Issue of Identity through the Work of Patrick Kavanagh - Case Study Example

Identity and culture are important parts of literary forms, such as poetry. They shape these forms, as they shape the individual who creates the forms. Without these two concepts, there would not be great art. In Patrick Kavanaghs case, his identity was based upon a number of things – upon being an Irishman, an outsider, a rural individual and a poet. These identities are prominent in the three poems that are discussed in this paper - “Inniskeen Road,” “Epic” and “Kerrs Ass.” While the identity that is at the center of “Inniskeen Road” is that of the outsider, the identity at the core of “Kerrs Ass” is that of the country man, and, secondarily, as the outsider. “Epic” has at its core Kavanaghs identity as an Irishman, as well as aspects of his identity as a poet. Since these ideas rely upon complicated concepts, namely identity and culture, the first parts of this paper explains the nature of identity and culture, and how these two things shape and inspire who we are, and why they are necessary for a persons very existence. Then, the second part of the paper applies these concepts to Kavanagh in general, then specifically to the poems “Epic,” “Kerrs Ass” and “Inniskeen Road.” I. The Nature of Identity Identity is a dynamic social product, residing in psychological processes, which cannot be understood except in relation to its social context and historical perspective. (Breakwell, 1986, p. 9). It is a process that is developed over a persons entire life span. (Singer, 2004, p. 437). There are social and personal aspects to an identity. All humans have a division between self-identity and the performance of oneself that he puts out into the world, in specific social contexts (Giddens, 1991, p. 58). The personal identity, or real self, differs from one individual to another - some individuals real self comes out when they act impulsively, others real self is manifested when acting out social obligations. (Breakwell, 1986, p. 16). The real self may be looked at as being a person’s root core of who they are, and who they would be if there were not the influences of various social dynamics and constraints. (Tracy & Trethewey, 2005, p. 173). Another way of looking at this concept is the private self, the self that known only to the individual, and the public self, the self that is known to others. These two aspects of identity both act in concert with one another and conflict with each other. Most individuals unconsciously deem one aspect more important than the other, and the favored aspect is the one that controls their behavior. (Brewer & Hewstone, 2004, p. 154). There is some theory that ones personal identity is only exposed when making moral decisions, as this exposes values, which are the cornerstone of presuppositions about the self. (Breakwell, 1986, p. 17). According to Anthony Giddens, the self is a reflexive project. In modernity settings, such as the setting that Kavanagh inhabited, "the altered self has to be explored and constructed as part of a reflexive process of connecting personal and social change." (Giddens, 1991, p. 33). The premise of reflexive awareness is that an individual knows what they are doing, and why they are doing it. Humans monitor their circumstances, and are able to discursively explain why they are engaging in a certain behaviour. Discursive practices use reason or argument to explain something, as opposed to emotions and intuition (Giddens, 1991, p. 35). Practical consciousness is the underpinning of the reflexive monitoring of action in daily life, and is practiced on a non-conscious, automatic level. With every action, one has an endless array of possibilties, and and a given response to any kind of query will depend upon the shared framework of reality. There is a shared reality between individuals. Practical consciousness brackets anxieties due to the social stability that is implicated by such consciousness, as well as providing a "constitutive role in organising an as if environment in relation to existential issues." (Giddens, 1991, p. 37). II. Definition of Culture Culture is a general term for how an individual finds meaning and collectively make sense of their world (Cushman, 1996, p. 7). It is how participants interpret events and communication to understand the modern world. Culture is the outcome of concrete experiences of the individual social actors in their social world. People make culture, and culture makes them. Through making culture, individual and collective identities are formed (Cushman, 1996, p. 7). The construction of cultural institutions reflect “commonsense beliefs about human behavior” (Bruner, 1990, p. 38) Culture has its roots in mans relationship to other men and to nature. (Hall, 1979, p. 318). Culture refers to the form that social existences assume under historical conditions. This is contrasted with the word social, which refers to the content of relationships between men within any social formation, and culture is the form of these relationships. Culture, then, is the "objectivated design to human existence when definite men