Michael Longley: Laertes

Length / Form 18 lines, narrative

Allusion to Classical figure Odyssey 24. 226-38

Relationship to Classical text  Version / revision - first 8 lines translated from Odyssey, rest of poem does not follow Homer but goes on to affectionate reunion - Odysseus does not test his father.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts One of several poems in Longley’s Gorse Fires that uses episodes from the Odyssey to address ideas of ‘home’ and relationships. The others are ‘Tree-House’, ‘Anticleia’, ‘Eurycleia’, ‘Argos’, all of which play on Homeric recognition scenes, in contrast to the violence enacted in the house which is treated in ‘The Butchers’. 

Comment Sarah Broom, ‘Learning about Dying: Mutability and the Classics in the Poetry of Michael Longley’  New Hibernia Review Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2002, pp. 94-112 esp. p. 100.