The Poetry of Rutger Kopland

A World Beyond Myself, Enitharmon, 1991

Memories of the Unknown, Harvill Press, 2001

Part 1: Beginnings

In 1996, New York’s Vintage Press brought out ‘The Vintage Book of World Poetry’; the book settled many reputations, but also introduced many more.

The Dutch writer Rutger Kopland woke up one morning to find himself a world-class poet. Ok, he was already a top-selling author in his own country. But that is the point, as Martinus Nijhoff lamented in 1936, it is a country whose literary appreciation is limited to a small range by its language.

We are very lucky to have the masterful translations of the late James Brockway. He preferred the description of ‘collaborations’, it reflected more the close work with the author to render as near a syllabic and tonal copy as possible.

“…what I am presenting,” he wrote, “…is a Dutch poem by a Dutch mind, but now in the English language”.

James Brockway was made ‘Knight of the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands’ in 1997, for his services to Dutch literature. He died in 2000.

‘Rutger Kopland’ is the pen name of Professor of Psychiatry (retired) Rudi H van den Hoofdakker. He was born in 1934, and has won many prestigious prizes, one of which is the Dutch highest award for literary achievement, the P C Hooft Prize.

Kopland’s first book, Among Cattle, appeared in 1966. The date is important in a number of ways.

In the nineteen fifties Dutch art and literature woke up to experiment; it was a time of cataclysmic experiment in all forms, only paralleled in Dutch poetry by the exuberance of the medieval Rederijker rhetorical guilds.

Of course, as with many such movements, they also carry and help generate the seeds of their successors. Out of the foment of imagistic, lexical experiment a strong realistic note was beginning to be detectable.

Kopland, along with Judith Herzberg are now readily identified as the best representatives of this tone: of a sane, nonrhetorical, everyday language and subject matter.

In this first book are to be found all the tonal keys of his later work. An instant favourite was the first poem of the book, A Psalm, now a much anthologised piece:

 

A Psalm

                     The green pastures the still waters

                    on the wallpaper in my room –

                    as a frightened child I believed

                    in wall paper

 

                    when my mother had said prayers for me

                    and I had forgiven for one day more

                    I was left behind among

                    motionless horse and cattle,

                    a foundling laid in a world

                    of grass

 

                    now that once again I have to go

                    through god’s pastures I find no path

                    to take me back, only a small hand

                    clasped in mine that tightens

                    when the enormous bodies

                    of the cattle grunt and snuffle

                    with peace.

 

The first thing to notice here is the almost total lack of punctuation. In the original there is only the final full stop, even the commas, lines 8 and 14, do not appear.

We catch the tone of slow, almost ruminative… can we call it ‘thinking aloud’? Are we overhearing a sotto voce between intimate friends? Husband and wife, perhaps, or is it between father and child, as maybe becomes apparent in the last stanza? I wonder, does it matter: the drama of a listening audience is of less importance, than the manner and intent of the narration.

Also notice the slow accumulation of details that reveal-but-not-reveal the narration: what was it he had, or had been, forgiven? The biblical references (note lowercase ‘god’) and Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd…”) set a tone, particularly in the traditionally Calvinist/Lutheran Netherlands, for solitary meditative discourse, whose  heavy and responsible purpose: to converse with God, without intercessors, is offset by the witty, chatty aside: ‘as a … child I believed in wall paper…’.

Psalm 23 becomes a constant reference point in his writing.

The setting of the poem: the home, night, childhood, segue into the author’s own fatherhood; the meditative tone; the rural setting : an image of continuity, perhaps.

This may seem a little dated to those only familiar with the great urban sweep from Rotterdam, east and south; it is, however, deeply ingrained in the Dutch cultural model.

Kopland has lived all his working life in the villages outside Groningen. This is where many still refer to as the real ‘rural’ Netherlands. These are the heartlands of the Dutch, the green ore that runs through the urban stonework.

What we read with Rutger Kopland, especially with these earlier books, are the books of the Dutch interior: the soul-lands. The irony is, Kopland is the least metaphysical of men; his insights are, I suspect, very much coloured by his profession as clinical neuroscientist.

Kopland was born in 1934; by the time of that terrible winter of German reprisals 1944/5, he would have 10 years old. 10, 000 died that winter.

Consider the following poem in the book: Under the Apple Tree:

 

                                         I came home, it was about

                                         eight and remarkable

                                        close for the time of year,

                                         the garden seat stood waiting

                                         under the apple tree

 

                                         I took my place and sat

                                         watching how my neighbour

                                         was still digging in his garden,

                                         the night came out of the soil

                                         a light growing bluer hung

                                         in the apple tree

 

                                         then slowly it once again became

                                         too beautiful to be true, the day’s

                                        alarms disappeared in the scent

                                         of hay, toys again lay

                                         in the grass and from far away in the house

                                         came the laughter of children in the bath

                                         to where I sat, to

                                         under the apple tree

 

                                         and later I heard the wings

                                         of wild geese in the sky

                                         heard how still and empty

                                         it was becoming

 

                                         luckily someone came and sat

                                         beside me, to be precise it was

                                         you who came to my side

                                         under the apple tree,

                                         remarkably close

                                         for our time of life.

Masterly; we scarcely even notice the ‘literaryness’: the ballad-like repetitions of key phrases, the manipulation of mood-buttons. He earns our trust, and the trust of the ordinary reader by foisting no great ideas of redemption on us, by insinuating no Political awkwardness. We get the ‘feel’: the surburbanism of life lived by the ordinary person, with a job, family… in fact, do we recognise in ourselves: nostalgia for the past? This is a claim that plagued Kopland from these early books.

