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 The New
Antiquity
CLASSICAL PRESENCES IN
IRISH POETRY AFTER 1960
The Answering Voice

FLORENCE IMPENS
The New Antiquity

Series editor
Matthew S. Santirocco
New York, NY, USA
Over the past two decades, our understanding of the ancient world has
been dramatically transformed as classicists and other scholars of antiquity
have moved beyond traditional geographical, chronological, and method-
ological boundaries to focuson new topics and different questions. By
­providing a major venue for further cutting-edge scholarship, The New
Antiquity will reflect, shape, and participate in this transformation. The
series will focus on the literature, history, thought, and material culture of
not only ancient Europe, but also Egypt, the Middle East, and the Far
East. With an emphasis also on the reception of the ancient world into
later periods, The New Antiquity will reveal how present concerns can be
brilliantly illuminated by this new understanding of the past.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/series/14756
 Florence Impens

Classical Presences in
Irish Poetry after 1960
The Answering Voice
Florence Impens
University of Manchester
Manchester, UK

The New Antiquity

ISBN 978-3-319-68230-3    ISBN 978-3-319-68231-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68231-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017954966

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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To the memory of my father,
Claude Impens
 Acknowledgements

With the obvious exception of quotations, every word in this book is

mine, but The Answering Voice could not have existed without the guid-
ance and support of many—both people and institutions.
Funding received in 2010 in the form of a short-term MARBL
Fellowship, and of a grant from the Trinity Foundation, made it possible
for me to consult archival material at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript,
Archives and Rare Book Library at Emory University.
At Trinity College, Dublin, where the book originated as a doctoral
dissertation many years ago, members of the School of English and the
Department of French provided regular words of encouragement and
advice which have shaped my scholarship and this monograph: most of all,
Gerald Dawe, my PhD supervisor, and most generous mentor.
At the University of Notre Dame, the Keough-Naughton Institute for
Irish Studies, where I was fortunate to spend an academic year as NEH-­
Keough Fellow, gave me the space, resources, and time necessary to
rework the dissertation into a fuller manuscript in the best possible condi-
tions. I am very grateful for the warm welcome I received there, notably
from Brian Ó Conchubhair and Tara MacLeod, both of whom made me
feel at home thousands of miles away from it. Vona Groarke and James
I. Porter also provided essential feedback on the book on the occasion of
the NEH Seminar, and I would like to thank them both for their insightful
comments.
At the University of Manchester, where the manuscript was finally com-
pleted, I feel very lucky to have found supportive colleagues in English,
American Studies and Creative Writing, and at the John Rylands Research

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Institute. The support of the postdoctoral community there has seen me

through the last revisions.
Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family, in particular my
mother Isabelle and Dermot Kelly, for their love and support.
Quotations from Eavan Boland’s Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman
and the Poet in Our Time (Manchester: Carcanet, 1995), ‘Virtual Syntax,
Actual Dreams’ in PN Review 29:4 (2003): 25–28, and from ‘The Latin
Lesson’ in New Collected Poems (Manchester: Carcanet, 2005) are repro-
duced by permission of the author and Carcanet Press Limited. Excerpts
from unpublished drafts of Michael Longley’s ‘A Gloss on Lycidas’,
‘Lena’, and ‘The Maid’, as well as of an unpublished letter from Michael
Longley to Donald Wormell dated 10 November 1969 are reproduced by
kind permission of the author and Lucas Alexander Whitley Ltd © Michael
Longley 2017. Excerpts from Derek Mahon’s unpublished drafts of
Oedipus, The Bacchae, and ‘River Rhymes’ are reproduced by kind permis-
sion of the author and The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, Co.
Meath, Ireland.
Elements from this research project have previously appeared as ‘Writing
Ireland: Seamus Heaney, Classics and Twentieth-Century Irish Poetry’ in
Post Ireland? Essays on Contemporary Irish Poetry (edited by Jefferson
Holdridge and Brian Ó Conchubhair; Winston-Salem: Wake Forest
University Press, 2017) and as ‘“Here are the words you’ll have to find a
place for”: Virgilian Presences in the Work of Seamus Heaney’ in Irish
University Review 47:2 (Autumn 2017).
 Contents

