seamus eaney

8/2/2019 seamus eaney

1/21

Qaisar Iqbal Janjua, Contact: (92) 300 94 678

[email protected], [email protected]

1

SELECTED POEMS

Seamus Heaney

(1939--)

Words themselves are doors

Seamus Heaney


2/21



2

LIFE AND WORKS OF HEANEY

"I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing"

Heaney was born on April 13, 1939, the eldest of nine children, to Margaret and

Patrick Heaney, at the family farm, Mossbawn, about 30 miles northwest of Belfast inCounty Derry. He attended the local school at Anahorish until 1957, when he enrolled atQueen's College, Belfast and took a first in English there in 1961. The next school year hetook a teacher's certificate in English at St. Joseph's College in Belfast. In 1963 he took aposition as a lecturer in English at the same school.

While at St. Joseph's he began to write, publishing work in the universitymagazines under the pseudonym Incertus. During that time, along with Derek Mahon,Michael Longley, and others, he joined a poetry workshop under the guidance of PhilipHobsbaum. In 1965, in connection with the Belfast Festival, he published Eleven Poems.In August of 1965 he married Marie Devlin. The following year he became a lecturer inmodern English literature at Queen's College, Belfast, his first son Michael was born, andFaber and Faber published Death of a Naturalist. This volume earned him the E.C.Gregory Award, the Cholmondeley Award in 1967, the Somerset Maugham Award in1968, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, also in 1968. Christopher, his second son,was born in 1968.

His second volume, Door into the Dark, was published in 1969 and became thePoetry Book Society Choice for the year. In 1970-71 he was a guest lecturer at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. He returned to Northern Ireland in 1971, and in 1972he resigned his lecturship at Queens College, moved his family to Glanmore, in CountyWicklow, and published Wintering Out. In 1973 his daughter, Catherine Ann, was born.During this year he also received the Denis Devlin Award and the Writer in ResidenceAward from the American Irish Foundation. In 1975 North was published, winning theE.M. Forster Award and the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize. During these years atGlanmore, Heaney also gave many readings in the United States and England and editedtwo poetry anthologies.

In 1975 Heaney began teaching at Carysfort College in Dublin. In 1976 the familymoved to Sandymount, in Dublin, and Heaney became Department Head at Carysfort. In1979 he published Field Work, and in 1980, Selected Poems and Preoccupations: SelectedProse. In 1981 he gave up his post at Carysfort to become a visiting professor at Harvard.In 1982 he won the Bennett Award, and Queen's University in Belfast conferred on himan honorary Doctor of Letters degree. He confounded Field Day Publishing with BrianFriel and others in 1983. Station Island, his first collection in five years, was published in1984. During that year he was elected the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory atHarvard, and Open University awarded him an honorary degree. Also in 1984 his

mother, Margaret Kathleen, died. The Haw Lantern, published in 1987, contains abrilliant sonnet sequence memorializing her. Heaney's father, Patrick, died after this, andHeaney's latest collection, Seeing Things, published in 1991, contains many poems for hisfather.

Robert Lowell has deemed Heaney "the most important Irish poet since Yeats."Critics have been largely positive about his verse, and he is undoubtedly the mostpopular poet writing in English today. His books sell by the tens of thousands, andhundreds of "Heaneyboppers" attend his readings. His earliest influences, Robert Frostand Ted Hughes, can be seen throughout his work, but most especially in his first twovolumes, where he recollects images of his childhood at Mossbawn. Other poets,especially Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Wordsworth, Thomas Hardy, and even

Dante have played important roles in his development.


3/21



3

The first poem in this archive, Personal Helicon introduces an abiding interest, aconcern for that which lies deep within the earth. It is dedicated to Michael Longley,another member of Hobsbaum's group. Mount Helicon is a mountain in Greece, thatwas, in classical mythology, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. From it flowed twofountains of poetic inspiration. Heaney is here presenting his own source of inspiration,

the "dark drop" into personal and cultural memory, made present by the depths of thewells of his childhood. Now, as a man, he is too mature to scramble about on hands andknees, looking into the deep places of the earth, but he has his poetry. This serves as hisglimpse into places where "there is no reflection," but only the sound of a rhyme, like abucket, setting "the darkness echoing." This is the final poem in his first volume, and,together with his first poem in that volume, "Digging," acts as a bookend to thecollection, utilizing this successful metaphor.

Bogland the final poem in his second volume, presents once again his fascinationwith things buried. He acknowledges an attachment to the soil that is the source andsubject of his poetry. The catalogue of objects, buried in bogs for years, sometimescenturies, and dug up in remarkable condition, encompasses the vegetable world("waterlogged trunks / of great firs"), the animal world ("the skeleton / of the Great IrishElk"), and the human world ("Butter sunk under / More than a hundred years"). Perhapswith hindsight we see a progression toward the bog's most important preservation, ahuman being.

Hard on the publication of P.V. Glob's The Bog People, detailing the discovery of aseries of bodies over 2000 years old in the bogs of Denmark, Heaney's metaphor, begunin Bogland reaches its ultimate fruition. In Glob's book, Heaney found theconsummation of his descent into the earth. His series of "Bog Poems" (including TheTollund Man address, through a study of these victims of tribal sacrifice andpunishment, the political and social situation in his native Northern Ireland. Heaney'sfascination with the past allows him to comment on the present in an oblique yet forcefulway. Perhaps the most striking of these poems is "Punishment," where he sees in thecorpse of a ritually sacrificed woman an echo of the Catholic women in Northern Irelandwho are tarred and chained to their front porches for dating British soldiers. Heacknowledges his guilt for implicit participation in such terrible deeds, because he"would have cast, I know / the stones of silence." He recognizes his own conflictingfeelings, this man who would connive in civilized outrage yet understand the exact andtribal, intimate revenge.

Some critics have placed Heaney in a no-win situation; he is condemned either forconfronting too strongly the situation in his homeland, or taken to task for remainingaloof from it. Nevertheless, some of his most convincing elegies deal with friends andfamily he has lost to the Troubles. Causality a poem about a Catholic friend murderedby a bomb set by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in a Protestant pub, gives us

another look at the tribal warfare in Northern Ireland. His questioning of his friend'sresponsibility for his own death realizes the ambiguous nature, the muddling of rightand wrong, that grips Northern Ireland today. And yet, what is important is not placingblame, but the recognition of what remains to those who live, memories and sadness.

It is easy to get the impression that Heaney is a provincial poet, concerned onlywith the happenings of his island and his memory. That conclusion, however, would bemisleading. He is not merely a one-note minstrel; his birthplace does not completelyoccupy his mind. Song demonstrates his exploration of the poetic process. Like"Digging" and Personal Helicon this short lyric attends to his own imagination. Hisdescriptive powers are akin to Wordsworth's, and his attention to the world around himand the details of language make this poem a small success.

Harvest Bow a touching look at his father's creative impulse, also addressesHeaney's own art. The poem rests on the recognition that there are more important


4/21



4

creations than the ordering of words. Rather than being merely a recollection ofchildhood, this poem takes on universal weight in the intertwining of the artistic forces infather and son. Heaney presents the mature relationship of a child with his or herparents, the unspoken joy of a shared experience. His recognition of his father's differenttalents leads to a consideration of his own work, like his father's a "frail device." Be it a

harvest bow or a formal elegy, "The end of art is peace." Further explorations of Heaney'sthoughts on his own poetry can be found in his two collections of essays, the previouslymentioned Preoccupations and The Government of the Tongue. He is an insightful criticof both the Romantic tradition and the poetry of the twentieth century.

