Derek Mahon: How to Live

Poem Title

Original Publication

How to Live

The Hunt by Night, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982

CP Page no

78

Length / Form

Allusion to Classical figure

Leuconoë

Allusion to Classical place

Relationship to Classical text

This is a fairly free translation but it stays close to the sense and content of the source text.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts

The poem is a translation of Horace’s Odes I, ix (not I, ii, as erroneously given in the Collected Poems)

Classical/post-Classical intertexts

Further Comment

Arthur McGuinnes notes that the title of this translation echoes the example said to have been set by Mahon’s poetic predecessor (and classical scholar), Louis MacNeice, in Mahon’s poem ‘In Carrowdore Churchyard’ (‘This, you implied, is how we ought to live’: CP, 17). (p.135 in A. E. McGuinnes, ‘Cast a Wary Eye: Derek Mahon's Classical Perspective.’ (The Yearbook of English Studies17 (1987), p.128-142).)

Further Analysis