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Elaine Ko 494200694 Seamus Heaney: The Spirit Level June 28, 2010 Imagination, Literature, Home, and Perseverance in “Keeping Going”. 3 Religion, Passive Suffering, and Retaliation in “Weighing In”. 12 The Power of Power Not Exercised: Surviving Amid Violence Introduction
Prophesy who struck thee! When soldiers mocked Blindfolded Jesus and he didn't strike back They were neither shamed nor edified, although Something was made manifest—the power Of power not exercised, of hope inferred By the powerless forever. (Heaney lines 29-34) The Spirit Level, published in 1996, is Seamus Heaney's first collection of poems after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. As with Heaney's earlier works, many of the poems in The Spirit Level are concerned with the political conflicts in Heaney's homeland of “Keeping Going” and “Weighing In” depict violence as an on-going, historically relevant problem. The circumstances are different than the world portrayed in “To a Dutch Potter in As the title, The Spirit Level, suggests, the collection of poems has much to say about the need for balance and equilibrium. This is especially apparent in “Weighing In,” which frames violence as a problem needing to find balance. The speaker begins by describing the balance of a 56-pound weight on a weighbridge, and how this is the same as the principle of bearing, bearing up And bearing out, just having to Balance the intolerable in others Against our own” (14-17). The act of balancing is also seen in “Keeping Going” as both brothers seek a way to reconcile the innocence of imagination with the atrocity in reality; the marvelous with the murderous; and the act of leaving with the decision to stay on. Despite this attempt, however, the act of balancing is never fully resolved in either poem. The brother's question about the past, present, and future in “Keeping Going” is never answered, and though the speaker in “Weighing In” asserts his view, it is debatable whether the principles of balance can be applied to the philosophy and politics of retaliation. The shortcomings of each approach undermine the rhetoric of the principles of balance. With violence at the forefront of these two poems, there is much we can infer about Heaney's view of the issue, and how other aspects of the poems are connected with violence. Among them are imagination that is shaped by a collective consciousness; the senses that provide a connection with the past; the power of literature and art; the implications of keeping going; the power and futility of passive suffering informed by Christian philosophy; and retaliation as a counterbalance to violence. In between, I will also discuss the effects of these attempts on the speaker and his alter-ego, whether as the brother or his friendly enemy.
Imagination, Literature, Home, and Perseverance in “Keeping Going”
“Keeping Going” is the sixth poem in The Spirit Level. The poem is unrhymed, and is divided into six parts, with each stanza or section varying between 8 to 16 lines. The movement of the poem is slowed by the long, round vowels (“coming from far away,” “wobbling round you,” “our old brush/ Up on the byre door,” 1, 3, 81-82), the arrangements of consonants and vowels in the poem (“An old blanched skirted thing,” “The steam crown swirled,” “Grey matter like gruel flecked with blood,” 9, 48, 51), and rhetorical and grammatical pauses (“Like a freshly-opened, pungent, reeking trench,” “A car came slow down Castle Street, made the halt,/ Crossed the Diamond, slowed again and stopped,” “And wondering, is this all? As it was/ In the beginning, is now and shall be?” 23, 57-58, 79-80). The slow movement, along with the use of narration and the different images blending the past and the present, adds to the poem's contemplative, retrospective mood. The six parts recount the speaker's childhood memories in rural Innocence informs the children's early imagination. “Keeping Going” opens with the image of the brother pretending to be a piper, his “pop-eyes and big cheeks nearly bursting/ With laughter” (Heaney line 6, 7). The first stanza and section, which is comprised of one sentence spanning 8 lines, portrays the brother as a young, fun-loving child, enjoying himself in the process of make-belief. This is developed through the stanza's use of present participle (“coming,” “wobbling,” “pretending,” “bursting,” “keeping,” “going” 1, 3, 5, 6, 7), which does not appear much until the last stanza. The brother's energy is also seen in the description of his posture as a piper, and the much-used sound of /r/ (for example, “piper,” “far,” “brush,” “sporran,” “shoulder,” “arm,” “pretending,” “bursting,” “laughter”). These /r/ sounds presents an exuberance and a sense of dynamics that is yet unhindered by violence. This same sound, however, is later used to convey the effects of violence: “grey matter,” “gruel,” “spatters,” “parched,” “reservist,” “car,” “tarred strip,” and “gutter.” For now, however, the 8-line long sentence opens the poem with a sense of interminable joy and innocence. Despite the energy of the first stanza, the brothers' imagination is soon infused with images of the ominous. At the end of the first stanza, the brother keeps the “drone going on… between catches of breath” (7-8). The exertion of monotonous effort is needed to sustain imaginative play. As the brothers whitewash the wall, the speaker recalls how they “inhaled/ A kind of greeny burning and thought of brimstone” (14). The smell conjures up imaginations, but they are associated with the brimstones of hell. The speaker recognizes that the watery grey is not magic—only “like magic”—and this prompts him to ponder about their own lives in the spiritual realm, asking, “Where had we come from, what was this kingdom/ We knew we'd been restored