“In what ways can a reading of a poem be enhanced by a knowledge

of historical details not included in the text? Refer to at least two

poems in your response.”

In accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, Seamus Heaney spoke of
“having to conduct oneself as a poet in a situation of ongoing political violence
and public expectation”. As someone who is both Irish and a poet, it seemed
only right that Heaney would write scathing treatises behind the battlements of
one of these “mutually disapproving groups” - that he would comment,
politically and factionally, on the issues facing a divided Ireland. Heaney
seemingly rejects this, instead seeing the Troubles as that which transcends
the current political landscape and is archetypal of the human condition – who
we are, what we are, and why we do the things we do. Heaney does not write
as an Irish poet – Protestant or Catholic – but merely as a human being, with
the context of living through the Troubles. Through the use of historical details,
fleeting glances of the past and present, Heaney shows that the issues and
messages presented in his poetry are universal truths. It can be said that the
conclusion Heaney reaches it “if you do what you've always done, you'll get
what you've always gotten”; that until we (that is, the species as a whole)
disallow ourselves to walk down the same wrong roads and repeat the same
mistakes, we will leave the same legacy of pain, suffering and violence that our
forebears did. Heaney's poems “The Tollund Man” and “Punishment” - the
former from the Wintering Out collection and the latter from North - all go
beyond the prima facie reading, linking Irish affairs with historical occurrences
and thereby commenting on the human condition.

The initial reading of “The Tollund Man” is of the persona seeing and describing
vividly the Tollund Man, a human sacrifice to the pagan earth goddess, Nerthus,
interred within a Danish bog. The Tollund Man was discovered by peat-cutters
in 1950 and his origin confirmed by archaeologist P.V. Glob. Over 1500 years
old yet almost perfectly preserved by the peat (“those dark juices working Him
to a saint's kept body”), the Tollund Man and his fellow 'bog bodies' fascinated
Heaney, himself something of an archaeologist. In “The Tollund Man”, Heaney
writes almost as if he reveres the bog body, contrasting the pagan ritual – the
sacrifice itself, with the Tollund Man becoming “bridegroom to the goddess” –
with Christian diction – including images of a last supper (the Tollund Man's
“last gruel”), the concept of blasphemy, consecration, “holy ground” and
prayer. Very interestingly, the pagan sacrifice has become the Christian martyr.
Heaney has the persona contemplate praying at the bog, in which the sacrifice
has become an idol, being referred to as “Him”. The Tollund Man's sacrifice is
expected to bring reward (the granting of the prayer) to the modern persona,
as it was expected to in 400BC. Thus, it can be said that the Tollund Man is a
symbol of of fruitful sacrifice that transcends time.

It is seen that Heaney's persona prays for Ireland – to “make germinate the
scattered, ambushed flesh of labourers, stockinged corpses laid out in the
farmyards, tell-tale skin and teeth flecking the sleepers of four young brothers,
trailed for miles along the lines”. The final 'prayer' refers to folklore from
Heaney's Catholic upbringing during the Troubles, the story of the murder and
mutilation of four young Catholic brothers by Protestant paramilitaries. As such,
we can see that Heaney views the Tollund Man not only as a saintly figure, but
more specifically a patron of an Ireland rife with sectarian violence; the poem is
revealed to not only be a lamenting of a sacrifice conducted over a millennium
ago, but of the violence that has become a mainstay of modern day Ireland.
Heaney identifies an archetypal pattern of human nature, drawing parallels
between the two situations. In “Digging” and “Follower”, Heaney discussed the
earth as a symbol of Ireland or as something which with Ireland is intrinsically
linked. As the Tollund Man was sacrificed to Nerthus, described by Tacitus (a
Roman historian) as the “Earth Mother”, it could be seen that the Troubles are a
sacrifice to the Mother Ireland. Indeed, Heaney describes a familiarity, with the
persona feeling “lost, unhappy and at home” in the “man-killing parishes” -
'parishes' again referring to the religious nature of the conflict. “The Tollund
Man” is not just a description of one sacrifice, as it mentions in the third section
of the poem “Graubelle” and “Nebelgard”. It can be said that Heaney's
message is maturing, and the poem casts a wider scope in attempting to reveal
a part of the universal human condition: ritualised violence as a means to an
end. In the case of the Tollund Man, this 'end' was perhaps for a greater
harvest. Ironically, in the case of the Irish Troubles, this 'end' is peace.

