heaney - squarespacestatic1.squarespace.com/.../1391620233237/heaney.pdf · seamus heaney...

!

Cian Hogan English Notes Ⓒ 2013 �1

!

Seamus HeaneyA Study Guide | © Cian Hogan

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013)

!Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 in the townland of Mossbawn, County

Derry, in Northern I re land. By the mid-1960s,

h is poetry was appear ing regular ly in l i terary

magazines. S ince then he has achieved what

can only be descr ibed as a meteor ic r ise to

fame. In 1995 he won the Nobel Pr ize for

L i terature and is now widely regarded as one

of the leading poets of his generat ion and the

greatest I r ish poet s ince Yeats . The poems on

y o u r c o u r s e b y S e a m u s H e a n e y a r e

representat ive of his body of work as a whole.

They are by turns mythological and grounded in everyday real i ty, erot ic

and innocent, rural and cosmopol i tan. Heaney’s poetry is , to borrow from

Harold Bloom, ‘keyed and pitched unl ike any other s igni f icant poet at work

in the language anywhere’. In his Nobel Pr ize acceptance speech, Heaney

praised the undisputed achievement of W.B. Yeats , whose work he fel t

‘does what the necessary poetry a lways does, which is to touch the base of

our sympathet ic nature whi le tak ing in at the same t ime the unsympathet ic

nature of the world’. This could easi ly be read as an assessment of

Heaney’s own poetry.

!!!!!!!!


!!!!!A Constable Cal ls

!His bicycle stood at the window-si l l ,

The rubber cowl of a mud-splasher

Ski rt ing the f ront mudguard,

I ts fat black handlegr ips

!Heating in sunl ight , the ‘spud‘ 5

Of the dynamo gleaming and cocked back,

The pedal t reads hanging rel ieved

Of the boot of the law.

!His cap was upside down

On the f loor, next his chair. 10

The l ine of i ts pressure ran l ike a bevel

In his s l ight ly sweat ing hair.

!He had unstrapped

The heavy ledger, and my father

Was making t i l lage returns 15

In acres, roods, and perches.

!Ari thmetic and fear.

I sat s tar ing at the pol ished holster

With i ts buttoned f lap, the braid cord


Looped into the revolver butt . 20

!‘Any other root crops?

Mangolds? Marrowstems? Anything l ike that? ’

‘No.’ But was there not a l ine

Of turnips where the seed ran out

!In the potato f ie ld? I assumed 25

Smal l gui l ts and sat

Imagining the black hole in the barracks.

He stood up, shi fted the baton-case

!Farther round on his belt ,

Closed the domesday book, 30

Fi tted his cap back with two hands,

And looked at me as he said goodbye.

!A shadow bobbed in the window.

He was snapping the carr ier spr ing

Over the ledger. His boot pushed off 35

And the bicycle t icked, t icked, t icked.

!


�

!!!!!!!!!!!!!


1. Content

! Speaking of his sense of ident i ty as a Cathol ic in an interv iew with

Seamus Deane, Heaney had the fol lowing to say:

!Poetry is born out of the watermarks and colourings of the self .

But that self in some ways takes its spir itual pulse from the

inward spir itual structuring of the community to which it belongs:

and the community to which I belong is Cathol ic and National ist . I

bel ieve that the poet’s force now, and hopeful ly in the future, is

to maintain the efficacy of his ‘mythos’, his own cultural and

pol it ical colourings, rather than to serve any particular momentary

strategy and his pol it ical leaders, his parami l itary organisation or

his own l iberal self might want him to serve . I think that poetry and

pol it ics are, in different ways, an articulation , an ordering, a giv ing

form to inchoate pieties, prejudices, world-v iews, or whatever . And I

think that my own poetry is a kind of slow, obstinate, papish burn ,

emanating from the ground I was brought up on .

! Certa inly i t i s di ff icul t to read this poem without sensing the ‘papish

burn’ of which Heaney speaks. The poem opens with a depict ion of the

constable’s bike that stood at the ‘window-si l l ’ . Whi le there is nothing

unusual about any of i ts component parts , i t i s di ff icul t not to feel that th is

bike const i tutes a threat . A gun comes to mind when, in the second stanza,

we learn that the ‘ “spud” | Of the [bike’s] dynamo’ was ‘cocked back.’ A

sense of the constable’s presence is conveyed by the bike’s pedal

t reads, which hang ‘ rel ieved | Of the boot of the law.’ In the next stanza,

further information regarding this man’s arr iva l is provided.

!


Something of the qual i ty of the welcome that this man has been

afforded is conveyed when we are told that his cap lay ‘upside down | On

the f loor, next his chair ’. In the f inal couplet , Heaney int imates that the

constable is a physical ly unappeal ing man. He is ‘sweat ing’ and the l ine of

pressure on his head caused by the t ightness of his cap suggests that he is

overweight . As the chi ld narrator looks on, the constable opens his ledger

and his father makes his returns in imperia l measurements:

! He had unstrapped

The heavy ledger, and my father

Was making t i l lage returns

In acres, roods, and perches.

!The opening l ine of the next stanza conveys the intensi ty of the scene.

‘Fear ’ mingles with ‘Arithmetic ’ and the inferences of v iolence that were

suggested by the constable’s bike in the previous stanzas now become

overt . The speaker ’s attent ion is drawn to the ‘polished holster ’ and the

‘revolver butt .’ In the next stanza, the speaker ’s apprehension leads him to

wonder i f h is father is being ent i re ly t ruthful when he answers ‘No ’ to the

constable’s quest ions concerning root crops. His worry is heightened as he

begins to f ret about possible imprisonment and the ‘black hole in the

barracks .’ Of course, the constable does not take any act ion. He s imply

c loses his ‘domesday book, ’ p laces his ‘cap ’ on his head and looks at the

speaker as he says ‘goodbye ’. In the f inal s tanza, the constable’s shadow

bobs in the window as he prepares to leave. The c losing l ine of the poem,

with the t ick ing of the constable’s bike as i t moves into the distance, is

h igh ly suggest i ve of the menace that he represents in the poet ’s

imaginat ion.

!!


2. Styl ist ic Features

! This poem, which f i rs t appeared in the col lect ion Singing School , is

one of s ix autobiographical works that detai l Heaney’s growing sense of

ident i ty both as a poet and a Northern I r ish Cathol ic . ‘A Constable Cal ls ’ i s

h is most overt ly pol i t ical poem on the Leaving Cert i f icate sy l labus. The

pol i t ical agenda can f i rs t be seen in the poem’s t i t le . The word ‘constable ’

i s h ighly suggest ive of Br i t ish rule. The poem recal ls the v is i t of an RUC

man to his home in order to col lect agr icul tural s tat is t ics . Told pr incipal ly

through the eyes of a chi ld, the reader is a lso made aware of a second

voice. Al though i t is not fu l ly art iculated, there is a sense of adult

r e s e n t m e n t f o r t h e l a w . To b e g i n w i t h , t h e c o n s t a b l e ’s b i k e i s

representat ive of the repress ion that the poet associates with the Royal

Ulster Constabulary. The ‘rubber cowl ’ and ‘ fat black handlegrips’ recal l

the batons and rubber bul lets that were f requent ly used by the RUC

dur ing the Troubles. The associat ion with v iolence is maintained in the

descr ipt ion of the ‘dynamo .’ The fact that i t l ies ‘cocked back ’ i s s t rongly

suggest ive of a gun that is ready to f i re . S imi lar ly, the mention of the ‘boot

of the law ’ br ings to mind the jackbooted pol ic ing that was often

associated with the RUC. One of the most interest ing sty l is t ic features of

th is poem is the manner in which Heaney manages to infer the nature of

the deep-rooted div ide that exists between the predominant ly Protestant

pol ice force and the Cathol ic minor i ty. The cacophonous ‘g’, ‘ s ’ and ‘k ’

sounds of the f i rs t two stanzas further add to the underly ing tension of the

constable’s v is i t . The fact that the poet ’s parents do not afford the man

anything near ing a hospitable welcome speaks volumes about the div is ion

that exists in this society. Rather than take his cap, as would normal ly

happen with a v is i tor, i t i s left on the ground.

