Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Irish Identity in Seamus Heaney's Poem "Digging"

Irish Identity in Seamus Heaney’s Poem “Digging”
Ipatia Apostolides
May 23, 2020

Digging
by Seamus Heaney

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 deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
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.


Seamus Heaney’s poem “Digging” was originally published in Death of a Naturalist in 1966. The poem describes the speaker looking out his window and seeing his father digging in the flowerbeds. The speaker contemplates that twenty years ago, his father and grandfather both dug for potatoes, and how he has broken that tradition by writing instead of digging. Yet there is more to the poem than first meets the eye. I will cover several aspects of the poem, like its structure, title, symbolism, and sensory detail. I will also show how the dominant theme in “Digging,” which demonstrates the act of digging, is linked to the speaker’s Irish past, or roots.

Heaney’s poem “Digging,” written in first person point-of-view, gives the impression of being a personal poem (3-4). It begins with the first stanza consisting of two eight-syllable rhyming lines followed by the second stanza consisting of two ten-syllable rhyming lines and one eight-syllable rhyming line. The third stanza consists of four lines, and here the pattern changes from traditional rhyme to nonrhyming verse. This nonrhyming verse with varying syllabic meters, including iambic pentameter, continues until the end; with five lines in the fourth stanza, two lines in the fifth stanza, seven lines in the sixth stanza, four lines in the eighth stanza, and three lines in the last stanza. Essentially, the speaker has begun with traditional rhyming verse in the first 5 lines and switches to modern, non-rhyming verse for the rest of the poem.

The speaker’s inactive stance is evident here: “Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests; snug as a gun,” and he is just sitting there (lines 1-2). According to Goes, the speaker “is preparing to write, or perhaps, is unable to write and is merely sitting dumbstruck as he attempts to” (2). Another form of inactivity is shown in the “squat pen,” which suggest that his pen is squatting, or doing nothing, just like he is. 

The physical act of digging commences with the speaker’s father. The speaker looks out the window and goes into minute detail about the process of his father digging among the flower beds (lines 5-6), and then he reminisces twenty years ago when his father dug potatoes: “Bends low, comes up twenty years away/Stooping in rhythm through potato drills/ Where he was digging” (lines 7-9). Line 7 gives a smooth transition from the present moment to twenty years into the past. The majority of the poem focuses on the digging done by his father and grandfather, denoting two generations of diggers. This shows a time in Irish history where digging potatoes was a way of life and a way to feed the family.

The speaker also plays a role in his familial past; he assisted in some part of this digging process. For example, the speaker mentions that he picked new potatoes along with others, presumably his siblings: “To scatter new potatoes that we picked/Loving their cool hardness in our hands” (lines 13-14). According to Goes, editor of the Hog Creek Review, a literary journal of the Ohio State University at Lima, the speaker “is at the center of action,” and he identifies himself as being a member of a group by using the word “we.” In addition, the speaker mentions: “Once I carried him milk in a bottle/ Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up/ To drink it, then fell to right away” (lines 19-21. This act of taking milk to his grandfather symbolizes a feminine, supportive role. It also means that what his grandfather was doing probably was too difficult a task for the speaker, who must have been a young child at the time. Yet the speaker participated in an indirect way by bringing milk to his grandfather. 

The title in the poem is significant because the act of digging has more than one connotation. Digging could consist of actual digging, which falls into the realm of naturalism. For art and literature, naturalism is defined in the dictionary as a realistic depiction of detail, and it focuses on the natural world. Heaney appears to be dealing with the natural world. Digging can also be symbolic. 

The symbolism of digging can refer not only to the physical act of digging, but also to the past. By referring to “twenty years” away (line 7), the speaker guides the reader to reflect upon his past, as if he were digging into it. In addition, using similar words, through metaphor, is a good way to show double meanings and denote symbolism. In the following phrases: “I look down,” (line 5), “Bends low” (line 7), and “going down and down” (line 23), may symbolically refer to the speaker’s father’s and grandfather’s hard manual labor in the past which represented Ireland’s past, and where the Irish, due to British Imperialism, were forced to live in poverty. “I look down” (line 5) could also suggest how the British looked down on the Irish in the past. The “roots” in the following phrase: “Through living roots awaken in my head”  (line 27), can refer to the speaker’s familial roots. There are the roots from the flowers and potatoes, and then there are the living familial roots in the speaker’s head. 

