|
::
Back to Page 1 ::
The poem reveals its central themes through a network
of allusions, the juxtapositon of past and present,
and patterns of imagery. Sex and licentious behaviour
seems to be Eliot's obsession in the poem with three
explicit accounts and many allusions to famous historical
and mythical figures whose downfall is caused by this
behaviour or recounted with regret. The Fisher King
is a key symbol in the poem and the quest for meaning
in the poem is parallel with the quest for the Holy
Grail. The Fisher King was the custodian of the Grail
and he loses control of it after he is sexually wounded
and made impotent. His impotence and lack of fertility
is reflected on his kingdom which also becomes infertile.
He has the final voice in the poem, 'I sat upon the
shore/Fishing, with the arid plain behind me/Shall I
at least set my lands in order?' In the myth he is saved
in the end by Parsifal, who can achieve this as he is
innocent and pure and has been able to rescue the King
as he had conquered earthly pleasure, which is alluded
to earlier in the poem.
The reader needs to know the context of many of the
allusions as they are not explicit in their relation
to the topic. The Parsifal allusion ('Et O ces voix
d'enfants chantant dans la coupole') refers to children
in the chapel but relates to the washing of Parsifal's
feet before entering the sanctuary of the Grail. The
lines 'To Carthage then I came' is an allusion of St
Augustine's 'Confessions' but again it must be seen
in the context that he recalling his wild, licentious
youth.
Temptation must be overcome for an individual to live
fully and in the modern world it is the temptations
of the material world that is in the ascendent. This
way of living must die and be reborn and this form of
redemption in paramount in the allusions to Christianity,
Hinduism and Buddhism. Those who believe only in the
temporal body and the material world are lost: they
are the infertile barren soil, the parched earth that
dominates the earlier parts of the poem. This soil and
correspondingly those in society, need rain and this
can only come with belief. The final section of the
poem, 'What the Thunder Said', is at least hopeful as
the thunder is the forerunner of a storm and rain.
The image of dryness and infertility dominate the earlier
parts of the poem. The earth is seen as ' the dead land'
with 'dull roots', a 'stony rubbish' which nothing will
grow. In this desolation there is no hope for life:
'And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no
relief,/And the dry stone no sound of water.' These
images of desolation are metaphorically linked to the
lack of spiritual belief and loveless relationships
in the modern world. In Section Two, 'A Game of Chess'
an allusion to the splendour of Cleopatra ('The Chair
she sat in, like a burnished') is juxtaposed with the
pretentiousness of the neurasthenic woman. The world
of fertility and love is replaced with alienation, loneliness
and implied sterility ('My nerves are bad tonight..
Stay with me/Speak to me').
She finds nothing to fill her days and her life is
empty and purposeless ('What shall we do now. What shall
we ever do?') This middle class setting is then juxtaposed
with the working class pub scene where again the talk
shows a woman whose life is endless child-rearing and
finally made ill by an abortion.
The spiritual emptiness initially shown in images of
desolation and dryness are echoed again in the third
section, 'The Fire Sermon', where loveless relationships
are shown in detail. The typist passively has sex and
feels total emptiness, shown to act more like an automaton
than a human as reflected in the final image of her,
'She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, and puts
a record on the gramophone.' In this section it explores
the modern world debased by meaningless couplings, by
directionless passion devoid of spiritual values and
physical joy. After the typist scene and sex in the
canoe in Richmond we here the central plight in the
poem spoken 'I can connect/ Nothing with nothing', and
lines from Buddha's 'Fire Sermon' which relate to purification
through fire - 'Burning burning burning burning/ O Lord
Thou pluckest me out'. Throughout Section Three the
symbolism of fire has been aligned with human passion,
jealosy and anger - all traits that destroy and consume,
however this is finally juxtaposed with fire as a source
of purification and renewal.
If images of desolation and dryness echo through the
first half of the poem there is always the suggestion
of water. Indeed the spiritual drought of the waste
land gives rise for a yearning for water, both for relief
and renewal. The imagery and symbolism of water is a
little more complex as there is a need for rain and
its metaphorical correspondence with spirituality and
belief, but as stated by Madame Sosostris there is a
fear of drowning ('Fear death by water'). The allusion
to Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' ('Those are pearls that
were his eyes') refer to Alonso and Ferdinand who are
caught in storm and presumed drowned before they experience
a 'sea change' and are transformed through drowning.