under definite condition appropriate natures productions in a form adapted to his own wants and stamps that labour as exclusively human." (Hall, 1979, p. 318). Culture thus refers to mans capacity to mold nature to his own use. An individual’s experiences and acts are shaped by his intentional states, and these states are ”realized only through participation in the symbolic systems of culture” (Bruner, 1990, p. 33). It is only through cultural interpretations of one’s personal autobiography, such as through poetry, that this story becomes understandable. Through this cultural mediation, meaning becomes communal and public, as opposed to private. The difference between culture and biological inheritance is that the latter does not necessarily shape human experience and action, but, rather, constrains action in a modifiable way. Culture shapes the human mind and life by giving “meaning to action by situating its underlying intentional states in an interpretive system.” (Bruner, 1990, p. 34). There can never be a self that is independent of culture, as the ”self rises out of our capacity to reflect upon our own acts, by the operation of ’metacognition.’” (Bruner, 1986, p. 67). The structural and historical circumstances that occur in the actor’s outside world fill the lifeworlds of individuals. A lifeworld is composed of the individual experiences with objects, persons and events encountered in everyday life (Cushman 1996, p. 9). For Kavanagh, poetry was the way to make and share meaning, and this leads to “affective alliances” between the participants – himself and his audience. The lifeworld represents the subjective experience, or the social world, while it is the objective experience which frames the subjective experiences. The social framework is rational and given meaning through intersubjective communication. We must communicate our objective and subjective experiences, for it is through sharing our objective and subjective experiences, we fill our life worlds (Cushman, 1996, p. 11). The way that culture shapes the human life and mind is by imposing the inherent patterns of culture’s symbolic systems – the logical and narrative forms, the patterns that are formed by communal life, and the discourse and language modes. The self’s growth is not independent of the social world, but is dependent upon social constructs, such as images, social bonds and meanings for growth (Bruner, 1990, p. 42). Culture externalizes internal feelings, states of consciousness and thoughts into concrete forms that are shared by individuals. These concrete forms, such as poetry, are viewed as cultural objects (Cushman, 1996, p. 90). III. Patrick Kavanaghs cultural identity The above explain the basics of culture and identity, and thus help explain Kavanaghs cultural identity, and how his identity was shaped by his poetry, and how his poetry shaped his identity, and how his social world shaped both of these processes. As a basis, his identity was specifically shaped by his lifeworld, which represents the structural and historical circumstances of his outside world. In this case, Kavanaghs lifeworld, his external reality, was that of a country poet, an identity and image that he used to define himself in the publication of his first book, Ploughman and Other Poems (Nemo, 1979, p. 19). This is an identity that constrained him somewhat, as his status as a country man meant that his formal education was slight, as was his exposure to literature and intellectuals (Nemo, 1979, p. 34). He also felt shame from other farmers, who thought of his poetic musings as a sign of laziness or wasting time (Nemo, 1979, p. 44). And, when Kavanagh moved to the city from the country, his image of the peasant poet followed him - the group of writers with whom he associated in Dublin always associated him with the country. This led Kavanagh to some degree of shame and anger, and caused him to turn on these other writers and condemn them as “pseudo artists,” stating that their conversations were “nothing more than tiresome drivel between journalists and civil servants” (Nemo, 1979, p. 18). Yet, there was a part of Kavanagh that always existed in the country, even after he left the farm for London in 1937 and Dublin in 1939, a move that was prompted by dull and oppressive nature of life in Inniskeen and the insensitivity and lack of appreciation of the Inniskeen populace to his poetic musings (Nemo, 1979, p. 20). It was a decision that tortured him, and one that he rued in his later years, stating that it was “the worst mistake of my life. The Hitler war had started. I had my comfortable little holding of watery hills beside the Border. What was to bate it for a life? And yet I wasted what could have been my four glorious years, begging and scrambling around the streets of malignant Dublin” (Nemo, 1979, p. 21). Kavanaghs identity with his roots, as well as the rueful nature of leaving the country, is the subject of the poem Inniskeen Road: July Evening. The form of the poem is a traditional Shakespearean sonnet, with three quatrains and a couplet. However, each line does not have 10 syllables, but, rather, alternates between 