Author: Vera Dokter

I thought this poem was particularly interesting,because it again dealt with the issue of what the role of a poet is. Should he be actively involved in the political ordeals and the violence that Northern Ireland was submerged in?

The first stanza immediately tells us that he is talking about the troubles that northern Ireland, “that was a time when the times were also in spasm”. And here again, Heaney makes clear that he believes that the poet should distance himself, because although he feels he was involved and did address  in the political drama and all the violence that was going on, (he was “mired in attachment”), the people around him felt that he should be more active, like a Lorca figure, as he mentions in “Singing School”. That they want him to do more, or at least that he felt that the people wanted him to do more becomes  clear when he says “they began to pronounce me a feeder off battlefield”.

And he did flee from this, “so I mastered new rungs of the air to survey out of reach”, which then also reminds us of his inherent feeling of always being an outsider observing and commenting on what’s going on in the group that he feels he cannot be part of, he will always be ‘an inner émigré’. However, although he escaped by making his ‘first flight’, it is interesting to note that Heaney does not feel threatened or put down by the people’s response. He uses these critics to his advantage and grows stronger as a poet from them, for he says; “the onslaught of winds I would welcome and climb at the top of my bent”.

Gusty Spence seems to me to be the first person who actually got that there is no such thing as the ‘essential Ireland’ as Heaney alludes to in his poem  “The Stations of the West” when he says “I had come west to inhale the absolute weather”. There is nothing that is inherently there and only to be found by a certain group of people, in this case either Protestants or Catholics. Spence is then also the first one, who as David Ervine says, will try and organize a peace treaty.

It can therefore be said that he is the first one that realizes that there are not ‘essential’ differences between Protestants and Catholics that cannot be overcome and make them inherent enemies of each other. It reminded me a lot of the two men in Heaney’s poem “Trial Runs” who are able to joke about each other religion. “’Did they make a Papish of you over there?’ ‘Oh damn the fear! I stole them for you, Paddy, off the Pope’s dresser when his back was turned.’”

This whole view of Spence being seen as one of the rare members of the UVF and IRA who finally was able to focus on the things they had in common instead of the difference, can be supported by the fact that this poem is included in Stations, which was released in 1975, only two years after Spence had convinced the leaders of the UVF to temporarily cease fire, ending the violence for at least a little while.

This is of course a highly debatable view, and I would like to know what you think and if you think this is even a slightly justifiable argument.

When talking about “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz” today, we identified the gazebo at the end of the poem as a reference to man-made aspects of life such as Time and Death itself. This would of course make sense in relation to the fact that the speaker wants to burn these aspects down. Man should be purified from these elements to be able to really live life. The match the speaker strikes and the purifying ability of the flames then also reminds us of the flames described in “Byzantium”.

However, I thought that the gazebo can also represent Ireland itself in relation to England. England then being the larger, more powerful house or mansion. This reference to England taking on the metaphorical role of parent, and Ireland subsequently being the child, can also be related to the almost childlike rhymes the poem ends with, and with which the word ‘gazebo’ is surrounded;  ‘Time-climb’, ‘match-catch’, ‘know-blow’, and ‘built-guilt’. The match then could represent the desire to burn the present submissive attitude Ireland has towards England, and be able to grow into the fully adult and independent nation Ireland can be.

Furthermore, when thinking about gazebos, mansions and matches the reader cannot help to be reminded of the large amount of mansions which were burnt down in the Irish civil war, one being Lady Gregory’s mansion.