to?” (19, 20). As David Ruzicka explains, “The restoration, through the work of whitewashing, of the radiant ‘kingdom' of childhood, is the constructive ‘making' of civilization unmade in the act of terrorism” (141). This radiant meditation on the heavenly, however, is quickly counterbalanced with a return to the earthly. As the speaker remembers the past, he sees that their shadows “moved on the wall and a tar border glittered/ The full length of the house, a black divide/ Like a freshly, opened, pungent, reeking trench” (21-23). The speaker not only returns to the physical and the tangible, but also to an imagination that is darker and more sinister than before. The shadow appears to him like a black divide and a freshly opened trench. The smell is not only stinging, like the “greeny burning,” but also “pungent” and “reeking” (23). It is almost a smell of death. This imagination, shaped by more and more unpleasant smells and images, foreshadows the cruel reality the children would encounter later. The smell of buttermilk and urine, and of hill-fort clay and cattle dung, permeates the speaker's mind (and the reader's) with memories of a modest home and farm; “hill-fort clay,” in particular, hints at the effects of war, the work of restoration and construction, and the Creation when God formed man out of clay. The olfactory image thus shifts from the smells of the whitewash to those in and around the home. Like the children's imagination, these smells change from innocent and imaginative to realistic—encompassing both the mundane (cattle dung) and the ominous (hill-fort clay). But as the speaker acknowledges, memory is not always reliable, nor is the past readily accessible. We were all together there in a foretime, In a knowledge that might not translate beyond Those wind-heaved midnights we still cannot be sure Happened or not. It smelled of hill-fort clay And cattle dung. (Heaney 32-36) Though the past tense in the middle stanzas situates the scenes in the past, they do not appear distant because of vivid descriptions of the smells and sounds of that childhood. Whether it is the posture of the reservist or the smells of the brothers' childhood home, these images help the speaker preserve and access the past. However, even though the smell and sound from their childhood home remain in the speaker's mind vividly, other things are not so easily identified. His experience and his memory are stranded in the past, and the “knowledge” that were crucial to his growing up has become less accessible. The word “translate” suggests that past experience, like language, needs mediums through which they can become understandable and accessible (33). The smells of the barn and the sound of midnight wind stays in the speaker's mind, but these may not be shared by others; even the confusion of the brothers' own experience, a mixture of imagination and reality, undermines their ability to return to that childhood. The uncertainty of the past is never answered, even to the present—“we still cannot be sure” (34). This shows an on-going perception of experience that was never and will probably never be resolved. Of course, the dread that never came to past serves as an example where fearful anticipation was proved wrong, and thus resolved. But this experience, too, situates itself in the process rather than the resolution: “I shared the dread/ When a strange bird perched for days on the byre roof” (37, 38). Here, the collective experience is stated, while the resolution is only implied. Another source of reconciliatory power comes from literature. This connection with the arts is seen in both brothers: the speaker as a poet, the brother as a musician (piper), and both as painters (whitewash). In the fourth section, the speaker identifies himself with the “helpless and desperate” Macbeth, who sees “the apparitions in the pot” (39, 41). He declares, “I felt at home with that one all right” (42). Like Macbeth, the speaker's “nightmare” turns into reality as he faces the violence in While the speaker feels at home with the literary, his own family becomes both a source of repression and comfort. The ominous manifests itself in the mother's admonition to the speaker: “Don't go near bad boys/ In that college that you're bound for. Do you hear me?/ Do you hear me speaking to you? Don't forget” (44-46). The comparison between the witches and the mother suggest that the speaker sees the mother as oppressive, though ultimately right in her forewarning. The short monologue, the only words in the poem separated by quotation marks, sheds light on family life—how parents are in charge of their children, and how these children leave the rural areas to pursue education elsewhere. The admonition of the voice, which contrasts with the speaker's affectionate address to the brother in the end, suggests a generation gap where parents see things differently than their children (more differently than siblings do). The mother's warning points to traditional societal values that respect and treasure family roots. Parents see the home as a place of refuge, while the outside world (educational institutions, no less) are filled with danger. The “bad boys” that the mother warns the speaker about also hints at the underlying sectarianism in society. Although they may be referring to trouble kids that the speaker has yet to meet in his life, the difference— even antagonism—between “us” and “them” is emphasized. The speaker's identification with Macbeth, meanwhile, reveals his interest in literature and a more individualistic outlook in life. He seems less concerned with danger in society as he is with the moral and practical challenges of his own life. In sympathizing with Macbeth, it is implied that the speaker also sees himself as partly guilty—committing “moral evil” by leaving his hometown and the scene