Death of a Naturalist and Door into the Dark by Seamus Heaney

Source of book: I own Opened Ground, selected poems from 1966 through 1996. 

My wife found this mint condition “used” copy of the book for me. As is my practice, I am reading through it systematically. Since both of Heaney’s first two collections (or at least the excerpts in this book) are fairly short, I decided to read both. Since both were published in the 1960s, I will consider it a decade of reading. 

I admit to being a fan of Seamus Heaney, both for his poetry and the way he read it. My first real introduction was through The Spirit Level, which remains my favorite of his books. “Mint” in particular is one of my all time favorite poems. I also enjoyed his translation of Beowulf, which adds so much to the story because of its keen ear for sound and rhythm. 

The collection kicks off with what is probably Heaney’s best known poem, “Digging.” Here is the classic video of him reading it. 

The title for the first collection comes from a poem about the young poet losing his appetite for collecting frog eggs after fearing the frogs would have their revenge on him. I won’t quote the whole thing, but it is an amusing poem. 

Here are the ones which I liked best:

“Personal Helicon”

As a child, they could not keep me from wells

And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.

I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells

Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.

I savoured the rich crash when a bucket

Plummeted down at the end of a rope.

So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch

Fructified like any aquarium.

When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch

A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call

With a clean new music in it. And one

Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall

Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,

To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring

Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme

To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.  

Yep, I’m a bit like that myself. 

“The Peninsula”

When you have nothing more to say, just drive

For a day all round the peninsula.

The sky is tall as over a runway,

The land without marks, so you will not arrive

But pass through, though always skirting landfall.

At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,

The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable

And you're in the dark again. Now recall

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,

That rock where breakers shredded into rags,

The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,

Islands riding themselves out into the fog,

And drive back home, still with nothing to say

Except that now you will uncode all landscapes

By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,

Water and ground in their extremity.

I love exploration, whether on foot or by car, and Heaney makes this one come alive. In these days when a lot of my favorite places are closed to slow Covid-19, I am enjoying poems about places. I look forward to better days ahead. 

This next one is a fascinating, multi-layered poem that gets better with each reading. The title, “Undine,” refers to a water sprite in European mythology. As the inspiration (in part) for The Little Mermaid, undines cannot gain a soul unless they marry a human. However, they will die of the human is unfaithful to them. In this poem, Heaney melds the legend of the undine with a farmer cleaning out his ditch. The language does so many things. It evokes the smell of mud and earth and stagnant water. But it is also shockingly sexual. Bringing together all those elements: the earth, mythology, and sex in a way that unexpectedly works is one of Heaney’s best skills. 

“Undine”

He slashed the briars, shoveled up grey silt

To give me right of way in my own drains

And I ran quick for him, cleaned out my rust.

He halted, saw me finally disrobed,

Running clear, with apparent unconcern.

Then he walked by me. I rippled and I churned

Where ditches intersected near the river

Until he dug a spade deep in my flank

And took me to him. I swallowed his trench

Gratefully, dispersing myself for love

Down in his roots, climbing his brassy grain ---

But once he know my welcome, I alone

Could give him subtle increase and reflection.

He explored me so completely, each limb

Lost its cold freedom. Human, warmed to him.

The second half of the second collection has a lot of poems about the “lough” (Irish version of “loch”) and the surrounding bog. Two of those poems seemed particularly lovely to me. Enjoy.

“Relic of Memory”

The lough waters

Can petrify wood:

Old oars and posts

Over the years

Harden their grain,

Incarcerate ghosts

Of sap and season.

The shallows lap

And give and take:

Constant ablutions,

Such a drowning love

Stun a stake

To stalagmite.

Dead lava,

The cooling star,

Coal and diamond

Or sudden birth

Of burnt meteor

Are too simple,

Without the lure

That relic stored—

A piece of stone

On the shelf at school,

Oatmeal coloured.

“Bogland”

We have no prairies

To slice a big sun at evening--

Everywhere the eye concedes to

Encrouching horizon,

Is wooed into the cyclops' eye

Of a tarn. Our unfenced country

Is bog that keeps crusting

Between the sights of the sun.

They've taken the skeleton

Of the Great Irish Elk

Out of the peat, set it up

An astounding crate full of air.