Perhaps his most moving works are the series of sonnets called "Clearances,"written as a memorial to his mother. The two poems we have here, the third and fifth ofthe sequence, show him taking firm hold of the sonnet form and bending it to his owninterpretation of the elegiac tradition. These poems possess a soft power that bathes all inthe golden haze of memory while presenting stark images of the spaces that death leavesbetween us. In "When all the others were away at Mass" Heaney moves from the distantpast of the first two quatrains, through a telling break in lines, the into a place nearer thepresent in the final quatrain. But this present reality is too much to bear, and he retreatsagain to the past in the final couplet. In this way memory serves as a shield to protecthim from his mother's death. "The cool that came off sheets just off the line" takes placeentirely in the past, as he recalls the intricate dance he and his mother performed infolding bed linens. His comment on their relationship, "Coming close while againholding back," speaks to a lifetime of memories, and the space that her absence leaves inhis life.

His final poems here, from Lightening take up again thoughts of death, theafterlife, and other planes of existence. The structure of these poems, with their three-linestanzas, recalls Dante's Divine Comedy, where the poet as pilgrim is guided through theafterlife. Heaney has remarked that, since the death of his parents, he feels as if "the roofhas blown off" his life. We are all inevitably released from both the weight and the shieldof our ancestors. This lightening, when we are finally exposed to the elements, to thecosmos, is both freeing and frightening. The first poem acknowledges the transience oflife, framing death in the religious terms of the particular and universal judgements thatcome at the end of an individual life and the end of the world. Recognition of the factthat "there is no next-time-round" carries with it a mixture of fear and freedom.

Heaney discusses that mixture again in the Hardy lyrics, and explores the questionsthat the nearness of death brings. Hardy pretends to be dead in "vi," and, being dead,"He experimented with infinity." He claims that the recognition of death is a necessaryact for a poet, for it alone opens the poet up to what the universe has to say. In "VII"Heaney admits to the frailty of memory, a fragility that makes what is remembered allthe more dear. Hardy's communion with the frightened sheep holds the anticipated

sorrow that would later fill his poetry at bay for a moment. Again, the nearness of death,or, for Hardy, the pretending to be dead, is an essential component, if not the ultimatefont, of poetry. The final poem here ends on a life-affirming note, for Heaney recognizesthe beauty of earthly existence, placing that beauty in a religious context that not onlyenhances it, but holds out hope for more wonders to come after death.

Heaney's work is filled with images of death and dying, and yet it is also firmlyrooted in the life of this world. His tender elegies about friends and family members whohave died serve many purposes: they mourn great losses, celebrate those who have gonebefore us, and recall the solace that remains to us, our memories. When asked recentlyabout his abiding interest in memorializing the people of his life, he replied, "The elegiacHeaney? There's nothing else."

SEAMUS HEANEY'S REMARKS ON GETTING NOBLE PRIZE


5/21



5

Today's date, May 12, will always be a memorable one for you, and for me too.From here on, the mark of the tar is upon all of us, academically and indelibly: so let usrejoice in that, because now we fare forth as Tar Heels of the mind, and the world w herewe are to make our tarry mark in lies all before us.

But then, when it comes to faring forth, today's date, May 12, has always been an

auspicious one. Especially in my native province of Ulster, for long ago it was designateda kind of second May Day, the official start of the summer season; and so May the 12became the day when the great hiring fairs took place at towns all over the countryside,when working men and working women would assemble there to be hired out foranother term to new masters and mistresses. The hiring fair was a cross between acommencement day and a slave market; it was a carnival shadowed by the tyranny ofeconomic necessity, but it did produce a real sense of occasion. It was a hosting of thelocal clans and it brought the singer and the musician and the whole community on tothe streets, with all their wares and in all their finery; so I thought that I could celebratethis great hosting of the clans here at Chapel Hill and celebrate the old links that havebeen established between Ulster people who emigrated to North Carolina in the 18thcentury and who played such an important part in the founding of this university --people like the Rev. David Ker, the university's first presiding professor, a graduate ofTrinity College, Dublin -- I thought I could celebrate that old connection and celebrate, ofcourse, my own new one here today by quoting from a ballad I used to hear when I wasgrowing up in County Derry. It tells the story of a young woman setting out with highhopes of romantic adventure on May the 12, to the May Fair at Magherafelt, which is theone sizable town in our part of the country. But it begins like this:

I am a bouncing fair young girl,my age is scarce sixteen,and when I'm dressed all in my bestI look like any queen;bright, young, at play, who wants a wayto go and sell her wares,on the twelfth of May I made my wayto Magherafelt May Fair.My mother's caution unto mewas not stay late in town,for if you do, my father and Iboth on you we will frown.Be wise and shun bad companyand of young men do beware --how smart you be, don't make too freein Magherafelt May Fair.

Well, I would like to quote the whole thing, but at this stage it's enough that thebouncing fair young girl has started on her journey; like the heroine of a thousand otherballads, she has roamed out on a May morning to encounter whatever fortune puts in herway. And over the years, because of her confidence and buoyancy, she has become forme the guardian angel of all such moments of faring forth; for it matters very little onoccasions like this whether you are the tomboy daughter of God-fearing rura l parents in19th-century Ulster or the atheist heir of tobacco barons in our own date -- what mattersat these occasions is not the economic givens of your background but the state ofreadiness of your own spirit. In fact, the ability to start out upon y our own impulse isfundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own terms, not to mention thefurther and more fulfilling gift of getting again all over again -- never resting upon the

oars of success or in the doldrums of disappointment, but getting renewed and revivedby some further transformation.


6/21



6

Getting started, keeping going, getting started again -- in art and in life, it seems tome this is the essential rhythm not only of achievement but of survival, the ground ofconvinced action, the basis of self-esteem and the guarantee of credibility in your lives,credibility to yourselves as well as to others. So this rhythm is what I would like to talkabout briefly this morning, because it is something I would want each one of you to

experience in the years ahead, and experience not only in your professional life,whatever that may be, but in your emotional and spiritual lives as well -- because unlessthat underground level of the self is preserved as a verified and verifying element inyour make-up, you are going to be in danger of settling into whatever profile the worldprepares for you and accepting whatever profile the world provides for you. You'll be indanger of moulding yourselves in accordance with laws of growth other than those ofyour own intuitive being.

The world, for example, expects a commencement speaker to arrive with a set ofdirectives, a complete do-it-yourself success kit, which he or she then issues to thegraduating class; the commencement speaker's appointed role is to provide a clear-cutmap of the future and a key to navigating it as elegantly and profitably as possible. To bea mixture of Polonius and Tiresias, of bore and of bard. But while that is what the worldprescribes, the inner laws of this particular speaker's being make him extremely anxiousabout laying down laws or mapping the future for anybody. In fact, this speaker believesthat all those laws and directions have to be personal discoveries rather than prescribedroutes; they must be part and parcel of each individual's sense of the world. They are tobe improvised rather than copied, they are to be invented rather than imitated, they areto be risked and earned rather than bought into. Indeed, I have to say that for me, thisvery commencement address has been a matter of risk and improvisation from themoment I said I would do it, because I kept asking myself how I could reconcile my long-standing aversion to the know-all with a desire to say something worthwhile to you.

I therefore did what I increasingly do in moments of crisis nowadays: I asked mydaughter what I should do. "Just be yourself, Dad," she said. "Talk about yourself. Tellthem a few stories." And this advice was a great relief to me because I thought, "Yes,that's true. Some of the greatest wisdom speakers in the world went about their workthat way. So Seamus what was good enough for Aesop and for Jesus should be goodenough for you. Relax. For a start, for a start, tell them something about getting started."

