Talk:Death and Transformation/@comment-124.189.16.152-20160511092313/@comment-28417325-20160512094507

This is an impressive discussion on the transformative qualities of death, however I think we can take this a step further. Perhaps within Heaney's poetry the transformative qualities of death are placed in antithesis with the brutality of death. Thus the brutality of death functions to oppose and tamper its transformative qualities. In the ‘Tollund Man’ the death of the subject is characterised as ‘naked except for ‘cap, noose and girdle’ the brutality and finality of the death emphasised, his existence reduced to nothing more than ‘bridegroom to the goddess.’ The brutality isn’t held in the death but in the simplicity and absoluteness of the sacrifice. Within the poem the sacrifice extends to associations with the Irish Rebellion, the futility of death emphasised in the ‘stockinged corpses,’ like the Tollund Man ‘dark juices’ of reality ‘working them down.’ This reality is juxtaposed against the ‘hillside… soaked in our broken wave’ from ‘Requiem for the Croppies.’ The ‘blushing’ of the ‘hillside’ acts as a romantic counter point to the brutality of the ‘scattered, ambushed, flesh of labourers.’ Perhaps this construction of a duality in relation to death allows Heaney to present a heightened realism. The brutality simultaneously complementing and opposing the romanticism of love to construct a coherent, centred realism.