Derek Mahon: XVIII: A Bangor Requiem

Allusion to Classical figure Plato, ‘The figure in the Republic’

Allusion to classical place The cave

Relationship to Classical text The allegory of the cave from Plato’s Republic features strongly throughout the poem, which begins with a image of Mahon’s mother, content in the enclosed world of her bungalow, ‘by Plato’s firelight’, to consider ‘the appearances’ that rule her life. The poet, returning to the memory of his mother, sees ‘with all artifice stripped away’, much like the emancipated figure who returns to the cave in the Republic. The phrase ‘Nature’s a bad example to simple folk’, used to refer to a materialistic and industrialist culture, but also to an artistic one, subverts suggestions in the Republic (e.g. in book 10) that art and poetic mimesis can act as a dangerous, corrupting influence.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts ‘Little soul, the body’s guest and companion’ is a translation from a poem attributed to the Emperor Hadrain in the Historia Augusta (Hadrian 25, 9-10), which begins: Animula [...] Hospes comesque corporis.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Direct references to Plato’s Republic carry a contemporary political subtext in the poem’s Northern Irish setting and at the end of the poem we see Mahon travelling south into ‘blue skies of the republic...’. Plato’s cave becomes a ‘Dutch interior where cloud-shadows move’.

Further Comment The complex interplay of pathos and feelings of alienation relating to his place of birth leads to an ambiguous, at times seemingly apolitical, attitude towards ‘The Troubles’ in Mahon’s poetry. He returns to Plato’s cave not as an enlightened philosopher but as a poet carrying ‘the incurable ache/ of art’.