Like for example, the Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak's definition oftalent. Talent and the art of writing is "boldness in face of the blank sheet." The sheerexhilaration of those words is already enough to convince you of their truth, the truththat getting started is more than half the battle. One of the great Sufi teachers expressedthe same wisdom in a slightly different way. "A great idea," he said, "will come to youthree times. If you go with it the first time, it will do nearly all the work for you. Even ifyou don't move until the second time, it will still do half the work for you. But if you

leave it until the third time, you will have to do all the work yourself."

My own story in this regard, however, is more a story about a false start, althoughit is indeed a story about the importance of getting started from that first base of yourbeing, the place of ultimate suffering and ultimate decisions in each of you, the last ditchand the first launching pad. When I was in primary school, I was once asked to do acomposition entitled "a day at the seaside" -- a common, indeed a predictable subject in acountry school in Northern Ireland years ago. So, I wrote about the sunlit sand, of theyachts in the bay, of the perfect sand castles and of diving in the pool, even though theweather was usually rainy and it was a coal boat rather than a yacht in the bay and I wasa farmer's son who couldn't have passed through the University of Carolina because Icouldn't in fact swim at all, never mind diving into a pool. But my chief lyrical effort was

reserved for the description of the bucket and the spade I said I had used at the beach.The sky-blue enamelled inside of the bucket, as bright as a graduating class at the


7/21



7

University of North Carolina, and the technicolor outside, all its little canary yellows andgreenfinch greens and canary yellows. And then I also praised the little spade for beingso trimly shafted, so youngster friendly, so small and scaled down. And so I got mygrade for making up a fantasy and delivering the conventional goods, pictures I had seenon postcards of other people's days at the seaside. But years later what came back to me

was the thing I did not describe, the truth I had suppressed about a day which hadactually been a day of bittersweet disappointment. An account of what had actuallyhappened would have been far more convincing as a piece of writing than theconventional account I had rendered up , far truer to life altogether.

I have to say this even it is on Mother's Day, but when my mother was out for theday -- indeed especially when she was out for the day -- she was a frugal woman, far tooself-denying and far too much in thrall to the idea of keeping going to indulge her self orher children in the luxury of catchpennies that she would see like buckets and spades.After all, we were only out for the day; next morning we'd be back on the land, up in themorning for our porridge, out to the field to bring the cows to the by re and after that todeliver the milk to our neighbours. But still, in her mother's heart, she desperatelywanted to do something for us, so off she went to a hardware store and bought not theconventional seaside gear that we desired but a consignment of down-to-earth farmequipment which she could utilize when she went home: instead of bucket and spade,she brought us a plain tin milk can and a couple of wooden spoons, durable itemsindeed, useful enough in their own way, but wooden spoons for Gods sake s, totallydestructive of all glamour and all magic. I hope it will be obvious why I tell you this: Iwant to avoid preaching at you but I do want to convince you that the true and durablepath into and through experience involves being true to the actual givens of your lives.True to your own solitude, true to your own secret knowledge. Because oddly enough, itis that intimate, deeply personal knowledge that links us most vitally and keeps us mostreliably connected to one another. Calling a spade a spade may be a bit reductive butcalling a wooden spoon a wooden spoon is the beginning of wisdom. And you will be

sure to keep going in life on a far steadier keel and with far more radiant individuality ifyou navigate by that principle.

Luckily, in a commencement address you only have to get started and keep going.Luckily for you and for me there is no necessity to start again. But for you today, class of1996, starting again is what it is actually all about. By graduating from this great andfamous university, you have reached a stepping stone in your life, a place where you canpause for a moment and enjoy the luxury of looking back on the distance covered; butthe thing about stepping stones is that you always need to find another one up thereahead of you. Even if it is panicky in midstream, there is no going back. The next move isalways the test. Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says moveagain. Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

Back in Magherafelt May Fair, for example, our young woman didn't dazzle the crowd asthoroughly as she had hoped she would. The song ends like this:

So I bade them all good eveningand there I hoisted sail,Let the best betide my countryside,my fortune never fail.Then night coming on, all hopes being gone,I think I will try elsewhere,at a dance or a wake my chance I'll takeand leave Magherafelt May Fair.

Class of 1996, Tar Heels of the mind, when I said at the beginning that the world

was all before you, I was echoing what the English poet John Milton said at the end of hisgreat poem, "Paradise Lost." And I am not the first one to have echoed that line. Almost a


8/21



8

century-and-a-half after Milton wrote about Adam and Eve being driven out of Eden,into history, having to keep going by the sweat of their brow, Milton's words wereechoed by another English poet, William Wordsworth, at the start of his epoch-makingautobiographical poem, "The Prelude." By making the entry into adult experience anadventure rather than a penalty, Wordsworth was announcing the theme I have

addressed this morning; he was implying that history, and our individual lives withinhistory, constantly involve the same effort at starting again and again.

Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiativeswithin a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit. There is risk and truth toyourselves and the world before you. But there is a pride and joy also, a pride and joythat is surging through this crowd today, through the emotions of your parents and yourmothers particularly on Mothers Day, your families and your assembled friends. Andthrough you yourselves especially. And so, my fellow graduates, make the world beforeyou a better one by going into it with all boldness. You are up to it and you are fit for it;you deserve it and if you make your own best contribution, the world before you willbecome a bit more deserving of you.

HEANEY AND BOGLANDHard on the publication of P.V. Glob's The Bog People, detailing the discovery of a

series of bodies over 2000 years old in the bogs of Denmark, Heaney's metaphor, begunin Bogland reaches its ultimate fruition. In Glob's book, Heaney found theconsummation of his descent into the earth. His series of "Bog Poems" (including TheTollund Man) address, through a study of these victims of tribal sacrifice andpunishment, the political and social situation in his native Northern Ireland. Heaney'sfascination with the past allows him to comment on the present in an oblique yet forcefulway. Perhaps the most striking of these poems is "Punishment," where he sees in thecorpse of a ritually sacrificed woman an echo of the Catholic women in Northern Irelandwho are tarred and chained to their front porches for dating British soldiers. He

acknowledges his guilt for implicit participation in such terrible deeds, because he"would have cast, I know / the stones of silence." He recognizes his own conflictingfeelings.

Nobel laureate Heaney is a pastoralist with a strong and critical sense of history.His rich and earthy poems are about the life of the land of Northern Ireland as well as theevolution of the heavily mythologized Irish identity. Heaney's sonorous lyricism stemsfrom his love of the cycles of country life, the mystery of the sea, the satisfying rhythm ofhard, physical work. But Heaney loves poetry and poetics as well as nature andexpresses this passion in his forceful if demanding literary essays. This is his third bookof criticism, and it contains 10 lectures Heaney delivered as professor of poetry atOxford. In the title essay, Heaney explains how poetry balances the "scales of realitytowards some transcendent equilibrium." After considering all the burdenscontemporary poets carry, from the long tradition of the form itself to pressing politicalperspectives, Heaney still insists that "poetry cannot afford to lose its fundamentally self-delighting inventiveness." This viewpoint underlies his shrewd essays on George

Herbert, Christopher Marlowe, the Irish poet Brian Merriman, Dylan Thomas, PhilipLarkin, and Elizabeth Bishop. Donna Seaman --This text refers to an out of print orunavailable edition of this title.

It is easy to get the impression that Heaney is a provincial poet, concerned onlywith the happenings of his island and his memory. That conclusion, however, would bemisleading. He is not merely a one-note minstrel; his birthplace does not completelyoccupy his mind. Song demonstrates his exploration of the poetic process. Like"Digging" and Personal Helicon this short lyric attends to his own imagination. His

descriptive powers are akin to Wordsworth's, and his attention to the world around himand the details of language make this poem a small success.


