The Yeats Journal of Korea/한국 예이츠 저널 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14354/yjk.2015.48.293
Vol. 48 (2015): 293-302
Heaney as Craftsman: Focusing on Death Poems
Sung Sook Hong
____________________________________
Abstract: Heaney declared in his first poem “Digging” that “Between my finger and
my thumb/ The squat pen rests./ I’ll dig with it.” Rereading his poems, I could
conclude that he stands by his promise, continuously making every effort to labor
and create new-styled poems, although the scope of this paper is limited to the
poems in Field Work, The Haw Lantern, and Seeing Things. My research shows that
Heaney experiments with various forms. Heaney seems to have perfected his poetry,
much as his father did his spade.
Key words: Heaney, craftsman, pastoral elegy, sonnet
Author: Sung Sook Hong is Professor in the Department of English Language and
Literature, Cheonju University, Korea.
E-mail: [email protected]
____________________________________
제목: 글쓰기의 장인, 히니: 죽음의 시 중심으로
우리말 요약: 히니는 그의 첫 시 땅파기 에서 “내 검지와 엄지 사이에 뭉뚝한 연필
쉬고 있네/ 나 그것으로 팔 것이요.”라고 선언했다. 그의 시를 읽은 이제까지의 결론
은 그는 산고의 고통으로 새 스타일의 시를 만들기 위해 끊임없이 노력함으로써 위의
공언을 실천했다는 것이다. 본 논문은 시집 밭일, 산사나무 등불 그리고 환영보
기의 시들만을 다루지만 필자의 결론은 히니는 그의 아버지가 경작에 있어 완벽을
추구하던 장인이었던 것처럼 글쓰기의 장인이라는 것이다.
주제어: 히니, 글쓰기의 장인, 전원 애가, 소네트
저자: 홍성숙은 청주대학교 영어영문학과 교수다.
____________________________________
I
S eamus
Heaney is reputed to be one of the greatest poets of the 21th
294
Sung Sook Hong
century, which could be well proved by the fact that he was awarded
throughout the years from 1968’s Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, including
the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 to the 2012’s Griffin Poetry Prize.
Heaney was recognized as one of the principal contributors to poetry in the
early 21st century. I think that one of the reasons Heaney has earned such
praises is because of his mastery and commanding ability of the English
language and its literary form. Since Field Work, Heaney has paid more
attention to experimenting with form and genre. I think “Squarings” in Seeing
Things, is a masterpiece similar in technique to Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting
for Godot” because “Squarings” de-constructs the fixed meaning and releases
us from language’s oppression. Meanwhile, “Squarings” is a collection of
water-color poems underpinned by objectivism, which partly resembles
William Carlos Williams’s technique. Moreover, “The Journey Back” from
Seeing Things shows an interesting pastiche of “a poem within a poem” by
the speaker’s quoting of Larkin quoting Dante’s lines. This paper aims to
prove such hypothesis by analysing his death poems. Here, what I mean by
death poems is the poems which deal with death. The range of analysis will
be limited to his poems in Field Work, The Haw Lantern, and Seeing Things.
Some elegies of Field Work such as “The Strand at Lough Beg,”
“Casualty,” “In Memoriam Sean Sean O’Riada” commemorate victims during
the turmoil in Ulster. Meanwhile, Seamus Heaney’s eye turns to the invisible
world starting with his mother’s death. The Haw Lantern, which was released
in 1987, three years after his mother’s death, contains some poems about her;
Seeing Things in 1991 also contains poems about his father and friends that
had passed away.
The elegy deals with a persona’s longing for the deceased who were
much loved during life. Elegiac poetry sometimes expresses a retreat from the
cacophony of the living world, distant from the dead. A dictionary says that
“an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral
Heaney as Craftsman: Focusing on Death Poems
295
song or a lament for the dead”. Especially, pastoral elegy has such familiar
and often predictable patterns as invoking muse, offering details of friendship
between the writer and the deceased, regret of his death, nature’s lament and
a wish for his resurrection. Joining nature in the process of lament, it
awakens in humans a wish for rebirth and a desire to be connected to the
cyclical system of nature.
Elegies in Field work present the victims of Ulster Trouble to us, where
about 247 to 297 civilians were killed and about more than five hundred
were wounded. However, the poet dwells in the remote and peaceful
Glanmore, wishing to enjoy his peaceful life with his family just like
Wordsworth did in Dove Cottage of Glassmere with his sister Dorothy.
