That the Science of Cartography is Limited

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That the Science of Cartography Is Limited

- and not simply by the fact that this shading of

forest cannot show the fragrance of balsam,the gloom of cypresses,

is what I wish to prove.

When you and I were first in love we droveto the borders of Connacht

and entered a wood there.

Look down you said: this was once a famine road.

I looked down at ivy and the scutch grassrough-cast stone had

disappeared into as you told me

in the second winter of their ordeal, in

1847, when the crop had failed twice,

Relief Committees gave

the starving Irish such roads to build.

Where they died, there the road ended

and ends still and when I take down

the map of this island, it is never so

I can say here is

the masterful, the apt rendering of

the spherical as flat, nor

an ingenious design which persuades a curveinto a plane,

but to tell myself again that

the line which says woodland and cries hunger

and gives out among sweet pine and cypress,

and finds no horizon

will not be there.

Poet: Eavan Boland

Volume: In a Time of Violence

Year: Published/Written in 1994



"The famine roads belonged to the second year of the Irish famine," says the Irish poet Eavan

Boland, discussing her haunting poem 'That the Science of Cartography Is Limited' which

criticises the British policy of putting starving Irish peasants to work building roads. "In 1847,the Relief Committees, coming to Ireland from the economic councils of Lord Trevelyan and the

British government, decided the Irish should work for their food. In the simple and most

understated testament of heartlessness, they required strength of those who had none. Wherethose roads end in those woods is where those building them died."

This poem by Eavan Boland starts with a statement which incorporates the title of the poem.

‘That the Science of Cartography is Limited..........is what I wish to prove.’ This statement almost

seems like a one made in a court of law. The poet wishes to prove a point and substantiates her case with additional proof in the very first stanza. According to the poet “This poem begins

where maps fail.” She shows the limitations of maps by evoking the sensuous images of the

balsam and the cypress. Both balsam and cypresses also carry a symbolic weight, of healing anddeath respectively. The map fails to show the beauty and the smells of the forest. The repeation

of the ‘ss’ sound through the stanza also contrasts with the dryness of maps. However Boland

also points out the fact that this is not the only reason for the limitations of cartography.

In the next stanza a narrative element is brought into the poem. The poet is recollecting amemory and in expressing this memory to the reader the poem shifts from the present to the past

tense which gives it a story like feel. The stanza breaks off at this point and the next line comes

suddenly – “Look down you said” – which again gives the impression of an old tale. In her essayin the Literary Review the poet comments on this line “Those lines had an exact source for me.

When I was first married, my husband Kevin--whose people had come from Mayo and who had

had been brought up in Meath--pointed out the heartbreaking path of a famine road in a wood.”

The poet looks at ivy, grass and the rough-cast stone which almost vanishes into the

undergrowth. The smoothness of the ivy is contrasted with the image of the rough-cast stones.The poet is then told by her husband that the ‘Relief Committees’ gave the starving Irish such

roads to built in the second winter of the famine. The double ‘in’ used in the third stanza seems

to emphasise the facts regarding the famine roads. “Their ordeal” – the use of ‘their’ for thestarving Irish shows a connection that the poet feels for them. On the other hand “Relief

Committees” shows alienation and disconnect from the British and is also used ironically. The

stanza then breaks off with a single line:

“Where they died, there the road ended.”

The line is divided into two halves, the first half mirroring the second. Where is balanced by

there and died is balanced by ended. This solitary, quiet line removes all doubt of benevolence

on the part of the British.

In the fifth and sixth stanza the poet comments that she can never really appreciate a map of Ireland. She can never praise the maker of the maps and call them ‘masterful’ in the art of

representing the spherical globe into a flat surface. She feels this because the famine roads which

form an integral part of Ireland and are so significant to its history are missing from these maps.In her essay in the literary review Boland remarks



“I was certainly aware, long before I wrote this poem, that the act of mapmaking is an act of

power and that I--as a poet, as a woman and as a witness to the strange Irish silences which met

that mixture of identities--was more and more inclined to contest those acts of power. Theofficial version-and a map is rarely anything else--might not be suspect as it discovered

territories and marked out destinations. But the fact that these roads, so powerful in their

meaning and so powerless at their origin, never showed up on any map of Ireland seemed to methen, as it does now, both emblematic and ironic.”

That the Science of Cartography is Limited

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Transcript of That the Science of Cartography is Limited