1 A Brief Introduction: Rationale and Objectives   1

2 The Classics in Modern Irish Poetry  11

3 Seamus Heaney: ‘Lethe in Moyola’  45

4 Michael Longley: The ‘Lapsed Classicist’  85

5 Derek Mahon and Eavan Boland: Marginal Perspectives 127

6 A Classical ‘Revival’? 169

Further Reading 205

Index 211

ix
 CHAPTER 1

A Brief Introduction: Rationale

and Objectives

In 1976, W.B. Stanford, Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College,

Dublin, concluded Ireland and the Classical Tradition, his seminal study
of classical presences on the island from the fifth to the early twentieth
centuries, on the belief that the classics were losing their appeal among
artists in the contemporary world, and gradually disappearing from the
Irish cultural landscape. With an education increasingly centred on ‘mod-
ern’ subjects, ‘in the non-academic world’, he wrote, ‘few poets, novelists
or artists now use classical themes or images in their work, and recent
styles of art and architecture are unclassical’ (Stanford 1976, p. 246).
Looking at the literature published on the island in those years, his com-
ments certainly ring true. Writers such as Austin Clarke and Brian Coffey
were still publishing classical poems, respectively Tiresias: A Poem (1971)
and Death of Hektor (1979), but these poets were in their seventies, and in
all appearance were survivors of a generation who had used classical mate-
rial in their work, such as William Butler Yeats, Louis MacNeice, and
Patrick Kavanagh, and who were, one by one, slowly passing away. In the
work of younger poets, by contrast, Greece and Rome seemed to occupy
very little space.
Oliver Taplin’s comments in ‘Contemporary Poetry and Classics’ on
similar changes in the relationship of English poets with the material reso-
nate in a Northern Irish and Irish context:1

None of the major English poets born between, say, 1915 and 1935, seems
to have shown a strong awareness of any relationship to ‘the classical

© The Author(s) 2018 1

F. Impens, Classical Presences in Irish Poetry after 1960,
The New Antiquity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68231-0_1
2 F. IMPENS

t­ radition’. ( … ) This anti-classical or non-classical ‘generation’ (in so far as

my periodisation is valid) may be the product of little more than individual
coincidence. But these poets were educated in what was to prove the final
era in which Classics held an automatic and often obligatory elite status in
schools in England. This death-grip produced a revulsion in many of those
subjected to it. It may also be relevant that this ‘generation’ was formed at
the time when F.R. Leavis was at his most influential in his attempt to clear
the pedestal of all idols, including the classical, so that he could place the
Great Tradition there in sole majesty.
(Taplin 2002, pp. 9–10)

While the previous generation—poets such as Wynstan Auden, Cecil Day-­

Lewis, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender—born in England and
Ireland at the beginning of the century, had received a classical education in
English public schools and at Oxford, and, often, assumed that their reader-
ship shared a similar cultural background that would enable them to under-
stand the classical allusions peppering their work, the following generation
reacted against the classics and their elitist role in education.2 For writers
such as Philip Larkin, poetry, if it was to remain relevant in the 1950s and
later, needed to get rid of the elitism conveyed by (classical) allusions, and
on the contrary, focus on resources available to the majority of readers:

My objection to the use in new poems of properties or personae from older

poems is not a moral one, but simply because they do not work, either
because I have not read the poems in which they appear, or because I have
read them and think of them as part of that poem and not a property to be
dragged into a new poem as a substitute for securing the effect that is
desired. I admit this argument could be pushed to absurd lengths, when a
poet could not refer to anything that his readers may not have seen (such as
snow, for instance), but in fact poets write for people with the same
­background and experiences as themselves, which might be taken as a com-
pelling argument in support of provincialism.
(Larkin 1982, no page number)

