How and to what effect does Seamus Heaney define innocence and maturity in

his poetry?

Seamus Heaney’s “Death of a Naturalist”, “Personal Helicon” and “Blackberry-

Picking” pay tribute to his Irish identity by describing his childhood in rural
Ireland. More specifically, these poems explore the difficulties of maturing and the
loss of innocence and wonder it entails. Through vivid poetic techniques, the poet
illustrates the inevitable sacrifice of innocence inherent in the process of maturing.
While innocence allows the boy to wonder, exploring places that may hold
discomfort or danger, the adult, with a heightened awareness of the darker side of
nature, is not able to experience the child’s excitement in nature.  This essay
assesses how and to what effect does Seamus Heaney define innocence and
maturity in his poetry.

“Death of a Naturalist” compares the enthusiastic flight of fancy of the

young poet to the more guarded and structured imagination of the adult to
emphasize the effect the process of maturing has had on their perception of nature.
The poem is divided into two stanzas, each describing the central image of a flax
dam, the first through the eyes of the poet as a child, and the second from the
adult’s point of view. 

Most of the first stanza is an extended image of the frogspawn and the joy
the boy finds in the fecund environment. The child’s wonder in the flax dam is
shown with the comedic simile “best of all was the warm thick slobber of
frogspawn that grew like clotted water”. With the honesty of the latter, explaining,
how the young boy actually enjoys the visual and sensual repulsiveness of the
scene and innocently observes nature. In addition, the description of the life cycle
of the frog from the “slobber” of frogspawn to the “tadpoles” and eventually the
dull “yellow” “brown” adult frogs. acts as an analogy for the way the poet
inevitably evolves from a curious child, to a more guarded and fearful adolescent,
and finally, an adult who is no longer fascinated by nature. This difference in
perception is foreshadowed from the beginning, through strong verbs such as
“rotted” and “festering” showing the disgust with which the adult poet comes to
view the dam. 

       In the second stanza, the poet relates his experience with the same setting but
from the cynical viewpoint of the adult. The poet portrays the changes of growing
up by juxtaposing the tone of childhood fascination with that of fear and
abhorrence of adolescence. The experiences of adulthood have given the poet a
more pragmatic view of nature. The strong visual and acoustic imagery, “rank with
cow-dung”, the “air […] thick with a bass chorus”, the onomatopoetic “slap and
pop […] threats” overwhelms the young adult, urging him to retreat. Far from
seeing the frogs as a harmless family unit, the older poet, with his understanding of
the human life cycle, transposes the human feelings of hate onto the frogs,
portraying them as an army bent on vengeance with warlike imagery such as the
simile “poised like mud grenades’ or the personification of the frogs as tyrannical
“great slime kings”. Thus, the poem exemplifies an irony, where adults think they
are wiser than children, but in reality, are the ones who allow their maturity to
conjure up an illogical fear of the inevitability of death associated with the natural
world.

In “Personal Helicon” Heaney explores how the increased self-awareness

that comes with maturity, detracts from the adult’s ability to fully involve himself
in nature. The poem describes the young poet’s fascination with the numerous
wells that dotted the rural landscape of his childhood. Like “Death of a Naturalist”,
this poem is separated into two parts each describing the central image of the wells
from the child’s point of view (1-4) and adult’s point of view (5).

          With the first well, the young poet imagines the closed, intense space as an
escape to another reality, to his own little microcosm.  While adults are only able
to see the wells as hazardous, the boy finds wonder within them, loving everything
that makes wells traditionally frightening as seen in the asyndeton “I loved the dark
drop, the trapped sky, the smells of waterweed, fungus, dank moss”. The boy loses
himself in the mystery and familiarity of the darkness: Childhood, the poem
implies, is a time of intense sensory experience, as well as of deep communion
with the natural world while adulthood brings with it a more pragmatic view of
nature. 

With the second well, the poet introduces the idea of how the child’s
innocent perception of reality is the result of his undeveloped self-awareness. The
substitution of the phrase “my face” with the metaphor “a white face hovered” in
the next image, symbolizes that because of his immaturity he is still only vaguely
aware of his own sense of self.