See how he builds the tension from stanza two: the juxtaposing of details of the neighbour (for which read, everyman/the identifier of self as ordinary: the classic Dutch sense of communalness), the change in light: the dark that identifies colours, blues…. Having keyed up the emotions at this point: the ‘…too beautiful to be true…’ (those last three qualifying words communicate so much, particularly in combination with preceding, ‘…once again…’), he immediately disengages and redirects; the emotional response is channelled via the toys in the grass to the house, the laughter of children. The emotions are stirred but not settled, their direction may have been channelled but the mind is made open, the imagination engaged by this “mental event”, so that when the geese fly they are identified immediately as ‘wild’, the sky is emptied by their presence, a sense of immanence is apparent. Once again this keying-up of emotions is channelled to the ‘…precisely you…’. An anchoring, grounding in the here and now.

Kopland displays here a willingness to be honest about feelings, a willingness to be open about his experience of them, of their place in his life and world.

And yes, he is privileged: he has a satisfying though demanding job, he has happy children, he has a close relationship with his partner. Is it Kopland, here? Or is it the ‘ordinary person’? Is it the person glad to be alive, having survived that last terrible winter of the War; like his neighbour he goes through the daily affirmation of survival.

Following a sequence of poems on his father’s death, we have:

 

                             Miss A

 

                            On September 19, a misty

                            nineteenth, Miss A stepped-off

                            from the wrong side of her house-boat

                            Sweet Content

                            into the waters of ‘The Deep’.

 

                            The cold had come, she had been unable

                            to get the stove to light,

                            her old mother had died,

                            everything was creaking, going to rust,

                            from her galley God and the

                            DHSS seemed out of reach.

 

                            She disembarked.

An altogether different piece. We have here, I think, irony used as a stylistic device; there is no longer the personalizing, intimate nature of the experience, but a distancing. A tragic event; but almost, in this retailing, a news item; the details of particulars: date, boat name, area of mooring.

The domestic details are all laid out for us to see, like the effects of a dead person, to be collected by relatives (us: readers-as-community?), or the unknowns who will come later when our attention is caught by other news. Whichever way it is read we, the reader, or, shall I qualify that: we, the ones amongst the readers who actually care what happened to her – are involved: her fate impinges upon us. We may not be responsible, but we are made witnesses. To be able to remain open, to witness, and not close-off is maybe one of the things makes a workable community.

This poem appeared in print in 1968. This is significant: 1968, and The Netherlands were as much caught up in social upheaval as we were in England. It may be this poem can be read as a response to the student protests, the extreme political factions.

Another, more significant poem of his poems of the period was Young Lettuce:                        

                           I can stand anything,

                           the shriveling of beans,

                           flowers dying, I can watch

                           the potato patch being dug up

                           and not shed a tear – I’m

                           real hard in such things.

 

                           But young lettuce in September,

                           just planted, still tender,

                           in moist little beds, no.                                         

Literary friends would repeat this poem when latest news came through of some new social upheaval, or political upset. Why? It is the understatement; the masterly irony; it is also a poem of great benevolence. The weary retort to old problems presenting themselves in new clothes, of seemingly unsurmountable social problems… and yet the response is of a wry gentleness.

Maybe this poem can be read as an attempt at affirming communal responsibilities.

The ironic yet engaged tone of the times, the response of an older generation.

Kopland’s sharper mode was prompted to some extent by what he saw as misreadings of his work. After the anecdotal style a greater dissatisfaction with accepted things became apparent. There emerged a ‘stern’ period of disillusionment.

 

Difficulty and J H Prynne

‘Rich in Vitamin C’ – from  ’The Collected Poems of J H Prynne’

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George Szirtes in his StAnza Lecture Possessing the Line (2007), cites George Steiner’s essay, On Difficulty (1978). Here Steiner has formulated poetic difficulty into four main classes.

1 – The Epiphenomenal Difficulty. This is in the use of obscure words, phrases; and of ideas that relate to unusual or relatively unconnected areas of knowledge.

2 – The Tactical Difficulty. This is where something is deliberately withheld from the text. This was a major strategy of Eastern European writers, where a classical allusion was used as a comment on a contemporary situation, but the readers had to draw the linkages themselves.

3 – The Modal Difficulty. This is where the tone of the poem renders it unappealing. Think of Swift’s diatribe’s on women’s boudoirs. It need not be inimical to the reader, just at odds with the subject.

4 – The Ontological Difficulty. Contemporary poets question more than ever before the ways a writer communicates with the reader, the languages used, and the ways syntax can be manipulated to express more of the complexity of the contemporary world.

A writer’s medium is that of expression through language, and by extension, the voice in space and time; and the printed page, the message of the layout on the page, and the type of font used.

For J H Prynne these are all part of the overall consideration of a poem. Bring in also the officialdom and legitimacy of the choice of publisher, and we have a picture of the writer’s chosen stance towards his/her audience, self, peers, and also to the writing itself. Is the text part of an ongoing psycho-biographical framework; or can it be seen as independent of the author, and therefore open to complete lexical analysis?

Prynne has published most of his books through small, unknown presses; this is partly through necessity, where the larger presses have shown themselves unsure of his work, but also it has become a deliberate tactic.

John Kinsella and Rod Mengham have written widely in praise of Prynne’s work. We have in their introductions one of our best resources for approaching Prynne’s difficulties. And they are temporal as well as strategic: they relate how Prynne’s relationship with his work, with the reader, have altered over time.

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Kinsella’s commentary, in the Jacket Series, on Prynne’s ‘Rich in Vitamin C’, on a poem from the early nineteen seventies, is very deeply considered.

What is ‘rich in vitamin C’, according to the advertisement? Rosehip Syrup. That this is indeed the reference can be seen in stanza two’s ‘Or as the syrup in the cup’, and the last stanza’s ‘Such shading of the rose to its stock…’.

