Category: Seamus Heaney

There are other mentions of nature, for instance: “The sky” (v3), “sea and hill” (v6), “that rock” (v10), “The leggy birds” (v11), and “Water and ground” (v16). Nature is important in this poem, “breakers shredded into rags” (v10), breakers are heavy waves which become white foam. (Wikipedia) This is really inspiring for the narrator. A lot of his poems are including natural elements, for instance, in “Personal Helicon”, the reference to the Helicon Mountain shows that Heaney is very close to Nature. If we look at the shape of the poem it can remind us of the waves shredding on the beach.

The title was not chosen randomly. Indeed, the shape of a peninsula is causing a cut between the mainland and the water. It also seems significant as it reaches far into the waters, establishing the bridge between the known and unknown. It seems to be a metaphor of the poet finding his voice. In this poems, Seamus Heaney tells us about the encounter between a poet and the lack of inspiration.

The speaker’s voice in the poem is very close to the write’s own voice, like in the poem “Digging”. The author dissociates the lack of inspiration he has with the beauty of nature which can help him to overcome his difficulties. The poem’s atmosphere is quite peaceful, and it is straight forward as the narrator addresses the reader by using the second person singular: “you”. Heaney incorporates the reader into the poem as the lack of inspiration can happen to anybody. It is a common situation that almost anyone can relate to, and he tells us about something we can do to solve this problem. This poem is a journey, like the poem “The first flight”, or even ‘The underground”. The theme of the journey in very important in Seamus Heaney’s poems and life, Indeed, he travelled a lot during his life.

In the first stanza, the narrator tells us that “When you have nothing to say, just drive”. Of course, driving when you have nothing else to say or to do, with no inspiration, is calming and it eases the mind. It can bring back the inspiration to anyone. Trough the poem there is this idea of escaping. In order to escape, oneself can find peace in nature. Like I said earlier, the references to Nature are abundant, and it helps the reader to picture this beautiful setting, in order to feel the benefits of driving through the Peninsula.

But this tranquil atmosphere has obviously an ending, as the verse 4 and 5 picture it, “you will not arrive” means that there is no final destination and that you can escape reality only for a brief moment as you “pass through” the landscape. There is an enjambment who forces the reader to come back to reality as it is impossible to avoid the trip “back home” (v13).

On the second stanza, the narrator gives us hope, and tells us not to let go and to continue: “But pass through, though always skirting landfall.” It is important for the reader to continue this journey to inspiration, in order to find something beautiful. But, on this journey, it is possible to encounter some difficulties. Darkness is one of them: “The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable and you’re in the dark again.” This brings this landscape to life and reminds us that this is a place of constant change and movement.

Nevertheless, on stanza three, the narrator tells us that even if oneself is obliged to come back to real life, it is still possible to remember. On verse 8 “now recall”, proves that the memory of it will sustain even when it’s impossible to see it in the “dark”. The word ‘shredded’ implies violent force. This shows that Nature can be both lifeful and violent, as in “Personal Helicon”, as the wells are filled with life, they are also associated with darkness and fear. All of the imagery, however, is powerful, which proves that this place is indeed inspirational.

The last stanza evokes the trip “back home” that I mentioned earlier. You may have to wait for inspiration to come, but eventually it will come: verse 1” to 14 “still with nothing to say except that now you will uncode all landscapes”. This is important because even if inspiration takes time to come, the trip still taught something to the narrator.

This poem could be divided in two separate parts. Stanza 1 and 2, and stanza 3 and 4. Indeed, the poem starts with the poet’s struggle to find inspiration; meaning his vocabulary is poor and he struggles to find the right words. But as we arrive to stanza 3, the vocabulary becomes richer and the poet’s perception of the word is much clearer than in the first two stanzas.

To conclude I can say that this poem is characteristic of Seamus Heaney’s work. Indeed, the proximity with nature and a quest to find inspiration are one of the usual faces of Heaney’s poetry. The poem started as the narrator did not know what to say, but in the end his vocabulary became richer. It’s an example of what Heaney’s calls poetic technique, as in “The Forge”, as Heaney tells “the discovery of ways to go our of his normal cognitive bounds and raid the inarticulate” (Heaney, 47) It’s a good spiritual answer because Seamus Heaney basically tells us that even if in the end you still have nothing to say, you will be able to remember this journey and the beauty of the place he visited.

Two world wars, an intervening economic depression of great severity, and the austerity of life in Britain following the Second World War help to explain the quality and direction of English literature in the 20th century. The traditional values of Western civilization, which the Victorians had only begun to question, came to be questioned seriously by a number of new writers, who saw society breaking down around them. Traditional literary forms were often discarded, and new ones succeeded one another with bewildering rapidity, as writers sought fresher ways of expressing new kinds of experience, or experience seen in new ways. The Post World War II Literature defined itself by reflecting the prevalent violence of modern society, from the destruction of large-scale warfare to individual crimes. The historical significance of violence in the period following World War II attributed to violence becoming a very common and popular theme. The poets expressed their anxieties of a world where human aggression was rising at an alarming rate and warfare was causing massive destruction.