!


In the second movement, Heaney al lows the chi ld’s voice to intrude.

The sense of cur ios i ty and wonder that should be a chi ld’s react ion to the

arr iva l of a pol iceman is supplanted by apprehension and palpable

tension. The descr ipt ion of the constable works to dehumanise him. L ike

his bike, he is descr ibed as ser ies of separate components, reducing him

to l i tt le more than an extension of his job. The ‘uniform ,’ the ‘polished

holster ,’ the ‘cap ,’ ‘braid cord ’ and, more ominously, the ‘revolver butt ’

te l l us nothing about this man himsel f except that he is a representat ive of

the law.

! In the end, he is a ‘shadow ’ that jeopardises the secure atmosphere

of home. The fact that he represents Br i t ish rule is a l luded to in the

imperia l measurements used by him to quant i fy the farm’s returns. The

‘acres, roods, and perches’ are more than just measurements – they are

c lear reminders of Br i t ish rule and the Heaney fami ly ’s place in the socia l

h ierarchy of Northern I re land. Furthermore, there is an obvious incongruity

between the rout ine nature of the constable’s v is i t and the fact that he is

armed. I t i s interest ing that the encounter with the constable should take

place on a farm, especia l ly when one considers that so much of the

v iolence and tension that has been part of I re land’s history has centred on

the struggle for land. One of the most upsett ing aspects of the encounter

with the constable is the manner in which i t involves the emasculat ion of

the father in the eyes of the son. The young speaker should never have

had to witness his father ’s ‘ fear ’ that the farm’s ‘Arithmetic ’ might not

sat is fy the constable’s inspect ion. In the fourth movement of the poem,

Heaney al lows the tension to mount. The speaker is complic i t in his

father ’s l ie and he imagines them being thrown in ja i l for not declar ing the

turnip patch:

! […] I assumed


Small gui l ts and sat

Imagining the black hole in the barracks.

He stood up, shi fted the baton-case

!The repet i t ion of the consonant sounds ‘b’ and ‘ck ’ re inforces the sense of

dread that this imagined place creates.

! The f i fth movement br ings with i t the rel ief at the constable’s

departure. However, we are afforded one last gl impse of the ‘baton case ,

’ the belt ’ and of course the ‘domesday book .’ The ‘Small gui l ts ’ of the

previous stanza seem to have pre-empted the mention of Doomsday. I t i s

typical of Heaney’s poetry that an al lus ion should be so mult i - layered.

Thoughts of gui l t and Doomsday are not only suggest ive of a Cathol ic

mindset , but a lso hint at the history of the Br i t ish Empire. The Domesday

Book was commiss ioned in 1085 by Wil l iam the Conqueror, who invaded

England in 1066. As the poem closes, the menacing al l i terat ion of the

bicycle that ‘ t icked, t icked, t icked ’ h ints at the t roubl ing t imes to come in

Northern I re land.

According to Daniel Tobin, ‘ the poem ends with the haunt ing sound

of the constable bicycle t ick ing down the road l ike a bomb about to go off .

An ai r of oppress ion hovers about the scene, and whi le we know that

nei ther the father nor the son wi l l respond v iolent ly to that oppress ion, the

poem nevertheless suggests that a v iolent repr isa l wi l l someday detonate

in this explosive socia l c l imate’ . Heaney is so successful in evoking tension

and a sense of dread that we share in the speaker ’s re l ief at the

constable’s departure.

!3. Essay Wri t ing


I f you are thinking of making reference to ‘A Constable Cal ls ’ in any essay

on Heaney’s poetry that you may be asked to make, you may wish to

consider some of the fol lowing points .

!a. The poem provides us with an interest ing perspect ive on the div is ions

that exist in Northern I r ish society.

b. Heaney makes interest ing use of sound devices such as a l l i terat ion and

consonance to heighten the tension surrounding the constable’s v is i t .

!c. Many of Heaney’s poems deal with the theme of v iolence. I t may be

interest ing to consider a comparison between this poem and ‘The Tol lund

Man’.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


!Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedicat ion

for Mary Heaney

!I Sunl ight

!There was a sunl i t absence.

The helmeted pump in the yard

heated i ts i ron,

water honeyed

!in the s lung bucket 5

and the sun stood

l ike a gr iddle cool ing

against the wal l

!of each long afternoon.

So, her hands scuff led 10

over the bakeboard,

the reddening stove

!sent i ts plaque of heat

against her where she stood

in a f loury apron 15

by the window.

!Now she dusts the board

with a goose’s wing,

now s i ts , broad- lapped,

with whitened nai ls 20


!and measl ing shins:

here is a space

again, the scone r is ing

to the t ick of two clocks.

!And here is love 25

l ike a t insmith’s scoop

sunk past i ts gleam

in the meal-bin.

!

�

Cr i t ical Commentary: Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedicat ion ( I ) Sunl ight

!1. Content

! In this beaut i fu l and heart -warming dedicatory poem, Heaney evokes

a sense of genuine love, a connect ion with a pass ing way of l i fe and a

chi ldl ike sense of secur i ty. The poem opens with a depict ion of the s i lence

that the poet associates with Mossbawn. In the yard, the pump is warmed

by the sunl ight whi le the water in the ‘slung bucket ’ i s ‘honeyed . ’ The

t imelessness of the scene is emphasised by the image of the sun standing

l ike a ‘griddle cool ing | against the wal l .’ Once the scene is set , the poet

moves into the inter ior of Mossbawn, where his aunt ’s ‘hands scuff led | Cian Hogan English Notes Ⓒ 2013 �13

over the bakeboard, | the reddening stove . ’ As with the yard outs ide, the

poet emphasises the warmth of the place. A ‘plaque of heat ’ r i ses up

against her as she stands ‘ in a f loury apron | by the window . ’ In the f i fth

stanza, the poet ’s attent ion remains focused on his memories of his aunt

performing her household chores:

! Now she dusts the board

with a goose’s wing,

!While Mossbawn obviously occupies a specia l , even mythical place in

Heaney’s imaginat ion, he does not seek to embel l ish or a i rbrush his

memory of his aunt . She is descr ibed as being ‘broad-lapped ’ and as

having ‘measl ing shins . ’ In the same stanza, the speaker again emphasises

the peace and the ‘space ’ that th is place afforded him. The ‘ two clocks ’

that presumably symbol ise the past and the present ‘ t ick ’ in unison as past

and present are uni f ied by the poem’s upl i ft ing message. The f inal s tanza

of the poem aff i rms Heaney’s centra l bel ief that i t i s the ordinary,

everyday, domest ic qual i ty of h is love for Mossbawn and his aunt who

l ived there that makes i t so specia l :

! And here is love



in the meal-bin.

