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Notes |
Politics in the North of Ireland deserves a paper all its own. To attempt to condense the political situation in the North in a few short chapters is to try and distill the essentials. In such a location, politics becomes more than an argument, or a different point of view on how rules are implemented. Politics is what one becomes born into; the “us” and “them” mentality roots itself at birth and becomes almost impossible to break from. Everything in politics has an historical understanding, the interpretation of which complicates the discussion. The uniqueness of a place like Northern Ireland really comes to the fore when dealing with the implications that such historical political concerns has for the nation’s writers. Tribal bonds remain strong and dictate reactions to writings and opinions; the reader, the audience, are already endowed with a unique sense of preconceived ideas, notions, assumptions. Thus, for the writer, things such as place names and their references and spellings take on a specific meaning and can either enhance or interfere with intended thematic concerns. Furthermore, when turning to specific events or historical moments, the writer leaves himself open to criticism – why that event? Why not the parallel event of hundreds of years earlier? Why isn’t history being given equal discussion and attention as current day? What political message is being espoused? In such a place was Seamus Heaney attempting to write. In Heaney's early collections of poetry and prose, there existed a need for the writer to identify his position as a writer growing up in the political turmoil of Northern Ireland. He had to face the influence of both literary and cultural history and choose whether to uphold the ideals that had become central to Northern Ireland writing community, or to branch off and insist on a new approach. Heaney’s ultimate decision was the latter, and he set forth to challenge the Irish romanticism championed by such literary greats as W.B. Yeats and J.M. Synge. Heaney’s life as a writer became a journey to overcome influences and expectations. Like his father and grandfather before him, Heaney would set forth to dig and toil in Northern Ireland; not in the soil of the land, as they did, but in wealth of literary and cultural history, using his pen as his tool as he sought for his own place in the Irish canon. This search is divided into three chapters, each chapter outlining a particular aspect of that journey. First, I will identify the literary heritage to which Heaney was born and demonstrate how Heaney found that heritage to be overly idealistic and, thus, misleading. Next, I will show the guidance that Heaney discovered in the poems of the Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh, and how Kavanagh’s more realistic approach helped Heaney to identify his own style. Finally, I will explore an in-depth reading of Heaney's poetry and prose collections to clarify Heaney’s own literary voice and the place he chose for himself in the canon. This thesis will prove that Heaney uses his writing as a personal exploration to identify his position in the social, political, and literary history of his home country. The inevitable resolution of this exploration is that Heaney’s work is both independent and interdependent; on his path to establishing his literary voice, Heaney had to first embrace and then transcend his contextual influences. This paper's focus is on the idea that Heaney, in order to find his own voice in writing, disregarded the tradition founded by Yeats and Synge. Heaney realized that he did not want to follow their lead of mythology and contemplation which Yeats had sought, nor did he want to depict the Irish as people with heightened and bawdy sensibilities as shown in some of Synge's plays. Heaney's writing chose a different direction to what they had chosen. Instead, his writing favors the more realistic style and attainable existence with an emphasis on the natural that Kavanagh had espoused. I first read Heaney back in the Eighties in a Christian Brother's School in Newry, Northern Ireland. I remember the teacher explaining in detail Heaney's decision in the poem, “Digging,” not to follow his fathers and grandfather's agricultural footsteps and to instead pursue a career in writing. This poignant last line from his most widely read poem was not only an affirmation of a change in the Heaney family traditio,n but it also signaled a change of direction in Ireland's literary history. Ireland's writing culture was changing, also. Heaney, born in County Derry in 1939, began writing seriously in the 1960's, at the same time that demonstrations were taking place in Northern Ireland, during which the Catholics demanded civil rights and equal opportunities, similar to the Civil Rights campaigns that took place in this country. He wanted his poetry to reflect the struggles taking place in the Six Counties but was wary of being labeled a spokesperson of the Nationalist community of which he was a member, or as a poet of what was termed the Troubles. In a sense, he was faced with much the same issues as Yeats and Synge had before him. Heaney attempted to write on the history of his home and not always on the political history. He became aware of the history of Irish writing which had come before him. He looked into Ireland's literary heritage and saw that it was heavily influenced by two giants of Ireland's writing community: Yeats, perhaps the most famous and widely read of all Irish writers, and Synge, a playwright of some renown. Both Yeats and Synge had advocated Irish nationalism through themes of “inspiration.” They believed that Ireland should one day return to its former state of supposed glory, to a time that never really existed, but nonetheless appeared desirable. Yeats' poetry relied heavily on imagery and mythology. His writing relied heavily on the romantic. He favored the life of isolation and meditation. He wrote a play, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, whose theme advocated the shedding of blood for the cause of Ireland, much to the anguish of mothers and brothers and wives-to-be. In Cathleen Ni Houlihan, the old woman travels around gathering young men for Ireland's cause promises glory and legacy. Yeats' writing had inspired young men and women to abandon everything and stand up against British rule in Ireland. Although Ireland eventually gained independence for most of the country, the fighters were often ill-equipped both militarily and politically and maintained a short sighted solution. In Synge's most popular play, The Playboy of the Western World, the characters were viewed as being stereotypical of Irish people and of relying too much on style, as opposed to representing the Irish as they really were. They were often boisterous, violent and full of sentimentality. The characters often seemed laden with charm and wit. Conversations were entertaining and highly stylized, like "Stage Irish" as they were often labeled. In Synge's play, Christy Mahon has recently murdered his father and is attempting to explain himself to a young lady whom he feels is being unkind. "That's an unkindly thing to be saying to a poor orphaned traveler, has a prison behind him, and hanging before, and Hell's gap gaping below” (Synge 38). He continues with the admission of the murder. "I just riz the loy and let fall the edge of it on the ridge of his skull, and he went down at my feet like an empty sack, and never let a grunt or groan from him at all” (Synge 39). The character later tries compliments to evoke sympathy and understanding from the young woman. Both these writers failed to offer Heaney the direction he realized he needed to find and grow his literary voice. Heaney, realizing the opportunity that writing had afforded him, endeavored to “unearth” a more pragmatic approach, an approach not concerned with idealism and seeking glamour. He wanted his writing to celebrate his homeland not enlarge it to something that it wasn't. He remained constant with the fact that although Ireland was fragmented and at times war torn;,it was essential that his writing and his voice reflected a true understanding and an historical significance. He wanted credibility. He also wrote about violence, but from an understanding of its impact on generations and its legacy. He abhorred violence but saw it as ritual and as a passage. S topping short of admitting its necessity, Heaney acknowledges that violence needs to be understood and debated by both sides of the political divide. Heaney's personal search is an interesting one. This paper will show the journey his writing took and the voice he found along the way, rejecting the history of Yeats and Synge before him, relying on the bravery of Kavanagh and finding his own true voice and identity in becoming a great writer. |
