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Poetry File Sarah Abdulaziz Abdussalam

Twentieth Century Poetry - 8E3

Contents

!!Introduction 1

Seamus Heaney 1

Heaney: a Follower of Romanticism 1

The Personal and the General 2

The Trilogy 2

Several Connotative Meanings to Digging 3

Heaney’s Poetic Theory 4

Post-colonial Theory 5

Psychoanalytical Approach 5

Eco-critical Theory 5

The Pen/Spade Analogy 5

Techniques 6

Frost 6

Bogland 6

Words 7

Language 7

The Sense of Place 8

“Digging” 10

“Follower” 14

“Gravities” 17

“Personal Helicon” 21

“Midnight” 25

"1

Introduction

There’s always a link between the past and the present. Poets are parts of a continues chain to

which they add, or change. Modernist poets were trying to confront the changes of their time wither

scientific, moral, or literary and other details that form and structure their poetry.

!Seamus Heaney 1939 - 2013

! Seamus Heaney was a modern contemporary poet. A post-modern poet, started writing in the

1940s. He's a follower and representative of the Irish ancestry. His model poet was Yeats, the Nobel prize

winner. Heaney contributed to the Irish literature as much as Yeats, and won the Nobel prize as well. He

worked as lecturer abroad.

!What is his problem? Heaney was brought up in a country of divisions. Divisions is a keyword for him:

1. Geographical division, he lived in Mossbawn county which is in the border line where the right side

of it is the place for the English and the other is for the Irish. Even the county's name represent this

division.

2. In religion, the Catholics and the Protestants.

3. Division in the cultural background and in the language. There's the Celtic language which is the

original language of Ireland. But the English demolished it, they pulled the Irish out of their roots,

their history, civilisation, and language. Heaney learned the Celtic language to read the old history,

the folktales, and the Irish mythology. However, he depended on the translations more.

4. Division of loyalty. Heaney is loyal for both sides. He was brought up by English teachers, they

taught him proper poetry, and his role models were English poets. He felt gratitude and loyalty

towards them since he didn't have a reason to consider them as enemies. He showed this gratitude in

his collection of essays Preoccupations.

5. Division between his personal attachment to his tribe, to his family and his job as a poet. Poetry

became his profession, so he departs from the lines of his ancestry whom were all farmers. He was

the first in his family to be a literary figure. So he felt that he was doing something totally different.

He was wondering if he will excel in the field of literary as his ancestry excelled in the farming field.

! Heaney was brought up in a farm, so it became a main part of his life. His mother read him

Wordsworth, Shelley, and Shakespeare to teach him the value of words, beauty, and nature. So he was

brought up to like this kind of verse. And when he studied this poetry, then he started writing poetry

himself in college. Because of the division between his family and his work, he felt that the best type of

poetry is of the Romantics', a poetry of the self, a subjective poetry, it digs within the self. Heaney starts

writing his early poetry by digging within the self. And by being influenced by the natural environment,

he borrows his images from nature.

!Heaney: a Follower of Romanticism

1. He admits his indebtedness to William Wordsworth In Preoccupation, there's an essay entitled Feeling

into Words, opens with a quotation from Wordsworth's The Prelude to explain what he learned from

him.

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2. The natural environment and its strong influence on Heaney. So the Romantic poetry influenced him

as a theory. He's indebted to Wordsworth's theory of poetry. The backbone and the main settings of

Heaney's verse are in nature. And the major analogy in his poetry is borrowed from the land, the act

of digging in the ground.

3. His choice of everyday language.

4. The return to childhood and the importance of memory.

5. The mixture between the personal and the general. Heaney uses the personal for a general purpose,

which makes him more convincing and interesting to the reader.

6. The political problems of his time concerned him as much as politics concerned the Romantics.

!The Personal and the General

! When Heaney started his first collection, he started with the early stages of his life tracing his

relationship with his father whom is a symbolic figure of the Irish man. But the poems have these titles as

Follower, Digging, Mother, and Wife. So the personal note is present throughout the collection.

Therefore, some critics accused him of being an escapist. That he ran out from reality to his past,

childhood, and his farm. The answer to this accusation is that his mission is to shape a new image of the

Irish. The Irish image was still distorted, so he was reconstructing a new image. Second, his second

mission is to defend his identity as an Irish poet. He writes in English, so he had to prove his Irishness.

Then, he can talk about the land, the time, and the people. Hence, he talks politics.

! Heaney, like the Romantics, believed that if he didn't know himself and didn't define his mission,

then he cannot speak for others. He had to know himself and his approach first. It's a phase of divided

aims. Thus, the best approach is define where he belongs and then start confronting public problems. So

by speaking of a father or a mother, it doesn't that they are his real parents, he did learn from his father,

but it is also possible that the description in the poem doesn't fit his father. It's a symbolic figure that

inform the Irish people that they have an ancestry, and they should be proud of it. That they have to have

role models and they should emulate them, and take pride in them. A sense of belonging sprouts from his

admiration and gratitude towards his ancestry. These are things that he wanted to plant in his nation's

conscience. So he gives simple examples of a bigger picture. For instance, loyalty to the family as an

example of loyalty to the nation alerting the immigrated Irish people, and recovering their sense of

belonging. Using personal experiences is the best way to grab the people's attention. He used his father as

an example of the Irish farmer, he described as a professional and a giant figure since English has

damaged, shattered the image of the Irish people. They even described them as apes and barbaric.

Therefore, Heaney writes in this ways to better the image of his nation.

!The Trilogy

!Heaney defines his mission in his first poem in the first collection The Death of a Naturalist. Its title is

Digging.

The title of the second collection is Door into the Dark.

The title of the third collection is Wintering Out.

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! The early poems define the poet, his language, his philosophy, his attitude, his imagery, and his

style. Changing his focus later isn't very important, what's significant is the roots, the beginnings.

Additionally, these three collection constitute a trilogy because there's a link between them, a

development from collection to another. He ends his first collection with Personal Helicon. The poem

closes with the line "I will set the darkness echoing." So the darkness in the title of the second collection

is the same as the darkness in Personal Helicon. It's a continuity. The darkness could mean everything

that's unknown, in the darkness, not knowing nor understanding anything, prevented to reach knowledge.

Knowledge is to see through things. So darkness stands for not only what's been covered, but also what's

been damaged by the English. For example, his history, his culture, his language. All that is considered

darkness for the young Irish poets. The truth is unknown, distorted by the English, so they're left in the

dark. The darkness is also personal, when he goes back to his roots. His family history concerns the

country as much as it concerns him because they're Irish living in Ireland.

! Darkness could be: history, ancestry, past, unknown, the hidden details of the past, the personal

direction, and could be a psychological side. Going to the dark, unknown area of the self. Heaney is a

poet who digs within the self and using that inner dig to reach the outer identity of the public issues. So

the inner and the outer are very much connected.

!Several Connotative Meanings to Digging

!1. the dig within the psychological self.

2. the dig within the memory. Memory of either the self or the past which could indicate the past of the

nation, or tribe. Going from within the self to the outer others.

3. the dig in the past history of his country to bring out details from the Irish past.

4. the dig in the Irish mythology.

5. the dig in the Celtic language.

6. the dig into the Irish landscape to bring out examples of names of places to identify his country.

7. the dig into the Celtic folklore.

