Abeer Basbos Areej Abu-Farah

Hiba Jaferah

PRESENTATION ON:

The Relationship between the Personal and

Political in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry

Supervised by: Mrs. Hanadi Younan

English 216

Seamus Heaney 1939-2013

• He received the Nobel Prize in

1995.

• He was born in Northern

Ireland

• He studied art and work as a

teacher

• He grew up in a rural farm

family

Seamus Heaney

• He wrote “Digging” to show

the turning point in his life.

• He wrote the “Bog Poems”

which portray the violence in

Ireland

• He wrote the “Act of Union”

to document the union of

Ireland and Britain.

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 deepTo scatter new potatoes that we picked,Loving their cool hardness in our hands. By God, the old man could handle a spade.  

DiggingBy God, the old man could handle a spade.   Just like his old man.My grandfather cut more turf in a dayThan any other man on Toner’s bog.Once I carried him milk in a bottleCorked sloppily with paper. He straightened upTo drink it, then fell to right awayNicking and slicing neatly, heaving sodsOver his shoulder, going down and downFor the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slapOf soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edgeThrough living roots awaken in my head.But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests.I’ll dig with it.

Digging

• " Digging" shows the changing

face of Ireland, from a rural

country to a modern industrial

country which plays a role in

identifies Heaney's identity as

a poet.

Digging

• "in a mood of nostalgia, the poet recalls vividly and evocatively how his father and traditional community of his grandfather farmed on land with spades as potato farmers.

• Heaney creates a sense of historical continuity even though he feels he cannot take his place with the traditional laboring generations of his forefathers. Still, he can honor his family and community on his verse.

• "The smell of potato mould, the sucking sound of walking in a damp land, awaken in the poet's mind desire to track his ancestor's path but, he doesn't have a spade. The pen became a spade" (26-29).

Bog Poems

“Bog Queen", “Punishment”, “Strange Fruit” and

“Cassandra” from “Mycenae Lookout” depicts the

suffering of the Irish girls due to the traditions of the

society and the political conflicts.

The Bog Queen

• The queen’s message is to call the Irish

people to rise up

• Heaney has the hope of Ireland's rising and

it appears in the first line of his poem “I lay

waiting” (1)

• “braille for the creeping influences.” (5-6)

Kraemer commented, "Her body was a kind

of text read by touch“

• The poet connects the body with the land

and it's frozen "like the nuzzle of fjords / at

my thighs" (35-36).

• The body survives to rise again "and I rose

from the dark"(53)

Punishment

• He illustrates the cruel punishment of a

young woman who was found killed in the

Iron- age.

• He shows deep sympathy for the girl , in the

first and the third stanzas "I can feel the

tug/…I can see you drowned," (1-3) and in

line 28 "My poor scapegoat“

• For Heaney there is no problem about the

marriage between Irish girl and British

soldiers, but he can't defend this idea

because he would considered betraying

Ireland.

• In the lines "I who have stood dumb When

your betraying sisters" (36-37).

Strange Fruit

• Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod,

Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old

workings. Diodorus Siculus confessed

His gradual ease with the likes of this:

Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible

Beheaded girl, outstaring axe. (Heaney

7-12)

Mycenae Lookout

• “I’d dream of blood in bright webs in

a ford,/Of bodies raining down like

tattered meat/ On top of me asleep”.

(Heaney 34)

• The king should have been told, but

who was there to tell him if not

myself? I willed them to cease and

break the hold of my cross-purposed

silence. (Heaney 41)

Mycenae Lookout

No such thing as innocent bystanding.Her soiled vest, her little breasts, her clipped, devast-ated, scabbed punk head, the char-eyedfamine gawk— she looked camp-fuckedand simple. People could feel

The Act of Union

1-To-night, a first movement, a

pulse, 

2-As if the rain in bog land gathered

head

3-To slip and flood: a bog-burst, 

4-A gash breaking open the ferny

bed.

5-Your back is a firm line of eastern

coast

6-And arms and legs are thrown

7-Beyond your gradual hills. I caress

8-The heaving province where our

past has grown.

9-I am the tall kingdom over your

shoulder

10-hat you would neither cajole nor

ignore.

The First Stanza

According to Antoinette Chan, the poet uses three apostrophes in the first line in order to build up suspense and tension to create a foreshadowing effect on an event about to take place. This first line also represents the sexual arousal between the ‘couple’.

The Act of UnionThe Second

Stanza

15- And I am still imperially16- Male, leaving you with pain, 17- The rending process in the colony, 18- The battering ram, the boom burst from within.19- The act sprouted an obsinate fifth column20- Whose stance is growing unilateral.21- His heart beneath your heart is a wardrum22- Mustering force. His parasitical23- And ignorant little fists already24- Beat at your borders and I know they're cocked25- At me across the water. No treaty26- I foresee will salve completely your tracked27- And stretchmarked body, the big pain

The Act of Union• Heaney confirms on the sexual union

between England and Ireland.

• According to M. Armengol : “The

sexual relation between England and

Ireland leads to the creation of a child

which represents the union.” line (19-

20).

The Act of Union

• The BBC News commented :

• In 1975's Act Of Union, he took the

map of Britain and Ireland and

turned it into an image of a married

couple lying in bed together,

Ireland surrounded and mastered

by the masculine Britain.

Chan, Antoinette. "Written Analysis – Act of Union." English@ESF. Tangient, n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2013.

Heaney, Seamus. North. London: Faber and Faber, 1975. Print

Heaney, Seamus. Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978. New York: Farrar, Straus. Print

Heaney, Seamus. The Spirit Level. New York: The Noonday Press, 1996. Print

Works Cited

M. Armengol, Josep. Atlantis. 1st ed. Vol. 23. N.p.: Aedean, 2001. Gendering The Irish Land: Seamus Heaney's "Act of Union"(1975). JSTOR. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/41055006>.

"Obituary: Seamus Heaney." BBC News. BBC, 30 Aug. 2013. Web. 05 Nov. 2013.

"Punishment: Seamus Heaney - Summary and Critical Analysis." N.p., n.d. Bachelorandmaster. Web. 20 Oct. 2013.