It is hard to overstate how pivotal a figure in British Literature Ted Hughes was, and remains. Understated and mildly ironic in style, he explored questions of human existence, human consciousness; man’s relation with the universe, with the natural world and with his own inner self. He wrote with vivid imagination, cynical descriptions and powerful imagery. He often used the imagery of crows, hawks and jaguars in his poetry. In extraordinarily vigorous verse, beginning with his first collection, The Hawk in the Rain (1957), Hughes captured the ferocity, vitality, and splendor of the natural world. Hughes has become one of the main poetical voices in English thanks to his celebration of the dark rhythms of nature and his valuation of the animal world above the rational, destructive impulses of human civilization. Sheikh Mehedi Hassan believes that “…his contemporaries were committed to “the Movement” and kept articulating angst, anger, negation, narcissism, morbidity, and frustration in their verses, Hughes produced elegant poems of versatile animal world.” Nevertheless, according to Hassan, “The use of animal symbolism and imagery is an old trend to teach human beings certain lessons of honesty, morality and ethics.” The theme of violence finds the most vivid expression in the animal poems of Hughes. That Morning, Full Moon and Little Frieda, The Jaguar, Second Glance at a Jaguar, Pike; Hawk Roosting; Thrushes are some of his poems which revolve around the themes of cruelty and violence, inseparable from the world of Nature. John Press refers to his work as a ‘naked apprehension of physical reality’, and to Hughes himself as ‘anatomist of violence’.

A native of Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney is widely recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century. Heaney began his career writing personal and pastoral poems using rustic images. However, he changed the course of his poetry because of what he deemed as political necessity- the agitation in Northern Ireland- to poetry of political significance. In 1979, reflecting on the years he spent writing Field Work, Heaney offers a much less politically charged focus for his art: ‘Those years […] were an important growth time when I was asking myself the proper function of poets and poetry and learning a new commitment to the art”. His poems are popular for their simple and understandable language along with their universal themes. As Blake Morrison noted in his work Seamus Heaney, the author is ‘that rare thing, a poet rated highly by critics and academics yet popular with ‘the common reader.”

Hughes’ Hawk Roosting is a dramatic monologue of a Hawk. Sitting on a treetop, the Hawk meditates on its upraised position as it looks arrogantly at the world in front of it. Proud of its abilities and situation, it assumes the role of the Creator, God. It takes pleasure and pride in the fact that it can kill and wreak havoc on its innocent preys whenever it pleases. The Hawk is a symbol of power, superiority and arrogance. Many critics see in the ruthless behavior of the hawk a despot or a dictator. It can be compared to a tyrant or a fascist. However, Hughes didn’t particularly agree with this approach to his poem. According to him, he merely wanted to depict the cruelty and the bloodthirstiness which exists in nature. The poem is about a single minded concern with a violence which seeks no justification for itself.

Casualty is an elegy for Seamus Heaney’s friend who was killed by the British troops on ‘Bloody Sunday’. It is set against the background of the turmoil in Northern Ireland in which innocent lives were being taken in Ireland by the British troops. Heaney describes the victim in elaborate detail. This detailed description helps the reader connect with the victim. Heaney then describes the coffin procession and tries to imagine the expression of his friend before his death. The poet missed his funeral but finds or imagines himself on a boat carrying the coffin. The poem ends with the poet asking the victim to return and talk to him again. Through the poem, Heaney attempts to outline the suffering that the innocent endure due to acts of violence. Put into context with the social significance and the other victims, this puts a more subjective face on the victims of what are usually dispassionately described as the casualties of war and political struggle. It ends by ensnaring both the speaker and his elegized subject in the Northern Irish conflict, despite the best efforts of both men to remain uninvolved.

Introduction

Twentieth-Century English Poetry contains the poetry of over 280 poets from 1900 to the present day, including W.B. Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, A.E. Housman, John Betjeman, Fleur Adcock, Tony Harrison, Benjamin Zephaniah, and Isaac Rosenberg, D.H. Lawrence and Carol Ann Duffy and many others. It also incorporates works by poets such as Sylvia Plath, T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Louis MacNeice and Siegfried Sassoon. This synopsis will focus on the two such poets of the twentieth century: Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney.

