Patricia Valle Elegido

DIGGING

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6714&poem=33129, visited April 23, 2006

Seamus Heaney

The title of the poem I’m about to analyse is a word reflecting a past labour, and it probably suggests that the poem will be going to deal with the agricultural or farm work. But the author is going further, he is talking about that but as part of his memories. He is remembering the image of his father and his grandfather working on the fields comparing it, in a hidden way, with his own work, as I noticed in the first reading.

The structure of the poem doesn’t follow a pattern. It has eight stanzas and they vary between two and eight lines, and this probably brings some information forward. The possible information that his past, his memories are not common, they don’t follow an established pattern.

In the first stanza (just composed by two lines), it may be a confusion, where he says: “The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun”. We have to take into account that he was born in a farm in Castledawson, County Derry, Northern Ireland, but the poem was published in 1966, before all those conflicts in Northern Ireland. So, in this case the pen-gun makes no reference to them, we will see later what kind of weapon is the pen according to the author.

Now he begins to remember the image of his father in the second stanza: “Under my window a clean rasping sound/ When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:/ My father, digging. I look down”. We can see that the three last words of each line end with the same sound: sound, ground, down, and if somebody reads the poem aloud, this stanza seemed to be a song because of this repetition. This way of making a repetition to seem like a song is a good way to make easier to remember what he is saying. The last part of the last sentence: “I look down”, could be as a regret, because he has not followed in his father’s footsteps.

The next stanza is like a technical explanation of the labour of a digger: “The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft/ Against the inside knee was levered firmly./ He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep”. Irishmen are well known for digging, but Heaney shows the skill and dignity in their labour. “By God, the old man could handle a spade,/ Just like his old man.” Here is highlighting the “dignity” of his father through a colloquial expression because in the present he is old but he can “handle a spade” yet. And in the second line, he is introducing a new figure, the figure of his grandfather.

The way he introduces his grandfather to us is more exaggerated than in the case of his father: “My grandfather could cut more turf in a day/ Than any other man on Toner's bog.” But I don’t think he is giving more importance to his grandfather than his father.

The last but one stanza is more or less a conclusion: “The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap/ Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge/ Through living roots awaken in my head.” He is saying that all what he has explained are his roots, where he and his family come from, an important fact to him because poetry is determined by the cultural and physical atmosphere where the poet has grown up. Heaney said that he began to be a poet when his roots interconnected with his readings. (Belfast, p. 38)

In an essay known as Preocupations, Heaney talks about the “Sense of Place”. According to him, the “place” gives to the inhabitant not just a physical atmosphere, but also a spiritual and cultural background, where one develops one’s own individual and collective identities.

Finally, he ended this stanza with an adamant sentence: “But I've no spade to follow men like them.” He is underlying the importance of his roots underestimating himself. He is saying: “I will never be like them”. But in the last stanza we can see that he has no spade, but he has another weapon: the pen.

Now we can see the real meaning of the pen mentioned at first: “Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat pen rests./ I'll dig with it.” It is his gun (not for killing), his weapon, his “spade”, and he is using his characteristic “spade” to dig into his past.

Seamus Heaney is an author who is always conscious about his background, about his roots. And that is what we can see in this poem. He is making an image of two men (his father and grandfather) making their labours at the field to make us see where he comes from.

He is an Irish poet who is always letting us see that the earth where his roots are situated is, and will be forever, Ireland. But why is it so important to him these aforementioned roots? As I said before, our personality born in the place where we come from, in the place where we have our “roots”. And that “Sense of Place” is very decisive in the development of a poet’s personality, according to Heaney.

So, what Heaney is doing in this poem is “digging”, but not in the same way as his father and grandfather had done before. They had been digging with a spade in the fields and Heaney is digging into his past with his pen. That is the metaphor used by the author. With his pen-spade is digging into his past and showing us his roots, a very important trait that any author has to take into account.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Digging – Seamus Heaney – Poem by

http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6714&poem=33129, visited April 23, 2006

http://www.ucm.es/BUCM/revistas/fll/11330392/articulos/EIUC0000110237A.PDF, visited April 23, 2006

Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense

Universidad de Valladolid

Seamus Heaney - bio

http://www.uv.es/~fores/PoesiaUK2005/1Heaney,%20Seamus/Seamus%20Heaney%20-%20Bio, visited April 23, 2006

Seamus Heaney – Study Guide

http://www.uv.es/~fores/PoesiaUK2005/1Heaney,%20Seamus/heaneyAQAAnthology.htm, visited April 23, 2006

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