Heaney’s desire is to live like a hermit in an individual and free way, which
can be proved by the fact that he doesn’t try to use the word “We”
indicating the plural, and explained in an interview with James Randall that:
“I no longer wanted a door into the dark, I wanted a book into the light. . .
to be able to use the first person singular to mean me and my lifetime.”1)
The elegies in Field Work are written in the genre of pastoral elegy,
which means that Heaney thinks the pastoral to be the ideal place and his
symbol of peace. “The Strand at Lough Beg” offers the example. This elegy
is about his cousin Macatney who was murdered during a trip to a Dublin
Gaelic football match. In the first stanza, his cousin is pictured as a pilgrim
like Sweeney, a historical person. And the narrator is imagining what
happened to his cousin. Questioning the reason for his death in the first
stanza is indicative of the pastoral element. And the difference of Heaney’s
elegy from the traditional one lies in the omission of calling Muse:
“You climbed the hills towards Newtownhamilton
Along that road, a high, bare pilgrim’s track.”
296
Sung Sook Hong
What blazed ahead of you? A faked road block?
The red lamp swung, the sudden brakes and stalling
Engine, voices, heads hooded and the cold-nosed gun?
(FW 17)
The second stanza explores their friendship where the cousin is described
as an innocent shepherd without any connection to something as murky as
murder. The poet creates an atmosphere of homeliness, which is consistent
with elements of the traditional elegy:
On your way across the strand to fetch the cows.
For you and yours and yours and mine fought shy,
Spoke an old language of conspirators
And could not crack he whip or seize the day:
Big-voiced scullions, herders, feelers round
Haycocks and hind quarters, talkers in byres,
Slow arbitrators of the burial ground.
(FW 17)
The decoration of the coffin in the third stanza also possesses common
traits of the pastoral elegy, but it is the poet himself that decorates the coffin
whereas in the traditional elegy nature itself decorates the coffin:
I turn because the sweeping of your feet
Has stopped behind me, to find you on your knees
With blood and roadside muck in your hair and eyes
Then kneel in front of you in brimming grass
And gather up cold handfuls of the dew
To wash you, cousin. I dab you clean with moss
Fine as the drizzle out of a low cloud.
I lift you under the arms and lay you flat.
with rushes that shoot green again, I plait
Green scapulars to wear over your shroud. (FW 18)
Heaney as Craftsman: Focusing on Death Poems
297
II
“Clearances” in The Haw Lantern commemorates his mom’s passing in
the form of sonnet. It means that Heaney wants to emphasize his affection
and love for his dead mother. Eight sonnets entitled “Clearances” are full of
the memory of his mother, which shows how much affection and respect the
poet felt for his mother. And also, we can infer that the death of his mother
creates in the poet a sense of emptiness and leads him to a meditation on
death.
The first sonnet is about a small pebble that was associated with his
great grandmother who tied the knot with the Catholic family while she was
deemed a traitor of her protestant faith. The second one is a collection of
images that remind him of his mom: the shiny table, her story-telling, and
the poet’s grandfather who has a special affection for his daughter.
The third sonnet is about the relationship between mother and son. The
former stanza depicts a warm bond that broke the lengthy silence while he
and mom were peeling the potatoes while the rest of family’s were away at
mass. The cyclical atmosphere from silence to the breaking of silence and to
the return of silence stirs up the native atmosphere of the Celtic home.
Through the powerful image of both of them peeling potatoes, we feel
invited to an almost iconic image of Irish agrarian life. The latter part
describes the deathbed of his mom and also expresses his regret that although
he felt her final breath, he had not devoted his whole life to her. This sonnet
offers us some comfort and lyricism from the warming relationship between
mother and son.
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
298
Sung Sook Hong
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her beside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knivesNever closer the whole rest of our lives
(HL 27)
The fourth sonnet depicts the son’s regards and respect for his mother by
only using Irish when talking with her. The fifth sonnet vividly sketches a
scene in which he helps her folding the bed sheets, another intimate and
mundane image. It’s these seemingly insignificant events that we hold dear
when those we love pass on.
And pulled against her, first straight down the hem.
And then diagonally, then flapped and shook
The fabric like a sail in a cross-wind,
They made a dried-out undulating thwack.
(HL 29)
He describes another shared memory in the sixth sonnet. The following of
the seventh sonnet shows his father’s tender love at her death bed.
In the last minutes he said more to her
Almost than in all their life together.
‘You’ll be in New Row on Monday night
And I’ll come up for you and you’ll be glad
When I walk in the door. . . Isn’t that right?’
(HL 31)
Heaney as Craftsman: Focusing on Death Poems
299
In the eighth sonnet, the poet compares his feeling of emptiness to the
clearing of a chestnut tree after her death.
I thought of walking round and round a space
Utterly empty, utterly a source
Where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place
In our front hedge above the wallflowers.
Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere,
A soul ramifying and forever
Silent, beyond silence listened for.