of violence. As the speaker looks at the potstick and the gruel as an adolescent, he sees “everything intimate/ And fear-swathed brightening for a moment,/ Then going dull and fatal and away” (48-50). The conjunctions suggest how the disappearance of their childhood is simultaneously dull and fatal and—unlike the piper “coming” from far away in the opening line—is fading further and further away. While the speaker's childhood memory is marked with energy and sensually-inspired imagination, this imagination is disappearing while the danger of reality intensifies. As demonstrated by the detailed but understated fifth section, the violence the speaker encounters in adult life is both “dull and fatal.” The absence of any military posture or activity, except for the identification of his work as a part-time reservist, accentuates the innocence and helplessness of the man in the face of violence; his death is filled with both ordinariness and drama. The description of the victim and the narration of the shooting demonstrate an imagination that is both detached and personal. Neil Corcoran writes that Heaney is attempting “a physical representation of the literally unrepresentable, the moment of violent death when the man ‘just pushed with all his might/ Against himself'” (195). Like his description of the brother's posture as a piper, Heaney pays detailed attention to the reservist's relaxed and then tensed posture during the shooting. But here the feeling is detached, underlined by the use of third-person pronouns (“he,” “his” or “himself” appear 15 times) and the absence of first- and second-person pronouns. The speaker reconstructs the crime scene with his imagination, sensing the helplessness of the reservist as he pushes with all his might—surprisingly, not against the whitewash wall, but against himself. Amidst the detached descriptions, including the opening lines, “grey matter like gruel flecked with blood/ In spatters on the whitewash,” imagination works as a way for the speaker to relate to the victim and to make sense of the crime. The reservist utilizes this empathetic imagination, too, when he looks into the gunman's face and “saw an ordinary face/ For what it was and a gun in his own face” (51, 60, 61). The repetition of the word “face” at the end of line 60 and 61 links the gunman's “ordinary face” and the reservist's “own face,” emphasizing their similarity. However, just as the gun—the weapon used in the killing—is positioned between the two persons, both in the poem's lines and in reality, the individuals' similarity is broken and undermined because of sectarian violence. The speaker understands the terror experienced by the reservist, using imagination as a way to empathize with the victim. He uses details of description to make the episode real and personal, transforming the subconscious fear and terror in the society into something more tangible. However, the possibility and extent of empathy is questionable, limited partly because this empathetic imagination does not come from the senses or one's personal past, but is instead shared by a larger community, informed by social and political awareness rather than “intimate” personal experience. Unlike other sections of the poem, the episode of violence is the most detached, lacking the intimacy of home life and the brilliance of childhood imagination. Fulfilling the mother's warning to stay away from “bad boys” in college, this incident demonstrates the real danger that exists in society. While the brother broke his arm and had to endure the scare of a strange bird perched on the byre roof, the reservist's death is real, turning the childhood imagination of the tar border as a “freshly-opened, pungent, reeking trench” into harsh reality (23). Unlike child play and superstition, which also have their share of unpleasantness and threat, the speaker finds it harder to understand and accept the reality of violence. The reality of violence undermines the power of innocent imagination to confront the atrocious and the mundane on earth, and to connect to a more heavenly, spiritual otherworld. The whitewash wall where the reservist leaned his back against connects him, the victim of political conflicts, to the brothers' own childhood and memory: the wall had made them think of heaven and hell, but now it is the location of sectarian violence, void of any literary or religious associations. The narration of the shooting demonstrates this lack of connection with the literary, religious, and familial. Although the whitewash wall connects the imagination in childhood with the atrocious in adulthood, the detached description of the shooting undermines the possibility of reconciliation between the two. While the drying out of whitewash had “worked like magic” in their childhood memory, now it is a “parched wall” that absorbed the blood and brain matter of the reservist (18, 54). The child's imagination has thus, in a sense, dried out. Despite the limitations it faces, the speaker's imagination returns to focus on the brother in the sixth and final stanza. He addresses the brother affectionately: My dear brother, you have good stamina. You stay on where it happens. Your big tractor Pulls up at the Diamond, you wave at people You shout and laugh above the revs, you keep Old roads open by driving on the new ones. (67-71) Because of the brother's decision to stay on and live in their hometown, he has a more immediate connection with the past than the speaker. This connection serves as a source of support and power. The speaker commends the brother for his “good stamina,” staying on “where it happens” (67, 68). Like his make-belief role as the piper, the brother maintains this cheerfulness as an adult, able to return to the Diamond—the location of brutal violence—with a high spirit and interact with people around