8. the dig into the field of poetry and literature. The word field is a pun because his act is an act of

digging. The action of going inward to outward is what he does. The act is transferred into his writing

the same way, he starts by the present, and then he carries the readers into the past, and then brings

them back to the present. The land is structured in layers that are called strata. Each layer has a

different shape and colour, until the last layer which is water. Heaney takes these layers symbolically

as different stages which is very clearly applied in Personal Helicon in which each stanza takes the

reader to a different layer until they reach the water of the well, that is the well of the self in that

poem. So he transfers the natural scenes into acts in his verse. Heaney digs in the field of literature to

bring out the best in there, the best words, structures, language.This is the difficult mission that he has

as a poet. He made use of all the literary giant figures who constitute the layers until he produces his

own poetry, his own spring of verse.

!

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Heaney’s style isn’t to attack the English colonisers directly, but he points out the destruction they

brought to Ireland. So he didn’t escape, he’s a man who was trying to identify himself first as an Irish

poet, he’s reconstructing the Irish image, he’s proving that he’s a successful Irish poet who has an

independent type of verse different from the English. He doesn’t imitate the structure of the English poets.

He introduces in his poetry poetic words and style that makes his poetry typical Irish.

!Heaney's Poetic Theory

! There's a number of essays by Heaney that formulate his theory which he applies to his poetry.

The first essay is "Feelings into Words”, from his book Preoccupation (1968-1978) it includes his

definition of poetry, poets, techniques, and craftsmanship and the reason for using digging as the main

analogy that he run throughout his verse. Digging is not only a metaphor, it is a dynamic act that he

practices in writing poetry. He starts the essay by quoting Wordsworth's The Preludes, and he agrees with

Wordsworth's statement:

!"The hiding places of my power

Sèem open; I approach, and then they close;

I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,

May scarcely see at all, and I would give,

While yet we may, as far as words can give,

A substance and a life to what I feel:

I would enshrine the spirit of the past

For future restoration."

! “Substance” and “life” are keywords, they bring him close to the Romantics. They mean that he's

a subjective attitude that allows him to reflect his personal vision, feeling, and his own perception of

things. He would enshrine the spirit of the past for future restoration. Therefore, memory is very

important because returning to the past depends on memory. The word memory could include historical or

personal details, his own personal #memory is also included. All this is done through the power of the

mind. The hiding places are his mental powers of memory and imagination. As a young poet he has the

enthusiasm recall and to penetrate those hiding places. Heaney is alway digging into those #hidden

places. Then he says that those words are direct and precise for what I intend for my poetry:

!“Implicit in those lines is a view of poetry which I think is implicit in the few poems I have

written that give me any right to speak: poetry as divination, poetry as revelation of the self to the

self, as restoration of the culture to itself; poems as elements of continuity, with the aura and

authenticity of archaeological finds, where the buried shard has an importance that is not

diminished by the importance of the buried city; poetry as a dig, a dig for finds that end up being

plants.”

! "Revelation of the self to the self" brings us to the personal side where the poet digs

psychologically, inwards to discover himself. The other side is the "culture to itself" which is the cultural

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background. Thus, the private and the public are always combined, he's not an escapist. Heaney is the

second to decolonize the Irish history following the footsteps of Yeats. Both Nobel prize winners.

! "Poems are elements of continuity," linking past and present with the future with poems as

element of continuation, with aura of therefore it tells that poetry for him is discovery. To find the truth

and the shattered image of the English and to find out the folklore of Ireland so he digs into the past, the

tradition, the memory in order to surface these findings with which he'll constitute the new image of the

Irish. He will rewrite a history that the English destroyed.

!Pst-colonial Theory

! The text can be read using different theories, one of them is the post-colonial theory that speaks

about the expression of oppression and violence. The manner of his writing (style and structure) is typical

Irish and the language is English #hybridity. In his poem he speaks about finding a voice that is like a

fingerprint, used for identification. He frees his poetry from the influence of the English by giving it a

manner, technique, sound effect of words, structure, that are typical Irish. This fingerprint cannot be

copied, it is his own voice, it's his authenticity and genuineness. He learned from great benchmarks but to

be himself. He searches for a voice, a feeling of words, and that's why the title of the essay is Feeling into

Words. He's expressing his feelings insisting that poetry is a revelation of the self.

Poetry, as Heaney said, is a dig for finds that end up being plants. This is the conclusion of his

definition.It shows his focus on the dig.

!Psychoanalytical Approach

! Another theory is the psychoanalytical approach when we relate the text to the poet's mind and

personal life. With Heaney we apply a psychoanalytic approach due to his subjectiveness. He says that it

goes back to his personal life. He goes on to tell why he chose digging, he says that it originated from his

own environment. It's a metaphor that expresses his own admiration to the inner, hidden places. It's an

inward excavation.

!Eco-critical Theory

! The eco-critical theory, like the romantics, focuses on how the natural environment influences the

writer. And it is a large umbrella that we find beneath it political and social environments. Plus his sense

of protecting this environment. So the contextual reading of the text must place it in its natural, political,

and social environments.

!The Pen/Spade Analogy

!“The pen/spade analogy was the simple heart of the matter and that was simply a matter of almost

proverbial common sense.” (Heaney)

!

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The gun has two function, to attack and protect which is exactly his mission, "snug as a gun." ‘the

pen’s lighter than the spade’. Heaney said, but is the mission also lighter? No. He moves on after

expressing his admiration to the act of digging to quote from *Philip Sydney, his definition of poetry in

his Apologie for Poetry: ‘Among the Romans a Poet was called Vates, which is as much as a Diviner . . .’

And he agrees with Sidney that there's a relation between the diviner and poets, because a poet makes

contact with the hidden areas. Therefore, he's the ability to express and bring to the surface all these

details.

!Techniques

! Heaney differentiates techniques from the craft of writing. Craft can be learned. Techniques,

however, cannot be learned because it's personal.

!"Technique, as I would define it, involves not only a poet’s way with words, his management of

metre, rhythm and verbal texture; it involves also a definition of his stance towards life, a

definition of his own reality. It involves the discovery of ways to go out of his normal cognitive

bounds and raid the inarticulate: a dynamic alertness that mediates between the origins of feeling

in memory and experience and the formal ploys that express these in a work of art. Technique

entails the watermarking of your essential patterns of perception, voice and thought into the touch

and texture of your lines; it is that whole creative effort of the mind’s and body’s resources to

bring the meaning of experience within the jurisdiction of form. Technique is what turns, in

Yeats’s phrase, ‘the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast’ into ‘an idea,

something intended, complete.’ (Heaney)

!Frost

! He refers to Robert Frost who puts it this way: ‘a poem begins as a lump in the throat, a

homesickness, a lovesickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.’ Heaney agrees with

him on the two first points. However, he disagree with "the thought finds the words," because finding

words to Heaney is a conscious act of the poet.

!Boglad

! He goes on to comment on the features of the bog. And he has many poems that involves details

from the bogland. He choose the bogland because as he said he "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."

Ireland is an agricultural country, and the relationship between a farmer and their land is faithful. Heaney

made a strong connection between memory and bogland, memory supplies him with all the details he uses

in his poetry, and believed that the bog represents the national consciousness of Ireland.

Heaney wrote a book called "The Bog People" and it's concerned with human bodies preserved in boxes.

!!

"7

Words

! He goes on to highlight his role as a poet and historian saying that "words as bearers of history

and mystery began to invite me." He explains that he's an admirer of words from his childhood. "Maybe it

began very early when my mother used to recite lists of affixes and suffixes, and Latin roots, with their

English meanings, rhymes that formed part of her schooling in the early part of the century." In his poetry,

the sound effect becomes very important way of removing the English influence, liberating the Irish verse

from the English influence.

! Frost also stresses the importance of the sound and sense, through the sound of words we get the

meaning. Heaney explains how he developed his writing in the second collection Door into the Dark, he

says that "words themselves doors."