10 syllables and 11 syllables, with one line having 9 syllables. This distinguishes the poem from the typical English or Shakespearean sonnet, which typically had 10 syllables per line, making the poem more modernistic. The syllables in this poem are 10-11-10-11; 9-10-10-10; 10-10-10-11; 10-10. This meter is similar to another modernistic poem the Wilfred Owen Sonnet “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” which incorporates a syllabic scheme of 11-10-11-10; 10-10-10-9; 10-10-10-10; 11-10 (Owen). This shows the experimentation in style in this poem, and a form of subtle rule-breaking. The poem begins with people arriving at the most country of events, the barn dance. Kavanagh describes the participants as gossipy and having a good time – such as the descriptor “wink and elbow language of delight”- one conjures up the image of a jolly person elbowing the person next to him, and winking, which is a way that people point out other people in a crowd in a merry fashion. Also, the “half-talk code of mysteries” probably refers to the way people speak when they are gossiping about somebody, yet want to keep this fact secret. An example of this would be “I saw her at you-know-whos house” - the “her” in question would be a mystery to anybody who is not privy to the lifeworlds of the individuals in question, as is the term “you know who.” It is a kind of shorthand between familiars, who do not have to explain everything to one another, and this allows these people to gossip amongst themselves about people, who are none the wiser. Thus, the first quatrain sets the scene – people are arriving at the barn dance by bicycles, in couples and small groups. Once there, the scene is typical – people gossiping about others, people winking and nudging their buddies as they see something funny or out of the ordinary. It also paints a lively scene of people having fun. At the same time, Kavanagh seems detached from the merriment, an outsider and observer, as opposed to be in the middle of the camaraderie. He does not seem to be privy to the private conversations, and about what others are elbowing and winking. Thus, this quatrain spells out Kavanaghs identity as an outsider, and how his identity was shaped by his social interactions and social influences. No doubt he attended these soirees, and, no doubt, he probably felt that he was not of the scene, but outside of it, given that he did not identify with other rural people in his life and felt that they did not understand him. Thus, although the image of the first quatrain is itself merry, there is also a hollowness that rests inside of it, that represents how the poet felt about the social interactions around him. The second quatrain spells this isolation out further, for it is 8:30 and Kavanagh is alone on the street. Hence, it is obvious that he was not going to the dance. One can imagine that he is alone and not a part of the festivities because he was not invited to the party, or did not have anybody to go with. This would be why he observed that the people were bicycling in “twos and threes” - everybody at the party had somebody to go with them to the party, and Kavanagh most likely did not, which is why he was alone instead of inside the barn with the others. The street itself seems desolate - “Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown/that might turn out a man or woman, not/a footfall tapping secrecies of stone.” In other words, there is not another person for at least a mile, and Kavanagh stands alone. The quatrain is lonely, empty, rueful. Kavanagh evidently wants to fit in with Innskeen society. He want to go to the dance as well. This is evident by the way that he describes the fun and merriment of the dance, and contrasts that with the image of him standing alone in the street. But his identity as a poet makes him an outsider from the others, who probably shape their identities by their roles that are more traditional to a rural society – farmer, mother, preacher, etc. These identities and traditional roles make Kavanagh at odds with the others, but he evidently is not happy about this. Otherwise, he would not be wistfully observing the merriment – he would have stayed home if he did not want to somehow be a part of the liveliness. In the next quatrain he acknowledges that, even though he is a poet, and poets are stereotypically supposed to enjoy loneliness and contemplation, he himself hates the feeling and states that, whats more, every poet actually hates it as well. This might speak to the group of writers with whom he associated in Dublin in the 1930s. The group of writers were probably a melancholy bunch, just like Kavanagh, which is why he knows that the poetic misery was universal. This setting was probably another basis for the poem “Inniskeen Road,” for Kavanagh did not fit in with these writers any more than he fit in with to rural folks of Inniskeen (OBrien, 1975, p. 16). This must have been rueful for Kavanagh – he could not fit in with the rural folks because they did not understand him and he had nothing in common with them. Yet he could not fit in with the Dublin writers because of his