him. As in their childhood, the brother “dressed up and marched [them] through the kitchen” (73). At his work, the brother “comes to in the smell of dung again,” which is the smell of the foretime when they were all together (78, ref. 32-36). The brother also preserves the past by keeping the old roads open. The reminders from things such as the old whitewash brush demonstrate the brother's tangible connection with home and the past. However, as the speaker weighs the implications of perseverance and tenacity in the face of violence, he understands their futility: “You cannot make the dead walk or right wrong” (74). As in “Weighing In,” the poem asks the question of what perseverance and passive suffering, without proactive action, accomplish in the face of violence. The speaker and the brother can be seen as alter-egos, doubles who share a similar heritage but whose life choices put them on separate paths. As the speaker observes his brother, he admires his “good stamina,” yet also questions the value of such perseverance. The speaker says to the brother: “I see you at the end of your tether sometimes” (75). There is a sense of helplessness that is shared by both brothers. Because of their collective memory and experience of violence, the speaker imagines that the brother must have also contemplated about his own life and action while staying on in the midst of violence. Thus, he imagines the brother asking these questions during his routine work in the milking parlor: “Is this all? As it was/ In the beginning, is now and shall be?” (79, 80). The brother's questions remain unanswered, yet there is a sense of closure that opens itself up to possibilities. The brother's question, while reflecting his own existential dilemmas, also points to spiritual questions involving God and His eternal nature. The interminable drone of his childhood is redressed into a question about eternity. Like the earlier alternation between the heavenly and the earthly—“kingdom” and “trench”—however, here the final scene returns to the earthly, but with a connection between the past and the future: “Then rubbing your eyes and seeing our old brush/ Up on the byre door, and keeping going” (81, 82). Here, the image is very intimate, without the drama of child play or the loudness of shouting and laughing above the revs. The brother is alone, working by himself in the milking parlor. As he holds himself up between two cows, the “drone” is no longer bagpipe music, but the monotonous work of a farmer. Nevertheless, the brother is not alone; the closeness between the speaker and the brother is maintained through the direct address of “you,” and the mention of “our brush,” which highlights their shared identity. Just as the speaker sees the brother at the end of his tether sometimes, the brother sees their old brush and finds meaning in it. The senses continue to serve as a medium through which the brother becomes intertwined with his surroundings. The brother has to rub his eyes, because his life has been filled with a mixture of reality and imagination, home and the larger society, innocence and atrocity—he has to sort out these things first. But as he does that, what he eventually sees the old brush, a physical, tangible connection to the past that is also ties in with his present peasant life. The present participle heightens the sense of being in the present; this echoes the first stanza when the brothers were young. Although the role-playing and the magic-like whitewashing are no longer there, what is left, the physical and the ordinary, still gives the brother the power to keep going. The ending is not assertive, but instead leaves it open-ended by simply describing the brother going on with his life. Its subtle gentleness does not pale in comparison to the violence of the fifth section. Rather, its quietness suggests a personal steadfastness and strength that does not yield to violence. Even though the speaker has left his hometown, he shares this steadfastness through the brother and through his poem.
Religion, Passive Suffering, and Retaliation in “Weighing In”
“Weighing In” is a poem divided into four sections, each comprising of four tercets. It begins with the image of a 56-pound weight, a solid iron that is also a “dead weight” (8). Like “Keeping Going,” the movement in the poem is slow, particularly in the first section, where rhetorical and grammatical pauses and the arrangement of vowels and consonants give the poem a slow and heavy start (“With an inset, rung-thick, moulded, short crossbar,” “Stamp and squat and square root of dead weight,” 3, 8). The first stanza, in contrast to the long 8-line stanza that opens “Keeping Going,” is short, yet filled with images of heaviness. Together with the lack of verbs and the stress on monosyllabic words with short vowels like “stamp,” “squat” and “dead,” the series of short, fragmented sentences in the first section infuses the poem with weightiness and tension—reflecting the 56-pound weight as a “life-belittling force” (8, 6). Though scientific, the phrase “unit of negation” gives the first clue to how this weight is being used as a metaphor, at the same time casting an ominous ambiance over the poem (2). Named as “Gravity's black box,” there is a stagnant, immovable quality to the weight—something that adheres to the unchanging laws of nature—though at the same time possessing potential energy. Also, “black box” suggests a hint of impenetrable mystery. The idea of weighing, which is introduced early in the poem, ties in with the book's title, The Spirit Level. After the description of this 56-pound weight, “another one” is introduced: Yet balance it Against another one placed on a weighbridge— On a well-adjusted, freshly greased weighbridge— And everything trembled, flowed with give and take. (9-12) Despite the balance achieved