HERE I’m sharing poem “Digging” by Seamus Heaney:
“DIGGING”
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
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.
Seamus Heaney Digging is an taken from his 1st poem-“Death of a naturalist”. Digging is the 1st poem of the collection in which we find the reconciliatory expression of an artist who will not follow in his father and grandfather’s footsteps as a common labourer. It concern his admiration for his fathers and grandfather skill at Digging.
Related to the title, the poet reflects that all the three generation are involved in Digging: his grandfather dug turf, his father dug up potato’s, and he is digging up his memories and his past. So the poem deals with digging, hence the title is appropriate.
This poem symbolizes the changing face of Ireland from a rural country to a modern industrial nation. The poem is divided into eight stanza and in the first stanza Heaney describe seeing his elderly father straining among the flower beds,,then he remembers his father and grandfather at work than he start poem introducing us “His pen “he says that it rest in his hand “snug as a gun” this phrase “snug as a gun” gives the impression that the pen its naturally in his hand.
Seamus Heaney from the 2nd stanza own words describe his father and his work of digging. In the 5th stanza he introduces us his grandfather, who was a digger two .in the 6th stanza he remembers how to see how his grandfather works.
In the pen altimet stanza, Heaney gives us more vivid picture about the act of digging. He also gives us the feeling of the sweet smell of the crop-potato. He also introduces the sounds on the farm of the cropfeels and the bird.
In this line Heaney gives us the cold smell of potato mold again in the same line he gives the sound of squelch and slap later in the same stanza Heaney realizes that his work is writing and not digging. He write about his thought in line: I’ve no spand to follow man like them and in the last stanza Heaney repeat the opening lines” between my finger and my thumb the squad pen west.
In the last stanza this image of the pen as a gun is replace by the phrase: I’ll digit”. That is the poets pen becomes a metaphorical spade which suggests that his pen is like is tool as the spades were the tool of his father and grandfather ,so he will continue with his work digging with his work, digging in his memory through writing.
Conclusion:
Digging is one of the repetitive poem of Seamus Heaney .In which, there is immense amount of himself an his history.seamus Heaney always relates the individual Irish culture to general theme of humanity. In this poem we find the important features of Heaney as a wrote: writing about everything that surrounds him, which means Ireland, and specially northern Ireland and writing about his own family history.
Digging compares the poet pen to the farmers spade depicting Heaney early struggle to define himself as a poet this means that he will break the family tradition of physical labour as an occupation, so we can say that Heaney wrote this poem to justify to decision to became a poet.
Thank u
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