Door Into The Dark By Seamus Heaney Analysis

Introduction:

The second collection of Seamus Heaney’s verse Door into the Dark (1969) is a surrealistic evocation of the physical and metaphysical world. Most of the poems of the anthology hang in between the two. Though most of the poems apparently represent nature with its landscape, seascape and the common people of the rustic world, there remain profound implications of a deeper idea relating to violent human history of Ireland. The poet feels and is drawn towards the mystery, fear, beauty, dread of the collective unconscious of his race. At the same time the horrible happenings of human world around him was too painful for him to give an account of it in detail. He is at a loss to get appropriate word to paint the picture of huge wastages

Whatever may be Foster’s opinion, I think this strategy of Heaney helps him opening up innumerable avenues of semantic suggestions in poetry. He refuses to surrender either to any ‘ism’ or socio-political demand of the time. Moreover, the term ‘dark’ in the title of the book is steeped in multiplied suggestions. The ‘dark’ may hint at the mystery and horror of the unknown universe. It may also suggest the dark and distant archeological and anthropological past or the dark racial memory of the ancient fore-fathers. This may also imply the chaos and darkness of the disintegrated human psyche. The darkness may also be the spiritual darkness of the faithless modern man. The darkness may also assert the dark and bleak state of Irish political perspective which has met plethora of cold-blooded murders and pogroms throughout centuries. Instead of making any easy political conclusions, Heaney keeps numerous possibilities hovering over the threshold. Heaney dips down to the primordial past to excavate the universal state of existence. In the poems of Door into the Dark the distinction between past and present is blurred. Most of the poems of the anthology move with ease and spontaneity in between past and present, conscious and unconscious, physical and

The terrible battle of ‘Vinegar Hill’ (1798), fought between Irish rebels and the English colonial rulers is the subject of the poem. Although the poem upholds determinate political perspective, much against the obscurity and ambivalence enunciated elsewhere, it nevertheless has layers of meanings and suggestions. One cardinal theme, of course, is the barbarity, brutality and bloodshed of the meaningless and unwanted war and violence. One major achievement of the poem is that it craftily conjoins the centuries of Irish violence and political struggle and achieves an organic, indeed germinal resolution: ‘And in August the barley grew up out of the grave’. Heaney himself gives an elaborate account of the composition of the poem, its historical and political