on the weighbridge, the idea of imbalance is already present. As mentioned previously, the poem begins with tremendous heaviness. The balance with another weight on the weighbridge is also not described in detail, but grossly described in passing. This vagueness can be seen later when the speaker discusses his own attempt to find balance in his philosophy and attitude. Even though everything on the weighbridge “flowed with give and take,” the movement occurs with “trembling” (12). The repetition of “weighbridge” in lines 10 and 11, each followed by a dash, reveals an underlying requirement for a balance to hold: the balance has to occur on a “well-adjusted, freshly greased weighbridge” (11). Thus, it is a hypothetical, tentative balance—something that, like child play in “Keeping Going,” is vulnerable to external forces such as sectarian violence. The apparent smoothness of this balance is also undermined later in the second section when the mathematical balance is applied to the human world. The thrice repeated word “bearing,” which begins with the same /b/ sound and has the same metrical foot (trochee) as “balance,” undercuts the smoothness of the balance suggested in the preceding stanza. The reluctance and frustration is also conveyed by the words “having to,” which are repeated twice (15, 17). Like imaginative play in “Keeping Going,” the hint of exertion and exhaustion challenges the seeming effortlessness. The second section uses mathematical terms to explain the speaker's philosophy. The speaker shifts from the metaphor of the 56-pound weight to the principles of addition and equality, affirming the idea that two things can be “equal and opposite” (“Flight Path,” 15). The “square-root of dead weight” also suggests the culmination of two things equal (8). The examples he uses, however, with the “intolerable” and what we “settled for and settled into,” suggest early on that he holds a grudge against the people and the condition of the world (16, 18). The repetition of “against” emphasizes the negative connotations of the word, adding to the smoothness of the weighbridge a hint of friction and resistance (17, 19). This problem with balance can also be seen in the speaker's tone and the structure of the poem. The first and second sections of the poem, like all four sections, are separated with an asterisk, but both the sentence before and after the sectional break begin with the conjunction, “and,” which links the two sections in a casual way. However, one can doubt whether these two parts can be linked equally—especially with the many social, political and philosophical implications discussed later in the poem. One questions whether laws of physics can be applied to explain philosophy. The speaker's casual tone suggests that, in the midst of all this heaviness of the topic, he is unaware of the possible flaws of his logic and reasoning. His assertion that this is what it all “amounts to” should be thus called into question (13). In continuing to apply the laws of physics to human issues, the speaker starts to encompass the whole world, as he makes his statement in the poem's first grammatically correct complete sentence: “Passive/ suffering makes the world go round” (19, 20). The past tense of the first section is replaced with the present tense, and the juxtaposition of the religious and the secular, the passive and the active, brings out the irony. The speaker ridicules the Christian ideology by putting a spin on the saying (also the title of a song), “Love makes the world go round.” He is thus commenting not only on passive suffering, but also Christian and secular understandings of love. Unlike the laws of gravity, this statement is much less logical or practical, and infused with much subjective opinion. The speaker considers the idea illogical—that passive suffering is vital to sustaining life on earth. The line preceding this saying seems to reflect his view: passive suffering is “against our better judgment” (19). This passive suffering would later be embodied in the blindfolded Jesus who did not strike back. However, the poem begins to point to Christianity even before any mention of Jesus. The speaker mocks the authority of God as he assumes his role in announcing that, “Peace on earth, men of good will, all that/ Holds good only as good as the balance holds” (21, 22). Instead of proclaiming the birth of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, his “gospel” is his exposition on the give and take of balancing. He applies the science of balancing not only to the society, but also to religion—Christianity, and especially, Catholicism. The mockery is also apparent as we see the expressions “passive suffering” and “peace on earth” and the repetition of the word “good” (“good tidings,” “good will,” “holds good,” 13, 21, 22). In a poem concerned with unending violence, these expressions from the Bible and Christian traditions seem almost out of place. Their positive and contented outlook contrasts sharply with the speaker's frustrated view at the world. The third section includes many Biblical allusions, thus bringing religion into the center of the discussion on violence. Much is implied in the section's opening line with a caesura: “To refuse the cheek. To cast the stone” (25). Contrary to Jesus' teaching, “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:39), the speaker suggests another course of action. Although the statements are qualified by the preposition, “to” (thus they are not imperative statements), the speaker still renounces passive suffering in favor of retaliation. Since casting the stone alludes to the Biblical story where Jesus silenced a crowd that was ready to execute a woman caught in adultery, it indicates the speaker's belief that the person in question is guilty, and thus the speaker is justified in “casting