!The ‘ t insmith’s scoop ,’ worn and in some respects unremarkable, becomes

a metaphor for the warmth and love that Mossbawn represents .

!2. Sty l is t ic Features

! Cian Hogan English Notes Ⓒ 2013 �14

Heaney grew up on a County Derry farm not far f rom Mossbawn.

Mossbawn l ies 30 mi les north-west of Bel fast , between Cast ledawson and

Toome Br idge, a long the Bann River just north of where i t emerges f rom

Lough Neagh. Mossbawn holds a v i ta l place in Heaney’s imaginat ion. In

Preoccupat ions, Heaney has descr ibed the place as a ‘nave l ’ :

! I would begin with the Greek word, omphalos, meaning the navel ,

and hence the stone that marked the centre of the world,

and repeat it , omphalos, omphalos, omphalos, unti l its blunt a n d

fall ing music becomes the music of somebody pumping w a t e r a t

the pump outside our back door .

!In this poem, Heaney balances natural speech with a genuine dedicat ion

to what he has descr ibed as a ‘musical ly sat isfy ing order of sounds .’ As a

result , the reader feels that he or she is shar ing in what is , in the words of

the Swedish Academy, a moment of ‘ lyr ical beauty and ethical depth .’ The

int imate domest ic images that dominate the poem are matched by a r ich

and sensuous language that enables the reader to share ful ly in the

exper ience. In part icular, the al l i terat ive combinat ion of words such as

‘helmeted ,’ ‘heated ,’ ‘honeyed ,’ ‘slung ,’ ‘sun ,’ ‘stood ,’ ‘scuff led ’ and

‘stove ’ work to create an easygoing, re laxed sense of homely comfort . The

naturalness of the language is mirrored in the sensuous imagery used by

Heaney. The f i rs t two stanzas st ress the elemental place that Mossbawn

holds in the poet ’s imaginat ion. In fact , images associated with two of the

elements, water and sunl ight , dominate f i rs t s tanza:

! There was a sunl i t absence.

The helmeted pump in the yard

heated i ts i ron,

water honeyed


!According to Michael Parker, Heaney’s search for ‘myth and symbol has

caused him to return f requent ly to the Mossbawn pump as a source for his

creat ive energy […] I t i s a recurr ing fecund image in several volumes. With

i ts phal l ic shape and l i fe giv ing water, i t symbol ises the creat ive union of

his parents , the male and female, the myster ious fus ion of f ix i ty and f lu idi ty

which gives the wor ld and Art i ts shape; i t i s a south Derry equivalent of

the Pieran spr ing.’

!! The inter ior wor ld at Mossbawn is no di fferent in that i t i s a lso

associated with a l i fe-giv ing, creat ive energy. The heat that emanates f rom

the stove is a reminder not only of the warmth that Heaney associates with

Mossbawn, but of his aunt ’s creat ive spir i t . The act of baking bread and

the s ight of the scones r is ing are obvious reminders of th is creat iv i ty.

There are f requent references to t ime throughout the poem. In the f i rs t

instance, the sun’s movement is l ikened to a ‘griddle cool ing | against the

wal l | of each long afternoon .’ Here, the long vowel sounds s low down the

progress ion of the poem and create a lazy, hazy feel ing that works to

capture a sense of t imelessness. As the poem reaches i ts conclusion, the

speaker refers to the scones ‘r is ing | to the t ick of two clocks .’ This is a

di ff icul t l ine to interpret . Heaney may have the not ion of past and present

in mind. Certa inly, Mossbawn, with i ts water pump, ‘goose’s wing ’ duster

and homemade baking, is a reminder of another t ime. However, the two

clocks t ick ing may also refer to the beat ing of the two hearts of aunt and

chi ld. Whatever the case, i t i s c lear that the poet is savour ing his memories

of the unspoken love and warmth that he exper ienced dur ing this per iod

in his l i fe . In the f inal instance, th is love is l ikened to a t insmith’s scoop:

! And here is love




in the meal-bin.

!Tin is a soft metal that is re lat ively f ragi le. As such, i t i s a prefect metaphor

for the unassuming, unspoken love that l ies hidden, ‘sunk […] | in the

meal-bin. ’ The meal-bin l inks this metaphor to the k ind of nurtur ing and

sustaining love that Heaney associates with his aunt and Mossbawn.

!!3. Essay Writ ing

!I f you are thinking of making reference to ‘Mossbawn’, you may wish to

keep some of the fol lowing points in mind.

!a. In much of the poetry on the course, Heaney moves easi ly f rom the

homely images of farm and v i l lage to larger issues of history, language

and nat ional ident i ty, creat ing what he once cal led ‘ the music of what

happens’. ‘Mossbawn’ is an obvious an example of Heaney’s deep

connect ion to his roots in Derry.

!b. The language of the poem evokes the importance that Heaney attaches

to Mossbawn in a beaut i fu l manner.

!c. Despite the almost mythical s igni f icance that Heaney affords the people

and places surrounding Mossbawn, his depict ion remains at a l l t imes

bel ievable and real is t ic . !


!

! !

! !!!


!!Crit ical Commentary: The Forge

! 1 . Content

This poem uses the relat ively fami l iar image of the blacksmith to cast l ight on the

poet ic process. The sonnet opens with a memorable l ine of poetry that provided

the t i t le to Heaney’s second publ ished col lect ion, Door into the Dark:

! Al l I know is a door into the dark.

!Drawing on his chi ldhood fascinat ion and memories with the local forge, the

poet paints a v iv id picture of th is place. We are told that outs ide, ‘o ld axles and

i ron hoops’ l ie ‘ rust ing’. Then, in the thi rd l ine, att racted by the ‘short -pi tched

r ing’ of the anvi l , the poet ’s attent ion is drawn into the ins ide of the forge. One

can imagine the young poet ’s eyes adjust ing to the darkness of the forge, which

is i l luminated br ief ly by an ‘unpredictable fantai l of sparks ’. Al though the speaker

does not see the anvi l , he feels that i t ‘must be somewhere in the centre’ :

! Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,

Set there immovable: an al tar

!The references to the ‘unicorn’ and the ‘a l tar ’ convey the almost mythical , even

sacred, l ight in which the young poet v iews the workings of the forge.

! In the ninth l ine, the poet turns his attent ion to the smith. We learn that he

‘expends himsel f in shape and music ’. This is a rough, powerful man whose

physical presence is palpable. A man f rom another era, he is ‘ leather-aproned’,

has ‘hai rs in his nose’ and ‘grunts ’ at the pass ing ‘ t raff ic ’. The poem ends with a

c lear aff i rmat ion of the smithy’s mastery of his art : he beats ‘ real i ron out , to work

the bel lows’.


2 . Sty l is t ic Features

!This poem is one of the most memorable examples of Heaney’s meditat ive sty le.

