View of DEPICTION OF CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN THE SELECT POEMS OF SEAMUS HEANEY

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Vol. 06, Special Issue 08, (ELL-2021) November 2021 IMPACT FACTOR: 7.98 (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL)

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DEPICTION OF CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN THE SELECT POEMS OF SEAMUS HEANEY

Rayees Ahmad Malla

Research Scholar, Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore, M.P India IQra Seemab

City University Peshawar

Abstract- Seamus Heaney's writings and studies reveal his yearning for Irish culture and identity as a poet. In literature, regardless of time or place, readers seek answers and gain insight into the questions and identities that are at the core of literature. This study carries an attempt to show how identity for Seamus Heaney is at the heart of poet‟s preoccupations. He explores the tensions within by saying that one is unique as long as he is “multicultural”, “a conglomerate of identities, of truths”. For Heaney prevention of one's own culture and identity is the sole purpose of every writer. Being a farmer‟s son, Heaney was the only child in his family who broke this farming tradition by choosing to become a writer and later on, his poetry became the voice of his people, and the memo of Irish historical horizons. In this study, the author attempts to demonstrate Seamus Heaney's desire to preserve the culture and identity of Ireland, since he was of the belief that colonization is not only a political problem, but a way to destroy the country's culture and identity.

Keywords- Seamus Heaney, culture, identity, tradition, Preoccupations. Irishness.

1. INTRODUCTION

Seamus Heaney became a literary sensation after achieving the milestone by winning the 1995 Nobel prize in literature “for his lyrical beauty and ethical depth which exalt everyday miracles and living past‟‟. Seamus Heaney has shown how to maintain a link between past and present.

He, like other modernist poets, tried to manifest the changes of time through his style and techniques of writing in many ways like scientific, moral, etc. to form the structure of his poetry. Since Heaney was brought up in farm fields, it became an important part of his life.

Young Heaney drew a lot of inspiration from his natural surroundings, his ploughing and digging, butter being churned, his collection of frogs spawn, picking blackberries hanging around the barn and riverbank, looking down wells- all these memories Heaney weaves a vivid dazzling matrix. There are several poems written by Seamus Heaney which deal with the various age-old Irish traditions, agrarian activities, and hardworking craftsmen in the farm fields with special reference to Irish culture. These simple traditional and cultural lifestyles were endangered by extinction that was associated with growth and cultivation. Seamus Heaney constantly tries to preserve this in the museum of his words (Poetry); he has tried to protect it from the fading danger and preserves these age old and simple ways of life in his poetry which was prevalent in Ireland centuries before. Seamus Heaney in his essay entitled as Preoccupations says:

“One half of one‟s sensibility is in a cast of minds that comes from belonging to a place, an ancestry, a history, a culture, whatever one wants to call it. But consciousness and quarrels with the self are the result of what Lawrence called

„the voices of my education” (Preoccupations, 43-56).

The traditional Gaelic peasantry is recreated and presented before our eyes in „Gifts of Rain‟ the poem traverses through Irish history and describes the nature of Gaelic peasants. It is an appraisal for the nature of Gaelic peasants who were very much capable of talking about the past, imaginary, and real. The poem seems inspired with the Christine sensibility of these peasants and the Gaelic people are described in the poem. Heaney writes:

Their world-schooled ear could monitor the usual confabulations, the race

slobbering past the gable (WO, 101).

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The poet says that why he raises his ear to listen to the absence, for him, the absence refers to the ancient Irish people, their culture and tradition. Their sensibility is being shared by the poet with its readers as the poet himself is Irish and their descendant too. The poet is able to hear the voices of the people of the past, who are talking by the shore. Those dead people of past are seen in wonder whether the poet would remind them about baked clay floor, rotten crop, or river mud. Heaney says:

That I would question (and for my children‟s sake) bout crops rotted, river mud

lazing the baked clay floor (WO, 103).

The poet land back to pre-colonized days of Ireland and retrieves the voices of his ancestors. The ancestors who were living their lives under the shade of nature and were so much instinctive and later refers back to the deadly famine of 1840‟s which left a massive wound on the psyche of Ireland. The poem is later connected with the murmuring waters of river Mayola which has been flowing throughout the entire land. When the water of Mayola is flooded it has its own unique music which the poet compares with the tone and music of the songs of Gaelic language. For Heaney, the river has the ownership of music and the poet termed it as „reed music‟. Heaney writes:

the tawny guttural water spells itself: Mayola

is its own score and consort, bleeding the locale

in the utterance,

reed music, an old chanter breathing its mists

through vowels and history.

A swollen river,

a matting call of sound rises to pleasure me, Dives,

hoarder of common ground (WO, 104).

The poet seems in his past a man singing the melodious songs about the history of Ireland, the rivers along with the Irish landscapes. River Mayola for the poet has flowed through Irish history for centuries. The river Mayola and its flowing waters symbolized the continuous flourishing of Irish tradition and culture. Heaney brings a fusion of personal and private and blends his childhood remembrances of river Mayola with Irish cultural past. One of the major critics Neil Corcoran has beautifully thrown his words about Heaney‟s „Gifts of Rain‟:

The „absence‟ which Heaney‟s ear picks up there is that of older native lore of pre-colonial Gaelic civilization…the lore of native history and traditions…

listening in to this lore is necessary to found a more equitable future (Corcoran.

84-85).