!Language

!Jonathan Swift is an 18th C writer of prose and poetry, he was one of the Irish who wrote in the English

language living the hybridity, oppression, and divisions between the English and the Irish. During the

19th C, political and economical reasons led to the divisions, and English became the main language of

the Irish. This, paradoxically, had a positive effect. The poets began to dig back into the history of the

Irish language. Instead of being frustrated, they were driven furthermore to revive their own language.

The most prominent Irish poet to do so is Thomas Moore. Moore published a book named The Irish

Melodies. His work became greatly welcomed by not only Irish poets but also English poets. It taught

them about lyric poetry and the Irish songs of the past. Heaney wanted to follow their footsteps. His

mission is to express the self, to relate it to the outer world, and to revive the living past. He recognised

that the talented Irish writers were mostly focused on the national problems. Heaney as critics point out

stands out as an international figure among them. He had a very strong influence on his contemporaries

and his influence extends to reach most of the American writers and other European writers. However,

Robert Lowell said that Heaney is the most important Irish poet since Yeats, and that many of his works

are influential to him. Therefore, Heaney was preoccupied with the way he wrote the verse. He knew that

he was combining the past with the present, that he was mixing the Romantic tradition with the post-war

tradition. He was preoccupied with language, the choice of words. He was part of the intellectual

movement of the post-modern age in the way that language is not a transparent medium by which a writer

can express himself, it is a self generating act that expresses the personal of the writer. He attempted to

develop a poetic language in which meaning and sound are intimately related. His poems tend to mirror

the social and cultural divisions in modern Ireland. Heaney's poetry has a traditional dimension, meaning

the tribal strong link with, for instance, James Joyce, and other Irish figures, also his interest in the

cultural field, place names, his treatment of nature, his use of a persona is a traditional trend, and his

frequent allusions to other poets which reflects his awareness of being part of the literary heritage. He has

an interesting quotation saying that: "Much as I would to think of myself as breaking new ground, I find

on looking at what I have done that it is mostly concerned with reclaiming old ground. My intention is to

retrace some of my paths into the ground, to investigate what William Wordsworth called 'the hiding

places." Heaney had a profound experience in his poetry. For him, poetry is a mean of bridging this gap

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that exists between him as a poet and the outer world. There is a sense of loss and guilt that sometimes

echo in his early poems, it's a feeling that controlled him as a young poet. It made him see the distance

between the physical world and the world of language. And he kept trying to bridge this gap, and to dig

out all the words as bearers of history and mystery to recall this physical world, and he succeed. This

countryside in which he was born, gave him actually a very rich material, the roots upon which he wrote

poems as plants fruitful for the young generation, fruitful for the coming generation, and fruitful for the

intellectual community.

! He never forgot his attachment to the land, he said that as a young man and as an elderly person

he never forgot the feeling of slimy weeds in the pond he used to swim in when he was child. He never

forgot this feeling of the sticky water and the slimy little weeds that used to stick onto his feet or arms.

He's not narrating this aimlessly, he is emphasising the strong relation to the homeland.

! The Sense of Place

!He starts his essay by saying that there are 2 way in which a place is known and cherished:

1. the lived one. You know the place and love it because you lived in it, this is an unconscious act.

2. the learned and conscious.

• Both ways co-exist in a tension, and poetry produces this tension between the conscious and the

unconscious. In Gravities, we have examples of the conscious and the unconscious.

• Heaney mentions a very important detail that is in Irish literature, there is a genre includes poems and

tales called “dinnseanchas” devoted to trace the origin of place-names. This genre constitutes a kind of

mythological etymology, because when it races a place-name it could be linked to a Gaelic mythology.

• For the Irish poet, this tracing is very important. They have to be well understood by them in order to

relate to the place more. It has the roots of their identity. If they don’t understand they cannot

communicate with the land.

• Heaney and Montague are accusing the young Irish generation of failing to learn about the Irish

landscape properly. They don’t go deep into the stories to link themselves with their origins.

• He goes on to use a term metaphorically, he say he would love to see a marriage between “the

geographical country” and the “country of the mind.” He uses “marriage” because it’s a symbol union.

He wants a very strong union between the Irish intellectual mind and its land. This example of marriage

is in Follower. The description of the father furrowing the land compared to the verse writing, and the

mapping of the mind of the poet is exactly what he is saying here. The bending of the father on the

ground is like a religious ritual because of respect and love to the land. Here he speaks about the poet

knowing the geographical details about the land in order to be able to speak about it. They have to know

every story that will help the Irish relate to their past in the right manner.

• The metaphorical image isn’t only union and understanding, but also the sacramental relation.

• “the landscape is sacramental instinct with signs implying a system of reality beyond the visible

realities.” By this he is stressing the sensing of the place which is an instinct. The natural, the

instinctive, and the learned are all combined in the human being as the last stanza of Gravities suggests.

When you read your history, you are constructing strings that have gravitational power.

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• The land is their source of living, their memory, their history. There is a shared inheritance between the

land and the human beings. Therefore, this union is important and very strong.

• He introduces an example of W. B. Yeats, he quotes Yeats to show that he is one of the important

contributors of the link between the Irish and his land. He didn’t only speak about it, but he applied it in

his texts. And that he was always referring to Sligo, his birthplace. The Celtic Revival is an Irish

movement that was started by Yeats. It was a cultural movement to be counter-culture to the materialism

that was spreading everywhere. He was looking for literature that will revive the return to the past, to

the legends and fairies in order to bring up to the surface a counter-culture different from the one that is

focusing on materialism and social and political dilemmas. This was a way to make people return to

their past, because by returning to their roots they are becoming independence. Heaney supports this.

• By speaking about their native land, they have a double purpose: [1] they are restoring the Irish

identity , and mythology, and history, [2] the Irish identity, not in a historical sense, but for them as

writers. Their independence.

• Place-names helped Heaney to emphasis this sense of belonging.

• He says: “this idea of mentioning certain places or certain modes of life, has become an Irish

obsession.” Because this is their way of defining themselves and defending their identity. Then he says:

“the Irish literature is a literature that focuses on the local details and the common language of the Irish

people, which has become a phenomenal.”

• He goes own to link the sense of place to other poets starting from Dante. They are not the only ones to

use it, but they’re obsessed with it because they are colonised. They want to free their literature from the

foreign element.

!!!

!!

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Digging

1966

!

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

!Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down

!Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

!The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

!By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

!My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

!The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

!Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

!!!!!

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The first poem in his collection The Death of a Naturalist which accumulates the poems of 1968-1978.

Form: irregular rhyme. But there’s a lot of sound effects through alliteration and assonance. The /s/ sound

and the /g/ sound shows the strong relation between sound and sense. He has an interest in stressing the

musicality to reflect the intended meaning.

!Tone: he is speaking in a very proud tone.

!Title: the title is translated into action in the text itself. The poet’s act of writing the poem is actually built

on the act of digging itself. The poem carries you from the present into the past through, the passage of

time, throughout a flashback, to his ancestry that is used symbolically. And then towards the end of the

poem we’re brought to the present once more. The same manner of digging [surface > going deep in and

bringing the gravelly ground on the surface again]. This opposition between past/present, surface/bottom,

helps the poet project his feelings and use the act to symbolise his effort in writing his verse. It’s

symbolic and it’s the major analogy that runs throughout his writings.

! First Stanza: The poem starts with the opening statement the defines the poet’s vision and

mission. How he looks at things and how he decides to tackle these things. Therefore, the statement is

precisely given “Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.” A clear

comparison between the pen and gun, which later transforms into a pen/spade comparison. Written with a

slash because they are complementing and alternating.

