Seamus Heaney's "Peninsula"

A detailed Summary of Seamus Heaney's "Peninsula"

Seamus Heaney is widely believed to be one of the finest poets currently active. "To call him the most important Irish poet since Yeats has become something of a cliche."1 One of his poems, "Peninsula", published in the collection "Door into the Dark", is one example of many which constitute a broad image illustrating a split that Heaney as an Irish poet apparently experienced, a split between "the illiterate self that was tied to the little hills and earthed in the stony gray soil, and the literate self"2.

A poem, in the very first sentence, introduces a concept of inarticulacy: "When you have nothing more to say, just drive". When a poet finds himself in a position of being unable to express himself, when there is a silence inside of him, he has to give in to the silence and set out on a journey round the peninsula. The peninsula, which, by the definition is simply a narrow strip of land projecting into a sea or lake from the mainland, is not any peninsula. It is a "land without marks" which embodies Irish landscape - the land of the "silence", the old ancestral places.

Taking into consideration John Montague's words that "the whole of the Irish landscape is a manuscript which we have lost the skill to read"3, one c

3 John Montague (cited in) "The Sense of Place", (lecture given in the Ulster Museum, January 1977)

4 Blake Morrison, "Seamus Heaney", Methuen London and New York (1987), p.27

annot avoid the conclusion that in a manner of speaking both the place and the man are inarticulate. As the work of art can be claimed to be nonexistent until it is read, the same can be applied to a place, which until it is "uncoded", is inarticulate. "The land without marks" is a blank spot on the map full of marks, full of names. The fact results in preventing a man from arriving at any specifically named place but instead makes one "pass through" the land, without hearing the voices of ancestors speaking through nature. This suggests, that until every aspect of the place is seen as nearly mystical oneness, it will not constitute a significant entity and will remain inarticulate.

1 Blake Morrison, "Seamus Heaney", Methuen London and New York (1987), p.11

celebrate the world, the secret source of power, so that, in turn, it would guide and sanction the poet's craft.

Therefore, the journey into the darkness becomes a nocturnal and somnambulistic encounter of the man and his apprehension of the land left behind. The circular movement, driving "round the peninsula" leads towards darkness descending upon the land, when the "horizons drink down sea and hill", and upon the poet's eyes and consciousness. Plunging into the "dark" as well as looking into the depth of subconscious is the condition of understanding. Entering into the darkness seems to be the only way of looking into the natural processes of country life, into the dark interior of earth, nature, nature's forms and the rituals man has created upon them. Being "in the dark again" is l

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Approximate Word count = 1175
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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