„The Backward Look‟ is another poem which has striking features and mourns the fading of Gaelic tongue which is considered as a staggering bird by poets. This poem is very much important to discuss because it offers a lamentation about the unfortunate disappearance of Gaelic tongue. The Irish people no more use the Gaelic tongue now for which the poet highly regrets. The disappearance of native Irish tongue which is allegorized to the snipe in the poem. The disappearance of the bird in the Irish landscape, the Gaelic tongue of Ireland has vanished in the same way. The people no longer use this; it is now confined only to the field workers of rural areas. The loss of tongue is lamented by the poet because he thinks it is not the just disappearance of language it is the erasure of culture and tradition, and it will

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bereft the people from knowledge of their nativity, and it will weaken Irish connections towards its history. The poet mourns in his own way by saying:

A stagger in the air As if a language Failed, a sleight Of wing (WO, 107).

Seamus Heaney was aware that Irish culture was on the verge of destruction because of the colonial clutch, he felt this pain and realized his duty to play his part as an artist towards his country Ireland and was a true son of his soil. It is a matter of actual Irish identity which has been preserved in the poetry of Seamus Heaney. Seamus Heaney is very versatile in handling his issues and concerns, especially the Irish ones. He has confessed about the artist‟s relation to his motherland, Seamus Heaney in one of his essays „Preoccupations’ says:

Poetry is divination, poetry as revelation of the self to the self, as restoration of the culture to itself; poems as elements of continuity, with the aura and authenticity of archeological finds, where the buried shard has an importance that is not diminished by the importance of the buried city; poetry as a dig, a dig for finds that ends up being plants (P, 41).

Seamus Heaney has regularly tried to blend his memories with the visuals of the landscape of Northern Ireland by reversing his mind to the time of his childhood when the people of Ireland were living happy and peaceful lives. His poetry carries the adoration of the Irish pastoral atmosphere. As we know Irish culture, tradition and history have fully been influential to his works. For Heaney, poetry and national politics have a strong relation. While talking about his childhood experience and his roots, it has the connotation to one‟s identity, and that is why his sense of selfhood is not only about the identity of the poet rather it is the question of the identity of the whole nation which is Ireland. He is the poet, so he is the voice of his time within the national parameters of Ireland. His poetry must be the carriage of Irish political situations especially of Northern Ireland. The poet regarding the Irish identity has expressed a lot both as a poet and a person as well.

In his poem „Turnip- Snedder‟ the author intends the attention of people to the historical perspective of their past events to bring them more and more to life as it was used to be in the past. In actual means the poet recalls the Irish culture and tradition back which is somehow forgotten by the cosmopolitan fellows of the present world. These poems have also tried to universalize the real beauty of Irish culture which will be a great loss if it is forgotten.

The Irish people in their past had also been victimized due to the wrath of colonialism. Heaney has also recapitulated the episodes of Irish past to show the significance of a national history regarding the maintenance of one‟s identity within a nation and community as well. Seamus Heaney in his „The Turnip-Snedder‟ says:

In an age of bare hands And cast iron,

The clamp-on meat-mincer,

The double-fly wheeled water-pump, It dug its heels in among wooden tubs and troughs of slops,

Hotter than body heat

In summertime, cold in winter (DC, 3).

The issues of Irish identity dwell in Heaney‟s poetry in a way that covers Irish history, identity, ancestry, and culture. And every issue is justifiably expressed to make the world aware of the

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actual structure of Ireland with an address to the Irish people also. The colonization of Brittan in Ireland is exposed to a great extent for the sake of Irish identity. The political violence of 1970 triggered the poet to be more conscious to write about Ireland and preserve its culture and tradition. The history and the conflict that erupted in Northern Ireland infused the poet to let him strive for socio-cultural identity and formed a central theme for his works like Death of the Naturalist, Door into Dark, Wintering Out, North, Station Island, Field Workand District and Circle.

Thus, we can estimate that Seamus Heaney has meritocracy employing his stylistic tendencies to highlight the landscapes and mindscapes in terms of past, present Ireland. The poet is a wonderful task master in utilizing his literary genius to explore how an Irish patriot should be? Seamus Heaney has beautifully used his memory and imagination to preserve the roots and culture of Ireland. Heaney has beautifully described the places and preserved the Irish culture throughout his poetry. By going through his poetry one can easily get a beautiful and detailed description of Ireland‟s culture and identity and painting of Ireland. Seamus Heaney while on a journey through his memory into the past of Ireland and has beautifully dug out the history, culture, traditions, and sufferings of Ireland. By using the simple style and vocabulary Heaney has made his poetry available to every average reader in this world where one can feel himself in the lap of Irish culture, roots of history and identity of Ireland. His style has won him international fame and success and was awarded with many prestigious poetry awards including Nobel Prize.

WORKS CITED

1. Heaney, S. (2014). Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968-1978. United States: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

2. Heaney, S. (2011). Wintering Out. United Kingdom: Faber & Faber.

3. Corcoran, K. A. P. o. E. N., Corcoran, N. (1999). Poets of modern Ireland: text, context, inter text. United States: Southern Illinois University Press.

4. Heaney, S. (2009). District and Circle. United Kingdom: Faber & Faber.

5. Heaney, S. (2010). North. United Kingdom: Faber & Faber.

6. Foster, R. F., Foster, R. (2020). On Seamus Heaney. United Kingdom: Princeton University Press.

7. Heaney, S. (2014). New Selected Poems 1988-2013. United Kingdom: Faber & Faber.

8. Heaney, S. (2009). Death of a Naturalist. United Kingdom: Faber & Faber.