In the fourth stanza the boy’s fascination with wells continues but it
becomes apparent to the reader that the boy’s journey to maturity has begun. The
personification of wells “gave back your own call with a clean new music in it” not
only introduces auditory imagery, but implies that the boy’s voice is changing;
something he fails to recognize, believing the ‘new’ voice is the transformative
effect of the wells. The last well is described as “scaresome” with “a rat slapped
across my reflection”. The rat symbolizes the boy’s change in perspective and a
growing awareness of the unpleasant side of nature, disrupting his ability to enjoy
the wells.

In the last stanza, the poet differentiates between his innocence as a child
and adult maturity. The digressionary allusion “big eyed Narcissus” a young man
who according to Greek mythology fell in love with his own reflection, reveals the
shortcomings of his childhood innocence in being unaware of his own reflection’s
flaws or faults. The poet however, ends the poem with the final metaphor “to set
the darkness echoing’, to pay tribute to his younger self for giving him experiences
to draw on as a poet that are now considered “beneath his adult dignity” 

‘Blackberry Picking’, describes the seemingly innocent experience of

picking blackberries as a child. However, the poem acts as an extended metaphor
for the inevitability of the process of maturing and the loss of the innocent belief
that nature can be changed. 

 The first stanza describing the excitement and joy of the poet as a child as he picks
the ripening fruit. The poem is set in late August, a time of changing seasons and
unpredictable weather, ‘heavy rain and sun’, immediately foreshadowing at the
fact that the change that comes with maturing involves both joy and
hardships .This effect is reinforced by the enjambment the poet employs for much
of the stanza, hastening the poem along, as time will inevitably lead to maturity in
the child. Its rich sensory imagery in phrases like “a glossy purple clot” or the
simile “sweet like thickened wine” exemplifies the child’s innocent absorption in
the activity and his ability to ignore discomfort in order to enjoy what nature
offers. This discomfort comes in the form of visual imagery like the pushing
through the briar that scratches or the metaphor “wet grass bleached our boots”.
The obstacle he overcomes to reach the fruit is symbolic of the obstacles he will
soon meet as he matures. Furthermore, the metaphor “Leaving stains upon the
tongue and lust for picking” exemplifies the child’s innocence as he lets the berry’s
addictive sweetness mesmerize him; forcing him on just as he will be forced by
nature to continue his journey to maturity. The stanza ends on an ominous note
foreshadowing the last stanza, with the ripe fruit described as ‘Like a plate of eyes’
and the allusion to the murderer Bluebeard, to imply that the future may hold fear
as well as joy.

The second stanza describes how disillusionment with the harshness of reality is a
necessary part of maturing, as is the acceptance of disappointment. The children,
have ‘hoarded’ the berries, suggesting that they were something precious, only to
find the berries are already rotting: ‘A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.’ The
sensory imagery of ‘glutting’ followed by the juice ‘stinking’, clearly shows the
child’s disgust, shock and most importantly disappointment. In his innocence, the
boy gathered the berries, ‘Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not’.
The aphorism shows that deep down he accepted the fact that just like the decay of
the berries is unavoidable in nature, so is the coming of maturity in his journey in
life.
In conclusion, these poems examine the complicated connections between
childhood and maturity in the eyes of the poet. He does this through an exploration
of childhood innocence, curiosity and enjoyment of the natural world, juxtaposing
it with adult dignity and how the change in point of view can turn fascination into
fear and disgust. Ultimately, all three poems illustrate that this transformative
process comes at the cost of innocence and curiosity. Although the poems are
autobiographical, the symbolism has a universality, as they reflect a person’s
journey to maturity and how the experiences of childhood can shape the adult.

WORD COUNT: 1507

Bibliography:

Seamus, Heaney, “Blackberry-Picking” Opened Ground: Selected poems 1966-1996, Poetry Foundation.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50981/blackberry-picking

Seamus, Heaney, “Death of a Naturalist” Opened Ground: Selected poems 1966-1996, Poetry
Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57040/death-of-a-naturalist

Seamus, Heaney, “Personal Helicon”, Internet Poetry Archive

https://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/heaney/personal_helicon.php

None. (2020, February 8). Analysis of the poetry of Seamus Heaney. RSS. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from
https://bohatala.com/analysis-of-the-poetry-of-seamus-heaney/