Heaney's Bogland and Yeats' Innisfree: Island Symbolism

Introduction: Two Islands, Two Visions

This essay compares Seamus Heaney's "Bogland" and W.B. Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." Both poets describe an island, yet the poems are very different in purpose and tone. The bogland in Heaney's poem is nothing less than Ireland itself — the country where the poet was born. His physical description of the landscape is inseparable from his own feelings toward a place that has served him as a school of thought and feeling. Yeats, by contrast, imagines Innisfree as a destination — a place of longed-for escape rather than inherited belonging.

We might assert that while the metaphors used within Heaney's poem are not numerous, their use and meaning are exceptional. If Ireland is the country of the bogs, then the bog is the symbol of both the country and its history. As one scholar notes, literary geography — as opposed to literary criticism — examines poetical descriptions of bogs in comparison to how closely the imagery fits the empirical reality of the landscape, offering alternative approaches to geographical understanding. "While objective studies in geomorphology and ecological succession may help to explain the origin and development of bogs, literary geography considers place-creation to be also subjective, based on landscape perceptions which take into account humanistic responses as well as purely environmental factors" (Meredith, 127).

Heaney's Bogland: Landscape as National Identity

"We have no prairies / To slice a big sun at evening" (Heaney, 1–2) suggests that the horizon is infinite. The open space of the Irish geography implies it is a free land with free people, who have the opportunity to experience anything they might conceive of. "Everywhere the eye concedes to / Encroaching horizon" (Heaney, 3–4) — the limit of the Irish land is not another country or geographical entity, but the horizon itself.

Reading between the lines, we understand that Heaney perceives his homeland as infinite. In the lines that follow, Ireland is revealed to be not only infinite but also eternal. The point the poet wishes to make is not that his country is literally boundless and timeless, but that its people have been blessed with a historical development that has allowed them to remain free. We are therefore dealing not only with landscapes, but also with mindscapes (Meredith, 126).

The association with the eye of the Cyclops suggests that the country has a mythological foundation. It is also significant that the poet uses the collective pronoun, speaking for all his Irish compatriots: "our unfenced country / Is bog that keeps crusting" (Heaney, 6–7). The absence of fences should not be interpreted as a lack of protection, but rather as a lack of confinement. The Irish do not need fences to divide their territory because they respect one another enough. The poet suggests that the Irish people are united by a powerful bond.

Conclusion: Islands of Freedom and the Self

Both poems describe ideal islands — places where eternity and infinity are found together. If in Heaney's case the island is his home, for Yeats it is the ideal home. The most important feature of both islands, however, is that they permit internal freedom and the discovery of the self. Indeed, the island, through its solitude and boundedness, becomes the very symbol of the individual self.

Bibliography

Meredith, D. "Landscape or Mindscape? Seamus Heaney's Bogs." Irish Geography, vol. 32, no. 2.

Heaney, Seamus. "Bogland."

Yeats, W.B. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree."