Sanjai Yadav
Associate Professor & Head,
University Dept of English and Cultural Studies, Kolhan University, Chaibasa, Jharkhand, India
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&
Subhajit Das
Asstt. Professor of English, Rani Dhanya Kumari College, Jiaganj, Murshidabad, West Bengal
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Abstract: This paper aims at examining Seamus Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist within the framework of ecocriticism. As opposed to Romanticism and the Pastoral tradition, we can find difference in interest and in approach to nature as far as ecocriticism is concerned. Ecocriticism encourages the biocentric reading of a literary text and tries to examine the relationship between literature and environment. An ecocritic rereads and reexamines major canonical writings from the point of view of nature. The paper highlights how Seamus Heaney’s first major poetic volume Death of a Naturalist raises ecological awareness and makes human more responsible towards nature. The current study endeavours to explore the relationship between the humans and their environment by applying the parameters of ecocritical theory to Heaney’s volume. We believe this study will contribute significantly to the body of ecological literary criticism. Heaney’s nature is fit to be read through ecocritical lens.
Key Words: Ecocriticism, environment, energy, symbiosis, greenness, nature, pastoral.
Since literature is the mirror of society, it must not turn its face away from any contemporary issue. Literary studies have been pursued from the perspectives of Marxism, Feminism, Colonialism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism and so on. But none has paid serious attention for a long period of time to study literature from environmental perspective. It is only in the late twentieth century that a branch of literary critical study emerged with an aim to develop awareness for nature and to reorient man into more positive relationship with the environment. William Rueckert first used the term ‘ecocriticism’ in Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism in 1978 with the object of applying “ecological concepts to the study of literature” (Rueckert 107). The book, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, published in the year 1995, can be considered as the Bible of the movement where Cherryl Glotfelty and Harold Fromm made a clarion call to this movement and defined ecocriticism as a study of “connection between literature and the environment” (Glotfelty ix).
Ecocriticism implores a symbiosis between the human and the non-human. Though the humans live in a close proximity with nature, there prevails within them a hierarchic superiority being the lone rational animal, which ultimately leads them to consider nature as nothing more than a commodity. As long as they carry on this anthropocentric attitude, nature will be exploited until the final doomsday arrives on this earth. The ecocritics question the functioning of our ethical systems and our behaviour with nature. Since culture is created by the people who have been living in a particular place over the years, the ecocritics study culture in relation to the geography of a place or landscape, and thereby also protect rights of the marginals.
Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), an Irish poet, playwright and translator, is considered as an eco poet. Unlike the Romantics who depend heavily on nature for their personal feelings, Heaney through his poetry deals with varied subjects regarding nature’s sustainability. Though Irish landscapes, Irish mythology and pastoral elements meet the readers’ eye in his writings, Heaney’s deft touches could be discerned in the profound delineation of nature which draws the reader to the crisis of the modern age. An ecocritical approach to the reading of Heaney’s poems may cultivate ecowisdom as the ecocritical awareness of the readers will awaken them to the need for maintaining sustainable and mutually rejuvenating relationship with nature. There is no such sweeping glorification of nature as found in the Romantics, Heaney’s poetry, rather, enlivens his country experience in Country Derry to reconnect his aesthetic longing with the physical labour of his ancestors.
Death of a Naturalist (1966), Heaney’s first major poetic volume, consists of thirty-four short poems which are mostly concerned with his upbringing and his journey from innocence to experience. The volume is full of natural and agricultural images starting from digging, ploughing, tilling and so on. In the opening poem, “Digging”, growth and fertility are delineated as an aesthetically creative process. The volume abounds in images which find a connection between the subjective inner emotion and the objective outer world. Quite unlike the Romantics who have neglected biodiversity, Heaney’s poems emphasise the topography of a particular area. The Romantics have deliberately overlooked the ecologically challenged space, but for him, these ecologically threatened zones constitute the locale of his poems. As a result, situating locale amidst bogs helps him to consolidate his Irish identity.
Hence, for Heaney, nature plays a pivotal role. Owing to their agrarian occupation, Heaney’s family must have spent a significant time in the lap of nature. Ecocriticism also challenges the anthropocentric attitude that defines modern existence. To counter that “the dogma that culture will always master nature” (Coupe 164), Heaney portrays Irish landscapes in his poems realistically. Irish people have lived centuries after centuries on agriculture and, therefore, we cannot dissociate pastoralism from Irish landscape. In his poetry nature never acts as a mere setting, it rather becomes an integral subject of his writing. He never believes that humanity is above nature, rather humanity is an integral part of nature. Since Ireland’s farming history is rich having a close bonding between human beings and nature, poetry must echo this co-existence.