the stone.” Despite the condition Jesus lays down in the story, however, the speaker does not necessarily see himself as one without sin. He affirms the obedience in the believer and the power of power not exercised in Jesus; he also calls his retaliation “foul play” (48). He never asserts his own innocence in the poem. Though the accuracy of this self-image is questionable, the perception itself is important. The speaker considers this self-perception again later when he talks about “self-exculpation” and “self-pity” (40). This regard for the self contrasts with the speaker's view of the “others.” If the speaker identifies himself with Jesus, then the “others” in this story are the soldiers who “mocked/ Blindfolded Jesus” (29, 30). The speaker is incensed that these soldiers, who hurt and mocked a vulnerable but righteous Jesus, were “neither shamed nor edified” (31). While the speaker looks into ancient history at the vulnerable Jesus, he is also contemplating about the present. The combination of past and present thus suggests that the speaker is also commenting about the British soldiers in his time who are involved in the conflicts in His stance is made less clear, however, with the allusion to Jesus, whose passive suffering is affirmed: Something was made manifest—the power Of power not exercised, of hope inferred By the powerless forever. The irony lies in how Jesus refuses to use the power he actually possesses, while the speaker, who is in fact “powerless,” wants to use the power he does not have in order to retaliate. This puts into question how much the speaker truly identifies with Jesus. When he talks about “hope inferred by the powerless forever,” there is a distance and detachment between what Jesus did and what it means to him. The speaker may look towards this power with desire and reasonable confidence, but it is only a hope, shakier than a promise or a knowledge. In addition, the hope is not as strongly established as “manifested,” but only “inferred.” The distance is also emphasized by the stanza break, leaving the inference unresolved. In addition, while “forever” suggests an everlasting influence over humankind, like what the Gospel is supposed to do, the image of the blindfolded Jesus portrays a God who is helpless and vulnerable, rather than all-powerful. This returns to the issue of the relevance of history and Christianity in the contemporary world marred with violence. The speaker recognizes the manifestation of power not exercised, but he chooses not to act in the same way as Jesus. The word “still” shows his recognition of the efficacy and significance of both actions (34). Nonetheless, he abandons the Christian virtue of passive suffering for a more aggressive approach. When the speaker asks the reader to “prophesy, give scandal, cast the stone,” he says it is “for Jesus' sake”—but then also as a favor “for [himself]” (36, 34, 35). The implication is that the speaker is bringing God into the equation in order to rationalize and defend his own stance, yet at the same time pushing Christianity to the brink of relevance. He relies on the reader's emotions—sympathy, outrage, affront—to justify an act of revenge on behalf of Jesus, so that even though Jesus was mocked and “didn't strike back,” the speaker gets the revenge for Jesus' sake. Thus, to the question of whether religion—especially one that denounces violence and retaliation—can solve the problem of violence, the speaker's reaction gives an answer of “no.” Jesus may champion a non-violent stance in response to violence, but how this figures in a world of violence seems to be a different question. The religious is invoked again later when he says “mea culpa” to his being passive in the past. He mocks Christianity using its own language: that remaining passive is not only the wrong course of action, but also a sin. Two sides to every question, yes, yes, yes… But every now and then, just weighing in Is what it must come down to, and without Any self-exculpation or self-pity. The fourth section returns to the metaphor of the weighbridge and the action of weighing. The “sides” and “question” can be read as mathematical terms, again juxtaposing the objective and the scientific with deeply human questions. However, the speaker's answer to this mathematical “rule” is certain in tone but vague in content. The repetition and ellipsis in the section's first line, “yes, yes, yes…,” suggests both a recognition of different attitudes on the part of the speaker, and also a “giving up” on debate and further consideration. Like the brothers in “Keeping Going,” the speaker here also acknowledges the two sides of every question. But he sees retaliation as an exception to the rule, something that is necessary “every now and then,” not a big task, but “just” weighing in (38). As with the answer, “yes, yes, yes…,” the speaker here seems less contemplative and more defensive. Continuing with his earlier reference to sin and self-perception, the speaker urges the readers to weigh in without seeing themselves as guilty, or as victims—without any “self-exculpation or self-pity” (40). It is similar to the previous stanza, where he proposes that not to refuse the other cheek or to cast the stone would be to “fail… the self” (28). Thus, the preservation of self is maintained by holding on to an attitude and by not doubting oneself. This emotional self is shown as the speaker recounts a past experience, when he “got a first submission” (44). The poem, by this time, has progressed from the scientific to the universal to the historical (and religious), and now it becomes personal. The speaker remembers his personal past with regret: he begins the short tale with the word “Alas,” which frames the incident as something of literary significance (41). Instead of affirming the “power of power not exercised,” the