be found in two stanzas from the second chapter of the poem. The prisoner displays a serene acceptance of his fortune when he does “not wring his hands nor weep” or even “peek or pine” (II, 19-20). The association with Christ’s famous words “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they
24 The “he” this stanza refers to is in fact “each man” who kills the thing he loves (I, 37), but does not go to prison for it. Hence, in spite of the denials “not” and “nor” in these lines, Wilde does describe the prisoner’s situation. 39 are doing”, is not far away (Lk 23:34). The combination of these Biblical references forms an apt example of Wilde’s approach on intensifying the traumatic effect of the execution in the poem. Moreover, the question arises if a man with the same impotence as Jesus on his Way of
Cross, deserves this harsh punishment.
3.2.2. Individual and collective trauma
I know not whether Laws be right
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
(‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ V, 1-6)
Next to offering a view on the traumas of the prisoner awaiting execution, the narrator also frequently refers to the troubles he and the other inmates experience. One of the first aspects in the poem that characterize life in Reading Gaol, is the routine of daily actions for the prisoners. The recurring reference to the wistful look of the prisoner, for instance, always happens when the other prisoners take their daily walk in the yard. In the fourth part, the repetition of this walk is emphasized by the iteration of the lines “silently we went round and round” (IV, 39-43). With nothing else to do and the boredom sprouting from the same old walk, the prisoners are constantly haunted by “the memory of dreadful things” (IV, 45). The engines that seem to drive the motion of the walk are the “Horror” that “stalked before each man” and the “terror” that “crept behind” (IV, 47-48). This could allude to the fact that the walk is actually forced upon the prisoners, or it could even hint that the traumas of prison urge them to keep walking in order to forget. Another example of this routine can be found in the 40 narrator’s use of exact timestamps to illustrate that certain actions happen on fixed hours of the day, like he does in the following lines: “At six o’clock we cleaned our cells, / At seven all was still” (III, 169-170). The idea of obligatory routine can also be linked to the sentence of hard labor, since the narrator claims that “every stone one lifts by day / Becomes one’s heart by night” (V, 53-54). The prisoners are forced to do the same exhausting job every day, which leads to a certain degree of automation and emotional numbing. Wilde even writes something remarkably alike in ‘De Profundis’ concerning the numbing effect of prison: “The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart […] but that it turns one’s heart to stone.
One sometimes feels that it is only with a front of brass and a lip of scorn that one can get through the day at all” (Wilde 9). Wilde ‘s choice for depicting the routine, and automating effect, of the prison obligations therefore clearly stems from his personal experience.
Suffice it to say that the repetition of these actions causes an extensive amount of boredom and fatigue for the prisoners, both mentally and physically. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that the days in Reading Gaol go by slowly. ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ portrays this apparent eternity of imprisonment with a strong sense of temporality. According to the narrator, in Reading Gaol “each day is like a year, / A year whose days are long” (V, 5).
Other references the narrator makes to the sloth of time appear on regular occasions in the poem, for instance when he mentions that the unceasing sound of the wind eventually turns into the noise of “a wheel of turning-steel” to such an extent that the prisoners “felt the minutes crawl” (III, 159-160). Moreover, a period of three years is repeatedly described as
“three long years” as well (IV, 73-75). Even Wilde himself was no stranger to this problem, as he admits to it in ‘De Profundis’: “we think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell again” (Wilde 9). As can be concluded from the poem, and ‘De Profundis’, the days in prison are identical, and the misery is omnipresent. Eventually, this causes them to blend into one blurry sequence of impressions. 41
This conscious experience of time progress and the difficulty of distinguishing events from the past, also known as temporality, actually often occurs in the processing of trauma. After experiencing an intense trauma, the patients sometimes encounter difficulties in situating the event in the chronology of time, and their later sense of time at the moment of the event becomes distorted (Mather & Marsden 203-211). Therefore, Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading
Gaol’ also exposes prison trauma in this crooked sense of time that controls the narrator’s perception; a mental effect that is even stimulated by his prison environment. Finally, it is worth mentioning that Bobby Sands’s Prison Poems also contains this sense of prolonged time, for instance in ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’: “From day to day in Castlereagh, / The hours tick by like years, / While to and fro men come and go / To play upon your fears” (439-
442). The fact that this phenomenon appears in the poetry of two poets that were incarcerated also proves it is a significant part of prison trauma.
However, the Reading Gaol in Wilde’s poem does not only affect the prisoner’s sense of time. The prison also stands out as a den of evil by the narrator’s straightforward description of the prison circumstances in the fifth chapter. The cell area is portrayed as a cramped space that resembles a “foul and dark latrine” most, since it emits a stench that reminds him of “the fetid breath of living Death” (V, 38-39). The scarce meals that the prisoners receive consist of “brackish water” and “bitter bread […] full of chalk and lime” (V,
43-46). The narrator also assures this kind of environment is venomous for everyone; this is the place where they “starve the little frightened child”, “scourge the weak”, “flog the fool, /
And gibe the old and grey” (V, 31-34). In the fourth part of the poem “the hideous prison wall” is repeated three times (IV, 58), which contributes to a general image of filthiness.
Moreover, Reading Gaol is even associated with death, since the word appears in the form of a personification a couple of times, for instance when “the Lord of Death with icy breath /
Had entered in to kill” (III, 173-174). This implementation of death as a character in the poem 42 demonstrates the tangible presence of death in prison. The prisoners do not only witness the deaths of others, the inferior circumstances also oblige them to struggle to survive. The omnipresence of death in Reading Gaol is also aptly reflected by Wilde’s portrayal of flowers that wither in the polluted prison air: “But neither milk-white rose nor red/ May bloom in prison air; / The shard, the pebble, and the flint, Are what they give us there: / For flowers have been known to heal / A common man’s despair” (III, 91-95). Next to a literal reference to the lack of flowers in the bare prison landscape, this stanza can equally be considered a representation of the curative power of nature. In the light of Bobby Sands’s ‘Comrades in the
Dark’, this stanza could even be an allegorical representation of the Reading prisoners as flowers. In his poem, Sands talks about the republican prisoners as flowers picked from their green fields and left to fade away in prison, which resembles Wilde’s stanza to some extent.25
However, despite the flowers in Sands’s poem also “wither in their bloom” (28), he still remains relatively optimistic and hopeful of a future where the republican ideology thrives again, or as he phrases it: “I care not should we freemen die, / To see the garden flower” (33-
34). Wilde’s poem on the contrary is rather characterized by hopelessness and pessimism, which is proven by the narrator’s claim that “something was dead in each of us, / And what was dead was Hope” (III, 185-186). This denial of hope in any form also speaks from the lines: “He did not wring his hands, as do / Those witless men who dare / To try to rear the changeling Hope / In the cave of black Despair” (II, 13-16). Wilde’s meaning behind this excerpt seems outspoken: it is foolish to look for sparks of hope in prison, because hope does not belong there. Instead, the horror and misery of prison are so overwhelming that there is only room for “Fear” (III, 129). Some of the consequences of this deeply rooted fear in prison also appear in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. While “some men curse, and some men weep, /
And some men make no moan” (V, 69-70), and others even “grow mad” (V, 35), the narrator
25 See p.30 in the paragraph about ‘Comrades in the Dark’. 43 is sure that “all grow bad” (V, 35).
Another interesting interpretation of certain fragments from the poem also relates to the atmosphere of hopelessness, and can also be considered part of the prison trauma. During his description of what happens to the prisoner after he is hanged, the narrator contemplates what awaits the prisoners in general when they die. In his pondering, the narrator comes to a couple of frightening conclusions. First of all, the poem shows the lack of a proper burial for the prisoners. After “they hanged him as a beast is hanged”, the prison staff simply puts him in the ground in the same manner in the final stanzas of the fourth chapter (IV, 115-120). The fact that the guards mock the corpse and strip down his clothes, another subtle reference to
Christ’s Way Of Cross, proves the degraded status of the prisoner. Furthermore, the traumatic effect of being killed and buried like an animal is intensified by the image of his grave. This
“dishonored grave” (IV, 128) in fact is nothing but “a hole” (IV, 120), also represented as “no grave at all: / Only a stretch of mud and sand / By the hideous prison-wall” (IV, 56-60). The fear that this inferior and anonymous burial evokes is also demonstrated when the prisoners pass by one of these open graves, waiting for the next executed prisoner. When he examines the grave, the narrator notices that “With yawning mouth the yellow hole / gaped for a living thing” (III, 61-62). After their confrontation with the executions and the deplorable circumstances of the burials, the prisoners are aware that their lives could end in the same way when dying in Reading Gaol. It is clear that the sight of this prisoner’s grave, the moment the other prisoners have an unsettling look underneath the surface of prison procedures, left a deep impact on them because they consequently go to their cells “with soul intent / On Death and Dread and Doom” (III, 67-68).
Next to this distressing discovery, the narrator mulls over another worrisome aspect of dying in prison: the fact that the prisoner will not be missed by anyone. As he comes to realize in the following stanza, there are few people that would actually mourn his death: “alien tears 44 will fill for him / Pity’s long-broken urn,/ For his mourner will be outcast men, / And outcasts always mourn” (IV, 135-138). In other words, only the other inmates know of this horrifying death and therefore think about it, however, they do not really know the deceased. They mourn over their own misfortunes in prison rather than actually pity his loss. From this perspective, the broken urn of pity in the excerpt is a metaphor for the general loss of compassion and pity of humanity, especially for the prisoners as the “lowest ones” in society
(Mandela). Perhaps even worse is the thought that a prisoner will always carry his past with him. The idea that a prisoner remains one for life, and even in the afterlife, is incorporated in the poem by the recurring motif of fetters and gyves. Despite his death, the executed prisoner still lies “deep down below a prison-yard […] with fetters on each foot” (IV, 63-65).
Moreover, the prisoner’s grave is still located within the prison walls, which means he will never even physically leave it after his death. The same image of perpetual imprisonment is displayed in the lines “The world is wide, / But fettered limbs go lame!” (III, 134-135).
Although they may be free on a physical level, mentally the prisoners still are stuck to their past and the traumas they carry along. However, Oscar Wilde did not only incorporate this idea in the poem; he mentions something notably similar in the instructions to his publisher
Robert Ross: “I know that on the day of my release I will merely be moving from one prison into another, and there are times when the whole world seems to be no larger than my cell, and as full of terror for me” (Ross 5). His feeling that society still will remain a prison for him, is also reflected in one particular line from the poem: “And thus we rust Life’s Iron chain” (V, 67). Through this imagery, Wilde explicitly voices his conviction that life in contemporary society has the inherent quality of metaphorically chaining people up or restraining them, which only contributes to the general mood of pessimism that dominates the poem.
Earlier in this analysis, it already became clear that the hanging stands out as one of 45 the major traumas in the poem. Another convincing argument for this assumption is the imagery of Wilde in his recurrent descriptions of the scaffold. The hanging does not only become a trauma for the prisoner awaiting execution, it also contaminates the minds of the other prisoners. The narrator’s fear dominates his references to the gallows of Reading Gaol, because the descriptions make them appear even ghastlier. Wilde seemingly stimulates the reader to look behind the concrete form of the wooden construction and emphasizes its sole purpose of killing human beings. For instance, Wilde’s narrator refers to the noose in detail as
“three leathern thongs” (I, 83) or “a murderer’s collar” (II, 47).26 After his personal confrontation with the brutal efficiency of the executions, the narrator realizes that death is never far away in Reading Gaol and that it can occur abruptly, or as he puts it: “Three yards of cord and a sliding board, / Are all the gallows’ need” (III, 177-178). The horror of the gallows even haunts the narrator and the other prisoners in their sleep: “We saw the greasy hempen rope / Hooked to the blackened beam, / And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare /
Strangled into a scream” (III, 213-216). This excerpt, and the third chapter of the poem in general, reflects the severe impact of the hangings on the prisoners by in account of the nightmares that trouble them. Although there is little recorded data in psychological studies on nightmares and their relation with traumas, some studies have proven that these dreams can be an indicator for posttraumatic stress. As a means of clarification, the following passage comes from a psychological study on the nightmares of sixty trauma patients that is published in Journal of Traumatic Stress in 2001:
Ten of 21 dream reports from morning diaries were rated and described as similar to
the recent traumatic event. The participants reporting these distressing “trauma
dreams” had more severe concurrent PTSD symptoms than those reporting other
26 Note the shared fascination for the image of the noose between Oscar Wilde and Bobby Sands, see p. 24. 46
categories of dreams and had more severe initial and follow-up PTSD than those
without dream recall. (Mellman et al. 241)
In this light, the reaction of the prisoners on the hanging in the poem can without a doubt be related to psychological trauma. Moreover, other psychological studies also confirm that
“PTSD sufferers often re-experience a traumatic event in the form of a ‘flashback’, nightmare or recurrent memory” (Mather & Marsden 206). From that perspective, the following stanza from ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ can also be considered a reflection of how the narrator re- experiences his traumas through hallucinations or nightmares. In his cell at night, the narrator suddenly sees “evil sprite[s]” (III, 113): “They glided past, they glided fast, / Like travelers through a mist: / They mocked the moon in rigadoon / Of delicate turn and twist, / And with formal pace and loathsome grace / The phantoms kept their tryst” (III, 115-120). Just as was the case in ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’, where the narrator is haunted by similar hallucinations in his cell, these evil spirits again remind of the prisoners of Reading Gaol that died, as they evoke a deep feeling of terror within the narrator.27 The re-experiencing of traumas through hallucinations in both poems can be linked to Freud’s principle of Nachträglichkeit, which describes a temporal relation between two events of a different kind. The following study links these two events in Freud’s theory to nightmares and hallucinations of trauma patients:
The first [event] has the character of shock or surprise and is often of such traumatic
intensity that the subject is unable to assimilate it or properly experience it. At a later
time, a relatively trivial event, […] catalyses a response of disproportionate affective
charge, only explicable […] by reference to the first event. He paradox of
Nachträglichkeit is that the first event is only experienced after the second event even
though the latter is not chronologically prior. (Mather & Marsden 211)
27 See p. 17 for the paragraph on hallucinations in Sands’s poetry. 47
Hence, the hallucinations in both poems can be regarded as examples of Nachträglichkeit.
The narrators re-experience horrible events that they know of, the deaths of other prisoners, far more intensely than before. The revisit of the trauma is also triggered by a trivial event, the shadows in their cells, and happens after the actual event has occurred. Not only do the silhouettes remind the narrator of the executed prisoner in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol, his deep fear is also provoked by the words of the imaginary shapes: “The world is wide, / But fettered limbs go lame!” (III, 133-134). This refers to another sincere concern of the narrator: the question whether a prisoner can ever go back to a normal life after his sentence.
Furthermore, the poem contains other elements triggered by the execution that can reflect trauma. On the moment the hanging takes place in the poem, the narrator mentions remarkably few details about the event. Instead of the elaborate grim descriptions of the gallows, the stanza that refers to his death is characterized by brevity on behalf of the narrator.
The narrator first tells how the prisoners “watched him day by day” (II, 65), when the following stanza suddenly introduces new information to the unsuspecting reader: “At last the dead man walked no more / Amongst the Trial Men, / And I knew that he was standing up
/ In the black dock’s dreadful pen, / And that never would I see his face / In God’s sweet world again” (II, 61-66). The change between these two stanzas is strikingly abrupt as regards content, and if it were not for the previous references to the gallows, the reader would not even be aware of the fact the prisoner is hanged. This withholding of information is also a literary strategy in postmodernism to reflect the troublesome processing of trauma, mainly because actual trauma patients often suppress the particular details of the event in order to avoid the painful process of reliving it (Elsaesser 197). Besides, this literary approach is an equally useful tool to hold back crucial information of the storyline until the end. From this perspective, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ reflects the same kind of suppression of information and similarly postpones sharing it, since the actual execution is not discussed in- 48 depth until the end of the fourth chapter of the poem. There, the narrator finally manages to admit that “they hanged him as a beast is hanged: / they did not even toll / A requiem that might have brought / Rest to his startled soul” (IV, 115-118). What is equally striking about
Wilde’s portrayal of Reading Gaol, is his unification of the prisoners as a whole. The narrator consistently uses “we” and “us” to describe his feelings of terror and misfortunes, as if they are collectively shared. The following stanza forms an apt example of the unity of their actions and the connection of their feelings: “We sewed the sacks, we broke the stone, / We turned the dusty drill: / We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, / And sweated on the mill:
/ But in the heart of every man / Terror was lying still” (III, 49-54). The fact that the prisoners are haunted by the same dreams, fears and traumas creates an atmosphere of solidarity similar to what was noticeable in the poetry of Bobby Sands.28 It should not come as a surprise that
Wilde felt connected to the prisoners, knowing all too well what they went through after his own personal experiences. He even mentions this thought, not devoid of his typical wit, in his motivation for publishing the poem in Reynold’s Magazine. According to Wilde, this is an apt medium for the first distribution of his poem, “because it circulates widely among the criminal classes, to which I now belong, for once I will be read by my peers, a new experience for me” (Kiberd 336). Wilde incorporates the same idea into ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ by his conscious unification of the prisoners as if they were a body of interconnected souls.
Nonetheless, this perception of collectivity does not always dominate the poetry. Quite logically, the prisoner does not spend all of his days in the company of other inmates. Wilde therefore also highlights the moments of individual distress that affect the narrator. Then, the reader gets a completely different picture of how the prisoners spend their days, “each in his separate Hell”, where “the silence is more awful far / Than the sound of a brazen bell” (V, 58-
60). Stanzas like these emphasize how heavily the incarceration experience can weigh when
28 For Sands’s portrayal of solidarity: see p.30. 49 one has to get through on one’s own. The processing of prison trauma, and even more so in the setting of a Victorian jail cell in the late 1800s, mostly happens on a personal level.