Edward James Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998), popularly known as Ted Hughes, was the youngest child of William Henry Hughes and Edith Farrar Hughes. He was an English poet and a British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death on 28 October 1998. Hughes was a multitalented poet and he is best acknowledged for creating influential poems that feature bold metaphors, echoing language, imagery, and speech rhythms. Hughes’s poetry, according to Seamus Heaney reflects these traits along with, ‘racial memory, animal instinct and poetic imagination all flow into one another with an exact sensuousness.’ Hughes’s poetry signals a spectacular departure from the prevailing modes of the period. Unlike R.S. Thomas & Tom Gunn who preferred to write on the bleak beauty of the British Landscapes Ted Hughes preferred to differ by choosing to focus his poetic works to root in nature and, in particular, the innocent coarseness of animals. The rural landscape of Hughes’s youth in Yorkshire exerted a lasting influence on his work. To read Hughes’s poetry is to enter a world dominated by nature, especially by animals. This holds true for nearly all of his books, from The Hawk in the Rain to Wolfwatching (1989) and Moortown Diary (1989), two of his late collections. Hughes’s love of animals was one of the catalysts in his decision to become a poet. According to London Times contributor Thomas Nye, Hughes once confessed “that he began writing poems in adolescence when it dawned upon him that his earlier passion for hunting animals in his native Yorkshire ended either in the possession of a dead animal, or at best a trapped one. He wanted to capture not just live animals, but the aliveness of animals in their natural state: their wildness, their quiddity, the fox-ness of the fox and the crow-ness of the crow.” However, Hughes’s interest in animals was generally less naturalistic than symbolic. Using figures such as “Crow” to approximate a mythic everyman, Hughes’s work speaks to his concern with poetry’s vatic, even shamanic powers.

Seamus Justin Heaney was born in 1939 and died in 2013. He was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. During his lifetime, he was an important figure in poetry and he is believed to be one of the best Irish poets of all times. Seamus Heaney received several awards during his lifetime, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (1968), the E. M. Foster award (1975), the PEN Translation Prize (1985), the Nobel Prize in Literature (1995), the Golden Wreath of Poetry, and the T. S. Eliot prize, among others. He was born in Northern Ireland, raised in County Derry, and then lived many years in Dublin. In the 1960’s Seamus Heaney became a lecturer in St College in Belfast after attending Queen’s University Belfast. From 1981 to 2006, he lived part-time in the United States. Seamus Heaney worked as a professor and was a “Poet in Residence” in Harvard University. His most notable works are: North, Field Work, The Spirit Level, Beowulf, District and Circle, and Human chain. Furthermore, one of his most well-known poetry collections is Death of a Naturalist. Death of a Naturalist was issued in 1966 and was Heaney’s first major published collection. The book won several awards, including the Gregory Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and consists of 34 short poems.

Though both the two poets have different genre or area of interest yet they have some similarities in them. Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney both portrayed their own feelings or human instincts by using animal imagery into their works. Also both the two poets belong to the poets of post world war so some of their poetries also resemble the essence of world wars.

Content

This dissertation will further approach the study of comparing works, style, technique, and impact of world war in the poetry of the two famous poets Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. Both the two poets have been into a complex friendship and were greatly influenced by each other’s works. The works of Heaney and Hughes tough are different yet have some similarities. If we go through their poems of them we will see that both the two poets use the elements of ‘past’ in their poetries. Both the poets belonged to the twentieth century but their work resembles the essence of the ancient world. Also both the poets had been through world wars and had seen devastation from their own eyes which we could clearly see in their works too. Like ‘Six Young Men’ by Ted Hughes and ‘In a Field’ by Seamus Heaney. Ted Hughes ‘Six Young Men’ is inspired by a photograph of six men shot at Lumb Falls near Hebden Bridge in the earlier part of the last century. All the six men were killed in the First World War.

Six Young Men by Ted Hughes is a poem based on the true story of six soldiers who were killed during First World War. Hughes here with their reference tried to explain the condition of those poor soldiers as well as their families. Heaney on the other hand also describes the same scene of the First World War in his poem In a Field where he describes about a soldier who returned to his family after the war.

Another tools that this dissertation will focus on to bring out the comparative study between Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney is the way of using nature and showing how ferocious it can turn in order to harm human life. Ted Hughes ‘wind’ and Seamus Heaney’s storm on the island’ is the perfect example for the same. Both storm and wind are the two powerful image of air. Here in the two poems both the poets use them as a title which gives reader a clear sense of warning at the beginning about how this poem will go on to explain the disaster they produce and also how it can turn dangerous for human beings’ life. In the poem ‘Wind’ Ted Hughes moved further and shows ferocious wind and also its effects on land. Wind is all about nature and the struggle of man with it. The poet in the poem talks about a deadly night that was stormed by strong and fierce winds and the helplessness of man in front of it. The poem is divided into six stanzas each talking about the terror of the wind.

Seamus Heaney’s “Storm on an Island” is included in Death of a Naturalist. This poem shows us how the islanders live their lives on an island that is frequently been hit by fierce and ravaging storms.

In the poem ‘Mid-Term Break’ belonging to the collection ‘Death of a Naturalist’ (1966), the poet Seamus Heaney thoroughly explores the theme of children sometimes being forced to grow up. The memory poem presents the tragedy which forced Seamus Heaney to come of age, laying out in snapshot-like form the instances that marked the influential day. Called away from school, he faces the reality of his younger brother’s death, and the new expectations which fall upon him. Through the poet’s detached tone, due to the shock he experienced, the burdens of upscaled responsibilities and the new realities forced upon the young Seamus Heaney are evident. This integration demonstrates how children may be obligated to shoulder parts of adulthood prematurely.

