When reviewing North, Ciaran Carson describes Seamus Heaney as ‘a laureate of violence – a mythmaker, an anthropologist of ritual killing, an apologist for the situation, in the last resort, a mystifier’. Do you agree with Carson’s assessment? PDF

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I disagreed with Ciaran Carson's notion about Heaney being ‘a laureate of violence – a mythmaker, an anthropologist of ritual killing, an apologist for the situation, in the last resort, a mystifier’. By analysing Heanry's fourth poetry collection 'North', I detailed how Carson's view is problemati...

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When reviewing North, Ciaran Carson describes Seamus Heaney as ‘a laureate of violence – a mythmaker, an anthropologist of ritual killing, an apologist for the situation, in the last resort, a mystifier’. Do you agree with Carson’s assessment? Professor Ciaran Carson. A well-respected Irish poet and novelist that has produced critically acclaimed and renowned pieces of literature such as Breaking News and Belfast Confet, winning the Forward Poetry prize and the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry respectively. He has also developed a mutual respect for his contemporary Seamus Heaney, establishing the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. Alan Gillis, from Poetry Ireland News, further exalts Carson as an artist who “[understands] poetry as an art form deeply entwined with music and the visual arts, with its roots creeping into every aspect and element, nook and cranny, of [Irish] culture.” 1 With such accolades, Carson is definitely a significant figure in regard to literary expression and critical opinion. However, one must disagree with his statement that Seamus Heaney, particularly in the wake of Irish sociopolitical instability, was “a laureate of violence – a mythmaker, an anthropologist of ritual killing, an apologist for the situation, in the last resort, a mystifier.” Not only can it be argued that Carson’s opinion was demonstratively incorrect when analysing the poems in North but is also very problematic when discussing oppression. Ironically, despite also being a part of the Irish populace with Heaney, Carson’s opinion epitomises the actual mindset that continues to uphold oppression. His opinion also expresses how the oppressive state silences the political minority, the “other”, in their own socio-political degeneration; accusing them of venerating the violence that is used to oppress them.

The wake of instability was made clear from the outset of North, starting with the two poems that are dedicated to Heaney’s aunt. At the start of the first poem, ‘Sunlight’, Heaney expresses a lack of warmth in the environment where “there was a sunlit absence”. 2 The sun has always, in both the literary and the natural world, been an important symbol. Being the biggest star in our solar system, the sun usually represents warmth and vitality and is paramount to the survival of all living entities on Earth. Depending on the empathy of the reader, the absence of the sun can be interpreted as either a macrocosm of Irish hostility, or a parallel to it. Either way, Heaney himself, a lone writer, expresses

1 Gillis, Alan, The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry 2 Heaney, Sunlight (page ix)

how infinitesimal he is in both size and significance, compared to the sun and the malice present in Ireland. This immediately contradicts Carson’s view of Heaney as a ‘mythmaker’ and a ‘mystifier’; the socio-political instability in Ireland significantly overshadows and appears to overwhelm Heaney initially, paralleling with the absence of the ultimate sign of power in the natural environment. Although the sun returns as the poem progresses, it has been framed in a more diminished state “the sun stood / like a girdle cooling / against the wall”.3 The warm, vibrant properties of the sun and the verb ‘cooling’ are diametrically opposing concepts; coupling them together further proves how futile Heaney’s opinion appears to be.

However, the disturbance in the atmosphere serves as a dichotomy against Heaney’s relationship with his aunt, who appears to be baking in the poem, “she stood / in a floury apron / by the window.”4 The act of baking, creating something new, edible, and hopefully delicious, reflects the maternal nurturing of Heaney’s aunt as well as the possible optimistic undertone of the poem and the collection; despite the atmosphere proving to be ‘cool’, the aunt’s baking provides warmth and a sense of harmony for Heaney, admitting at the end of the poem that this “is love / like a tinsmith’s scoop / sunk past its gleam / in the meal-bin.”5 This idea of peaceful production seems to continues over to the second dedicatory poem ‘The Seed Cutters’. “With time to kill / they are taking their time” 6, Heaney’s reference to agriculture helps bring the Irish ancestors of the ‘Brueghel’ past and the Irish civilians of the present together, showing the continuity of agrarian tradition and “Oh, calendar customs!”.7 Heaney narrating the Irish identity as a holistic monolith does not glorify the ensuing violence in 1970s Ireland, but it does not ignore it either.

