modern devices are employed to turn the experiment into a memorable experience yet their initial failure to find what they are searching for shatters the presumed superiority of the modern world. The frustration of the lack of concord between the landscape and the map reduces the human characters to the status of a beast ignorantly existing in the landscape, and this already makes the occasion a memorable one. Everything changes, however, in a moment as a fox runs out of the bracken and shows them the way, facilitating recognition: the concept of the beast of the earlier passage is heavily revised and the subsequent mental processes are elaborately detailed, culminating in the final enlightenment in which the ancient story becomes more than a story, with identifiable reference points in the actual landscape.
The section describing the sight is reminiscent of Wordsworth’s Alpine accounts, especia lly the “gloomy pass” (Kinsella 1996, 125) is an element that would fit the earlier poet’s diction. The modern figures restore something of their dignity by being able to read the sign and follow it; even if maps and books are inadequate, the ability of orientation is still possessed by the speaker and his company. The landscape in sunlight opens up the much awaited enormous panorama, and the picture again recalls the spirit of Wordsworth and through him Milton too – a remarkable perspective: “Before us / the route of the Táin” (ibid).
The conclusion of the poem, however, leads towards a more sobering stance: as they contemplate the land, their gaze wanders “toward these hills that seemed to grow / darker as we drove nearer.”(ibid) The northward itinerary of the Connacht army suggests the hills of the North, with the corresponding hint at the conflict, both the ancient and the modern one; on another level the idea of getting too close to the required destination blocks the proper observation of it, echoing something of Wordsworth’s experience.
The peninsula is an instance of land intruding into water, thus a lengthening of the coastline and a similar widening of the zone of meeting between land and sea. As such it is a place where self-definition is achieved by the immediate presence of the other, with land and water each taking turns in defining the other rather than themselves. Still, the peninsula, and its more general context, the coast is one which does not exis t in the form of a simple definition; it becomes meaningful only in the presence of opposites. At the same time the peninsula retains its character as intrusion into water in its physical reality, thus it displays a stubborn insistence on being a part of something not itself, moreover, something radically different – but difference only makes sense in a dialectic relationship, in the full presence of both sides.
The perspective of “The Peninsula” would paradoxically suggest permanence by its requirement of passing and the picture of the shore itself; landscapes, however, change their significance in time in the light of contemporary circumstances. Heaney’s fascination with places is constant, yet what he reads in them shifts with his broadening of vision and knowledge: thus a place heavily loaded with contemporary historical weight in moments of stress and danger turns into one of inspiration for totally different reasons in another. The recent poem “At Toomebridge” revisits the place in the vicinity of which the speaker’s earlier self has an unnerving experience, an encounter with armoured cars intruding into his world.
The location is more specific in its reference than the earlier poem – the exact point is now Toomebridge, instead of the earlier rather vague road; the choice accordingly suggests a different symbolic undercurrent. The point is one where water from Lough Neagh finds outlet, the water thus moving from a lake to a stream; in addition, there is historical significance too. The natural, howeve r, outweighs the historical: more space is devoted to the water pouring out of the lake, to “negative ions in the open air” (Heaney 2000, 3) and to “the fattened eel” (ibid) than to the former checkpoint and the hanging site of a rebel boy from the eighteenth century. The two domains, nature and history, are nevertheless reconciled in the final image of the eel, as the past tenses give way to the present with the time marker “As once before” (ibid). That the significance of the place is now fully associated with creation is proved by the image of the transfer of water from the still body of the lake into the movement of a stream and the “negative ions” which are “poetry” (ibid) to the speaker.
The natural scenery of the North means something else for Derek Mahon. The landscape becomes a reminder of the permanence of nature, its ability to reclaim areas brought into human activity, with the frequent suggestion of the insignificance of the human being. There is an acute awareness of the temporality of human life and there is also a doubt
about transcendental human effort, with the speaker subscribing to Beckettian patterns. The chosen places are often desolate locations, desolate because of the missing human element yet there is a wild beauty in his locations, a suggestion of elemental powers which are multifariously beyond human control and they do not necessarily need constant human presence for recognition, and which powers occasionally exert a haunting influence on the speaker exactly for their wild nature.