9/21



9

Heaney uses the book, 'The Bog People', written by P.V. Glob, in many of hispoems. Heaney wrote that the book 'was chiefly concerned with preserved bodies of menand women found in the bogs of Jutland, naked, strangled or with their throats cut,disposed under the peat since early Iron Age times.'

He saw in the book a way to focus a number of his traditional interests, and it

offered him a frame of reference, and set of symbols which he could deploy in engagingwith the present conflict and its antecedent history.

Glob's book offers an image of a pre-Christian, northern European tribal society, inwhich ritual violence is a necessary part of the structure of life. Most of the bodiesrecovered from the Jutland bogs had been victims of ritual killings, many of them havingserved as human sacrifices to the earth goddess, Nerthus. Heaney detected a kinshipbetween the pagan civilisations and Ireland's own Celtic traditions and he used theseIron Age narratives to explore contemporary atrocities.


10/21



10

MOST EXPECTED QUESTIONS

Q: SEAMUS HEANEY IS POET OF EXILE. MAKE A CONVINCING CASE.

Q: DISCUSS SEAMUS HEANEY AS A POET OF MODERN IRELAND.

Q: GIVE A DETAILED DEPICTION OF HEANEYS POETIC QUALITIES.Ans:

To survive like a poet in a culture glutted with politics is a touch and go business.Investing poetry with the heavy albatross of public gist, only circumvention is its flight,however, it is appetizing, it is to bring ones poetic aptitude into effect for the sake of aprogramme or and ideology, but the aftermath has little to do with poetry.

Heaneys poetry exhibits the latter day chronicles of Ireland. Heaneys poems rangefrom more subjective poems about his upbringing and the significance of the simpletonlife on the land to those that explore the social injustice and murderous history of hiscountry. Poet is very actuated by the society and the subject matter. The sectarianviolence is in the saddle of his work and sometimes addresses specific revenge killing.

Heaneys poetry is also said to be the Poetry of exile. In fact, Heaney has stood inthe way of the bloodiest era; his pre-teens come into contact with barbarianism andsuppression prevalent in his country at that time and it stimulates him to write aboutfreedom. Thus, there was no way out for the poet except exile and it was the only meansof restoring the autonomy of his poetic voice.

As he says:

I will content elsewhere.

The pre-eminent critic Edna Longky opines;

In other words, Heaney sees the contemporary conflict in Northern Ireland asamongst other things, a symptom of collision between the opposing claims of

rationalistic order and religious atavism.For an instance, his poem A Constable Calls is based on his personal experience.

The poem is about a childs feedback to constables visit. The constable takes the routineofficial visit in a connection with usual collection of data regarding the area undercultivation and its agricultural produce. On this, the little lad is thrown into a panic. Andthe child reacts to it with trepidation.

The autochthons of this region have experienced this long fright as they were bornand sent illustrated. The constables ovesence, his get up and his bike are sinisterpresence that makes the childs blood run cold and feels fidgety. The ministry of fearthus comes to light as a collective coercive force is put into the mouth of the child. Thesound image of tick-tick very plainly refers to the jeopardy of time-bomb that can go off

at any moment to bring quietus and demolition. It also turns to a state of topsy-turvy,uncertainty and difference.

In The Toome Road Heaney wishes to kick up a fuss about and elevates hispersonal voice against the antagonistic activities and unauthorized military movementsof invaders across the country. He also wants to impart awareness to his fellowcountrymen regarding under the counter capture of his territory by the intruders fortheir nefarious designs of subjugating the native of Northern Ireland, but he findshimself isolated among a cowering and a cringing crowd of passive and vulnerablepeople.

He says:

The whole country was sleepingwhom should I run to tell.


11/21



11

Heaneys poem The Tollund Man sets down events that took place in prehistoricJutland, in Denmark and in modern day Ireland. These phenomenen have similitude ofpurpose. The people of this place have offered their lives for the sake of their motherland just like in the way, as the bog people in Early Iron age were oblated to please theirgods and goddesses to safeguard their motherland from some calamity or famine or

drought or for bounteous grain, whereas, Irish people lost their lives during the civil war.Heaney blended these events to highlight the atrocities and ferocity mankind suffered atthe hands of power groups.

Some critics say that the poem The Tollund Man is a desirable instance of poetryof fuss, whereas, some others say that the poet takes the both sorts of violence i.e. ritualand political in a pessimistic way. Through mingling both kinds of events, Heaney hasscrutinized perpetual human bloodshed in a detached and unconcerned manner. He optsfor tristesse and agony without a word of protest. In fact, Heaney has utilized all hispoetic abilities and finesse to portray the biter reality of the world.

Heaneys poem Casting and Gathering is also allegorical to a higher degree. Ittouches the intuitive in the poet sometimes. This poem presents an overview of

interchange of social, political, theological and economic concepts that put a new spirit inthe people to raise their voice against injustice. This poem shows his point of view veryclearly as he says:

I loved hushed air, I trusted contrariness years and years ago past and I do notmove for I see that when one man casts, the other gathers. And then vice versa,without changing sides.

Heaney is not a quintessential or archetypal poet. His poem Personal Heliconclaims to corroborate him as a narcissist. He concerns his own self as the source ofinspiration. Helicon is another name of Mount Olympus. This mount was a source ofinspiration for the poets of Greek era. That is why, the poets used to visit that Helicon.But Heaney is of the opinion that he has his own (personal) Helicon. In other words, for

fillip, he does not rely on any external source. He dives into the unfathomable sea of thethought to extract the genuine power of faculty of reason. Through his poetry, he wantsto make a description of the untold and unrevealed realities. He wants to set thedarkness echoing through his poetry. He says to himself:

To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

Heaneys opus is well fed with images of death nevertheless; it is truly rooted in thecosmic life. His solicitous elegies about his pals and family members, who have pushedup the daisies, serve multi-purposely. They are wearing widows weeds over great lossesand recall the solace that remains to their recollections. He wants to egg on the people forfreedom.

The whole country was sleeping.

Whom should I run to tell.According to George Boyce,

The necessity to choose words carefully in the context of Irish politics hasbeen succinctly put by the Ulster poet, Seamus Heaney

And is said;

Whatever you say, say nothing.

So, Heaneys protest is not that of a political agent or propagandist. He simplylongs his people to dwell with all their heart and soul in the land of their ancestors. Hehankers for such a life instinctively. In other words, he is a marvellous Pacifist.

In a nutshell, Heaneys poetry is packed with primordial or antediluvian sentiments

and conveys a message to millions of downtrodden, who were ill-treated at the cruelhands of foreign unbridled forces.


12/21



12

Q: DISCUSS SEAMUS HEANEY AS NON-POLITICAL POET.

Q: SEAMUS HEANEYS POETRY ALIENATES HIM TO HIS SURROUNDINGS.HOW CAN YOU MAKE A CONVINCING DEBATE?

Q: HEANEY IS STAGGERED BETWEEN TWO FORCES THE PURE POET AND APOLITICALLY AWARE PERSON. DO YOU AGREE?

Ans:It is easy to get the impression that Heaney is a political and provincial poet,

concerned only with the happenings of his island and his memory. Some critics haveplaced Heaney in a no-win situation; he is condemned either for confronting too stronglythe situation in his homeland, or taken to task for remaining aloof from it. As one canconnote his awareness and caring attitude from the boot of the law, the heavy ledger,the polished holster, and imagining the black hole in the barracks from A ConstableCalls and armoured cars, warbling along on powerful wheels, my roads; and I hadthe right of way from The Toome Road.