Larkin’s argument is not specifically directed at the use of classical mate-

rial. For the poet, intertextuality and literary allusions of all kinds were to
be avoided: not only did they presume that readers would recognise the
source, which was unlikely, but they also distracted them from the new
text. Larkin’s unequivocal dismissal of the ‘myth kitty’, and his anti-­
classical attitude certainly resonated with Stanford’s concerns about the
 A BRIEF INTRODUCTION: RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES 3

decreasing importance of the classics in modern education and in the arts

(Larkin 1983, p. 69).3
The classical ‘revival’ in poetry and other art forms that seized the
Anglophone world, including Ireland, in the late twentieth century, and
continues to be felt in the first decades of the new millennium, might look
all the more surprising in this context. In the last sixty years, a plethora of
poems, novels, plays, and films (sometimes loosely) based on Greek and
Roman material has seen the light of day, and more importantly, has found
a significant receptive audience. Stephen Harrison in his introduction to
Living Classics (2009) comments on the ‘interesting but comprehensible
paradox’ of the popularity of classical re-appropriations in contemporary
Anglophone writing, of which he traces the roots back to the mid-­
twentieth century, when the classics became the object of a ‘vigorous pro-
cess of outreach’ and democratisation (Harrison 2009, pp. 1–2). To
compensate for the decline in the number of people learning the subject
at school, proponents of the classics actively sought ways to make the
material available to an audience less and less likely to read the texts in
their original language, notably with new non-specialist publications.
‘Enterprising publishers [in the postwar world thus] moved into the pro-
duction of readable and inexpensive versions of classical texts for the gen-
eral public’ (Harrison 2009, p. 2), giving rise to well-known series such as
Penguin Classics and Oxford University Press World’s Classics. Most
importantly, those versions ‘had claims to be literary works in their own
right rather than mere aids to deciphering the originals’; in brief, they
were stand-alone versions destined to be enjoyed by the reader (Harrison
2009, p. 3). One did not need to know Latin nor Greek any longer, nor
have much money, to have access to a relatively cheap and readable version
of say, Homer or Virgil. Slowly, the classics were being severed from their
association with the upper social classes.
While the wide commercialisation of new domesticising versions of the
classics was instrumental in making the material more widely available and
popular, in the context of the British Isles, changes in the education sys-
tem, both in England and in Northern Ireland, too played a role in the
democratisation of the classics, which Stanford had not foreseen. Those
changes introduced a new generation of writers, born between 1935 and
1955, to Greek and Latin literatures in a less elitist context, and indirectly
enabled them to dissociate those texts from their social connotations, and
to rewrite them more freely later on in their creative careers. If those
changes were primarily taking place in the United Kingdom, they would
4 F. IMPENS

have a ripple effect on Irish poetry too, North and South, under the influ-
ence of Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley. Mentioning Douglas Dunn,
David Constantine, Carol Ann Duffy, and Seamus Heaney, Oliver Taplin
pointedly remarks that

One thing that most of this ‘generation’ of poets have in common is that
they did not go to famous Public Schools. On the other hand most did take
Latin, at least as far as O-Level: the difference is that the subject was not
imposed with such heavy constraint or expectation as it had been on previ-
ous generations. The period between the education reforms of 1944 and the
1960s was a kind of golden age for selective grammar schools and for inde-
pendent ‘Direct Grant’ schools, during which both catered for the bright
and motivated children who had been selected by the reviled ‘11 Plus’
examination. In rivalry with the more privileged Public Schools, and often
in superiority to them, Latin and ancient history, and to some extent Greek,
were taken seriously. Even though still generally taught by unenlightened
traditional methods, they seem to have introduced future poets to a resource
which enriched rather than alienated them.
(Taplin 2002, p. 10)

