READING MODULE 7
By: GASPAR JULIO NAVARRO AMADOR
27 / 04 / 06
SUBJECT & POEM: England and other dialects. Poem: Act Of Union, by Seamus Heaney.
ACT OF UNION
I
1 To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
2 As if the rain in bogland gathered head
3 To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
4 A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
5 Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
6 And arms and legs are thrown
7 Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
8 The heaving province where our past has grown.
9 I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
10 That you would neither cajole nor ignore.
11 Conquest is a lie. I grow older
12 Conceding your half-independant shore
13 Within whose borders now my legacy
14 Culminates inexorably.
II
15 And I am still imperially
16 Male, leaving you with pain,
17 The rending process in the colony,
18 The battering ram, the boom burst from within.
19 The act sprouted an obsinate fifth column
20 Whose stance is growing unilateral.
21 His heart beneath your heart is a wardrum
22 Mustering force. His parasitical
23 And ignmorant little fists already
24 Beat at your borders and I know they're cocked
25 At me across the water. No treaty
26 I foresee will salve completely your tracked
27 And stretchmarked body, the big pain
28 That leaves you raw, like opened ground, again
Seamus Heaney
(Ref 1)
In
this paper, the main focus is to contrast, England
and Ireland.
This is an example of the diversity existent in the United Kingdom, which is not
actually so united from some points of view. This contrast means that there is a
differentiation in terms of language, culture, tradition, etc. which has led
into a real conflict between these two countries since long time ago. ((Ref
2)
As one of the most representative reactionist against
this situation, there is Seamus Heaney. In the title ‘Act Of
Union’, there is a dichotomy of meaning. On the one hand, the author denounces
the political act of union, which took place in 1800, under which Ireland became part of the United Kingdom.
On the other hand, there is the physical, sexual as well as spiritual act of
union between human beings. Heaney’s poem is a metaphor related to a rape and
in which both characters man and woman are represented
by England and Ireland
respectively. In this sense, the actual act of rape would
have been executed by England,
due to its power superiority. (Ref 3)
The poem is divided into two
stanzas. In the first one, there is more relation with the description of Ireland’s
landscape. The mention of ‘To-night’, in the first line, sets the connotations
that this word implies. The night and darkness, gives the idea on the one hand
of sensuality, and on the other hand it gives the idea of something sinister
and an evil ‘movement’ (line 1). In the second line the word ‘bog’ in
‘bogland’, represents the central symbol in Heaney’s work the wide unfenced county
that reaches back millions of years. The bog in Ireland is one of the most
representative characteristics. These kinds of fields have been in the island
for ages, and there is a sense of antiquity and old age, which gives to its
inhabitants the feeling of tradition and culture that they have in common. It
is a look back into their roots. (Ref 3)
In the first four lines there is a sense of release of
something very strong, as in lines 3-4 ‘a bog-burst. A gash
breaking open the ferny bed’. This release could be
related to hate, to blood, etc. This refers to the beginning of the
problem, the annexation of Ireland,
which for the author is compared to a ‘flood’ in
‘bogland’.
From the line 5 to line 8, the description of the
country is compared to a woman’s body. There is sense
of sensuality, as in:
‘Your back is a
firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your
gradual hills’
The geological features of the island contrast with
the physical features of a woman. The author establishes the foundation of the
physical weakness of Ireland
in comparison to England,
as a woman in comparison to a man. In this part the quantity of nouns and
adjectives that describe Ireland as in ‘night’, ‘pulse’, ‘rain’, ‘bogland’,
‘flood’, ‘bog-burst’, ‘gash’, ‘ferny bed’, ‘heaving province’, etc., which
smoothes the text, contrast with the following part, which is full of verbs of
action such as:
‘I am the tall
kingdom over your shoulder
that you would neither cajole nor ignore’
This conveys action and power, and it is parallel to
the presentation of the dominant male that is England. This country is shown as the one to be afraid of, as in:
‘I am the tall
kingdom over your shoulder’
(Line 9)
From this line 9 to line 14, there is a demonstration
of power, which erases the colonizer’s will and
establishes the conqueror’s will.
In the second stanza, there is a description of a
rape, the sexual harassment to which Ireland,
represented as a woman, suffers from England, represented as a man. The
representation of England as
a male and the abuse that he inflicts over Ireland is definitively evident:
‘And I am still
imperially
Male, leaving you with pain,
The rending process in the colony
The battering ram,
the boom burst from within.’
(Lines
15-16-17-18)
England is the
‘battering ram’ (line 18). Therefore, this country is the instigator of the
troubles, which gives justification to any uprising in order to defend Ireland against
the aggressor. This invasion and the following confrontations generated all
kind of sectarian violence due to the economic and social dichotomy between the
minority of Catholics, the native population, and the majority of Protestant
colonists. (Ref 2)
There is a description that clearly explains the
sexual assault, right at the end of the poem:
‘And stretchmarked
body, the big pain
That leaves you raw, like opened ground, again’
(Lines 27-28)
This reinforces the image of physical violence, which
at the same time is a response to the previous lines:
‘His heart beneath
your heart is a wardrum
Mustering force. His parasitical
And ignmorant little fists already
Beat at your borders and I know they're cocked
At me across the water. No treaty’
(Lines 21/25)
This lines openly declare that although many more
peace treaties or ceasefires were declared, this does not change the real
situation in Ireland
that still remains as a place with scars and marks of the conflicts.
The symbolical rape of Ireland
as a woman by England
as a man, not only led to the religious segregation, and internal and external
confrontation between neighbours sisters and brothers, but also there is the
phenomenon of the displacement of the language, in this case Irish Gaelic, by
the language of the conqueror, the English language. Hence, the dialectal situation
in Ireland
is reflected in Seamus Heaney’s poem as an invasion
and colonization by force and the subsequent stage of displacement and marginalization
of the people who speak the language of the minority.
REFERENCES
1 - PoemHunter.Com, 2006
http://www.poemhunter.com/
27/04/2006
2 - e2webmaster
at everything2.com, SeamusHeaney@Everything2.com, 2006
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=451314
27/04/2006
3 - Stefan Balan, Carmen Bujdel / The Irish
Experience of Violence in Irish Contemporary Poetry and Music,
1999-2000-2001
http://www.cloudsmagazine.com/12/Carmen_Bujdei_The_Irish_Experience.ht
27/04/2006
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