This is important as fear may keep people from undergoing,
metaphorically transforming their modern lives, but
it can bring about salvation. This is also the theme
in Section Four, which is aptly named 'Death by Water',
where Phlebas the Phoenician drowns. On one level it
relates to the Christian baptism where one must go beneath
the water to rise again and be saved. This rebirth imagery
occurs in many ancient ceremonies but in this case it
shows that water has the power to purify. Phlebas now
forgets the materialism of this world with his connection
to commerce (Forgot ... the profit and loss') and uses
traditional archetypes and symbols - the whirlpool and
turn of the wheel - to show the cyclic nature of existence
and rebirth.
It is in the last section, 'What the Thunder said'
that the reader is returned to the wasteland with its
images of dryness, stone and rock. It has been a quest
for meaning, for seeking the Grail that would restore
life and has allusions to Christ on the road to Emmaus
after his resurrection and the approach to the Chapel
Perilous where the Grail awaits. Yet the images of desolation
are even more pronounced in the early part of Section
Five ('After the agony in stony places', 'Here is no
water but only rock', 'Dead mountain mouth of carious
teeth that cannot spit') suggesting that the suffering
is greatest at this time. Nevertheless there is hope
as the thunder may bring rain. There is nowhere in this
section where rain actually falls, but the harsh images
of dryness give way to more evocative and lush images,
despite being framed by the conditional 'If there were
water'. The lines are musical - 'But sound of water
over a rock/Where the hermit thrush sings in the pine
trees/ Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop' - and makes
the sound of rain and at least alleviate the former
desolation.
The Thunder heralds the possibility of rain and thus
a way out of the sterility of the Waste Land. The title
is from one of Hindu Upanishads and delivers a way of
living that will restore the individual and society.
Datta means to give, Dayadhvam is self control and,
Damyata to show compassion.
Themes/Issues/Values
* The Wasteland is a critique of modern society. The
main problems in the modern world alluded to in the
poem concern the lost of meaning and faith. In this
condition people look for meaning in the external and
superficial; in essence the material world. It explores
this crisis in belief that pervaded twentieth century
Western culture.
* It explores the theme of a desolated land in need
of rebirth which parallels the state of contemporary
Western culture
* Many of Eliot's early poems concern the individual
in conflict with society: the mindless routines that
alienate those entrapped by social rituals and materialism.
In The Wasteland Eliot for the first time deals with
civilisation as much as the individual. He is reacting
to a world without order and meaning, a godless and
dying civilisation where the 'certain certainties' of
traditional society had been undermined by Science,
the theories of Darwin and Freud, the social analysis
of Marx and the philosophy of Nietzsche. These come
to a climax in World War 1 where the teleological belief
in Science and Progress brings only greater destruction.
It is a world that needs spiritual renewal according
to Eliot.
The world portrayed at the beginning of the poem reveals
a barren Western world of sexual and regenerative incapacity
and Eliot turns to Eastern religion, in particular the
Hindu philosophy of the Vedas, for an answer to the
problems of the world: Datta (give), Dayadhvam (sympathise),
Damyata (control).
The poem's major theme centres on the desolated land
that needs rebirth. This is the Wasteland, a symbol
of the Western world, a place that is culturally and
spiritually barren.
* Eliot endorses traditional, conservative values that
re-establish cultural hierarchies. He wants a return
to religious values where individuals live by their
faith and this purportedly gives meaning. In The Wasteland
Eliot is radical in his style of poetry and also his
critique of modern society, but his values are never
far away from being intellectualised versions of prudish
moral codes. The poem is critical of modern sexual behaviour
and though calling for the more romantic, courtly love
of the past, Eliot can be seen to have an adversion
to sexuality itself. In the poem it is 'earthly temptation',
and must be transcended to more spiritual vaues which
are deemed superior.
Allusions
One of the main modernist techniques used by Eliot
is to understand and contain the chaos of the present
through mythology. For Eliot myth was not simply a set
of tales in the past but a way of understanding the
modern world. Eliot uses references to vegetation rites
(from Jessie Weston's 'From Ritual to Romance'), religious
archetypes and anthropological practices in Frazer's
'The Golden Bough', St Augustine's 'Confessions', Christ,
the Fisher King, Parsifal and the Holy Grail as well
as numerous literary allusions. He employs the contrast
between modern life and the ancient (as well as the
Elizabethan) world order as a way of criticising what
he sees as the meaningless disorder of the contemporary
world. All these beliefs and practices gave their adherents
a way of understanding themselves and their place in
the universe, while the modern world is adrift because
of this loss.