Firstly, the tone in the composition which is evident through the use of several literary feature, is almost entirely devoid of emotion. Maintained by the poet as he remembers this impactful event of his life, it is indicative of his shock, of his sense of a disturbed reality – stark against the backdrop of childhood- which forced him to grow up and adjust. A clear example of this is found as the poet details his entrance into the house full of members of the grieving community, as he says: “And I was embarrassed/ By old men standing up to shake my hand” [8-9]. The poet here lays out his awkwardness at being treated like an adult through the visual imagery of the old men standing up to express their condolences, showing that due to the tragedy, he is now being treated like an adult, and finds it difficult to behave accordingly as he states that he was “embarrassed”. Interestingly, this is the only occurrence of a directly stated emotion, which shows the significance of this particular feeling to the young poet. This shows that he is not used to this treatment, and is being forced to react to it, which he does uncomfortably. Further, the word choice in “old men” emphasizes the poet’s then youth, as he sees the adults present as “old”, which stands out to him, again showing him being forced to deal with an unprecedented situation through the detached tone as he simply describes his reactions without much introspection.

The poet chronologically details the tragic day, beginning with his removal from school, using clear time references, as is the norm for reminiscence. A grim example of this occurs as the poet depicts the scene of the arrival of his brother’s cadaver, saying: “At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived/ With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses” [14-15]. Here, the poet uses a specific time reference (“At ten o’clock”) before proceeding to describe the arrival of his younger brother for his final night at home, showing that this particular incident stood out in his memory. This instance-specific way of recalling events is repeated throughout the poem, and emphasizes the shock and detachment of the poet, as his memory encompasses only those striking events of the tragic day but highlights them extensively.

Furthermore, the visual imagery evident in (“With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses”) exhibits a clinical description of a highly emotional situation, which is unexpected from a child, and shows a forced reaction to an unprecedented situation. In addition, the word choice in “the corpse” instead of, for example, “my brother”, again confirms the detachment of the young Seamus Heaney, as he refuses to accept the reality of the situation, which shows that he is still shocked, and confirms the detached tone. This is because he defers from explicitly referring to the identity of the corpse, and his close emotional ties to the person now dead before him, showing the difficulty which the poet, as a child, faced in dealing with the tragedy. This tragedy exposed him to the harsh realities in life and forced him to change, which is evidenced by the shocked tone which shows difficulty and uncertainty in dealing with a situation.

Last is the poet’s description of the reactions of others to his presence, a clear indicator of the new circumstance forced upon him, as shown through: “Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, / Away at school, as my mother held my hand” [11-12]. Here, the poet details his entrance to the house full with numbers of the bereaved community. The poet’s lack of reaction to the auditory imagery present in (“Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest”) shows his detachment, as he lays out his memory as a series of sense perceptions, mostly devoid of emotion. This is evidence of shock, which is carried by the tone.

Moreover, as communities in Northern Ireland were known to be particularly close, the failure of adults to recognize the young Heaney again shows his youth, and that he is distinctly out of place, as whispers inquiring about his identity immediately sprang up at his entrance. The contrast which appears between “I was the eldest” and “my mother held my hand” shows the opposition in the way the Heaney is perceived. He presents the child, holding his mother’s hand, while society views him as “the eldest”, expecting him to grow up prematurely, pressuring him to rise to a role for which he is not yet ready.

This paper deals with Seamus Heaney’s attitude to politics in his poetry, focusing on ‘North’ collection (1975). It aims at showing how Heaney developed from a nature poet to a political poet and how the surrounding events affected his poetry and his attitude. Besides, he is not really considered as a political poet but he had to respond to the events around him in his homeland, Ireland. North is considered a reflection to the conflict inside the poet who is seeking art for art and the person who is living in a colonized land and cannot escape writing about the events.

Seamus Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. He worked at Queen’s University in Belfast and, at Carysfort College in Dublin, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at Oxford University.

Heaney spent a rural childhood and was watching the battles of the American soldiers in the local fields and these battles were centered near his home. This image was taken in Heaney’s mind and much of his poetry grounded there in Mossbawn.

He is considered ‘the most important Irish poet since Yeats’ as Robert Lowell described him. He wrote poetry and playwrights and translated works from Irish to English and vice versa. Heaney won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 for writing art for art’s sake and universalizing the suffering of the Catholic people as he is a Catholic suffering among a Protestant majority. There is a tension appears in his poetry between his belonging to Ireland, his mother land and the imperial Britain. He described the reason for this tension in his Nobel Prize speech by drawing an image for the child’s life in the colonized Ireland: “The child in the bedroom, listening simultaneously to the domestic idiom of his Irish home and the official idioms of the British broadcaster while picking up from behind both the signals of some other distress, that child was already being schooled for the complexities of his adult predicament, a future where he would have to adjudicate among promptings variously ethical, aesthetical, moral, political, metrical, skeptical, cultural, topical, typical, post-colonial and, taken all together, simply impossible”.

He suffered from the tension inside him between his belonging to Ireland and England which has led him to the feeling of guilt and was articulated in his response to the crisis of his own country, Ireland. He writes: “At school I studied the Gaelic literature of Ireland as well as the literature of England, and since then I have maintained a notion of myself as Irish in a province that insists that it is British” (Preoccupations 35). Alan Shapiro described this tension saying that: “If Irish culture is his wife English is his mistress, and to satisfy one is necessarily to betray the other” (13).