rural background. That sense of isolation is what he is referring to when he states in “Inniskeen Road” that he has what every poet hates. He drives this point home with the reference to Alexander Selkirk, who was a castaway on a deserted island for four years in the early 1700s (Wikipedia). Selkirk was the king, government and nation of his deserted island, for he was the only one on this island. Therefore, he was the king, government and every other role that a person could have in a civilized society. In comparing himself to Selkirk, Kavanagh notes that he is also the king “of banks and stones and every blooming thing.” In other words, like Selkirk, Kavanagh was on a deserted island, metaphorically. As he was alone in the world, Kavanagh was the king of the rocks and stones and other aspects of nature, as Selkirk was king of these similar things on his deserted island, yet both men suffered isolation from actual people. Selkirks isolation was literal; Kavanaghs isolation was figurative; yet the results are the same – both men were devoid of human companionship. “Kerrs Ass,” on the other hand, has more of a feel of camaraderie and less of a feel of Kavanaghs identity as an outsider. Like “Inniskeen Road,” “Kerrs Ass” apparently takes place in a rural setting. Unlike “Inniskeen Road,” “Kerrs Ass” is not a sonnet and every other line is free-verse, while every other line is either a half rhyme or regular rhyme, a style which is reminiscent of Yeats. For instance, the first quatrain contains the half rhyme “butter” and “Mucker”, which are half rhymes. It also contains the words “ass” and “market” which are not rhymes at all, but free verse. The second quatrain contains the regular rhyme of “inside” and “tied,” and the other two lines end in “door” and “breeching” - therefore these lines are also free verse. The third quatrain has the half rhymes of “reins” and “names,” with the other two lines ending in “choke-band” and “town,” making them free verse. The fourth quatrain has the regular rhyme of “bog” and “fog,” while the other two lines end in “life” and “waking,” which makes these lines free verse. At the same time, the lines that are half-rhymed have the same meter, while the lines that are regular rhymed do not. Hence, the poem, like “Inniskeen Road” is modernistic in form, even more so than “Inniskeen Road,” which still took the form of sonnet. For, while “Inniskeen Road” follows some form in half of the poem, in the other half, it does not. In contrast, only half of “Kerrs Ass” follows a traditional form, and half is free verse. “Kerrs Ass” describes a bucolic scene and it seems pretty straight-forward. There are no images of loneliness or being an outsider, as there were with “Inniskeen Road.” In fact, the first two quatrains reference a “we,” which implies that Kavanagh had a partner in this endeavor. This implies a partnership and camaraderie, and that Kavanagh was not isolated in this particular task. This poem also accesses another aspect of Kavanaghs identity, that of the countryman who does rural tasks, as opposed to the outsider countryman who writes poems. In this way, Kavanagh becomes an insider in the rural environment, for he is participating in traditional tasks that gain respect in the rural community. This why he has a companion in this poem – he is doing a task that is traditional and respected, therefore he is able to do this task with another person. On the other hand, his poetry made him solitary and isolated. At the same time, it appears that Kavanagh is thinking about this incident fondly while he is London Town. It states that “In Earling Broadway, London Town/I name their several names.” By this, he references “the winkers that had no choke-band.” While it is difficult to discern what he means by “winkers,” it sounds like he is talking about horses, as the term winkers is the term used for the blinders that are put on horses. Coupled with the words “the collar and the reins,” and one can surmise that the Winkers whose names were recalled by Kavanagh were horses. And, since he is thinking about these horses while in London, thinking about their names, it sounds like a yearning for these earlier times. So, in this way, the poem becomes about Kavanaghs identity as the outsider in the city, the country bumpkin, if you will, and his desire to go back to that way of life, as he always had a yearning to go back and rued coming to the city as he was getting towards the end of his life (Nemo, 1979, p. 21). At the same time, the last quatrain would seem to indicate that Kavanagh was dreaming about the incident with Kerrs ass and the horses. The last quatrain indicates that it is morning and that he had been dreaming - “Until a world comes to life/Morning, the silent bog,/And the God of imagination waking/In a Mucker fog.” The “God of imagination” would point to a dream, while the rest of the quatrain points to morning breaking. Which would still indicate that Kavanagh has a yearning for his simple life, because he dreams about it. Assuming that this dream represents a desire, not a nightmare, and the gentleness of the description would indicate that this