Introduction
Many writers and poets describe the natural world, countryside, and places far from urbanization as something good and beautiful at its core. However, nature has not only pacifying landscapes and beautiful reliefs but also often unpleasant and destructive forces, which people resist with hard work. This fact is often emphasized by Seamus Heaney’s poetry, which challenges the notions of nature and the countryside as delighted and celebrated phenomena. This paper will analyze Heaney’s poetry to demonstrate how the author helps the ecocritical debate by revealing the relationship between people and nature and its unpleasant side.
Analysis of the Poems
One of the most famous collections of Heaney’s poems is Death of a naturalist, the works from which will be analyzed in this paper. This collection contains many verses that describe the life of an Irish farmer in the countryside, nature, its elements, and forces are used as a metaphor for the key stages and events of human life. For example, the poems “Death of a Naturalist” and “Blackberry-picking” both show the process of growing up and losing childhood innocence. However, the descriptions that the author uses to create this metaphor also demonstrate the imperfection, strength, and often cruelty of nature.
“Blackberry-picking”
One can find confirmation of this idea in the lines of “Blackberry-picking”. The main story of the verse is the seasonal blackberry picking, which involves children and teenagers helping their parents. Although the first stanza describes a cheerful picture of finding the first sweet berry, the further development of the plot points to the difficulties of the harvesting process, which are a necessity for farmers. The second stanza also shows the inevitability of natural processes of rotting and decay that symbolize growing up in this context. For example, the author writes, “Our hands were peppered / With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s” (Heaney, 2014, p. 10).
These lines demonstrate the real difficulties of picking berries from thorny bushes, and a metaphor of particular cruelty of the process, since the author compares their hands sticky with the juice of berries, with the hands of a famous violent pirate sticky with blood.
In addition, despite the initial innocence of picking berries, Heaney described the process with a certain brutality. Words such as “flesh”, ” summer’s blood”, “lust”, “like a plate of eyes” allude to the wildness of the children, possibly referring to the primitive dependence of humans on nature. Before the development of agriculture, people used all the available resources collected or hunted, and the words used by the author hint at those wilder practices. In this way, Heaney deprives the process of picking berries of the innocence and fun with which it is usually described, and with simple literary methods, shows nature and its mastery by man as hard work.
Moreover, in the second stanza, Heaney describes how natural processes can be disgusting and destructive. In this part, the narrator talks about the process of fermenting berries that farmers use, but not from the point of view of benefits, but from the perspective of ruining down the sweet juicy berries. The narrator says, “It wasn’t fair / That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot” (Heaney, 2014, p. 10). Mold and the smell of rotting fruit are disgusting to the narrator and readers, although this is one of the typical steps of processing berries into wine or other products. At the same time, although, in this context, feminization is desirable for people, it is entirely natural and shows the imperfection of nature.
“Death of a Naturalist”
Another example of natural but disgusting for unaccustomed viewers processes that people use for their benefit is described in verse “Death of a naturalist”. The main setting of the story is a rotting flax-dam inhabited by insects and frogs. Although in the first stanza, the narrator shows a childish interest in the processes taking place in the flax-dam and does not experience fear or disgust, this feeling is difficult for readers to share. Heaney deliberately created vivid descriptions that show the unpleasantness of the decay processes and life of the local fauna, which one can see from the words used and the pace of the first stanza.
For example, the narrator says, “But best of all was the warm thick slobber / Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water” (Heaney, 2014, p. 5). Although this substance delights a child who learns the world, this description is not pleasant to most readers. In addition, the assonance of sounds, as in the phrase “green and heavy headed”, makes it impossible to read the stanza at a fast pace, which gives the impression of the viscosity of the rotting flax-dam. Nevertheless, this impression is partially smoothed by the childish naivety and interest with which the storyteller describes flax-dam, in contrast to the second stanza.
The second stanza is more disturbing in nature and shows the narrator’s fear and disgust of a place that aroused his interest in childhood. The narrator describes the toads as a threat and “the great slime kings” that can harm him and avenge him for stealing frog eggs (Heaney, 2014, p.5-6). Although in context, this description is used as a metaphor for fear of growing up, one can also take it literally. People have learned to use natural resources to their advantage, but the forces of nature are still more powerful and can cause serious harm. In addition, the narrator’s fear of revenge can also be taken in a broader sense.
Frogs cannot harm a child, and this fear is just a metaphor to show the change in the narrator’s perception of the world and his growing up. However, nature can “take revenge” on people for deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions by causing climate change and natural disasters such as droughts, floods, or hurricanes. Consequently, Heaney helps the ecocritical debate with this verse by demonstrating the unpleasant side of biological processes and the relationship between people and nature.
“At a Potato Digging”
Another example of people’s dependence on nature and its irresistible power compared to humans is demonstrated by Heaney’s verse “At a potato digging”. Heaney (2014) talks about a potato harvesting process that, although partially automated, still requires significant human effort. The mood and tone of the verse present people as small and practically powerless in front of nature and the earth, which appears more like a god than a resource.
The author writes, “Centuries / Of fear and homage to the famine god / Toughen the muscles behind their humbled knees, / Make a seasonal altar of the sod.” (Heaney, 2014, p. 21). The process of digging potatoes is also similar to worshiping as the farmers barely unbend their backs and kneel to find potatoes. Thus, Heaney shows that only hard work allows people to benefit from nature and emphasizes their dependence on the environment.
Most clearly, the dependence and powerlessness of man in front of nature are demonstrated in Heaney’s reference to the hunger of the past. The author says, “Live skulls, blind-eyed, balanced on / wild higgledy skeletons / scoured the land in ‘forty-five, / wolfed the blighted root and died.” (Heaney, 2014, p. 22). These lines describe a famine in Ireland that began in 1845 due to a fungus that destroyed the potato crop and resulted in hundreds of thousands of people’s death(Cantwell, 2017). Five verses of the poem are devoted to the description of suffering and death caused by this famine. With these lines, Heaney shows that nature and its resources are the most valuable for people, since only they can people the food and water they need to survive. This question is particularly relevant to the ecocritical debate because it highlights the importance of using resources responsibly and protecting the environment.
Conclusion
Therefore, an analysis of the poems “Death of a naturalist”, “Blackberry-picking”, and “At a potato digging” shows that Heaney helps the ecocritical debate by describing the imperfection and threats of nature as well as people’s dependence on it. In the poems “Death of a naturalist” and “Blackberry-picking”, the reader can see the unpleasant side of natural processes, which are usually not celebrated by society. At the same time, “At a potato digging” demonstrates people’s dependence on natural resources, which should provoke a sense of respect and frugality. Thus, Heaney’s poetry is one example of literary work that raises important environmental questions.
References
Cantwell J. D. (2017). A great-grandfather’s account of the Irish potato famine (1845-1850). Proceedings (Baylor University. Medical Center), 30(3), 382–383. Web.
Heaney, S. (2014). Poems, 1965-1975. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.