Heaney tried to merge the troubles of his Homeland with a historical frame to include the human situation in his book ‘North’ (1975). Reviewers criticized Heaney for playing the role of apologist and mythologizer but Morrison suggested that Heaney would never thought himself as a political spokesman. Heaney “has written poems directly about the troubles as well as elegies for friends and acquaintances who have died in them; he has tried to discover a historical framework in which to interpret the current unrest; and he has taken on the mantle of public spokesman, someone looked to for comment and guidance”, noted Morrison. “Yet he has also shown of signs of deeply resenting this role, defending the right of poets to be private and political, and questioning the extent to which poetry, however ‘committed,’ can influence the course of history”. (‘Seamus Heaney’)

Heaney believed in the influence of art in the face of technologies and economic crisis and said that people during these times realize their need for life and art over economics: “If poetry and the arts do anything”, – he said, “they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness” (‘The poetry, and wisdom, of Seamus Heaney’).

He refused to be a political poet but he can do nothing but respond to the troubles of his country and write about what is going on around him in addition to his need to express his feeling of isolation as a Catholic in a protestant province.

Seamus Heaney’s most prominent political collection is ‘North’ (1975) and it is his fourth collection, where Heaney reached his poetic process climax. ‘North’ is a post-colonial text. It was published three years after Wintering out and those three years have been marked by attempts to find solutions for the crisis in Ulster. The attempts included an agreement between the British government the Protestant establishment and the SDLP to have a new assembly with power sharing and a joint Protestant/Catholic administration. The agreement failed and the assembly was down by the Ulster workers’ strike on May 1972. In response, Northern Ireland administrated directly from Westminster and British troops in the Province.

In the summer of 1972, Heaney left Northern Ireland after becoming a well-known poet in the North and a kind of spokesman people looking forward to his words and opinions concerning the status quo. Thus he was aware of the consequences of this move as he told James Randall: “Undoubtedly I was aware of a political dimension to the move south of the border, and it was viewed, I think, with regret by some, and with a sense of almost betrayal by others. That was because a situation like that in the North of Ireland generates a great energy and group loyalty, and it generates defensiveness about its own verities. Some people felt rejected by my leaving” (8). Heaney’s move to Glenmore is considered an assertion of his Irishness and a protest against being called a ‘British’ poet.

In ‘North’, Heaney brought the Northern conflict into his poetry. He has chosen two ways as the book consists of two parts: the first based on metaphor and analogy dealing with historical matters of Northern Ireland and the other almost documentary deals with contemporary Northern Ireland. We can notice through the book’s two-part the transformation of Heaney from being a nature poet to a political one.

Part one of the book is framed by two poems: ‘Antaeus’ and ‘Antaeus and Hercules’.

Antaeus is the son of Gaia (Earth) and got his power from a close contact with Earth. He is a figure from Greek/ North African mythology. The first poem Antaeus is a monologue by Antaeus exposing his magical power:

When I lie on the ground

I rise flushed as a rose in the morning.

In fights I arrange a fall on the ring

To rub myself with sand

That is operative

As an elixir.

And as Antaeus is the son of the Earth, he can survive only by contacting his mother:

Down here in my cave

Girdered with root and rock

I am cradled in the dark that wombed me.

At the end of the poem, Antaeus introduced Hercules who knew about Antaeus’ weakness point so he will disconnect him from his source of power; the Earth. Hercules has to defeat Antaeus to pass to the world of fame and power:

Let each new hero come

Seeking the golden apples and Atlas:

He must wrestle with me before he pass

Into that realm of fame

Finally, we do not know if Antaeus defeated by Herclues or not and do not know if it’s the end of Antaeus or a rebirth for him:

He may well throw me and renew my birth

But let him not plan, lifting me off the earth,

My elevation, my fall.

Here we wonder whom does Anateus symbolize? Is he Heaney who is attached to his roots? Is he Heaney, who does not want to use his poetry in politics? Is he the poet who is afraid from elevation into the world of political poetry that may lead to his fall down? We find the answers at the beginning of Antaeus and Hercules’ poem as Heaney described the labours of Hercules then tell us that Anateus has been beaten:

a fall was a renewal

but now he is raised up,

he is taken

out of his element

into a dream of loss.

Antaeus at the end will die, just like those other ancient heroes: Balor, Byrthnoth and Sitting Bull. These four heroes share a common status: they are defeated by an imperialist enemy – Hercules, Lugh, the Vikings, the white Americans.

Morrison suggests his political interpretation of the Antaeus-myth, saying that “politically, these are poems about colonization, suggesting that dispossession is the inevitable lot of small, backward nations” (59). Morrison suggests that Heaney sympathizes with the minority in the character of Antaeus. And as Morrison suggests two that the two Antaeus-poems framed part 1 of the book ‘North’ with its content that shows the successive invasion and colonization. I see it may be a true point of view. Also, it may refer to the status of the poet himself. His struggle with his poetry and himself from neglecting the events and producing the kind of poetry that is metaphorical and full of analogies like Antaeus to the moment he is defeated by Hercules that represents rationality. Finally, he resorts to the direct, explicit, political poetry in part two of the book leaving the myths behind.