is the case, then this last quatrain reinforces the identity of Kavanagh as the city outsider who longs for his life in the country. Simultaneously, Kavanagh gives a voice to that part of his self that was private and his core, and formed the very heart of his identity, for he never did escape the fact that he was a rural boy at heart. This was who he always was, and would always be. While these two poems are two parts of the same coin in a way, in that they represent Kavanagh as an outsider to society, whether it be an outsider to Inniskeen society and longing to fit in, or an outsider to the city society, and longing for the bucolic days of Inniskeen, “Epic” has a different topic altogether. “Epic” is entirely in free verse, which sets it apart from the previous two poems that had some kind of form. Thus, the poem is entirely modernistic and does not try to hew with tradition at all. And, unlike the previous two poems, the subject is not insular, but refers to the lifeworld that existed entirely around him, as opposed to within him. This poem deals with Kavanaghs identity as an Irishman, and how the conflicts - such as “The Troubles,” in which Ireland saw rebellion, political strife and civil war between the years 1916 and the 1920s – affected him (Nemo, 1979, p. 22). Epic begins by talking about the “great events” that “decided who owned the half a rood of rock,” which is a clear reference to the conflicts in Ireland, as the Ulster unionists were in conflict with the nationalists, both of them fighting for the soul of Ireland, both sides fighting for who would control Ireland. The “pitchfork-armed claims” references the fact that both sides of the conflict were heavily armed. Thus, Ireland itself seems to be the “rood of rock” in question. Of course, the “great events” might additionally refer to World War I and World War II, both of which happened during Kavanaghs lifetime. At any rate, the Irish conflicts are probably more at the heart of this poem, as he references neighbours telling others to “Damn your soul,” while another neighbour is stripped to the waist. This is a typical scene in a civil war, where neighbours are against neighbours. Unionists against Nationalists; Protestants against Catholics; neighbour against neighbour. These are the conflicts that tore Ireland apart, and the the lines “I inclined to lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin” refer to Kavanaghs despair in these conflicts, and how he was inclined to lose his faith in Ireland, which might have made him inclined to lose his faith in his very Irishness. Then, he was reminded by “Homers ghost” that great literature and poems come from conflict, and this is what turns Kavanaghs attitude around. Ever the pragmatist, Kavanagh has the fundamental identity as a poet, and such events as war and conflict make great poetry. Therefore, his poet identity, in the end, supplants his Irish identity. His Irish identity is clearly ashamed of what the country had become. The poet identity realizes that these conflicts are important for great art, literature and poetry, for conflicts form the bases for these art forms. This is the identity that becomes most important, in the end. Conclusion Kavanaghs identity comes through his work, and his work is considered to be a cultural mediation of his identity, a way to share his identity with the world, while shaping it. It is evident from Kavanaghs background that loneliness, isolation, and feelings of being an outsider shaped his years. It is also evident that Kavanagh reveled in his identity as a poet, and, to some extent, as a country man, for he always regretted leaving the country. Finally, Kavanagh is, at his heart, an Irishman. These are the identities that permeate through the works discussed in this paper, and these are the identities that Kavanagh was most interested in portraying to the world. Bibiliography Brewer, M. & Hewstone, M. 2004. Self and Social Identity. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Bruner, J. 1990. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cushman, T. 1995. Notes from Underground: Rock Music Counterculture in Russia. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Giddens, A. 1979. Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hall, S. 1964. Popular Arts. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Kavanagh, P. 1964. Collected Poems. New York, NY: The Devin-Air Co. Nemo, J. 1979. Patrick Kavanagh. Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers. Obrien, D. 1975. Patrick Kavanagh. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses. Owen, W. 1917. Anthem for Doomed Youth. Available at: http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen2.html Singer, J. 2004. Narrative identity and meaning making across the adult lifespan: an introduction. Journal of Personality, 72(3): 437-460. Tracy, S.J. & Tretheway, A. 2005. Fracturing the real-self – fake-self dichotomy: Moving toward ”crystallized” organizational discourses and identities. Communication Theory, 15(2): 168-195. Wikipedia. “Alexander Selkirk.” Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Selkirk Read More