! He knows he will use the pen both ways; to defend his nation through rewriting the past and

depending on the Irish landscape. Also to attack the reason of oppression, violence, and bloodshed which

is the English ruler.

! Second Stanza: the stanza present the setting of the poem. The poet setting watching outside the

window. The window is symbolic of an outlet that connects the inner with the outer, the mind with the

memory/the past. The stress on “my father” and “digging” is clearly projected on the text by the use of

pauses. The focus is on the father image he draws and the act of digging. “sinks” sound and action that

carries the mind of the listener backwards.

! Third Stanza: the run-on lines show the passage of time backwards. The mind starts to

remember “twenty years away.” The childhood of the persona, when his father digs. The movement of

bending low suggests the effort, and the close relationship between the farmer and the land. This bending

down- in Heaney’s mind- is showing the love and admiration towards the land. It is maybe close to a

religious relationship. The land is their source of living, it’s everything for them.

! He presents the father image not only because he’s a subjective poet who speaks about personal

details. But he chooses this excavation into his life to move outward to the public, his small family is part

of a whole. Therefore, if the ties between them are strong then the society is united. He is defying

divisions by stressing their unity. “Bends low, comes up twenty years away” what comes when the father

bends low is memory stooping into rhythm. “Stooping in rhythm” shows his insistence on drawing a

"12

strong link between the act of digging to the act of writing poetry. Digging into gravelly ground to bring

up some details is similar to the poet’s act of digging into history, memory, or folklore to record what he

finds out in his verse.

! By returning to the Gaelic mythology and the Irish landscape, there’s also an act of unity since

they all share the same mythology. This element of unity is used by Yeats as well.

Fourth Stanza: detailed description is given to emphasis the professional way with which the

father carries out his job. It is a serious and important action to show professionalism, the seriousness of

the matter, and to prove when an Irishman does a job he does it perfectly, as Heaney aims to do.

! Why the potatoes? It is a typical vegetable in Ireland. Potatoes grow under the surface of the earth.

It’s embedded, buried in the land. They are like the potatoes, they’re part of the land. In order to plant a

new seed, you have to clean the land. It is the same thing that Heaney wants to do. Because he needs to

clean their consciousness of the English pollution in order to start to draw a new bright image of his

nation. In his definition of poetry, he compares poems to plants.

! Fifth Stanza: The emphasis is to show admiration, respect, of his parents and grandparents. At the

same time, there’s a suggestion of the conflict and worry inside him. “By God, the old man could handle a

spade./Just like his old man.” Old man is an intimate way of speaking. The structure emphasis the

continuity, the strong link from one generation to the other. He also reflecting some worry and inner

conflict because they are alike but where does he stand. As he said “his” to show a distance that they are

not at the same path. He is a young, educated poet. He is starting to realise that he’s not like them. It

worries him whether he’ll be as professional as they are.

! Sixth Stanza: The image of the grandfather is introduced for several reasons:

(a) the strong family ties which is symbolic of the relations in society at large. We always move from the

private to the public so

(b) it is also introduced to show the unity and the strong link between people in society. Which is

something Heaney would love to have. He suggests it to project the idea in the minds of his people, to

remind them that we should be like that, connected. He is a poet who is bothered by divisions.

Therefore, he emphasises unity because this is how he will save his society. This is how he presents the

ideal society: strong and united.

(c) going to the roots of the past, the Celts, is one way of uniting them because they all belong to that sect,

they have similar background and history. So what unifies them is their past because they cannot

separate themselves from the past. Returning to the past is a unifying element to them.

! A place name: Toner’s bog. The bog for him is the memory of Ireland. It preserves in it all the

details from the past: cities, bones, fingerprints, etc. He is reviving and reconstructing the history of

Ireland. They have different memories for different districts. The scenery in Ireland is beautiful, so they

admire the land for its beauty, for the preservation of history, for the preservation of stories they learned

from them which shows their variety.

"13

! His reference to the hardworking grandfather, a man who never wastes time, a professional, is the

same image he is going to introduce about his father in Follower. To say a professional means that his

work is 100% perfect, and he knows his role exactly. “He straightened up/To drink it, then fell to right

away/ Nicking and slicing neatly.”

! “Going down and down” sound and sense are strongly connected. It is the sound that gives the

impression of the meaning of the word. “Down” long, deep, vowel sound and its slow rhythm agrees with

the act of penetrating deep down in memory. The act that he himself is doing as a poet. There is a

comparison between the speaker and the grandfather who goes deep to bring the good turf. Heaney is

clarifying his mission; that he will not dig out-while reading- any kind of turf, but the good-suitable

information-turf. He reaches the good turf to throw the seeds. Historically: the bad turf is the influenced

by the English. The pure one, however, is the one not ruined and polluted by the colonisation. “Cleaning

the land” from the dead and dry remains. This mission is not easy, it needs someone professional like the

grandfather. So he applies his definition of poetry by using theses comparisons: “a dig for finds that end

up being plants.” The poems are going to be planted in the good soil that will make them grow in the

minds of the young generation. He's feeding the intellect and the soul of his nation.

! Heaney has a more difficult position than Yeats because: although Yeats lived in the divided

conditions more than Heaney, but Heaney came after Yeats, Shaw, and Joyce whom are giant figures in

the literary world. So what will Heaney do to be distinguished? That is why he is looking for the good and

new turf.

! Seventh Stanza: The cold smell here does no suggest a cold feeling, it is suggesting freshness,

the fresh smell of potato mould, the squelch, the slap, as you notice the sounds; alliterations and

repetitions of the S sound ( the smell, the squelch, slap, of soggy, curt) When he spoke about the cutting

and the smell and the potato and squelch and soggy peat; there is no full stop, no punctuations, to tell us:

“the curt cuts of an edge/Through living roots awaken in my head.” So, all is actually symbolic of what is

going on in his mind as writer and when he digs and cuts and the turf is turning and the ground and the

layers are preserved in the memory, so as he goes back step by step until the living roots, the healthy ones,

now awaken memories living roots of memories "awaken in my head”. Then we have the sounds which

the critics point out; the sound of hesitation, the sound of fear, of un-experienced young poet “But I’ve no

spade to follow men like them.” Does it really show that he will fear to take a step away from them? It is

simply a reminder, I will consider the line a stop to remind himself that he is moving in different

direction, that his interest is completely different, that he is not a follower of ancestors, but he is a

follower in the sense that he will do the same act in a different field, he follows their responsibly, their

feelings of belonging, their sense of belonging and their protection to the land. He will do the same, but in

different field.Roots for Heaney whenever mentioned in his poetry are fertile toots of a wet land. Roots

are what's keeping him solid In his mission

! Eighth Stanza: the concluding lines round up the poem and bring us back to the beginning. “I’ll

dig with it.” a reminder that he’ll dig with a pen to defend and attack.

"14

Follower

!My father worked with a horse-plough,

His shoulders globed like a full sail strung

Between the shafts and the furrow.

The horse strained at his clicking tongue.

!!!An expert. He would set the wing

And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.

The sod rolled over without breaking.

At the headrig, with a single pluck

!!!Of reins, the sweating team turned round

And back into the land. His eye

Narrowed and angled at the ground,

Mapping the furrow exactly.

!!!I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,

Fell sometimes on the polished sod;

Sometimes he rode me on his back

Dipping and rising to his plod.

!!!I wanted to grow up and plough,

To close one eye, stiffen my arm.

All I ever did was follow

In his broad shadow round the farm.