Nature is ever present all through the volume Death of a Naturalist. “Digging”, the first poem of the volume, is one of the most read poems of Heaney. The poem talks about agriculture, ancestral preoccupation of potato digging. Potatoes, here, stand for Ireland. The Irish soil is feminized, and the spade with which his father toils represents a phallic symbol and thereby husbanding Irish soil with fruits.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog…
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head. (Heaney, “Digging” 1-2)
Here we come across ‘Toner’s bog’, a marsh land and ecologically threatened zone and we come to know how they are necessary for maintaining the ecological balance. The poet continues and digs deep with his pen.
The eponymous poem “Death of a Naturalist” gives a vivid description of a pond and young Heaney’s passion for natural events. Once again, the pond here does not evoke the Eden like luxuriance, rather it is dirty with rotten flax and buzzing insects. The biological life cycle of the frogs and the sheer bewilderment of the poet ultimately lead to the death of a naturalist which suggests the birth of someone with a more scientific ecological consciousness as well. We all know that frogs belong to amphibian species. Amphibians live both in land and water but the absence of any one of the two elements may lead it to its extinction.
… You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain…
…Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. (Heaney, “Death of a Naturalist” 3-4)
As identity can be formed by the negation of the opposite, binaries like nature/culture, man/animal can also be formed. Hence, these binaries become dominantly operative and man-nature relationship gets corrupted. The birth and subsequent growth of a man with a mature ecological sensibility is required to restore the pristine bonding.
The rat imagery is very much present in “The Barn” and “An Advancement of Learning”. The co-existence of human space with that of non-human one, once again, exemplifies Heaney’s biocentric approach. The poem “Blackberry-Picking” describes the process of ripening of the fruits. But unlike Keats’ extreme sensuousness (as presented in “To Autumn”), the poem bridges the gap between nature and culture as black berries are presented by Mother Nature as gifts to man and animals. They grow wildly; there is no need to cultivate them, the only effort needed is to visit the woods and pluck them at your sweet will. “Churning Day”, on the other hand, describes the production of butter.
The poem “At a Potato Digging” alludes to the Irish potato famines of 1845 that lasted for almost four years. Potato digging is an industrious job. Irish farmers are as busy as bees. After famine the same land which had been worshipped earlier is now converted into barren, desolate land. During famine, starvation arrives in the form of a predatory bird. In “Turkey’s Observed”, the act of slaughtering on the auspicious occasion of Christmas aches the poet. He realizes that nature can exist on its own. “Waterfall” presents the tumultuous flow of water which can be contrasted against the earlier description of contaminated, stagnant water of the pond or bog. The various forms and shades of water and earth and their mutual relationships are all significant as they constitute the biodiversity.
That yielded with an ebb…
Did sea define the land or land the sea?
Each drew new meaning from the waves’ collision.
Sea broke on land to full identity. (Heaney, “Lovers on Aran” 25)
Not mere subjective feelings are echoed, rather like the above poem, the poem “Saint Francis and the Birds” is laden with environmental connotations. Saint Francis represents the ideal harmony that must exist between man and nature. This is also the crux of ecocriticism which preaches how a better understanding of nature can be drawn.
By using the phrase ‘waves’ collision’ in the very title of this paper, we have tried to assert how waves are being created and destroyed. Likewise, multiple layers of meanings can also be generated. Out of this collision and collusion new ecological wisdom can be nourished. His poems have the force and appeal to produce a counterforce which enables him to provide solace not only to a nation troubled with a sectarian violence but also the entire posterity laden with ecophobia and cultural marginalization.
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it. (Heaney, “Digging” 2)
By digging with pen Heaney can reexamine the parochial culture as “attitudes to nature vary, and some of the variations are culturally determined…” (Barry 245). His nature-centric view is likely lead us to be rooted in culture and believe that mutual interdependence amongst all life is required to heal modern pangs of existence.
Works Cited:
- Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester University Press, 2012.
- Coupe, Laurence, editor. The Green Studies Reader: from Romanticism to Ecocriticism. Routledge, 2000.
- Glotfelty, Cheryll, and Harold Fromm, editors. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. University of Georgia Press, 1996.
- Heaney, Seamus. Selected Poems 1966- 1987. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
- Rueckert, William. “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism”. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. University of Georgia Press, 1996.
- “Seamus Heaney.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Heaney. Accessed 1 Aug. 2022.
(The paper was received on June 30th, 2022. It was sent for blind peer review on 5th July and after review it was received back from the reviewer/s on 30th July 2022.)
