Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests: 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 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, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, 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.
1966 from "Death of a Naturalist" by Seamus Heaney
Nowadays many writers and poets do not write their works in their own language or dialect. I think that most of them do write them in English because it is the most spoken language in the world and so their works can be read all over the world. In this paper I’m going to analyse a poem written by Seamus Heaney, an Irish writer who claims the Irish identity but writes in English, not in Irish language. It’s a bit contradictory but he is not the first Irish poet who acts like this. W. B. Yeats was also Irish, exposed the Irish culture, contributed to the “Irish Literary Revival” but wrote also in English. Ireland, a small country, has made a disproportionate contribution to world literature. In more recent times, Ireland has produced four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature: George B. Shaw, William B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney. (Irish culture and customs)
We need to take into account that Irish literature is unique and that it plays a very important role in its society. As Seamus Heaney himself explains, "Ireland is one of those places where the writer is in a crossing of artistic ambition, political implication and the awareness of the mother country.” (Isla de la poesia)
The poem on which I’m going to base my paper is “Digging” written in 1966 and belonging to “Death of a Naturalist”. Heaney begins the poem with a description of the situation in which he is before he starts writing. The pen is like a gun for him. On the one hand, it fits in his hand, which means, he feels good and comfortable by using it, and on the other hand, he likes saying what he thinks when he writes, so he will attack with words.
The next three stanzas talk about his father. Digging in the field or in the garden is a typical image in Ireland. People used to dig in order to get turf. In this poem Heaney mentions his father because he wants to show a familiar and very common Irish situation. “Many of his works concern his own family history and focus on characters in his own family; they can be read as elegies for those family members” (Reference.com).
I would add that the idea of using family members could also be an example of the whole Irish worker class. He’s talking about the present, but suddenly the situation comes up to the past. He describes how his father had to stoop through potato drills and how they, as children, were happy by picking them. This is a completely rural image and the election of the product, potatoes, could be a clear reference to the Irish Potato Famine (1845- 1849) and another Irish allusion. (Wikipedia, famine)
With the following couplet, Heaney changes the person he is referring to, now his grandfather. He admires how their relatives devoted themselves to nature and to their families. They were responsible for them and their survival. Heaney expresses his feelings when one day he gave milk to his grandfather. His grandfather’s determination in getting the turf was admirable. As he writes in verse 27 he is not ready to act like them, but the poem finishes with the same idea as in the beginning. So, we can understand that the last verse is like a promise of improving their life style but through his writing.
He just seems to be telling us a story that one day happened to him, but if we interpret the poem in a deeper level we can suppose that he is showing us that Ireland has changed. Nowadays Irish people are not like those farmers anymore and the society has improved and developed culturally, economically and is completely aware of their identity. By using the English language, Heaney wants to let people all over the world know that Ireland has its own identity because if he had written his poetry in Irish only his countrymen would understand them.