From a st r ict ly formal point of v iew, ‘The Forge’ is a sonnet. However, the poem

undermines the convent ional sonnet form in that both the shape and the rhyming

scheme of ‘The Forge’ depart f rom the typical sonnet. In the poem, the forge

becomes an al legory or symbol for the art is t ic process in general and the art of

wr i t ing poetry in part icular. The sty l is t ic complexi ty of the poem can at f i rs t be

seen in the opening l ine, where the internal rhymes and hal f rhymes that exist

between such words as ‘know’ and ‘door ’ and ‘door ’ and ‘dark ’ create a a

memorable interplay that engages the reader ’s attent ion f rom the outset . The

emphasis on sound cont inues throughout the rest of the poem. Notice how the

‘short -pi tched’ descr ipt ion of the sound of the hammer st r ik ing the anvi l evokes

in i ts consonance the sound of metal on metal . This act ion leads to ‘an

unpredictable fantai l of sparks ’. Here, Heaney l inks sound to the unpredictable

nature of the beauty that resul ts f rom art is t ic creat ion. The v i ta l energy that

capt ivates the young poet is captured in the ‘h iss ’ of the ‘new shoe’ as i t

‘ toughens in water ’.

!At the heart of th is process l ies the anvi l and the f igure of the blacksmith. Whi le

Heaney goes out of his way to st ress the sacred, unfathomable nature of what this

man achieves, he is eager to emphasise his earthy ordinar iness. What this man

does is c loaked in darkness and thereby shrouded in mystery. For a br ief moment

in the sonnet, the associat ions between the smithy’s work, the unicorn of c lass ical

mythology and even the sacramental a l tar lend him a pr iest - l ike aspect . I t i s as i f

he is a holy man transubstant iat ing the common and even banal occurrences of

everyday l i fe into some kind of raref ied artefact . However, Heaney quick ly

counters his inst inct ive urge to glor i fy the art isan by descr ibing him in the most

ordinary of ways.

!At the end of the poem, the speaker emphasises the secular rather than spir i tual


aspect of the blacksmith ’s work . Ul t imately, the smith does not cast any

i l luminat ion on l i fe , but rather beats ‘ real i ron out ’. The ‘ real i ron’ is the end

product , whi le the unknowable and ul t imately indescr ibable creat ive inspirat ion

remains deep In the darkness of the forge. The correspondence between the

‘shape and music ’ that Heaney draws our attent ion to in the sestet h ighl ights

both the abstract and concrete nature of creat ion. The ‘shape’ of the art i f ice

emphasises i ts concrete real i ty, whi le i ts ‘music ’ is i ts abstract nature.

!The forge and the smithy have longstanding associat ions with art is t ic endeavour

in both c lass ical and contemporary l i terature. In his famous poem ‘Sai l ing to

Byzant ium’, W.B. Yeats celebrates the ancient Byzant ine goldsmiths, whi le Homer

devotes a famous passage in the Odyssey to the story of Hephaestus, the

blacksmith to the gods. In A Portra i t of the Art is t as a Young Man , James Joyce’s

Stephen Dedalus promised to ‘ forge in the smithy of [h is] soul the uncreated

conscience of [h is] race’. However, perhaps i t i s Shakespeare’s ‘quick forge and

working-house of thought ’ in Henry V that Heaney has in mind in this poem.

!Final ly, i t i s interest ing that the poem ends with a warning of sorts . Al though

the poet emphasises the power and mystery of the art i f icer ’s achievement, he

also acknowledges the threats to his existence that l ie beyond the forge. Outs ide,

‘a c latter | Of hoofs ’ is now but a distant memory and the t raff ic that f lashes by

reminds us of a faster modern world that has l i t t le need for the sk i l l s of the

blacksmith. Of course, i t i s not di ff icul t t o see that poetry faces s imi lar threats to

i ts existence f rom the modern world.

!!!!!!!!


3. Essay Wri t ing

!I f you are thinking of making reference to ‘The Forge’ in any response to

Heaney’s poetry that you may be asked to make, you may wish to keep the

fol lowing points in mind.

!a. Heaney makes use of the sonnet form in this poem. I t may be possible to

compare and contrast the form of this poem with the other poems on the course.

b. Heaney is interested in the art is t ic process. In this respect , you may be able to

devote an ent i re paragraph to this aspect of Heaney’s wr i t ing. I t might be useful

to compare this poem with ‘The Harvest Bow’.

c . This is a complex and interest ing poem that is r ich in c lever language devices

and l i terary a l lus ion.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


�� !!


�� !!!!!!

�� !!!!!! Cian Hogan English Notes Ⓒ 2013 �24

Critical Commentary: Bogland

! 1. Content

!In 1969, Heaney read The Bog People, a study of the discoveries made by the Danish

archaeologist P.V. Glob, which had a profound influence on his work. A close examination of

Heaney’s earlier poetry demonstrates clearly the extent to which he was influenced by

Glob’s writing. However, even before Heaney first read The Bog People, he was using bog

imagery as a metaphor for the elemental. ‘Bogland’ opens with a negative statement that

seems designed to offer an alternative to our traditional image of the wide, sweeping

prairies of North America:

We have no prairies

To slice a big sun at evening –

!Instead of wide-open spaces, the countryside offers us a landscape where ‘the eye

concedes to | [the] Encroaching horizon’. In the second stanza, Heaney develops this idea

further. The reflection of the sun setting over a mountain lake, or a ‘tarn’, is likened to

‘cyclops’ eye’. Where the American prairies contain vast stretches of unfenced country, the

Irish alternative is ‘bog that keeps crusting | Between the sights of the sun’. The third stanza

marks the beginning of a series of examples that demonstrate the natural, cultural, historical

and social importance of bogland. The ‘skeleton | Of the Great Irish Elk’, which the poet

describes as being ‘An astounding crate full of air’, has been found buried in the bog. The

Great Irish Elk, or Giant Deer, was a species of Megaloceros and one of the largest deer

that ever lived. While its range extended across Eurasia, it is in the boglands of Ireland that

the greatest numbers of these creatures have been found. In the fourth stanza, Heaney

mentions the bog butter. In some cases, churns and wooden containers of butter dating

back over three hundred years have been found in the bogs. The high level of acidity in

bogs acts as a preservative that previous generations valued highly. In the speaker’s

opinion, the bog itself is:

[…] kind, black butter


Melting and opening underfoot,

!Many students find this fifth stanza puzzling. When Heaney says that the bog is ‘Missing its

last definition | By millions of years’, he is referring to the fact that the bog will eventually

become coal. Over time, pressure will force the massive accumulation of dead plant life in

the peat into bitumen, which will eventually be transformed into coal. However, for the time

being, all that is to be found in these boglands is ‘waterlogged trunks | Of great firs’. In the

final two lines of the penultimate stanza, Heaney alludes once again to North America. In

the 1700s, the ‘pioneers’ were a groups of men and women who were the first Europeans

to settle the American frontier. Whereas the American pioneers extended the frontier

beyond the Appalachian Mountains and in later westward expansions beyond the

Mississippi River, the Irish pioneers ‘keep striking | Inwards and downwards’. The sense of

expanding into virgin territory that was so much a part of the American experience seems

absent here. Within the context of the Irish experience, ‘Every layer […] | Seems camped on

before’. In the poet’s imagination, the cultural depth that he associates with the bogholes is

mirrored by a physical one that extends as far as the Atlantic Ocean and beyond. The

hyperbole of the final line emphasises this depth further. The ‘wet centre’, we learn, ‘is

bottomless’.