Butter sunk under

More than a hundred years

Was recovered salty and white.

The ground itself is kind, black butter

Melting and opening underfoot,

Missing its last definition

By millions of years.

They'll never dig coal here,

Only the waterlogged trunks

Of great firs, soft as pulp.

Our pioneers keep striking

Inwards and downwards,

Every layer they strip

Seems camped on before.

The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.

The wet centre is bottomless. 

That line “an astounding crate of air” describing the elk fossil is brilliant and unforgettable. I love the whole poem and its imagery. 

I’m not sure what else to say about Heaney. I love his style, including the peculiar use of enjambment across stanzas. The poems are fairly traditional, yet not exactly regular or rhymed. I am never disappointed to read Seamus Heaney. 

Beowulf - Translated by Seamus Heaney

Source of book: I own this.

I read at least some extended excerpts from Beowulf in high school. I do not remember the translator, but I suspect (knowing the curriculum) that it was some venerable older translation. I don’t think I read all of it, just the battle scenes. I definitely do not remember all the flashbacks and histories and poems thrown in. But I enjoyed it enough to have an overall positive impression.

A few years back, I discovered Seamus Heaney, through his collection The Spirit Level. He now stands as one of my favorite poets. A law school classmate recommended this translation at around the time my wife found a copy at a library sale. I can’t remember which came first, but in any case, it sure sounded promising.

I decided to read this aloud to the kids, despite my hopelessness in pronouncing all the names. With the exception of my second daughter (who is going through an early teen stage of ennui about everything), it was a hit. My kids are a bit weird, I suppose, because the didn’t find the idea of Beowulf tearing Grendal’s arm off to be particularly disturbing. In fact, the gore and violence was rather a welcome feature to the story. (Note: I wouldn’t say my kids are violent themselves, but they can tolerate a ridiculous amount of pain and blood. I wouldn’t recommend messing with them.)

This edition contains both the original Old English and the translation, so you can compare them. Well, assuming you can read Old English. I am passable at Middle English - I have read quite a bit of Chaucer in the original, and got fairly fluent working my way through C. S. Lewis’ Allegory of Love. More recently, I have been reading a collection of Pre-Shakesperean drama - the early cycle and miracle plays, all in Middle English. But Old English is a truly foreign language. 

 Because Seamus Heaney with a period helmet makes me smile.

Heaney’s translation is amazingly good. I particularly appreciate that he captures the feel of the old style, without making it too stilted and literal. One does not, for example, expect - or desire - a poem roughly 1000 years old, to sound like Elizabethan or Victorian poetry. The past is, as L. P. Hartley noted, a foreign country, and to import modern turns of phrase and values to an ancient work is akin to vandalism.

To that end, Heaney works to preserve the central poetic device of Beowulf. My kids were a bit surprised that it didn’t rhyme (yeah, I know, I need to talk about poetry more…). Instead, it uses alliteration. Heaney preserves that where he can, using repeated sounds to establish the rhythm.

Just a few lines can give an idea of the way it sounds:

Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark,

Nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him

To hear the din of the loud banquet

Every day in the hall, the harp being struck

And the clear song of a skilled poet

Telling with mastery of man’s beginnings,

How the Almighty had made the earth

A gleaming plain girdled with waters;

In His splendour He set the sun and the moon

To be earth’s lamplight, lanterns for men,

And filled the broad lap of the world

With branches and leaves; and quickened life

In every other thing that moved.

This is also typical of the narrative. It requires patience. The poet will tell a bit, then digress, then tell a bit more, then muse on something, then tell some more, then circle back to a backstory of some character, and so on. You cannot be in a hurry, but instead let the music of the poem take you along.

I appreciated that it was easy to read aloud (except for the names, and there is no cure for that) and that I could easily make it flow. All in all, I highly recommend this translation.

A bit about the story. My kids quickly identified the fact that this story has a lot in common with The Hobbit. Not the plot, but the details. The king (or sinister villain) who gives rings both as a reward for loyalty and as a gift that binds the recipient to continued service. The dragon as guard of a treasure of which he knows every single coin. Come to think of it, a lot of what we believe about dragons in fantasy dates to Beowulf.