Hence, if the processing happens on an individual level, the consequences of the prison traumas should differ from prisoner to prisoner as well. Psychological research on predictors of prisoners’ distress, for instance, concludes the following: “a prisoner’s condition […] is determined by variation in what happens during incarceration, in resources for overcoming and managing the experience, as well as in individual characteristics”
(Hochstetler 437). This statement supports the assumption that the degree of intensity of prison trauma depends on several factors that vary from prisoner to prisoner. When looking at
‘De Profundis’, it becomes clear that Oscar Wilde at first was one of those prisoners on whom the incarceration experience weighed heavily:
While I was in Wandsworth prison I longed to die. It was my one desire. When after
two months in the infirmary I was transferred here, and found myself growing
gradually better in physical health, I was filled with rage. I determined to commit
suicide on the very day on which I left prison. (Wilde 7)
Wilde was known as an individualist; his confinement in prison for sodomy and his new environment with a majority of people with lower intellectual interests contributed to a profound feeling of isolation. Unlike Bobby Sands, who was literally surrounded by kindred spirits sharing the same ideology in the cells around him, Wilde was rather on his own. This feeling of isolation also shimmers in the lines of ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, for instance in two consecutive stanzas of the fifth chapter, where the narrator complains that “never a human voice comes near / To speak a gentle word: / And the eye that watches through the door / Is pitiless and hard” (V, 61-64).29 The narrator outspokenly longs for human contact
29 There is a striking resemblance between this “eye that watches through the door” (V, 63) and the recurrent Watcher-figure in Bobby Sands’s poetry (p.8). The feeling of being watched during their imprisonment must have intrigued both poets. 50 and sociability. Instead, the little contact he receives is distant and impersonal. This image of the isolated prisoner yearning for conversation in fact could correspond with Wilde’s actual feelings in Reading Gaol. In his Irish Classics, literary critic and Wilde-connoisseur Declan
Kiberd suggests the following:
Solitary confinement was the worst of all punishments. Designed to make offenders
confront the nature of their sin, it was in fact a cynical device to destroy the sense of
camaraderie with fellow inmates. In the prison sick-bay, Wilde so entertained inmates
with quips and stories that a guard was placed by his bed, under strict instructions not
to answer if the prisoner spoke. It was as if the whole process was designed to
disconnect him from all possible audiences. (Kiberd 334-335)
Unable to exercise his typical wit because of his isolation from any potential audience, Wilde may very well have exclaimed the same complaints as the narrator in his poem; he too must have felt “degraded and alone” (V, 68). As these two stanzas show, the horror and trauma of imprisonment also lies in the sudden deprivation of the prisoner’s social status and his possibilities of social contact. In ‘De Profundis’, Wilde also comes to realize this terrible power incarceration carries with it: “For I have come […] from a sort of eternity of fame to a sort of eternity of infamy, and sometimes seem to myself to have shown […] that between the famous and the infamous there is but one step, if as much as one” (Wilde 6). Because of these similarities and the close connection with Wilde’s imprisonment in terms of time and content, it is clear that ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ and ‘De Profundis’ share a lot of opinions about life in prison.
It should not come as a surprise that every prisoner longs to escape such deplorable circumstances, and this desire is also reflected in the poem. The highlight of the day in
Reading Gaol, seems to be the walk in the prison’s yard. Wilde’s narrator describes how the prisoners yearn for “God’s sweet air” (IV, 13). Furthermore, the prisoner awaiting execution 51 in the beginning of the poem, is characterized by his wistful look “upon that little tent of blue
/ which prisoners call the sky” (I, 15-16). Later on, Wilde also applies this wistful gaze at the sky onto all inmates of Reading in his unification of the prisoners as a whole (IV, 21-22). The sky, or its rectangular blue representation in the poem, symbolizes the image of freedom for the prisoners. Through the open air above their heads, they can grasp a portion of nature and liberty that awaits outside, from the inside. The joy of liberty is also noticeable in the lines that describe this blue window, because they associate it with images of frivolity. The clouds that pass by, for example, are referred to as “careless” and “in happy freedom” (I, 23-24).
This small window to the outside even has a curative function for the prisoner in the beginning of the poem, in his struggle against the sapping environment of Reading Gaol. He breathes the air “as though it held / Some healthful anodyne” and drinks the sun “as though it had been wine” (II, 21-24). Therefore, the freedom of nature stands out as a motif of energy and purity in the poem. In the letter written during his incarceration, Wilde also confirms this new bond with nature noticeable in the poem: “society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, […] but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed”
(Wilde 24). The traumas of imprisonment caused him to withdraw from society and live as a hermit, which he eventually did during his exile in France (Ellman 375). Wilde’s personal appeal to nature, which he developed in prison, is therefore clearly shared by the prisoners in his poem. Despite the refreshing view on the world outside prison, Wilde subtly indicates that the experience of freedom and nature is merely a taste for the prisoners in the poem. The idea of freedom is false because of their imprisonment, and this awareness never ceases to dominate the poem, even in the aforementioned references to the sky that symbolizes nature.
For instance, in Reading Gaol, the “bars […] hide the stars” of the same sky they daily look at (III, 77). These bars also “blur the gracious moon, / And blind the goodly sun” (V, 19-20), 52 and therefore it becomes that the joyful image of freedom they perceive is nothing more than a fake; an idealization. The idea that freedom literally is a couple of yards away, but at the same time remains intangible, makes it the more painful and traumatic. This thinking path also helps to explain the wording of the line “beneath the leaden sky” (III, 4), since this weight could reflect the mental burden prisoners carry by merely looking at it. Wilde ultimately takes away every illusion in the following stanzas, where he opposes some of the good that freedom has to offer to the horrible execution by hanging, characterized by his disarming wit: “It is sweet to dance to violins / When Love and Life are fair: / to dance to flutes, to dance to lutes / Is delicate and rare: / But it is not sweet with nimble feet / To dance upon the air!” (II, 49-54). The one action in prison that partly simulates the joy of life as a free man quite grimly seems to be an execution.
Finally, it is important to mention that Wilde also uses capitalized concepts such as life, death, justice, lust and humanity in his depiction of Reading Gaol. These are explicit personifications of abstract themes; they behave as animate beings since they are often connected to actions such as breathing and swerving or have the ability of possessing human characteristics like “hands” (I, 8). These personifications can remind the reader of certain stories from the Bible or for example the medieval morality play Everyman, where abstract concepts such as Death, Knowledge and Good Deeds also play an animate role as allegorical representations of their original meanings. This connection is not at all far-fetched after figuring out that Wilde’s poem is not devoid of any moral bias. Despite his aesthetic poetics, he still was convinced that “if a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly will see its moral lesson” (Holland 441). Thus, according to Wilde an explicit moral lesson in the artwork does not have to repress its beauty in se, as it concerns two different aspects. However, what exactly is the moral lesson that Oscar Wilde tries to share with his poem, and how does this 53 relate to prison trauma? First of all, it could be a matter of raising the reader’s moral awareness that the judicial system, which includes the prison procedures, is mildly put crooked at its core. This early assumption becomes more probable when one looks at the following excerpt from ‘De Profundis’: “the prison style is absolutely and entirely wrong. I would give anything to be able to alter it when I go out. I intend to try” (Wilde 20). This intention of fighting the deplorable circumstances in prison also surfaces in the poem, because the prison is often described as a faulty institution. Certain stanzas are an equally direct assault to the justice system; the narrator for example complains “that every Law / That men have made for Man, […] But straws the wheat and saves the chaff / With a most evil fan” (V,
7-12). In this complaint, Wilde reverses the idiom saving the wheat from the chaff with a clever pun. Only readers that are familiar with the expression are immediately able to grasp the meaning behind its use in the poem. While laws were initially introduced with the intention of bringing the best out in mankind and society, they have quickly reached a stage of counterproductivity. This results in the deterioration of civilization; without any hesitation people that do not abide these laws are thrown in jail and left to “rot and rot” (V, 65). The
“most evil fan” from the previously quoted stanza is a reference to the brutality of the prison regime (V, 12). The fact that “the vilest deeds” bloom “like poison weeds” in prison, and that
“only what is good in Man […] wastes and withers there”, also emphasizes the paradoxical effect of incarceration (V, 25-28). Locked up in an unsettling environment like Reading Gaol by force, it is not exactly a surprise that the prisoners have no motivation at all to alter their behavior. Besides, in ‘De Profundis’ Wilde also remarks that “when the man’s punishment is over, [society] leaves him to himself; […] it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins” (Wilde 6). In other words, the prisoner’s punishment paradoxically seems to start when it is over, because he is confronted with life as a social pariah. When one compares this statement to the findings of this paragraph, it is safe to say 54 that the poem once again proclaims Wilde’s personal view on imprisonment.
Part of the prison trauma in Wilde’s poem therefore also lies in the narrator’s understanding that he is locked up in environment full of squalor by order of law, and that no- one will publically contest this form of injustice until they know about it. Therefore, the exposure of the way that a glorious world empire, England’s status in the Victorian age, treats its own citizens, is an obvious attempt to raise the moral awareness of the reader. Just like the narrator, the people should realize “that every prison men build / Is built with bricks of shame”, and that for this reason it is also “bound with bars lest Christ should see / How men their brothers maim” (V, 15-18). The reader gets the opportunity to take a look at prison behind the curtain, the way the prisoners know it all too well. From this perspective, the poem could even subtly reflect the attempts of the authorities to keep their prison policies secretive.
For example, the uniforms of the guards at first sight display neatness and professionalism, however, they also bear different traces: although “Their uniforms were spick and span, / And they wore their Sunday suits”, the prisoners “knew the work they had been at / By the quicklime on their boots” (IV, 51-54). The lime on their boots is connected to another place in
Reading Gaol, which is clarified in the following stanzas, where the narrator describes the grave of the executed prisoner and “a little heap of burning lime, / That the man should have his pall” (V, 59-60). While they appear genteel on the surface, these guards in fact have blood on their hands. Although this is an obvious assault to the staged innocence of the guards, the narrator partly understands their behavior, as he explains: “for he to whom a watcher’s doom /
Is given as his task, / Must set a lock upon his lips, / And make his face a mask” (III, 27-30).
The governor is characterized by the same misleading camouflage in the poem. Despite his imposing attire “all in shiny black”, he still has “the yellow face of Doom” (I, 71-72). In a different stanza, he is also portrayed as the typical gentleman smoking his pipe “twice a day” and drinking his daily “quart of beer”, while (with the same apathy) he claims to be “glad / 55
The hangman’s hands are near” (III, 19-24). Both the prison staff and the authorities maintain an image of professionalism and humanity on the outside, a disguise that is exposed behind the prison walls. The narrator also unmasks this skillfulness in hiding prison procedures in the following lines: “And they do well to hide their Hell, / For in it things are done / That son of
God nor son of Man / Ever should look upon!” (V, 21-24). The public would know about this already if the prisoners were allowed to speak, though “none a word may say” (V, 36).
However, not all moral guilt in the poem concerns the prison staff or the responsible authorities. In order to cope with their punishment and facilitate the trauma processing, the prisoners should in the first place clear their own conscience. After all, they are criminals who violated their environment in some way. Quite remarkably, the prisoners in ‘The Ballad of
Reading Gaol’ seem to have this notion of guilt. After the prisoner is executed, they realize
“that, had each got his due / They should have died instead: / He had but killed a thing that lived / Whilst they had killed the dead. / For he who sins a second time / Wakes a dead soul to pain” (IV, 27-32). Next confirming that they too have made mistakes, this recognition of sinning contributes to the prisoners a noble image. This once again underlines their humanity, which at the same time makes them look more innocent. Wilde’s moral lesson in the poem is more a case of raising awareness: no man really deserves the injustice of contemporary justice and the consequent horrors of prison. Furthermore, it is relevant to mention that Wilde’s personifications could also serve a different purpose than sharing a moral lesson. Because of these personifications, the presence of the abstract concepts becomes tangible in the poem, just like it is tangible in the direct environment of the actual prisoners. Other inmates are executed or nearly starve, so there always is the struggle between life and death. Moreover, these concepts are often contemplated by the narrator in his criticism on the judicial system, society and the circumstances in jail. All themes, whether be it Death, Life, Fear or Lust, 56 became such a part of the prison trauma, that they are portrayed as characters that actively participate in the poem.
3.2.3. Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde: kindred poets with kindred poetics?
With the previous analysis of Prison Poems and ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ in mind, it turns out that Bobby Sands writes something strikingly similar to the aforementioned lines from Wilde’s ‘II, 9’ in ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’: “To dance and prance to love’s romance /
Is elegant and neat. / To wine and dine on red port wine / Is such a tasty treat, / To eat and sit where you’ve just shit! / Is not so bloody sweet!” (217-222).30 In both cases, the first four lines of the stanza contain peaceful and pleasant imagery of freedom. Moreover, the words
“dance” and “love” appear in the same part of the stanza. After these four lines both poets seem to introduce a volta, which they use to abruptly confront the reader with the harsh reality of the circumstances in prison, consequently portrayed in the last two lines. Although Wilde refers to the hanging and Bobby Sands takes the opportunity to describe the poor comfort of the narrator’s cell, they both use “sweet” to refer to the aforementioned frivolities of life. Next to this finding, the analysis already revealed certain correspondences between the poetry of
Wilde and Bobby Sands, for instance the metaphoric use of flowers in prison and the descriptions of haunting hallucinations. Prominent similarities like these could suggest that
Bobby Sands read Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ and at least was inspired by it in terms of poetics. After investigating this further, the previous assumption becomes even more probable. Although nothing with actual proof presenting Oscar Wilde as a source of inspiration for Bobby Sands has yet been written, Sands’s prison diary has something interesting to show. Written in the first seventeen days of his hunger strike, this document contains personal reflections in prose on the blanket protest and general prison circumstances.
On March 7 1981, Sands wrote down the following interesting remark:
30 In order to assure oversight: Wilde’s corresponding stanza ‘II, 9’ can be found on p.52. 57
The Screws are staring at me perplexed. Many of them hope (if their eyes tell the
truth) that I will die. If need be, I’ll oblige them, but my God they are fools. Oscar
Wilde did not do justice to them for I believe they are lower than even he thought. And
I may add there is only one thing lower than a Screw and that is a Governor. (Sands 7)
In ‘De Profundis’ and ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, Oscar Wilde overtly criticizes the circumstances in prison and the judicial system of his time.31 This explicit reference to Wilde and the content of the two works that are related to his imprisonment, supports the statement that Sands had read Wilde’s writings. Wilde, an almost legendary Irish writer, suffered a fate of incarceration that the Irish rebel Bobby Sands experienced as well. Because of this mutual imprisonment, he must have considered the works that Oscar Wilde constituted in prison those of a kindred spirit. From this perspective, the similarities between the poetry of Bobby
Sands and Oscar Wilde, these include the watcher-figure, the recurrent image of the noose and hanging, the phenomena of temporality and solidarity as regards trauma processing, now gain extra significance in the broader perspective of this analysis on prison trauma in poetry.32
Generally, these parallels appear in the poetry of Sands and Wilde as logical reactions to prison trauma, which is a timeless phenomenon, because they are factors typical of an environment that abuses prisoners. In the light of this new find, however, some of the similarities could even be considered conscious literary references on Sands’s behalf to reflect the horrors of prison, because they correspond with the earlier and publically better-known work of Oscar Wilde ánd they contribute to his credibility as a literary figure. This should not come as a surprise when knowing that Sands, as much a republican propagandist as a poet, wanted to reach the largest audience possible in order to fight the circumstances of the IRA prisoners in Maze. Besides, although his status as a convict accused of terrorism may at first give a different impression, Sands’s literary knowledge was profound. While incarcerated in
31This criticism is discussed in the section on prison trauma in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. 32 All these similarities have also been clarified in the chapter on prison trauma in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. 58 the H-Blocks, for example, he also began reading Marx’s Communist Manifesto and studied the works of revolutionaries as Ché Guevara and James Connolly (Hanke 20). Moreover, the analysis of Prison Poems revealed certain references to the poetry of William Wordsworth and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe that are too accurate to be a mere coincidence. This combination of arguments make the assumption that Sands’s reproduced certain elements from Wilde’s poetry the more plausible. Nonetheless, this does not have to harm the truth and sincerity of Sands’s account of life in Maze prison in Prison Poems per se. As has been explained in the previous analysis, Bobby Sands without a doubt experienced a rough and inhumane treatment and not every element in the works of both poets correspond with one another. Despite his choice for foregrounding certain aspects of prison life in particular and their remarkable resemblance to Wilde’s poem, his poetry still is characterized by a style of his own. The prison poetry of Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde, with its differences in style, setting, zeitgeist and prison circumstances in general, therefore offers two unique perspectives on prison trauma.
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4. Lord Byron
Lord Byron, just like Oscar Wilde a flamboyant literary figure, is the third and final writer whose prison poetry will be tackled. In the light of this analysis on prison trauma, however,
Byron in fact is the odd one out. Although his poem ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ gives the poetic reflection of a prisoner in his isolated environment, Byron has never been a prisoner himself.
Nevertheless, this lack of personal incarceration experience should not be regarded as a disadvantage, since it contributes to three divergent angles on imprisonment in this analysis:
Bobby Sands: the prisoner who never left prison and wrote his poetry on site, Oscar Wilde: the prisoner who did leave prison and wrote his poem shortly afterwards, and Lord Byron: the freeman who composes a poem on imprisonment. Therefore, it is safe to say that these three accounts of prison trauma will only enrich the findings of the analysis and give a broader picture of the poetic approach on the subject in the nineteenth and twentieth century.