Another symbol in this poem is the gun; it could be symbolic of the sexual act. This is revealed in “snug as a gun” (line 2), “the spade sinks into” (line 4), “straining rump” (line 6), and even “the shaft” (line 10). In the natural world, the sexual act produces offspring, and in this case, the act of digging produces potatoes or crops. The gun in the second line could also represent fighting for a cause, yet it rests, where the speaker has the ability or potential to fight with words. 

The speaker’s use of sensory detail abounds in this poem; he sees, hears, and even smells in the poem. These details include the following concrete words: pen, gun, flowerbeds, boot, knee, spade, hands, potatoes, turf, shoulders, and milk, among others. When the speaker states what he sees, as in: “I look down” from the window, and what he hears, as in the “clean rasping sound” (line 3), the reader is there with him, seeing and hearing. Later, the speaker talks about the sound of the spade sinking into the “gravelly ground” (line 4), as well as the sound of “the squelch and slap” (line 25), and these sounds bring realism and naturalism to the poem. In addition, the sense of smell, as seen in line 25, “The cold smell of potato mould” is evident in  these few words. Although smell is not “cold,” the cold in this phrase represents the coolness of the damp earth where the mold grows.

A central theme to this poem is Irish identity. This has been a topic that has been a central theme in many Irish poets’ works, and being under British rule in the 19th century and early 20th century meant that the Irish were inevitably poor, which was a stark reality of their Irish culture. Both Heaney and Yeats were Irish poets. W.B. Yeats was born in Ireland in 1865 and grew up as a Protestant with the Irish revolting against the British (Finneran). Heaney was born in 1939 in Northern Ireland and grew up as a Catholic (Heaney). 

Their Irish identity was important to them, and it shows in their poems, even though they came from different religious backgrounds and time periods. During the 1840s to 1890s, the Irish peasant was tagged as “Paddy,” a comic Irish buffoon due to their post-famine emigration into the English slums (Hirsch 1119). The Irish Literary Revival revolved around Yeats’s writing; and it tried to change the “Paddy” image into a “natural” aristocrat by idealizing them (1120). Although Yeats liked to idealize and romanticize the Irish past, this romanticizing of the “peasant” was not necessarily the truth, because Yeats didn’t really know them, since much of his life was spent in Sligo, Dublin, or in Coole Park. As a result, the question I raise is “What is the real Irish man’s identity?” The Irish man’s identity really begins when he is liberated from Britain. As long as the Irish were ruled by Britain, their identity was not their own. Even though he was a romantic, Yeats’s “Easter 1916” poem attempts to mark this historical uprising in 1916 of Ireland against Britain, and in line 41, the speaker emphasizes Ireland’s unified front: “Hearts with one purpose alone” (Finneran 76). This was a turning point in Ireland’s history with Britain.

Another significant aspect of the Irish identity was the role that poverty played in their lives. According to the May 18, 2020 lecture by Dr. Frazier (University of the Cumberlands), the Irish were cultivating potato crops but the British were confiscating them, leaving the Irish to be hungry. Hirsch states, “The overwhelming squalor and poverty in the West during the horrible years of the famine also led English writers to conclude that the Irish existed on a lower rung of the Darwinian ladder” (1119). 

Heaney’s “Digging” poem refers to the Irish man’s years of famine, where growing potatoes was an integral part of that life; and it’s depicted through his personal experience with his grandfather: “My grandfather cut more turf in a day/Than any other man on Toner’s bog” (lines 17-18). Equating the Irish past with poverty can also be seen in the “coarse boot” (line 10) which portrays an old boot that is not shiny or new, but a boot of a hardworking man who has used it often in his work. Also, the bottle that was “Corked sloppily with paper” (line  20) reveals that there is no cork, which may have been lost or misplaced, but a substitute cork made of paper. Milk, readily available from the cow, was the food of the poor. These well-chosen and well-placed words give rich detail to the “Digging” poem, bringing the reader into the speaker’s humble Irish past, and making it real for them. Poems like this, that deal directly with the Irish past, help piece together the true Irish man’s identity.

The ending lines of the poem brings it to a full circle as the speaker reminds us again of the squat pen and how he will “dig with it” (line 31). In essence, there are two different ways to earn a living through digging, either through the physical process of digging, or through digging with the mind and pen. By tying into the Irish past with the digging of potatoes, the speaker reminds us that the act of digging is not always an activity reserved for flowerbeds, but was useful at one time for making a living and feeding the poor. The speaker also reveals how he now has a choice to dig with his pen rather than with the lowly spade, and through this, reminds us that his father and grandfather did not have that option during their poverty-stricken Irish lives. 


