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This book demonstrates the ways in which Virgils 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 Virgils hexameters can be heard in Heaneys pastoral eclogues and sonnet sequences. And Virgils life and times, as well as his poetry, contribute to the shaping of Heaneys 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 Heaneys 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.
This book demonstrates the ways in which Virgils 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 Virgils hexameters can be heard in Heaneys pastoral eclogues and sonnet sequences. And Virgils life and times, as well as his poetry, contribute to the shaping of Heaneys 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 Heaneys 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.