He gained a scholarship to Saint Columba’s College in Derry, which he described as: "from the earth of farm labour to the heaven of education". From there he went on to gain a First Class honours degree from Queen’s University, Belfast. He later took up professorships at Trinity College, University of Dublin, and at Harvard University, in the USA.
1966 saw the publication of his first collection of poems: Death of a Naturalist. In 1992 Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In the circumstances and environment that Seamus Heaney grew up around, it was hardly possible for him to be other than an Irish republican in is his political views and his personal inclinations. He considered himself Irish rather than British, and carried an Irish passport. This is not to say that he was militantly partisan, nor that his ‘Irishness’ was bound up with anti – British sentiments. He was born a product of social and political circumstances that had been manufactured by events of several centuries earlier, but which continued (and still continue) to colour the collective psyche of the people of Ireland, and to blight the landscape of the island of Ireland. (For an overview of the history of the British / Irish ‘troubles’ please see our section: ‘Politics, Society, and the Quest for Change).
Much of Heaney’s poetry is concerned with this conflict, but does not strive to apportion blame or to demonise, on the one hand, nor to glorify on the other; rather, I suggest that his purpose is to impart to the reader an understanding of the long and bitter history of Ireland’s divisions and unrest, and the effect that this has inevitably had on the psyche of the people there, generation after generation… In what is described as his ‘Declaration of Independence’, Heaney stated that: “poetry can never be reduced to a political, historical or moral issue ". This must be borne in mind when attempting to analyse his work…
‘Death of a Naturalist’ is Heaney’s first published collection of poems. As with all great poetry (and all great literature) the work can be read and in interpreted in a number of different ways – and themes and possible inner meanings surmised and analysed.
On the surface the work appears to be a recollection of his childhood and youth spent on the family farm, and an overview of Irish life and history, but the opening poem ‘Digging’ (which has that theme – and is, ostensibly, about his memories of watching his father at work), is, I suggest, an invitation to the reader to do just that with his poems: dig deeper...
The poem itself suggests Heaney’s exploration of Irish history, and his personal search for an Ireland and an Irish identity that lived up to the myth and glorification that is the currency of all nationalities when describing their own – and he has to look for it in the past, because, in his honesty and truthfulness, he sees through this nationalistic mythology – and reality, in his lifetime, does not live up to it. In the short fifth stanza Heaney marvels:
‘By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.’
The sixth stanza describes how his grandfather was even greater than his father:
‘My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.’
Tellingly the stanza concludes with:
‘Going down and down For the good turf. Digging.’
This is an indication of what I have suggested the poem to be about: Heaney’s search for that mythical Ireland and ‘Irishness’ – leading him to the past. The poem concludes with Heaney’s lamenting his own shortcomings, and, I contend, by extension the shortcomings of the present, and of reality – beside the radiant glow of the mythology, and all he can do is search for some trace of truth in that mythology in the only way he can:
‘But I’ve no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it.’
Mid-Term Break is the most poignant of the poems in the collection. In it Heaney recalls the tragic death of his younger brother, who died, aged just four, when he was struck by a car. He describes the grief of his father:
‘In the porch I met my father crying…’ (2nd Stanza line 1)
and his mother, stronger than his father in coping with her maternal grief:
‘…my mother held my hand In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.’ (4th stanza line 3 – 5th stanza line 1).
