The Tollund Man

I thought you might enjoy seeing some images of the Tollund Man. He dates from the 4th Century BC and was discovered in Denmark in 1950. I think seeing these images might add to your reading of Heaney's poem. And, if you want to see some truly AMAZING photography of bog-preserved bodies (and who wouldn't, right?), go to http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/09/bog-bodies/clark-photography. The first photo, which is of the Tollund Man, is arresting. So are many others.

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.

Seamus Heaney Reading List

Monday
“Digging” (3)
“Death of a Naturalist” (5)
“Blackberry-Picking” (7)
“Requiem for the Croppies” (23)
“The Wife’s Tale” (25)
“Bogland” (41)
“The Other Side” (59)
“The Tollund Man” (62)
“Limbo” (72)

Wednesday
“Punishment” (112)
“Summer, 1969” (132)
“The Toome Road” (143)
“The Strand at Lough Beg” (145)
“The Singer’s House” (153)
“The Otter” (167)
“The Skunk” (168)
“The Harvest Bow” (175)
“In Memorium Francis Ledwidge” (176)

Friday
“Changes” (211)
“The Railway Children” (216)
“The Haw Lantern” (275)
“The Pitchfork” (320)
“Two Lorries” (378)
“A Call” (403)
“Postscript” (411)
“Crediting Poetry” (413-430)*

*“Crediting Poetry” is Heaney’s 1995 Nobel Lecture

Elizabeth Bowen and Anglo-Irishness

In one of my volumes on Modern Irish writers (Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook, ed. Alexander Gonzalez), the entry on Elizabeth Bowen, written by Barbara Suess (that's Dr. Suess, not Dr. Seuss), begins this way:

"Although she was revered more for her 'Anglo' works than her 'Irish' works, Elizabeth Bowen's Anglo-Irish upbringing in the early twentieth century provided her a unique position from which to view--and write about--Ireland. Bowen's Irish works, the large body of short stories, novels, reviews, and essays devoted to Irish subjects, characters, and settings, are an impressive literary legacy that need no apology."

This entry is a great way to begin a discussion about Bowen and, by extension, to continue our discussions about "Anglo-Irish" literature. There are several assumptions running beneath Suess's paragraph. First, she assumes that one can distinguish between Bowen's "Anglo" works and her "Irish" works. If Bowen's "subjects, characters, and settings" are "Irish," then so is the work in question. But this can be problemetic since defining what is "Irish" about a character or subject is not a simple task, as we discussed early on (we decided, for example, that Wilde and Yeats are both problematic in this way). Suess writes that Bowen's "Irish" works need no apology, and by this she presumably means they do not need to justify their "Irish-ness." Well, why would they? One answer is that Bowen grew up in a manor house in Cork, in a well-off Protestant family with English ties, and this put her at odds with writers who were more "authentically" (that is, Catholically and Dublinally) "Irish." She also spent much of her time in England, and many of her works (including Death of the Heart) are set in England. These works are what Suess calls Bowen's "Anglo" works, and one wonders whether she means to imply that these do need an apology of some kind for being set in England and containing English characters. Or maybe it is the fact that Bowen hung around the likes of T. S. Eliot (see the above photograph from the National Portrait Gallery), Virginia Woolf, and other very non-Irish modernists. But no matter the reason, the very suggestion, however slight it may be, that Bowen has to justify, or somehow apologize for, her any work because it is not "Irish" enough tells us something about how Anglo-Irish literature is often perceived and discussed.

So we are back to this question again: Is Irish-ness simply a matter of geography? Must Irish literature be set in Ireland? What makes a work of literature Irish, the author or the subject matter? Some combination of these? Is C. S. Lewis, who was born in Belfast to a father of Welsh blood, an Irish writer? He is not commonly included in the Irish "canon." I intentionally included The Death of the Heart on the syllabus because I wanted to raise these questions. I might have included The Last September, which is typically categorized as one of Bowen's "Irish" works, but it is not as good of a novel. Should I have put it on anyway because it is partially set in Ireland? Are you reading this book and thinking, "What the heck does this have to do with Ireland?" (It's okay if you are, by the way.)

One other thing: If you read Suess's paragraph again, you will detect the suggestion, though it is not a stated claim, that Bowen writes about Ireland from the perspective of an outsider. I think this is true, but I hasten to add that Bowen, like many of the so-called "Anglo-Irish," experienced a kind of identity crisis brought on by a cultural rootlessness. They were not simply Englishmen and Englishwomen looking at Ireland. They were, in many cases, deracinated Irishmen and Irishwomen who felt just as out of place in England as they did in Ireland. If we look at Portia as a type of this character, a type that appears in many of Bowen's works, we can start to appreciate the psychology of the outsider, the estranged, and this is a character that is extremely important to Modern Irish literature, at least in my view. In other words, all of Bowen's work is written from the perspective of an outsider, not just her "Irish" works (I obviously don't separate her "Anglo" works from her "Irish" works because I think these can be used too easily and categorically, and at times falsely).

I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of this.

"O come all ye youthful poets and try to be more human."

Prompts for next time:

1. One could argue (many critics have) that Kavanagh is the first poet of the new, independent Irish State. If this is true, what are your impressions of that State based on your reading of his poetry?