Classics had become a more ‘democratic’ subject, and as such, Greek and
Latin literatures became part of the cultural background of one more gen-
eration of writers, who would rewrite them without necessarily feeling
caught in the tension between modern society and the elitist connotations
which these writings had conveyed before.
In many cases, those writers would be at the forefront of the wave of clas-
sical rewritings which were to characterise much of literature in English in
the late twentieth century. Re-appropriating Greek and Latin texts, they
highlighted issues such as class, colonial structures, and gender representa-
tions. For Harrison, ‘many of the most striking engagements with classical
texts since 1960 in Anglophone poetry have come from writers who are in
some sense on the periphery of the “traditional” English metropolitan cul-
tural world’ (Harrison 2009, p. 4). The marginality of those writers is to be
understood broadly, and brings together people ‘such as Tony Harrison,
from the northern English working class, Margaret Atwood, Canadian fem-
inist, and Derek Walcott, from St Lucia in the Caribbean’, to whom the
scholar later adds (among many others) ‘Harrison’s fellow northerner Ted
Hughes’, ‘African writer Wole Soyinka’, ‘working-class Scots poet Liz
Lochhead’, as well as ‘Irish writers [dealing] with the distress and issues of
the political Northern Irish “Troubles”’ (Harrison 2009, pp. 3–5).
 A BRIEF INTRODUCTION: RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES 5

This generation of poets will be the starting point, and to some extent,
the main focus of The Answering Voice in an Irish context, as it is one
whose relationship with the classics has been unique, both unprecedented
and never repeated. The last generation to widely learn Classics (at least
Latin) at school, it was also the first one to benefit from the democratisa-
tion of education in the post-war world.4 For the first and last time, many
writers from different social backgrounds had direct knowledge of classical
texts and narratives, which they could and would rewrite in their work.
If this generational dimension links British, Northern Irish, and Irish
poets in their shared use of classical material, the present study also shows
that the imaginative return to the classics in Irish poetry, from both North
and South, is also in many ways distinctive. While the classics have helped
Irish poets address broad themes such as contemporary violence and gen-
der issues, also reflected in adaptations by their contemporaries across the
Irish Sea, such Irish rewritings are informed by local circumstances specific
to the poets’ home ground. For Eavan Boland, for instance, classical
rewritings have long been a means to interrogate and challenge the mar-
ginal and passive positions occupied by women in Western art and society
in broad terms, as well as very often within a narrower Irish cultural con-
text. Many of her classical poems in the 1990s, focusing on the figure of
Ceres, revise the trope of Mother Ireland, and show its limitations. The
multiplication of rewritings of Greek and Latin literatures in the late 1980s
and early 1990s in response to the ‘Troubles’ also readily comes to mind—
notably in works by Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley. Pressured to
respond to the Northern Irish conflict, many Irish writers found in the
classics texts that enabled them to do so while avoiding partisanship, as
distant metaphors of the situation.
In addition to those local inflections on broader uses, the postcolonial
and religious nature of Ireland has uniquely informed the poets’ relation-
ship with, and use of, the material. For Irish poets with a Catholic back-
ground, the classics, and Latin literature in particular, have at times
become secular and mythic alternatives to religious narratives. Heaney, for
instance, would increasingly, after the mid-1980s, draw from Virgil’s
Aeneid, VI and its description of the underworld in elegies for his father,
as well as in poems looking back at his life in Derry. Most importantly, the
classics have helped Irish poets renegotiate literary identities outside the
Irish/British binary—as markers of European identity challenging post-­
colonial definitions of Irish writing, and exemplifying new modes of relat-
ing to European literatures not mediated by Britain.
6 F. IMPENS