The poem's opening lines allude to Chaucer's 'The Canterbury
Tales', which also deals with an April journey, an annual
pilgrimage for spiritual regeneration (to Becket's shrine
at Canterbury). This is also the central theme in The
Wasteland as the poem marks the progress out of the
spiritual and cultural wasteland to a place where individual
spirituality and a collective civilisation can experience
renewal and rebirth.
If images of desolation and dryness echo through the
first half of the poem there is always the suggestion
of water. Indeed the spiritual drought of the waste
land gives rise for a yearning for water, both for relief
and renewal. The imagery and symbolism of water is a
little more complex as there is a need for rain and
its metaphorical correspondence with spirituality and
belief, but as stated by Madame Sosostris there is a
fear of drowning ('Fear death by water'). The allusion
to Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' ('Those are pearls that
were his eyes') refer to Alonso and Ferdinand who are
caught in storm and presumed drowned before they experience
a 'sea change' and are transformed through drowning.
This is important as fear may keep people from undergoing
a metaphorical transformation in their modern lives,
but it can bring about salvation. This is also the theme
in Section Four, which is aptly named 'Death by Water',
where Phlebas the Phoenician drowns. On one level it
relates to the Christian baptism where one must go beneath
the water to rise again and be saved. This rebirth imagery
occurs in many ancient ceremonies but in this case it
shows that water has the power to purify. Phlebas now
forgets the materialism of this world with his connection
to commerce (Forgot ... the profit and loss') and uses
traditional archetypes and symbols - the whirlpool and
turn of the wheel - to show the cyclic nature of existence
and rebirth.
In Section Two, 'A Game of Chess' an allusion to the
splendour of Cleopatra ('The Chair she sat in, like
a burnished') is juxtaposed with the pretentiousness
of the neurasthenic woman. The world of fertility and
love is replaced with alienation, loneliness and implied
sterility ('My nerves are bad tonight.. Stay with me/Speak
to me'). She finds nothing to fill her days and her
life is empty and purposeless ('What shall we do now.
What shall we ever do?') This middle class setting is
then juxtaposed with the working class pub scene where
again the talk shows a woman whose life is endless child-rearing
and finally made ill by an abortion.
Temptation must be overcome for an individual to live
fully and in the modern world it is the temptations
of the material world that is in the ascendent. This
way of living must die and be reborn and this form of
redemption in paramount in the allusions to Christianity,
Hinduism and Buddhism. Those who believe only in the
temporal body and the material world are lost: they
are the infertile barren soil, the parched earth that
dominates the earlier parts of the poem. This soil and
correspondingly those in society, need rain and this
can only come with belief. The final section of the
poem, 'What the Thunder Said', is at least hopeful as
the thunder is the forerunner of a storm and rain.
In the 'Fire Sermon' classical allusions to St Augustine
and Buddha are used for their well known restraint from
the physical to contrast with the sexual activities
of the typist, Belladonna and Lil. It is used as a critique
of modern values concerning sexuality and like the movement
of the whole poem it attempts to shed physical temptation
and yearns for transcendence ('Burning ... O Lord Thous
puckest me out')
The allusions to the myth of Tristan and Isolde with
lines from Wagner's opera of the couple serve to show
how the ecstasy of love is replaced with the desolation
of loss after Tristan dies while Isolde is sailing to
him ('Oed und leer das Meer' - 'Empty and waste the
sea') This echoes the loss of love in contemporary society
as well as contrasting the pure, emotional love of Tristan
and Isolde with the mechanical and passionless sex witnessed
in the urban scenes.
The poem reveals its central themes through a network
of allusions, the juxtapositon of past and present,
and patterns of imagery. The Fisher King is a key symbol
in the poem and the quest for meaning in the poem is
paralleled with the quest for the Holy Grail. The Fisher
King was the custodian of the Grail and he loses control
of it after he is sexually wounded and made impotent.
His impotence and lack of fertility is reflected on
his kingdom which also becomes infertile. This can be
seen as an allegory for the predictament of modern civilisation
as the dry, barren earth is a symptom of the lack of
traditional values. In some versions he receives his
wound after having illicit sex with a temptress and
this links with frequent scenes that are critical of
sexual behaviour in modern society. He is also similar
to the Sibyl of Cumae who yearns for death as he is
in so much pain that he wishes to die.