That finale, however, would be misleading. He is not merely a one-note minstrel;his birthplace does not completely occupy his mind. Casting and Gathering

demonstrates his exploration of the poetic process. Like "Digging" and PersonalHelicon. This short lyric attends to his own imagination. His descriptive powers areakin to Wordsworth's, and his attention to the world around him and detail of the poemsmake it a small success.

Heaney imbues with Joseph Brodsky that the only thing poetry and politics have incommon are the letters P and O. He is of the view that poet should be well aware of hissurroundings, especially when there is bloodshed, and that he must perform his role asmuch as he can. But he does not want to be identified with hacklers. In his essay TheRedress of Poetry, he is at crusade against hacklers who have made poetry a source ofpropaganda.

"There is no getting around that there is a political component to the decision-

making," said Jonathan Galassi, editor in chief at Farrar, Straus and Giroux,Heaney's New York publisher. "But this has been a long time coming, and itcouldn't go to a more popular, beloved person."

The poem in this archive, Personal Helicon introduces an abiding interest, aconcern for that which lies deep within the earth. It is dedicated to Michael Longley,another member of Hobsbaum's group. Mount Helicon is a mountain in Greece, thatwas, in classical mythology, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. From it flowed twofountains of poetic inspiration. Heaney is here presenting his own source of inspiration,the "dark drop" into personal and cultural memory, made present by the depths of thewells of his childhood. Now, as a man, he is too mature to scramble about on hands andknees, looking into the deep places of the earth, but he has his poetry. This serves as his

glimpse into places where "there is no reflection," but only the sound of a rhyme, like abucket, setting "the darkness echoing." This is the final poem in his first volume, and,together with his first poem in that volume, "Digging," acts as a bookend to thecollection, utilizing this successful metaphor.

Robert Lowell has deemed Heaney "the most important Irish poet since Yeats."Critics have been largely positive about his verse, and he is undoubtedly the mostpopular poet writing in English today. His books sell by the tens of thousands, andhundreds of "Heaneyboppers" attend his readings. His earliest influences, Robert Frostand Ted Hughes, can be seen throughout his work, but most especially in his AConstable calls, and The Toome Road, where he recollects images of his childhood atMossbawn. Other poets, especially Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Wordsworth,

Thomas Hardy, and even Dante have played important in this context.Q: GIVE A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF THE TOLLUND MAN.


13/21



13

Q: THE TOLLUND MAN PRESENTS THE TRAGIC SITUATION OF IRELANDIN MYTHICAL MANNER. DO YOU AGREE?

Ans:

Seamus Heaneys The Tollund Man is one of the Bog poems. It is his dazzlingendeavour at conflating his sense of Juteland rituals with his own perception of mythic

and modern Irish history. Hard on the publication of P.V. Glob's The Bog People,detailing the discovery of a series of bodies over 2000 years old in the bogs of Denmark,Heaney's metaphor, begun in Bogland reaches its ultimate fruition. In Glob's book,Heaney found the consummation of his descent into the earth.

His series of "Bog Poems" (including The Tollund Man) address, through a studyof these victims of tribal sacrifice and punishment, the political and social situation in hisnative Northern Ireland. Heaney's fascination with the past allows him to comment onthe present in an oblique yet forceful way. Perhaps the most striking of these poems is"Punishment," where he sees in the corpse of a ritually sacrificed woman an echo of theCatholic women in Northern Ireland who are tarred and chained to their front porchesfor dating British soldiers. He acknowledges his guilt for implicit participation in such

terrible deeds, because he "would have cast, I know the stones of silence." He recognizeshis own conflicting feelings.

The excavators of history of Denmark found preserved bodies of young men andwomen in the bogs of Juteland naked and, strangled or with their throats cut disposedunder the peat since early Iron Age. Heaney observes a similarity between the bog menand those Irishmen who have been killed during the civil war. He develops a myth out ofthe happenings and proclaims that the soil has always desired for sacrifices from itsdwellers as the bog men were sacrificed to the goddess of land (Nerthus), similarly theIrish men are being slaughtered for their land. It is in this spirit that Heaney aspires tovisit the Bogland to personally observe what happened in the early Iron Age. For thatreason, he gives vent to his desire to go to Aarhus- a place where the heads of the bog

man, called, Tollund man, is kept in a museum.Heaney took a perusal of Globs book The Bog People. The Tollund Man is one

of the recovered bodies featured by Globe in his book. He was a sufferer sacrificed toNerthus, in hope of securing superior crop from the land; in this sense the amplifier callshim Bridegroom to the goddess. The raconteur fancies the killing of the Tollund Manand his subsequent burial in the bog as a kind of violent lovemaking betweensurrendering person and the goddess, in which Nerthus opened her fen, preserves thevictims body by immersing it in her sexual dark juices. When the Tollund Man ishollowed out, many centuries later, the turf cutters discover, His last gruel of winterseeds caked in his stomach. As a sacrificial-goat to the goddess of germination, theTollund Man carries the potential of germination (gruel of winter seeds). The goddesstightened the noose around his neck and the bridegroom was sucked by the fen or thebog. The sacrificed men thus became the fertilizers of the land. The Dark Juicessymbolize the transference of the sacrificed man to the earth. To Heaney, in such custom,he becomes a martyr whose death is the life of others and whose blood works as thefertilizers for the land. The poet then compares these martyred bodies to the beehives,the cells of which are full of honey and that face still exists in the museum of Aarhus.

In the second section of the poem the connection between Jutland and Ireland ismade explicit. Both places have had their innocent victims. Ireland also has killings thathave a certain ritualistic dimension to them. In the last stanza the speaker recalls anincident in which bodies of four young Catholics, murdered by Protestant militants, weredragged along a railway line in an act of mutilation:

'Tell-tale skin and teethFlecking the sleepersOf four young brothers, trailed


14/21



14

For miles along the lines.

The speaker imagines that, if he addresses a prayer to the Tollund Man ('riskingblasphemy' as a Christian by aligning himself with pagan rituals), then perhaps thepotential for germination and regeneration inherent in the Tollund Man's sacrifice, and inhis very body ('winter seeds') might be released, not in the victim's native Jutland, but in

contemporary Ireland. It might 'make germinate/The scattered, ambushed/Flesh' of thesacrificial victims.

In the final section of the poem, the speaker imagines a visit to the Museum inAarhus where the Tollund Man has been in display. Though the names of the region hepasses through ('Tollund, Grabaulle, Nebelgard') will be alien to him, and the locallanguage unintelligible, he fancies that, as an Irishman burdened with the weight of hiscountry's history, he will feel a kinship with a landscape that has witnessed similarconflict and killings.

The poem shows that the sacrificial death of the Tollund man is associated withritual and this seems to be reflected in the dead body's restful pose, which is a contrast tothe terrible maiming and unrest of the victims in contemporary Irish society. The Tollund

man's body has been preserved and is aligned with a saint (saint's kept body').The body is constantly associated with the Earth ('peat-brown head', 'mild pods')

and fertility ('His last gruel of winter seeds'). The earth is represented as female andsexual: 'And opened her fen,/Those dark juices working') and it is this that has preservedand elevated him to a saint.

He is seen as a bridegroom to the bride-goddess Earth, a sacrifice that will bringsome good, some alleviation of pain (though of course he has been violently killed),unlike the four young brothers who are killed shamefully, resulted in only more turmoiland bloodshed.

The last lines reveal the state of mind of the speaker. The terrible paradox of bothfeeling lost and unhappy while 'at home', show the correspondences between Neolithic

Jutland and modern Ireland as well as acknowledging the terror and loss that is aneveryday occurrence in his world, though there is still resignation but rather a desire forpeace that underlies the final lines and the whole poem.