!2. Stylistic Features

This poem, which is one of a number of poems by Heaney that are inspired by the wetlands

of Ireland and Northern Europe, concluded his 1969 collection, Door into the Dark. In his

presentation speech on the occasion of Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Prize in 1995, Östen

Sjöstrand, a member of the Swedish Academy, said that Heaney ‘has little time for the

Emerald Isle of the tourist brochures. For him Ireland is first and foremost The Bogland.’

Speaking about his own interest in boglands during a lecture called ‘Feeling into Words,’

given to the Royal Society of Literature in London on 17 October 1974, Heaney said:

I began to get an idea of bog as the memory of the landscape, or

as a landscape that remembered everything that happened in and to


it. In fact, if you go round the National Museum in Dublin, you will

realize that a great proportion of the most cherished material

heritage of Ireland was found in a bog.\]

!He also added that he:

! had been reading about the frontier and the west as an important

myth in the American consciousness, so I set up – or rather, laid

down – the bog as an answering Irish myth.

!According to Neil Corcoran, this poem can be regarded as a kind of ‘answering Irish poem

to Theodore Roethke’s American “In Praise of Prairie”, in which “Horizons have no

strangeness to the eye”, and “distance is familiar as a friend. | The feud we kept with space

comes to an end”.’

!Perhaps the most striking stylistic feature of the poem is the manner in which Heaney’s

mastery of form mirrors his descriptions of the bog. Run-on lines, metre and rhythm

combine to produce memorable sound patterns that capture fully the sense of the bog.

The run-on lines in particular help to create a sense of the interconnected layers of bog that

connect the present with the past and store a wealth of culture and history:

! The ground itself is kind, black butter

Melting and opening underfoot,

Missing its last definition

!According to Edna Longley, ‘The poem alternates ampler development with sharp

insertions. Thus the abrupt “They’ll never dig coal here” interrupts assonances which imitate

the wet softness of bog “Melting and opening underfoot”. “Bogland” might be called not

so much “a prospect of the mind” (to use Heaney’s favourite Wordsworthian phrase for

poet landscape) as a prospecting of the mind.’ For Heaney, the bog is a mythological


landscape, a symbol of cultural identity and race memory. In this respect, he is heavily

influenced by the writings of the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung. This revolutionary and

extremely influential thinker founded a type of psychoanalysis known as analytical

psychology. Jung was virtually alone amongst 19th-century thinkers in believing that human

beings had placed far too much emphasis on science and needed to return to the realms

of the mythological and the spiritual in order to obtain a true understanding of what

defines our humanity. In particular, Jung believed that beneath the personal unconscious

lay the collective unconscious. According to Jung, this collective unconscious could be

inherited as a race memory and passed on from generation to generation. In Heaney’s

imagination, the bog acts as a storehouse for our collective unconscious. Speaking directly

about this poem, Heaney has said: The title of the poem refers to the bogs I knew while I

was growing up and the stories I had heard about the things that could be preserved in

the bog such as supplies of butter that were kept there, and about the things that were

even more astonishing to a child, such as the skeleton of an Irish elk which our neighbours

had dug out. In the same address, he emphasised the lifelong hold that the bogland has

held on his imagination:

! When I was a child and an adolescent I lived among peat-diggers

and I also worked in the peat bog myself. I loved the structure the

peat bank revealed after the spade had worked its way through the

surface of the peat. I loved the mystery and silence of the place

when the work was done at the end of the day and I would stand

there alone while the larks became quiet and the lapwings started

calling, while a snipe would suddenly take off and disappear...

!In one respect, it is not surprising that Heaney should identify so strongly with the boglands

of Ireland. In 1969, the date of the poem’s publication, Derry’s Bogside was at the centre of

the civil rights marches in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, the English word ‘bog’ comes

from the Irish for ‘soft’. However, in English the word has often been a synonym for

backwardness, shame and even filth. ‘The bog’ is slang for a toilet and ‘a bogger’ is often


used as an insult in Hiberno-English. Yet Heaney dismisses such connotations for a view of

the bog that is altogether more favourable.

!!3. Essay Writing

!If you think you would like to make reference to ‘Bogland’ in any response to Heaney’s

poetry that you may be asked to make, you may wish to keep the following

points in mind.

!a. The poem is one of two poems by Heaney on the course that have the bog as their

central metaphor . As such, you may wish to compare this poem to ‘The

Tollund Man’.

!b. The language and metre of the poem attempt to capture the sense of the Irish bog.

!c. Although Heaney is not an overtly political poet, it is possible to assign political

significance to this and Heaney’s other bog poem on the course. It might be possible to

mention this in a paragraph on Heaney’s attitude to violence.

!!!!!!!!!!!


!

�


!

�

!!!!


�

!!!!!!!! 1 . Content

____________________________________________________________

Heaney was inspired to wr i te this poem after he had read The Bog People,

wr i tten by the Danish archaeologist P.V. Glob and publ ished by Faber &

Faber in 1969.


Speaking of this poem, Heaney has said that he was drawn to the

descr ipt ion of the v iolence and def ini te sense of place as out l ined by

Glob. The fol lowing is a br ief

extract f rom Glob’s book:

! An ear ly spr ing day – 8 May 1950. Evening was gather ing over

Tol land Fen in Bjaeldskov Dal . Momentar i ly, the sun burst in , br ight

and yet subdued, through a gate in blue thunderclouds in the west ,

br inging everything myster iously to l i fe . The evening st i l lness was o n l y

broken, now and again, by the grat ing love-cal l of the snipe. T h e d e a d

man, too, deep down in the amber-brown peat , seemed to h a v e c o m e

al ive. He lay on his damp bed as though as leep, rest ing on his s ide,

the head incl ined a l i t t le forward, arms and legs bent . H i s f a c e w o r e a

gent le express ion – the eyes t ight ly c losed, the l ips soft ly pursed, as in

s i lent prayer. I t was as though the dead man’s soul had for a moment

returned f rom another

wor ld, through the gate in the western sky.

!!Heaney’s poem opens with a commitment by the speaker that someday he

‘wi l l go to Aarhus’. The purpose of th is intended v is i t i s to see the ‘peat-

brown head’, the ‘eyel ids ’ and the ‘pointed sk in cap’ of the Tol lund Man.

Then, in the next stanza, the poet imagines ‘ the f lat country nearby |

Where they dug him out ’. In the f inal l ines of the second stanza, the

contents of the dead man’s stomach are envis ioned by the poet in a lmost

forensic detai l . In the thi rd stanza, the man’s naked vulnerabi l i ty is

juxtaposed in a shocking fashion with the evidence of his execut ion:

! Naked except for

The cap, noose and girdle,


I wi l l s tand a long t ime.

Br idegroom to the goddess,

The f inal l ine of the thi rd stanza casts l ight on the reason for this man’s

death: he was offered up as a sacr i f ice, or as a ‘Br idegroom to the

goddess’. In keeping with the fact that th is act of sacr i f ice was intended to

form part of a fert i l i ty r i te , the language in the fourth stanza becomes

more sexual in nature. We learn that the earth goddess ‘ t ightened her

torc ’ and then opened the ground to envelop him, her ju ices ( the acidi ty

of the water in the bog) preserv ing his body unt i l i t becomes in the poet ’s

imaginat ion a ‘sa int ’s kept body’. Where this man once lay deep in the

bog, ‘h is s ta ined face’ now ‘Reposes at Aarhus’.

