Seamus Heaney, Virgil and the Good of Poetry

Description:

This book demonstrates the ways in which Virgil's are poems that Heaney 'lived with long and dreamily', especially the descent into the underworld in Aeneid VI. It shows that in his original English poems as well as his translations from Latin, Heaney conjures and transforms familiar Virgilian motifs. The rhythm, pace and musicality of Virgil's hexameters can be heard in Heaney's pastoral eclogues and sonnet sequences. And Virgil's life and times, as well as his poetry, contribute to the shaping of Heaney's prose poetics. In dialogue with Virgil, as well as other classical and modern poets, Heaney develops his notion of the redress of poetry: the counterbalance that poetry can offer against historical tragedy, suffering and loss.
The book explores Heaney's intensely productive, thirty-year dialogue with Virgil, beginning with his translation of 'The Golden Bough' in the 1980s and extending through several major volumes, including Seeing Things, The Midnight Verdict, Electric Light, District and Circle, The Riverbank Field, Human Chain, and the posthumously published translation of Aeneid Book VI.

Brief description: Rachel Falconer is Professor and Chair of Modern English Literature at the University of Lausanne. Her publications include A Quest for Remembrance: The Underworld in Classical and Modern Literature, edited with Madeleine Scherer, and Hell in Contemporary Literature: Descent Narratives since 1945.

Review Quotes:

To celebrate the book for its exhaustiveness is no faint praise. Anyone who ever wants to investigate Heaney's engagement with Vergil will be grateful to Falconer for methodically drawing together and bringing to light an unprecedented hoard of primary materials, some archival, others ephemeral, many rare or hard to access. Radio essays and interviews, little-known Heaney poems, limited editions light up her subject from as many angles as possible. As a research tool, Falconer's book is indispensable.