Rosehip Syrup is very much a WWII memory, bringing in the ‘Dig for Victory’ initiative: food supplies were not getting though the Axis’ naval blockade, and so all recreational land and gardens were to be dug up and turned to growing vegetables, to become self-sufficient. Part of this initiative was the collecting, harvesting, of rose hips because they were ‘Rich in Vitamin C’.

In turn this memory leads us into reading the poem as a very touching, indeed moving active elegy for an elderly person; it is also a commentary on the generation gap. The narrator has his own take on her life, how ‘the trusted’ of her time became in his the ‘idiocy’. Her ‘incomplete, the trusted’, that is the accepted status quo, the war time propaganda, becomes for the narrator tantamount to ushering in ‘what/motto we call peace talks.’ (in both senses of noun phrase, and verb phrase).

One strand of narrative behind the piece is of an elderly widow and her younger visitor; the widow has lost her husband to enemy action in the War, in the Baltic. Baltic in the poem is lower-case and hence taking on adjectival nuances. This ties-in later when we look at the way images are linked.

The garden the elderly widow looks out on (dug-up and replanted: the cycle of examination and re-examination that we call memory) could very much be a reference to the widow’s self-enclosed, memory-obsessed later life.

An archaic, or pseudo-archaic, note is heard in the ‘ shews’ and the arch; the water is like awareness/mental lucidity in the elderly widow; the image of ‘the purpose we really cut’ as a wind over its surface, a momentary disturbance, produces a brooding, almost Gothic, mood (there is also a metaphysical imagery at work here: the garden of the soul in medieval Christian writing, the Taoist imagery of wind on water. Is this also part of her ‘idiocy’ in the Auden-on-Yeats sense: ‘You were silly, like us…’? And is that ‘idiocy’ also that of the holy fool?). This Gothicness has a ring of falsity perhaps, of an ornate folly. Do we also sense here in the follow-up of the militaristic images of accidental damage, ‘the cross-fire’ et al, of the fall of the Brideshead generation in WW11?

The images follow on from each other in an associative manner; we have the point of view of the two people in the narrative, they intrude and weave between and comment obliquely on each other. We see the germane image of ‘darkly the stain skips as a livery/… like an apple pip’ connect with the dark Baltic region, with the darkness of depth and cold of the Baltic where her ‘loved one… sleeps’. This leads to the ‘shading/of the rose to its stock tips the bolt/ from the sky…’ Here we see the death in enemy action in the Baltic transform into the narrator’s present day fears where the Baltic, its cold, represents the threat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War. The ‘bolt/ from the sky…’ and ‘what we call peace talks…’ references nineteen seventies President Carter regime’s (the period of the poem) Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT 1 and 11). And also, quite appositely in the dark and cold, the ‘starry fingers’ and ‘bolt/ from the sky’ references, to space, and President Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ web of a satellite early-warning system.

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At first I was uncomfortable with this roping-in of WW11 and the Cold War together. There are obvious historical linkages, but by nature and character they were very different affairs. But then it occurred to me that this was indeed how a lot of the youth protest groups thought at that time, that naïve, half-understood restlessness, that throws out everything older generations did, thought or achieved.

The narrator’s pejorative of the widow’s ‘trusted’, that ‘idiocy’, is perfectly in tune with the youth-rebellion attitude.

What on first reading seems to be a continually shifting sand of half-meanings and implications, takes on a clearer perspective: to look back, to look forward: both are highly speculative acts, and both coloured by the observer’s contemporary concerns. The poem holds both views in the same space, and also we have the writer’s colourations: the kindness and generosity of his attitude towards the elderly widow apparent in the time he spends with her, ‘setting’ her in the poem.

And also the humour: vitamin C is considered an excellent remedy against colds; and was also believed to help one see in the dark.

This is simple word-play, but it also points-up Prynne’s ‘sounding’ of the connotive possibilities of words and language.

In stanza one the ‘snowy wing-case/ delivers truly…’ whereas the widow’s idea of honour is in the ‘incomplete, the trusted.’ What the eye sees (has she brown/ hazel eyes?) is what is there to be seen; what is remembered, ie the image held within the eye of what has been seen, is liable to ageing, changing tone and colour as one’s attitudes and beliefs change.

To really see, one must reflect upon and judge against what one knows. There is also the implication that what one truly believes is all there is of value for one. Can value be measured by what is seen, and what it is compared with? Or is it something objective?

The ‘syrup’ could well be a placebo, something sweet for our childish, or at any rate immature, minds to be soothed by: the ‘sweet shimmer of reason’ , a childish fascination with shiny, shimmery things.

The reference to health propaganda by health companies points up the insidiousness of language used against us: to believe the image and deny the thing.

It also points up that we as much as them, the characters in the poem, are just as vulnerable to the propaganda of our time: ‘this flush/ scattered over our slant of the/ day…’: the slant of sun at evening, and the slant of our take on our time.

We get the ghost-shiver of Socrates’ ‘the unexamined life…’ here, just as earlier we hear the ghost of Auden’s ‘September 1, 1939’:  ‘Accurate scholarship can/ Unearth the whole offence/ From Luther until now/ That has driven a culture mad…’ in ‘an idea bred to idiocy by the clear/ sight-lines ahead.’.

There does not seem to be an occasion for the poem. It appears to occur at the point of happy coincidence of Prynne’s subjective concerns, reflections on his time, and memories, and the impulse to write in this manner at this time, on these themes.

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It is surprising how this poem fulfils all of Steiner’s criteria for difficulty. There is no indication in Steiner’s writings that he was aware or appreciative of Prynne’s writing. And also I very much doubt that Prynne was paying Steiner any kind of homage in his writings.