!In the s ixth stanza, the poet te l ls us that he ‘could r isk blasphemy’ and

‘Consecrate’ the bog. Unusual ly, given the pagan nature of the r i tual that

led to the Tol lund Man’s death, the language used here is overt ly

Chr ist ian. The prayer that the speaker feels that he would l ike to intone

concerns the germinat ion or reanimat ion of the ‘Stockinged corpses’ of

‘ labourers ’ who died as a result of a Black and Tans atroci ty in Northern

I re land dur ing the 1920s. In the next stanza, Heaney provides us with a

ser ies of disturbing gl impses into the level of the v iolence that was meted

out to these brothers . We learn that their ‘sk in and teeth’ f lecked the

s leepers of the ra i l road for ‘mi les a long the l ines’. Then,

in an abrupt and jarr ing change that l inks the pl ight of these four young

brothers to that of the Tol lund Man, we are t ransported back in t ime to the

day when he ‘ rode the tumbri l ’ on his way to certa in death. In an almost

incantatory fashion, the poet then l is ts the names ‘Tol lund’, ‘Graubal le ’

and ‘Nebelgard’, a l l wel l -known s i tes where sacr i f ic ia l v ict ims have been

found.

!


In the f inal s tanza, the speaker te l ls us that he imagines he wi l l feel a

st range sense of aff in i ty with the ‘old man-k i l l ing par ishes’. Such a sense of

k inship that wi l l cause him to ‘ feel lost , | Unhappy and at home’ results ,

one can only imagine, f rom the shared history of v iolent sacr i f ice that

exists between Northern I re land and Jut land.

! 2 . Sty l is t ic Features

____________________________________________________________

This is a complex poem that both rewards and demands our c lose

attent ion. In the poem, the Tol lund Man is emblematic of the v ict imisat ion

and v iolence that have dominated recent history in Northern I re land.

Östen Sjöstrand, a member of the Swedish Academy who awarded Heaney

the Nobel Pr ize in 1995, has said of ‘The Tol lund Man’ that ‘ in his f igure

Heaney conjures forth, brutal ly and movingly, a cul ture that is both al ien

and famil iar, a dist inct ive subject of r i tual sacr i f ice, human voices s i lenced

by the boggy landscape’. From the outset there are obvious paral le ls

between the r i tual is t ic v iolence that led to this man’s brutal death and the

awful v iolence that has been part of I re land’s history. The poem was

inspired by the accounts of the r i tual is t ic deaths that Heaney read in the

late 1960s. According to the poet:

the unforgettable photographs of these v ict ims blended in

[h is] mind with photographs of atroci t ies , past and present , in

the long r i tes of I r ish pol i t ical and rel igious st ruggles.

!Archaeology and the act of digging have fascinated Heaney throughout

his poet ic career. In this poem, Heaney imaginat ively digs down through

the layers of the past in order to cast l ight on the present . The l inks that

exist between the v iolence that led to the Tol lund Man’s death and

I re land’s sad history are many. Fi rst ly, th is man was sacr i f iced to a female

goddess as part of a fert i l i ty r i te . The mythology surrounding the I r ish


Republ ican cause has a lways ident i f ied I re land as a feminine presence.

Secondly, the rel igious nature of his sacr i f ice is mirrored in the sectar ian

nature of the v iolence that has dogged Northern I re land’s recent past . The

rel igious imagery in the poem is part icular ly interest ing. Through the

re l ig ious symbol i sm, Heaney sk i l fu l l y in te rweaves pagan r i tua l w i th

Chr ist iani ty in general and Cathol ic ism in part icular. The f i rs t instance of

re l igious imagery in the poem is to be found in the poet ’s promise to

undertake a pi lgr image to v iew the Tol lund Man’s ‘kept body’. In this

manner, the Tol lund Man is ident i f ied with those saints who appear to

have been incorrupt ible. The speaker te l ls us that he is wi l l ing to ‘ r isk

blasphemy’ by venerat ing this pagan f igure. This , he hopes, wi l l resul t in a

consecrat ion of the land, which in turn wi l l lead to a t ransformation of the

‘cauldron bog’ of internecine v iolence into a ‘holy ground’ of common

purpose. In order to emphasise the rel igious s igni f icance of the Tol lund

Man, Heaney capita l ised the ‘h ’ in ‘Him’ in the s ixth stanza. Given that the

Tol lund Man was sacr i f iced as part of a fert i l i ty r i tual of renewal and

revival , the speaker feels he can go so far as to hope for a miraculous

germinat ion of the dead v ict ims of v iolence in his country.

! The paral le ls between these two parts of Europe, separated by

cul ture, t ime and geography, are such that the poet feels ‘at home’ in the

‘man-k i l l ing par ishes’. In this sense, the poem does appear to offer a smal l

amount of hope for an end to the v iolence that has plagued modern

I re land. According to Andrew Foley: I f Heaney’s work general ly emphasises

t h e i n e ff i c a c y o f C h r i s t i a n s y m b o l s s u c h a s t h e c ro s s t o p ro v i d e

consolat ion or resolut ion of a conf l ict in which Chr ist iani ty is after a l l a

contr ibut ing factor, then a poem l ike ‘The Tol lund Man’ may be regarded

as Heaney’s attempt to offer more ‘bef i tt ing emblems of advers i ty ’ to help

understand and counter the ‘ rage’ of I r ish rel igious and pol i t ical enmity.


I t i s c lear that Heaney is both repulsed and fascinated by the Tol lund Man.

The depict ion of his persevered body, which at f i rs t seems to emphasise

his rest ful nature, y ie lds to the forensic , even voyeur ist ic , descr ipt ion of his

innards:

His last gruel of winter seeds

Caked in his stomach,

!The harsh cacophonous sound of words such as ‘Caked’ and ‘stomach’

st resses the disgust the poet feels . Furthermore, the idea that we are pr ivy

to this man’s ins ides cal ls attent ion to the v iolat ion that is part of such

v iolence. Other Northern I r ish poets such as Michael Longley have made

s imi lar points about v iolence. I t i s as though human dignity is effaced by

the cruelty of v iolence. Final ly, when one considers the histor ical changes

that have swept as ide the fert i l i ty r i tuals in which this man part ic ipated, his

death seems part icular ly point less . Could Heaney be suggest ing that any

v iolent death for any cause, re l igious or otherwise, is point less?

!3. Essay Wri t ing

!I f you think that you would l ike to make reference to ‘The Tol lund Man’ in

any response to Heaney’s poetry that you may be asked to make, you may

wish to keep some of the fol lowing points in mind.

!a. This is a complex poem that draws on the past in order to provide us

with a powerful plat form from which the poet attempts to ident i fy centra l

t ruths about the I r ish exper ience.

b. This is one of two bog poems on the Leaving Cert i f icate course. As

such, i t may be useful to devote a paragraph to a comparison with

‘Bogland’.


c. Heaney’s poetry f requent ly deals with v iolence and rel igion. I t may be

possible to devote an ent i re paragraph to these themes in his poetry

and to draw some interest ing paral le ls between ‘A Constable Cal ls ’ and

‘The Tol lund Man’.

!!


�


�

!!Crit ical Commentary: The Harvest Bow

! 1 . Content

!!This deeply personal poem explores the poet ’s memory of his father

making a harvest bow. As the father works s i lent ly on the bow, i t i s as i f

aspects of his personal i ty are incorporated into i t :

! As you pla i ted the harvest bow

You impl icated the mel lowed s i lence in you

In wheat that does not rust

!The ‘wheat that does not rust ’ i s a reminder of the way in which the bow is

an enduring part of the natural cycle.