In its European argument, The Answering Voice is indebted to

W.B. Stanford’s and Brian Arkins’ work. Stanford’s Ireland and the
Classical Tradition was motivated by the realisation that despite its con-
tinuous importance over many centuries, the influence of the classics in
Ireland had been neglected in favour of studies focusing on the country’s
Gaelic and Christian identity, and on the nature of its relationship with
Britain. Bringing Ireland’s classical heritage to the fore was on the con-
trary a way to redress the perception of Irish culture(s) in a wider European
context, and to move beyond the fruitless debate around Ireland’s cultural
identity, which in many ways had been crystallised in the ‘Troubles’ that
were raging when Stanford was researching his subject. As he noted in the
epilogue, ‘in this way the classics served as an antidote to chauvinism, big-
otry and racialism’ (Stanford 1976, p. 245). This argument also informed
Arkins’ Hellenising Ireland: Greek and Roman Themes in Modern Irish
Literature (2005) some forty years later. Focusing on Anglophone Ireland
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Arkins sees in the classical pres-
ence in Irish literature evidence to support the claim that Ireland’s classical
past places it within a European context. As he remarks in his introduc-
tion, his is a reading of classical re-appropriation as a sign of postcolonial-
ism as well as an ideological decision to displace the context in which Irish
literature is perceived towards Europe:

To investigate how Irish writers appropriate Greco-Roman material is to

largely sideline the perennial question of Ireland’s relationship with Britain.
At one level, to espouse Greco-Roman material locates Ireland firmly in the
mainstream of Western civilisation with countries like France and Germany
that have long looked to Greece and Rome, and might now be further seen
as one cultural manifestation of Ireland’s membership of the European
Union. (…) At another level, the fact that Irish writers use Greek and
Roman material ensures that they occupy the same cultural space as many
British authors. Educated in a largely British way, their appropriation of
Greco-Roman themes brings to mind Caliban’s dictum to Prospero and
Miranda in the Tempest: ‘You gave me language, and my profit on’t/Is, I
know how to curse’.
(Arkins 2005, p. 7)

He reiterates in his conclusion, ‘(…) when Hellenised by such an array of

truly magnificent writers, Ireland can take its place at the centre of a pan-­
European enterprise that places the varied ideas of the Greco-Roman
world at the centre of its thought’ (Arkins 2005, p. 219).
 A BRIEF INTRODUCTION: RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES 7

Stanford’s and Arkins’ work might be criticised, on the one hand, for
not reflecting enough postcolonial and gender studies, which have revealed
the imperialist and patriarchal ideologies underlying the modern recep-
tions of the classics, and Ireland’s position in the context of the contem-
porary popularity of Greece and Rome in the Anglophone world; and, on
the other, for placing so much emphasis on the debatable existence of
what Arkins calls a ‘pan-European enterprise’, which ultimately fails to
account for the multiplicity of European (national) identities. But both
essays, I believe, are nonetheless essential in creating a framework for sub-
sequent studies of the classical ‘revival’ in Irish literature: Stanford, by
pointing out the search in Ireland for a literary material that could belong
to diverse, and often conflicting, cultural groups, especially during the
‘Troubles’, and Arkins, by underlining the need to reposition Irish litera-
ture in a European context.
Keeping in mind a double framework, The Answering Voice therefore
sets out to trace classical presences in the work of Irish poets who started
to publish in the late 1960s, which it reads both within an Irish context,
and against the wider background of British and Anglophone poetry.
Starting with a generation of young Irish poets experimenting with the
classics to find their voice, it shows how Greek and Latin literatures gradu-
ally became central in their work, up to the beginning of the ‘classical
revival’ of the mid-1980s. Briefly discussing dramatic adaptations and the
role of commissions, it focuses mostly on poetic rewritings, and outlines
the contours of a ‘movement’ accompanying a poetic transition in Ireland
from a postcolonial to a transnational model, whereby the classics, first
used to negotiate the historical and literary dichotomies between Ireland
and Britain, later became poetic manifestations of the poets’ engagements
with European and other foreign literatures.
At its heart are four poets: Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek
Mahon, and Eavan Boland, who represent the diversity of classical rewrit-
ings in Irish poetry in the last sixty years. Seamus Heaney and Michael
Longley are indeed the two poets one might most commonly associate
with classical intertextuality in the period under study—Heaney notably
with his Virgilian poems, Longley with his Homeric rewritings. The analy-
sis of their classical output reveals the existence of parallels in the timing of
their classical poems and in the latter’s relationship with their sources. It
also highlights common ground in their respective uses of classical mate-
rial to address issues such as the ‘Troubles’ and global conflict, personal
grief and relationships, as well as the position of the Irish literary space
8 F. IMPENS