The first part contains poems about the history of Northern Ireland and explores many aspects of suppressing Ireland by different invaders. It includes the poem ‘North’, which the collection itself is on its name. In ‘North’, Heaney is asking for an answer to one of his fundamental concerns – the poet’s mission. North is one of the three or four poems of this part that handle that problem or question concerning writing poetry metaphorically or explicitly? In the first stanza, the poet returns to the seaside:

I returned to a long strand,

the hammered curve of a bay,

and found only the secular

powers of the Atlantic thundering.

He stares at the Atlantic towards Iceland and Greenland and the magic of these colonized islands:

I faced the unmagical

invitations of Iceland,

the pathetic colonies

of Greenland, and suddenly

His thoughts go suddenly to the Viking invaders and their places in the Orkneys and in Dublin, their raids, their long swords and long ships:

those fabulous raiders,

those lying in Orkney and Dublin

measured against

their long swords rusting,

And then appears Heaney’s awareness of the danger of using his poetry in violence or in politics. The warning voices inside him appear in his lines:

were ocean-deafened voices

warning me, lifted again

in violence and epiphany.

The longship’s swimming tongue

Heaney has never been a propagandist or opportunist that thrives on the troubles. So he is confused between using the violence in his North or resort to the metaphor, as usual, to express his suffer and to refer to the crisis.

The cycle in Ulster never ends; the cycle of revenge and counter-revenge, blood shedding and the cruel customs of the Vikings still alive there. The memory of violence regenerates violence.

as buoyant with hindsight—

it said Thor’s hammer swung

to geography and trade,

thick-witted couplings and revenges,

the hatreds and behind-backs

of the althing, lies and women,

exhaustions nominated peace,

memory incubating the spilled blood.

The voices of the long ships advices the poetry of the following:

It said, ‘Lie down

in the word-hoard, burrow

the coil and gleam

of your furrowed brain.

As we mentioned that Heaney’s art is for the sake of Art so the voices in his poem are in favor of art and against propaganda. Here we find the inner voice of Heaney ordering him to keep doing what he has been always doing. The voice orders him to write only for art and to put his art a priority. Only talk about the crisis if this art has something to say or to do with this crisis but never put politics before art. The voice tells him to keep digging the darkness and explore what is not explored.

Compose in darkness.

Expect aurora borealis

in the long foray

but no cascade of light.

Keep your eye clear

as the bleb of the icicle,

trust the feel of what nubbed treasure

your hands have known.

‘North’ depicts the conflict inside Heaney concerning writing poetry and his political attitude in his writings. Whether to be an explicit political poet or stick to his metaphors and analogies in his poetry? To refer to the crisis with clear words or use his images and express in an artistic way?

In part two, Heaney started to articulate the crisis and reflecting upon the surroundings. The poems of this part are less metaphorical and more rational and direct to politics. Particularly in poem ‘When You Say, Say Nothing’, Heaney is reflecting upon current events happened to him or in Ireland. The title stands for what Heaney has called ‘strategies for evasion and compliance’ (Celtic Fringe, Viking Fringe, 254) remembering his mother telling him’ “Whatever you say, say nothing”. This is an indication to the status in Ulster as everyone has to pay attention of he/she is speaking of as saying wrong things lead to dangerous consequences.

The beginning of the poem was written after an encounter between Heaney and an English journalist asking him about his opinion in the Northern Irish Crisis.

I’m writing just after an encounter

With an English journalist in search of ‘views

On the Irish thing’. I’m back in winter

Quarters where bad news is no longer news,

The poet is very annoyed; the reports are chasing locals to ask about how the Irish people feel about their situation. They are chasing the people with their microphones and records to ask them about their feelings as Irish:

Where media-men and stringers sniff and point,

Where zoom lenses, recorders and coiled leads

Litter the hotels.

Heaney is feeling negative and cannot help, he can only realize as Hamlet that:

The times are of joint.

The reports and journalists care about nothing but material for their articles and newspapers. They not even help in the resolution of the conflict and the poet prefers ‘rosary beads’ prayer:

But I incline as much to rosary beads

The poet describing for us the clichés of the journalists and their repeated words everywhere those are meaningless and away from reality. They care about events not related to the conflict:

As to the jottings and analyses

Of politicians and newspapermen

Who’ve scribbled down the long campaign from gas

And protest to gelignite and Sten,

Who proved upon their pulses ‘escalate’,

Backlash’ and ‘crack down’, ‘the provisional wing’,

‘Polarization’ and ‘long-standing hate’.

Then the poet is part of this world and has no way but to engage in the talking and respond to the events:

Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing,

Expertly civil-tongued with civil neighbours

The poet keeps describing events in the following parts of the poem, events in Ulster and the status of people, the authority and the resistance in the city. In the final part, he is describing what he has seen and starts to ask questions about pain and misery and if there is a life before death!