Another poem in which unmentioned historical detail allows Heaney to

comment on the human condition is “Punishment”. Another of Heaney's bog
poems, “Punishment” is a requiem for a “little adulteress”, the Windeby Girl
murdered, much like the Tollund Man, almost 2000 years ago. At the start of
the poem, the girl is sexualised through the use of sensory devices, with
particular focus on the fragility and preciousness of her body: “the wind...blows
her nipples to amber beads, it shakes the frail rigging of her ribs”. Her fate is
then revealed, stripped of her clothing, shaved, and then drowned in the bog.
The poem then changes tone, as time shifts to before the girl's death. Heaney
describes the girl's state: “flaxen-haired, undernourished, and your tar-black
face was beautiful”. This was before her punishment! The poet creates
sympathy for the girl and, as “Punishment” goes on to reveal, those in a similar
situation as her – her “betraying sisters, cauled in tar”. Finally, Heaney
concludes the poem with the persona's reaction to these acts of punishment: a
false visage of “civilised outrage”.

Quite obviously, “Punishment” contains many images and events which a

modern day audience would be all too familiar with, bringing their own
contexts into the equation, each context with its own historical details. For
Heaney, these historical details include the public humiliation and tarring of the
Falls Road and Londonderry teenagers, all Catholic girls, for dating or marrying
British soldiers. Their faces, blackened with tar, are reminiscent of the Windeby
Girl's own, darkened by the tannins in the bog. The poem makes frequent use
of the first person, opening with “I can feel the tug...”. But who is the persona?
Is he merely an observer of the exhumed bog body? Is he, perhaps, the one
with whom the Windeby Girl created “the memories of love”? The identity of
the persona seems to shift throughout the poem, and one could conclude that
the persona is not one individual man, but rather an abstract of all men. Thus,
if we were to accept a more feminist reading of the poem, on one level,
“Punishment” concerns the role of women in society throughout history. In
death, the girl is seen by men in the same manner as she was in her lifetime,
objectified and eroticised, despite the fact that centuries have passed. Perhaps,
it can be said that it is the men who haven't changed. Yet, it is the girls who are
punished for adultery, and the persona feels twangs of guilt for his “poor
scapegoat”. This is juxtaposed against the judgement of the girls as
“betraying” - the moral self righteousness (that is, the power imbalance
granted by societal norms) in this instance is used by Heaney to show
hypocrisy. So it can be seen that throughout history – be it in Iron Age
Germany, fundamentalist Iran, or Troubles-era Ireland – that a part of the
human condition has always been the subjugation of women.

In “Punishment”, Heaney seems also to comment on the “tribal” human lust for
revenge. As in “The Tolland Man”, in this poem, Heaney seems to take a
personal culpability for the wrongs committed – again, we see the importance
of the poem's first person perspective. In the poem, the persona is sympathetic
towards the girl up until the point of her execution. While he may love her in
private, in public he can choose to act with the tribe or against it, to be cast
out: as such, the persona is merely the “artful voyeur” who “stood dumb”.
However, this does not seem to be much of a choice, as the persona says he
would “understand the exact and tribal, intimate revenge”. Heaney links this
with his own (perhaps imagined) reaction upon seeing the punishment of
young girls during the Troubles. More broadly, however, the persona is guilty of
conforming to societal norms, casting the “stones of silence” (the silence, not
only the physical punishment, is seen to be acting against the victims) and
“conniving in civilized outrage”, where appropriate. It is this obedience in the
respect of the accepted norms – the following of the tribe – that Heaney
criticises. These have never been truly questioned, not after the brutality
against the Windeby Girl in the Iron Age, or against the Catholic teenagers,
over a millennium later in Londonderry. Until they are questioned, the cycle of
violence will continue, of which the entirety of society is ultimately a victim.

In these two poems, “The Tollund Man” and “Punishment”, Seamus Heaney has
extended the meaning of the words on the page, ruing the cruel cycles of
history, unbroken because of man's stubborn inability to do so. He has used
different contexts to move beyond a singular, isolated reading, and in both
cases to comment on the faults of the human condition: the historical context
of the poem, his own context, and he also relies upon his readers' contexts.
After all, if Heaney is to be believed, we are all born with the 'original sin' of an
inherent attachment to violence and revenge. In “The Tollund Man”, Heaney
says that humans are programmed to prefer bloodshed in solving problems,
and in “Punishment”, the poet claims that the idea of retribution as justice -
“an eye for an eye” - is a commonality between every man, woman and child.
Surprisingly, however, Heaney's poetry is not cynical. Either by leaving the
reader with a sense of injustice, or by concentrating all our sympathies onto
one “flaxen-haired, undernourished girl”, Heaney firmly rejects these ideas. He
isn't resigned to these concepts, but instead believes that the human condition
can, should and needs to change. Perhaps Heaney is saying that peace,
equality and coexistence aren't unattainable things – we just have to want
them.