speaker looks back and regrets his passiveness. He gives up on the opportunity to take a “quick hit,” which, as the short vowels suggest, is an action that is swift and efficient (42). The seemingly joking manner of the speaker when he says “a quick hit would have fairly rankled” is later replaced by a more serious tone, however; the longer vowels and the darker image of drawing blood shows the contemplative mood of the speaker: “I held back when I should have drawn blood” (45). Nevertheless, the speaker's tone changes again in the last stanza. The last stanza, like the transition between the first and second sections, begins with the word, “And” (46). The casualness is further complicated by the insertion of the italicized words “mea culpa” in parentheses. As mentioned earlier, the speaker uses the Catholic expression of confession to mock Catholicism: he is saying that passive suffering and non-violence are not only the wrong courses of action, but also a sin. Nonetheless, the sincerity of this confession is undermined by the speaker's earlier rejection of the Christian virtue of passive suffering. His earlier statement already calls for weighing in “without/ Any self-exculpation,” thus the speaker does not seem to be sincere when inserts the Catholic prayer for forgiveness (40). Regardless of whether the speaker is earnest or not, the expression “mea culpa” shows his contemplation on the necessity and morality of retaliation as a response to violence. While Jesus' passive suffering is described as the power of power not exercised, the speaker's own holding back is said to be the result of his own fault, making him lose an edge—and thus lose the balance of power. But is the speaker really saying that passive suffering is a sin? Or is he just mocking the Christian non-violent stance, in addition to his own inability to offer practical alternatives? As he addresses his opponent and says that holding back is a “deep mistaken chivalry,” he is not only building on the increase in severity of retaliation (from taking quick hit to drawing blood to establishing a code of honor), he is also implicating the The speaker's casual, almost brazen, tone is again seen in his addressing the opponent as “old friend” (47). Previously, “you” is used in the third section to address the reader, whom the speaker refers to as he explains the principle of refusing the other cheek (“not to break with/ The obedient one you hurt yourself into/ Is to fail the hurt, the self, the ingrown rule,” 26-28). At the end of the section, the speaker urges “you” to retaliate as a favor to him. The persona of the non-violent “you” in the third section, however, changes to that of a friendly opponent in the last section. The blending of these different personas brings the reader close to the changing stances of the speaker (At first, the reader is the person who “tried to lift” the 56-pound weight, then the passive person whom the speaker urges to act; in the end, the reader is the opponent who told the speaker that his passiveness was what made him vulnerable, 5). Here, the speaker addresses this enemy directly as “you,” showing an intimacy and familiarity with the opponent. This connection is also seen in the reservist in “Keeping Going,” who observes in the gunman “an ordinary face/ For what it was” (60, 61). While the reservist and the gunman never exchanged words, and thus their relationship is only impressionistic, the speaker and the opponent in “Weighing In” engage each other directly through their speech. After all, it is the enemy who “countered that it was [the speaker's] narrowness/ That kept [him] keen,” and thus convinced him to adopt a more aggressive stance (43, 44). The “you,” like the speaker himself, has renounced the passive suffering of Jesus and embraced a more aggressive, intolerant attitude. The friendliness between the two doubles is again seen in the last line, where the speaker makes another slogan-like saying, “At this stage only foul play cleans the slate” (48). Unlike his earlier statement, “Passive suffering/ Makes the world go round,” here the speaker asserts a different view about living in a violent world. The last statement can also be read as a challenge or a call to war from the speaker to the opponent. However, its seemingly confident tone covers a similar intention to mock. Just as the speaker calls his opponent an “old friend,” the term “foul play” also suggests that the speaker sees their rivalry as a game, as if they are competitors on a field, late in a game of sports (48). Although the qualification of time, “at this stage,” puts a limit on the rectitude of revenge and violence and justifies retaliation as being historically appropriate, the relevance is likened to the stages of play in a game. Thus one can question whether this final statement is also a reflection of his disregard for dialogue when the speaker says “yes, yes, yes…” and calls for retaliation for “Jesus' sake” (37, 34). In view of this lightness in the end, the whole poem is unbalanced. While it begins with the heavy image of the 56-pound weight, and then considers the great theological and moral implications of Jesus' passive suffering, the poem ends with the view of action and reaction to violence as a game of sports. The final image of the cleaned slate, which suggests emptiness, contradicts with the initial images of the heavy weight and counterweight. Although the question remains unanswered whether the slate can really be cleaned, even the action itself only aims to erase the past, but does not offer more. As a poem about achieving balance, the final image does not offer a resolution, but only a “hope” that one can return to the past and begin on a clean slate. Like the efficacy of passive suffering, the practical value of foul play, or retaliation, is called into question.
