That art imitates life is oftentimes taken for granted. It seems fairly obvious that an artist’s life shapes his or her work because, without his or her experiences, it would be impossible to create anything in his or her style or voice. A perfect example of such a statement is Seamus Heaney, a poet from Northern Ireland. His experiences and his life directly impacted how he could write poetry and gave him a very unique voice. Growing up in Northern Ireland during a time of great violence shaped Heaney’s poem The Punishment. Without the experience of witnessing the aggression between the British and Irish, Heaney would not have been able to draw parallels between the girl in the poem and the women of Northern Ireland to create a dark metaphor full of conflicting emotions.
Like many poets, Seamus Heaney’s life is directly reflected in his work. Heaney grew up in Northern Ireland during the Second World War. He was born in April of 1939 and was the oldest of nine children who lived on a farm. Heaney’s mother was a member of a more industrial family; they worked for mills and factories. Heaney’s father was a cattle dealer. The difference between the two sides of his family, according to Heaney himself, absolutely had an impact on his poetry. He explains that his “father was notably sparing of talk and his mother notably ready to speak out” (“Seamus Heaney – Biography”) and that his poetry reflects that difference. Heaney watched the world delve into a world war when he was still a child and moved many times throughout his childhood. Most of his poetry, however, remained rooted in the rural backdrop of his youth.
When Heaney was twelve, he began courses at St. Columb’s College, a Catholic school in Northern Ireland. It was here that Heaney learned classic Latin and Gaelic. The languages and volumes he learned would later manifest themselves in his poetry. He studied classic literature as well and would find influences from classic Anglo-Saxon prose. When Heaney met Marie Devlin, later Marie Heaney, his poems developed yet again. The changes in Heaney’s life are reflected in his work.
Though Heaney, as an adult, lived all over the world, his work stayed rooted in the rural county of his childhood. He traveled to America and England, earning a place among Harvard and Oxford professors, but returned home to Northern Ireland to live and write. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995. Heaney lives and works now in Dublin.
In Heaney’s poem The Punishment, he draws heavily from his own life to both find inspiration and truly drives the metaphor home. The Punishment serves as one arching metaphor for the violence in Ireland during Heaney’s childhood and through his early adulthood. If Heaney were not from Northern Ireland, which underwent severe cruelty for decades, he would not have had the experiences to draw upon in the poem. Heaney was “born into a society deeply divided along religious and political lines, one which was doomed moreover to suffer a quarter-century of violence, polarization, and inner distrust” (“Seamus Heaney – Biography”) and it was that society that gave Heaney the backdrop for all his future work. He would not have known to marry the bog body, a long-deceased young woman, with the image of Irish women being murdered for marrying English soldiers. Heaney used “an ancient example of brutality and [linked] it with [a] modern form of brutality…” (“Punishment: Seamus Heaney”). Using this metaphor connects everything within Heaney’s poem — his life, the past, the future, and everything in between. It is only through his life’s experience that he had the insight to draw that parallel.
Heaney’s poetry was also incredibly dark, especially the poem The Punishment. This is, of course, a direct result of the violence in which he grew up. In the 1970s, the rising conflict between the IRA and the British “[darkened] the mood of Heaney’s work” (“Seamus Heaney – Biography”) dramatically. The violence and problems of Northern Ireland at that time also caused Heaney to question poetry’s place in the world; he felt socially obligated to express opinions on the issues that faced him every day. Given that these were dark issues, his poetry certainly turned more dreary.
One of the most telling and intriguing aspects of Heaney’s poetry is its conflict. Within The Punishment, Heaney’s narrator expresses deeply conflicting emotions; he struggles with himself and the material. This is a mirror of Heaney’s childhood. His mother, the child of an industrial family, and his father, the son of farmers, were two extremely different people. While his mother chattered constantly, his father was silent. Heaney expressed that he always felt torn between the two; he questioned whether it was better to be quiet or talkative. In his poetry, Heaney struggles between whether he would or would not feel pity for the dead girl. In the end, he clearly states that he would probably have cast the first stone, even if he did nearly love the adulteress. This is another example of Heaney’s early life and background rising into his work as a poet.
Poets naturally draw from their own life when they create their art and Seamus Heaney is no exception. He writes poems such as The Punishment, which draws directly from his experiences growing up and living in Northern Ireland, a country with much violence in Heaney’s time. Had Heaney not lived in Northern Ireland, his poetry would undoubtedly be completely different. He drew heavily on his childhood on a farm, his mother and father and their differences, the violence of Northern Ireland, and even his wife to create his art. Heaney, like the poets he studied, was shaped by his experiences; The Punishment is a great example of his world views entering his work.
Works Cited
“Punishment : Seamus Heaney.” Bachelor and Master. Web.