(HL 32)
III
Heaney draws his visions of afterlife from Virgil and Dante in order to
come to terms with the death of his father, Patrick, in 1986. The title
“Seeing Things” refers both to the solid, fluctuating world of objects and to a
haunted, hallucinatory realm of the imagination (www.wikipedia.com). Seeing
Things of 1991 was written from the motive of his father’s death. This
poetry collection contains poems remembering his father in some new stylesa kind of pastiche2)-allusion of classics and searching for his father’s spirit
through observing the past traces entangled with the keepsakes.
One of the characteristics of Seeing Things is to begin and end with
description of the world after death. This shows us that the range of the
poet’s imagination has been expanded. The first poem “The Golden Bough”
exposes the poet’s longing to meet his dead father like Aeneus of Aeneid who
begs a shaman, Sibyl of Cumae to let him go down to hell in order to meet
his father. Here, Sibyl warns Aeneus that the way back from the hell is
hazardous, showing him how to get the golden bough, a key to enter the hell.
300
Sung Sook Hong
Aeneus’s longing for dead father can be seen as similar to that of Heaney’s.
As soon as her fit passed away and the mad mouthings stopped
Heroic Aeneas began: ‘No ordeal, O Priestess,
That you can imagine would ever surprise me
For already I have foreseen and foresuffered all.
But one thing I pray for especially:since they say it is here
That the King of the Underworld’s gateway is to be found,
Among these shadowy marshes where Acheron comes flooding through,
I pray for one look, one face-to-face meeting with my dear father.
Teach me the way and open the holy doors wide.
. . .
He was praying like that and holding on to the altar
When the prophetess started to speak: ‘Blood relation of gods,
Trojan, son of Anchises, the way down to Avernus is is easy.
Day and night black Pluto’s door stands open.
But to retrace your steps and get back to upper air,
This is the real task and the real undertaking.
(ST 1-2)
Besides this pastiche, Heaney uses another technique to invoke the spirit
and remembrance of the deceased: He traces the past by creating relics of
seemingly mundane objects and focuses his attention on these to give us
powerful images of people that shaped his life. “The Pitchfork” is an example
where the poet commemorates his father by depicting him as a perfect
craftsman, a skillful warrior and a javelin thrower.
Of all implements, the pitchfork was the one
That came near to an imagined perfection:
When he tightened his raised hand and aimed with it,
It felt like a javelin, accurate and light.
So whether he played the warrior or the athlete
Heaney as Craftsman: Focusing on Death Poems
301
Or worked in earnest in the chaff and sweat,
He loved its grain of tapering, dark-flecked ash
Grown satiny from its own natural polish,
(ST 23)
IV
Heaney’s respect for the craftsman including his own father is seen in his
continuously making every effort to labor and create new-styled poems. This
can be evidenced by researching his poems commemorating the deceased.
Investigating the poems from Field Work, The Haw Lantern and Seeing
Things shows that Heaney experiments with various forms in dealing with the
same subject.
Poems of Field Work that deal with the deaths of the Trouble’s victims
are pastoral elegies; some poems remembering his dead mom in The Haw
Lantern are presented in sonnet form; Seeing Things, in which he chooses a
kind of pastiche-classical allusion or seeing things from objective observation,
contains poetry that speaks of his deceased father.
My last conclusion to the research into Heaney’s death poems is that he
is a real expert in perfecting his poetry writing much like his father was a
master of farm cultivation. It seems natural that he is reputed to be a master
craftsman of poetry in the English language.
Notes
1) See James Randal’s “An Interview with Seamus Heaney.” Ploughshares 5.3 (1979): 16.
2) “Pastiche” has two definitions: one is a literary, musical, or artistic piece consisting wholly or
chiefly of motifs or techniques borrowed from one or more sources; the other is an incongruous
combination of materials, forms, motifs, etc., taken from different sources; hodgepodge
302
Sung Sook Hong
Works cited
Heaney, Seamus. Field Work. LondonFaber and Faber, 1979. (FW)
___. The Haw Lantern. LondonFaber and Faber, 1987. (HL)
___. Seeing Things. LondonFaber and Faber, 1991. (ST)
Hong, Sung Sook. “Modernism and Post-Modernism Aesthetics in Seeing Things.”
The Yeats Journal of Korea 29 (2008): 209-224.
___. “Digging Memory of the Dead in Field Work, The Haw Lantern and Seeing
Things.” The Yeats Journal of Korea 31 (2009): 251-268.
Ramazani, Jahan. Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney.
U of Chicago P, 1994.
Randal, James. “An Interview with Seamus Heaney.” Ploughshares 5.3 (1979):
16.
Sacks, Peter. The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats.
Johns Hopkins UP, 1987.
Elegy/sonnet/pastiche. (Retrieved 2 Sept. 2015 http://www.wikipedia.com)
Manuscript peer-review process:
receipt acknowledged: Oct. 20, 2015.
revision received: Nov. 15, 2015.
publication approved: Dec. 25, 2015.
Edited by: Ilhwan Yoon