2. The shadow of Yeats is long, falling over not just modern Irish poetry, but all modern poetry written in English. However, Kavanagh stands in stark contrast to his predecessor. We talked about some of those differences in class today, but I would like for you to explore this further. And, what is perhaps more difficult, discuss any similarities you see in their work. (You might pair an answer to this question with an answer to #5 below.)

3. How is the poem "Advent" a celebration of the immediate, and perhaps most especially a celebration of the vernacular? Where and how do you see this kind of celebration reflected in Kavanagh's other poems?

4. In "Peace," do you think the speaker feels more of an affinity with the "country fellows" mentioned early in the poem, or with the "fools" who try to transcend the local setting and "fight with tyrants Love and Life and Time"? Our instinct is to place Kavanagh among the turnips, potatoes, and turf banks, but isn't the relationship expressed in the poem a bit more complex than that? Thoughts?

5. After reading "Irish Poets Open Your Eyes," go back and read Yeats's "Under Ben Bulben." What are some of the most striking differences between the two poems?

6. Do you see anything in Kavanagh that reminds you of Joyce? If so, what? Also, after reading the poem of the same name, you might consider answering Kavanagh's question: "Who Killed James Joyce?"

7. If "Spring Day" is an artist's manifesto (I'm not saying it is, but for the sake of an interesting question...), what are the principles of that manifesto?

8. One thing that always strikes me when I read The Great Hunger is how many different styles Kavanagh uses. There are sections in rhyme and meter, sections of long-line free verse, sections of short couplets, etc. Why do you think Kavanagh varies the form of the poem so much? How might that be related to the content?

9. Talk about sexuality in these poems. How is used differently than in Wilde, or Yeats, or Joyce? Why, for example, might Kavanagh use sexual imagery and language to describe farming (and, for that matter, farmers)? Quinn calls the Ireland of The Great Hunger a "famine-stricken, psycho-sexual wasteland." Do you agree? Can comparisons be made to that pillar of modern poetry, The Wasteland?

Patrick Kavanagh Reading List

Here I am, rushing back from Ohio, with a Patrick Kavanagh reading list in-hand. If you haven't been able to track down the Penguin Selected Poems, or if it hasn't arrived yet, you should be able to find many (but probably not all) of these poems online. I definitely want you to read Quinn's "Poetry and Independence" piece at the beginning, so I will be bringing a few copies of that to class for those of you who don't have it yet. It's very good, if slightly repetitive in places; and for those of you who find yourselves drawn to Kavanagh's work, or who want some supplemental material for your term paper, Quinn has also written an excellent biography on him.

I like to think of Kavanagh as the counterweight to Yeats. That's overly simplistic for sure, but it's accurate in many ways, which we will discuss. I will start a Kavanagh thread tomorrow, but for now, feel free to compare his work to Yeats's, or to Joyce's for that matter. He was a big fan of Joyce.

Here is your reading list. I'll be excited to see what you make of Kavanagh.

For Monday
"Inniskeen Road: July Evening"
"Shancoduff"
"Memory of My Father"
"Spraying the Potatoes"
"Stony Grey Soil"

For Wednesday
The Great Hunger
"Advent"
"Peace"
"Threshing Morning"
"Pegasus"
"In Memory of My Mother"
"Spring Day"
"Irish Poets Open Your Eyes"
"To be Dead"
"Who Killed James Joyce?"

For Friday
"Innocence"
"Epic"
"If You ever Go To Dublin Town"
"Irish Stew"
"The Hospital"
"Come Dance With Kitty Stobling"
"Canal Bank Walk"
"Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin"
"An Insult"

Most of these poems are fairly short, but The Great Hunger, Kavanagh's magnum opus, is quite long, so you might want to read ahead if you have time.

See you tomorrow.

Patrick Kavanagh monument on Dublin's Grand Canal.

Dubliners

Let's start a Dubliners thread. I liked what you had to say in class yesterday very much and would welcome any further discussion of open-ended narrative, atypical or fragmented plot structures, authenticating details, or comparisons to/tie-ins with Yeats and Wilde or anything else (yes, including comic books, Andy). Here are a few things I wouldn't mind reading about:

1. Some critics argue that the main character in Dubliners is the city of Dublin itself. How do you feel about this? Can any place transcend "setting" and function as a character?

2. Do you feel as though you gain something from reading the stories together, as a collection, as opposed to reading only a few of them? I realize it may be impossible to know how you would react to a story on its own, separated from the others, but it isn't impossible to see what is gained from reading them as parts of a whole (perhaps wholeness isn't the best adjective to use when discussing Joyce, but you know what I mean). For example, what common motifs, images, situations, themes, landmarks, etc. run through the stories, and what effect does this have on you as a reader?

3. Joyce was skeptical of the Celtic Revival, famously saying, "I distrust all enthusiams." However, as important to Ireland's identity as revivalist texts were/are, could it not be argued that Joyce's depictions of Dublin's political climate, religious tensions, family life, sexuality, stagnation, etc. are ultimately some of the most substantive texts when it comes to modern Ireland's identity?

4. Could Joyce's stories be called, in Yeatsian terms, "the fascination of what's difficult"?

5. Joyce once wrote in a letter that "Two Gallants" is "one of the most important stories in the book," and he said he would "rather sacrifice five other stories" than lose that one. Why do you think this is?

Yeats Exhibit - National Library of Ireland

There is a really cool interactive exhibit on Yeats at the National Library of Ireland, and it's online. Check it out: http://www.nli.ie/yeats/