!


In the next l ine, the bow ‘br ightens’, becoming transformed in the

poet ’s imaginat ion into a ‘knowable corona, | A throwaway love-knot of

st raw’. The second stanza focuses on his father ’s hands, and the man’s

connect ion to the natural cycle is emphasised once again. These hands

have worked on ‘ashplants and cane st icks ’ and ‘gamecocks’. Such was his

father ’s sk i l l that his ‘ f ingers moved somnambulant ’ on the harvest bow. In

the f inal couplet of th is stanza, the poet takes the bow and holds in i t h is

hand. Imagining that he is touching the i tem as a bl ind person would read

‘brai l le ’, he manages to glean or gather unsaid t ruths.

! In the thi rd stanza, the poet looks through the ‘golden loops’ of the

harvest bow and in the process a door into the past is opened. Images of

his re lat ionship with his father are brought to the fore. He can see the two

of them walk ing ‘between the ra i lway s lopes | Into an evening of long

grass and midges’. On a general level , an auct ion not ice on an outhouse

wal l reminds us of the type of change that the bow in his father ’s lapel

seems to defy. However, th is auct ion not ice is a lso a reminder of a

part icular ly painful moment in Heaney’s ear ly l i fe . Fol lowing the death of

his younger brother, Chr istopher, who was k i l led by a car when he ran out

f rom behind a bus, the Heaneys sold the fami ly home at Mossbawn.

!Heaney has said that the move f rom Mossbawn s ignal led the end of his

chi ldhood. Warmer memories dominate the fourth stanza, where the poet

remembers f ishing tr ips with his father. The joy of these out ings was such

that the young speakerant ic ipated the longed-for l i ft to his spir i ts that he

associated with these evenings. The poet then recal ls the t ick ing sound of

his father ’s s t ick as i t ‘Beats out of t ime’. In the c los ing couplet of the

stanza, the speaker pictures his father once more as a quiet ‘ tongue-t ied’

man working on the straw of the harvest bow. The i ta l ic ised opening l ine

of the f inal s tanza al ludes to the poet Coventry


Patemore, who cla imed that the purpose of art was ‘ to br ing peace’. The

speaker feels that th is could be the ‘motto’ of th is ‘ f ra i l ’ yet obviously

powerful harvest bow that he has ‘pinned up’ on the ‘dresser ’. In the f inal

l ines of the poem, the poet attempts to make concrete the relat ionship

between the natural and human worlds. The bow is l ikened to ‘ the spir i t of

the corn’ or rabbit that has s l ipped i ts ‘snare’ and eluded capture.

!!2. Sty l is t ic Features

!!This beaut i fu l memory poem is one of Heaney’s most anthologised pieces

of wr i t ing. The bow that occasions the poet ’s heart fe l t t r ibute to his father

a lso creates a number of tangible l inks with such var ied themes as the

pass ing of t ime, nature and the worth and purpose of art is t ic endeavour.

In Robert F. Garratt ’s opinion, ‘ the poem draws i ts powerful effect f rom a

del icate conceit , which develops throughout the piece f rom what i t i s in

actual i ty – a woven badge of st raw s igni fy ing the harvest – to what i t

represents symbol ical ly ’. The bow is of course a powerful and interest ing

metaphor. Fi rst ly, i t represents a l ink with the t radit ions of the rural

community. The bow was made in celebrat ion of the bounty of the harvest

a n d o f t e n h u n g a b o v e t h e k i t c h e n d o o r. Th e a d v e n t o f i n t e n s i v e ,

mechanised farming and the waves of migrat ions f rom the land that have

taken place s ince Heaney wrote the poem have threatened the way of l i fe

that the bow represents . For Heaney, the bow is a potent reminder of our

connect ion to the land. In the poet ’s imaginat ion, the art of making the

bow provides a l ink to a t ime when the ‘spir i t of the corn’ was an integral

part of the rural community ’s l i fe . Such pre-Chr ist ian r i tuals are of course

now lost to us, but the bow, made f rom ‘wheat that does not rust ’, i s a

symbol of our connect ion to such t radit ions.


! Secondly, an interest ing aspect of the bow is the manner in which i t

reveals aspects of Heaney’s re lat ionship with his father. Not ice how the

speaker never recal ls any instance of di rect communicat ion with this father.

The bow, however, a l lows the poet to form a connect ion with his father

that t ranscends the spoken word. This ‘ f ra i l device’ communicates an

‘unsaid’ message of love and tradit ion. This message is l ikened by the

poet to a form of ‘brai l le ’ that , when understood, a l lows him to glean ‘ the

unsaid off the palpable’. This ‘unsaid’ knowledge seems to speak of the

enduring value of community and tradit ion. Despite the reminders of

change that are present in the poem in the form of ‘o ld beds’, ‘p loughs in

hedges’ and even ‘An auct ion not ice’, the ‘or iginal townland’ that inspires

Heaney’s imaginat ion st i l l ex ists . The separateness of the father and son,

wh ich i s emphas ised by the persona l pronouns ‘ You ’ and ‘Me’, i s

countered in the end by the inclus iveness and warmth that the bow

symbol ises. This inclus iveness is further expressed by the fact that in i ts

current incarnat ion, the bow seems to act as a symbol of the poet ’s love

for his wi fe:

! The end of art is peace

Could be the motto of th is f ra i l device

That I have pinned up on our deal dresser –

!An interest ing aspect of the poem’s sty l is t ic features is the manner in

which the casual nature of the poem’s form creates the sense of the

speaker ’s mind wandering back through t ime. Whi le each of the f ive

stanzas rel ies on three rhyming couplets , the run-on l ines and lack of

emphat ic rhymes push the poem forward in a gent le, unforced manner.

However, despite the meandering nature of the poem, i ts f inal message is

c lear. Art is t ic endeavour, whether spoken or not , has the abi l i ty to


t ranscend div is ion. The reference to Coventry Patmore’s bel ief that the

‘end of art is peace’, which the poet feels ‘Could be the motto of th is f ra i l

device’, i s wonderful ly upl i ft ing.

!3. Essay Wri t ing

I f you are thinking of making reference to ‘The Harvest Bow’ in any

response to Heaney’s poetry that you may be asked to make, t ry to keep

the fol lowing points in mind.

!a. Th is poem is one of a number on the course that dea ls w i th

relat ionships. Given the predominance of th is theme in Heaney’s poetry,

you may wish to devote an ent i re paragraph to this aspect of h is work.

b. The poem’s form works to create the impress ion that the speaker ’s mind

is wandering back through the years .

c. I t has been said of Heaney’s poetry that he ‘ t reats of nature with a lover ’s

intensi ty ’. This poem embodies Heaney’s deep connect ion with the

natural wor ld.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!


!Crit ical Commentary: The Underground

_______________________________________________________

See the text of the poem on p. 71.