4.1. A different perspective on prison trauma: Byron’s motivation behind ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’
As was also the case with Oscar Wilde before his incarceration, George Gordon Byron lived a life of flamboyance and eccentricity. Without any doubt, one of the aspects that contributed to this popular image, is his fascination for the exotic. This interest for the mystery of what was foreign and unknown, for example became explicit in his work by his introduction of orientalism in English poetry, noticeable in tales like ‘The Corsair’ and ‘The Bride of
Abydos’ (Drucker 140-142). An equally prominent manifestation of Byron’s desire for exploring the unknown is his urge for travelling; an expensive hobby he could nonetheless afford because of his position as a young aristocrat (Garrett 13). Throughout his life, he journeyed to Italy and Greece and even spent his last eight years abroad. However, one trip in particular was an undeniably significant inspiration for ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’, the poem 60 this analysis will focus on. In 1816, Lord Byron traveled through Switzerland in the company of the fellow Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, with the intention of visiting the places that are described in the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau. They were on a sailing trip on Lake
Geneva when they stopped to visit the Château de Chillon, a medieval island castle established near the shore of the lake (Huguenin 66-67). According to the castle’s chronicles, the duo received an extensive guided tour around the château upon their arrival (Huguenin
68). The castle’s dungeons in particular left an impression on Byron because they were connected to the story of François Bonivard (Huguenin 68).33 In 1530, the Genevois ecclesiast
Bonivard was imprisoned in these dungeons by the Duke of Savoy for his participation in patriotic rebellion and undermining his authority. Only six years later he was freed from his cell by Bernese troops that conquered the castle (Van Amstel 822-825). ‘The Prisoner of
Chillon’ is Byron’s fictional portrayal of Bonivard’s misfortunes in prison, which he immediately composed within two weeks after his visit to the château. Despite its fourteen stanzas, the poem is quite lengthy as it counts 392 lines. It is a perfect example of a romantic verse-tale, a stylistic template which is typical of Byron’s poetry (Ward & Trent 22). These narrative poems were characterized by their rapid completion, and were composed with two main intentions on Byron’s behalf: “partly to satisfy the public taste for work of this character, and partly to wring the poet’s thoughts from reality to imagination” (Ward & Trent
22). This escape to the imaginative can be explained by Byron’s self-imposed exile; a consequence of public scandals in his home country concerning his bisexuality and the alleged incestuous relationship with his half-sister (Garrett 25). In 1816, its year of publication, ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ was reviewed by for instance Sir Walter Scott and
Francis Jeffrey. Despite its lukewarm reception, the reviews of prominent contemporary critics, proves that the poem did have its share of attention (Prothero 5-6).
33 A picture of this dungeon, the poem’s setting, is included in appendix: p. 116, image 7. 61
As was mentioned, Byron’s portrayal of prison is not based on personal experiences.
Therefore, his motivation behind dedicating a poem to imprisonment, hence indirectly prison trauma, is considerably different than that of Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde. A first aspect that probably made the story of Bonivard appealing to Byron, is that the abstract content roughly matches that of his traditional poems. First of all, the protagonist of the poem is an isolated figure, and is resolute in his struggle against the misfortunes he encounters (Garrett
48). Furthermore, as will be clarified further in the analysis, the purity of nature and liberty stand out as two important themes in the poem, which is typical of Byron’s Romantic poetics
(Garrett 79). This already proves that Byron’s motivation stems from personal interests as a poet rather than from personal experience, which was the case with Sands and Wilde. The subtitle he added to his poem, ‘The Prisoner of Chillon / a fable’ in full, also emphasizes that this work is the result of a poet exercising his imagination on a certain theme, in this case long-term imprisonment. This does however not exclude an analysis on prison trauma, since it is represented frequently in the poem, albeit from a different perspective.
4.2. Prison trauma in Lord Byron’s ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’
Although Lord Byron based his poem on the historical figure of François Bonivard, his portrayal of the prisoner in the poem is not necessarily truthful. Instead of sticking to the dry facts, Byron consciously chose to add fictional elements in order to dramatize the traumatic effect of the narrator’s captivity. In the first stanza, for instance, he confesses that he has
“suffer’d chains and courted death” solely for the sake of his father who “perish’d at the stake” (11-13). Next to losing his father because of an execution, his family counted six brothers “who now are one”, which means he is the only one left (17). Two of these brothers apparently died in battle and he lost another brother at the stake before the last three brothers, including the narrator, are thrown in prison. Nevertheless, the deaths in the storyline match certain prosecutions in the conflict in Geneva during Bonivard’s life; there are similarities 62 between the reason that the characters are prosecuted, “For the God their foes denied” (24), and an actual religious and territorial conflict between Calvinists Protestants and Catholics at that time (Huguenin 72). In the poem these are however fictional additions that affect the protagonist, which contributes to a feeling of compassion among the readers. Already in the first stanza, the reader is aware of the outcome of a terrible process that took years: the narrator witnessed the slow death of his brothers in the castle’s dungeon, preceded by a period of prosecution. This immediate sharing of information is an obvious strategy of Byron; later on in the poem the process is repeated in the narrator’s words “But why delay the truth? – he died” (144). This literary strategy contributes to the poem a sense of straightforward honesty and simplicity. Moreover, all the deceased characters are even pictured as innocent martyrs that were killed out of religious beliefs, which stresses the injustice of their fate, and of the horrors the narrator subsequently experiences in the dungeon.
The distress of the narrator in ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ is caused by several features of the jail cell in which he is confined. In the second stanza, it is described as a “deep and old” dungeon “below the surface of the lake”, hemmed by a “thick wall” and “massy and grey” columns with chains that restrain the three brothers (28-33). This representation provides an image of utter isolation which the poem also reflects in the scarce appearances of the
“keepers”, the ones responsible for guarding the prisoners (301). They only appear two times in the dungeons, with the sole purpose of unchaining the brother’s body and burying it, as well as removing the narrator’s chain near the end. Next to the nearly non-existent interaction with the guards, Byron’s associations of the dungeon with impenetrable objects or areas enhance the image of isolation. The prison is for example compared to a “dark vault” (116), or even “a living grave” (114). The dungeon’s ghastly atmosphere eventually becomes so tangible for the three prisoners, that some of its features are passed on to them. In the third stanza, the narrator first perceives that their “voices took a dreary tone, / An echo of the 63 dungeon stone” and that these voices did not even sound “like [their] own” (63-68). Later on, he even admits that he felt a stone “among the stones” (236). This unification of the prisoners with their environment reveals the plausible effect of long-term imprisonment in the same enclosed environment, to such an extent that the prisoners become a part of it. More than
Sands and Wilde did, Byron puts an emphasis on the loneliness of the prisoners by exploiting the familiar image of a remote medieval dungeon; a frequently used image in Romanticism.
Already then, it intrigued readers as it reminded of mysterious and ghastly events in the dark
Middle Ages (Huguenin 67-68).
This sense of isolation is not solely enlarged by the setting of the poem, though; Byron also pays attention to the psychological impact it has on the narrator. The isolation becomes truly horrifying when the protagonist realizes he is all alone after losing his last brother. When he rushes to him, he “found him not”, a symbolical line that connects the idea of losing the soul to an unreal physical vanishing of the body (211). From this perspective, nothing of a person is left after the soul leaves the body, which merely functions as its container. Perhaps this twist in plot could allude to the physical weakness long-term imprisonment can cause; the brother’s body, next to his lust for life, slowly faded away when alive until eventually nothing remained. Consequently, the narrator’s understanding that he is the only one left to suffer, leads to deep despair, expressed in the poem by a series emotional exclamations: “I only stirred in this black spot, / I only lived, I only drew / The accursed breath of dungeon dew”
(212-214). The narrator’s last connection with humanity is lost along with his brother and he realizes that it “was broken in this fatal place” (218), which makes this scene of recognition one of the most dramatic in the poem. Moreover, the narrator is not only isolated in space, but also in time. He has no clue of what is going on outside, which makes his cell appear as a vacuum in time from where he has “not seen the sun so rise / For years” (43-44). The narrator even lost count of the exact amount of years, “I cannot count them o’er / I lost their long and 64 heavy score” (44-45). The final stanza of Byron’s poem starts with the same distorted temporality that also characterized certain passages in Wilde’s poem: “It might be months, or years, or days- I kept no count, I took no note- no count on time” (366-367).34 If there is no possibility of keeping track of time, there eventually is no need for it either. Time, an intrinsically human phenomenon, can only be effectively put to use in social contexts, for example, its purpose for setting up exact meetings or appointments. For the isolated narrator in Chillon castle, however, the values of time have become superfluous.
Next to the strong sense of isolation, another aspect typical of imprisonment is intensified in Lord Byron’s poem. While the physical restriction of the prisoners in the poetry of Sands and Wilde was caused by cramped cells and the prison walls, the space accessible to the prisoner of Chillon is even more limited. As he describes in the beginning of the poem, the narrator is chained up to one of the columns of the dungeon. This chain is “a cankering thing” that leaves an ineradicable mark on the prisoner, as he claims that “in these limbs its teeth remain” (38-39). The shackles do not only prevent him from any physical exercise in the dungeon and impede his view on the outside, they also hinder the communication with his brothers. First of all, the three prisoners can “not move a single pace” and can “not see eachother’s face” (50-51). Luckily, this does not entirely eradicate the possibility of verbal interaction: “’twas still some solace in the dearth […] To hearken to each other’s speech, /
And each turn comforter to each / With some new hope, or legend old, / Or song heroically bold” (56-61). The human interaction, still present in the beginning of the poem, functions as a sort of anesthetic that softens the pain and trauma of prison. Cuffs do not keep hold of words of hope or comfort, or stories that can serve as a welcome distraction. The clash between the spatial limitation of the brothers and the possibilities of communication is distinctively represented in the paradoxical lines “And thus together – yet apart, / Fettered in hand, but
34 For the paragraph on temporality in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’: p. 40-41. 65 joined in heart” (54-55). Nevertheless, the comfort of other voices does not seem to erase every problem as soon as it becomes clear that “even these at length grew cold” under the burden of their imprisonment (62). Furthermore, the narrator’s brother is described as a man
“strong in his frame” (94) who “perish’d in the foremost rank / With joy” during battle (96-
97). Chained up in prison however, “his spirit wither’d with their clank” until he eventually passes away (98). The description of the chain’s restraining function reaches its climax when the narrator watches his first brother die and is unable to help him. When reliving the event, he realizes: “I saw, and could not hold his head, / Nor reach his dying hand -nor dead,- /
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain, / To rend and gnash my bonds in twain” (145-58). In other words, the powerless position of the narrator is caused by the chains that restrict him from helping out his brother. At the end of an earlier stanza in the poem, there is a dramatic contrast of life and death in a prison setting that connects the chain to the narrator’s deceased brother : “when my last brother droop’d and died, / And I lay living by his side” (46-47). This means two significant aspects of imprisonment, isolation and restriction, are directly connected to the death of two characters in the poem. This connection contributes to the significance of their function in the manifestation of prison trauma in Byron’s poem.
Moreover, the narrator’s relief after being released from his chain also proves its depressing effect. How paradoxical it may without a doubt sound, he even considers it a sort of “liberty to stride / Along [his] cell from side to side” (306-307). A final interesting aspect related to this element in particular, is the unclear motivation of the guardsmen to remove the prisoner’s chain. According to the narrator this seemingly empathic concession has nothing to do with actual compassion on their behalf, since they are “inured to sights of woe” (303). Rather than letting the guards expose a whiff of humanity, Byron’s actual goal behind this sudden shift in plot is to enable the narrator’s depiction of the landscape through the barred window of his 66 cell in the following stanzas.35 Byron therefore bends the story and gives it an illogical, even unrealistic touch to allow certain deviations on the prison theme. The same happens when the narrator’s last brother dies, and he suddenly manages to burst his chain “with one strong bound”, while he previously was unable to (210). It immediately becomes clear that this moment of unrealistic strength was necessary to allow the narrator to rush to his brother and exclaim that he is the only one left in prison: a moment of intensified emotion. This strategy of deviation varies from the approach of Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde, who both wrote their poetry dedicated to the vices of prison, and attempted to make the content of their poems as balanced and logical as possible in order to achieve a realistic portrayal.
Nevertheless, this does not necessarily imply that the horrors of Byron’s prison come across as phoney or plastic. On the contrary, there is a lot of attention for the intense description of emotions and the feelings often seem all too recognizable. In Suspended
Judgments, a collection of literary essays, influential British novelist and lecturer John
Cowper Powys connects this characteristic intensification of emotions to the image of Byron:
“It is simply the intensification, to a point of fine poetic fury, of emotions and attitudes and gestures which we all share under the pressure of spirit youth” (Powys 279). He even considered this intensification of familiar emotions the key of Byron’s success:
He would never have become all this; he would never have stirred the fancy of the
masses of people as he has; if there were not in his temperament something essentially
simple, human, and within the comprehension of quite ordinary minds. (Powys 80)
From this perspective, Byron’s poem can also be understood as an accessible literary work on prison and its traumas; work that practically every reader of his time could easily process and digest. Bobby Sands’s and Wilde’s poetry demands of the reader a certain degree of social insight and mental exercise in order to fully grasp the poetry’s sense and criticism. Byron’s
35 In the poem, this concerns the lines 334-355. 67 account on prison trauma is rather dominated by the portrayal of emotions in his typical
Romantic way and far less confronting by its situation in a long gone past. Cowper Powys’s only comparison between the poetics of Wilde and Byron corresponds with this opinion at its core: “It might indeed be maintained that what Oscar Wilde is to the rare and more perverse minority, Byron is to the solid majority of downright simple philistines” (Powys 279). Despite the fact that this statement is quite radically formulated, and not entirely uncontroversial, its core still contains some truth. It is plausible that Lord Byron is the poet in this analysis whose prison poetry could most appeal to the broader public, by, for example, its aforementioned focus on recognizable emotions and fictional setting. Nevertheless, the reader of his poem does get a vivid impression of the possible horrors of prison that should not be regarded as inferior, but simply as different. The general atmosphere of chaos for instance, becomes truly tangible in the poem when the narrator realizes his brother is dying:
And then the sighs he would suppress
Of fainting nature’s feebleness,
More slowly drawn, grew less and less.
I listen’d, but I could not hear -
I call’d, for I was wild with fear;
I knew ‘t was hopeless, but my dread
Would not be thus admonishèd.
I call’d, and thought I heard a sound . (202-209)
This is a striking example of Byron’s skillfulness in bundling an abundance of emotions into a compact amount of lines. The slow death of his brother, a process that likely took years, is depicted in the first three lines of the excerpt. In terms of form these lines slowly come to a stop as well; from a relatively long first line to a shorter second one, and ultimately a line that is broken in two by a comma and ends on a dot that stimulates the reader to pause (202-204). 68
The poem’s formal cadence can at the same time be corresponding with the brother’s fading breath that steadily comes to a standstill. The brother’s dimming struggle equally speaks from the deeper content of this part, for instance reflected by the last words of each line. At first, his resistance is still reflected in the active verb “suppress”, while the second line already admits his “feebleness” (202-203). Finally, his slow decline is confirmed by “less and less”
(204). This section is followed by five lines that sketch the narrator’s state of distress, confusion, and panic following the death (205-209). The repetition of the “I” performing an action, followed by extra information already reflects his panicky and hasty response.
Moreover, when taking notice of the verb meanings, they respectively refer to a part of the mental process of communication. First the narrator listens, then he calls, and lastly he knows.
The combination of these verbs show the chaos of how the approaching death of his brother causes the narrator to do every action he possibly can in order to prevent it. The sequence of these verbs is ultimately mixed in the final line “I call’d, and thought I heard a sound” (209).
After this observation, he finally takes the step to break his chain and rush towards his brother
(210). The excerpt, despite its modest eight lines, can from this perspective be regarded as an extensive summary of emotions and actions connected to a singular event in prison. When one reads the lines with great attention and looks beyond, the scene depicted is characterized by the drama of trauma, expressed in both content and form. The horror of a slow death is also described in detail when the narrator thinks of how his father died: “He, too, was struck, and day by day / Was withered on the stalk away. / Oh, God! It is a fearful thing / To see the human soul take wing / In any shape, in any mood” (174-175). Because of Byron’s outspoken fascination for his descriptions of death, as displayed in the excerpt, Goethe even suspected that he was guilty of a venial murder (Prothero 25). What can probably serve as a better explanation for the narrator’s attention for slow death, is simply that he is in the same situation of long-term captivity and subjected to the same degeneration process. Therefore, 69 the fate of the prosecuted brothers and father could equally be his.
It is no surprise, then, that the narrator bends under the burden of the atrocities he experiences in prison. He confesses, for instance, to be glad that there is “no partner in [his] misery”, because the “thought of them had made [him] mad” (325-328). His words are even grimmer when he admits that he “could have smiled to see / The death that would have set
[him] free” (124-125). This urge to die and escape his troublesome circumstances is however inconsistent, because it is also opposed to sparks of faith in the poem. “I know not why / I could not die”, he contemplates, “I had no earthly hope-but faith, / And that forbade a selfish death” (227-230). Overall, the narrator’s view on death has striking resemblances with the philosophy of the narrator in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. When his first brother dies, for example, the narrator tries to convince the guards to lay “his corse in dust whereon the day /
Might shine” (153-154). At first, he considers this a strange thought, but then concludes “That even in death his freeborn breast / In such dungeon could not rest”(156-157). The notion that a prisoner can remain imprisoned in the afterlife, especially when buried within the prison walls, is therefore also reflected in Byron’s poem.36 When comparing the poems of Byron and
Wilde, another remarkable parallel stands out. In ‘De Profundis’, Wilde realized that he would just be moving from one jail into another upon his release, a thought that was also expressed in his poem by the frequently recurring motif of fetters. The following lines from
‘The Prisoner Of Chillon’ convey a similar message: “For I had buried one and all, / Who loved me in a human shape; / And the whole earth would henceforth be / A wider prison unto me” (320-323). After the extinction of his family members, he realizes he will never understand the joy of life anymore. The traumas of Chillon will forever haunt him, which at the same time means he will never be entirely free.
36 For the resembling paragraph on the narrator of ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’: see p.44. 70
On a different note, one more interesting psychological phenomenon can be added to this study’s expanding list of elements that correspond with prison trauma. Earlier comparative research on the poetry of Byron and Keats, concludes that Byron “resorts occasionally to synaesthesia to convey a vague, ill-defined, or even hallucinatory mood” (De
Ullman 822). Synesthesia can be defined as a neurological disorder in which the stimulation of one sensory organ causes automatic experiences in a second sensory organ; a unification of the senses as it were (Cytowic 5). Consequently, it is ‘The Prisoner Of Chillon’ that serves as an example in the aforementioned literary study on Byron. The synesthesia is reflected in the lines “A light broke in upon my brain, / It was the carol of a bird” (251-252) and “when I did descend again, / The darkness of my dim abode / Fell on me as a heavy load” (359-361).