The symbolic utilization of these bog men is applied to the strugglers of Ireland.Heaney makes a comparison between these buried men and the dead bodies of Irishlabourers found in the fields. These labourers were in their dungarees; they have theirstockings on. Heaney wants to express that these people were not fighters or so calledrebels; they were ordinary people killed mercilessly in the civil war in Ireland. So manyinnocent people who had nothing to do with that civil war were butchered.

The poet also tells the tales of men who were dragged from miles along the railwaytrack. They had been thoroughly skinned and their rotten dead bodies were bare to teethbecause of that Draculaian dragging. Heaney recalls, perhaps alluding to the cruel scenesof condemned people carried in tumbrels to the guillotine during the French Revolutionpresented by Dickens in A Tale of two Cities.

Heaney calls these people with their proper names, Tollund, Grabaulle, Nebelgardlike Yeats, who also gave the names of Irishmen in Easter 1916. This comparative stylementions the close associations of the poets for people who are killed in civil war. Thosewere his fellow-countrymen. Though the bog men were belonged to a dissimilar landand spoke a different language, yet there is an archetypical kinship between them.

Heaney feels that in Juteland, he will feel at home because the bogs at Juteland arenot poles apart than bogs in Ireland. He will be gloomy that the thrashing of so manylives but the idea that the tragedy is universal is a source of consolation to him. This iswhat he identifies as the redress of poetry. He will feel unhappy and at homesimultaneously.


15/21



15

Heaney avers to be a pure poet who considers that poetry should have no functionbeyond poetry. He believes in poetry for the sake of poetry. He reviles the hackler whowants to employ the poetry for political ends. Heaney asserts that politics is not thefunction of poetry, but, ironically enough, he cannot detach himself from the worldsurrounding him. On seeing men falling in dilapidated condition around him, he feels

culpable that he is only writing poetry. He wants to find a role for himself in that strife.This poem, as we can observe, is a political poem, but Heaney fastens together thetragedy of Ireland with the tragedy of pre-historic Juteland. He creates a myth of misery.In resultant, he turns a political tragedy into an aesthetic one. This is how he combinespolitics with poetry. Perhaps it consoles him but does it really console hundreds andthousands who are being butchered in Ireland.

Andrew Lynch's remarks about the poem:'Heaney does not venerate the Tollund Man as king or martyr, but as victim. His

vowed journey to Aarhus in Jutland recalls the Catholic custom, of pilgrimage to a saint'sshrine, sometimes featuring the miraculously preserved body of the saint. Heaney's'saint' has had a brief period of glory, but has been violently killed 'for the land'. To the

poet, he stands for the Irish people killed for their allegiance to Ireland, a suggestionwhich is symbolically rendered as the embrace of the earth-goddess. The gold 'torc'(collar), worn by Celtic royalty, is likened to the arms of the goddess encircling thebridegroom's neck, but the metaphor reminds us that this embrace is a strangulation, thenoose of the victim-bridegroom.'

Q: GIVE A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE TOOME ROAD.

Ans:

State terrorism combined with unending threat of war and violence has turned thelife of Irish people into a night mare. While speaking about freedom of his people,Heaney does not like to be labelled a heckler or a professional political provocateur,though at the same time he cannot help sympathizing with his people plight at the hands

of foreign aggressors. Heaneys protest is not that of a political agent or propagandist. Hesimply wants his people to live happily their lives in the land of their forefathers.

The Toome Road reflects poets childhood impressions of military exercises ofAmerican soldiers in connection with Normandy invasion of 1944. In the poem the poetreacts to the invasion of his native country by foreign soldiers. He can see the foreignsoldiers march there on roads; the vehicles are with heavy body and tyres. They aremoving about in the land of his forefathers without any hindrance.

Armoured cars in convoy, warbling along on powerful tyres,All camouflaged with broken alder branches,Headphone soldiers standing up in turrets

This and later developments regarding sectarian and political schism during poetsadult day experience serve as background to this protest piece of poetry,

How long were they approaching down my roadsAs if they owned them?The whole country was sleeping

The poet feels that all Irish people appear to have become insensitive to thisthreatening movement of all out foreign domination. He does not know whom he shouldask to realize the approaching danger of evil designs of the aggressor;

Whom should I run to tellAmong all of those with their back doors on the latchFor the bringer of bad news

The people lost hope of setting their freedom restored to them. They shut theirdoors if they find somebody approach them to tell them of their own good and welfare.


16/21



16

They avoid him as they think that the visitor will, with his message, add to theirsuffering and misery. They hope for nothing better.

Heaney is quite cognizant of the seriousness of the problem. He wants to share hisconcern with his people. He is certain that the presence of foreign soldiers on the Irishsoil is a clear indication that rights of the Irish people are in jeopardy. He proclaims

pathetically, I had rights, that now it is a thing of the past,I had right-of-way, fields, cattle in my keeping,Tractors hitched to buck rakes in open shedsSilos, chill gates, wet slates, the green and reds, of outhouse roofs

But now, he believes, they are all in others keeping occupied by the invaders.Their movement goes unchecked, unnoticed and they move about in such a way as ifthey are the owners of all that. His voice, he thinks, is alone voice a cry in wilderness.

The poets use of clear visual images is a rich source of vivid description. The poembegins with movement of armed soldiers head-phoned in camouflaged armouredvehicles. The picture of this convoy approaching down the poets roads is very clear. Healso talks about concrete things like fields, cattle, tractors, shed, soils, chill gates,

wet slates, the greens and reds of outhouse roofs. Warbling is a sound imagewhereas wet slates is a touch image. The colour images of the greens and reds ofouthouse roofs add to the clarity of vision and meaning.

The last four lines appear as a ray of hope in the pitch dark gloom of the wholedescription of disappointment and distress. The poet invites the Sowers of seeds andthe erectors of headstones of his oppressed native area to listen his message of hope. Hetells them that somewhere high above the tanks and weapons carried by the soldiersexists a living force like that of Omphalos the invisible and unshakable stone holdingthe whole universe in place at its centre.

The poem is packed with patriotic sentiments and sends a message across million ofdown-trodden, oppressed at the cruel hands of foreign unbridled forces.

The symbolic use of Omphalos is to show the unshakable will of Irish people as acentral indomitable force in freedom struggle, and charioteers as invaders of themodern day war help the reader understand the message of the poet.

Q: WHAT IS CONCEPT OF POETIC INSPIRATION IN HEANEYS POETRY?GIVE A DETAILED DEPICTION WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO HISPERSONAL HELICON.

Q: GIVE A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF PERSONAL HELICON.

Ans:

The important he archive, Personal Helicon introduces an abiding interest, aconcern for that which lies deep within the earth. It is dedicated to Michael Longley,

another member of Hobsbaum's group. Mount Helicon is a mountain in Greece, thatwas, in classical mythology, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. From it flowed twofountains of poetic inspiration.

Heaney is here presenting his own source of inspiration, the "dark drop" intopersonal and cultural memory, made present by the depths of the wells of his childhood.Now, as a man, he is too mature to scramble about on hands and knees, looking into thedeep places of the earth, but he has his poetry. This serves as his glimpse into placeswhere "there is no reflection," but only the sound of a rhyme, like a bucket, setting "thedarkness echoing." This is the final poem in his first volume, and, together with his firstpoem in that volume, Digging, acts as a bookend to the collection, utilizing thissuccessful metaphor.