He can only be saved by someone pure and innocent and
this is Parsifal. He has conquered earthly pleasure
and in the myth Parsifal saves him simply by believing
in the Grail Castle and by asking the question, 'Who
does the Grail serve?' or in other words, 'Who is God?'
The Fisher King is restored and his kingdom is again
made fertile. Parsifal's journey to the Chapel Perilous
is alluded to in the final parts of the poem ('There
is the empty chapel, only the wind's home'), but it
is now in ruins, just like modern civilisation, and
there seems no certainty that the quest can be achieved,
though there is a suggestion of rain, albeit only a
'damp gust'.
The poem then shifts to the words of the Thunder and
perhaps redemption, a way of living that will bring
back meaning. The Thunder heralds the possibility of
rain and thus a way out of the sterility of the Waste
Land. The title is from one of the Hindu Upanishads
and delivers a way of living that will restore the individual
and society. Datta means to give, Dayadhvam is self
control, and Damyata to show compassion. These traits
present an attitude to life that transcends the egocentrism
and materialism of Western society and offers an alternative
to the emptiness prevalent in the European society.
Significantly these allusions seek wisdom from eastern
philosophy and religion as the western models are in
ruins. The final lines of the poem, 'Shantih, shantih,
shantih' are also from the Hindu Upanishads and mean
'The peace that passeth understanding'. This has been
the object of the quest throughout the poem, yet the
poem still ends ambiguously as the last stanza is made
up of fragements ('Hieronymo's mad againe') that suggest
that this state of peace has not been totally achieved.
The Fisher King and the Holy Grail
The Holy Grail was the cup in which Christ drank wine
at the Last Supper and also the same cup that Joseph
of Arimathea collected the blood of Christ's wounds
at the Cross. It symbolises the truth and knowledge
needed to achieve the experience of salvation. It is
this salvation and redemption, a spiritual renewal that
is at the centre of the quest in The Wasteland.
The Fisher King was the keeper of the Grail, but he
is tricked by evil forces into sin (sex) and while he
is in the act (just after actually) he is speared by
Klingsor (representing earthly tempatation and evil)
in the leg. His wound will never heal and he is in great
pain and wishes to die (like the Sibyl of Cumae). It
is prophesised that he can only be healed when the spear
that had wounded him is brought back to him and that
the only one who can achieve this is an innocent knight.
This figure is Parsifal who goes in search of the Holy
Grail and finally defeats Klingsor (by being pure and
not succumbing to earthly pleasures) and returns the
spear. The Fisher King and his kingdom is restored.
Dante
'Poi s'ascose nel foc che gli afflina' - "and
I pray you, by that Virtue which guides you to the top
of the stair, be reminded in time of pain'. Significantly
these are the final lines of Arnaut Daniel, the late
twelfth century poet, in Purgatory for his lust in his
encounter with Dante. After this is spoken Arnaut hides
himself in the fire that purifies them.
In all these cases concerning the Grail myth and Dante's
cosmology the earthly temptations of the body are at
the core of sin and suffering. These must be overcome;
a higher quest is needed, a spiritual quest that transcends
the body and will bring salvation.
'Quando fiam uti chelidon' - 'When shall I become like
the swallow'. This allusion to the Tereus-Philomela-Procne
myth echoes release and redemption.
Imagery
Contrast between images of aridity and fertility, procreation/sterility,
desert/water - opposition of male/female enmeshed in
these.
religious images
images of city
past and present (contemporaneity and antiquity) constantly
juxtaposed to show the richness of the former, while
modern society only offers up 'broken images' and dryness,
loveless relationships (typist and the clerk)
11. Seamus Heaney
'Digging' is one of Heaney's poems, written at a time
when his poetry was more concerned with the personal
- his relationships to his family and the rural world
in which he was born. In the poem Heaney memorialises
the cycles of manual labour on his family's farm - digging
up potatoes and cutting turf on the bog. On one level
this seems hardly the material that might engage a poet,
but in celebrating the familial and the local, Heaney
is drawing attention to the significance of ordinary
people on the land as well as atrtempting to find his
place in the world and the very nature of this relationship
to that world.
