Wells and Dunghills: Division in Seamus Heaney's Poetry

Abstract

Oppositions and seeming contradictions run deep in Heaney's writing; they come as part of his territory. In several of his poems and prose writings, Heaney speaks about the effect which the political strife in Northern Ireland has had on him. He says that ultimately he felt he had to choose sides. Making that choice, however, is not a simple matter for the poet.

For Heaney, the situation in Northern Ireland in the seventies gives rise to a great number of questions which lie beneath the surface; like the layers of the earth, each time we dig one away, we only reveal another. Heaney asks himself, to begin with, about the poet's place in society: to what extent need he be involved, or to what extent might he distance himself? Underlying this problem, however, is the question of his relationship to his place, to the land itself. Is place known through the present and the personal, or through the past and the impersonal? Or indeed, is it knowable at all? And what is the spirit of the land; is it benevolent, malevolent or indifferent? He asks, too, if place is known through the personal, to what extent his poetics are a betrayal of his community's reticence? Or more generally, is it possible to write in a Northern voice using forms which belong to his tradition, a tradition which is cut off from the developments of urbane Modernism?

While Heaney asks many questions, he does not come up with definitive answers. In the question of stylistics, Heaney finds himself caught in the middle, between tradition and innovation, and in the thematic questions which are raised, he finds himself arguing both sides, always reluctant to settle finally on either one.