Communities that are considered political minorities are actively aware and at constant conflict with the stereotypes that are perpetuated on to them by the political majority, as well as the negative connotations produced in their own communities consequentially. Martinican writer and revolutionary Frantz Fanon illustrated this awareness in most of his works, relating this consciousness 3 Ibid 4 Ibid 5 Ibid 6 Heaney, The Seed Cutters (page xi) 7 Ibid

to the black struggle, “In the white world, the man of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema. Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third-person consciousness.”8Although the Irish are racially identified as white, many articles have expressed similarities between the Irish and the black struggle. For example, in his 1962 speech, Malcolm X expressed how, “The most disrespected woman in America, is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America, is the black woman.”9 To prevent succumbing to oppression in modern society, the popular hashtag #BlackGirlMagic was established, representing a modern social movement created by black women that “illustrate the universal awesomeness of black women”. 10 Heaney appears to combat the tension between the nationalists and the unionists by reviewing the past and regarding how all modern Irish civilians are descendants of people who maintained harmony. By projecting a positive, calm image that was near opposite to that that was being portrayed due to political movements such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), North is arguably similar to the efforts of modern movements such as #BlackGirlMagic, contradicting Carson’s view of Heaney being a ‘laureate of violence’.

However, as North progresses, the reader understands that Heaney’s interaction with the past is significantly dark in tone and themes, albeit continuing the connection between the past and the present. The 1st half of North contains poems that explore the theme of placement and displacement, through the poems’ descriptions of archaeological and anthropological findings. In the 7 th poem ‘Bone Dreams’, the longest poem in the collection, Heaney describes the physical characteristics of discovered human bones, “its yellowing, ribbed / impression in the grass - / a small ship-burial. / as dead as stone”.11 Heaney’s use of adjectives such as ‘yellowing’, as well as the simile ‘as dead as stone’, implies the typical imagery of decomposition. However, despite how grotesque the image is in its realism, Heaney asserts the presence of old Ireland being re-established into the modern Irish remit. When reviewing Heaney and Carson’s bodies of work, Professor John Kerrigan references French 8 Fanon, Frantz, Black Skin, White Masks, (page 110) 9 X, Malcolm, Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?, 1962 10 Wilson, Julee, The Meaning Of #BlackGirlMagic, And How You Can Get Some Of It 11 Heaney, Bone Dreams (page 19)

philosopher Michel Foucault to explain the sense of Irish placement and displacement in regard to poem and place, “We are in the epoch of the near and far, at the end side-by-side, of the dispersed.”12 The landscape is important, as both the text and the article suggest, because it provides anthropological evidence to previous civilisations before 1970s Ireland. The deeper Heaney digs in the poem, which occurs simultaneously with the reader’s reading, the further both Heaney and the reader appear to “push back / through dictions, / Elizabethan canopies. / Norman devices,”. 13 When exploring the themes of death throughout North, the remains appear to become a force of resistance to archaeological observation and voyeurism. In ‘Strange Fruit’, the 12th poem in the collection and one of the shortest poems, Heaney appears to assign agency to the remains of a girl the longer he studies her, “Here is the girl’s head like an exhumed gourd.” 14 Similar to the poem ‘Bone Dreams’, Heaney’s use of similes and a sense of realism attracts the reader’s attention to the decomposed state of the dead body, as well as inciting the injustices performed to her body during the time she was living in, “Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible / Beheaded girl” 15. However, the poem also reveals the injustices performed to her by those that discovered her remains, displaying her in a state of exhibition. Yet, she remains “outstaring axe / And beatification”16 and refuses to be viewed as a feeble victim.