In 'Personal Helicon', Heaney proclaims that he writes poetry in order 'to set thedarkness echoing'. Heaney's poems often explore language as a means of examining


17/21



17

reality and the individual's relationship to the world, and he once said that 'Wordsthemselves are doors' that open up new ways of understanding. In the final lines of'Personal Helicon' the 'darkness' is the unknown, the things that remain hidden, conceptsthat have not been brought into the light and articulated in words. Whether it is personalfears or social injustices, poetry is a medium to bring these 'unspoken' attitudes to the

world, to make it 'echo' and resound with force.In the poem, the 'Helicon' is a reference to the mountain in Greek mythology where

the nine muses lived. The streams that run down the mountain have the power to givethose who drink from it the inspiration to write poetry. It is in this context that the poemexplores the nature of writing or at least a definition of poetry.

Seamus Heaney in Personal Helicon claims that his own soul is the source of hisinspiration basic to his creative work. In other words, the Muses are not the source of hisinspiration leading to his poetic creation. He believes that nothing lies outside his ownsoul that can inspire his urge to rhyme.

The poem records Heaneys own childhood rambles across his farmland and itsneighbourhood when as a pleasure pursuit he peeped into the dark deep wells refers to

the unknown hidden deep into the recess of the poets own soul itself an abode andreservoir of mystery. The secret is out when the depth (well) of soul is searched and theunknown and the hidden is brought to light at the tip of inspiration.

A poet, of course, in his own well of his soul, feels the need of inspiration to have ago at truth finding. Heaney defines poetry here in his own way. He asserts that poetry isvehicle of poets personal thought and feelings. It is an inspired act of expressing whatlies deep in the consciousness of the poets soul.

We find the poets untrained childhood sensibility exposed to a country landscapedotted with brickyards, wells and cold pumps. We follow the childs curious looksearching for his reflection in the calm water of these dark and deep wells. The smells ofrank weed, fungus and rotten moss in the wet surrounding here fascinate him.

The poet mentions a well in particular that is located in a brickyard. It is protectedwith a wooden plank used as its cover on top. As a child he loved to hear the noise thatcame from the well when the empty bucket, lowered into it, hit water below with asplashing noise. The dark depth of the well, its pitch black water, and its noise presenteda weird and mysterious look to the childs untamed sensibility. The well, he mentions,was too deep and dark to look at ones reflection in its water. It was not a deep holeunder a dry stone ditch. It had a close resemblance with a fish pond, as the poet seeks alikeness between the plenty of fish swimming in an aquarium and the lot of rotten plantsfloating in the water of the well.

As the water in bucket was cleared of all its dart of weed, the child could see hisface mirrored in it. The reflection of childs white face was visible in it. The poet here

symbolically asserts his theory of subjective approach to poetry. His looking at his ownreflection also refers to this subjective and intuitive nature of his poetry. Like legendaryNarcissus he is interested in expressing his own fears and doubts that lie deep in his soul.He does not look around to be inspired for creating his verse.

The fountainhead of his poetic thought is his soul, and what lies hidden there is thesubject matter of his verse, and the same is revealed through his poetic words. Heaneyspersonal experiences of injustice, fear, apprehensions, losses, unfulfilled desires, anddeprivations urge him to speak and write. They are the source of his inspiration. Helooks at his own face when he writes.

When Heaney claims to adopt this course in his poetry, he denies the role thatenvironment plays in evolving a work of art, since his theory of poetry hinges mainly on

his remaining detached from what is going on around him. What Heaney, in this way,claims to practise is difficult to do particularly when modern psychology insists that


18/21



18

personality is an indivisible combination of hereditary traits and environment. Asensitive person, a poet in particular, cannot keep aloof when his immediate surroundingis exposed to grave crisis involving injustice and violence, death and destruction.Inevitably, he is supposed to be stirred by necessity of circumstance and reactaccordingly.

Simple words, metaphorical use of wells, buckets, windlasses and dark drop, andsight, smell, sound and taste images have a lot to do with the transparency of meaningsin the poem. Heaney, by force of his descriptive art, paints a pretty landscape ofbrickyards, wells, open sky and wild water weed. His childhood rambles across the placeand his Narcissus pursuit have skilfully been used to support his subjective approach topoetic thought and creation.

Q: WHAT ARE MAJOR CONFLICTING FORCES THAT ENCOMPASS HUMANLIFE? HOW HEANEY PRESENTS THIS CONFLICT IN CASTING &GATHERING.

Q: GIVE A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE POEM CASTING &GATHERING BY SEAMUS HEANEY.

Ans:The limerick Casting and Gathering presents an over view of interplay of social,

political, religious and economical views that inspired people everywhere to raise theirvoice against inequality. The working class was greatly inspired by these views. Thepoem seeks a compromise on the ideological conflict that has long been contaminatingsociety with numerous tribulations.

Philosophers like Rousseau and Hegel have expressed fairly like chalk and cheeseopinions regarding the extent of freedom and authority that individual and societyshould have. Man has over centuries been trying to strike a balance between the twoextremes held in these views but the titled scale of opinion in favour of both has widenedthe distance and originated a conflict between the Leftist and the Rightist, between the

progressive and conservative, communist and capitalist and the oppressor and theoppressed.

The poem consigns symbolically to mans innate love for pleasure and hisinstinctive desire to escape fear. These desires have made him long for prosperity andavoid pain. Heaney looks back at this dilemma and feels the need of resolving theconflict behind it. The river in the poem is a river of life. The banks, where workers onboth sides are engaged in toilsome activities, are vital to the very portion of human race.The sight images of river banks are Green silk tepard net moving fast in the air,hayfields, marsh birds, farming machines, moving arms and rods, workersabsorbed in sowing seed and cutting crops in the holy stillness of countryside

Mentioned images convey a vivid representation of farm work to the readers mind.

The poet describes two different stages of process in farming. That are sowing seeds andreaping a crop. That is the culmination of producing grain to sustain life. Same as theviews do no look alike but in spirit they lead to envisage a better and improved futurelife for human race.

The sound images used by Heaney are no less gratifying to the mind and soul ofthe reader. The sounds of words like hush and lush, swishing noise stand for fearand hope. The feelings of fear and hope are a reaction to movements calling for a change.The swishing noise of the net plays the role of messenger with a good or bad whisperingof news. The jarring noise of cries of the marsh birds, and the loud noise of farmingmachines pierce the calm of the peaceful farmland atmosphere on banks. The voices ofa speeded-up corncrake, a sharp rat-chatting suggest that individual has no

important role to play in society.


19/21



19

The title of the poem Casting and gathering refers a thought to the mind of readeron both views. Casting a net or scattering seeds is one view and gathering the fish orcollecting grains by reaping or harvesting is another view. Both are quite different butboth are essential to lead our life. It provides a healthy environment of co-existence. Thepeople need to rise above social, racial, political, religious and economic differences and

work together to achieve higher goals of human welfare, without a compromise oncontraries; it is very hard to live a life of peace and prosperity.

The poet is optimistic about the outcome of efforts if made in that direction. Hebelieves that both views in their own right aim at improving life by putting in their shareof knowledge and skill. The poem gives the message of hope and tolerance. According tothe poet,

A culture of tolerance is the ultimate need to promote peace and harmonyamong the people. One needs not subscribe to opposite views but one canrespect and accommodate them.

Q: POETRY CAN EXPLORE THE PERSONAL DIMENSIONS OF THE SELF ANDTHE RELATIONSHIP TO THE FAMILIAR THINGS AROUND, OR ELSE

INVESTIGATE THE LARGER ISSUES THAT PERSIST IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD. DISCUSS THE WORK OF HEANEY BY ANALYSING TWO ORMORE POEMS IN RELATION TO THIS STATEMENT.