                                                      Works Cited

Finneran, Richard J., editor. The Yeats Reader: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose. By W.B. Yeats. 2nd ed., Scribner, 2002.

Goes, Adam. “Digging into Society: The Hierarchy of the Poet and the Working Man.” Hog Creek Review. https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/79431/5/LIMA_HCR_2012_ESSAY_Goes.pdf

Heaney, Seamus. “Digging.” 100 Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008, pp 3-4.
Hirsch, Edward. “The Imaginary Irish Peasant.” PMLA, vol. 106, no. 5, Oct., 1991, pp. 1116-1133. https://www.jstor.org/stable/462684 

Metaphors of Darkness in Joseph Conrad's Novella HEART OF DARKNESS

 

Metaphors of Darkness in Joseph Conrad's Novella Heart of Darkness

Ipatia Apostolides

Sept. 2, 2020 


     Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella “Heart of Darkness” is a story of horror, greed, and lack of morality. The main character, Marlow, goes into the Congo with his steamboat searching for Kurtz who has lived there a long time and is involved in procuring ivory from the natives. Conrad uses metaphors to depict darkness in his story. During this journey down the Congo river, the word “darkness” is often repeated in varying nuances; darkness is seen in the dark forest; the darkness observed in the black savages; darkness as in the decaying machinery; darkness as in Marlow’s observing the death of his helmsman and the fear of dying; and darkness representing evil, as in the oppression of the savages by the white imperialists. In addition, darkness can be felt in isolation and silence. This is seen in the passage: “the silence of the land went home to one’s heart…the amazing reality of its concealed life” (Conrad, p. 41). This darkness is not only observed externally, but internally. It is all encompassing.

     The more Marlow travelled, the deeper he entered this darkness, witnessing a continuum, like the ongoing river, of death, black savages, decay, and absence of civilization. He observed the black helpers that became diseased, “some of the helpers had withdrawn to die…nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation (Conrad, p. 32). This inhuman treatment or indifference to the helpers and their lives evokes a feeling of moral decay and would cause an outcry in Europe. The cannibals that came along on the trip, after eating their hippo-meat, may have also provided a darkness or foreboding death to him and his crew. The only time that darkness seemed to disappear momentarily is when Marlow witnessed all the ivory that Kurtz had collected. Ivory is not black. It is almost white. Yet it too, was tainted by the greed of the imperialists who collected it to trade internationally.

 

     Finally, another metaphor for darkness was seen in the following passage: “There is a taint of death, a flavour of deathlike indifference of unhappy savages” (Conrad, p.42). This “deathlike” indifference of unhappy savages suggests an absence of feeling or emotion, a hopelessness, or lack of joy.

 

     Kurtz, an ivory trader, had become a madman by the time Marlow found him. He had heard about him from others; Kurtz collected ivory and had been wandering alone in the woods, and the young Russian man helped nurse him twice. According to the Russian, the tribe followed Kurtz because he had shot game for them. When Marlow discovered the shrunken heads on the posts, he was disgusted. This was Kurtz’s doing and the Russian explained that they were “rebels.” Then the Russian confided that Kurtz also told him he would shoot him for his ivory, “and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased” (Conrad, p. 72). Another example of his madness, in the 17-page pamphlet about imperialism that he handed to Marlow, Kurtz had also written “Exterminate all these brutes!” which showed his real feelings about the savages. His evil spirit revealed itself through his killing the savages or threatening to kill the Russian. Marlow described Kurtz as having “the barren darkness of his heart” (p. 85). This metaphor can actually apply to Marlow's heart.


     When Marlow returns to the “sepulchral city” (p.88), and he realizes how petty the people’s lives are, going to and from their jobs, and their insignificant actions, he is bothered, and he shudders. They are clueless as to what is happening in their world, which is also a sort of jungle, comparable to the Congo. There is darkness there too, but it is concealed. The sepulcher is a tomb, and in the Bible represents a whitewashed tomb that is pure and white on the outside but filthy on the inside. A sepulcher represents death and darkness. What secrets are held in this "sepulchral city?” Conrad uses metaphors to depict darkness here also. Even after Marlow thinks he has left the darkness of the Congo, this darkness follows him into the city. He cannot shake it off because the darkness has become embedded in his heart.

 

 

 

References

 

Conrad, J. (1996). Heart of Darkness. New York, NY: St Martin’s Press. (Originally published 1899) https://archive.org/details/heartofdarkness00conr/page/n3/mode/2up