Bogland
A poem by Seamus Heaney
We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encroaching horizon,
Is wooed into the cyclops' eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.
They've taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.
Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter
Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.
They'll never dig coal here,
Only the waterlogged trunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneers keep striking
Onwards and downwards,
Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.
http://www.irish-society.org/Hedgemaster%20Archives/bogland.htm
© Irish Cultural Society of the Garden City Area
Seamus Heaney was born in
County Derry, Northern Ireland in 1939, the time and place where he grew old as
a poet. It is a very special context due to all the political and sociological
conflicts between Ireland and the Great Empire. This conflict will develop a
wide range of feelings amongst the Irish society, feelings that will be
expressed by artists in their own particular way. GEOCITIES.
In this case, Heaney
expresses himself as an individual through his poetry. His political protest
and position will never be expressed in single phrases: “Heaney has been
consistent in his refusal to reduce complex political and social issues to
simple slogans” KIRJASTO. This means that individuals should search deep inside
themselves, in their own heart, their own feelings, in their own roots as
members of the Irish collective. He defends the search of the Irish culture,
separated from the English, and he does it by writng about Irish legends,
stories and tales that are exclusively Irish, and not English at all. He evokes
the Irish landscapes, with their Tarns as an important symbol.
“Heaney’s works are rooted
in Northern Irish rural life, and draw on myth and unique aspects of the Irish
experience. KIRJASTO.
He defends the Irish
culture as independent from the Crown by seeking in his own roots and myths, by
looking for exclusive characteristics that meke them diffenrent from English.
And this is a strange contradiction because if he defends his culture, his
values, his identity through language, he should use his own Irish vernacular
language instead of using English as a cultural mother tongue . this is a
critic that could be made from the point of view of a local Irish citizen, and
from a foreign reader too.
“One of the poems that
evoke those unique Irish landscapes is Bogland”. PEATLANDS. There we see an
implicated Heaney that makes reference to the symbol of the tarn 6, the great
Irish Elk 10, the firs 22, all of the natural elements that have special
connotations for the sensitive Irish reader.
A deep reading will show
us how he uses some symbols to describe the situation his country is living. He uses the word encrouching 4 to
reffer to the horizon, like a kind of invader, an element that comes with the
rising sun, everyday, and no way to stop it. The landscape is wooed5, full of
pain, into the cyclops’ eye, including here a superior being, a kind of
half-god that sees everything with his single eye. He is saying that the
presence of the eye of the English invaders is always present, like a natural
cicle, something that looks eternal and external at the same time.
He uses the tool of the
contradictions to get into the reader’s mind:
He qualkifies the country
as unfenced 6, that has no limits or bounds, a country which is free, a tarn,
but giving it a negative connotation, it is a bog that keeps crusting 7, the
word bog takes off all the positive connotations that the landscape vould have.
If there are no limits, how can it keep crusting? It is a question that comes
to the mind of the reader. And, what keeps it crusting?pain?woe?…
There he includes another
symbol in verse 9, THE SKELETON OF THE Great Irish Elk. This way he can make
reference to the Irish nature which is being invaded by the English presence.
Another contradiction used
by the author is that of the butter in verse 16, an element that has become
sunk13, and for more than a hundred years 14, and by millions of years 19
making reference again to the always present English in the Irish context,
giving it again all the negative connotations, as if all the Irish elements
touched by the English could turn into black, black butter 16. He shows his sad
point of view in the last stanza where he confirms the eternal destruction of
their own Nature:
Every layer
they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.
As they never stop destroying again and againall the
layers of their Nature, their personality, their culture, their people, their
country. He sees the English culture as an invader, an extremely dangerous
enemy that can kill or transform all the unique and authentic elements that
make Ireland so independent and personal.
“a
medida que se desarrolla su obra, esos escenarios se convierten en el foco de
una búsqueda arqueológica de los mitos e historias que han contribuido a
configurar la violenta situación política de Irlanda del Norte”. EDPLD