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Derek Mahon: De Quincey in Later Life

(Page numbers given refer to Collected Poems: Derek Mahon [CP]: The Gallery Press, 1999)

 

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

De Quincey in Later Life

Night-Crossing, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968

20

 

Relationship to Classical text ‘mens sana/ In corpore sano’ is a quotation from Juvenal’s Satire X, 356. Mahon’s later poem ‘The Idiocracy of Human Aspiration’ (CP, p.243) is a reworking of this satire).

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Thomas de Quincey’s autobiographical account of his laudenum addiction in Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (first published in The London Magazine, October 1821).

Further Comment Vocabulary derived from Greek, such as ‘perihelion’ and ‘panacea’, recalls that used in de Quincey’s text.

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Poem Title

Original Publication

De Quincey in Later Life

Night-Crossing, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968

CP Page no

 20

Length / Form

 

Relationship to Classical text

‘mens sana/ In corpore sano’ is a quotation from Juvenal’s Satire X, 356. Mahon’s later poem ‘The Idiocracy of Human Aspiration’ (CP, p.243) is a reworking of this satire).

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts

 

Classical/post-Classical intertexts

Thomas de Quincey’s autobiographical account of his laudenum addiction in Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (first published in The London Magazine, October 1821).

Further Comment

Vocabulary derived from Greek, such as ‘perihelion’ and ‘panacea’, recalls that used in de Quincey’s text.

Further Analysis

 

 

Derek Mahon