Prynne’s poem in taking on the past, carries the suggestion from Geoffrey Hill’s work of a rehabilitation of history in poetry. Pound’s Cantos are read by many as a refutation, even cancellation, of the sense of history: Donald Davie states ‘…the poet’s vision of the centuries of recorded time has been invalidated by the Cantos…’.

In some ways the Cantos can be viewed as the last word of a generation’s sense of ‘the end of history’. This sense of the end was particularly strong amongst survivors of World War 1.

This period however also saw the beginning of a new validation of historical study. Here began the ground-breaking work of Marc Bloch and the French Annales School, and of course the developments in Marxist economic history.

If anything it was the end of the ‘history of great men’, of political, imperial history, history as narrative, of hierarchies. The new history, and this is relevant to the reading of Prynne’s poem, looked on the past as part of a matrix, its constituents linguistic, architectonic, relativistic: present and future are present in time past, as it were. Present concerns, coloured by past precedent, influence future decisions, the selection of material, their weighting, and interpretation.

One criticism levelled at both Prynne and Geoffrey Hill is that although both eschew any biographical approach to their work, their range of references and especially the nature of the references they use, are essentially personal, subjective.

As with all general comments this, as we have seen above it is not always the case. I feel this criticism applies more to the later Hill than the instance of this particular poem by Prynne. The poem is maybe idiosyncratic in its form but the intentions and motives appear mostly objective.

7. Beowulf

‘Beowulf’ is full of rings; it is ‘hringe-rice’ in Anglo-Saxon. It opens with the funeral of Beowulf’s progenitor Scyld Shefing, and ends with the funeral of Beowulf himself. It has long been recognised that the structure of Beowulf is chiasmic; the extent to which it is chiasmic, though, is quite unique.

One need only think of the how the episode in the story of Beowulf’s exploits in the sea adventure with Brecca, and the sea monsters, echoes the episode in the mere as he challenges Grendel’s mother. We would mostly read this as the one setting up for the other, if it were not for how the two events are so closely interwoven. The key to reading these as chiasmic is in the responses of his followers/onlookers: in the first they are wholly supportive; in the latter the Danes leave, expecting the worst to have happened: in effect a reversal of the first

But even Scyld’s funeral that opens the tale is a ring. Look at the pattern:

In order                                                             In reverse order

Scyld’s fated time to die                                     Who received Scyld in death?

Retainers carry him to the water                        Ocean carries him from retainers

He is laid by the mast of the ship                       Gold standard above his head

Heaped with treasure from far away                  Treasure compared with childhood treasure

He has incomparable treasure                           Treasure to go far away

And the turn:  The loading up of his funeral ship with weapons and armour

(From: The Four Funerals in Beowulf, Gale R Owen-Crocker)

There is even a cross-reference in the last two before the turn: heaped with treasure from far away, is paralleled with the treasure heaped on him that is to go far away with his body.

But we need to distinguish between chiasmic, and ring-structure. The first indicates a relationship between two parts, one of which is the reversal of the others’ order. This is a characteristic of ring-structure, but ring-structure proper must have a true meeting of beginning and end, and a reversal-event at the heart of the tale. The start of this tale with the, by then mythical, progenitor Scyld Shefing opens with the setting up of the house and people of the Shefings. It ends in Beowulf’s death, with the ending of the house of the Shefings. That both these events are funerary events further strengthens the connection between them into a ring-structure.

Many ring-structured tales frame the central cross event; it is the same in Beowulf. The frame in this case is that of two funerary elegies: firstly, from the tale of the Finnsburg fight, and secondly from what is known as the Last Survivor’s tale.

The Finnsburg piece is a particular version of the independently known Fight at Finnsburg. The ‘Beowulf’ version emphasises the sadness and loss of life, goods, and heritage treasures. The story is of Frisian-Danish relations: Finn has married the daughter of the Danish ruler; the Danes visit Finn at his stronghold, and a fight ensues. Many are killed on both sides so a truce is called. Finn allows the Danes many concessions: a separate lodge for living in through the frozen-in Winter, and equal sharings of all booty. Come the Spring the Danes turned on Finn and his company and killed them all, the daughter was taken back to Denmark, along with all Finn’s treasures.

The second frame tells of the equipping of the barrow the dragon is later to seize – and where Beowulf loses his life – with all the treasures of a people who have perished. It is accomplished by their last survivor. It turns into a personal elegy of loss, and the ending of a way of life. In many ways it can be read as a reversal of the portrayal of the loss at Finnsburg: we see the flip side of the Dane’s glorious success, of what is left once they leave. We also see in this frame a foreshadowing of the death, and through it, the disintegration, of Beowulf and the people/house under his protection.

The two can be seen to agree in their general approach to subject: great loss of life, and of a people’s treasures, and can indeed be seen as a paralleling structure.

What do they frame? Knowing the general story one would expect the main crux to be the fight with Grendel; but what of the fight to the death of Grendel’s mother? That this last is the main event is further given by the build-up of tales and events around the last visit by Grendel’s family. The battle with Grendel’s mother exposes many telling elements that relate back and forward in the story, as in true ring-structure. The doubt of the Danes at Beowulf’s success in the mere, echoes back contrarily to the enthusiastic support they gave him on the defeat of Grendel himself. The character of Unferth also occurs again here, offering Beowulf his valued sword as he is about to enter the mere. In the previous encounter with Unferth we see him cast doubt on Beowulf’s prowess in the sea-challenge with Brecca. This is a complete and telling reversal for Unferth.  From hereon also the tone of the tale changes. Instead of Hrothgar’s great pleasure of being rid of the monsters who had plagued him for years, we hear him holding forth to Beowulf on the responsibilities and dangers of kingship. King Heremond is once again brought forth as an example of bad rulership. All this ushers us towards the role that Beowulf is to play eventually in the latter quarter of the tale.