The values are both recognizable and very much of their time. This was in the period before the flowering of chivalry. Women in the tale exist mostly as chattel to be given away to cement alliances and as mead wenches. Even the queens go around serving libations to the thanes during the big feasts. Likewise, honor, reputation, loyalty, and fighting prowess are the chief virtues. A king is good because he is a badass in battle - and also because he is fair and honorable in gifting land, treasure, and women to those who assist him to victory. It is the patronage that matters - much more than “judging rightly” as other civilizations would consider the pinnacle of kingship.

Likewise, while wisdom isn’t discounted, it is secondary to physical strength. In this, there is a significant contrast to the ancient Greeks. Likewise, guile and subtlety are not admired. Beowulf chooses to eschew his sword and fight Grendal with his bare hands. It shows his manliness and his honesty. Certainly a bit different from Odysseus, who wins with his brains more than brawn. This is also a contrast with later English heroes. King Arthur may be a big guy with a strong arm, but he better known for his wisdom and skill at building and maintaining alliances with potential rivals. And Robin Hood is all guile. I remember reading the original stories and realizing that everyone beats Robin Hood in a fight. He never wins. But he inspires, and the victor always ends up joining the Merry Men. It is an interesting contrast in values. Times change, and the past is indeed a foreign country.

On the other hand, some other values really have aged well. Being fair and generous to those who support you is always in style. Knowing who your friends are, and defending them to the bitter end. Thinking twice before talking smack. Particularly about your betters. Courage in the face of overwhelming odds. Willingness to sacrifice one’s life for others. These are good virtues too. In an era of constant violence, loyalty is literally the difference between life and death. I wouldn’t like to go back to that era, though, but it is fun to visit in a story.

I am sure there are other good translations of Beowulf, but I thought this one was simply outstanding, both readable and true to the original spirit. And don’t stop there: Heaney’s poems are a real joy.

***

DO NOT BUY DOUG WILSON’S PHONY “TRANSLATION.”

I say this because Doug Wilson is inexplicably popular in homeschool circles. He should be avoided for his defence of the institution of slavery, his affinity for white supremacists, for his bullying of others, particularly women, his defense in court of a serial pedophile, and eventual marriage of him to a naive young woman in his church. Also his AIDS denialism, his vision of sexuality as about power and dominance, and so much more. You can read a bit of my stuff on him here and here.

But even if Wilson were not a horrible person, there is an even stronger reason to stay away from his version of Beowulf.

It is plagiarized.

Actually, Wilson has been in a long series of plagiarism scandals for years. Even his defense of slavery was largely cribbed from an earlier work - which he didn’t attribute. And since then, there have been multiple cases where whole paragraphs were stolen from other works.

In the case of Beowulf, it is important to note that Wilson has not attempted a translation. He is not fluent in Old English, and certainly lacks the background in that language to attempt an actual translation. Instead, as he has admitted, he took several translations done by other people, and used their work to “write” a new version. As might be expected, he copies most of the language from others, substituting a few of his own words to make it “different” enough that he can sell it.

I’m sorry. This isn’t a new work. It is essentially stolen from other authors who did the hard work of translation. DO NOT buy this. DO NOT support this thief.

The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

One of the books I added to my own shelves this year is Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. I read a few excerpts, and liked the flow of the poetry and the clarity of style.

My wife, who visits the library with the kids far more often than I do, usually picks up books from my list. Occasionally, however, she brings me something random that struck her fancy. This is one of those books.

Heaney is an Irish poet, currently in his seventies, who has been writing for the better part of the last six decades. (His name is pronounced, “SHAY-mus,” incidentally.) He has consistently insisted on being considered Irish rather than British - a distinction which appears in his writing, particularly in his numerous poems related to the Irish conflict. The Spirit Level was published in 1996, so it is one of the author’s more recent works. (Although he has published several collections since: he is certainly not slowing down.) Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature the year prior. This is thus the second Nobel Prize winning poet I have read this year.

The name for this collection comes from a simple tool, the device used to determine whether something is level. The most common form uses a liquid with a bubble, which will be centered in the tube when the tool is parallel to the ground. I have several of these in my garage, made of metal or plastic. I like these old fashioned wood ones, though, even if they are less reliable.

