Derek Mahon: Ovid in Tomis

Length/Form One of Mahon’s longer poems, composed in an unusual three-line form which appears stark on the page.

Allusion to Classical figure Ovid, Tiberius, the Getes, Augustus, Syrinx, Pan, the Muse

Allusion to classical place Tomis, Rome, the forum, Thrace

Relationship to Classical text Ovid’s Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, which present the ancient poet’s miserable exile at Tomis, are the main source of reference, though there is also an allusion to Syrinx, the subject of Metamorphoses I, 690ff. Mahon also mentions the Halieutica, a didactic poem attributed to Ovid by Pliny the Elder (in his Naturalis Historia 32.11 and 32.152) and said to have been composed by him at Tomis; it is no longer commonly believed to be a work of Ovid.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts The phrase ‘Pan is dead’, recalls Plutarch’s tale (in Moralia 5.17) in which a mariner is said to have heard this mysterious proclamation.¹ Historically, the story has been widely appropriated by Christian commentators who interpreted it as signifying the end of the pagan era. and it is in this light that it is commonly referred to in poetry (e.g. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘The Dead Pan’ and Robert Frost’s ‘Pan with Us’). (E. Barrett Browning, The Poetical works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1897), p.282; R. Frost, A Boy’s Will (London: David Nutt, 1913).) Robert Lowell addresses the subject of Ovid’s exile in ‘Beyond the Alps’, which is the opening poem of his Life Studies (London: Faber & Faber, 1959). However, Mahon’s poem perhaps has most in common with Seamus Heaney’s ‘Exposure’, in which he speaks as an exiled poet or ‘inner émigré’ from his Ulster homeland, who sits ‘weighing and weighing/ My responsible tristia’. (S. Heaney, North. London: Faber and Faber, 1975.).

Further Comment This poem is Mahon’s most explicit meditation on the Image of the poet as an exile. The language used to describe the bleak shoreline of Tomis recalls that used by Mahon in other poems (e.g. ‘Going Home’, CP p.95) to describe his Ulster birthplace, thereby complicating notions of belonging and displacement. See also D. Tobin, ‘In the Back of Beyond: Tradition and History in the Poetry of Derek Mahon.’ Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 88 (1999), p.295-304.

Further Analysis Metamorphosis forms a key theme in The Hunt by Night and Mahon particularly seems to dwell on how, along with corroding man-made detritus, ‘nature’ will outlive the poetry and culture it has been brought to serve. In an act of reversal, here, the poet Ovid, once a ‘living legend’, recalls his ‘transformation/ Into a stone’.