To give some indication of how closely woven is the structure of ‘Beowulf’ allow me to quote from Owen-Crocker:  “The Finnsburg Lay ended, the scene in Heorot continues with (Queen) Wealtheow’s approach to uncle and nephew (lines 1162-4). This balances the earlier reference to the Danish uncle and nephew (line 1017) and concludes an elaborate ring-structure at the centre of which an uncle and nephew lie together on the Finnsburg pyre having died fighting on opposite sides. The mention of uncle and nephew at this point is also, however, part of the chiastic structure which centres on the twenty-fourth fit. It is balanced by Beowulf’s mention of his kinship to Hygelac (lines 2150-1)….”.

Owen-Crocker’s readings are so detailed in their teasing out of the interweaving of themes and echoes within the text. He relies as much on textual evidence, the placing of certain textual markers, such as the relationship of spoken elements in the text, as on overall structure.

It has been argued that the Christian elements in the tale have been incorporated at a later date. Owen-Crocker gives evidence that their content is indeed more a part of the structure. Take Syld Shefing; his birth and appearance amongst the Geats shows him to be presented as a Moses figure, complete with being found in a sea-borne basket. This connection is only inasfar as he is presented as a great leader and settler of his people. The Old and New Testaments are extensively referenced throughout the text; they are, as Owen-Crocker reveals, as much a part of the cultural milieu of the piece as are the Anglo-Saxon heroes and kings.

6: The Tale of Mad King Sweeney

You  know how it is: you’re so keyed-in into your subject that you surf it, leaping forward into new and unexplored ideas. And then you discover that what you were surfing on was, well, foam basically, wind-filled froth. Well…

Earlier I wrote I would not expect to find ring-structured texts in older Irish literature. My argument being that ring-structures are mnemonic devices for the oral story-teller, and that Ireland had literacy, albeit in the monasteries, from an early date. That written literature tended more towards the linear structure.

Well I was wrong. I was wrong in that most monastic transcriptions of oral work tended to copy as closely as possible, the source material. And I was subsequently wrong about some later Irish literature.

For instance…

My wife just happened to be talking about mad Sweeney the other day. I thought ( ‘Does she mean me?’):  ‘I have Seamus Heaney’s copy of the tale! I must read that again!’ I remember when I first read it being a little nonplussed by the tale; I couldn’t grasp the tale’s dynamic. As we now know, that is a sure sign of a ring-structure.

Seamus  Heaney has made an excellent version of the tale of Buile Suibne in ‘Sweeney Astray’ (Faber, 1993). The tale was written sometime between 1672 and 1674, but the composition is thought to be as old as 1200 to 1500 AD. The O’Keefe version is available online, but with this work where prose is heightened by poetry at the crucial points, Seamus Heaney has all the skill, the ear, and technique for an excellent version of the text.

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The storyline is basically:

King Sweeney of Dal-Arie in Antrim heard that Ronan Finn was building a church on his lands. Sweeney dashed out and confronted him, threw his psalter in the lake, and was just dragging him bodily out of the church when a messenger arrived: he was needed at the Battle of Moira.

Sweeney was keen on this battle, dressed in his finest silks, and entered the field. Then Ronan Finn turned up with several acolytes, they attempted to forestall the fight or at least set rules. Sweeney was incensed, threw a spear and killed one of the acolytes, then threw another at Ronan but hit and cracked his priests’ bell.

Ronan cursed him then: he was to have the nature of a bird, to be skittish, fearful and afraid. He would only find release from the curse on the end of a spear.

As the battle commenced the noise drove Sweeney mad and he leapt from tree to tree away. Eventually he arrived at Glen Arkin, perched in a churchyard tree. Then survivors of the battle arrived. He was seen, they conversed but he fled again.

He arrived at Kilreagan, again survivors arrived. And he fled.

Eventually he arrived at Glen Bolcain, a place where mad people  hid out.

For seven years he wandered like this, he grew feathers, lived as a mad bird-man in the woods, and latterly the mountain areas.

His half brother Lynchseachan was searching for him, tracking him. Several times he nearly caught him.

Sweeney’s abandoned wife, Eorann, arrived with a hunting party. They had a long and tender but unfruitful conversation.

Shortly after this Lynchseachan lured him down to the ground telling him how all his family had perished. In his grief he comes down and is captured. Lychseachan shackled him, and after a while reason returned. Lynchseachan revealed it was all a trick to capture him, no one was dead.

Sweeney was left in the care of an old woman. This was the mill-hag, and she tricked him into recalling his madness again, challenging him to run and leap again. And his madness returned, and he escaped. Except this time she chased him leap by leap. The only way he could shake her was by tricking her into a leap she could not achieve. She died, and he escaped.

He realised then he could never return because Lynchseachan would avenge her death.

He met another woman, and they wrangled over food: watercress; Sweeney claimed it was his to eat. She responded that it was up to God to pass judgement on all of man’s doings. His reply was to hope the Vikings got her. He fled to the mountains, islands, and ended up on Eigg, off Scotland, then Ailsa Craigg, off Scotland.

He travelled through Britain, until hearing the howling of a madman in the woods. He sought him out, and they became close friends. The madman’s curse was for forcing all in a battle to wear silks and fine clothes, much as Sweeney wore at Moira.

They stayed together for a year, after which the madman revealed it was his time to die, and how it was to happen.

Sweeney returned to Ireland afterwards. He met a madwomen but they fled from each other.

He met Eorann again, but he was no better, she said, and she had to move on.

He travelled through mountains and glens. His reason returned again. Ronan heard of this and renewed his curse: Sweeney was visited by five bloody heads who pursued him. He eventually lost them but his life became worse.