Byron indeed interweaves the senses in both examples: the sound of a bird triggers a visual perception, while the darkness stimulates the narrator’s sense of touch. Although there is an array of subdivisions for synesthesia, suffice it to say that psychological research has proven that the symptom in general can be connected to posttraumatic stress. As means of clarification, a study on 700 war veterans who “had served at least one warzone deployment” concludes that “synesthesia seems to be associated with PTSD among veterans who had been deployed. This finding may have implications for PTSD diagnostic screening and treatment”
(Hoffman et al 882-885). Although Lord Byron naturally did not intend this reference to trauma theory, it can be considered another legitimate representation of prison trauma interpreted from the poem, which is the aim of this analysis. The mood this mixed perception causes indeed has a lot in common with hallucinations and panic attacks, known to be two other PTSD symptoms, since the narrator describes “the loss of light, and air, / And then of darkness too” in the stanza before he notices the bird’s song. He is pulled into a state of
“vacancy absorbing space” (243), a mental environment with “no stars, no earth, no time, / No check, no change, no good, no crime, / But silence, and a stirless breath / Which neither was 71 of life nor death; / A sea of stagnant idleness, / Blind, boundless, mute and motionless!” (245-
250). The narrator experiences an intensified hallucination that is depicted as a dimension alien to this world and its physical concepts. Moreover, the final line of the excerpt emphasizes his paralyzed senses (250), until the bird eventually triggers the narrator’s sight and hearing with his song. Furthermore, the fact that the hallucination and synesthesia happen in Chillon’s dungeon raises the assumption that these phenomena are caused by the traumatic experiences of the narrator in prison. After all, it is also “the darkness of [his] dim abode”, in other words the ghastly environment of his dungeon, that becomes tangible for the narrator in the second given example of synesthesia (360).
Another relevant finding of the analysis concerns the stylistic approach of Lord Byron in his poem, because he incorporates the account of the prisoner in a dramatic monologue
(Rutherford 66). This typically Romantic poetic form is distinguished by three main aspects in the literary criticism of M.H. Abrams. First of all, the narrative is told by one person that is not the poet. Consequently, this narrator is addressing an audience, but the presence of these auditors is only noticeable in the references the narrator makes, Byron’s monologue, for example, is a retrospective story told to an imaginary audience. Lastly, the reader is able to obtain a vivid image of the narrator’s character and temperament through his speech (Abrams
70-71). Because it enables a detailed and up-close depiction of the narrator’s psyche, the dramatic monologue is also a useful tool to portray the psychological impact of prison trauma.
When looking at the poems of Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde in this analysis, it becomes clear that they also apply the dramatic monologue to some extent. Although in Sands’s case the line between narrator and poet is sometimes blurry, the narrator’s frequent interjections aimed at the reader, for example, show that he clearly addresses an audience.37 Moreover, the strong republican bias of Prison Poems gives the narrator the image of an ardent Irishman fighting
37 “Depression, friend, it did extend / In waves through every cell” (‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’ 85-88) 72 for his freedom under the thumb of a distorted prison regime. Despite the fact that Wilde’s narrator shares a lot of features with his creator, a clear distinction still remains. The narrator’s retrospective criticism on the circumstances in Reading Gaol and society in general is equally aimed at convincing possible listeners.38 Finally, his character of an empathic and observing intellectual in prison is thoroughly developed in the poem as well. This corresponding comparison of the poems with the aspects of the dramatic monologue proves that all three poets, to some extent, make use of it in order to convey their image of prison and its trauma.
4.3. Prison trauma as a vessel for Byron’s Romantic poetics?
Finally, it is clear that Byron assigns an important role to nature in his poem. Whenever it appears, its liberty and purity form a stark contrast with the horrors of prison. After the narrator is released from his chain, he makes “a footing in the wall” to be able to look outside
(318). The description that follows next is a perfect example of the poet celebrating nature, a phenomenon typical of Romanticism (Hunt 296). Unlike the narrator, aged by his imprisonment, the mountains outside his window “were not changed […] in frame” (333):
I saw their thousand years of snow
On high-their wide long lake below,
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O’er channell’d rock and broken bush;
[…]
The fish swam by the castle wall,
And they seem’d joyous each and all;
38 “And all men kill the thing they love, / By all let this be heard” (‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ VI, 13-14). 73
The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast
As then to me he seem’d to fly.
(334-355)
In this scene, the majesty of nature is described as a powerful and vivid entity that is very peaceful at the same time. Consequently, all this visual beauty is explicitly opposed to the narrator’s depleting environment when he descends to his cell again. The area feels like a
“new-dug grave, / Closing o’er one we sought to save” (362-363). What can also be connected to the motif of nature and its contrast to prison, is the recurrent appearance of a bird in the poem. Next to the “eagle” from the previous excerpt (353), the bird re-appears in the narrator’s dungeon. With great awe, he considers it “A visitant from Paradise” (284), because he “sometimes deemed that it might be / [his] brother’s soul come down to [him]” (288). The brother in question is already associated with birds in the second stanza, when the narrator mentions their father would be distressed “to see such bird in such a nest”, “for he was beautiful as day / (When day was beautiful to me / As to young eagles, being free)” (78-81).
The narrator’s youngest brother stands out as an empathic, vivid and innocent young man because of his comparison to birds and nature in general, which makes his death all the more tragic. The comparison of prisoners and birds is nothing new when looking at the tradition of
Romanticism. According to Clair Legette, a researcher of the University of Georgia specialized in Romantic Literature, “nineteenth-century depictions of the solitary poet often rely on the longstanding figurative pairing of birds and prisoners”, because this comparison has a significant underlying meaning (Legette 22). Birds and prisoners are “twin figures for the poet. The idealized prisoner offers perfect isolation, while the vision of the bird offers a free-wheeling independence” (Legette 22). Moreover, this statement tallies with an excerpt from Percy Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry”: 74
A poet is a Nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with
sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician,
who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why (Shelley
486).
From this perspective, Lord Byron is merely using the prison setting and the traumas in the excerpt to convey a deeper image of the isolated poet and his free imagination in a typically
Romantic way. This interpretation also clarifies why “the carol of a bird” wakes the prisoner from his aforementioned state of mental delusion, as it equally symbolizes the powerful effect of liberty that sprouts from the isolation of the poet (252). Hence, this Romantic escapism is more intensified than the forms of escapism that appeared in the poetry of Sands and Wilde.
While their escapism rather is a longing for physical freedom and tranquility as opposed to the horrors of prison, Byron’s portrayal of nature’s beauty subtly is more poetically motivated.
Finally, the fact that Byron often follows the conventions of Romanticism is also noticeable in the wording of ‘The Prisoner Of Chillon’. There for instance is a striking resemblance between the lines “And truly might it be distressed / To see such bird in such a nest” (76-77) and “Thou tree of covert and of rest / for this young Bird that is distrest” (Wordsworth 98-99); lines from William Wordsworth’s poem ‘Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle’. The same goes for “Lone-as a solitary cloud” (294) and Wordsworth’s famous poem ‘I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud’. Byron’s poem even contains a reference to another Lake Poet, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, in the line “I could not die” (228). It is as good as identical to the line from his reputed poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, where the narrator states “And yet I could not die” (Coleridge IV, 262). These similarities did not go unnoticed by the contemporary critics as well. As the following commentary aptly shows, they did not really consider Byron’s poem refreshing: 75
He could not […] carry many volumes on his tour, but among the few […] are found
the two volumes of poems lately republished by Mr. Wordsworth […] to whose
system Lord Byron […] has become a tardy convert, and of whose merits in the poems
on our table we have a silent but unequivocal acknowledgement. (Prothero 27)
In this regard, the content of Byron’s poem is more of a confirmation of, and a connection to,
Romantic tradition. Despite the omnipresence of prison trauma in the poem and its interesting representation, the reader should therefore -next to enjoying its vivid and intensified portrayal-always be mindful of Byron’s motivation underneath. The narrator, a social exile in his isolation and a fighter of his fate perceptive of his own sentiments, can be considered a
Byronic hero adopted to the horrifying setting of a medieval prison (Hunt 55).
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5. Conclusion
First and foremost, the diversity of the findings in this research points out that the poetry of
Bobby Sands, Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron offers three unique accounts on prison trauma.
Not only do they differ on the scale of time and location, their poetry also presents different perspectives and commentary on imprisonment. Bobby Sands’s Prison Poems, the largest work tackled in my analysis, is characterized by the Irish Republican spirit of a blanket protestor oppressed by a harsh prison regime under the Northern Irish criminalization programme during the 1970s and 1980s. The poetry’s descriptions of the daunting physical violence of the interrogations, the deplorable circumstances in prison and the staff’s meticulous techniques for breaking a prisoner’s will, allow an array of insights on prison trauma. Several aspects of his poems displayed striking similarities with psychological trauma theory on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, dissociation, Emotional Numbing, victimization, isolation, shell shock and hallucinations. Although these are mostly no conscious references made by Sands, they do give an enriching underlying image of what troubled the psyche of the blanket protestors under the burden of oppression, which contributed to an interdisciplinary reading of the poems. Moreover, Prison Poems also gives an image between the lines of both the grim and heart-warming ways in which the, physically as well as mentally, nude prisoners tried to alleviate the effects of prison trauma. The narrator and his fellow blanket protestors manage to live through each day by clinging to several individual and collective “life rafts” (‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ 192). These include the ideals of
Catholicism, Irish republicanism, Romantic escapism and the solidarity among “comrades in the dark”, as well as rather trivial pleasures like the joy of smoking a cigarette (‘Comrades in the Dark’ 1). Even the poetry collection itself can be considered a form of collective trauma processing since it was recited to the prisoners as a confirmation of their just cause and their horrifying abuse in prison. Next to this, Sands endeavoured to connect his poetry with the 77 tradition of Irish republican rebel songs, both stylistically and in terms of content. Finally, the analysis also revealed certain connections with the work of Edgar Allan Poe and William
Wordsworth.
Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ already differs from Sands’s account because it was written shortly after, and not during, Wilde’s personal prison experiences.
Characterized by his typical wit, the narrator criticizes the crooked judicial system and the general circumstances of imprisonment and society in general of England of the Victorian era.
Wilde’s poem, focusing on prisoner executions and prison circumstances, has a more pessimistic impact because it sketches the contemplations of a prisoner that will remain imprisoned after his release and even in the afterlife. Despite the clear distance between narrator and poet, several excerpts from ‘De Profundis’ have shown striking parallels in their attitude. Furthermore, his poetry showed links to psychological phenomena such as Emotional
Numbing, trauma-related nightmares and PTSD. It also incorporates the cross-disciplinary idea of temporality, which is a typically postmodern strategy next to a factor in trauma studies. Although Wilde puts the crime of the executed prisoner in perspective, he does emphasize that the prisoners are sinners and that they should be aware of this moral guilt. The moral bias of his poem is unmistakable in the metaphorical use of abstract concepts such as life, death, lust and fear, in order to raise moral awareness.
Finally, Lord Byron’s ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ is the result of a freeman composing a poem on imprisonment and thus exposes prison trauma from a whole different perspective.
His chiefly poetic motivation behind the poem is proven by its outspoken fictional nature and a series of aspects that can be linked to the conventions of Romanticism; for instance noticeable in the motifs of liberty, nature, a medieval setting and similarities in wording with the Lake Poets. Nonetheless, he offers an equally interesting account on prison trauma with a focus on emotional intensification and dramatization of the circumstances of incarceration. 78
Moreover, his conscious use of synaesthesia can be linked to its appearance as a symptom of trauma processing. Despite Byron’s vivid sketch of prison trauma, the reader should nevertheless be mindful of its incorporation in the broader structure of a conventional
Romantic poem.
Next to this array of differences, the comparative analysis of the poetry revealed a surprising amount of parallels. Although nothing with actual proof presenting Oscar Wilde as a source of inspiration for Bobby Sands has yet been written, both works contain resemblances that are too explicit to neglect. First of all, Sands’s poetry reminds of Wilde’s
‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ because of the similarities in wording and certain stanzas. Other correspondences include the motif of the watcher-figure, the recurrent image of the noose and hanging, and the phenomena of temporality and solidarity as regards trauma processing. Both poets even metaphorically portray the prisoners as flowers withering in prison. In the light of these new findings, some of these similarities could even be considered conscious literary approaches on Sands’s behalf to reflect the horrors of prison, because they correspond with the earlier and publically better-known work of Oscar Wilde ánd they contribute to his credibility as a literary figure. This should not come as a surprise when knowing that Sands, as much a republican propagandist as a poet, wanted to reach the largest audience possible in order to fight the circumstances of the IRA prisoners in Maze (Hanke 20). Sands’s explicit singular reference to Wilde in his prison diary can serve as an extra convincing argument.
Moreover, the analysis of Byron’s poem pointed out even more of these parallels. A comparison with the literary theory of M.H. Abrams proved that all three poets, to some extent, make use of the dramatic monologue to convey their image of prison and prison trauma. Furthermore, they also make use of Romantic escapism to contrast the purity of nature with the filth of prison. Sands, Wilde and Byron are equally unanimous in their emphasis on the concepts of isolation and temporality caused by imprisonment. Lastly, both 79
Sands and Byron converted certain lines from William Wordsworth’s poetry, while Byron and
Wilde’s narrators share the idea that a prisoner remains forever imprisoned.
To conclude, my analysis could even go as far as suggesting a literary continuum of prison trauma in poetry from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century because of these remarkable parallels, at least in the studied works of these three poets. While their respective portrayal of prison trauma remains distinct, the poetry has too much in common to consider it a mere coincidence. Nevertheless, this suggested continuum rather appears to be an assembly of conscious and unconscious similarities than an outspoken connection to preceding poets. The mutual parallels however cannot be denied, which makes the broader view on prison trauma obtained from this analysis all the more interesting. Moreover, the collected findings of this thesis could prove themselves interesting starting points for future analysis of the poetic connection between Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde, or the general continuum of prison trauma in poetry.
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7. Appendix
Primary Literature
The following seven poems in this section are quoted from Prison Poems by Bobby Sands, see p. 82:
Works Cited. Line references added by myself.
