A Tool to Dig up Memories

A pen; that is the tool that Seamus Heaney (ʃeɪməs hiːni), one of the greatest poets that has ever existed, used to give life to his very own arcade of memories.

“The Pen is a lot lighter than the spade.” This is one of the quotations that Heaney mentioned to refer to the fact that he always preferred the work given to a pen rather than the work given to a spade.

Having been born in the countryside, Heaney’s family were ‘people of the earth’, people who worked and lived of the ground they stood on.

His father and his grandfather were men proud of the land in which they were born and so they transmitted this pridefulness to Seamus, the next generation, though he did not work the soil has his previous generations did. He worked his earth with words. Although his family considered Seamus a bit disrespectful for this, since for them, sweaty and harsh work was the true way of living.    

You raise a spade to work the soil not a pen.

…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.

Extract of Seamus Heaney’s “Digging”

Since I started reading some of Heaney’s poems, (and of course reading different analysis about his poems) it was clearly shown to me that what drove Seamus’ writing, mostly, were the memories of his childhood and the memories of the essence of the old Northern Ireland he lived in. Needless to say, the feeling of loss Heaney must have felt when he moved from the green-like view of the countryside to live in a grey-modern city and also, how different this new glance of his beloved Northern Ireland was for him.

These memories were the muse and the so needed guidance that Seamus Heaney sought. Heaney recalls the light of a better lively past in order to overcome the maelstroms of the present and by doing so, he gives retrospective to the difficulties he was facing at the moment, politically and personally speaking.  

 

Besides his memories, another important engine of Seamus writing was all the political issues that Northern Ireland was going through (Catholicism Vs. protestant and the siege between The Ireland identity Vs. The British identity). 

As many of the people who analyzed his work have stated, it is quite unlikely that Seamus Heaney could have written all those memorable words if he had not lived in such a noisy context, context of a country which was in a constant social struggle.

"Religion's never mentioned here", of course.
"You know them by their eyes," and hold your tongue.
"One side's as bad as the other," never worse.
Christ, it's near time that some small leak was sprung

In the great dykes the Dutchman made
To dam the dangerous tide that followed Seamus.
Yet for all this art and sedentary trade
I am incapable. The famous

Northern reticence, the tight gag of place
And times: yes, yes. Of the "wee six" I sing
Where to be saved you only must save face
And whatever you say, you say nothing.

Extract of Seamus Heaney’s “Whatever you say say nothing III”.

By the time of his death (2013), the entire country of Northern Ireland looked up to Seamus Heaney as a true Irish man, a man of his country, a true patriot. Seamus Heaney is loved by Ireland due to the fact that most of his poems discuss or narrates the difficulties of being a true, prideful Irish.

Although, as Irish Seamus might have been, his poetry belongs to the entire world. 

This was Seamus Heaney, a man of his country, of his people, of his family and most importantly of his memories. For me, Seamus Heaney was or rather still is, “The Poet of Memories”.

This is why it is so intriguing to read his work. It is remarkable to read about someone who used his past in such a healing manner that his present became less obscure.

 

If you have the time (which you most likely do not have) try to read one of Seamus’ poems and imagine yourself in the place that the Poet of Memories sets for you.

(Or even better, why don’t you stop reading dead poets and attempt to become one alive.)

“Noli Timere” for those who use a pen as a tool to dig up memories.

References:

Emory University. (2015, Jun 01). “A conversation about Seamus Heaney — feeling into words”.  Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67MxifaG8UA

Parker, Michael (1993). Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Seamus Heaney. (2015). The Biography.com website. Retrieved 04:40, Jun 01, 2015, from http://www.biography.com/people/seamus-heaney-9332875.

          

          Seamus Heaney, The Art of Poetry No. 75. (2012) The Paris Review. Org 

           Website. Retrieved Jun 01, 2015 from: http://www.theparisreview.org /interviews/1217/the-art-of-poetry-no-75-seamus-heaney.