'Digging' is centrally concerned with the alienation
felt by the speaker and the need to negotiate the distance
between origins and the present circumstances. In the
Ireland when he was growing up Heaney was the first
generation which the working class had access to extended
education, and the reader sees the difference between
the poet inside by the window writing while his father
still needs to labour on the land. In one sense the
literal positions of father and son - one high at the
window, the other low on the ground - shows the cultural
distance between them. Similarly, the shift in the speaker's
class position, having changed from the difficult circumstances
of small farm life to educated middle class security,
is registered in the privileged position occupied by
the speaker,as he has the luxury of being able to sit
by and observe his father labouring outside.
The speaker is fully aware of his privileged position
and feels, if not guilt then a sense that he has been
cut off from some integral part of his former life,
as symbolised by his relationship to the act of digging.
In the poem digging serves to establish asense of historical
continuity: the father's digging at that present moment
shifts to twenty years ago, 'Bends low, comes up twenty
years away/Stooping in rhythm through the potato drills/Where
he was digging.' This past activity of the father is
in turn linked to the work of prior generations, following
the same course in life: 'By God, the old man could
handle a spade./Just like his own old man.' In these
lines there is a great sense of proud in the simple
lives of his ancestors, which he is no longer a part.
The poem does show that the speaker did feel an affinity
to this tradition when he was younger when he recalls
picking up potatoes unearthed by his father's digging:
'He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.'
The speaker clearly shows this affinity in the way
he describes his love for their 'cool hardness', and
suggests a connectedness between the young boy and the
land. In a similar vein, the speaker recalls having
'carried him milk in a bottle/Corked sloppily with paper'
to his grandfather as he worked cutting turf on 'Toner's
bog'. In both of these instances, while the boy's role
is peripheral to the activity of digging, he is nonetheless,
connected with that activity abd the traditional continuities
that it embodies. By contrast, the adult speaker feels
entirely disconnected from this world. As an adult he
should be expected to take up his place in the fields
but he is now forced to observe from the house: 'I've
no spade to follow men like them'.
The poem had opened on the lines, 'Between my finger
and my thumb/The squat pen rests; snug as a gun', and
now concludes repeating the lines, except replacing
the last section with 'I'll dig with it'. The opening
suggests through the simile of gun that his writing
may venture into the outside problems of the world using
his words as a weapon, but the shift from a weapon to
a simple farming tool acknowledges that he will be more
concerned with the world in which he grew up. The metaphor
of digging then takes on greater ramifications that
are not just personal. The work he undertakes as a poet
can be a kind of 'labour' of the same order as the work
of his forebears. He can still preserve the continuities
represented by his family by encompassing that farming
world within his poetry. If he cannot literally dig,
he can 'dig' metaphorically, unearthing the details
of the life of his family and community and honouring
them by preserving them in his poetry. In this the poem
ends on a positive note showing thaat continuity has
been established.
Poetry as a form of writing cannot be told in a straight-forward
narrative that simply tells what the speaker sees or
what is happening. The choice of words and image, the
creation of metaphor, the sounds of words and rhythm
are all integral in evoking another level of meaning.
In 'Digging' Heaney shows the act of digging in terms
that transcend the literal action, and shows his attitude
to the work of his father and grandfather. The alliteration
in 'the squelch and slap/Of soggy peat' and 'curt calls';
the assonance in 'The cold smell of potato mould'; and
the onomatopoeia in 'squelch' and 'slap', echoes the
sounds they describe. They visually enact the work being
done as though you can feel and hear the spade going
into the earth. Through this the act of digging is transformed
from simply labour into a way of life, embodying a relationship
with the environment. This is never romanticised though,
it is still hard work done to sustain a livelihood ('his
straining rump' and the way his grandfather has a drink
and immediately returns to 'heaving sods') and the speaker
is fully aware of its hardships, yet is is now something
beyond the act by being told in poetry. This is exactly
what the speaker has in mind when he says that he will
'dig with it'.
The choice of words are of great importance in poetry
as they create have connotations that set up a subtext
to a poem, an underlying set of meanings or metaphorical
relations. This is often achieved through setting up
new correspondences between words, often incongruous.
In the second line the adjective 'squat' is connected
to pen. 'Squat' has the duel meanings of bending the
body closer to the ground and to settle a piece of land,
usually without permission. In this second sense the
word suggests that the pen is out of place in this environment.
The speaker's father has a spade in his hand which is
more fitting to life on a farm while his son has a pen.