Ans:

For this analysis of coursework on Seamus Heaney, we will be choosing two poemsMid-Term Break and Personal Helicon, and we'll be writing a commentary on eachof them. Firstly we will be writing an introduction about Seamus Heaney, which willinclude his poems and on his educational background and then on what types of poemshe writes. We will then write about each of the poems 'Mid-Term Break', and 'PersonalHelicon', which are similar, as they're both about his child hood. Finally, we will attemptto show why his poems are so effective.

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet who was born in April 1939 and still lives today.Seamus Heaney was a very bright boy who as a country boy attended local primaryschools and colleges to gain scholarships at Colleges. At college Heaney was taught Latinand Irish and moved on to Queens University in Belfast. In the course of his careerSeamus Heaney has always contributed to the promotions of artistic and educationalcauses both in Ireland and abroad. In recent years Seamus Heaney has been the recipientof several honorary degrees, he's a member of the Aosdana (Irish academy of artist andwriters), and a foreign member of the American Academy of arts and letters.

'Mid-Term Break' is an incredibly sad poem. Mid Term Break is basically about alittle boy, who was actually Seamus Heaney's brother, who was sadly killed by aspeeding car. Seamus Heaney describes in the poem of what he did that day when his

younger brother was killed.

The stanza begins with the "morning" in line one, but it is two o'clock in line three,showing that hours have passed in waiting.

The second stanza begins with the image of Heaney's father "crying". Heaney'sfather appears to be a strong man of few words, so having him crying causes a powerfulemotion in the reader. Heaney skilfully takes the reader with him as he enters the house(showing he was scared) through the porch as we meet his father; "Big Jim Evans"; thebaby in its pram; the old men gathered in the room; and finally Heaney's mothercoughing out "angry tearless sighs", which show that she was hiding her true emotions.

The little brother of Seamus Heaney was hit on his head, as it says the ambulance

arrived at 10 o'clock, with the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. We learn inthe sixth stanza that Heaney hadn't seen his brother for six weeks having been "away atschool", which suggests he went to a boarding school. The words "paler now", hang at


20/21



20

the end of the stanza on line 18, causing a sad pause before the sentence continues anddescribes how little changed in appearance from when the boy was alive and dead, thebigdifference is his paler colour and his "poppy bruise".

The final line stands out of the rest of the poem. Almost every word is special so

that the reader must take in the line's message and the shock and deep grief that thefamily must have felt. There is shock for the reader reading it for the first time also, whenthey discover who has died and that he was only four years old. The little four-year-oldchild who suffered a hard hit to the head from a speeding car was well written in thepoem. The mood is set almost immediately in the second line: Counting bells knellingclasses to a close. We noticed how Heaney uses an alteration to the funereal sound of thebells and the feeling of time dragging.

'Personal Helicon' is basically about childhood and discovery. This poem is wellwritten, which cleverly makes us think so that we may see ourselves better as a species.

Looking at the first and last stanzas, I can see opposing points of view. The first linebegins 'As a child' and in the last line Heaney says that these activities are now 'beneath

all adult dignity'. He also begins by describing the very real echoes found in wells, butthe last line "I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing", which is about echoes ofa more metaphorical kind. The poem itself seems to be about the journey from childhoodto adulthood that he has taken. This means he has moved away from the poetry he wrotewhen he was younger to a more mature kind when he became older.

I find some lines in the poem wild and disgusting, words such as "fructified",fungus", "dank" which were said earlier in the poem, and later Heaney speaks of "a cleannew music", reflecting his life as he has become more mature.

Looking at the two poems 'Mid-Term Break' and 'Personal Helicon' I have learntthat Seamus Heaney's poems can be very meaningful and in depth. You could have somany ideas of what the poem is suggesting which makes you think what's happening

and what the poem is all about. Looking at the poem 'Mid-Term Break' we feel it is verywell written.

The poem builds up lots of tension towards the final stanza, which makes youwonder what's going to happen, which makes it highly exciting. The highlight of thispoem would probably have to be the way it was written as it builds up tension, and alsomakes people feel sympathies for the little four-year-old boy who was killed as he lookedlike he was sleeping in the coffin as he slept in his cot.

In 'Personal Helicon', Seamus Heaney writes about childhood and discovery, whichis very hard to understand. He creates a mirror with his rhymes. In a way, archaeology islike "hands-on" poetry. Its purpose is to "pry into roots" of humanity, "to set the darknessechoing" so that we may see ourselves better as a species.

Q: DISCUSS THE TECHNICALITIES OF HEANEYS POETIC STYLE.Ans:

Robert Lowell has reckoned Heaney as the most important Irish poet since Yeats,and he is undoubtedly the most popular poet writing in English today. Heaney is thebest promising example of a highly intelligent, honest and decent Irishman strugglinglike Hercules with the contradiction of his inheritance. The political pressures on himwere certainly great but it gave him a subject.

The love of language and the love of place are one for Heaney, and the ideal ofjustice entails a certain democracy of language, as well as common subject matter. He iswell aware that his is tentative art, and he understands those who are somewhatsceptical about poetrys special status.


21/21


His poems abound in such voices, mostly drawn from Heaneys own experience,and they never shy away from speaking their minds, even if what they have to say aboutthe poets tactics is not always flattering.

It is commonplace to get the impression that Heaney is a provincial poet, concernedonly with the happenings of his Island and his memory. That conclusion, however,

would be misleading. He is not merely a one-note minstrel; his birthplace does notcompletely occupy his mind. Personal Helicon, Casting and Gathering and Songare good examples of Heaneys own imaginative power.

His descriptive powers are akin to Wordsworths, and his attention to the worldaround him and the details of language make his poems a great success. Selection ofExpressive words is Heaneys hallmark. He is of the view that, words are themselvesdoors, His words open the minds of poet to the threshold of the reader.

The language is inflected either towards its signified or to its signifiers, presents itsmeanings and calls attention to itself as a medium. It acts as a clear window throughwhich its meanings are immediately and un-immediately visible, Heaney in his poemsdemonstrates the opposite, the clearer, the most transparent, the language. For in this

apparent bareness it becomes clear that no language is free of images and symbols, everyword may double its meaning.

A Constable Calls is full of images that help trace the meaning. The things are sominutely described through clear images. The images of bike and boot have beenused for inspiring awe. The revolver and Bolton images stand for state terror, too.The black hole in barracks is an image used to inspire the fear of punishment. Thesound image of ticked, ticked, ticked very clearly refers to the danger of time bombthat can explode any moment to bring death and destruction. It also refers to state ofchaos, uncertainty and insecurity.

Symbolism is special area of Heaney. He manipulates it to get his desired aim. Inthe Toome Road the symbolic use of Omphalous shows the unshakeable will of Irish

people as a central indomitable force in freedom struggle, the charioteers as invadersof the modern day war help the reader to understand the message of the poet.

Heaneys series of bog poems address, through a study of these victims of tribalsacrifice and punishment, the political and social situation in his native Northern Ireland.Heaneys metaphor, begins in Bogland reaches its ultimate fruition. His fascinationwith the past allows him to comment on the present in an oblique yet forceful way.

Casting and Gathering is comparison of two approaches of human mind to dealwith its immediate crises, and works for its vested interest. One is to kill man forreligious syndrome the other to appease political force.

The decision to avoid the limitations of dogma frees Heaney and enables him toattain visions of air. His poetic visions never lose sight of the physical, the immediate,and the local. His is poetry of nouns. Exile serves as a way to bypass the political whichconstantly inserts itself between man and society.

Heaney never disdains the so-called common man to accuse him of arrogancewould be completely misguided. Heaney is the voice we love to hear, for his talentultimately serves the common good.

Documents

seamus eaney