The title of the poem cannot be ignored, as connotations to the song ‘Strange Fruit’ famously sung by African-American singer Billie Holliday, can be made. Once again, similarities between the Irish and the black struggle, particularly African-American struggle, appear to be overt. However the referencing to the state of dead bodies because of an unjust system does not victimise the suffered. In fact, it lionises them to an extent where they become icons within their own right, achieving an agency that they may not have had whilst they were living. Between the “pastoral scene of the gallant

12 Kerrigan, John, Earth Writing: Seamus Heaney and Ciaran Carson (page 144) 13 Supra note 11 14 Heaney, Strange Fruit (page 32) 15 Ibid 16 Ibid

south / The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth”17 of lynched African-Americans in the 1939 song and the “Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible”18 girl expressed by Heaney in his 1975 collection, the reader is able to link the unjust oppression of political minorities during the girl’s period in Heaney’s poem, through 1930s America in Holiday’s song up to 1970s Ireland.

Carson’s opinion is problematic because it assigns the political minority with hyperaggressive traits that are not present in works of poetry and song. By describing Heaney as a ‘laureate of violence’ and subsequently a ‘mystifier’ and a ‘mythmaker’, Carson is describing Heaney as a person who glorifies unnecessary violence while hiding behind the mystique of a writer. However, Heaney utilises his own socio-political resource, the poetic form, to express how Irish conflict is not exclusive to the 1970s. Conflict has been central to the Irish identity and continues to shape it even after death. The discoveries of bones and remains and their descriptions in North illustrate how the Irish landscape has continued to preserve the efforts and results of conflict. As Heaney realises when observing the remains, the oppressed of the past continue to fight even beyond death because “memory retains its consequences, one of which is that the unspeakable cannot be rendered inexpressible”. 19

In conclusion, it is has been discussed how Carson’s perspective of Heaney, mainly as a laureate of violence, an apologist, a mystifier and a mythmaker is demonstratively incorrect. Heaney uses the poems in the collection to narrate a recalling of past oppression and injustices in order to understand present-day conflict, while simultaneously expressing the strong and defiant nature of the political minority throughout time. Carson’s opinion has also been proven to be problematic due to assigning negative traits to the political minority that just do not appear to be present in many forms of literature, subsequently leading to repressing the right to opinion and speech.

Word count: 1856 words including quotations, footnotes and references.

17 Holiday, Billie, Strange Fruit, 1939 18 Ibid 19 Rankin Russell, Richard, The Black and Green Atlantic: Violence, History, and Memory in Natasha Trethewey’s “South” and Seamus Heaney’s “North” (page 161)

Bibliography Adewunmi, Bim, How the #BlackGirlMagic movement helped make the internet a little less bleak, ‘The Guardian’, (accessed on 15th February 2018) Fanon, Frantz, Black Skin, White Masks, ‘Liberation Classics’, Pluto Press Limited (Great Britain: Cox & Wyman Ltd, 1986) Gillis, Alan, The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, ‘Poetry Ireland’,

(accessed on 14th February 2018) Heaney, Seamus, North, ‘Faber & Faber’, Faber & Faber Ltd (Great Britain: TJ International Ltd, 2001) Holiday, Billie, Strange Fruit, ‘Genius’, (accessed on 16th February 2018) Kerrigan, John, Earth Writing: Seamus Heaney and Ciaran Carson, ‘Oxford University Press’, (accessed on 12th February 2018) Rankin Russell, Richard, The Black and Green Atlantic: Violence, History, and Memory in Natasha Trethewey’s “South” and Seamus Heaney’s “North”, ‘The Southern Literary Journal’, (accessed on 5th February 2018) X, Malcolm, Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?, ‘Genius’, (accessed on 15th February 2018)...