Art plays an important role in a lot of Heaney's poems, and more specifically, the idea that art acts as link to the past, the present, and the future. Heaney's ability to find beauty in the most menial of tasks winds up creating an entirely new definition of what "art" is and what it can do for a society plagued with revolution and death. I am going to explore the role of the artist (Heaney and his father, Colin Middleton, and a blacksmith), and how their respective mediums reflect and impact the world around them. In an effort to create something that contributes to society and stands the test of time (like they hope Ireland itself would do), these artists connect the fundamentals of Irish tradition with the fleeting present and the looming future.
In the poem "Digging," there are two artists that make an appearance, even if Heaney does not see himself in the poem as one. He views father's ability to work as rhythmic and beautiful, with his easy flow and skill he learned from his father before him. Heaney's father's connection to the past amazes him, as he knows he has "no spade to follow men like them." The cadence of the poem is highly musical, despite the lack of rhyme scheme, and the diction appeals strongly to the senses like all art does. In my essay I will talk about the "roots" his father plants in his head; roots that urge him to create like his father and grandfather did before him. That's why I think it is fair to claim that, in this poem, Heaney himself should be considered an artist. Like his father's spade, he uses his tool (a pen) to connect himself with the past through the study of his father, in attempts to create and grow as a poet instead of a farmer. This transition from the old value of hard work to the new value for words and beauty creates the dynamic of Heaney's present, and hopefully changes the future of Ireland by succeeding in ways that hard work has failed in the past.
"The Forge" is a sonnet much similar to "Digging" in that it depicts hard, manual labor as something beautiful and artistic. The heavy reliance on the auditory sense creates for us a musical atmosphere of the ringing and clanging of a blacksmith shop. Since we can only imagine what Heaney guesses is inside the shop, we are left with sounds that form a symphony of work and creation beyond this dark doorway. The way Heaney depicts the forger is the same way he depicts his father, rhythmic and confident, and able to do things Heaney himself can't. The forger is also creating something from seemingly nothing, a skill that has probably been passed down through generations of blacksmiths. The line in the poem that plays a little bit with time and the transition from old to new is when the forger "recalls a clatter/ of hoofs" where there is now traffic buzzing and he grunts and goes back inside to "beat real iron out." Even though the need for blacksmiths was dwindling, the forger was unable to break from what he knows and accept the future.
Another poem of Heaney's that deals, more literally, with art is "In Small Townlands." About his surrealist friend Colin Middleton, Heaney here depicts creating actual art as something beautiful and otherworldly. In my reading of the poem, however, I thought that the poem seemed more fascinated with trying to understand how Middleton was able to see these colors and lines that weren't really there and paint them. I think in this poem, instead of focusing on the art of the average laborers, Heaney sought out a kindred spirit that creates things with their imagination. It might be a little bit of a stretch, but the last line of this poem, I think, is what all artists strive for: "a new world [cooling] out of his head]. All artists, even the forger and farmers, want to create something that is going to last until the end of time and not embrace that the world is going to change. They strive to plant their roots and instill their same values in their children, but the need for the shift from labor to creativity is as evident in the continuous failure to achieve Irish freedom as it is in Heaney's inability to farm and work like his forefathers.
