Sai Kumaravel

12EXO

In what way is Heaney’s identity shaped by his experience of the local and how is this experience
relevant to those navigating the global?

Heaney’s identity is shaped through the inherent need to preserve the experience of the local past,
thus suggesting an understanding of the past is essential to navigating the global. As Heaney delves
into his poetic inspiration to “set the darkness echoing”, he establishes the inevitable conflict
imposed by the global. He displays the tenets of liberal humanism in realising and being satisfied
through one’s subjective search for identity. Seamus Heaney’s experiences of the local are defiant
yet at the same time lingering. The progression of time dilutes the necessity of its existence as it is a
part of the past and is blurred by the present. Heaney seeks an understanding of his local to form his
identity in his current context. In his use of poetry to navigate his identity in the global world it
becomes evident the compromise and sacrifice needed in order to achieve and maintain a sense self.
Thus in remembering the past Heaney retains his local experience and allows this understanding to
form his present identity. Through his attempts to find himself as a poet he reveals the necessity to
understand the past so identity is not lost whilst navigating the global.

Heaney’s first poem Digging initiates his navigation into his concerns of his local experiences. Digging
displays his use of prosaic language with the shifts of time from the present to the past to establish a
strong sense of Heaney’s local world. The setting of a naturally rooted local is created and
highlighted through the use of alliterative onomatopoeic verbs in the “squelch and slap/ Of soggy
peat’ [and] curt cuts” and the connection with land evoked through the sensual imagery in the “cold
smell of potato mould”. This depicts his sense of place uniquely in Ireland. The “squat pen [which]
rests snug as a gun” is a metaphor to the power of words emphasised in the incongruity between
“snug” and the powerful “gun” representative of the British violence contrasting his equivalent tool.
This suggests a generational shift and is furthered through the metaphor of the pen to “dig with it”
“just like his old man” juxtaposing his father and grandfather who “handle a spade”. Thus Digging
reminisces the cycles of manual labour of his family’s farm, cutting turf and digging potatoes to be
recreated in Heaney’s digging with his “squat pen”.

Similarly in Personal Helicon, Heaney asserts the significance of memory to resist the excesses of
post structuralism and post modernism through the symbolic value of the wells returning his
individual consciousness. Heaney’s allusion to Greek mythology, indebted within the title itself of
“Personal Helicon”, outlines the sanctity of knowledge and source of poetic inspiration.

Triptych is a significant poem in Heaney’s remaking of identity as he becomes considerably more

aware of the inherent importance of place which feeds the spirit, like Antaeus whom “receives
strength from vulnerability of earth”. This poem structured as a set of three works as indicated by
the title “Triptych”, is religiously resonant, as it is often an altar piece. Triptych exhibits the dynamic
tension enacting between the global sphere and local values embodied within the inherent desire
for security in a life with “elbow room” as opposed to the commercial interests where people “think
money”. Heaney employs continual antithesis to emphasise this inevitable conflict between the two
domains describing the violent present as “profane and bracing” juxtaposing the unholy yet
invigorating nature of Ireland’s situation. This is continued in his criticism of this gradual mergence
and inescapable nature between the local and global listed through evocative imagery as “basalt,
blood, water, headstones, leeches” accumulating distinct imagery of life and the gradual degradation
of primeval ooze. Heaney returns to the notion of a localised self as the creator of meaning as he
Sai Kumaravel
12EXO

acknowledges the chaos and emptiness. Heaney constantly questions the complicity of those not
involved and even himself. The rhetoric “Who’s sorry for our trouble?” grimly mocks ‘the troubles’
and also creates a yearning for anonymity almost, tempered by deep cultural roots. This is
reinforced through the overwhelming sense of the past which permeates through all of Heaney’s
poetry. The ideal undisturbed past illustrated in the first section signifies the innocence before the
profanity. “Small eyed survivor flowers, The pined-for, unmolested orchid” symbolises the innocent
women and children. The affirming routine life of “buying mackerels...[and]...carrying potatoes”
demonstrate the cultural roots which contrasts stanza three of At the Water’s Edge in the isolating
imagery of a “cold hearthstone...open chimney” revealing the vulnerability, abandonment and
insecurity developed through time. The repetition of nature and the ground in this poem is
juxtaposed through time from “fresh...green” to “fouled magma...flayed or calloused” yet the
auditory image of “comfortless noises” displays the acute awareness of this change and the sounds
of this violence penetrates internally. “Heard”, “answered”, “watched”, “listened” and
“remembered” are definitive verbs of obedience and helplessness that accumulate throughout the
poem to invoke a silent compliance which is confronted in the final stanza of At the Water’s Edge in
“how we crept before we walked”. This line portrays humanity’s history and the seeping primeval
fear through the contrast between, “crept” and “walked”. A sense of retreating back to primal
security and closure is sought and comfort in vulnerability recognised. It is recognised in the steps
taken, be it literally in the marching through danger or standing up for beliefs. In Triptych Heaney is
navigating the across inner laws of the poets being and the exterior demands of a social and ethical
conscious.

The tension between global Christianity and the local Celtic mythology is present in their forms of
the oral mythology as opposed to the written doctrines of Catholicism. Hence Heaney recognises the
need for this cultural acknowledgement, as that is the only way to keep it alive. Heaney’s poetry
adjudicates between the wideness of the world and the past, present and local, and values both.
Ultimately, although no definitive answer is found, Heaney reiterates that it is through the mere
attempt of searching for the truth, meaning and sense within our roots that the individual
subconscious can be made the individual consciousness and thus present identity. To navigate the
global is to make sense of one’s self in the global, and allow an understanding of the past, family,
history, landscape and even internal chaos form that identity.

Words: 1073