!!I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,

Yapping always. But today

It is my father who keeps stumbling

Behind me, and will not go away.

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

"15

Title

! He chose this title because it suggests different meanings. It could be simply a follower of the

ancestry, his ancestry could be either his personal life and his literary career. The poem is presented in

personal note reflecting the persona's admiration of the symbolic figure of a father. A father image is

drawn to represent the ancestry of the modern Irish. They were planters, ploughmen, and farmers. He

chose a figure that is known for all the Irish people since Ireland is an agricultural country. It raises the

question of whether he's going to follow them, whether he'll become a leading figure and therefore change

what has been destroyed and ruined before, so he'll be the leading figure and they'll become the followers.

!Who is the follower?

! The title is suggestive. He's a poet who speaks about following the footsteps of the ancestry. And

the ancestry could be his personal ancestry or the literary figures. In both cases, Heaney is going to follow

them, or he's going to present a different new image as he does, or is he going to imitate the literary

figures, or is he going to be in the forefront doing something different and they become in the back.

!Form

! The poem is divided into two parts. It consists of 6 quatrains that are divided into two parts. The

first 3 are introductory describing the giant image of the father, the expert worker. The other 3 shift the

focus on the psychological inner feelings of the speaker. It has a development from remembering early

childhood to progressing to today, the present time when he's a mature man.

!How did he describe the father?

! "My father" he starts with the emphasis on the personal note because this is his adopted strategy.

That his poetry is self revelation, that his own personal experience and feelings that inspire him. Which

will excite the reader. He's creating an image of intimate feelings, "My father" the possessive gives a

sense of belonging. The father isn't only a man with a giant body, but he's a strong man who controls the

fields.

! The comparison in "His shoulders globed like a full sail strung Between the shafts and the

furrow," show not only love and admiration, and respect. But wonder and amazement to a figure whom

he'll never forget. The father uses a horse-plough and "The horse strained at his clicking tongue." The

horse respond to a simple click of a tongue, either to stop, or to move, or to turn around. They are trained,

and a man who trains his horses to respond to a click of a tongue is a clever trainer who controls his

animals. These details aren't only for the show of admiration to the work done, but also it's a part of

drawing the perfect picture of the Irish worker which every Irish man would be proud of.

! "An expert." Written alone for emphasis. The literature of colonised countries always show two

types of discourses, description of the people who are trying to defend their country, and reclaim their

identity which we get from Heaney. The other discourse which is written by the colonisers which

represents the colonised as uncivilised people who need help. Heaney is aware of that and aware that the

problem is not resolved yet. So he reconstruct the image of his own ancestry.

! "He would set the wing/And fit the bright steel-pointed sock." These details are given to emphasis

the word "an expert." The preparation are explained step by step. "The sod rolled over without breaking"

shows the continuity of action in smoothness. And to move smoothly means there're no obstacles, that

you know your way, you don't stumble. "At the headrig, with a single pluck/Of reins, the sweating team

turned round/And back into the land." This lines connotes several suggestions. We said that the first 3

quatrains are a description of the giant Irish worker, here, he's injecting the idea of writing poetry

comparing it with ploughing the land. Why and How? He does it through the description of the action.

"16

Farmers furrow the land by dividing it into lines so they can throw the seeds moving with the horses

starting from the headring to the end and go back to start again. Verse of poetry is made of lines. And the

word "verse" is originally Latin "versus" that means furrowing. It became then a word for writing poetry.

Therefore, Heaney's description of this action showing that it's a hard task to accomplish, he's pointing

that he as a poet has a difficult task to do and he wishes to perfect his work like that expert. The word

"team" shows unity, meaning that you can't do it alone, it's a "sweating team" work.

! "His eye /Narrowed and angled at the ground, Mapping the furrow exactly." Another detail is

injected by the poet to emphasis the knowledge, the perfection, and the exactness in doing the job. He

narrowed his eyes to focus, to see the land in a sharp exact manner, to know it exactly, as if he's studying

the land for wanting to perfect his job. Heaney is bringing up these details wishing to be like that persona,

perfect, knowing every detail in his field. Which is an application of his definition of his poems as

elements of continuity that will turn up to be plants. So even in his essays, he's always comparing his

poetry to plants. "Mapping," is a study of every detail, every single line, every single colour is indicative.

"Mapping" suggests exactness, knowing particular details of every dimension. This perfection makes an

expert.

!Second Part

! The second part shifts to a lower tone, after the loud one at the beginning that is filled with a sense

of pride and assurance. "I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake, Fell sometimes on the polished sod;" Heaney

shifts to his psychological inner feelings, digging in his childhood memory. He stumbled not knowing the

way, he fell because he wasn't a mature controller. "Sometimes he rode me on his back/Dipping and rising

to his plod." It's symbolic of a speaker needs guidance and help, who depends on somebody else. "dipping

and rising" changes in times, in moods, in understanding. It's all "his," the father's. It's an early stage of

Heaney's conflict when he was a child and young poet, he was hesitant.

! "I wanted to grow up and plough," The wish is expressed clearly. The tone of pride, and wonder,

and amazement with that figure links us with the same feeling "By God, the old man could handle a

spade. Just like his old man." from Digging. But there's also a fear. "To close one eye, stiffen my arm." He

chose the closing of the eye because it's the vision of the poet, the knowledge he has, and a reflection of

the mind. To close one eye and focus on the exact details, to find the pure soil, the good turf, where he'll

throw the seeds to turn out healthy plants. "Stiffen my arm," to have control on the material he has. "All I

ever did was follow." He still has this low tone, the poet is expressing the beginning, the first step he took

to grow and become like that ploughman. Up to the fifth stanza, he's not yet learned his lesson perfectly,

he's not yet become the mature professional one. He was still a follower of others, Irish writers. "In his

broad shadow round the farm." Heaney describes it as a broad shadow because he's a giant figure. I's not

an easy task to move away from that shadow, it takes time and effort. He needs to be an expert t walk

away from that shadow, to be different.

! "I was a nuisance, tripping, falling, Yapping always." He wasn't satisfied with what he was doing.

"But today," he takes us to the present time, so the tripping, falling, and yapping took place before he

started writing the text. The poem is published in his first collection, so "today" is when he started writing

as a young man. "It is my father who keeps stumbling /Behind me, and will not go away." This is what's

happening today. He's the leader but he can't let it go, he keeps remembering his father. He'll never forget

his memories. Stumbling here is different from the first stumbling. The first is not knowing the way,

unexperienced. The second is coming in the way, obstructing the way, meaning that the memory of the

father constantly crosses his mind and will never go away. It's the source of his inspiration and

information.

!

"17

Gravities

1966

!High-riding kites appear to range quite freely

Though reined by strings, strict and invisible.

The pigeon that deserts you suddenly

Is heading home, instinctively faithful.

!

Lovers with barrages of hot insult

Often cut of their nose to spite their face,

Endure a hopeless day, declare their guilt,

Re-enter the native port of their embrace.

!!Blinding in Paris, for his party-piece

Joyce named the shops along O'Connell Street

And on Iona Colmcille sought ease

By wearing Irish mould next to his feet.

!

!

"18

In Digging, Personal Helicon, and Follower, we had a lot of commonalities that point out Heaney’s style

and strategy as a writer:

1. the analogy of digging is very clear elaborated and projected through the different scenes and different

examples. Starting with digging in his memory to bring out images of ancestry: symbolised in the

father and grandfather in Digging, and as the giant figure of the father in Follower, and a projection of

the other meaning of ancestry which are the tradition and the literary figures of the past which he will

not follow or imitate in his writing.