The conflict comes to its climax in the final and finest poem of ‘North’, ‘Exposure’, where the poet is searching for an image out of the problem. It is about the poet’s calling and responsibilities. The poem itself is, to an extent, an analysis for Heaney himself, as he poses a series of questions as a public figure, yet simply another individual. Heaney asks: who is he writing for, who is he needing to represent – the entire Irish community or just the minorities, and ultimately, what is his place in society?

As I sit weighing and weighing

My responsible tristia.

For what? For the ear? For the people?

For what is said behind-backs?

The poem is set in December in Micklow and the poet is in doubt about his role and feels ‘cold’ in the ‘last light’.

It is December in Wicklow:

Alders dripping, birches

Inheriting the last light,

The ash tree cold to look at.

He is searching for the light but all that he sees is a ‘falling star’. Heaney is disappointed because he missed a great opportunity and has to be satisfied with the little he has gained.

a hero

On some muddy compound,

His gift like a slingstone

Whirled for the desperate.

In these lines appears a sense of failure as if the poet has wasted his talent so he is asking:

How did I end up like this?

The drops of raining through the tress evoke in him the conflict between his poetic sense and his responsibility. Heaney is back again to the basic dilemma- aestheticism or commitment, poetry or politics, responsibility to his art or to his community. He does not want to let his people down neither loses the aesthetics of poetry:

Rain comes down through the alders,

Its low conductive voices

Mutter about let-downs and erosions

And yet each drop recalls

The diamond absolutes.

Who is he? And what is his real role?

I am neither internee nor informer;

An inner migr, grown long-haired

And thoughtful; a wood-kerne

He is neither an internee nor an informer; he is just an inner migr. He admits that he moved as a Catholic from North to survive and escape in hope to return back when the situation allows for it.

Escaped from the massacre,

Heaney does not feel ease in his exile and wants to retire and withdraw from the conflict to become a private, neutral, political poet. In the same time, he knows that it is impossible as it is demanded from him to say something about the troubles:

Taking protective colouring

From bole and bark, feeling

Every wind that blows;

In Heaney’s art, protective colouring is the metaphor, analogy, and myth. Heaney uses his background, nature, history, the past, language as protective colouring to speak out. Protective colouring is also an image for his political poetry with its metaphorical aspects.

Yet Heaney is afraid of failure; to miss the comet which stands for Ireland crisis:

For their meagre heat, have missed

The once-in-a-lifetime portent,

The comet’s pulsing rose.

In ‘Exposure’, we find the poet’s conflict between withdrawing and commitment but he decides that the only way is to write his poetry by ‘taking protective colouring’. He settled the issue by his decision to write committed poetry but indirectly through metaphor and analogy.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that Heaney’s journey through poetry is full of confusion and inner conflict. He is tortured between his commitment towards his land and his people and his commitment towards his art. Heaney is sometimes staning for his art and prefers to be away from politics and other times he cannot flee his land’s crisis.

In ‘North’, the poet’s conflict is clear through his poems. The book is considered a good reflection of the poet’s history in writing. In ‘North’, we see Heaney moves between different stages. He is sometimes on the stage of the political man and other on the stage of the poet. And between this and that, he is asking himself about his real role and the role of his poetry.

The ‘North’ book is divided into parts. The first part is considered an extension to the previous works of Heaney. On the other hand, the second part is a direct, explicit, political poetry. The first part is framed by two poems, ‘Antaeus’ and ‘Antaeus and Hercules’, show Heaney’s switching from metaphorical poetry to direct, political poetry. Throughout the first part, Heaney asks himself about the poet’s role. Here we find the inner voice of Heaney ordering him to keep doing what he has been always doing. The voice orders him to write only for art and to put his art a priority. Only talk about the crisis if this art has something to say or to do with this crisis but never put politics before art. The voice tells him to keep digging the darkness and explore what is not explored. Then the citizen inside the poet is awake and beaten in the last poem of part one. Heaney as a poet is depicted in the character of Antaeus in the poem ‘Antaeus and Hercules’ as Antaeus is defeated by Hercules. The poet is defeated and cannot escape the surroundings so that he will write the crisis explicitly in part two of ‘North’.

In part two, Heaney writes explicitly in many poems about Ulster and the events there. In ‘Whatever You Say Say Nothing’, the poem that is into four parts, Heaney writes about a thing happened to him personally and how journalists harsh and chase Irish people everywhere to ask them their feelings as Irish. Heaney speaks the Northern Ireland dilemma directly and using no metaphor in part two and along the rest poems of the part expresses the events explicitly. At the end of the part, Heaney is back to questioning his role in ‘Exposure’ and decides to write metaphorically. He decides to be committed but not away from the aesthetics of poetry and art.

Heaney’s attitude to politics along his life is reflected in his collection ‘North’ and the conflict inside him too.