Once again he got into an altercation with a cleric over stealing watercress.

He met a holy community at Alternon, Tiree. He found a kind of contentment there.

He came across the church of St Mullins where the priest (bishop?) Molin allowed him sanctuary.

Although he ranged wide over the country, every evening he came back. The Swineherd’s wife was instructed to leave milk out for him each night. This was misinterpreted by her husband as an assignation: he rushed out with a spear, and killed Sweeney.

2

Several recurring events and episodes, in various forms, can be spotted straight away. And each is an important part of the tale.

Take a seemingly small one like the altercations over watercress, which to Sweeney was the choicest and most essential of foods: the first in stanza 42 is with a woman from the house of an erenach (cleric). The import of their wrangling is that his lack of humanity is keeping him from home and life. This episode follows closely upon the first conversation with his wife Eorann after his cursing. The next episode connected with watercress, stanza 70, is with a cleric in person who says something like, ‘Look at you, living in contentment with no worries or concerns, doing what you like!’ It is shortly after this Sweeney finds contentment, of a sort, but with the holy community at Alternon. And it was previous to this altercation that the curse was renewed, and his life became much harder, worse.

One of the most important parallels in the tale is where the conversations with his wife, Eorann occur. The first, stanza 31/2, is very tender, and although at this point in the tale, Sweeney is steadily shying away from all human contact, she says she would gladly go with him just to be with him. He cannot take even her closeness and flees once again. In the second parallel episode she finds him no better than before, although by this point he is desiring human company more and more. She, in effect, leaves him this time.

Another important parallel in the tale is with the episodes of pursuit. The first, stanzas 48 to 50, is where the mill-hag chases him leap for leap so he cannot shake her off. The next, stanzas 64 to 6, is where the five heads pursue him. Each episode marks a change in tone in the tale. The mill-hag episode continues the theme of trickery begun by Lynchseachan, and ending with Sweeney himself, when he gets her to leap, at Dunseverick, and she ends up dashed on the rocks. From this point on he is cut off even further from ever returning home. The five heads episode is to do with the effect of the renewal of the curse. In each case the purpose is to renew his madness, which had broken previous to these events.

So where is the main turn of the tale, and how is it indicated? As with earlier ring literature the main turn in framed by events. I would place the turn with the meeting with the madman in the woods:  Ealladhan, or as Seamus Heaney names him Alan. It is here that for the first time Sweeney seeks out friendship, closeness, kinship. They stay and wander together for a whole year. This is a major turn in the story. Up to this point we see Sweeney become increasingly estranged from society and human company; after this his responses to meetings are far more considered, conciliatory. After the meeting with the mad woman on his return to Ireland he realises that enmity is the cause of most troubles: ‘Whoever stirs up enmity/should never have been born;/may every bitter man and woman/be barred at the gate of heaven.’ This reflective tone, and inner awareness, continue through the latter part of the tale, and inform all of his responses.

The ‘turn’ is framed I would suggest, by the parallel of the mill-hag, and the five heads, each as I have said marks a renewal of his madness. Following from the episode with the madman of the woods Sweeney becomes more and more human again, even despite the bad setback.

The ending parallels the beginning very closely: the enmity with which Sweeney rushes out, spear in hand, to confront Ronan Finn is clearly seen in the wrath of Mongal the swineherd as he dashes out, spear in hand. The death-by-spear to pay for the death of Ronan’s acolyte is also clearly drawn.

It is also necessary to point out that whereas Sweeney broke Ronan’s priest’s bell with his spear at the Battle of Moira before the curse, it was to Molin’s bell for vespers he returned every evening at St Mullins, before he died.

3

The mill-hag episode has a precursor, in stanza 28. Here Lynchseachan’s mother-in-law, ‘Lonnog, daughter of Dubh Dithrib’ was acting as caretaker at his mill when Sweeney turned up. Lynchseachan disguised himself in her clothes and nearly captured him, but he escaped just in time ‘through the skylight’; this is the same way he escapes from/with the mill-hag.

There are also three runs of three. One, again the watercress episodes, which have a precursor in stanza 17, where in Glen Bolcain, ‘The madmen would beat each other for the pick of its watercresses and for the beds on its banks.’ The theme behind the watercress episodes would seem to be one of gradual re-humanising, of the efficacy of civility, the humanising effects of the church’s emphasis on humility and grace, as with the last watercress episode, stanza 70, we see Sweeney be accused of sloth and shirking responsibilities, his facing up to the accusation, and thereby his accession to a measure of contentment in the community of Alternon.

Another run of three can be seen indicated by the use of the term ‘six weeks’ for durations of time ‘in extremis’. We first encounter this when Sweeney is discovered at Rasharkin, stanza 35. He has spent six weeks here before discovery; he is then lured down by Lynchseachan’s trickery. After he is captured, stanzas 35 to 7, he is shackled for six weeks. By then his reason has begun to return. In stanza 44, he spends six weeks each on the isles of Eigg and then Ailsa Craig, off the Scottish coast. The last event is a single six weeks: in stanza 66, Ronan Finn, on hearing of Sweeneys’ next return to reason renews his curse, Sweeney is pursued by the five severed heads, then falls into a fit, lasting six weeks. Whether this is a seizure as we now know it, or an attack of madness, that is, mad leaping, we cannot properly ascertain.