It is this very incongruity that makes the speaker feel
alienated in his old home. He is no longer part of the
tradition of the land, but has acquired the more leisurely
status of writer, and it is this very dilemma that he
is exploring in the poem. The physical action of squatting
also has more to do with his father than him - bending
his back out in the fields - than the son who sits comfortably
observing others work. This difference also echoes throughout
the poem, showing how the son's art - his pen - has
caused this distance between them.
In the first stanza the simile, 'snug as a gun' is
also incongruous. The comfort and warmth suggested by
'snug' is a contrast to the cold hardness of the gun
(significantly the potatoes later in the poem are describe
affectionately as 'cool hardness'), however as the ending
shows the pen can be a powerful weapon and in this context
it can present a certain comfort as it can be used as
a means of alleviating oppression or at least telling
the story of people who do not always have a voice in
the political world.
The digging is also concerned with the actual digging
of potatoes that carry great cultural signiifcance to
the Irish. Potatoes have been their staple diet for
centuries and the images of potatoes and their cultivation
draws on a terrible past where a million Irish peasants
died in the potato famines in the nineteenth century.
In this context potatoes are life itself as well as
being a reminder of the great injustices suffered by
the Irish because of the oppressive policies of the
British. In the poem the traditions that the speaker
feels initialliy alienated from include a tradition
of farmers that have had to fight for a living and suffer
greatly from outside forces.
General Notes
Many poems in Death of a Naturalist concern themselves
with the transitions from childhood to maturity, and
particularly with the cost incurred in acquiring the
knowledge that puts an end to childhood innocence. These
include 'Death of a Naturalist', 'The Barn', 'An Advancement
of Learning'. 'Blackberry Picking' and 'Dawn Shoot'.
In 'Personal Helicon', Heaney proclaims that he writes
poetry in order 'to set the darkness echoing'. Heaney's
poems often explore language as a means of examining
reality and the individual's relationship to the world,
and he once said that 'Words themselves are doors' that
open up new ways of understanding. In the final lines
of 'Personal Helicon' the 'darkness' is the unknown,
the things that remain hidden, concepts that have not
been brought into the light and articulated in words.
Whether it is personal fears or social injustices, poetry
is a medium to bring these 'unspoken' attitudes to the
world, to make it 'echo' and resound with force.
In the poem the 'Helicon' is a reference to the mountain
in Greek mythology where the nine muses lived. The streams
that run down the mountain have the power to give those
who drink from it the inspiration to write poetry. It
is in this context that the poem explores the nature
of writing or at least a definition of poetry.
The speaker finds his poetic source in the wells of
the farmyard.
Heaney uses the book, The Bog People, written by P.V.
Glob, in many of his poems. Heaney wrote that the book
'was chiefly concerned with preserved bodies of men
and women found in the bogs of Jutland, naked, strangled
or with their throats cut, disposed under the peat since
early Iron Age times.' He saw in the book a way to focus
a number of his traditional interests, and it offered
him a frame of reference, and set of symbols which he
could deploy in engaging with the present conflict and
its antecedent history.
Glob's book offers an image of a pre-Christian, northern
European tribal society, in which ritual violence is
a necessary part of the structure of life. Most of the
bodies recovered from the Jutlans bogs had been victims
of ritual killings, many of them having served as human
sacrifices to the earth goddess, Nerthus. Heaney detected
a kinship between the pagan civilisations and Irelans's
own Celtic traditions and he used these Iron Age narratives
to explore contemporary atrocities.
Tollund Man
'Tollund Man' was Heaney's first attempt at conflating
his sense of Glob's Jutland rituals with his own sense
of mythic and modern Irish history. The 'Tollund Man'
is one of the recovered bodies featured by Glob in his
book. He was a victim sacrificed to Nerthus, in the
hope of securing a good crop from the land, and it is
in this sense that the speaker describes him, 'Bridegroom
to the goddess'. The speaker imagines the killing of
the Tollund Man and his subsequent burial in the bog
as a kind of violent love-making between victim and
goddess, in which Nerthus, 'opened her fen', preserves
the victim's body by immersing it in her sexual 'dark
juices'. When the Tollund Man is dug up, many centuries
later, the turf cutters discover 'His last gruel of
winter seeds/Caked in his stomach.' As a sacrificial
victim to the goddess of germination, he carries the
potential of germination ('gruel of winter seeds') within
himself rather than in the pockets of the young fighters
in 'Requiem for the Croppies' whose graves sprouted
with the barley from seeds in their pockets when they
fell.
