Tony Harrison: Study

Length / Form Sixteen-line sonnet

Allusion to Classical place Indirect allusion the banks of the Styx.

Relationship to Classical text Harrison’s stammering Uncles Joe, imagined with ‘gaping jaw’, recalls the silent gaping mouths of trembling Greek heroes as they wait on the bank of the Styx ( Aeneid VI, l.492-3), whilst his Aunt’s dead baby echoes the depiction of wailing infants (l.426-9). Harrison began a PhD thesis on verse translations of the Aeneid but abandoned it to pursue his poetic career.

Comment The final line ‘My mind moves upon silence and Aeneid VI’ melds the Classical reference with an allusion to the repeated refrain in W.B. Yeats’ poem Long-Legged Fly (see The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, Wordsworth Editions, 2000, p.287).