For me this poem, like all of Heaney’s poems, is about more than a moving recollection of personal tragedy – it tells the reader that he is someone who has experience personal loss, and of the grief and pain that it causes. It is, I suggest, Heaney’s way of trying to caution people away from the rhetoric and the glorification of conflict – to bring home to them its consequences in personal grief. Stanza’s 6 and 7 suggest this theme most compellingly:
’ …Snowdrops and candles soothed the bedside; I saw him for the first time in six weeks. Paler now, Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple… No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear…’
The scene is one of the deceased now sanitized – beautified – and serene. The ugliness of death and injury has been salved away. Yet in this depiction Heaney refers to a ’poppy bruise’, and ‘no gaudy scars’: I contend that this alludes to the poppy as a symbol of remembrance in the U.K – but used in a militaristic way which, in its way, glorifies conflict, and sanitizes the horrific reality of death in warfare. In this way, I suggest, Heaney cautions people about how we are fooled again and again into ‘airbrushing out’ the horrors, the grief and the pain of war – and duped into believing in its glory. Heaney experienced this pain and loss whilst still only a child himself. It must, surely, have coloured his thinking.
title poem in this collection, 'Death of a Naturalist', is a nice example of a poem that illustrates the freedom of analysis that makes literature a joy to study. Many years ago, after analysing that poem, I had a friendly debate (over a few beers!) about the piece - with a teacher of English Literature, and a few students. Ostensibly, ‘Death of a Naturalist’ is about Heaney, as a kid, falling out of love with squelching around in ponds and pools trawling for frogspawn and what not, and learning about nature in school:
‘But best of all was the warm thick slobber Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water…’ (1st stanza: lines 8-9);
‘Then one hot day when the fields were rank.
With cowdung in the grass and angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges to a coarse croaking…
…gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped: The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat poised like mud grenades…
… I was sickened, turned, and ran…’ (2nd stanza lines 1 – 13).
I contended that this might be seen as Heaney’s rejection of any consideration of his becoming militantly involved in the mechanisms of Irish nationalism – as a device or orator: a rhetorician.
Heaney will – like all kids at school in every country – have been taught about his country’s history in a favourable and glorifying light, at school and, I imagine, at home. (By this I mean Irish, rather than British history: Heaney attended Roman Catholic schools in British governed Ulster, and the education in these differed – if only somewhat – from that in the mainstream state schools). However, referring back to my analysis of the previous poems, I suggest that Heaney’s ‘seeing through’ the mythology – which is always based on glorified accounts of history - and his caution to people to hear the words of one who has experienced personal grief – and not to fall for rhetorical war mongering, along with his own ‘Declaration of Independence’ (see above: paragraph 3), supports my contention that ‘Death of a Naturalist’ may be read as Heaney’s refusal to become in any way militantly involved in the Irish nationalist cause – and have his poetry ‘reduced to a political, historical or moral issue.’
The imagery of ‘angry frogs’ (2:2); ‘a coarse croaking I had not heard before’ (2:4); gross-bellied frogs were cocked [military imagery: like a gun?]; ‘The slap and plop were obscene threats’; (2:9); ‘Poised like mud grenades’ (2;10), and finally the closing of the poem:
'The great slime kings were gathered there for vengeance and I knew that if my dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.’ (2: 11-13),
all indicates to me that Heaney had, as a child, revelled in the innocent telling of history in a glorified light, but in adulthood – in a troubled country – saw how this could be used and distorted to promote fear, conflict, and vengeance; and he, as a writer and intellectual, must not become the implement of that - but would be dragged into it if he ‘dipped his hand’…
My argument did not convince my companions – but that’s what makes great poetry – and all great literature: it’s open to interesting debate, opinion and analysis.... 🤔
This short sketch has, I hope, given some insight into genius of one of the greatest poets alive today – and one of the greatest poets who has ever lived…
I’ll end with a brief mention of another poem from the collection: the beautiful love poem, called simply: Poem (For Marie). It is dedicated to the woman who was the love of Seamus Heaney’s life: his wife Marie. I’ll leave this one un-picked over; I’ll just quote the opening two lines, and give the great man the last word:
‘Love, I shall perfect for you the child
Who diligently potters in my brain...’ (1:1-2).
(M).
Textual content:
© Copyright. MLM Arts 17. 07. 2012: Edited and re-posted: 20.10.2013. 19. 02. 2016. Edited and re-posted: 17. 07. 2019. Edited and re-posted: 06. 05. 2020
