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The Troubles With Seamus Heaney
The poet Keats wrote that “the only means of strengthening ones intellect is to make up ones own mind about nothing – to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thought, not a select body”. That this may be an admirable aim for a poet, and especially so for one writing against a background of ethnic violence, is not in doubt. It is, however, extremely difficult to remain neutral when one identifies oneself with an ethnic party involved in conflict. It is my intention, then, in this essay, to document how Seamus Heaneys reaction to violence in his homeland has affected his writings, with particular reference to the volume of poetry entitled “North”. This volume first appeared in 1975, a year after the collapse of the so-called Sunningdale Agreement, a power-sharing executive which came into being at the start of 1974 and had brought for many and certainly for Catholic nationalists a certain hope. However, shortly after its introduction, the IRA declared that “the war goes on” and a 15 day strike by loyalist workers brought the Faulkner-led government to disbandment. Thus, 1974 and 1975 saw some of the darkest days of the northern “troubles”. Heaney then is forced to react to the maelstrom in which he finds himself, much like Yeats after the 1916 rising, and like Yeats, he finds himself unsure of his position. Unlike Yeats, however, he is not a well-established, mature poet and upon being presented with an era which will shape the future of Ireland, he is often found wanting.
Edna Longley describes the latter half of “North” as “”a cobbled up second section of topical material” and yet upon its publication it caused a massive storm of controversy, not least amongst other Northern Irish poets. James Simmons accuses Heaney of having “timid moral postures” and I believe that if we study some of the poems we can see that he is correct to do so. Pervasive throughout “North” is the idea of placing contemporary situations against ancient happenings. In “Punishment” we are presented with a womans
drowned
body in the bog,
the weighing stone,
the floating rods and boughs.
Heaney goes on to call this ancient, punished bog-body a “Little adultress” which implies the poets comprehension both of the need for punishment and of those who did the punishing. The body is then compared to those of local Catholic girls, tarred and feathered for fraternising with British soldiers:
I who have stood dumb
When your betraying sisters,
Cauled in tar,
Wept by the railings,
Who would connive
In civilised outrage
Yet understand the exact
And tribal, intimate revenge.
Reading these last two stanzas of the poem, it is not difficult to understand why it caused outrage upon its publication. To even the most liberal of readers it surely must seem that the poet is in league with those who tar and feather women merely for having friends from the wrong side. One can accept that a casual onlooker may not risk life and limb to intervene to aid a stranger; what one finds much more difficult to accept is that Heaney, on seeing young women tarred and weeping, understands the ” tribal, intimate revenge”. This is poetry as catharsis. Although adultery and dating British soldiers are obviously two different things, they are both activities which occur outside the tribe. The sense of tribalism is present throughout and is presented as an inescapable and timeless pattern. Throughout the poem Heaney has apologetically distanced himself from violence, always “the artful voyeur”. This poem tells us much in relation to Heaneys stance on the violence in Northern Ireland. He certainly identifies with it, as we see in the poets inclusion of himself in the first line where “I can feel…” and indeed how could he not for he was surrounded by it. His attitude, as already stated, seems to be that it is merely part of an inevitable cycle and that any attempt to alter it would be as successful as Canutes attempt to stem the tide. There is however no attempt made to distance himself from the reality of the present, which is in itself an admirable and brave trait and he is indeed letting the mind be a thoroughfare for all thought, as Keats suggested. That we may not like what he discovers – his understanding of the “…tribal revenge” – is not the poets problem. The poets problem, one suspects, is that he may not like it much either. It is difficult, however, for one to come away from this poem without a bad taste in the mouth. As Conor Cruise OBrien puts it “It is the word exact that hurts most” .
It is important to note the importance of the bog itself in both this poem and the next that we shall examine. To the poet, “the bog requires intensive interpretation and yet it is commonplace. It is ordinary but also macabre; it is a mortuary and a love-nest”. Of course, much of Ireland is covered in bog, so it is also something that many Irish can easily relate to in a physical as well as a metaphorical dimension. We know of its ugly terrors, but there is occasionally something almost sexual about bogland as presented in Heaneys poetry. Looking at section III of the poem “Kinship” we are told how Heaney plunges his sword into
A tawny rut
Opening at my feet
Like a shed skin,
The shaft wettish
As I sank it upright
That this is suggestive of sexual intercourse is inescapable, and serves to connect the Poet, as a man representing his time, directly with the feminised bog representing past times, terrors and fears. This connection with the past is emphasised by the poets twinning of his spade with “that obelisk:”. This part of the poem ends with one of the most powerful images in “North”, and is difficult to read without feeling a shudder of fearful excitement:
I stand