2. In the three texts we don’t have the act of digging into the past, but a combination of past-present-

future anticipation.

3. The poet defines his mission in Digging, so he’s going to write with a pen instead of using a gun and

spade. To dig deep into the origins and the roots.

4. In the comparison between the week and the well of the self, there’s a personal revelation for a poet

who wants to decide his way in the future, and the next step will be “to set the darkness

echoing.” [explain darkness and how it will echo in his poetry].

5. the background of the three text was the land. It’s the source of different images, it’s used

symbolically to emphasis the sense of belonging and the identity of the poet, naming certain places-

Toner’s bog-.

6. He is always depicting the environment in Ireland following Yeats’s footsteps in using place names.

Therefore, we have to link these poems and Gravities to his essay The Sense of Place.

!The poem has a similar meaning of the gravitational power which is part of the land. The force that pulls

writers to their land and connects them tightly to their origins.

!TITLE

Heaney is interested in the gravitational power, which is a strong force that has all these qualities:

seen and unseen, natural or leaned, innate or adopted. They are all constituents of gravity. Different

GRAVITIES, examples of different sources. He poetically exemplifies the force that pulls man to his

homeland.

!FIRST STANZA

• there are two examples the kites and the pigeon. The “kites appear” to fly freely but they are controlled

by “strict and invisible” strings. The other example is the pigeon which is controlled and directed by

instinct. The former is an object and the latter is a living creature. Both are controlled, the former is an

artificial control and the latter is a natural, innate quality. In either cases, we have strong tie that pulls

and directs them home. Therefore, heading home is very important because the home is the sense of

belonging, a place of shelter, a place that you know very well, and you choose it because it’s a place that

gives you comfort, security, safety, love, and protection. Therefore, you instinctively go home, a place

that always take you in when you return. The “return” is important for Heaney in this text. The term

“desert” in the third line is important because you can desert a place and fly a distance, but all of the

sudden when you have this feeling of wanting to return home, that home will take you back. It has to

take you in because there lies your sense of belonging. This feeling extends in the picture of the lovers

in the following stanza.

• The stanza opens of the hight of the kites suggesting their separation from the earth. But there’s still a

force pulling them down.

• The strings are symbolic of the historical roots and the obligations of the ancestry. Invisible, but they

are there.

"19

• But there is also a natural, unconscious force that pulls man back to his homeland.

!SECOND STANZA

• In the first two examples there was an object and a living creature. In this third example, he introduces

lovers, humans, and they share a feeling of love. This love is compared to the bird’s feeling which

makes an unconscious link to their home. The power of love is compared to the power of gravity. They

both pull back. Despite the lovers quarrels and fights, they can endure and bare this suffering. The

strong feeling of love makes them tolerate the obstacles. Love always pulls them back to “the native

port of their embrace.” “Native” shows the same meaning as “heading home.” It connotes the same

meaning which is the return to the harbour of safety. They are all powerful forces that are invisible,

conscious or unconscious: strings, instinct, gravity, and love. They guide, protect, and pull back.

• He talks about overcoming obstacles with the tone of an Irishman who has problems with his country.

But his love to his country may help him overcome these problems and return to his homeland. He will

endure any suffering because he loves his native land.

!THIRD STANZA

• He poetically exemplifies the force that pulls man to his homeland, this is understood because he

concludes with an example from the literary field. The two introductory stanzas are universal and

applicable to kite, any pigeon, any lover. They are not personal or private to him as an Irish poet. He

introduces James Joyce for two reasons: his respect and admiration to the Irish writer James Joyce. And

because he’s one of many Irish literary figures who left Dublin to live Paris or the US. And they were

speaking as poets of exile. The sense of separation from their homeland is dominant in their writing.

Joyce was one of many who were attacked by critics for neglecting or marginalising the Irish cause;

which turned out to be a misreading of his works. Therefore, he never slough off the Irish skin. He

never neglected the Irish cause, he departed like the kite and the pigeon, but he always return through

his writing to his homeland using place-names, natural scenery, individual sufferings, and other details.

• Joyce is a typical Irish representative. Therefore, Heaney is trying to quote an example-which is Joyce-

as an outstanding literary figure who traveled abroad but never really separated himself from the strings

and ties that link him with his country. how did Heaney present him?

• how did Heaney present him? In Paris, Joyce met Irish figures and he was looking for them. He used to

enjoy sitting with them, and exchanging notes about Ireland, and what is happening in it, and reviving

the memory about Ireland. So he lived in Paris, but never forgot about his homeland.

• “O'Connell Street” and “Iona Colmcille” are Irish place-names mentioned to emphasis the link between

Joyce and Ireland. He is a man who never separated himself from his land.

• The final image stresses this idea “By wearing Irish mould next to his feet.” The image tells a strong

connection between him and his land. This is the image Heaney wants to draw about Irish writers, he is

defending Irish writers through the symbol of Joyce. The Irish writers “appear” to us as living away

like the kites “appear” as flying away. The image is that they are living there, but their minds and their

hearts are attached to their homeland. They are not to be judged by appearance. Many elements pull

them back, psychologically, mentally, intellectually, emotionally.

• The poem presents a very paradoxical image: it starts with the kites flying up high symbolising the

traveling and the distance in any Irish writer who travels abroad in search for freedom as the word

"20

“freely” indicates. At the same time, that traveling pulls them back to their country where their feet are

stuck to the ground.

• This sublime distance between the kites and the feet is showing the sublime relation between those

travellers and their country.

• This strong sense of belonging is the image he wants to draw about the Irish people. This is how he’s

defending the Irish nation. Their travelings does not mean that they forgot their country. There is a

strong link that makes them always speak about their Irish background and the Irish cause.

• The gravitational power is his love to his country as he names Ireland in the closing line.

• The last stanza stresses his identity as an Irish speaker.

!!

!

"21

Personal Helicon

!

As a child, they could not keep me from wells

And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.

I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells

Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

!One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.

I savoured the rich crash when a bucket

Plummeted down at the end of a rope.

So deep you saw no reflection in it.

!

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch

Fructified like any aquarium.

When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch

A white face hovered over the bottom.

!

Others had echoes, gave back your own call

With a clean new music in it. And one

Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall

Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

!

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,

To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring

Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme

To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

!

!

!!!!!

"22

The concluding poem of the first collection. It sums up the themes mentioned in the earlier poems.

The poem takes us to the last stage of the first act of digging, the last layer which is the water. His own

spring of poetry; self-discovery. It is important for him to know his role and what he’ll do in the future.

This poem agrees with Heaney’s definition of poetry as a self revelation.

! On Helicon, was the spring where Narcissus was inspired by his own beauty. When Heaney says

in the title “Personal Helicon” he suggests that the self is his own product, that he’s going to understand

the self first.

! Later in the text when says "Others had echoes" meaning the echoes of early writings of poetry. It

links us to Sidney in the 16th C. Poetry, Yeats and Heaney believed, is a product of earlier writings.

Poems are plants and the roots are the earlier writings. Past and future are directly connected, you cannot

produce a new poem without knowing what has already been introduced. In “Astrophel and Stella”

Sidney kept looking in books for suitable words. In the final couplet, the muse tells him to find the

suitable terms in his heart: “look in thy heart and write.” If there’s a sincere strong feeling of wanting to

say something, say it your own way. And this is the mission of any good poet as Heaney did when he

found the fountain springing from inside.

! In his essays, Heaney compares the springing of fountains and wells to the production of a poem.

So he chose this title to emphasis all this, that poetry comes from inside, a product of his own perception

of things.