The other run of three concerns the locale of Glen Bolcain. In the tale it is explained that Bolcain is where mad people tend to gather ‘once their year in madness was complete.’ Sweeney first arrived here in stanza 17 during his initial spell of madness and found it a sanctuary of sorts from the worst of exposure to the elements. He next resorts there in stanza 26, and this is where Lynchseachan tracks him. This marks the beginning of his capture episode. This is also where he was camped when he met his wife Eorann for the first time since his madness. His last main resort to Bolcain is in stanza 53, upon his return to Ireland. It is here he meets a mad woman but they flee from each other in turn. It is then he realises that enmity is the cause of many of man’s, and his own, woes. Bolcain, in conclusion is the centre of three of his Sweeney’s more important episodes.

There are three episodes of trickery, two by Lynchseachan, and the last, as has been noted, by Sweeney in luring the mill-hag to her death. And, of course, three periods of madness.

These are all standard mnemonic devices for helping the story-teller to pace the story, to remember the salient episodes, and to engage the listener’s attention.

4

Modern analytical sensibility places the ‘turn’ of the tale with the meeting of the madman-in-the-woods; it is worth considering if this would have been where contemporaries would have placed it. I had originally considered the turn to have been one of the long poetic interludes at the centre of the tale. As these are the heightened, intensified focal points in the tale, their effect on the listener would have been more impactful, if not crucial. I have in mind the long poem Sweeney recites whilst on Ailsa Craig. Here he recounts his life of madness and realises a longing for a return to Ireland. It could be argued that all his reaffirmation of humanity and civility stem from this, that his meeting with Alan is a direct consequence of this reawakening of longing for known places, things. This is framed by the previous episode of the encounter with the woman he accuses of stealing watercress. Sweeney accuses her of theft, she replies: ‘Judge not and you won’t be judged./Sweeney, be kind, learn the lesson/that vengeance belongs to the Lord/and mercy multiplies our blessings.’ His response is summed up as ‘…may you be snatched/by the foraging, blue-coated Norse.’ When, however, he encounters the madman, which follows immediately his sojourn on Ailsa Craig, he has learned his lessons; it is Sweeney does all the running after and persuading, who offers his trust and friendship first.

This long poem on Ailsa Craig has a precursor in a long poem from Sweeney whilst being pursued by the mill-hag. This poem begins ‘Suddenly this bleating/and belling in the glen!/The little timorous stag/like a scared musician//startles  my heartstrings/with high, homesick refrains -…’. Love of one’s country, however, as we have seen with the following episode of the wrangling over watercress, does not extend to love of one’s country man or woman. That comes with the following year-long interlude with the madman Alan.

5

So far I have established a number of patterns exist in the tale. For this to be a ring structure it must needs be chiasmic in character. Do any of these parallel patterns fall into chiasmic pattern?

There are four main blocks of episodes in the tale. These blocks fall into two either side of the ‘turn’, no matter where it is located. Firstly we have the episodes of Lynchseachan’s pursuit of Sweeney. Thus occurs in stanzas 26 to 37, and ends with his capture and shackling. The next block of episodes follow directly from this, and are concerned with the mill-hag and Sweeney, in particular her pursuit, ‘leap by leap’ of him.

The following two blocks are remarkably different in character. The first, Stanzas 46 to 51, centre on Sweeney and the madman. Here Sweeney actively seeks out the company of the madman, making strong bonds with him, establishing friendship, and trust. The last block, stanzas 74 to 85, are centred on Sweeney’s relationship with Molin at St Mullins. In this block we once again see Sweeney seek out the community of his fellow men, return every night from his far ranging, to the vespers bell, and to accept sustenance left out for him.

These four blocks do indeed form a chiasmus: the two episodes of pursuit and escape from all human contact resolve themselves into episodes where he actively seeks out human contact and community.

6

Seamus Heaney, in his Introduction, would seem to have been very astute when he noted that the madman-in-the-woods episode is a key episode, that is has reverberations outside the tale of Sweeney. In his version the madman is to die at a waterfall at Doovey. In O’Keefe’s version this is Eas Dubhthaigh. First of all Doovey got me wondering: is that Dovey, in Wales, now Aberdovey? In Welsh tradition it is connected with chief bard Taliesen. But Taliesin had no history of madness, or wandering. But maybe this was not Wales-Wales, but old Wales, the Wales that covered northwest England, Cumbria and Southern Scotland as far as Edinburgh. The madman in the woods tradition has it that this was Merlin (Myrddin Wyllt) in the Caledonian forests. This would make sense – for Sweeney to return to Ireland, specifically Antrim, would mean a crossing from Stranraer in the present day, or a place along the Strathclyde or Argyle coast. Sweeney ‘passed their royal stronghold on his right…’ and indeed he could have done so travelling from Strathclyde, passing Dunbarton, on his way to Argyle (named after its Gaelic cultural ties with Ireland).  The Myrddin story connects with this; he ran from the wrath of king Rhydderch Haed after the Battle of Arfderydd, 573 AD. Rhydderch Haed was based at  Dunbarton. Seamus Heaney suggests that the legend of the madman-in-the-woods may be older than the tale of Suibne – and therefore Suibne partly written around it? Probably appropriated for the tale.

The orthography of the name Eas Dubhthaigh would seem to suggest a place associated with a dark/black quality. That would rule out Aberdovey. I am more inclined to a place in Argyle. Eas Dubhthaigh – the dark waterfall… but that ‘thaigh’ eludes me.

Another source concerns Sweeney’s kingdom of Dal-Arie. In this source it is claimed that Dal nAriaide was the name of the Cruithin people of Ireland, one of the earliest settlers, and originally from Scotland. This strengthens the Scottish connection. They also, the source claims, practised divination by observing bird flight and calls. The Battle of Moira (Mag Rath), in 637 AD, was reputedly a fight for independence of the Dal nAriade.

I wonder how much of this is back-arguing, justifying the tale, rather than independent research.

There was also reputedly a well at St Mullins known as the Madman’s Well. Whether the Sweeney story appropriated this along with several already extant traditions is hard to tell. This, however, was a common practice.

