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Nature has its way, and life moves forward because of rituals and duties.
For Heaney, everything that happened in his family life, and in the surroundings and materials of his existence, caused something else to happen. This is the substance of his poem, as well, because each action causes another action, or a reaction - a product - based on the initial action. And like the poet who is skillful in the economy of words, the eye becomes trained to observe the pragmatism of those reactions and results, just like the young eyes of the poet witness the butter being made from the fresh milk of the cow.
First, a look at his Nobel lecture shows that in his boyhood, when a train passed by, the earth shook and the surface of the drinking water in the bucket would "ripple delicately, concentrically, and it utter silence." Did Heaney write that down as a young man, or did he simply have a great ability to recall what happened when a train passed? It doesn't matter, because the reader is there with him. The air around him was "alive" and it was "signaling too," he wrote in his lecture.
Why did he say "signaling" ? How can the air be "alive" ? This is how the sensitive person sees the world. Through his senses. He feels the world, hears the world, and tastes the world. The wind in his childhood "swept" down, through a hole that was bored in the corner of the kitchen window, right into the "innards" of their radio. The radio is made human, and the voices that came out of the radio - right after "a little pandemonium of burbles and squeaks" - were of the BBC, reporting on WWII.
So readers know that Heaney grew up during the war, and heard all the latest news about prisoners of war that were captured, cities that were bombed, bombers that were lost by the allies. What is also very interesting in his Nobel lecture is that those moments as a child listening to voices coming out of the radio…[continue]
"In Depth Analysis Of Churning Day By Seamus Heaney" (2007, February 04) Retrieved April 23, 2014, from http://www.paperdue.com/essay/In-depth-analysis-of-40260
"In Depth Analysis Of Churning Day By Seamus Heaney" 04 February 2007. Web.23 April. 2014. <http://www.paperdue.com/essay/In-depth-analysis-of-40260>
"In Depth Analysis Of Churning Day By Seamus Heaney", 04 February 2007, Accessed.23 April. 2014, http://www.paperdue.com/essay/In-depth-analysis-of-40260