!Wells

! The poem opens with a memory from the past, as a child. His love and admiration for wells, his

strong connection with the land. He chooses wells because they're dug into the land and they're part of the

Irish landscape, like the potatoes. The largest number of wells around the world are found in Ireland.

They live on the water brought from wells. Therefore, bringing such a symbol into the text is a selection

of a familiar part of their culture and nature. It's a also symbolic of the dig within. The interest in

penetrating the psych of man is very common in a post-modern writer. Heaney lived in the same era with

Lacan, Freud, Jung. In his essays, Heaney compares the springing of fountains and wells to the

production of a poem. Wells, additionally, symbolise reaching the final end, the mirror of the self, which

is an element in psychoanalysis. The inner mirror of defining the self, and defining the mission of it. For

all these reasons, wells become a very successful choice.

!Strata

!"Old pumps with buckets and windlasses" the whole scene gives a realistic sense of bringing out the

water. He uses these tools to bring out results that he's going to project later in the text. Digging the wells

is digging a land of different strata containing details of history like remains and footsteps. So he's

discovering through each layer a different type of knowledge, information, different features of the past

{readings}. And as he says it becomes like an aquarium in front of him. Until he reaches the last layer

where he can clearly see himself as a poet and how he's going to master all this and control it.

!Fear

!Fear of darkness + fear of failing

! There's a strong connection not only as a poet to the wells but also as a child. This reflects his

sense of belonging. He's a poet that doesn't separate himself from his childhood, and his strong

connection to the land. So Heaney never separates himself from the land (sticky waterweed). "I loved the

dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells/Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss." There is a contradiction

here. The image is ugly of darkness, fungus, dank moss, smells of waterweed, a running rat. Yet, he

"23

LOVES it. What he really loves is the memory of the past, even the smell. There's a crossing of any

limitation. He's not a self-centred poet, because in his inner self trapped the sky, he's enlarging the

knowledge he have. There's a sublime image of the sky of infinite dimensions. So he has a wide scope of

knowledge. Critics said that the scaresome words suggest a sense of fear that overwhelms the poem. That

the speaker is still struggling to fulfil his aim, he's not yet standing on a solid ground. It's the fear of

penetrating into this darkness. Darkness for him is all the unknown including the hidden self, the hidden

history, hidden details about his tradition, a lot of details are still unknown to him. This kind of ignorance

is scaresome because he doesn't know if what he'll find out is going to be satisfactory to him. In

succeeding to fulfil the mission, there's a fear of failing to reach the good turf, the details that will help

him reconstruct the Irish image in the proper manner.

!Two Directions

! "One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.I savoured the rich crash when a bucket/Plummeted

down at the end of a rope. So deep you saw no reflection in it." Again, the depth, the distance in time and

space, the details that are uncovered yet, he doesn't see. The bucket and the rope are symbolic of his trials

to dig back in his memory, his trial to excavate the historical books and literary material. But still in that

level, there are things he doesn't see. We have two different directions moving within that well:

psychologically, the persona and the inner self,digging in his memory. And as a poet digging in past

history and readings. For the former, the vision isn't clear because he still in the early layers, he cannot

identify what he want as a poet "So deep you saw no reflection in it." In the latter, the bucket symbolises

his readings, his exploration, he still didn't reach the good turf. But he's happy with "the rich crash" of the

bucket which connotes that it hit something. Meaning that he came across something important. The

"rope" is the memory, the series of information, the sense of time carrying him back.

! "A shallow one under a dry stone ditch/Fructified like any aquarium.When you dragged out long

roots from the soft mulch/A white face hovered over the bottom." The white face isn't identified yet. But

he starts at this level to uncover features of the self, of his identity as an Irish man. So the poem sums up

the development in the poems in the collection, layer by layer. He's a man who spoke about his childhood

"Digging, then in "Follower" addresses the image of a young boy admiring his father, and in "Gravities"

he mentions Joyce which shows his interest in the readings of others. And then he reaches an

identification of what he should do as a poet, the Narcissus stage which he'll not accept, he discovered

himself and what he wants but he's not a narcissus which shows that he's a mature poet now.

! "Others had echoes, gave back your own call With a clean new music in it. And one/Was

scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall/Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection." Any text is a

product of a previous text which is Yeats' definition that is followed by Heaney. This is what Eliot has

proved in The Waste Land which is like a tissue that combines different texts together. Therefore, this is

what Heaney said that he reads, he echoes the voices of other and others echo different voices. But it

depends on the new music, the new combination, how the ideas will be shaped in a new manner. It's the

form that makes all the difference because the meaning should be presented a novelty, people look at it

differently, they see angles they never saw before. So he'll not imitate, but he may echo which is a

continues cycle as others do echo others. "Clean new music" that has no traces of influence, as he cleans

the land of the dead roots. "Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall/Foxgloves, a rat slapped across

my reflection." At the end of this quatrain we see that he's speaking about his personal reflection. There

sense of fear is present again, the rat crossing the water caused a blurred vision, unclear, hazy. This lack

of clarity and sense of fear of figures that may appear and make him doubt his capability as a writer, and

his his ability to be a representative poet. Whenever he writes, until he dies, he complains about this

feeling of hesitance, whether he fulfilled his mission or not.

! The poem is a dig in the time as well as in the self and in history. "Now, to pry into roots, to finger

slime,To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme/To see myself, to

set the darkness echoing." The dig carries us through different layers and brings us to the surface, like in

"24

"Digging" but with the use of a bucket instead of the spade. The quatrain starts with "Now" bringing us

to the present. "to pry into root" which are essential to his plants, his poems. "To finger slime," to feel

them as in the title of his essay. For him, he has to feel every word he says that's why it's a personal

helicon. His poetry is felt by him. "I rhyme/To see myself, to set the darkness echoing." The mission is

clarified in these final lines. He writes his verse to uncover the self which he did in The Death of a

Naturalist and will continue in the next two collection that contain a lot of his childhood memories. They

are used strategically to attract the reader. Hw writes also to reconstruct the Irish image.

! He mentions Narcissus at the end because he wants to define his role as a poet, he's answering

critics who accused him of being a Romantic escapist, to say that he's not admiring himself but only

knowing it to be able to represent the nation. A quest into the self to uncover his belonging, his relation to

the land, his love for his country. And the poems in the first collection prove that.

!Form

! Regular stanza and organised rhyme scheme because he reaches a settlement. The harmony in the

text projects the harmony inside Heaney. Although there's some fear, still there is the satisfactory of

knowing what he'll do next by opening the door of the dark. The poem is divided into quatrains with

alternative rhymes. It reflects the steps of going down in layers as the well mentioned in the opening lines

and the water appears at the end.

!

"25

!Midnight

1972

!!Since the professional wars -

Corpse and carrion

Plaing in rain -

The wolf has died out

!!!In Ireland. The packs

Scoured parkland and moor

Till a Quaker buck and his dogs

Killed the last one

!!!In some scraggy waste of Kildare.

The wolfhound was crossed

With inferior strains,

Forests coopered to wine casks.

!!!Rain on the roof to-night

Sogs turf-banks and heather,

Sets glinting outcrops

Of basalt and granite,

!!!Drips to the moss of bare boughs.

The old dens are soaking.

The pads are lost or

Retrieved by a small vermin

!!!That glisten and scut.

Nothing is panting, lolling,

Vapouring. The tongue's

Leashed in my throat.

