Seamus Heaney's early work : poetic responsibility and the Troubles

Abstract

This monograph tackles the question of poetic duty and responsibility in the poetry of Seamus Heaney, with specific reference to the work he published before moving his family to the relative safety of the Republic of Ireland. It attempts to demonstrate how the first four poetry collections by Heaney exhibit a progression in how the poet, after coming to grips with his artistic vocation, finally discovers the means by which to address the troublesome events that afflicted Northern Ireland at the time. The very first poem in Death of a Naturalist informs us that Heaney is fully committed to use his pen in order to 'dig' (DN 1) in all that constitutes his country. Besides other things this is a declaration by someone willing to do something about the problems of his community. However, the main aim of this study is to show how difficult and at times burdensome has the artistic call been for Heaney. The first two collections give one a picture of a budding poet developing a style ofhis own, as well as creating in his mind the conception of the poet's figure as some sort of diviner, tapping the unknown and retrieving wisdom for his community. We come to see how the image of darkness is used as a symbol of the Jungian collective unconscious to which the poet has special means of access. Death of a Naturalist and Door into the Dark lay the foundations for the poet's engagement with 'external reality' (OG 449) in Heaney's future collections. Wintering Out focuses primarily on the question of the Irish language and investigates the problems elicited by the poet's use of the English language as his poetic medium. In North, Heaney grapples with the dilemma of how best to respond to Northern Ireland's political and religious climate, the dilemma of whether one should use the 'symbolic' or the 'explicit'' mode of poetry-writing. Through a detailed analysis of the poems in these first four collections by Heaney, as well as a consideration of his critical writings, the relationship between the poet and his vocation is examined. The manner by which Heaney at times makes the issue of poetic responsibility the subject of his poetry and the way by which he seeks to break free from too deep a concern with the brutality and division of Ulster are also traced out. By glossing upon the above-mentioned aspects of Heaney's work among others, this study intends to project Heaney's view of 'poetry's ... power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it' (OG 467).