Seamus Heaney's poem 'Limbo'. What does it mean?

Question

I don't really understand the relevance of the fishing imagery. Is it refering to the disciples of christ? Here's the poem:

Limbo

Fishermen at Ballyshannon
Netted an infant last night
Along with the salmon.
An illegitimate spawning,

A small one thrown back
To the waters. But I'm sure
As she stood in the shallows
Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists
Were dead as the gravel,
He was a minnow with hooks
Tearing her open.

She waded in under
The sign of the cross.
He was hauled in with the fish.
Now limbo will be

A cold glitter of souls
Through some far briny zone.
Even Christ's palms, unhealed,
Smart and cannot fish there.

Thanks for your help

Answer 1

Heaney is so damn awesome. This is a great work.



While there is obvious religious references, I don't see it as a fishing/disciples thing. Perhaps, on a stretch...



But I see it as much more straightforward than that. An infant was abandoned at sea, after childbirth (as he describes the mother "wading in the shallows" and the child "tearing her open" in birth), and is found by a fisherman.



And he goes on to explain the lack of salvation involved in this. The child is illegitimate, and it's almost as if the ocean is so vast, even Christ cannot reach out that far to save the soul of the dead there. And the child wasn't baptised (at least, not in the formal sense) as is necessarily in the Catholic faith.



Hence, the poem is called "Limbo"--that place where unsaved souls must reside because they can't make it into heaven.



I see some great use of metaphor relating to the fishing imagery here. The idea of small fish being thrown back in the sea, as this small child was thrown back. The "illegitimate spawning" suggests it was an unwanted pregnancy, out of wedlock, etc. So he runs the imagery throughout, creating these nice comparisons. Like I said, you could connect it to the "fisher of men" concept in the bible, but that's a stretch to me. Yeah, maybe Heaney had that in mind, but I think it's less significant than the rest of what he lays out here pretty clearly.

Answer 2

Limbo Seamus Heaney

Answer 3

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RE:

Seamus Heaney's poem 'Limbo'. What does it mean?

I don't really understand the relevance of the fishing imagery. Is it refering to the disciples of christ? Here's the poem:



Limbo



Fishermen at Ballyshannon

Netted an infant last night

Along with the salmon.

An illegitimate spawning,



A small one thrown back

To the waters. But...

Answer 4

The meaning is full of myth and metaphor, he is seeking his roots. The symbol of the boat is full of meaning that is a little contradictory in that it eludes to writing and conveying and speech which are vehicles for communication but it says it is unwritten law the leaders swear to and weeping salt water along with god weeping over his endless solitude created another dramatic commonality. In the first and third verse first lines he speaks of his arrival to a republic of conscience but a return from a frugal republic, he has changed his view and is changed by the process of becoming a dual citizen.

Answer 5

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I think I got it, but I'm missing something near the end about what the glow worm means. Perhaps it's the spark to survive The living Mother-of-pearl of a salmon just out of the water (This maybe Catherine Ann's mother and she's the pearl) Is gone just like that, but your stick is kept salmon-silver. (Catherine's mother dies quickly, but Catherine keeps her mother's likeness) Seasoned and bendy, it convinces the hand (Like her mother, her growth is rounded and flexible and convinces Catherine) that what you have you hold to play with and pose with (what she is becoming, she can play and pose) and lay about with. But then it too points back to the cattle (She can relax with herself, but it also points to an oppressive society, perhaps the English) and spatter and beating the bars of a gate- (Hitting the bars of a society's gate, or whatever that keeps her away) the very stick that we might cut from your family tree. (Is in the tradition of uncompromising integrity that was cut from the genes of the family ancestry tree) The living cobalt of an afternoon dragonfly drew my eye to it first (A dragonfly's cobalt color drew the branch first to my eye) and the evening I trimmed it for you you saw your first glow-worm- (And I trimmed it when you first saw a glow worm) all of us stood round in silence, even you gigantic enough to darken the sky Catherine is like her family in their dominating uncompromising Irish way) for a glow-worm. And when I poked open the grass a tiny brightening den light the eye in the blunt cut end of your stick. (when you used your stick to push back the grass to see the glow worm, I could see a tiny light in the den of the grass. The stick of family's tradition of integrity and fighting back is brought to life by the small glow in the grass)