In “Rathlin” the island off the north coast of the North is chosen as the theme and the location of the poem. The island has a heavy historical heritage, an early seventeenth-century massacre of women and children as a power demonstration. Just as in other Mahon poems, however, the natural world reclaims the scene after the historical trauma, the “unnatural silence” (Mahon 1999, 107) is replaced by “A natural silence” interrupted only by the sound of birds. The “sanctuary” (ibid) of the island has not been disturbed for a long time, the speaker thus may justifiably feel as if they “were the first visitors” (ibid) there. Nature’s takeover has been complete, the small but existing human population of the island is not even mentioned as it is seen in the matrix of elsewhere: “Bombs doze in the housing estates / But here they are through with history.” (ibid)
Providing a frame for the poem, the “unspeakable violence” (ibid) is mentioned again, with the stark contrast between human presence and natural peace. The boat leaving the island is another instance of disturbing the silence, this time it is aided by the sound of a bird. The speaker leaves the place in a state of uncertainty “Whether the future lies before us or behind”
(ibid). The pronoun is general eno ugh to liberate its referent, and the question is one that similarly allows for a range of possible interpretations, especially in the light of the explicit reference to the brooding conflict of the North, with the implication of the past by the future, that journeys involve both origins and destinations, that across from the future lies the past, depending only on the direction of the movement. Given the historical significance of the location, temporal and spatial may also be collapsed into each other: what is left behind is at the same time the before of the temporal dimension. The troubled present would find hope in such a conflation but Mahon’s speakers are rarely that optimistic. The case is rather that in the general Mahonian view the question may also lose its significance – if nature is the beginning as well as the end then the future is before as well as behind, the only permanence (if there is such a thing) is that of nature.
The poem “The Sea in Winter” is built on the stark contrast between a Greek island and a rather dreary Northern coastal location. Against the richness of colour and the warm climate of the former the “draughty bungalow in Portstewart” (Mahon 1999, 115) has little to
offer, especially that the not too attractive physical cond itions of “thin air” and “gale-force wind” (ibid) are coupled by “rednecks” and “gangs” (Mahon 1999, 116) making the location
“No place for a gentleman” (ibid). Yet “there is that Hebridian sunset, // and a strange poetry of decay” (ibid) which turn this place into something distinct and charming in its own right, and it is in such a place that the mentioned “goddess” (ibid) can make sense, returning in the spring after the desolation of “long winter months” (ibid). “The sea in winter” (ibid) can become the embodiment of the less glorious aspects of the human experience, “the something rotten in the state,” “the spite” (ibid) become tangible through the agency of “this infernal / backwater” (ibid). Yet it is in the face of such a presence that the frontier- like character of this northern location becomes manifest, demanding “heroism and cowardice / of living on the edge of space” (Mahon 1999, 117). The vision inspired by the place shines brightly, projecting an ideal future as realisable but at once the location drags the dreamer back to the ground making him see things as they are – or not, as the case may be: “I who know nothing go to teach / while a new day crawls up the beach” (ibid).
As if to further darken the northern world, “An Image from Beckett” evokes a northern landscape, with details so sparse that even Beckett would be proud of it. The bleak vision of the future only touches upon this location yet there is an uncharacteristically soothing element in its ‘description’: the “soft rush of its winds” (Mahon 1999, 41) is in fact the only particular detail of the place. This is in strong contrast with other Mahonian instances of northern winds – they generally are “gale- force winds,” better forgotten than to be exposed to them; here the winds are mellowed to a gentle sound and they appear rather friendly and pleasant than alien and threatening.
“Craigvara House” goes a step further and turns the landscape into something friendly despite its usual bleakness. The speaker’s self- imposed isolation is set in a northern coastal location, in a special time as “That was the year / of the black nights and clear /mornings”
(Mahon 1999, 134) – in itself such a time marker should not be distinctive as nights are black and mornings tend to be clear, yet a metaphoric dimension readily opens as the purpose of the exile is clarified: the speaker intends to spend some time on his own, immersing himself in reading and writing. The backdrop is a peaceful and deserted place where “the wind made harpstrings on the sea” (ibid) and “the first / rain of winter burst / earthwards as if quenching a great thirst.” (ibid) The day is quiet and misty while the night turns less friendly, taking up the usual Mahonian attributes: the sea becomes rough and mist is replaced by rain. The speaker, however, finds delight in the location, enjoying what the weather offers as well as his frugal comfort: there is “no phone, no television, / nothing to break my concentration” (Mahon
1999, 135) and the weather keeps him indoors with his reading and writing. It is also in the context of the night that the place is located in history as well by a reference to the “interned”
(ibid), with their lamps visible “over the water” (ibid).
The location now serves a positive and reassuring function. Despite its bleakness, or perhaps right because of it, the speaker finds the perfect environment to descend into himself.
The roughness of the outside world induces a profound introspection, thus it facilitates discovery, reflected in “the new-won knowledge of my situation” (ibid) and in his fresh start to writing. Night-time contemplation and proper dreams bring inspiration and the image of a thrush “practising on a thorn bush / a new air picked up in Marrakesh” (Mahon 1999, 136) recalls romantic precedents for this artist- figure. There is a return of the speaker’s companion at the end, so the speaker’s revival is fully accomplished. Much of this process is facilitated by the landscape itself, with its particular features – another landscape would be unlikely to bring about the same regeneration.