In the second section of the poem the connection between
Jutland and Ireland is made explicit. Both places have
had their innocent victims. Ireland also has killings
that have a certain ritualistic dimension to them. In
the last stanza the speaker recalls an incident in which
bodies of four young Catholics, murdered by Protestant
militants, were dragged along a railway line in an act
of mutilation:
'Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.'
The speaker imagines that, if he addresses a prayer
to the Tollund Man ('risking blasphemy' as a Christian
by aligning himself with pagan rituals), then perhaps
the potential for germination and regeneration inherent
in the Tollund Man's sacrifice, and in his very body
('winter seeds') might be released, not in the victim's
native Jutland, but in contemporary Ireland. It might
'make germinate//The scattered, ambushed/Flesh' of the
sacrificial victims.
In the final section of the poem, the speaker imagines
a visit to the Museum in Aarhus where the Tollund Man
has been in display. Though the names of the region
he passes through ('Tollund, Grabaulle, Nebelgard')
will be alien to him, and the local language unintelligible,
he fancies that, as an Irishman burdened with the weight
of his country's history, he will feel a kinship with
a landscape that has witnessed similar conflict and
killings.
Punishment
Another poem based on Glob's book which centres on
the retrieval of bodies from the bog, is 'Punishment'.
It is about a young woman who has been shorn, stripped,
killed and thrown into the bog as punishment for adultery.
The poem has caused controversy because of the values
it seems to represent concerning the sectarian violence
in Northern Ireland. Through fusing the contemporary
with the past, the poem suggests that such violence
is everpresent throughout history, and in this sense
it seems part of human nature and inevitable. Instead
of blaming the specific government, policies and individual
groups, Heaney opts out by relegating it to some mythical
past instead of the present, and implies that 'such
is the nature of the world'. This has been criticised
as being conservative in its politics as it fails to
confront and engage in the everyday problems and turmoil
which has been caused initially by imperialistic policies
rather than simple human nature.
This is shown early in the poem where the speaker expresses
a sense of identification and empathy with the victim,
but quickly becomes a voyeur (as he explicitly states
later), exercising his male power to take pleasure in
the woman's exposed body:
'I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.
It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
it shakes the frail rigging
of her ribs.'
This conflict between empathising on one hand and watching
passively, is compounded later when the speaker directs
his words to the dead woman: 'My poor scapegoat/I almost
love you/but would have cast, I know/the stones of silence.'
The 'stones of silence' are an allusion to the story
of a woman's adultery in the Bible (John8: 1-12) and
through this allusion conflates pagan and Christain
mythologies, which again serves to shows such stories
happen elsewhere. The speaker indicates that, despite
his attraction to her he would have still been complicit
in her death, if not directly, then certainly by failing
to raise his voice in support of her. In the closing
stanzas of the poem, this sense of troubled complicity
in an act of violence is extended to the contemporary
conflict in Northern Ireland, as the speaker characterises
himself as one who has
'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.'
The speaker acknowledges he sympathises with the motive
of revenge, and this is worse as now it includes those
Catholic women in Heaney's own country who were 'tarred
and feathered' by members of their own community. This
is the 'punishment' of the title as this was inflicted
on those who became involved with members of the British
Army. Like the victims in Danish pre-history, the women
had their heads shaved, before having hot tar and feathers
poured over them and being left tied up in a public
place, as an act of ritual humiliation.
The speaker's attitude to the contemporary punishment,
like his response to the women retrieved from the bog,
is ambiguous. On one hand, he 'connives/in civilised
outrage', yet he finds himself again complicit in the
act of retribution, as he admits that he is able to
understand the rationale for the punitive act. Though
admitting his own complicity it does not change the
idea that the poem accepts the inevitability of violence
and revenge, and offers a bleak portrayal for any hope
of change in Northern Ireland.
Limbo
The poem explores the religious and sexual repression
caused by a dogmatic Catholic Church, whose beliefs
in abortion and the value of female virginity before
marriage has resulted in unmarried girls killing their
new born infants. It is critical of these beliefs showing
them to be archaic and in conflict with the Christian
belief in love and forgiveness.
The title refers to the Catholic doctrine of limbo
being a place where unbaptised children go, which is
neither heaven or hell. The existence of such a place
seems unjust as the infants have done no wrong and the
speaker questions its doctrinal existence as 'Even Christ's
palm, inhealed/Smart and cannot fish here'.