THE CRIME OF CASTLEREAGH I heard the moans and dreadful groans They rose from some man's cell. I scratched my name but not for fame. 1 And knew I then that this poor friend Upon the whitened wall, Had something big to tell. "Bobby Sands was here," I wrote with fear I'd heard him go some hours ago 45 In awful shaky scrawl. His step was smooth and light, I wrote it low where eyes don't go 5 But he'd come back like crippled wreck 'Twas but to testify, Or one who'd lost a fight. That I was sane and not to blame Should here I come to die. All listened hard except the coward Who squirmed upon his bed, 50 I heard the creak of creeping sneak The pain of men just does not blend The watcher on his round. 10 With he whose silvers weighed. ‘Twould be, I thought, but all for nought It tore our ears and primed our fears If caught upon the ground. This man's tormenting groans My dancing eyes bore no disguise It made men reel for all could feel 55 They leapt like flames of fire, The hurt on this man's bones. When Christ I stared as at me glared 15 The death name of "Maguire". I stewed like rat in porter fat Fermenting drunk with fear. I paled with fright it was death alright When would they come, who'd be the one? I stood like trembling bird, The time was drawing near. 60 And felt the look, the Watcher's duke I worried sick and scurried quick As he passed by unheard. 20 Like a blind man in a storm, But one thought lay upon mind's bay I had no course but followed force 'Twas anchored deep, my friend, Of terror's blasting horn. 'Twas that man's name and cruel pain That seen him to his end. The light burned bright was day now night 65 Or was night turned to day. Forty hours, I'd sweated showers The light burned bright was day now night 25 In panic-stricken fray. Who cared of such in hell, This waiting game was greatest strain For a man's mind spent all it's time And though I knew their ploy, 70 On when he'd leave the cell. It did not ease nor did appease For who knew when or there again But helped more to destroy. Just who knew if at all, 30 If the next creak or creeping sneak My stomach turned, it churned and churned Was death's breath come to call. Stirred fast by swirling dread. 'Twas times like this in wretchedness 75 The floor was cold on stocking sole A man fell down and prayed. And boots forbidden things, 'Twas times like this in cowardliness For one might die if one might tie 35 That men would break their code, A noose with lacing strings. And spill the beans in cowardly screams For tortured men seek death's quick end To shed this murderous load. 80 And branchmen know this too, For stiffs won't talk so men must walk The groaning died, we tortured sighed The floor without a shoe. 40 And silence fell again. And so did that, that ties a knot To choke the very brain. Depression, friend, it did extend 85 86
In waves through every cell, And fry you in the pan. 140 Crept up behind and bit the mind She, you or him need bear no sin Like shock from bursting shell. They'll give you one for free. If break you will they sure as hell I'd nought to do but see it through Will give you two or three." I fought it tooth and nail. 90 It said to me in evil glee, The moans and groans they froze our bones 145 "Give up and go to jail. I heard the next man pray. The prison bars you'll see in hours 'Twas him again, said I in shame If you just sign your name. "That poor lad's on his way." Or just admit a little bit 95 The very air screamed in despair Regardless whose to blame." Contorted with pure fear, 150 For 'twas a tap on outside flap: I heard the clink of metal link, The torture men were here! The Watcher was abroad. He squeaked and creaked, tip-toed and sneaked The tension snapped like grizzly trap On shoes that were not shod. 100 It gripped me by the throat. Ne'er e'er he spoke and still unbroke, And every sense lost all defence 155 The silence hung in awe. Like gale-lashed drifting boat. He watched you quake and watched you shake And undisguised, my thoughts capsized And told them all he saw. And drowned they in my fear. And washed they out with any doubt When he had gone I sat upon 105 Of what was drawing near. 160 The monstrous heavy bed. What little air there was to spare A death hush fell for none could tell Was pumped out overhead. Where fate was going to fall. It came through vent to no extent All held their breath as pale as death To barely fill the lungs, 110 For pain had come to call. So ate we crust of dirty dust And stood we still in awful thrill 165 And choked upon our tongues. I trembling unashamed, An angry wound flashed the room And who could sleep in sweltering heat Twas fear of fear inflamed. With rattle of the vent. ‘Pon canvas sheets caked firm in pleats 115 Their cramped slow steps eased through the depths With sweat that men had spent. Of clinging floating fear, 170 The bright white light gave no respite I dared a sigh as they passed by And cut the eyes to shreds, Like hunters stalking deer. And left an ache to devastate Then came the word like call of bird Already bursting heads. 120 They'd found their trembling prey, And none knew whom was bound for doom 175 White walls! White walls! Torturous sprawls, As they led him away. With ne'er a window space. And so confined a quaking mind Some hours had passed when someone asked Goes mad in such a place. To see a certain fiend. The monotony so torturously 125 That timid voice had made his choice Cuts deep into the mind, ‘Twas clearly to be seen. 180 That men lose hope and just elope With coward’s reprieve he took his leave With charge of any kind. Midst cursing, silent flak. Said I, with sigh, as he passed by, There's one to eight left to deflate ‘That scoundrel won’t be back’. Will e'er they come to end. 130 I rose depressed for who can rest A prisoner's mind may pass the time 185 With torture to contend. In dreamy hopeful thought. From wall to wall my thoughts did trawl In Castlereagh from day to day Behind my dragging wake, A thought's a battle fought. And shouted they in disarray 135 And sinking men cling fast, my friend, "How much dare you take?" To hope within a thought. 190 A cherished smile or voice of child "How much! How much! for pain will touch Are life rafts to be caught. Your very spirit, man. And what you doubt may well slip out From cell to cell they moved 'round hell 87
With food to feed the starved. As well the vanquished know. And keeping rules, gave plastic tools 195 So genuflect, you tortured wreck So wrists could not be carved. And bear your cross of woe. On paper plate in greasy state They placed it in your hand. But who could eat the devil's treat *** Or who could give a damn? 200 I slowed the pace this terror race Was never to be won. 250 For creak of bed sparked awful dread They watched you too, while in the loo, And nerves would jump the gun. They stood while you sat down. T'was ten to nine, for that's the time But men must do what men must do, I heard the watcher say. So turn your head around. But was it light or was it night 255 And ne'er they slink in all men's stink, 205 I ne'er knew either way. And ne'er they flush or pale. What kind of men are these, my friend, And some are wrought with sickening thought Who walk the devil's trail? It tears their very heart. It eats their mind like burning lime 260 As twice before, he groaned once more, And rips their soul apart. The rattling noise began. 210 It puzzles men and muzzles them I quickened pace to such a race It leaves each one distraught. That God I nearly ran. It is that fiend that asks unseen, That neighbour prayed and bright light slayed ‘Just how did you get caught?' 265 The Watcher came to peak. I felt the ill of weakening chill, 215 I'd torn my jeans twice at the seams Like wind around my feet. And hidden matches there. For men must use each little ruse And take each passing dare. * * * If one had luck a lousy butt 270 This Citadel, this house of hell, Could calm the nerves no end. Is worshipped by the law. For cultured taste takes second place It's built upon a rock of wrong When you're in hell my friend. With hate and bloody straw. 220 Each dirty brick holds some black trick The Watcher came to check again, Each door's a door of pain I froze with sound of key. 275 'Twas evil's pen, a devil's den, Like ticking clock I stopped with shock And a Citadel of shame. As time ran out on me. And god forbid, but flew it did The Men of Art have lost their heart 225 Like screeching blackbird flew, They dream within their dreams. Across the floor, through open door 280 Their magic sold for price of gold As he barked 'INTERVIEW!' Amidst a people's screams. They sketch the moon and capture bloom The dreaded word, like trapped bird, With genius, so they say. 230 Went shrieking above my head. But ne'er they sketch the quaking wretch It screamed and screamed and God it seemed Who lies in Castlereagh Like calling of the dead. 285 He looked at me unenviously. The poet's word is sweet as bird Said he, 'They want you friend.' Romantic tale and prose, I looked at him, like man in sin, Of stars above and gentle love 235 Goin' out to meet his end. And fragrant breeze that blows. But write they not a single jot The Watcher signed and underlined 290 Of beauty tortured sore. My name into his book. Don't wonder why such pen can lie But ne'er he'd sign departure time, For poets are no more. 240 The devious dirty crook. He flanked my side like devil's guide And where are those whose holy prose On lonely gallows trek. 295 Has given them halo'ed fame? And curiously he stared at me, They kneel and pray, or so they say, Like one not coming back. And play their little game. For politics and love don't mix, 245 I felt the bite of chilly night 88
And warning in the air. A yellow moon like eye of doom 300 They led her by, her head held high Gripped me in its glare. Their faces hanging low. 400 Down twelve iron steps to darker depths It seemed to me quite obviously Where lurking figures were. That they had come to woe. A hurried swop, like smuggling drop, She looked at me determinedly And I was in their care. 350 Across that gap of doom, And smiled did she so pitifully 405 A silhouette of heavy set Like rose in winter bloom. Spoke out in whispered tones, "Our friendly quack must do his check And in her wake she left an ache Before we break your bones." That gripped my very heart. From fore and aft there rose a laugh 355 If men but knew what she went through That scraped my very spine. They’d tear their souls apart. 410 And said a voice, "you'll get no choice, ‘In here,’ he said by nod of head For, by God, you're goin' to sign." The door closed like a cave. I stood like one in face of gun I seen him come, he looked quite done, With one foot in the grave. His eyes were red and swollen 360 And knew I then, that this poor friend They both stood there, an awkward pair, 415 Had his secret stolen. From toe to tail they swayed, I caught his eye, as he passed by, With casual stands, pocketed hands, His terror stricken form Expressions carefully weighed. Search out the air for nothing there 365 So unalike as day and night Like blind man in a storm. This sneaky shrewd duet. 420 These shark-eyed hawks of chatty talks The doctor stood a gaping prude And I like etiquette. 'Tis hard to hide distaste. "All right," said he officiously, They have their means to make you scream "Strip off, down to the waist." 370 And cower to their whims. He'd stop and stare, and both here and there Some quake and shake before they break 425 When fancy was his whim, just fearing for their limbs, And gape at me quite hatefully Then fall like leaves from autumn trees As if I'd bitten him. Before the axe has swung. For such is fear that men adhere He glared at me begrudgingly, 375 To having themselves hung. 430 He asked if I were ill. I shook my head, for sickening dread, They have their means and dirty schemes Could not be cured by pill. To loosen up your tongue. I quaked like swine on the slaughter line Some talk so sweet you'd think their feat As he said, "You're quite fit. 380 Was one of pleasant fun. So send him on, he's good and strong, But soon you learn and soon you yearn 435 And roast him on the spit." For safety of the cell, For what was thought was penance taught They walked me through an avenue Was but the gates of hell. Where devils lay in wait. The very air was charged with care 385 From day to day in Castlereagh For there lay evil fate. The hours tick by like years, 440 A man could feel the agony steel While to and fro men come and go Quietly o’ver his skin, To play upon your fears. They looked at me expectantly And some wear masks for their grim tasks And each bore his own grin. 390 To hide their black disgrace. But what black mask, I dare to ask, 445 We came to halt for some default Could hide the devil's face? Caused to groups to collide. They looked perplexed stopped in their tracks ‘The law is right’, the judge will cite, For passage wasn’t wide. ‘The public must have care. They shuffled back then made attack 395 A crime is crime in any mind, committed Then shuffled back in shame, anywhere.’ 450 For no-one knew quite what to do Hypocritical, parasitical bastards So all just tried again. Cry ‘Hurray!’ 89
But they would yell like souls in hell Bones are bruised 'cause boots are used If locked in Castlereagh. To loosen up your tongue, So men admit a little bit They do not watch while minutes hatch 455 When nothing have they done. 510 Into eternities, Reciting prayer in awful fear They chop your neck, then walk your back Upon their bended knees. Spreadeagle you like pelt. Nor is each sound a worry found For private parts their special arts Each creak the devil's tread. 460 Are sickeningly felt. Each shattered thought a battle fought They squeeze them tight with no respite 515 Within an aching head. 'Till a man cries for the womb That give him birth to this cruel earth Nor do they twitch with nervous itch And torture of that room. As clouds of dread creep in, Nor gaze upon a wealth of wrong 465 Some play with threats to seek regrets That stares at them like sin. Others play with bribes, 520 Nor do they sleep nor do they weep In Castlereagh they'd dearly pay In little lonely tombs, For what a secret hides. For sleep they 'pon a bed of wrong And some poor folk throw off their yoke On others' bleeding wounds. 470 To whisper what they know, For price of gold they sell their soul 525 With sweating toil and bubbling oil For men can sink that low. Men once tortured men. On ghastly rack they broke your back They came and came, their job the same, Until you broke, my friend. In relays ne'er they stopped. But modern day in Castlereagh 475 'Just sign the line!' they shrieked each time The police persuade with care. And beat me till I dropped. 530 They draw a line, then walk your spine They tortured me quite viciously Until you sign - in err. They threw me through the air. It got so bad it seemed I had Now some will say in sweetest way Been beat beyond repair. They do not wish you harm, 480 They try to coax, they try to hoax The days expired and no one tired, 535 They murder you with charm. Except ofcourse the prey, They give you smokes, they crack you jokes, And knew they well that time would tell Allaying all your fears, If I had words to say. Then beg you sign that awful line 485 Each dirty trick they laid on thick To get you thirty years. For no one heard or saw, 540 Who dares to say in Castlereagh They flatter you and shatter you The ‘police’ would break the law! With pleasantry and smiles. They'd set you free quite readily They poured it on, this boiling wrong, If you would mark their files. 490 The body burned with pain, They crawl to you and drawl to you ‘Till hefty throws and heavy blows 545 As sweet as violin, Came hurling down like rain. But underneath there hides a thief 'Till clumps of hair lay everywhere Whose tune is that of sin. And blood lay red as wine, One would have thought a prey was caught Some bear the stain of cruel Cain, 495 And butchered like a swine. 550 These are the men of doom. The torture-men who go no end All things must come to pass as one To fix you in that room. So hope should never die. To brutalise they utilise There is no height or bloody might Contrivances of hell, 500 That a freeman can't defy. For great duress can mean success There is no source or foreign force 555 When tortured start to tell. Can break one man who knows, That his free-will no thing can kill Like withered leaf or side of beef And from that freedom grows. They hang you by the heels, Then kidneys crunch with heavy punch 505 In despairing gloom, out of that room To torture jiggling squeals. They led me quite depressed. 560 90
This dirty horde their heads now lowered *** For I had not confessed. This Citadel, this house of hell, 615 Down that isle in funeral file Is worshipped by the law, It’s built upon a rock of wrong We shuffled in retreat, With hate and bloody straw. And well I knew that this black crew 565 Each dirty brick holds some black trick, Were chewing on defeat. Each door’s a door to pain. 620 ‘Tis evil’s pen a devil’s den They walked me through that avenue And Citadel of shame. Still devils lay in wait. The very air was charged with care *** For there lay evil fate, 570 I heard the clink of metal link And I could feel the agony steel The Watcher was abroad. Quietly o’er my skin, He squeaked and creaked, tip-toed and sneaked 625 And knew I well that this was hell On shoes that were not shod. And I was still within. N’er ‘er he spoke and still unbroken The silence hung in awe. From day to day in Castlereagh 575 He watched you quake and watched you shake The hours tick by like years, And told them all he saw. 630 While to and fro men come and go To play upon your fears. ‘Twas in the night the burning light And some wear masks for their grim tasks Grew dim and barely lit, To hide their black disgrace. 580 And shadows fell with the cell But what black mask, I dare to ask, To almost smother it. Could hide the devil's face? ‘Twas hard to sleep for vigil keep. 635 The tortured and oppressed, As dawn converged the world emerged And day to day in Castlereagh Into a brand new day. The tortured know no rest. I stepped out to a sky of blue 585 Where silver fleeces lay. The shadows crept and figures lept The chirp of bird I plainly heard Across the murky beams 640 And as the breeze went by, That stole in by the judas spy I drank the air in thirsty tear In perpetuating streams… With greed upon my eye. 590 Then dearest Christ! As if enticed They danced around the wall I drank the day o'er Castlereagh And peered at me so hauntingly 645 Like one back from the grave, With faces white and small. And feasted high upon the sky Like one with awful crave. They moved around and moved around Each soothing breeze was laced with ease 595 Just staring at the bed. Each golden ray with life, They marched in pairs with tortured stares Each little bird that chirped a word For they were marching dead. 650 Echoed sweet as fife. Each looked a loss, each bore a cross Upon his bended back, The Watcher gazed with deep amaze And on it plain was that man’s name Or as if he'd saw a ghost. 600 For he’d knew torture’s rack. His face was set like losing bet Or a hollow ended boast. Each gruesome weird had rambling beard 655 Up twelve iron steps to silent depths And wore a blanket course. He led me to my cell, His flashing eyes spit out despise He could not gauge for hate and rage 605 With my stifying force, How another wouldn't tell. And bloody tears in blushing seers Cascaded through the gloom, 670 He turned away in pure dismay To paint a rose in trembling pose With shrug and sigh of hurt. Of beauty and tortured bloom. It seemed no more he’d sneak the floor This dirty, low-down blirt. 610 They courted pain and flaunted strain And n’er a sound was heard around Contorting in their throes As the hours crept on by. What these poor men had met, my friend, 675 And God it seemed if someone screamed A man dare not suppose, The very air would cry. For round and round and up and down 91
Their faces crissed and crossed Would suck the bloody thread. ‘Til in a sea of purgatory And all spat hate to that man’s fate Their painful shapes were lost. 680 And all cried, ‘Satan come!’ All praised the law in evil awe 735 I heard the clink of metal link For evil is but one. The Watcher was not there. And no bloody eye peeped through the spy They danced in gloom, they danced to doom But someone cast a stare. They waltzed with mortal sin I felt the chill of creeping ill 685 Shuffling and scuttling Someone was abroad, ‘Fore dark and evil wind. 740 And knew I not, just who or what They inched and winched and pinched and lynched But prayed my prayers to God. And ‘pon that scaffold swung ‘Twas evil fray in Castlereagh The quaking cell as if in spell Until that man was hung. Began to winge and weep. 690 Then awful shapes with sinners’ gapes The devils fled for life was dead 745 Stole by in ghostly sweep. The law hid in its shame. Whizzened apes with stumpy napes The butchered air gasped in prayer Danced by in shrieking fear And tears fell down like rain. And cavalcade of evil grade 695 The very walls were appaled, Filed by with dirty lear. My eyes were red as fire, 750 For I had cried a tearful tide The houls of ghouls and hoots of owls In mourning of Maguire. Rang round that little room, And devils’ rooks and phantom spooks This Citadel, this house of hell, Sailed by in deathly gloom, 700 Is worshipped by the law. And hideous, perfidious – serpents It's built upon a rock of wrong 755 Snaked and hissed, With hate and bloody straw. While silhouettes made pirouettes Each dirty brick holds some black trick In terrifying twist. Each door's a door of pain 'Twas evil's pen, a devil's den, A demon came his eyes aflame 705 And a Citadel of shame. 760 And round him was the law. They danced like in Hades and rats in plagues The Men of Art have lost their heart And Christ I froze in awe. They dream within their dreams. They spun a cord this gruesome horde Their magic sold for price of gold On loom of doom and sin, 710 Amidst a people's screams. To make a noose that would induce They sketch the moon and capture bloom 765 A tortured soul within. With genius, so they say. But ne'er they sketch the quaking wretch Oh! Gorgons and Morons Who lies in Castlereagh And vipers danced a ball, ugly beasts and Satan’s priests 715 The poet's word is sweet as bird Stood naked ‘pon the wall. Romantic tale and prose, 770 Crude and lewd the spectres spewed Of stars above and gentle love And goblins jigged in rage, And fragrant breeze that blows. While snarling shrimps and imps and pimps But write they not a single jot Threw sins onto the stage. 720 Of beauty tortured sore. Don't wonder why such pen can lie 775 The witch and bitch and thieving rich For poets are no more. Threw up a scaffold black
A Demogogue blasphemed to God In mocking disrespect. *** The devil’s sons and evil ones 725 I heard the clink of metal link, Gathered round like fire, The Watcher was abroad. And Jesus Christ their sacrifice! He squeaked and creaked, tip-toed and sneaked Was murdered Brian Maguire. On shoes that were not shod. 780 Ne'er e'er he spoke and still unbroke, Wizards, Lizards, sins in blizards The silence hung in awe. Swirled round above their head, 730 He watched you quake and watched you shake Squealing bats and snapping gnats And told them all he saw. 92
His black splashed hat lay 'pon the box, 25 *** 'Twas flanked by ten and two. A man must live, a man must give 785 Twelve grim men of this dead friend By law and justice, friend. That vengeance came and slew, Let all men know that it be so That haunting ghost that catches most That justice knows no end. Had caught this bugger too. 30 For king and knave, freeman and slave The grave is deep the grave is cold Must face the king of kings, 790 A murky red clay tomb, And each must pay in his own way While underneath the body rots, For great and little things. Above, the primrose bloom. So do not cringe and do not winge 35 And he with shame and he with blame For each will be there soon. Must answer every sin, And no black lie or reason why 795 From dust to dust, ash to ash, Will cleanse his soul within. The whizzened parson said, So listen well, you pimps of hell As sprinkling clay in loud dull thuds You beasts of Castlereagh! Fell down above the dead, 40 Both law an man will meekly stand And covered up forever more ‘Fore God on Judgement Day! 800 That fiend that luck had fled.