"26

The title of the poem suggests the darkness that overwhelmed the context. The poem was

published in the third collection Wintering Out in 1972. The primacy of culture preface of culture and

political topics is increasingly clear in that volume more than the first two. It marks a change from the two

first collections because in the first two, he did touch on cultural background and political details, but not

in the same manner as in his third collection. The first two collection focus more on domestic family life,

local place names, literary figures, the mission of the poet, they point out the relation of the land to its

people, and cultural background and many details that are dug out of history. In the third collection there's

an addition of more focus on political topics and cultural background. Although the poem is divided into

two parts, the first focuses on general political issues, the second is also focuses on family and domestic

relations between members of society, and different figures from Ireland. So he continues to explore the

Irish culture both downward and inward into the bogland details.

! This poem tackles themes and ideas that already have been covered in the early poems. It also

tackles problems that had been tackled in the general introduction to Heaney. Therefore, in his text there's

a focus on divisions in that he loved as a poet representing a post-colonial literature, the voice of a nation

that has been colonised for hundreds of years. The division of language, religious, geographical, names,

and place names, loyalties, cultural , historical background divisions. Beside the psychological inner

divisions within the man himself which always cause trouble and restlessness amongst post-colonial poets

who lived the double-consciousness. In the poem such divisions are emphasised.

!Anahorish

! When he was in primary school he lived in a Northern Irish town called "Anahorish." Anahorish is

an Irish name which he uses in many poems. The name Anahorish is translated from the Irish, anach fhior

uisce, means 'place of clear water' - a phrase used in the opening line of the poem.It refers to in many of

his writings. That school combined Catholic and Protestant students. This school was the only one that

had Catholic and Protestant students.It's important because it is the first time to personally experience and

become aware of differences religions. This aspect has been tackled by many critics who said the this

point has been articulated in Heaney's poetry in a very innocent simple manner because he wasn't trying

to create a barrier between himself and the English society. As a poet he didn't try to separate himself

from the English society. He simply points out some facts that used to happen and nobody can deny them.

He didn't go on attacking the English for no reason, he has a way that appears to be acceptable by every

reader. This experience is recorded here in Midnight when he chose the clash between the Catholics and

the Protestants.

!Language

!Midnight, Traditions and A new songs in those three poems in the third collection, the problem of

language divisions and suppression is highlighted. As it's here by the leashing of the tongue.

! The closing lines of the poem mark that division of language, "the tongue is leashed in my throat."

The words are stuck in his throat, he's chocked by them, implying that during the English rule the Gaelic

language has been destroyed and forgotten. Heaney learned Latin, French, English, Gaelic, and was

interested in translation. He translated Beowulf although it was translated several times. So he likes to

trace the origins of every detail he dealt with. So the idea of going back to the native Irish tongue is

something that bothered him. He's aware that Irishmen aren't speaking their language, they speak the

language of their coloniser. This irritated him making his tongue become leashed in the throat. Another

reason of his tongue being leashed is the loss of the Irish identity. Why is he constrained by a language

that doesn't represent him, the same as when we speak in English but use the Arabic language to express

ourselves purely and genuinely.

!!!

"27

Post-colonialism

!The poem shows the solidity of the Irish facing all of that

! He starts the poem by carrying us back in time, digging in the history of the Irish nation in order to

surface a detail that will refresh the memory of the contemporary generations. So they would know that

they have to remain solid and strong to defend their identity and to defend their land. So the idea of

digging is recurrent in his texts. This is the same analogy used in pervious poems. A post-colonial poet is

a poet who has to reclaim his land, and his identity. And this is what Heaney is trying to do in his poems.

!Title

! The title indicates the darkness that overwhelms the whole situation. But he doesn't say night nor

darkness. He chooses a time that marks the in betweens, a midway, in the middle of the night we hope for

a change to come. All the different images are chosen to show the cruelty, and the darkness that

overwhelms Ireland. Yet, the time of change will soon come. Midnight also is the in between, a divisions

they live in. The middle of divided interests, aims, languages and religions.

!Hybridity

! He carries us into the past bringing a historical detail metaphorically and symbolically in the

image of the wolf. The choice of the wolf is made for several reasons: it represents the animal spirit of

Ireland, the identity of the Irish. But how does he introduce the wolf? As a dying or an already died out

breed because it was attacked by another breed, the English. Here he's showing the influence of the

mixture, the hybridity. We have a new breed, but the original one, the wolf-like one is destroyed like the

Irish identity. His task is to communicate that identity. He's communicating it in a paradoxical nature,

because it is written in English yet he's defending this own language and identity. When he says the wolf

has died out in Ireland, he's projecting the Irish identity in all its aspects. It has been replaced by an

inferior race, stray. The Irish are robbed of its own voice or identity as their language was banned during

the colonial stage. Like the haunting dogs when they attack their pray. That's how he speaks of the

English coloniser represented by "Quaker buck " and his dogs. "Till a Quaker buck and his dogs/ Killed

the last one/In some scraggy waste of Kildare. The wolfhound was crossed/With inferior strains, Forests

coopered to wine casks." This is the invasion, the destruction. The Quaker buck is a typical representative

of the English upper classes with their hunting dogs. Natural images that represent every day experiences

and lifestyles of both the Irish and English, therefore both sides are able to relate to the poem.

!Place-names

! Mentioning Ireland and Kildare are place names, identifying himself as an Irish poet. Kildare now

is a "scraggy waste," but in the past it was very lively county. So he's showing changes. The land has been

attacked and ripped off its innocence and beauty. Even the forests that used to be rich and healthy are now

"coopered to wine casks." They are destroyed.

!Images

! He carries the readers to the professional wars ear that lead to nothing but destruction. The "corps

and carrions" and "rain" are suggestive of more that one meaning, the anger, restlessness, disturbance,

conflicts, unsettlement of the Irish environment. Additionally, it's keeping the land fertile.

! "Rain on the roof to-night" rain is a recurrent image in this poem functioning in more than one

manner and suggesting more than one meaning. What is lest of Ireland is still strong. So the rain functions

as a symbol of life and fertility. "the roof" suggests the human life and design within these houses. The

rain helps "Sogs turf-banks and heather," which Heaney usually use as images of fertility. But the rain is

"28

also a sign of anger, the stormy weather of restlessness and the rain falls as he describes on dead bodies. It

is destructive, representing aggression and the war. Among all this there's "Basalt and granite" as images

of strength, the solidity borrowed from the land. The solidity of the land is important because it will take

all this in and still challenge and continue, it will not be destroyed.

! But "The old dens are soaking. The pads are lost or/ Retrieved by a small vermin" which shows

destruction, formlessness, nothing but there remains. But it's there. Not gone. It'll continue to challenge.

!Wolf

! The "Wolfhound" is common in the Irish forests, he's been crossed with inferior strains which

shows the hybridity. The original breed of the wolfhound is changed. The choice of the wolf is due to the

Irish natural scenery and the name of one the Irish leaders who sacrificed his life to defend the Irish cause.

His name was Wolfe Tom. He was a famous figure in Ireland and in the Irish history. He died towards the

end of the 18th C, so he's digging in history. The collection poems were written in a very awkward time

of religious clash which provoked him to write this poem. It is normal for his poetry to project what's

going on in his life at that current time and remembering how it used to be in his childhood. This Quaker

killer is like the Protestants who try to attack the Catholics.

! Wolfe Tom was an Irish fighter who was assisted even by the French against the English. But

unfortunately he was sentenced to death. He committed suicide before they hung him because he knew

he'll not have a fair trial. So the wolf that has died out is a combination of several suggestions. Whether

identifying the Irish through the natural animal that's significant among Irish animals, or suggests the Irish

leader whom sacrificed his life for the cause. Both express the cruelty Irishmen bared under the English

rule.

!CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS: refer the poem back to its origin and to why and when it was written

before you comment on the lines.

!