seamus heaney h a a
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
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.