7

The extended poems towards the heart of the tale, where Sweeney praises the Irish landscape, are as good as anything in the whole of Irish poetry. This may be Seamus Heaney’s skill, but the clarity and exultation are conveyed with great economy of language that it not however stinting in expression. There is very little in the whole of Gaelic literature to match these, whether in the wonderful evocations of Ben Dorain and its flora and fauna by Duncan ban Macintyre, or Alexander Macdonald, both in 18^th century Scottish Gaelic.

Maybe this is not so fanciful as it seems; there do seem to be strong connections between this tale and the magnificent Scottish Gaelic waulking song, ‘Seathan, Son of the King of Ireland’. In this song Seathan wanders all over the known world: the Gaeltacht of Ireland and Scotland, and each place is named, and commemorated by his presence, as in the tale of Sweeney. It is sung, in part, as though Seathan’s wife wanders with him. One can only wonder about Eorann and Sweeney after that first encounter when she says she would travel with him. The boundaries between tales can blur in the haar: do we hear part of Deirdre’s lament here also? As well as the lament of every exile from his/her homeland. This is what makes the tale timeless.

I would dearly love to pursue these connections further but lack the resources, and access to resources.

Ring-Structures: Reprise

Mary Douglas, in her book Thinking in Circles, speculates on the wide prevalence of these forms of literary structure. As we have seen here they are to be found greatly around the middle-east: early Greece in the Iliad, and I greatly suspect the Odyssey. Also in Egypt, Sumeria/Babylonia, and in Israel, Palestine, as the form also features, as she relates, in the construction of the Book of Numbers  and indeed the overall structure of the Hexateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua in the bible. This covers the history of the Jews into slavery, and out of slavery. There have been a great many investigations of chiasmic structures in biblical texts.

Douglas also suggests that Zoroastian hymns were constructed in this way; I wonder whether it is worth a study of the Shanemeh. Or the Thousand and One Nights? I have, in particular, the Seven Voyages of Sinbad.

The question also must be asked, that as ring-structures have been majorly found in the middle east… could a study of the Koran prove fruitful?

1

Mary Douglas suggests that there may be something of our basic brain structure that gives this form to literary constructions, where parallelism is prevalent. On the subject of basic parallelism in construction, that is, of repeating patterns, whether of phrase, event or modus, then the practice is even more widespread than I have indicated here. Roman Jakobson’s work suggests that these forms are also to be found in Finnish oral pieces. The Kalevala itself, although of very old content, only received present form in the 18^th century. It is difficult to assess its earlier structures. Similarly with the Guatamalian epic the Popul Vuh; I took the time to have a look at this in the light of structure. The problem I found here was one of means of transmission; the current copy is constructed from loose sheets found in a church repository. Modern collocation methods have not taken the ring-structure into consideration, and so we tend to find older works presented in modern forms. And so the confusion and down grading of the piece follows from this.

Macpherson’s Ossian, although based on very much older Scottish Gaelic material, has been proven to be very much a deliberate construction of the author. If we were to study old Irish texts in the search for chiasmic structures we would be hampered by transmission problems also. The long history of Irish literacy before the later cultural calamities, would seem to rule out early on the prospect of such structures. Celtic, and then Roman Church transmission of texts does seem to have overridden much epic oral material.

It is interesting also to look at native Australian song cycles in the light of parallelism. The Bungul songs seem to have a promising structure for further exploration.

This is such a complex issue, especially where the transmission of culture is taken into account. Like Pascal with Cleopatra’s Nose, where, had not the Roman generals been so taken up with Egypt their presence in the middle-east would not have borne witness and been party to the birth of Christ. The transmission of Christianity to the Western world through Roman invasion, the suggestion is, would not have occurred, and maybe the birth of the new religion remained little more than a local matter.

What gets transmitted to another culture, why, what is made of it: how or if it is sufficiently understood when it is transmitted, and if it is deliberately changed to emphasise the superiority of the new culture – all these have to be considered.

2

The ring-structure must, as a mnemonic device, form a major part of the art of memory. This by no means invalidates the basic brain-structure argument, but maybe augments it. The discovery of the arts of memory is usually credited to Simonides (556-468BC) and recorded by Cicero (106-43BCE). It is related that Simonides was able to recall each member of a feast that had all been killed by the collapse of the building, by remembering where each sat at the table. From this a huge memory system, that is, increasingly complex yet successful method for memorising large and complex amounts of information, grew into being. From remembering the salient points of an oratory by mentally traversing a building arranged and furnished with relevant and coded contents, to the vast Theatre of Memory of the Renaissance, has been shown to be a continuous although somewhat erratic tradition. Memory systems  featured in Aristotle’s works, and were subsequently taken up by St Thomas Aquinas as a method for religious meditation.

That the Iliad was already using the chiastic form before Simonades’ time maybe undermines the claim he  was the originator of memory systems. Maybe it was that he was one of the best promoters of certain aspects of what must have been quite an extensive body of knowledge. Maybe it was also that memory systems were already by his time seen as a little old fashioned, and that he helped breathe new life into them. And also that for Cicero’s reviving the story was a case of ‘right time and right place’ to bring up the story of Simonides, as new emphases on education and knowledge were just beginning to take off.

Aeschylus, in his Orestia Trilogy ( 458BC), was denounced for exposing Orphic secrets (see the use of the net to snare Agamemnon, and the image of the net as part of the art of cunning, in ‘Cunning Intelligence in Greek  Culture and Society’, Harvester Press, 1978). It is very probable that Simonides was here also breaking ranks, and exposing secrets. It is noticeable by this time, though, that he was not denounced, suggesting that the schools of knowledge were already breaking down, becoming less secure.