Seamus Heaney and Virgil go back a long way. In his poem Route 110, from Human Chain (2010), Heaney reminisces about being in an Irish bookshop where a woman sells his younger self a “used copy of Aeneid VI” in a “deckle-edged brown paper bag”. In the foreword to his own posthumously published translation of Book VI, he explains – joking and serious – that his Latin master cherished Book VI and that he now feels he is doing his Latin homework partly in homage to the late Father Michael McGlinchey of St Columb’s College. He also wryly explains that now, no longer a schoolboy, he is burdened by approaching his task as a poet. A burden for him, a blessing for us: every page is a testament to the poet Heaney was.
This is a book about the impossiblity of which we all dream – a reunion with people loved and lost
Continue reading...