Thursday, July 2, 2020
Religious Intolerance Explored in Bog Poems - Literature Essay Samples
Seamus Heaney wrote poems on a wide variety of subjects; from reflecting on his experiences with nature as a child to a period of political turmoil that plagued Ireland in the early 20th century called the ââ¬Å"Troubles.â⬠Some of his poems address many issues together and have recurring themes and ideas. An example is a series of poems called Bog poems: ââ¬ËBogland,ââ¬â¢ ââ¬ËTollund manââ¬â¢ and ââ¬ËThe Grauballe man,ââ¬â¢ which share an obvious geographic theme but also show a similar concern towards themes like violence, religion, and terror. The first poem Bogland is a poem that looks at Bogs more from a nationalistic point of view. Bog lands are wetlands that accumulate peat, a deposit of dead plant material. Bogs are a topographic feature of Ireland and are a common occurrence in countries part of the Northern Hemisphere. The speaker of the poem opens the first stanza with the word ââ¬ËWeââ¬â¢, which is a possessive pronoun and conveys a sense of unity with the land. In the opening lines, there is a contrast between the physical geography of United States with the Irish landscape,ââ¬Å"We have no prairies/ To slice a big sun at eveningâ⬠, and what apparently seems as a negative statement is turned into a positive assertion with words like ââ¬Å" encroaching horizonâ⬠and ââ¬Å"unfenced country. Concurrently, the poem sheds light on the unrealized features of bogs, the layers upon layers of the land, enclosed with a rich history and ââ¬Ë bog that keeps crustingââ¬â¢ far and beyond. Moreover, the bogs are in layers and each layer is a page from a history book, but like an encroaching sun it at first doesnââ¬â¢t reveal anything, hence giving a feeling of absence.Bogs are also used as a metaphor to show a connection of the present to the past through the constancy of the land, evident from the verse ââ¬Å"Butter sunk under/ More than a hundred yearsâ⬠which ââ¬Å"Was recovered salty and whiteâ⬠. The conserving nature of the bogs is also discussed in ââ¬Å"Tollund Manâ⬠where Seamus Heaney takes it one step further by calling the land ââ¬Å"goddessâ⬠. Tollund Man is a poem full of promising things, for one there is the promising pilgrimage, ââ¬Å"Someday I will go to Aarhusâ⬠. In this very first line the tone is willful and expectant, however, there is a presence of aloofness towards the future from the time that is being spoken in. The speaker harkens to see the ââ¬Å"peat brown headâ⬠of the sacred body, but assume an impersonal tone when noting the physical features of the Tollund manââ¬â¢s body. Later; however, he feels a personal connection to the Tollund man when he says ââ¬Å"I will stand a long timeâ⬠only after he exposes his vulnerability to religious victimization. He then again glorifies it, and this time that to the status of a saint. But he uses a more ominous and forceful tone as he does this, he personifies the bog into a deity and equates it to Ireland, feminine in nature and overwhelming ââ¬Å"she tightened her torc on himâ⬠. The kind of language used indicates the powerlessness of the Tollund man in the face of superior and supernatural forces, but then insists on the quasi-divine nature coming into effect and ââ¬Å"working/ Him to a saintââ¬â¢s kept bodyâ⬠, a surrogate Christ perhaps, who is left at chance ââ¬Å"trove of the turf cuttersâ⬠for now and will be resurrected again ââ¬Å"his stained face/ Reposesâ⬠. There is a deliberate attempt at linking religion with the circle of violence for the sake of bringing peace. This attempt becomes clearer in the second stanza where the speakerââ¬â¢s tone becomes more emphatic as he breaks the stillness of the last line in the first stanza to boldly confront the violence caused by religion. His boldness is exemplified from when he says ââ¬Å"I could risk blasphemyâ⬠(that is by averting to Pagan beliefs), in an attempt to re surrect the victims of sectarian violence. As a sacrificial victim to the goddess of germination, Tollund man carries the potential of bringing the dead back to life (ââ¬Å"gruel of winter seedsâ⬠), this may also be an allusion to the ââ¬Å"Requiem for the Croppiesâ⬠where the fightersââ¬â¢ graves sprouted as a result of barley seeds in their pockets as they died. Hence perhaps aligning himself to pagan beliefs and then praying to Tollund, the speaker imagines he may have a shot at reviving the victims of religious violence. A third and final poem of the series is ââ¬ËThe Grauballe manââ¬â¢, where bogs act as a metaphysical conceit of history and highlight the recrudescence of religious violence that is associated with Ireland. However unlike Tollund man, this poem is less a myth-making and promising things, the terror in this poem comes from the depiction of the mummy as a grotesque art. The strong imagery in the poem conflicts with the state of tranquility in which Grauballe man is at first described. What seems even more unreal is once again the assumption of an impersonal tone and the absence of a commentary on such powerful images. There is even a lack of human empathy that would normally be present in such a scenario and it seems as if Grauballe man is presented as aesthetically horrific, yet appreciable. There is nothing passive or ââ¬Ëmildââ¬â¢ about the Grauballe man, his murder has been perhaps described overt at best: ââ¬Å"The head lifts/ the chin is a visor/ raised above the ven t/ of his slashed throatâ⬠. The lines that follow this description show a shift, where now the description ends and the rationale for the description is given, but first as a reflection of his self-discourse with respect to Grauballe being art and then as realization of the actual terror-embedded-reality, ââ¬Å"I saw his twisted face/ in a photograph, /a head and a shoulder/ out of the peat/ bruised like a forceps babyâ⬠, overshadowing the art. Here Seamus Heaney uses bogs as a different metaphor to create awareness regarding a clash between myth and reality. In the end, art is looked upon as a reflection of life but with certain limitations. The poem itself is limited in expressing the true horrors of life, however, it makes an attempt by using metaphorical techniques to create strong images of reality. All in all, it can be noted that in all three of the poems there are recurring topics, metaphors (metaphysical conceit) and explicit use of imagery in order to show Heaneyââ¬â¢s concern towards the chain of violence which can be connected back to a single source: religious intolerance. Moreover, he tries to discover violence by exploring the victims of Irish pagan cultures in the past and comments on how religious intolerance has been a lost culture of the land that was being revived during the ââ¬Å"Troublesâ⬠.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)