Conclusion
The question of violence is not fully answered in either of the poems. “Keeping Going” contends with the issue through narrating a personal tale and a tribute to his brother, creating an intimate, local, home-oriented vision of life in Northern Ireland that is shaped by imagination and strong sensual images. “Weighing In,” on the other hand, combines metaphors, allusions, and anecdotes to comment on the politics of violence. Both poems consider different approaches to surviving amid violence, but their somewhat ambiguous endings leave open the questions of whether imagination, perseverance, passive suffering, or retaliation can effectively respond to violence. The efficacy of various approaches is questioned in the two poems. In “Keeping Going,” child play and imagination, like the power manifested in Jesus' passive suffering, have all taken place in the past, and thus their relevance in the present moment is put in doubt. Meanwhile, the debate on the purpose and meaning of violence/retaliation in “Weighing In” underlines the almost impossible task of answering the need for justice and balance. Like the imbalance between the first image of the heavy 56-pound weight and the final problematic act of cleaning the slate, the changing perspectives in “Weighing In” demonstrate a conflict that is hardly reconcilable. The speaker, though assertive, mocks the fallibility of both passive suffering and retaliatory violence. However, as the brothers' relationship in “Keeping Going” demonstrates, having a shared memory and experience expands the possibility of finding harmony and equilibrium despite differences, whether it is personalities, life choices, or outlooks at life. The poem affirms the need for family and home, and the collective memory that is formed from a young age. As the brothers encounter a larger, societal consciousness that is more detached, though equally influential and encompassing, they return to their own memory and tangible connection with the past to seek power to keep them going. This issue is also addressed in the poem “Weighing In,” where the speaker takes on the task of commenting on universal and societal issues. Although there is a strong collective consciousness throughout the poem, in the end the speaker returns to his personal past to convey his final thought. He weighs his own desire for retaliation against the moral and practical values of passive suffering. Like “Keeping Going,” Heaney also weaves together in “Weighing In” the individual and the collective—whether it is about experience, memory, or questions of responsibility. The poems affirm the necessity and possibility for self-preservation and survival amid violence, whether it is through recollection, perseverance, or self-defense. “Keeping Going” portrays a speaker who is separated from his brother, his family, and his past because of his decision to move away. While his memory of their childhood home and his identification with literary figures empower him to find his identity, it also helps him to acknowledge his brother, albeit the different path his brother has chosen and the futility of his approach to confronting sectarian violence. The death of the reservist expresses a crushing helplessness in the face of violence, yet the brother's return to the scene of violence suggests a tenacity that is able to surmount and overcome the undoing brought about by violence. “Weighing In,” likewise, shows a speaker who empathizes with the blindfolded Jesus, whose passiveness manifested the power of power not exercised. Although the speaker would like to retaliate rather than turn the other cheek, he affirms the merits of passive suffering. The coexistence, and not elimination, of the “intolerable in others” and the intolerable in oneself helps to achieve delicate balance on the scales (16). Despite the lack of absolute resolutions for existing violence, both poems comment on the power of preservation and community found in poetry. The two poems engage the reader by making much use of the terms, “I,” “you,” and “we,” drawing the reader into the center of the conflicts in order to stand witness to the acts of violence and the various attempts at resolving violence. As the poem “Cassandra” begins, the speakers, especially that of “Weighing In,” believe that there is “No such thing/ as innocent/ bystanding” (Heaney 1-3). The poems not only embroil the reader in the conflict as they wrestle with individual and collective responsibilities, they blend the identities of the reader, speaker, and “you” (whether as the brother in “Keeping Going,” or the passive reader or friendly opponent in “Weighing In”). These personas bring the reader into close proximity with the younger generation of ordinary citizens who witness and live amidst violence. The first- and second-person pronouns evoke a sense of shared identities and generate empathy in the reader for the people struggling with violence. The poems, in affirming the power of language and narration in “Keeping Going,” yet also questioning the rhetoric in “Weighing In,” represent a kind of power not exercised, manifesting and exemplifying a restrained balance between opposing views. This can be observed in how the poems bring in questions about politics and religion, yet refrain from making them the dominant theme. Although Heaney's concern with the Troubles of Northern Ireland informs the nationalist overtones of The Spirit Level, they are political only to the degree that they provide backdrops for conversations on the moral and practical challenges of the speakers' lives, which are at the heart of the poems. Politics, religion, or aesthetics do not take precedence over Heaney's concern and interest in the ordinary—individuals, homes, and traditions, including superstitions. While it may be seen as a retreat to the sentimental and the personal, this concern for the ordinary is also a kind of “power not exercised.” Child play and imagination, like Jesus' passive suffering, do manifest the power of power not exercised. Their seemingly simple approaches to life do give individuals the power to keep going. Thus, although the problems surrounding violence are left unresolved in “Keeping Going” and “Weighing In,” among other poems in The Spirit Level, there is still a sense of hope and optimism despite the many challenges. The affirmation of keeping going and Jesus' passive suffering come through in spite of the speakers' skepticism. While the speakers in these poems do not contend that “complaint is wrong, the slightest complaint at all,/ Now that the rye crop waves beside the ruins,” they allow their troubling questions to be left unanswered, not fully out of a sense of frustrated helplessness, but by accepting the absence of perfect resolution (“To a Dutch Potter in Ireland,” 56, 57). After all, the speaker in “Weighing In” may only be mocking when he concludes that “At this stage only foul play cleans the slate”; “Keeping Going,” however, ends on an earnest note as the brother keeps going, by himself and on behalf of the speaker (48). It is possible to keep going amidst the violence. Works Cited Corcoran, Neil. The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: A Critical Guide. Ruzicka, David. “Seamus Heaney and Dante: The Making of a Poet.” Journal of educational research, Tobin, Daniel. Passage to the Center: imagination and the sacred in the poetry of Seamus Heaney.
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