1 . Content

____________________________________________________________

This poem, which was f i rs t publ ished in Heaney’s 1969 col lect ion, Stat ion

Is land,

has at i ts heart a c lever a l lus ion to the Greek myth of Orpheus and

Eurydice. In this

Greek myth, Orpheus marr ied the nymph Eurydice. A snake bite that

resul ted in

her death forced her to descend to the underworld. Orpheus was so

dist raught that

he descended into the underworld in order to beg for her re lease. This

descent into

the underworld is something only a smal l number of mortals have

successful ly done

in Greek mythology. When he was granted an audience with Hades and his

wi fe

Persephone, who ruled the underworld, Orpheus played a beaut i fu l ly

melancholy

melody on his lyre that melted the hearts of the k ing and queen of the

underworld.

Hades al lowed Orpheus to ascend f rom the underworld with his wi fe on

the proviso

that he not look at Eurydice direct ly. As the pair was leav ing the

underworld,

Orpheus glanced over his shoulder in the direct ion of Eurydice in order to

make


sure that she was in fact accompanying him. She was instant ly whisked

away and

condemned to remain forever in the underworld. When Orpheus made a

second

attempt at f reeing his wi fe, the Thracian maidens drowned out his music

and he was

k i l led and his lyre was carr ied to the heavens to become a constel lat ion. I t

may be

possible that Heaney had Georges Franju’s 1958 f i lm La Première Nuit in

mind when

he wrote this poem. In this f i lm, the story of Orpheus is retold through the

eyes of a

schoolboy in the modern sett ing of the Par is Métro.

In Heaney’s poem ‘The Underground’, the speaker and his wi fe assume the

roles

of modern-day Orpheus and Eurydice. The poem opens with a descr ipt ion

of the

pair in the ‘vaulted tunnel ’ of the Underground. The speaker ’s wi fe is

descr ibed

as wear ing her ‘going-away coat ’. Then, in an unusual s imi le, the poet

compares

himsel f to a ‘ f leet god’ gaining on her before she is ‘ turned to a reed’.

Perhaps the

poet is a l luding to the Greek myth of Syr inx. Syr inx was the daughter of

the minor

378 | Poems

deity and r iver god Ladon. She was chased by the god Pan, who was

enamoured with

her. Fr ightened, she cal led out to her father for help. In order to save her

f rom Pan,


he turned her into a water reed.

In the second quatra in, the poet descr ibes how his wi fe ’s coat buttons fe l l

off one

by one ‘ in a t ra i l | Between the Underground and the Albert Hal l ’. The thi rd

stanza

prov ides us w i th g l impses of the honeymooners ‘mooning around’

London, ‘ late for

the Proms’. There is a percept ible change in tone in the next l ine:

Our echoes die in that corr idor and now

The long vowel sounds of th is l ine create a haunt ing qual i ty that

emphasises the

passage of t ime. In the f inal couplet of the stanza, the poet sees himsel f

as a Hansel l ike

f igure who, fol lowing the buttons that his wi fe lost f rom her coat years

ear l ier,

retraces the path back to ‘a draughty lampl i t s tat ion’.

In the f inal l ines of the f inal s tanza, the poet descr ibes himsel f as being

tense as

he waits for his wi fe to return. Unl ike Orpheus in the underworld, he tel ls

us that he

is ‘damned’ i f he looks back.

2 . Sty l is t ic Features

____________________________________________________________

Heaney is fascinated by the moti f of the journey to the underworld. The

f igures of

Dante, Orpheus, Hermes and Virgi l , a l l of whom are associated with the

descent to

the underworld, have featured in his poetry. Of course, th is interest is a lso

found


in Heaney’s bog poems, where the speaker undertakes an excavat ion that

takes us

down through layers of soi l and history.

In ‘The Underground’, Heaney demonstrates his mastery of form and

sound.

The poem memoria l ises the Heaneys’ honeymoon in London in 1965. From

the

outset , the sounds in the poem match the poet ’s thematic concerns.

Not ice how in

the f i rs t l ine the long vowel sounds in the words ‘vaulted’ and ‘ tunnel ’

create an echo

that draws the reader ’s imaginat ion to an underground world of mystery:

There we were in the vaulted tunnel running,

This haunt ing qual i ty is balanced, however, by a sense of energy that

suggests

something important is going to happen. In fact , the f i rs t sentence of the

poem takes

the reader in a headlong rush through the f i rs t two quatra ins. The sparse

punctuat ion

Seamus Heaney | 379

( just two commas in eight l ines) barely gives us t ime to draw a breath. This

sense of

movement is further maintained by the sound patterns and clever use of

present and

past part ic iples in the second stanza. The present part ic iples ‘ running’,

‘ speeding’

and ‘gaining’ a l l create a sense of exci tement and movement. Meanwhi le,

the past

part ic iples ‘ japed’ and ‘ f lapped’ capture the sound of Heaney’s wi fe ’s coat

as the wind


rushes against i t . For anyone who has been in the London Underground,

the sensat ion

of rushing ai r that is created by the pressure of the t ra ins as they enter the

tunnel is

immediately brought to mind. Of course, th is unusual combinat ion of

present and

past part ic iples mirrors the poem’s preoccupat ion with the pass ing of

t ime.

An interest ing sty l is t ic feature of the poem is the manner in which Heaney

mixes

contemporary and even col loquial language with a l lus ions to Greek

mythology.

Obviously, the poem references the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but

there is a lso

the erot ic reference to Pan’s pursui t of Syr inx. Yet Heaney chooses to

couch these

references in language that can be descr ibed as playful . ( ‘There we were’,

‘And me,

me then’, ‘damned i f I look back’ ) .

F o r m o s t r e a d e r s , t h e m o s t t h o u g h t - p r o v o k i n g a s p e c t o f ‘ T h e

Underground’ is

the manner in which the poem draws attent ion to the pass ing of t ime. The

poem

o p e n s i n t h e Lo n d o n U n d e rg ro u n d o n t h e d a y o f t h e s p e a ke r ’s

honeymoon. As we

have discussed, the poem’s language captures the ant ic ipat ion and

exci tement of

that day. However, whi le the poem concludes in the same Underground

stat ion,


we cannot help but feel that much has changed. The energy and v i ta l i ty of

the f i rs t

s tanza have faded l ike ‘echoes’ in a ‘corr idor ’.

The inclus ive personal pronouns ‘we’ and ‘Our ’ are t ransformed in the f inal

s tanza to the indiv idual ‘ I ’ as the poet ends up in a wet and ‘draughty

lampl i t

s tat ion’. As the poem draws to a c lose, Heaney reminds the reader of the

or iginal

myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, though there is a t ragic reversal of that

myth in this

poem. In the end, i t i s the poet who is damned i f he looks back, not his

lover.

3 . Essay Wri t ing

____________________________________________________________

I f you are thinking of referr ing to ‘The Underground’ in a personal

response to

Seamus Heaney’s poetry, you may wish to keep some of the fol lowing

points in

mind.

380 | Poems

a. I t has been said of Heaney that for him, ‘myth expresses the past ’s

penetrat ion

of the present , the presentness of the past ’. This poem provides us with an

interest ing example of Heaney’s use of mythology.

b. The moti f of the underground appears in many of Heaney’s poems. As

such, i t

may be interest ing to compare this poem with ‘The Tol lund Man’ or

‘Bogland’.

c . Given that Heaney has wr i tten about his re lat ionship with his wi fe in ‘The


Skunk’, i t might be worthwhi le comparing or contrast ing that poem with

‘The

Underground’.


heaney - squarespacestatic1.squarespace.com/.../1391620233237/heaney.pdf · seamus heaney...

Documents