This collection contains poems on a wide variety of themes, mostly in traditional forms. Heaney is particularly fluent in blank verse, and the majority of the poems use iambic pentameter, rhymed or otherwise. Many of the poems that are rhymed use approximate rather than exact rhyme. The author also makes extensive use of the tercet.

This collection has both strengths and weaknesses. Heaney has a bit if a tendency (as do other moderns) to name-check other poets and writers within the community, many of whom are not always familiar to the reader. This also was a problem, for me at least, in the poems about the Irish conflicts. There were individuals and incidents that were probably familiar to Irish readers of the mid nineties, but were meaningless to this American reader. Needless to say, the lack of context diminished the impact of the poems.

On the other hand, Heaney writes beautifully about his friends, living and dead. He is able to use small incidents to great effect, creating an instant kinship with both the author and his friend.

Although there are many others, I particularly liked his tribute to his father-in-law, The Sharpening Stone, which contains this gem:

I thought of us that evening on the logs,

Flat on our backs, the pair of us, parallel,

Supported head to heel, arms straight, eyes front,

Listening to the rain drip off the trees

And saying nothing, braced to the damp bark.

What possessed us? The bare, lopped loveliness

Of those two winter trunks, the way they seemed

A causeway of short fence-posts set like rollers.

Neither of us spoke. The puddles waited.

The workers had gone home, saws fallen silent.

And next thing down we lay, babes in the wood,

Gazing up at the flood-face of the sky

Until it seemed a flood was carrying us

Out of the forest park, feet first, eyes front,

Out of November, out of middle age,

Together, out, across the Sea of Moyle.

Another great line is to be found in the tribute to another Irish poet, Hugh MacDiarmid.

At your wits’ end then, always on the go

To the beach and back, taking heady bearings

Between the horizon and the dictionary,

In many ways, this is my ideal of a life, lived by taking those heady bearings between the horizon and the dictionary. Just a great line and a marvelous word-picture.

I also liked the longer poem, Mycenae Lookout, which offers an interesting take on Aeschylus’ Agamemnon by the night watchman. The poem is in five sections, with each in a different form, from heroic couplets in the first to the stark tercets of the second, which have either three or four syllables. This second section, regarding the captive Cassandra, is a brutal melding of form and language, with a couple of face-slappingly shocking and effective uses of vulgarity. After reading the play earlier this year, I thought that Heaney’s particular musings were an excellent addition to the experience.

As I noted earlier, Heaney has a knack for the small incident. I recognized myself in a couple. In A Sofa, he describes playing “train” with his siblings similarly to how our family did. Likewise, The Flight Path includes a passage where the narrator attempts to find his own house from above as he flies over it. This is absolutely like me - I spend too much time trying to line up what I see with my mental map of wherever we are.

Two more poems stand out to me as excellent. The first is the opening poem in the collection, and probably one of Heaney’s better known works, The Rain Stick. My wife read it before she checked the book out, and decided it was worth a look for this one alone.

Up-end the stick and what happens next

Is a music that you never would have known

To listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash

Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe

Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And diminuendo runs through all its scales

Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes

A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;

The glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.

Up-end the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,

Twice, ten, and thousand times before.

Who cares if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?

You are like a rich man entering heaven

Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

Also a beautiful, and instantly recognizable picture to any musician or music lover.

Perhaps my favorite was this one, entitled Mint. The approximate rhymes, internal rhymes, and the rhythm itself tend to disguise the fact that this is a truly traditional poetic form: a four line stanza rhymed ABAB. Like the above poem, this one is best read aloud, and more than one time.

It looked like a clump of small dusty nettles

Growing wild at the gable of the house

Beyond where we dumped our refuse and old bottles:

Unverdant ever, almost beneath notice.

But, to be fair, it also spelled promise

And newness in the back yard of our life

As if something callow yet tenacious

Sauntered in green alleys and grew rife.

The snip of scissor blades, the light of Sunday

Mornings when the mint was cut and loved:

My last things will be first things slipping from me.

Yet let all things go free that have survived.

Let the smells of mint go heady and defenceless

Like inmates liberated in that yard.

Like the disregarded ones we turned against

Because we’d failed them by our disregard.