In Castlereagh from day to day For he had tortured men no less The tortured know no rest, And by God he done it good, And men don't sleep and men must weep For treacherous are the cunning cowards 45 Until they have confessed. And devious are the shrewd. Confessed to "crime" for sentenced time 805 But bastards are the hated Screws Though guilt they may not know Who tortured men in nude. But that is law however raw, So bear your cross of woe… And he had tortured men no less For he was such a Screw. 50 Yet! whinging voices cried aloud What did this poor man do? THE TORTURE MILL - H BLOCK He only done what madmen done Upon the silent Jew. On others' wounds we do not sleep 1 For all men's blood is red, So bury him and let him lie 55 Nor do we lick the poor man's sore And play your brass tattoo, Nor drink the tear he shed, But write above his marble stone For King and Knave must have a grave 5 "Here lies a stinking screw." And poorest are the dead. For if men knew what he had done They'd turn their backs and spew. 60 And poorest are the lonely dead Who stare at earthen sky, We do not sleep on other's wounds And rot alone in skin and bone Or lick their bleeding scars, Upon the spot they lie. 10 By avenues of marble halls But poorer still are stupid fools Citadels or towers. Who think they'll never die. For prisoners lie in darkened depths 65 Behind the prison bars. They found him on his own door-step In crimson pool he lay, So sleep we ‘pon each day of pain His deathly eyes in fool's surprise 15 That screams within it wake, Stared blankly at the day, And screeches at each shattered mind For plain it seemed he'd never dreamed How much dare you to take? 70 That death would come his way. How much, how much, for pain is such That even heroes quake. In draped pine box he made his way. To that hole of no return, 20 Pitiful is the lonely man The morbid band moaned death's lament Who watches night go by, So his very soul would churn, To hear the screams from comrades’ dreams75 But this sly soul had tortured men The gentle sob or sigh. And surely had to burn. But wretched is that lonely man Who knows that he must die. 93
To some dark secret of his soul And who are we but mortal men That would not set him free, 130 Who burn in others’ hate, 80 That hidden cleft through which but death And slump beneath the murderous load May find tranquillity. Of torture’s grueling weight. But though we slump we do not fall And endless is our fate. He did not smile like naughty child 'Pon hearing what had passed, And endless is the fate of we 85 Nor did he muse the morbid news 135 Who fight within the gloom, Nor question did he ask, For we have been imprisoned, But unleashed a yell that frightened Hell Since conceived within the womb, Like Gabriel's trumpet blast! But freedom’s fruit will blossom too In the darkness of the tomb. 90 He laughed aloud behind a shroud Of yellow skin and beard, 140 He will lie within the grave, His blazing eyes burned with despise, The grave he dug with pain, And madness of the weird. And pain of those who wear no clothes And thought I then, to this poor friend, And he dug it with disdain. A devil had appeared. So there he lies ‘neath earthen skies 95 In everlasting shame. But knew I well in this dark hell 145 That torture does such things, *** And leaves the brain like bare terrain There was no star nor heaven’s blaze From which but madness springs. No trumpet blast nor horn, And knew I well that in each cell No angel chorus sang in praise The sanest hung on strings. 150 To harken forth the morn. 100 For freemen lay in tears of grief *** No savior to them born. We do not wear the guilty stare Of those who bare a crime, Blessed is the man who stands Nor do we don that badge of wrong Before his God in pain. To tramp the penal line. And on his back a cross of woe 105 So men endure a pit of sewer 155 His wounds a gaping shame. For freedom of the mind. For this man is a son of God And hallowed be his name. Nor do we bend to black-clad men When torture scream is shrill, *** They who slight God's given right The word came up the frozen pipes Of each to his free will, 160 That one was off the air, 110 So bend the back upon the rack And each man knew a dirty Screw Of H-Block torture mill. Had got his dues somewhere. And each man knew we'd get it too Each cell does smell within that hell But who could give a care. Where the naked cough and spit. Each wall is smeared with something weird,165 The whispered word the naked heard 115 So the governor must admit, Was passed from cell to cell, On jail cement is excrement, And each soul smiled like naughty child But what he means is shit! At what he had to tell. For though we lay in slow decay And so it is this pit of his We heard his requiem bell. 120 Is reeking high and low, 170 This dirty mess he made no less He sat upon the filthy foam By casting men to woe. His piercing eyes ablaze. And now he squirms not from the germs He stared as if he did not know But what the world may know. Like one within a daze. But all men wear this crazy stare 125 They tramped us down into the ground 175 Within the dirty Maze. And righteous men ne'er spoke. And in our nude they fixed us good He stared upon nightmarish walls For freemen must be broke. As if they held the key What could be done but smear that scum 94
And Christ it is no joke! 180 You do not quake each day you wake To a hymn of dawn that roars, 230 When stern-faced rats in black splashed hats They do not call you by your name Steal in for Satan’s chores, Nor nickname try to fix, And with their batons high and hard For love and hate are hard to mate They batter down the doors. And right and wrong don't mix. You have no name but number plain, 185 You do not lie like pigs in sty 235 "Move on, ten sixty-six"! Upon a concrete bed. Or watch them come before the sun They call us "cons" to right their wrongs To count the living dead, They do it with a pen. And ask of Christ this sacrifice They call us "crims" to suit the whims Maybe your penance paid. 240 Of politics, my friend. 190 But they can call us all they want You do not pray through each long day For people call us Men. Or pray into the night, Take air in sips with prayer on lips, *** To sleep may steal your fright. From wall to door he walked the floor And cross your head in silent dread 245 Listening for a sound. As darkness turns to light. Each sudden creak or sneaky squeak 195 Sent him swishing round, *** His bulging eyes so terrorised From wall to door he walked the floor Near fell upon the ground. Like a man trapped in a mine, And looked at me quite desperately That eight foot space 'twas freedom's grace. Behind a mask of grime. 250 To exercise the bones, 200 For with each step he sank a depth With every step the body wept From which he had to climb. In awful moans and groans, And sounded like the gnawny grind And time is but an endless rut Of some one rubbing stones. And each man in his own, And some climb out and some do not 255 *** And some lie dumb and prone, Beneath the sky men live and die 205 While time goes by like cloudy sky For man must die from birth. Its destiny unknown. And some ne'er see the flower or tree Or know their lovely worth, Now keeping time to squelch of slime But in the gloom of prison tomb He marched a quickened pace, 260 Men crave for Mother earth. 210 Those blazened eyes like angry skies Rolled round his ashened face, There are no trees or cooling breeze, And on he went like a regiment To soothe our reddened eyes, That fled the battle place. Like clinging briar the grey blade wire Strangles cloudy skies, He ran that floor from wall to door 265 And every cloud's a bleeding shroud, 215 And glared at me quite dumb, And crowned with thorns it cries. And I at him like mortal sin For words just would not come. To dance and prance to love's romance For this was hell and in this cell Is elegant and neat. A soul was on the run. 270 To wine and dine on red port wine Is such a tasty treat. 220 Each wretched soul in that vile hole To eat and sit where you've just shit! Had one thought on his mind: Is no so bloody sweet! We'd get it too was what we knew When night time would unwind Shocked you are , by far, by far 'Cause each man knew just what was due 275 But shocked you do not know. For each man wasn't blind. Perhaps you say this poet's way 225 Is crude and very low? For come the morn as day is born But in the blocks men have had shocks And all is deadly still, That filled the very poe! The dirty Screws on muffled shoes 95
Creep in to make a kill, 280 *** But first of all they shriek and bawl They beat the flaps with drumming wraps Like madmen doing drill. And banged the pipes and doors. So terrified we almost cried They’ll let us know it’s time to go Before their vicious roars, And gauntlet they will form, And though we froze for lack of clothes 335 From wing to wing their blows will sting 285 The sweat oozed out our pores. Like hornets in a swarm, And naked men must run its end The dirty Screw wears black and blue Like seabirds in a storm. The devil knows him well, And he and they from grey of day So each man knew just what was due Call into every cell, 340 And each man paced the floor. 290 And stoke the fires that search desires A creeping dread was greatly fed Within the blocks of hell. As one would think once more, And dread set in and ate like sin Still keeping time to squelch of slime Right to your very core. he marched a quickened pace, Those blazened eyes like angry skies 345 Some rant and rave with awful crave 295 Rolled round his ashened face, For nicotine and smoke, And on he went like a regiment To such degrees that 'pon their knees That fled the battle place. The very dust they hoke, Elusive ends in gasping bends He ran that floor from wall to door To kill their choking yoke. 300 And glared at me quite dumb, 350 And I at him like mortal sin And some inhale to such avail For words just would not come. The smouldering blanket shred, For this was hell and in this cell For nerves are terse and options scarce A soul was on the run. To tame the killing dread, So pale as death with burning breath 305 Then came the reek of stomach weak 355 They drag each reddened thread. For some men retch with fear, And worse again and n’er the shame The crawling day just ran away the bowels of men appear. For time runs fast 'fore dread, For listen, friend, we don’t pretend, And near and near we came to fear There are no heroes here. 360 As minutes fell down dead. 310 And any hope we tried to grope The double-lock flew back in shock Jumped up aFnd promptly fled. Then came the first man’s name. ‘Twas times like this that cowardliness The dying night was bleeding white Would leave a man in shame, The dark was on the run ‘Cause each man knew just what was due 365 And dawning day drove it away 315 for all would get the same. Before the blood-eyed sun, He ran wild-eyed like screaming child And by the shadows on the walls Before a horde of rats, We knew that they had come. They beat him down upon the ground
With thumps and thuds and slaps, 370 *** And then within a ring of sin There was no star nor heaven’s blaze They kicked him to collapse. No trumpet blast nor horn, 320 No angel chorus sang in praise They sneered and cheered, leered and jeered To harken forth the morn. At their dirty handy work. For freemen lay in tears of grief Each dirty Screw knew what to do 375 No savior to them born. Each wore a dirty smirk, They flaunted hate, these men of state, Blessed is the man who stands 325 And each one went berserk. Before his God in pain. And on his back a cross of woe They grab your legs like wooden pegs His wounds a gaping shame. And part them to they split. 380 For this man is a son of God They pry and spy and even try And hallowed be his name. 330 To look in through the split. 96
Both north and south to find your mouth They shine a light for better sight 435 To try look ‘out’ of it. To see what may appear. I sometimes think they have a kink To roll and droll on country stroll 385 The way they juke and peer! Is quite a pleasant flip, To chase and race through open space And blood is hot and blood can clot Is such a thrilling skip, For I saw it on the ground. 440 To trot like swine through one’s urine It seems to say what's gone this way Is not so nice a trip. 390 Was pack of horse and hound, But no smart cox or shrewest fox The dirty Screws they stand in two’s Could take this hunt to ground. Along that tortured way. Their batons drawn to beat upon The medic's job though some what odd 445 The frantic screaming prey, Is to patch a body's hurt. ‘’Tis but a job,’ they winge and sob, 395 To nurse a man not curse a man And take the devil’s pay. When body is inert. Though in the blocks these humane chaps And scruples none, note even one, Just rub your face in dirt. 450 Do hold this gruesome band. How they debase their own cruel face Like screaming child I ran wild-eyed Is hard to understand. 400 Before that horde of rats. But to remain untouched by shame, They beat me down upon the ground Is damning to their clann. With thumps and thuds and slaps. And then within the ring of sin 455 He ran that floor from wall to door They beat me to collapse. And glared at me quite dumb, And I at him like mortal sin 405 Like drunken man who can not stand For words just would not come. I swayed like wavering tree, For this was hell and in this cell And felt worse than a sea sick-man A soul was on the run. Upon a raging sea. 460 And worse again I bore a pain And on and on they moved along That almost scuttled me. we listened to the fray. 410 And somewhere near I chanced to hear The ace of spades is sign of Hades, The first bird of the day, The Screw the sign of shame. Its dawning tune rang out like doom Whoever mates with these black apes 465 And died in disarray. No doubt will bear the same And in their grave they’ll rue and rave, They search your hair with greatest care 415 The marriage of that name. Shin lights inside your nose. Your mouth and ears and very fears In angry tear with grip of hair They scrutinise like crows, They dragged me at a trot, 470 And may I ask what is their task, They strangled me, entangled me, For we men wear no clothes? 420 Like squeezing tight garrotte, Then threw me in a cell of sin They search your back and every crack My body in a knot. Gloomy-faced and stern, And scrape and gape at every space He ran wild-eyed like screaming child 475 Like doctor seeking germ. I heard their bawling cries. But lewd and crude they fix you good 425 And ran he did to painful bid To make the patient squirm. With terror in his eyes, Until he fell into the cell There is no crime in deed or mind In lemming-like surprise. 480 No dirty evil lure, That any screw would rue to do 'Hurry up!! and scurry up!!' To each let this be sure. 430 They screamed at tearing men. They stoop so low they undergo We heard the cracks and baton whacks The morals of a whore. For every step were ten, And every man swore by his clan 485 They squat us o'er the blackened floor To kill the cutty wren. Upon a mirror clear. 97
They all went still they'd had their fill So bend the back upon the rack And Christ they had it full. Of H-Block Torture Mill. 540 To do such things take special things Learnt in the devil's school, 490 For when it comes to gauntlet runs The wicked are no fool. WING SHIFT IN H-BLOCK
'Tis joyful thing in early spring The boys all knew two days before 1 The morning lark to hear, It always was that way. The mistle thrush on far-off bush 495 It gave a man two days respite Crooning sharp and clear. To worry sick and pray. But who may know if lark or crow And some grew ill and some went dumb, 5 With bleeding, busted ear? Some paled with awful fear. I heard the very birds walk by Or who may sniff the fragrant whiff As crossing day drew near. Of daffodils and rose, 500 The wild green hills in autumn frills The minutes ticked from hour to hour, Awaiting winter snows, The days stole blackly in, 10 When worse the course you have to nurse He looked at me with scarey eyes, A broken bloody nose. And I with same at him. And n’er we spoke but paced the floor, We fought back tears and scorned our fears 505 And wished it was our day, And cast aside our pain For greatest curse was listening 15 And to our doors we stood in scores While comrades ran the fray. To conquer their black fame For loud and high we sang our cry They beat their batons on the pipes, 'A Nation once again!' 510 And roared in wild-mouthed glee, ‘Twas times like this a man grew weak, *** And buckled at the knee. 20 There was no star nor heaven’s blaze We knew their terror game alright, No trumpet blast nor horn, And they our trembling fright, No angel chorus sang in praise He looked at me and I at him, To harken forth the morn. In matching deathly white. For freemen lay in tears of grief 515 No savior to them born. The grillman called the dreaded words, 25 My God the whole block shook, Blessed is the man who stands ‘Lock ‘em up,’ he cried and cried again,’ Before his God in pain. ‘No witnesses may look.’ And on his back a cross of woe We stewed like prunes in deathly hush, His wounds a gaping shame. 520 And stomachs gave to fear, 30 For this man is a son of God For men do mess the corner floor, And hallowed be his name. When crossing time’s so near.
They lounge in might and glory bright We glided back and forth the cell, This empire once so grand. Our blankets swishing time, With bloody fleets and dirty feats, 525 And each little creak echoed loud, 35 They build it without span. In startling eerie chime. But tank or gun they have not one The quiet pressed in silent squeeze, To break a blanket man. ‘Twas a petrifying thing, I said to him in whispered dare, We do not wear the guilty stare ‘The devil’s in that wing.’ 40 Of those who bear a crime, 530 Nor do we don the badge of wrong He passed me by like flitting ghost, To tramp the penal line. I met his eyes aglare. So all endure this pit of sewer They danced like hurtling raindrops do For freedom of the mind. Cascading everywhere. And we heard the slam of heavy door, 45 Nor do we bend to black clad men 535 ‘Twouldd not be long we knew, When torture scream is shrill We sighed the sigh of fettered men, They who slight God's given right To brave the tempest through. Of each to his free will. 98
We heard the first one come afar, Like thunder in the clouds, 50 He rolled across from ‘B’ to ‘C’, Sent on by yelling crowds. We heard the stamp of heavy boot, The slap and crash of hand, That left us squirming nought to do, 55 Like fish upon dry land.
Dear God we sensed their evilness, Each blow we felt at heart, As comrades fell upon the ground, It tore our souls apart. 60 ‘Move! Move!’ they screamed, those cowardly Screws, And move by God they did. What naked man would dare defy, The batons wacking bid.
They hung the boys like spit-eyed pigs, 65 O’er table top spread rude, Where they would kick like new born child, Embarassed in their nude. They pulled each limb so far apart, You felt the body tear. 70 They crucified you in your fear, And hung you in the air.
The mirrors shone by flashing lights, Detectors bleeped for steel, But all the dirty probing tools, 75 Could sense not what we feel. He passed me by as white as chalk, His eyes in hateful glow, Says he in choking trembling words, ‘There’s twenty more to go.’ 80
‘There’s twenty more to go,’ said he, As they ran in naked file, And smashed ‘gainst grills and wielding blows, In reeling drunken style. They beat their batons loud and hard, 85 As beaters of the hunt, Like white gazelles the naked fell, Brought down by torture’s brunt.
The silence came in wake of pain, For all had ran that hell, 90 And lay they panting sore and glad, Of reaching that dark cell. And lay we now with beating heart, For next to move were we, Such are the trials of blanket men, 95 In the depths of H-Block Three.
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A TRIBUTE TO SCREWS
In the blackness I awoke like a corpse in the grave, 1 Engulfed by the fear of a ghostly wave. There were devils and angels by the foot of my bed And they fought for my soul to the night sky fled.
With trembling lips I prayed in the gloom 5 Questioning my birth to die in a tomb. The silence was angry and it bit deep in the mind And it screeched in my face, ‘You’re here for all time.’
Four bare walls make this prison cell The eight by eight space the prisoners call hell, 10 A concrete burden that is borne on the back And some call it ‘bird’ and some call it ‘wack’.
‘Tis a terrible feeling to be naked and down To be dirty and itchy and to sleep on the ground, ‘Tis a terrible feeling to live and feel like a rat 15 But ‘tis worse again still to be treated like that.
They’re ungodly dungeons these blocks of stone Where a man meets himself and finds he’s alone, And black devils walk their inner ways Where weeks seem like years and minutes like days. 20
Each morning they come banging on the doors And bid us good morning with obscenities, strings of curses and roars. Those murderers of hope those rogues of the mind Oh those godfearing Christians when it come dying time.
They’re the dregs of the earth and the prisoners’ curse. 25 Some call them Screws, but more call them worse. They watch while you weep, they watch while you kneel They watch while you die, your death’s secret to steal.
‘Tis hard to believe and yet even harder to take Why a man will stoop lower than the belly of a snake. 30 Some plead greed of money, some just out of trait, But the blackest devil is out of bigoted hate.
I’ve been locked in old dungeons and I’ve been locked in a Cage And I’ve watched these scoundrels play their lives on a stage. These rough and tough cowards, these hypocritical fools, 35 Who beat men to pulp and forget their own rules.
Is there such a damning indictment to this class of scum Than the million crimes they have already done? Be it an African dungeon or the old Bastille Their cruelty’s no different, nor the pain that we feel! 40
Has ever such slyness been born ‘fore mens’ eyes Than these conniving bastards, these lovers of lies, Has ever such a profession been developed so pure That in lowliness it stands higher than the back of a whore.
Have ever such talents been seasoned to prime 45 Has ever such evil been born in a mind, They make Judas seem innocent, they degrade even sin They’ll be ejected from Hades, should they ever get in! 100
I know them I tell you and I know their stare, And the crunch of their batons that reddens the hair. 50 I know their bravado, when they stand six to one And likewise their cringing cowardliness, when they stand to one!