3.2.THE URBAN WORLD
In one of his poems registering life in Belfast, “The Bomb Disposal,” Ciaran Carson declares “The city is a map of the city, / Its forbidden areas changing daily.”(Carson in Ormsby 265) In ano ther poem, “Turn Again”, the persona is engaged in a desperate struggle against the background of the city: “I turn into / A side-street to try to throw off my shadow, and history is changed.”(Carson 1987, 7) The ideas associated with the city in these lines are seemingly incongruent with the concept of the city itself – the city is an actual location, consisting of three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, whereas the map is a two-dimensional rendering of the city, a fiction, and history is a process rendered in a discourse, a fiction in a way. Carson’s approach may be understood as an attempt to translate the dynamism of the city into the terms of art, a human(ising) activity just as cartography or historiography: maps embody the human intention of orientation by stabilising their referent in time and rendering their spatial dimensions on a tangible scale, and the writing of history serves the aim of a desperate struggle to anchor the uncontrollable flow of time to certain points of reference.
Literary renderings of cities bear an interesting relation to the cities themselves. The concept of the ‘city in literature’ in itself is seen as something peculiar as it requires a certain transformation of the city. As Burton Pike explains it,
The image of the city in a literary work occupies a peculiar position. Since its empirical referent is a physical object in space, the word-city is an inherently spatial image. But this unavoidable association with spatiality conflicts in modern literature with the dominating convention of time. Perhaps this explains why so many cities in contemporary literature are etherealised or disembodied, like Biely’s St Petersburg, Musil’s Vienna, or Eliot’s London. This etherealisation reduces their spatial presence so that they appear as dependencies of time; they become images which reflect transitoriness rather than stable corporeal places. (Pike quoted in Kirkland 33-34)
The ‘city in literature’ interpreted in this way is a set of images defined in terms of time rather than space, and transitoriness is emphasised over stability. Real cities, however, also exist in time, and thus are dependencies of time, consequently the challenge in relation to a city is the representation of both stability and change. What Pike considers “reduction” should perhaps be better termed transmutation and employed as such: the transformation of the city takes the form of dissection with the very aim of removing the transitory elements and fronting some essential core that escapes mutability, with the attempt of constructing a
“corporeal” place in language, whereas the temporal is best grasped in narratives, often by the paradoxical strategy of insisting on the routines of life which are at once temporary and permanent. “Etherealisation” and “disembodiment” would suggest the separation of the physical dimension from something mysterious and spirit- like and grabbing that rather than what is observable – this would dispose of the city itself and would in turn produce not so much a representation but an independent imaginary construct. Though the physical dimension is subject to mutability as a city never equals the simple totality of its buildings, this immediate physical world demands a place alongside that mysterious element which is fancifully identified as the ‘spirit of the place.’
The approach to cities in contemporary Irish poetry involves both stability and change as their focal points. Physical details are evoked for accurate portraits of the places and minor stories contribute to the sketch of life in them. Slower but more profound change is also arrested in the context of contemporary historical processes and events, often considered through specific characters of the public sphere of life. The literary antecedent is offered by
Joyce – his Dublin could not be any more corporeal than it is, proving the possibility of representing the city as it is in the temporal world of literature.
As far as Irish cities represented in literature are concerned, Dublin takes precedent over any other place. Dublin has long been a written city, its literary renderings are numerous and frequent. The arch-artist of the city is certainly James Joyce yet more recent poetic visions are likewise present – Thomas Kinsella’s night-time version of Dublin would neatly fit the Joycean one if the temporal shift is taken into consideration. The more urban North, however, has failed to erect a counter-pole to the southern city: Belfast has not got anywhere close to Dublin in this respect. Writers for a long time were the “‘invisible exports’” (E.
Longley 1994, 87) of the city due to its basically hostile approach to literary activity. The predominantly economic focus of life in Belfast did not foster a cultural flourishing due mainly to the strictly Protestant ethos of a part of its population; it was only in the 1960s that significant literary activity began in the city, which marks the beginning of Belfast’s life in literature too.
There is a marked hostility observable on part of the poets addressing the urban world on either sides of the border though the tendency appears stronger in the South. David Lloyd suggests that this antagonism is due to the fact that cities, especially Dublin, are “sites of cultural hybridization as well as centres of imperial authority and capital domination” (Lloyd 93). Apart from the openly colonial context the general plight of the modern world of the city is also a factor to consider – it is not only the conditioned and inherited hostility towards the colonial authority that renders cities unpleasant places but the more universal tendency of dehumanisation observable in large urban settlements.