The poem
Here is the girl's head like an exhumed gourd. Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.
They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair And made an exhibition of its coil, Let the air at her leathery beauty. Pash of tallow, perishable treasure: Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod, Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings. Diodorus Siculus confessed His gradual ease with the likes of this: Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible Beheaded girl, outstaring axe And beatification, outstaring What had begun to feel like reverence.
the poem explores the bog peoiple in aa way portraying what a disgrace it is that they have been posted and displayed in exhibitions for people to
This poem is fantastic, as it shows Heaney's interest of bog people (he wrote a many more poems). Also of the way they have been preserved, as if they had died yesterday. It shows his love for these people, and often links them to events in Ireland or like in this one compares the girl to a roman historian, who like Heaney sympathies with the "murdered forgotten ect .." this quote from the poem shows how also sympathies. He views the people as saints, in which he beaticates them. Perhaps considering them a Marty or some sort. In my opinion, he sort of worship these people and makes them seem realistic.
were is there information on whether or not the greek Mythology dude name Diodorus Siculus be-headed a girl or not( its a yes or a no answere that simple) D... do I hate computers!
I don't think this is the full poem as the one I read in Collected Poems of Seamus Heaney had more eroticism in it. He calls himself a "voyeur" and is strangely attracted to the dead girl. This poem is very like the Willbuy 1 (no.2 was a man) who died in the 1 AD through ritualistic means and possibly because she was an adultress. It implies in the poem that she teaches the poet, a man a lesson in female desire (ie that women have them) and the reader is sympathising with the dead girl. Sorry English Literature Undergraduate here, explaining a bit mroe about the poem.
It was actually the poem Punishment where Heaney calls himself an 'artful voyeur'. That is the one with some eroticism in.
I'm no historian, so all I say is purely conjecture, however I'd say he didn't. What I read from my research was that he was a fairly well-travelled historian (and not a mythological figure...). What I think Heaney is saying is that Siculus admitted he was at ease with these actions, I.E they didn't worry him or upset him unduly, and that perhaps he felt that the punishment was justified? I don't know. But anywys, as I said, I think it unlikely that a historian would have taken up the executioner's axe, so he probably wasn't the one to behead her.