They’ve broke our women’s hearts, these dastardly fiends, They’ve built towers of worry and crushed our young dreams, They have greyed our poor mothers and helped dig their graves, 55 Is there one among you unsickened, by the deeds of these knaves?
Was only but yesterday that I sat in the space With thirty Screws encroaching my thirty minutes’ grace, In the space of a pen where the families trade tears In hushed whispers we tremble, betraying our fears. 60
And they, these magpies, of expression and thought They cling to every syllable that our secrets be caught Those sneaks, those creeps, those evil foxes Degrading the meek in dirty little boxes.
There is no place more lonely than the prison cell 65 But ‘tis a hundred times worse in this living hell. Oh I have eaten rubbish, I live with maggots and flies; Yet it’s the human parasites I’ve learned to despise.
Filthy ragged threads, clothe our pale bodies no end We political dungeon dwellers – we oppressed blanket men. 70 We stand in the face of all – we bow to none For in the depths of the dungeons, there is no where to run.
People of Ireland, dwell well on those lines They hold joke nor jest nor simply rhyme, If you knew but the torture, that the prisoners know well 75 You’d storm these dungeons, you’d tear down this hell.
But it’s more pity that I hold for these exploiters of pain Than a deep-scarred-revenge for to see them in flame, For be it heaven or the republic, or what may come to pass ‘Twill be woe to the devils of this murderous class. 80
They will be saluted with hatred, they’ll be acknowledged by scorn And our ghosts will haunt them, and theirs not yet born. Prisoners and bondsmen, mark me well you shall see These whores of justice perish – at your liberty.
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POETIC JUSTICE Don’t you know”, said the Lord, “I watched them, And every night they wept? It was the strangest dream, sure enough, 1 Roy, you tortured them, 55 Of all I’ve had, And you held them all those years, I dreamt I had left this life, Naked and suffering, And to be honest I felt glad. They wept a million tears.” And so I felt my soul ascending 5 I looked down to whence I came, “What is to be done?” said Peter, And all I saw was nakedness, suffering and pain. “My Lord you must contrive.” 60 “Poetic justice, Peter,” said the Lord, Soon I reached a golden gate “Send him down to H-Block Five!” Where other souls stood in line, To meet the Lord I joined the queue, 10 My fate to be defined, COMRADES IN THE DARK And gradually as we moved along, Ever closer to the gate, There came a splendid golden sun, 1 I saw some go on and some go down, Across the darkened skies, Testifying to their fate. 15 It woke the bondsman from his dream, As it fell upon his eyes. Then there came a familiar voice It lit the ways of freedom’s path, 5 That didn’t take much tracin’, Sent forth the singing lark, From the blackest soul in all the line, And bore a weeping blossom ‘pon, It was that of Roy Mason! The flowers in the dark. To the other souls I heard him say 20 “I’m alright, I only did my job”. They bloomed by country lane and town, I shouted up the line to him In freedom’s fragrant scent, 10 “That’s another lie, just wait ‘til I tell God.” Giving heart to a weary folk, When dark days came and went. Well we reached the golden gate, And grew they strong and beautiful, Where the Lord sat on his throne 25 Midst fortune cold and stark, And Peter called upon me The fairest flowers of their kind, 15 To come to them alone. These roses of the dark. “Bob”, said the Lord, “You done all right down there, The winds of war came sweeping cruel, Of torture pain and suffering The blossom would not cry, Don’t I know you had your share.” 30 Oh how it broke the freeman’s heart, “Let him in Peter”, said the Lord, To see the first rose die. 20 “And go in peace my son, Some soldiers plucked the garden’s joy, For the Lord your God forgives you And left a burning mark, For everything you’ve done.” Upon the silver petalled bloom, Now fettered in the dark. Well, was I a happy soul 35 For the good Lord had forgiven all, These flowers weep in dank cold cells, 25 I was just about to collect my wings No sun to light the gloom, When I heard Roy get his call. They suffer torture’s vilest scorn “Mason – Lord”, said Peter, To wither in their bloom. “I think you know him well, 40 But ne’er they yield these lovely things, And by the colour of that soul of his O hear they freedom’s mark 30 He’s plenty there to tell.” They are the light to guide the poor “Peace be with you Roy”, said the Lord, These flowers in the dark. “Have you anything to confess?” “Lord,” said Roy, “You must believe me, 45 I care not should we freemen die, It was Cromwell made that mess, To see the garden flower, And Merlyn Rees and Whitelaw, And humble bluebells lift their heads, 35 They led me far astray, To rise all in their power. Lord, what else could I do down there, I hold a tear, torn sore in heart, I could find no other way.” 50 ‘Twere e’r a Joan of Arc, ‘Tis each one of these saintly flowzers, “And what about those H-blocks, Roy Who be in dungeons dark. 40 And all those naked men you kept? 102
A PLACE TO REST
As the day crawls out another night crawls in 1 Time neither movers nor dies. It’s the time of day when the lark sings, the black of night when the curlew cries.
There’s rain on the wind, the tears of spirits 5 The clink of key on iron is near, A shuttling train passes by on rail, There’s more than God for man to fear.
Toward where the evening crow would fly, my thoughts lie, And like ships in the night they blindly sail, 10 Blown by a thought –that breaks the heart- Of forty women in Armagh jail.
Oh! And I wish I were with the gentle folk, Around a hearthened fire where the fairies dance unseen, Away from the black devils of H-Block hell, 15 Who torture my heart and haunt my dream.
I would gladly rest where the whin bush grown, Beneath the rocks where the linnets sing In Carnmoney Graveyard ‘neath its hill Fearing not what the day may bring! 20
103
The following poem is quoted from Project Gutenberg’s publication of ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ by Oscar Wilde, see p. 83: Works Cited. Line references added by myself.
THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL The kindest use a knife, because The dead so soon grow cold. I Some love too little, some too long, He did not wear his scarlet coat, 1 Some sell, and others buy; 50 For blood and wine are red, Some do the deed with many tears, And blood and wine were on his hands And some without a sigh: When they found him with the dead, For each man kills the thing he loves, The poor dead woman whom he loved, 5 Yet each man does not die. And murdered in her bed. He does not die a death of shame 55 He walked amongst the Trial Men On a day of dark disgrace, In a suit of shabby grey; Nor have a noose about his neck, A cricket cap was on his head, Nor a cloth upon his face, And his step seemed light and gay; 10 Nor drop feet foremost through the floor But I never saw a man who looked Into an empty place 60 So wistfully at the day. He does not sit with silent men I never saw a man who looked Who watch him night and day; With such a wistful eye Who watch him when he tries to weep, Upon that little tent of blue 15 And when he tries to pray; Which prisoners call the sky, Who watch him lest himself should rob 65 And at every drifting cloud that went The prison of its prey. With sails of silver by. He does not wake at dawn to see I walked, with other souls in pain, Dread figures throng his room, Within another ring, 20 The shivering Chaplain robed in white, And was wondering if the man had done The Sheriff stern with gloom, 70 A great or little thing, And the Governor all in shiny black, When a voice behind me whispered low, With the yellow face of Doom. “That fellows got to swing.” He does not rise in piteous haste Dear Christ! the very prison walls 25 To put on convict-clothes, Suddenly seemed to reel, While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and And the sky above my head became notes 75 Like a casque of scorching steel; Each new and nerve-twitched pose, And, though I was a soul in pain, Fingering a watch whose little ticks My pain I could not feel. 30 Are like horrible hammer-blows.
I only knew what hunted thought He does not know that sickening thirst Quickened his step, and why That sands one’s throat, before 80 He looked upon the garish day The hangman with his gardener’s gloves With such a wistful eye; Slips through the padded door, The man had killed the thing he loved 35 And binds one with three leathern thongs, And so he had to die. That the throat may thirst no more.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves He does not bend his head to hear 85 By each let this be heard, The Burial Office read, Some do it with a bitter look, Nor, while the terror of his soul Some with a flattering word, 40 Tells him he is not dead, The coward does it with a kiss, Cross his own coffin, as he moves The brave man with a sword! Into the hideous shed. 90
Some kill their love when they are young, He does not stare upon the air And some when they are old; Through a little roof of glass; Some strangle with the hands of Lust, 45 He does not pray with lips of clay Some with the hands of Gold: For his agony to pass; 104
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek 95 His last look at the sky? The kiss of Caiaphas. It is sweet to dance to violins When Love and Life are fair: 50 II To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes Is delicate and rare: Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard, 1 But it is not sweet with nimble feet In a suit of shabby grey: To dance upon the air! His cricket cap was on his head, And his step seemed light and gay, So with curious eyes and sick surmise 55 But I never saw a man who looked 5 We watched him day by day, So wistfully at the day. And wondered if each one of us Would end the self-same way, I never saw a man who looked For none can tell to what red Hell With such a wistful eye His sightless soul may stray. 60 Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky, 10 At last the dead man walked no more And at every wandering cloud that trailed Amongst the Trial Men, Its raveled fleeces by. And I knew that he was standing up In the black dock’s dreadful pen, He did not wring his hands, as do And that never would I see his face 65 Those witless men who dare In God’s sweet world again. To try to rear the changeling Hope 15 1 In the cave of black Despair: Like two doomed ships that pass in storm He only looked upon the sun, We had crossed each other’s way: And drank the morning air. But we made no sign, we said no word, We had no word to say; 70 He did not wring his hands nor weep, For we did not meet in the holy night, Nor did he peek or pine, 20 But in the shameful day. But he drank the air as though it held Some healthful anodyne; A prison wall was round us both, With open mouth he drank the sun Two outcast men were we: As though it had been wine! The world had thrust us from its heart, 75 And God from out His care: And I and all the souls in pain, 25 And the iron gin that waits for Sin Who tramped the other ring, Had caught us in its snare. Forgot if we ourselves had done A great or little thing, And watched with gaze of dull amaze III The man who had to swing. 30 In Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard, 1 And strange it was to see him pass And the dripping wall is high, With a step so light and gay, So it was there he took the air And strange it was to see him look Beneath the leaden sky, So wistfully at the day, And by each side a Warder walked, 5 And strange it was to think that he 35 For fear3 the man might die. Had such a debt to pay. Or else he sat with those who watched For oak and elm have pleasant leaves His anguish night and day; That in the spring-time shoot: Who watched him when he rose to weep, But grim to see is the gallows-tree, And when he crouched to pray; 10 With its adder-bitten root, 40 Who watched him lest himself should rob And, green or dry, a man must die Their scaffold of its prey. Before it bears its fruit! The Governor was strong upon The loftiest place is that seat of grace The Regulations Act: For which all worldlings try: The Doctor said that Death was but 15 But who would stand in hempen band 45 A scientific fact: Upon a scaffold high, And twice a day the Chaplain called And through a murderer’s collar take And left a little tract. 105
Went shuffling through the gloom 70 And twice a day he smoked his pipe, And each man trembled as he crept And drank his quart of beer: 20 Into his numbered tomb. His soul was resolute, and held No hiding-place for fear; That night the empty corridors He often said that he was glad Were full of forms of Fear, The hangman’s hands were near. And up and down the iron town 75 Stole feet we could not hear, But why he said so strange a thing 25 And through the bars that hide the stars No Warder dared to ask: White faces seemed to peer. For he to whom a watcher’s doom Is given as his task, He lay as one who lies and dreams Must set a lock upon his lips, In a pleasant meadow-land, 80 And make his face a mask. 30 The watcher watched him as he slept, And could not understand Or else he might be moved, and try How one could sleep so sweet a sleep To comfort or console: With a hangman close at hand? And what should Human Pity do Pent up in Murderers’ Hole? But there is no sleep when men must weep 85 What word of grace in such a place 35 Who never yet have wept: Could help a brother’s soul? So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave— That endless vigil kept, With slouch and swing around the ring And through each brain on hands of pain We trod the Fool’s Parade! Another’s terror crept. 90 We did not care: we knew we were The Devil’s Own Brigade: 40 Alas! it is a fearful thing And shaven head and feet of lead To feel another’s guilt! Make a merry masquerade. For, right within, the sword of Sin Pierced to its poisoned hilt, We tore the tarry rope to shreds And as molten lead were the tears we shed 95 With blunt and bleeding nails; For the blood we had not spilt. We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,45 And cleaned the shining rails: The Warders with their shoes of felt And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank, Crept by each padlocked door, And clattered with the pails. And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe, Grey figures on the floor, 100 We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, And wondered why men knelt to pray We turned the dusty drill: 50 Who never prayed before. We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, And sweated on the mill: All through the night we knelt and prayed, But in the heart of every man Mad mourners of a corpse! Terror was lying still. The troubled plumes of midnight were 105 The plumes upon a hearse: So still it lay that every day 55 And bitter wine upon a sponge Crawled like a weed-clogged wave: Was the savior of Remorse. And we forgot the bitter lot That waits for fool and knave, The cock crew, the red cock crew, Till once, as we tramped in from work, But never came the day: 110 We passed an open grave. 60 And crooked shape of Terror crouched, In the corners where we lay: With yawning mouth the yellow hole And each evil sprite that walks by night Gaped for a living thing; Before us seemed to play. The very mud cried out for blood To the thirsty asphalte ring: They glided past, they glided fast, 115 And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair 65 Like travelers through a mist: Some prisoner had to swing. They mocked the moon in a rigadoon Of delicate turn and twist, Right in we went, with soul intent And with formal pace and loathsome grace On Death and Dread and Doom: The phantoms kept their tryst. 120 The hangman, with his little bag, 106
With mop and mow, we saw them go, For the Lord of Death with icy breath Slim shadows hand in hand: Had entered in to kill. About, about, in ghostly rout They trod a saraband: He did not pass in purple pomp, 175 And the damned grotesques made arabesques,125 Nor ride a moon-white steed. Like the wind upon the sand! Three yards of cord and a sliding board Are all the gallows’ need: With the pirouettes of marionettes, So with rope of shame the Herald came They tripped on pointed tread: To do the secret deed. 180 But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear, As their grisly masque they led, 130 We were as men who through a fen And loud they sang, and loud they sang, Of filthy darkness grope: For they sang to wake the dead. We did not dare to breathe a prayer, Or give our anguish scope: “Oho!” they cried, “The world is wide, Something was dead in each of us, 185 But fettered limbs go lame! And what was dead was Hope. And once, or twice, to throw the dice 135 Is a gentlemanly game, For Man’s grim Justice goes its way, But he does not win who plays with Sin And will not swerve aside: In the secret House of Shame.” It slays the weak, it slays the strong, It has a deadly stride: 190 No things of air these antics were With iron heel it slays the strong, That frolicked with such glee: 140 The monstrous parricide! To men whose lives were held in gyves, And whose feet might not go free, We waited for the stroke of eight: Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things, Each tongue was thick with thirst: Most terrible to see. For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate 195 That makes a man accursed, Around, around, they waltzed and wound; 145 And Fate will use a running noose Some wheeled in smirking pairs: For the best man and the worst. With the mincing step of demirep Some sidled up the stairs: We had no other thing to do, And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer, Save to wait for the sign to come: 200 Each helped us at our prayers. 150 So, like things of stone in a valley lone, Quiet we sat and dumb: The morning wind began to moan, But each man’s heart beat thick and quick But still the night went on: Like a madman on a drum! Through its giant loom the web of gloom Crept till each thread was spun: With sudden shock the prison-clock 205 And, as we prayed, we grew afraid 155 Smote on the shivering air, Of the Justice of the Sun. And from all the gaol rose up a wail Of impotent despair, The moaning wind went wandering round Like the sound that frightened marshes hear The weeping prison-wall: From a leper in his lair. 210 Till like a wheel of turning-steel We felt the minutes crawl: 160 And as one sees most fearful things O moaning wind! what had we done In the crystal of a dream, To have such a seneschal? We saw the greasy hempen rope Hooked to the blackened beam, At last I saw the shadowed bars And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare 215 Like a lattice wrought in lead, Strangled into a scream. Move right across the whitewashed wall 165 That faced my three-plank bed, And all the woe that moved him so And I knew that somewhere in the world That he gave that bitter cry, God’s dreadful dawn was red. And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, None knew so well as I: 220 At six o’clock we cleaned our cells, For he who lives more lives than one At seven all was still, 170 More deaths than one must die. But the sough and swing of a mighty wing The prison seemed to fill, 107
IV Their uniforms were spick and span, And they wore their Sunday suits, There is no chapel on the day 1 But we knew the work they had been at On which they hang a man: By the quicklime on their boots. The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick, Or his face is far too wan, For where a grave had opened wide, 55 Or there is that written in his eyes 5 There was no grave at all: Which none should look upon. Only a stretch of mud and sand By the hideous prison-wall, So they kept us close till nigh on noon, And a little heap of burning lime, And then they rang the bell, That the man should have his pall. 60 And the Warders with their jingling keys Opened each listening cell, 10 For he has a pall, this wretched man, And down the iron stair we tramped, Such as few men can claim: Each from his separate Hell. Deep down below a prison-yard, Naked for greater shame, Out into God’s sweet air we went, He lies, with fetters on each foot, 65 But not in wonted way, Wrapt in a sheet of flame! For this man’s face was white with fear, 15 And that man’s face was grey, And all the while the burning lime And I never saw sad men who looked Eats flesh and bone away, So wistfully at the day. It eats the brittle bone by night, And the soft flesh by the day, 70 I never saw sad men who looked It eats the flesh and bones by turns, With such a wistful eye 20 But it eats the heart alway. Upon that little tent of blue We prisoners called the sky, For three long years they will not sow And at every careless cloud that passed Or root or seedling there: In happy freedom by. For three long years the unblessed spot 75 Will sterile be and bare, But there were those amongst us all 25 And look upon the wondering sky Who walked with downcast head, With unreproachful stare. And knew that, had each got his due, They should have died instead: They think a murderer’s heart would taint He had but killed a thing that lived Each simple seed they sow. 80 Whilst they had killed the dead. 30 It is not true! God’s kindly earth Is kindlier than men know, For he who sins a second time And the red rose would but blow more red, Wakes a dead soul to pain, The white rose whiter blow. And draws it from its spotted shroud, And makes it bleed again, Out of his mouth a red, red rose! 85 And makes it bleed great gouts of blood 35 Out of his heart a white! And makes it bleed in vain! For who can say by what strange way, Christ brings his will to light, Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore With crooked arrows starred, Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight? 90 Silently we went round and round The slippery asphalte yard; 40 But neither milk-white rose nor red Silently we went round and round, May bloom in prison air; And no man spoke a word. The shard, the pebble, and the flint, Are what they give us there: Silently we went round and round, For flowers have been known to heal 95 And through each hollow mind A common man’s despair. The memory of dreadful things 45 Rushed like a dreadful wind, So never will wine-red rose or white, And Horror stalked before each man, Petal by petal, fall And terror crept behind. On that stretch of mud and sand that lies By the hideous prison-wall, 100 The Warders strutted up and down, To tell the men who tramp the yard And kept their herd of brutes, 50 That God’s Son died for all. 108
If each could know the same— Yet though the hideous prison-wall That every prison that men build 15 Still hems him round and round, Is built with bricks of shame, And a spirit man not walk by night 105 And bound with bars lest Christ should see That is with fetters bound, How men their brothers maim. And a spirit may not weep that lies In such unholy ground, With bars they blur the gracious moon, And blind the goodly sun: 20 He is at peace—this wretched man— And they do well to hide their Hell, At peace, or will be soon: 110 For in it things are done There is no thing to make him mad, That Son of God nor son of Man Nor does Terror walk at noon, Ever should look upon! For the lampless Earth in which he lies Has neither Sun nor Moon. The vilest deeds like poison weeds 25 Bloom well in prison-air: They hanged him as a beast is hanged: 115 It is only what is good in Man They did not even toll That wastes and withers there: A reguiem that might have brought Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, Rest to his startled soul, And the Warder is Despair 30 But hurriedly they took him out, And hid him in a hole. 120 For they starve the little frightened child Till it weeps both night and day: They stripped him of his canvas clothes, And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool, And gave him to the flies; And gibe the old and grey, They mocked the swollen purple throat And some grow mad, and all grow bad, 35 And the stark and staring eyes: And none a word may say. And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud125 In which their convict lies. Each narrow cell in which we dwell Is foul and dark latrine, The Chaplain would not kneel to pray And the fetid breath of living Death By his dishonored grave: Chokes up each grated screen, 40 Nor mark it with that blessed Cross And all, but Lust, is turned to dust That Christ for sinners gave, 130 In Humanity’s machine. Because the man was one of those Whom Christ came down to save. The brackish water that we drink Creeps with a loathsome slime, Yet all is well; he has but passed And the bitter bread they weigh in scales 45 To Life’s appointed bourne: Is full of chalk and lime, And alien tears will fill for him 135 And Sleep will not lie down, but walks Pity’s long-broken urn, Wild-eyed and cries to Time. For his mourner will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn. But though lean Hunger and green Thirst Like asp with adder fight, 50 V We have little care of prison fare, For what chills and kills outright I know not whether Laws be right, 1 Is that every stone one lifts by day Or whether Laws be wrong; Becomes one’s heart by night. All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong; With midnight always in one’s heart, 55 And that each day is like a year, 5 And twilight in one’s cell, A year whose days are long. We turn the crank, or tear the rope, Each in his separate Hell, But this I know, that every Law And the silence is more awful far That men have made for Man, Than the sound of a brazen bell. 60 Since first Man took his brother’s life, And the sad world began, 10 And never a human voice comes near But straws the wheat and saves the chaff To speak a gentle word: With a most evil fan. And the eye that watches through the door Is pitiless and hard: This too I know—and wise it were And by all forgot, we rot and rot, 65 109
With soul and body marred. And cleanse from every blot of blood 95 The hand that held the knife. And thus we rust Life’s iron chain Degraded and alone: And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, And some men curse, and some men weep, The hand that held the steel: And some men make no moan: 70 For only blood can wipe out blood, But God’s eternal Laws are kind And only tears can heal: 100 And break the heart of stone. And the crimson stain that was of Cain Became Christ’s snow-white seal. And every human heart that breaks, In prison-cell or yard, Is as that broken box that gave 75 VI Its treasure to the Lord, And filled the unclean leper’s house In Reading gaol by Reading town 1 With the scent of costliest nard. There is a pit of shame, And in it lies a wretched man Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break Eaten by teeth of flame, And peace of pardon win! 80 In burning winding-sheet he lies, 5 How else may man make straight his plan And his grave has got no name. And cleanse his soul from Sin? How else but through a broken heart And there, till Christ call forth the dead, May Lord Christ enter in? In silence let him lie: No need to waste the foolish tear, And he of the swollen purple throat. 85 Or heave the windy sigh: 10 And the stark and staring eyes, The man had killed the thing he loved, Waits for the holy hands that took And so he had to die. The Thief to Paradise; And a broken and a contrite heart And all men kill the thing they love, The Lord will not despise. 90 By all let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, 15 The man in red who reads the Law Some with a flattering word, Gave him three weeks of life, The coward does it with a kiss, Three little weeks in which to heal The brave man with a sword! His soul of his soul’s strife,
The following poem is quoted from The Poetry Foundation’s publication of ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ by Lord Byron, see p. 82: Works Cited.
