Springing Forth:
An Examination of Seamus Heaney's Poem "Personal Helicon"
Seamus Heaney's title choice for his poem "Personal Helicon" is rooted in ancient greek language mythology. Helicon is the name of any hill in Greece. "In Greek mythology, two springs sacred to the Muses were located here: the Aganippe and the Hippocrene. "(Mount) The muses are goddesses of enthusiasm and the source of knowledge. Mt. Helicon is also where the fable of Narcissus occurs. Where Narcissus falls so in love with himself, and becomes so despondent when he realizes that he cannot have the object of his own desire, he requires his own life beside a spring. Narcissus and the other elements ascribed to Mt. Helicon are heavily used in his poem to help the audience grasp the meanings behind the quatrains. While reading it's important to remember the fables of Mt. Helicon, that the springs on the hill were the foundation of inspiration itself. Thus the subject of the poem must be specifically pulling parallels between your mountains springs and his sources of inspiration while a child. Unlike the unchanging mountain, Heaney's inspiration goes through a paradigm switch has as he expands older. One of the voices in this poem goes over the progression of this change, and explains to the storyline about his inspirations.
"Personal Helicon" is dedicated to another poet, a modern of Seamus', Michael Longley from Belfast. It really is unclear if Michael is the creativity for the creation of this poem, but the two had did the trick together for some time during their opportunities. Before Seamus' career, he was given birth to, and was raised on a farm in North Ireland. In the event the poem is considered literally, you can assume a great number of springs were present around his family's farm. Consequently it comes as no surprise they are a strong reoccurring theme of his youth, and poem.
The poem is five quatrains established around 10 syllables in a 1, 2, 1, 2 and 3, 4, 3, 4 rhyming structure. There are also a number of assonant results:
"[‰] pumps/ buckets; fungus/ bucket plummeted ['] drop/ moss; hovered/ underlying part [‰ ] rope/ so/ no; []in/ brickyard/ rich; big-eyed Narcissus/ inyo/ spring and coil/ is/ dignity; [u] new/ music; [e] scaresome/ there; [ai] rhyme/ myself;"(Fawbert)
and interweaves:
" [] []: dried out ditch fructified like/ aquarium; same combination of looks [] [] creates a chiasmic result: pry into/ finger slime;"(Fawbert)
In this poem, he with such style explains the entire world to himself, and himself to the reader. It is no wonder he's considered one of the biggest living poets. Likely he was compelled by others as much as himself to revisit his journey of becoming poet. And undoubtedly this may only be done through poem. Using wells and springs as a means of personal representation and understanding of the natural world, Seamus begins the reader at his child years.
Seamus uses simplistic dialect and grotesque imagery to bring forth from the reader a sense of childhood. He's filled with attention and naivety. Inside the first collection it becomes established that wells are a source fascination for him. Wells easily are symbolic of life. Here's found the effective starting of his, this new passion for what he lives for. These odd doorways to underground worlds placed untold mysteries which were irresistible to the youngster. As so were the devices that helped bring forth the mysteries from the depths of the worlds. The "old pumps with buckets and windlasses" divinely fastened devices that can cross the veil between worlds, may as well have been huge light up neon indications. Sirens who's beckoning call cannot be resisted. It is amazing he survived years as a child. Little Seamus couldn't help himself though, he
"enjoyed the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
of waterweed, fungi and dank moss. "
Not just filled with synthesia, this little bit is only synthesia. It pulls anyone who has ever been outside back there. It invites the reader to experience the smells not of decay, but of the beginning of life. It asks the audience to peer in to the darkness and the mysterious. Within this still primordial setting up, the image of a kid staring into the darkness comes easily. He stares in to the unknown and amazing things how it acquired there, begging the audience to come explore with him. What are the origins of this life within the well? How do the sky, something so big, get somewhat of itself caught in the well? And what other wonders lay hidden in the darkness? Let us change the windlasses, and move up the bucket. The empirical evidence helped bring forth will illuminate people, but answers will only be experienced after repeated results.
Seamus brings us to some other well, and another level of his life. Here he's older and wiser. Danger is beginning to become noticeable to him. In such a well he brings us to, he explicitly notes that there surely is "a rotted board top. " The thirst for knowledge appears slated now. Here novelty and entertainment is the main draw. Very little to do over a farm, he spends time savoring
"the wealthy crash whenever a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of any rope. "
The well here's "so profound you found no representation in it. " Probably because it is packed with allegories, and not water. The well is deep, but like all things it can be symbolic for, whether it is life, motivation, or knowledge, there can be an end. There is a bottom to everything, and Seamus is starting to get near to the end. However there continues to be darkness, and in the darkness there are yet things for him to learn. And from the explanation of the bucket, the hard tones, the violent action, these exact things will be learned the hard way.
Onto another well, and another level of life. Heaney's third quatrain brings us to "a shallow one under a dried out rock. " This well, though drying up continues to be teaming with life. If the depth of the well is taken his level ignorance about the earth around him, then at this point there is not much left. He describes himself as dragging "out long roots from the soft mulch, " where he discovers "a white face hovered over the bottom. " This transitions him from studying the globe, to learning about himself. He no longer peers into the darkness or online backup in to the sky, the earth is no longer shown, and his time for introspection begins.
Roots are generally symbolic of family and practices. Here before they can look at himself, he must clear them away. His doing this can be considered an action of taking away societal traditions and customs. To be able to see who he's, to allow person underneath turn out and play, to test in being.
Described in frolicsome ways, Seamus talks about his self-exploration and experimentations in being by describing his activities with even more wells. Using echoes he message or calls into the wells to listening to the mutations. That is a direct parallel for his thoughts. Playing out "what if" scenarios in his mind's eye to observe how the changes play out. At least until he received a fright.
When while peering deep into his reflection 1 day, "a rat slapped across my[his] reflection" and scared him. It distorted his image into something disfigured and unpleasant. As Nietzsche once said "when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. "(Nietzsche, 146) Supposing his gazing into his representation is him taking an introspective look at things, then the rat is just a convenient device used to explain how he found something inside himself that was disturbing. As is often the circumstance, one's conceptualization of themselves is not what one truly is. When the difference is fantastic, or goes against one's own moral or cultural values it can be frightening. This time, it seems to have been so freighting concerning put him off of it entirely.
No longer does he stare into wells. Seamus appears down upon discovering the miracles of the world. "pry[ing] into the root base, to finger slime" is unfitting the man he is becoming. He considers looking at himself immediately narcissistic. Having grown into an adult other matters took precedence. His child years activities are actually "beneath all adult dignity, " and he must find alternatives. Summed up in the last, and arguably his best range we find salvation. "I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing. " The echo in the darkness much like the echo in the wells, we find the take action of poetry has considered the place of gazing into wells. And we find him once more having the ability to live.