Works Cited

1. Morrison, Blake. ‘Seamus Heaney’. London: Methuen, 1982.
2. Sinner, Alain. ‘Protective Colouring’ – The Political Commitment In the Poetry of Seamus Heaney. Ph.D. thesis. University of Hull,1988.
3. Parker, Michael. Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1993.
4. Heaney, Seamus. North. London: Faber and Faber Lit, 1975.
5. ……. Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978. London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 1980.
6. Qadeer, Haris. ‘ Neither Internee nor Informer: Seamus Heaney – the Poet, the Public Spokesman and the Anthropologist in North’. Explorations. 21 (2010): 1-16
7. http://www.gcu.edu.pk/Publications/Explorations/2010/1-16.pdf 20-12-2018
8. Radall, James. ‘An Interview with Seamus Heaney’. Ploughshares, 5/3 (1979), pp.7-22.
9. Seamus Heaney – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2019. Wed. 2 Jan 2019.
10. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1995/heaney/lecture/

Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘The Thimble’ discusses the plethora of uses that a thimble has provided to many different societies and cultures over its time of existence. The thimble is a small closed-end cap worn over people fingertips to protect them from needles while sewing. But ‘The Thimble’ argues that every object is an absent center around which every culture develops a different meaning.

The wording by Heaney in the beginning of the poem is sexually suggestive. When he talks about the carnal mural, he uses the arty word of touch which contains different intentions, and also includes the details of the drawing lips and bite marks. The first section of the poem is written in single unpunctuated sentences, which contains lines of 8 to 10 syllables. In the second section of the poem Heaney uses the literary device of an allusion when he follows the Bible’s archaic usage, he also adds conjunction of ‘so’ to elaborate upon the impact that the idea of spiritualism has a cause and effect. Written in 17 lines, 4 of these sentences construct lines of 5-10 syllables, and also include the plentiful use of enjambment, as seen in line 4. Section three Heaney again uses explicit vocabulary, however this time focusing on pleasure, he also implements a lyrical compound of thirst-brush, which offers a parallel through very different sensual sensation. Written in 10 syllable lines, section three enlightens a question and also mentions the final echo of the human voice. Section four written 4 lines of variable length, in a unpunctuated sentence. Heaney takes a rebellious stand to his stride with no intention of using exclamation marks.

Heaney begins the poem off in section one talking about carnal of murals of the Ancient Roman time period. The paintings that are usually contained on the carnal murals focus on sexually explicit frescos. The painter of the mural uses the thimble as a device to hold the special red paint: “The painter used it to hold a special red” (pg. 94). The thimble, tiny in size and shape makes it easier for the painter to dip his tiny brush in, to finish the fine details of the painting. The special red is used to exaggerate the fleshy texture of the painting and is used to show evidence of uncontrolled passion. Heaney follows up this information by going into detail about how the painter adds the coloration of the red to paintings lips to help exaggerate the frescos unconventional, lustful subject matter. The way he touches the brush to the painting, slowly caressing the canvas adds to the lustfulness of the piece.

Heaney fast forwards in time in section two, this time the thimble is being used in the medieval world of holy relics. This relic comes in the shape of a Church bell, which until the reformation was revered as St. Adaman’s thimble. Straight out of commission, a bell so hefty no device could lift it to the top of the bell tower. Simultaneously, the workers were coming to the effects of the metal poisoning, one by one all succumbing to a sleeping sickness. A miracle came upon in the form of Adaman, who blessed their hands and eyes, thereby curing them. As a consequence of being cured, the bell shrank to a minuscule size. That being said, the church honored the miracle and registered Adaman’s thimble in the canons inventory.

Heaney in section three goes into lyrical ecstasy, associating with strong shots of liquor in expectation of what seems as a pleasurable side effect. This feeling sprawls the awakening and hankering that needs to be satisfied, “dew of paradise” (pg. 96) is that watering of the mouth anticipation of what is to come. This feeling of hunger and suspense is fueled and excreted out of the speaker because of the mere mentioning of “A thimbleful” (pg. 96). Heaney in section four again fast forwards in time, to a more present day were a puke rock teen is seen; using a thimble as Jewelry. The palish teen with a bald scalp uses the thimble to expresses his emotions; “Wears it for a nipple-cap” (pg. 97). In doing so the teens of the punk culture is rebelling against adults and in doing they so are demanding for their own personal freedoms. The expression was a wave along with other forms of merchandise such as chains and piercings; this was done by both sexes. Section five Heaney leaves off with a one line sign off; “And so on” (pg 97). Heaney believes that the theme of the thimble seems that it is destined to continue to be used in many different variation for times to come.

Seamus Heaney talks about the thimble and its many uses to highlight the idea that a single instrument can have multiple uses than the one it was originally designed for, it is like words with multiple meanings. Heaney’s poem also makes your think about the other devices that we have in our lives and how they can be used in many different ways. Seamus Heaney took an object like the thimble, a object we take for granted and expanded on it from what it truly was, he makes us look at thimble the same way we would look at a math problem, contemplating what to to do with it. Heaney is a revolutionary, he had the ability to take a simple product and write a story on it, which contained true and factual uses of that product give it a brighter light.