THE PRISONER OF CHILLON
MY hair is gray, but not with years, We were seven—who now are one,
Nor grew it white Six in youth, and one in age,
In a single night, Finish’d as they had begun,
As men’s have grown from sudden fears; Proud of Persecution’s rage; 20
My limbs are bow’d, though not with toil, 5 One in fire, and two in field
But rusted with a vile repose, Their belief with blood have seal’d,
For they have been a dungeon’s spoil, Dying as their father died,
And mine has been the fate of those For the God their foes denied;
To whom the goodly earth and air Three were in a dungeon cast, 25
10 Of whom this wreck is left the last. Are bann’d, and barr’d—forbidden fare; But this was for my father’s faith
I suffer’d chains and courted death; There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,
That father perish’d at the stake In Chillon’s dungeons deep and old,
For tenets he would not forsake; There are seven columns, massy and gray,
And for the same his lineal race 15 Dim with a dull imprison’d ray, 30 A sunbeam which hath lost its way, In darkness found a dwelling-place. And through the crevice and the cleft
110
Of the thick wall is fallen and left; Which he abhorr’d to view below.
Creeping o’er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh’s meteor lamp. 35 The other was as pure of mind,
And in each pillar there is a ring, But form’d to combat with his kind;
And in each ring there is a chain; Strong in his frame, and of a mood
That iron is a cankering thing, Which ’gainst the world in war had stood, 95
For in these limbs its teeth remain, And perish’d in the foremost rank
With marks that will not wear away, 40 With joy:—but not in chains to pine:
Till I have done with this new day, His spirit wither’d with their clank,
Which now is painful to these eyes, I saw it silently decline—
Which have not seen the sun so rise And so perchance in sooth did mine: 100
For years—I cannot count them o’er, But yet I forced it on to cheer
I lost their long and heavy score, 45 Those relics of a home so dear.
When my last brother droop’d and died, He was a hunter of the hills,
And I lay living by his side. Had follow’d there the deer and wolf;
To him this dungeon was a gulf, 105
They chain’d us each to a column stone, And fetter’d feet the worst of ills.
And we were three—yet, each alone;
We could not move a single pace, 50 Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls:
We could not see each other’s face, A thousand feet in depth below
But with that pale and livid light Its massy waters meet and flow;
That made us strangers in our sight: Thus much the fathom-line was sent 110
And thus together—yet apart, From Chillon’s snow-white battlement
Fetter’d in hand, but join’d in heart, 55 Which round about the wave inthrals:
’Twas still some solace, in the dearth A double dungeon wall and wave
Of the pure elements of earth, Have made—and like a living grave.
To hearken to each other’s speech, Below the surface of the lake 115
And each turn comforter to each The dark vault lies wherein we lay,
With some new hope, or legend old, 60 We heard it ripple night and day;
Or song heroically bold; Sounding o’er our heads it knock’d;
But even these at length grew cold, And I have felt the winter’s spray
Our voices took a dreary tone, Wash through the bars when winds were 120
An echo of the dungeon stone, high
A grating sound, not full and free, 65 And wanton in the happy sky;
As they of yore were wont to be; And then the very rock hath rock’d,
It might be fancy, but to me And I have felt it shake, unshock’d
They never sounded like our own. Because I could have smiled to see
The death that would have set me free. 125
I was the eldest of the three,
And to uphold and cheer the rest 70 I said my nearer brother pined,
I ought to do—and did my best; I said his mighty heart declined,
And each did well in his degree. He loathed and put away his food;
The youngest, whom my father loved, It was not that ’twas coarse and rude,
Because our mother’s brow was given For we were used to hunter’s fare, 130
To him, with eyes as blue as heaven— 75 And for the like had little care.
For him my soul was sorely moved; The milk drawn from the mountain goat
And truly might it be distress’d Was changed for water from the moat,
To see such bird in such a nest; Our bread was such as captives’ tears
For he was beautiful as day Have moistened many a thousand years, 135
(When day was beautiful to me 80 Since man first pent his fellow men
As to young eagles, being free)— Like brutes within an iron den;
A polar day, which will not see But what were these to us or him?
A sunset till its summer’s gone, These wasted not his heart or limb;
Its sleepless summer of long light, My brother’s soul was of that mould 140
The snow-clad offspring of the sun: 85 Which in a palace had grown cold,
And thus he was as pure and bright, Had his free breathing been denied
And in his natural spirit gay, The range of the steep mountain’s side.
With tears for nought but others’ ills; But why delay the truth?—he died.
And then they flow’d like mountain rills, I saw, and could not hold his head, 145
Unless he could assuage the woe 90 Nor reach his dying hand—nor dead,—
111
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain I call’d, for I was wild with fear;
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain. I knew ’t was hopeless, but my dread
He died,—and they unlock’d his chain, Would not be thus admonishèd.
And scoop’d for him a shallow grave 150 I call’d, and thought I heard a sound—
Even from the cold earth of our cave. I burst my chain with one strong bound, 210
I begg’d them, as a boon, to lay And rush’d to him:—I found him not,
His corse in dust whereon the day I only stirr’d in this black spot,
Might shine—it was a foolish thought, I only lived, I only drew
But then within my brain it wrought, 155 The accursèd breath of dungeon-dew;
That even in death his freeborn breast The last—the sole—the dearest link 215
In such a dungeon could not rest. Between me and the eternal brink,
I might have spared my idle prayer; Which bound me to my failing race,
They coldly laugh’d—and laid him there: Was broken in this fatal place.
The flat and turfless earth above 160 One on the earth, and one beneath—
The being we so much did love; My brothers—both had ceased to breathe: 220
His empty chain above it leant, I took that hand which lay so still,
Such murder’s fitting monument! Alas! my own was full as chill;
I had not strength to stir, or strive,
But he, the favourite and the flower, But felt that I was still alive—
Most cherish’d since his natal hour, 165 A frantic feeling, when we know 225 His mother’s image in fair face, That what we love shall ne’er be so.
The infant love of all his race, I know not why
His martyr’d father’s dearest thought, I could not die,
My latest care for whom I sought I had no earthly hope—but faith,
To hoard my life, that his might be 170 And that forbade a selfish death. 230 Less wretched now, and one day free;
He, too, who yet had held untired What next befell me then and there
A spirit natural or inspired— I know not well—I never knew;
He, too, was struck, and day by day First came the loss of light, and air,
Was wither’d on the stalk away. 175 And then of darkness too:
Oh, God! it is a fearful thing I had no thought, no feeling—none— 235
To see the human soul take wing Among the stones, I stood a stone,
In any shape, in any mood:— And was, scarce conscious what I wist,
I’ve seen it rushing forth in blood, As shrubless crags within the mist;
I’ve seen it on the breaking ocean 180 For all was blank, and bleak, and gray;
Strive with a swoln convulsive motion, It was not night—it was not day; 240
I’ve seen the sick and ghastly bed It was not even the dungeon-light,
Of Sin delirious with its dread: So hateful to my heavy sight,
But these were horrors—this was woe But vacancy absorbing space,
Unmix’d with such—but sure and slow. 185 And fixedness—without a place;
He faded, and so calm and meek, There were no stars, no earth, no time, 245
So softly worn, so sweetly weak, No check, no change, no good, no crime,
So tearless, yet so tender—kind, But silence, and a stirless breath
And grieved for those he left behind; Which neither was of life nor death;
With all the while a cheek whose bloom 190 A sea of stagnant idleness,
Was as a mockery of the tomb, Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless! 250
Whose tints as gently sunk away
As a departing rainbow’s ray; A light broke in upon my brain,—
An eye of most transparent light, It was the carol of a bird;
That almost made the dungeon bright; 195 It ceased, and then it came again,
And not a word of murmur, not The sweetest song ear ever heard,
A groan o’er his untimely lot,— And mine was thankful till my eyes 255
A little talk of better days, Ran over with the glad surprise,
A little hope my own to raise, And they that moment could not see
For I was sunk in silence—lost 200 I was the mate of misery.
In this last loss, of all the most; But then by dull degrees came back
And then the sighs he would suppress My senses to their wonted track; 260
Of fainting nature’s feebleness, I saw the dungeon walls and floor
More slowly drawn, grew less and less. Close slowly round me as before,
I listen’d, but I could not hear— 205 I saw the glimmer of the sun
112
Creeping as it before had done, For I had buried one and all 320
But through the crevice where it came 265 Who loved me in a human shape;
That bird was perched, as fond and tame, And the whole earth would henceforth be
And tamer than upon the tree; A wider prison unto me:
A lovely bird, with azure wings, No child, no sire, no kin had I,
And song that said a thousand things, No partner in my misery; 325
And seemed to say them all for me! 270 I thought of this, and I was glad,
I never saw its like before, For thought of them had made me mad;
I ne’er shall see its likeness more; But I was curious to ascend
It seemed like me to want a mate, To my barr’d windows, and to bend
But was not half so desolate, Once more, upon the mountains high, 330
And it was come to love me when 275 The quiet of a loving eye.
None lived to love me so again, I saw them—and they were the same.
And cheering from my dungeon’s brink, They were not changed like me in frame;
Had brought me back to feel and think. I saw their thousand years of snow
On high—their wide long lake below, 335
I know not if it late were free, And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;
Or broke its cage to perch on mine, 280 I heard the torrents leap and gush
But knowing well captivity, O’er channell’d rock and broken bush;
Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine! I saw the white-wall’d distant town,
Or if it were, in wingèd guise, And whiter sails go skimming down; 340
A visitant from Paradise; And then there was a little isle,
For—Heaven forgive that thought! the 285 Which in my very face did smile, while The only one in view;
Which made me both to weep and smile— A small green isle, it seem’d no more,
I sometimes deem’d that it might be Scarce broader than my dungeon floor, 345
My brother’s soul come down to me; But in it there were three tall trees,
But then at last away it flew, And o’er it blew the mountain breeze,
And then ’twas mortal well I knew, 290 And by it there were waters flowing,
For he would never thus have flown, And on it there were young flowers
And left me twice so doubly lone, growing
Lone—as the corse within its shroud, Of gentle breath and hue. 350
Lone—as a solitary cloud, The fish swam by the castle wall,
A single cloud on a sunny day, 295 And they seem’d joyous each and all;
While all the rest of heaven is clear, The eagle rode the rising blast,
A frown upon the atmosphere Methought he never flew so fast
That hath no business to appear As then to me he seem’d to fly; 355
When skies are blue and earth is gay. And then new tears came in my eye,
And I felt troubled and would fain
A kind of change came in my fate, 300 I had not left my recent chain.
My keepers grew compassionate; And when I did descend again,
I know not what had made them so, The darkness of my dim abode 360
They were inured to sights of woe, Fell on me as a heavy load;
But so it was:—my broken chain It was as is a new-dug grave,
With links unfasten’d did remain, 305 Closing o’er one we sought to save;
And it was liberty to stride And yet my glance, too much opprest,
Along my cell from side to side, Had almost need of such a rest. 365
And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part; It might be months, or years, or days—
And round the pillars one by one, 310 I kept no count, I took no note,
Returning where my walk begun, I had no hope my eyes to raise,
Avoiding only, as I trod, And clear them of their dreary mote.
My brothers’ graves without a sod; At last men came to set me free; 370
For if I thought with heedless tread I ask’d not why, and reck’d not where,
My steps profaned their lowly bed, 315 It was at length the same to me,
My breath came gaspingly and thick, Fetter’d or fetterless to be,
And my crush’d heart fell blind and sick. I learn’d to love despair.
And thus when they appear’d at last, 375
I made a footing in the wall, And all my bonds aside were cast,
It was not therefrom to escape, These heavy walls to me had grown
113
A hermitage—and all my own! And I, the monarch of each race,
And half I felt as they were come Had power to kill—yet, strange to tell!
To tear me from a second home: 380 In quiet we had learn’d to dwell—
With spiders I had friendship made, My very chains and I grew friends,
And watch’d them in their sullen trade, So much a long communion tends 390
Had seen the mice by moonlight play, To make us what we are:—even I
And why should I feel less than they? Regain’d my freedom with a sigh.
We were all inmates of one place, 385
Secondary Information
1.
Stetler, Russell. “The Battle of Bogside”. Photograph. 1970. The Battle of Bogside. CAIN. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
2.
“The H-Blocks of ‘The Maze’prison”. Photograph. 1976. Ulster Museum, Belfast. Paddy’s Wagon Blogspot. Web. 17 Mar. 2014. 114
3.
Unnamed photographer for US military. "Back to a Coast Guard assault transport comes this Marine after two days and nights of Hell on the beach of Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. His face is grimey with coral dust but the light of battle stays in his eyes." Photograph. 1944. US Government Archives. World War II Photographs. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
4.
Schiele, Egon. “The Single Orange Was the Only Light”. Sketch/Painting. 1912. Egon Schiele Life and Work Blogspot. Web. 12 May 2014.
115
5.
Schiele, Egon. “Die Tür in das Offene”. Sketch/Painting. 1912. Egon Schiele Life and Work Blogspot. Web. 12 May 2014.
6.
“Reading Gaol in 1844”. Print. 1844. University of Reading. Web. 2 May 2014.
116
7.
Sameli, Ioan. “Chillon’s Dungeon”. Photograph. 2010. Exploring Castles. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.