SIEGFRIED SASSOON
 

                         'They'

     The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back
     'They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
     'In a just cause: they lead the last attack
     'On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
     'New right to breed an honourable race,
     'They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'

     'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.
     'For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
     'Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
     'And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
     'A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.
     ' And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!'
 
 

SEAMUS HEANEY
 

                              The Early Purges
 
 

                          I was six when I first saw kittens drown.
                          Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits',
                          Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,

                          Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din
                          Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout
                          Of the pump and the water pumped in.

                          'Sure, isn't it better for them now?' Dan said.
                          Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced
                          Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.

                          Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung
                          Round the yard, watching the three sogged remains
                          Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung

                          Until I forgot them. But the fear came back
                          When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows
                          Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens' necks.

                          Still, living displaces false sentiments
                          And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown
                          I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'. It makes sense:

                          'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts ice in town
                          Where they consider death unnatural
                          But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.
 

Sassoon’s poem from: <(URL:http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/sassoon/they.html)>

Heaney’s poem from: <(URL:http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6714&poem=31278)>

PSYCHOANALYTICAL CRITICISM

In this paper I am going to try to analyse these poems from the psychological point of view. I have chosen this psychological aspect because we can know everything about author’s motivations, fears, feelings etc. apart from the psychological motivations, feelings etc I will also try to compare both poems and poets, their way of living before they wrote these poems, their conflicts etc. 

Firstly I am going to define what psychoanalysis is; psychoanalysis is a family of psychological theories and methods based on the pioneering work of Sigmund FreudAs a techniqueofpsychotherapypsychoanalysisseekstoelucidateconnectionsamongunconsciouscomponentsofpatients' mental processesThe analyst's goal is to help liberate the patient from unexamined or unconscious barriers of transference and resistance, that is, past patterns of relating that are no longer serviceable or that inhibit freedom. The psychoanalytic theory started obviously with Sigmund Freud’s studies about the human psyche.<(www.wikipedia.org/wiki/psichoanalysis)>

The psychoanalytical perspective claims that artist’s inspiration comes from dreams or that their own art is dream itself. The goal of psychoanalytic criticism is to reveal the latent content of the work that underlies and determines its manifest contentIn fact, the literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. All the content, characters, events etc, of a literary work are considered to be part of the own author’s psyche. Literature is seen as an expression of unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, guilt, traumas, sexual conflicts etc, that the author has patent in his unconscious part.Psychoanalytic criticism does not study the author´s intentions, but what the author never intended and it is repressed in his mind.<(http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Psychoanalytic_theory.html)>

Secondly in the Psychoanalysis apart from the studies of dreams, the sexuality, medicine etc, Freud talks us about pain; he defines it as “the term which refers to a physical sensation or a distress linked to instinctual tension, which the psychic apparatus then seeks to discharge by work according to the principle of pleasure/unpleasure<(http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/pain)>

Freud distinguishes two kinds of pain related to psychoanalysis; “primary pain” and “secondary pain”. Primary pain is the direct pain, physical pain but on the contrary secondary pain is the indirect pain, psychical and interior pain. <(http://www.querencia.psico.edu.uy/revista_nro1.htm)>This kind of pain is the pain which I will try to explain in the following poem. In the first poem “The early purges”, Heaney tells us a story that it happened him when he was a child. The story is about Heaney when he had 6 years old approximately. Seamus Heaney suffered the saddest moment in his life. An older boy (Dan Taggart) threw Heaney’s kittens to the garbage. This event marked Heaney very much, firstly because he could not understand why Dan could do this and secondly because for first time Heaney saw the death. The pain and sorrow that this boy felt was called by psychoanalysis as “secondary pain” because is a pain which has not got any answer, that pain wasn’t like when you have a head ache and you take a medicine an the pain goes out. This pain is a disorder, this is the one that, the most of times, worried us more than a head ache.

In the second poem, “They” its author Siegfried Sassoon tells one moment in the batle of the First World War, he tells the story in first person because he was a soldier in this war. In this poem the principal feeling is the pain. But this poem is divided in the two kinds of pain; on the one hand in the first stanza Sassoon talks about a Bishop who makes believe to the soldiers that the objective of the war is good; “The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back 'They will not be the same; for they'll have fought 'In a just cause. In this stanza the soldiers suffer the “secondary pain”; they feel a big pain because they know that the Bishop words are false but they cann’t do anything to cure their pain. On the other hand Sassoon in the second stanza makes reference to another kind of different pain than in the previous poem. In this poem the soldier who is telling the story (Sassoon) is suffering also a big pain, but this is a pain which the principal simptom is physical and not psychicalGeorge lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind; 'Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die…”. In this last stanza, according to the psychoanalysis, we are talking about “primary pain” because it affects the soldiers directly.

In my opinion the psychoanalysis of a poem can be very useful to guess the most interior feeling of the authors and also we can meet a lot of things about them and their lives such their conflicts, childhood traumas, love’s disillusion etc. I think that many authors use poems or other kinds of literature to represent these private feelings or others intentions which are not the same as we imagine. The most of the poets “play” with the unconscious of the readers with metaphors or other literary figures.
 
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Psychoanalysis – Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org,ed Jimmy Wales, last visited 30th August 2006. <(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psichoanalysis
)> 

Glossary of Literary Theory – Psychoanalysis, www.library.utoronto.ca, ed Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown, last visited 30th August 2006. <(http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Psychoanalytic_theory.html)>

Pain: International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, www.soc.enotes.comed Enotes.com, last visited 30th August 2006.

<(http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/pain)>

PsicoanálisisDolorwww.querencia.psico.edu.uyed Maria Isabel Riva Zucchelli, last visited 30th August 2006<(http://www.querencia.psico.edu.uy/revista_nro1.htm)>
 
 

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