mossbawn:sunlight Flashcards
what is mossbawn
•mossbawn is the family home where heaney grew up, a place that was for him, as home is to all children, the centre of the world and source of all energy and life
who was mary heaney
•his aunts whom he had special affection for
•she represents the old secure, stable way of life, a sense of community and traditional rural values
the poet created a zone of what
•created a timelsss zone of slow days, domestic ritual, natural and human warmth, and companionable silence
when are we taken back to
•taken back to childhood, pictured here as the golden age of innocence and security
what are the values in the poem
•the value of unspectacular routine work (“Now she dusts the board/with a goose’s wing”)
•the practice of simple culinary skills (“her hands scuffled/over the bakeboard”)
•the routine of a lifestyle pared down to its essentials of bread, water and love
these bare essentials are imbued with
•a sense of muster, a sense of sacramental, suggesting a religious simplicity of life: the water is “honeyed”, “the scone rising” and “here is love”
family feeling is important here, love grows out of
•simple shared domestic tasks, love flourishes in an ordinary, unspectacular setting, among ordinary, unglamorous people (“broad-lapped,/with whitened nails/and measling shins”), flowering in the silent spaces between people
love is associated with the simplest of food staples
•lurking in the life giving meal, unspectacular (“a tinsmith’s scoop”), yet vital
values of silence and peace are also stressed
•”sunlit absence”
•”each long afternoon”
all these values are found by
•reaching back to a premodern time
•all props in the scene suggest an earlier age: the pump in the yard,a griddle cooling, the reddening stove, a goose’s wing, the meal bin
they’re rural values, born of
•a simple life. yet they’re made to appear poignantly appealing, offering an ideal way of living
atmosphere of
•warmth, serenity and quiet vitality
how is the atmosphere achieved
•primarily through use of imagery and symbolism. images of sunlight & heat predominate (“a sunlit absence”, “the sun stood/like a griddle cooling/against the wall,”)
the “helmeted” pump is
•both actual and symbolic, a soldier on entry duty protecting the household
the pumps water
•is mysteriously transformed (“honeyed”)
the pump serves as an
•icon or symbol for the subterranean energies of the place & people
the sun too is captured by
•the scene, reduced to domestic proportions (“like a griddle cooling”)
bread and water are also a symbol of
•life
•the alliterative language (helmeted, heated, honeyed) creates a melodic flow that also helps to build this atmosphere of “mellow fruitfulness”
heaney himself is reported as saying it was
•intended to be a description of the experience of a fœtus in the womb
what kind of energy is in the poem
•a quiet energy, achieved partly through the style of verse
•a great deal is packed into these very short lines
the resulting enjabment
•(not just from one line to the next but also one verse to the next) created a sense of contained energy
the erratic activities and pause in the aunts baking ritual contribute to
•the sense of restlessness
•”now she dusts the board”, “now sits”, “here is a space”