'Limbo' recalls a specific incident in Ballyshannon
where a dead infant is hauled in by fishermen. The trope
of fishing dominates the poem with the dead infant called
a 'minnow', and refered to in the fishing parlance of
'A small one thrown away'. More importantly, the trope
of fishing alludes to Christ, who was known as 'fisher
of men', his disciples were fishermen and the orthodox
symbol of Christianity is the fish. The speaker does
not blame Christ for the death of the child, but the
Catholic brand of Christianity that enforces laws that
seem so uncompassionate and out of touch with the lives
of women in contemporary society. The metaphor of the
infant as a minnow ('He was a minnow with hooks/Tearing
her open') reveals in the image of tearing and hooks
the anguish and loss felt by the mother.
The mother is driven to infanticide by the fear of
social approbation and exclusion as she has sinned against
the laws of the Church. The poem clearly reveals that
it was not a cold-hearted act and now she must live
with the murder of the child haunting her. The killing
is shown ironically in the image of the Christian baptism:
'As she stood in the shallows/Ducking him tenderly'.
Instead of being baptised into eternal life this passage
under water brings death and a fate in limbo. The adverb
'tenderly' shows the love the mother has for her child
and she will never forget this moment. The images of
death and coldness also permeate the poem ('frozen knobs
of her wrists', 'dead as gravel', 'cold glitter of souls')
echoing the mother's psychological state as well as
th last image of 'cold glitter of souls' being an indictment
of the traditional beliefs in Christianity.
The Christian iconography reappears throughout the
poem in the image of the baptism, the Cross and the
palms of Christ. Significantly it is the mother who
is equated with Christ, 'She waded in under/the sign
of her cross', and it seems she is the one who must
suffer like Christ. Also the final lines show the palms
of Christ 'unhealed', suggesting that such social attitudes
are just as harmful as the driving of nails into his
hands by his crucifiers, and that Christ would never
endorse such beliefs; they merely leave old wounds unhealed.
The poem quietly reproves the social and religious
values in contemporary Irish society that result in
the deaths of infants. The speakers sympathises with
the suffering mother and though the murder of a child
can never be supported the poem presents an insights
into the circumstances that lead to such tragedy.
Bye Child
Heaney explores his own Irish culture - one that purports
to live as a community and in Christian benevolence
- by revealing its dark underside. As in the poem 'Limbo'
Heaney examines the effects of Catholic doctrine on
unmarried mothers and illegimate children. Instead of
killing the child to escape social disappproval the
mother in 'Bye-Child' hides him in a henhouse, feeding
him scraps like an animal.
The poem tells of the discovery of the young boy in
the outhouse with the speaker recalling the photograph
he saw of him in the newspaper. It focuses on this photograph
trying to imagine him living in a henhouse, attracted
by the light of the main house and the silence that
he lived in.
The dominant image in the poem is the moon and light.
The boy is attracted to the light of the back window,
with the light being seen in the metaphor of 'A yolk
of light', capturing both the visual image of the lamp
but more importantly associating it to the eggs of hens
and the henhouse which which has been his home since
birth. The boy's face is described in the simile as
'Sharp-faced as new moons/Remembered', called 'Little
moon man' and is associated with the moon in the frail
shape of his body being 'luminous' and weightless'.
On one level the associations with the moon illustrate
the boy's condition - he is separated from the social
world, a world of love and language, as if he was as
cut off from society as being on the moon. The final
stanza echoes this distance, showing how his treatment,
never taught to speak or communicate, reveals the great
distance (from her to the moon - 'Of lunar distance/Travelled
beyond love) between the way the child should have been
nurtured and his animal-like state in the henhouse.
The child is also connection with light throughout
the poem: he is attracted to light of house, he is called
a moon man, the moon being a source of light in the
darkness, he is luminous again reflecting light and
is described having a 'A puzzled love of the light'.
In the end the boy does emerge from the darkness of
his isolation into the light. He is now recognised and
is shown to 'speak' without language for the first time.
This light is in contrast to the images of dryness
and waste (dust,'old droppings', 'dry smells from scraps')
as well as the animal images which reveal the way the
boy has been treated because of fear of social approbation.
"In 'Limbo' and 'Bye-Child' the children are the
scapegoats for the parents, paying the price for the
parents' guilty and socially stigmatised sexuality".
(From Lynch)
animal imagery - seen as a rodent as dog ('Kennelled
and faithful')
|