within the world republic of letters. On the other hand, Derek Mahon and
Eavan Boland represent alternative voices in the conversation that has
developed around the classics in contemporary Irish poetry. Their work, if
not making use of Greek and Latin material to the same extent as their
fellow poets, highlights the existence of other representations of such
sources, and the intricacies of the classical ‘revival’. Mahon and Boland
have in the course of their careers to date re-appropriated the same poets
as Heaney and Longley, among whom Ovid, Virgil, and Homer, but often
with other intentions, opening up the range of classical uses. Producing
very different bodies of work, they have rewritten the classics from what
they believe has been their marginal position in the Irish poetic land-
scape—Mahon as a poet in self-imposed exile, Boland as a woman poet
faced with a male-dominated national tradition.
When Irish literature experienced a classical ‘revival’ in the 1980s and
1990s, the four poets would contribute, each in their own way, to the
multiplication of such rewritings. Their classical work would also coincide
with, and reflect, contemporary historical and social changes. In the
North, classical rewritings accompanied the first tentative steps of the
peace process, when Irish writers tapped into the long tradition of re-­
appropriation of the classics in Western cultures. Greek and Latin litera-
tures brought together in imaginative terms the two communities in the
province, and the people on both sides of the border. But contrary to what
recent studies, with their tendency to focus on Greek drama and the
‘Troubles’, seem to suggest, the classical ‘revival’ also went beyond the
border with Northern Ireland, and coincided with a growing European
sentiment on the whole island, and with globalisation. Both Northern
Ireland (as part of the United Kingdom) and the Republic had joined the
European Union in 1973, and by the mid-1990s, the Irish economy was
beginning to develop at greater speed, helped by previous European
investments, and the existence of the European free market. Immigrants
from other European countries would also move to the island, reinforcing
the connections between the Republic, Northern Ireland, and the
Continent. In the mid-1990s, the peak of the classical ‘revival’ coincided
with the growing importance of Ireland within the European Union, and
the strengthening of Ireland’s cultural and political relationship with other
European countries. Although not prompted as such by those social and
economic changes, indirectly, the ‘revival’ accompanied and, to a certain
extent, mirrored Ireland’s further integration in Europe and in a glo-
balised world.
 A BRIEF INTRODUCTION: RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES 9

The situation has since changed. At the end of the 2010s, at the
moment of writing, the classical impetus animating Irish poetry in English
seems to be fading away. The last generation to learn Classics, who had
been at the forefront of the classical ‘revival’, is now ageing; Seamus
Heaney, one of its foremost figures, passed away in 2013. Among younger
and emerging Irish poets, few seem to be attracted to the classics. Instead
of the rewritings of Greek and Latin texts of their elders, many seem to be
producing versions of foreign (and mostly European) literatures, both past
and modern. If those observations prove to be true and hold in the future,
the legacy of the classical ‘revival’ at the turn of the new millennium will
remain of consequence. As Chap. 6, the concluding chapter of The
Answering Voice, argues, those classical rewritings have facilitated a transi-
tion towards a global Irish literature. Playing a role in the exploration and
unsettling of dichotomies in the early 1990s, they became texts that could
be used to reach out to others: the other community in the North, as well
as other Anglophone and non-Anglophone cultures in the Ireland of the
late twentieth century.

Notes
1. Although Oliver Taplin mentions Louis MacNeice, Seamus Heaney, and
Michael Longley, his article focuses mostly on English poetry, and does not
take into account what may be Irish specificities. However, considering the
existence of similarities in the education systems of England and Ireland,
and the fact that education in Northern Ireland, where Heaney, Longley,
and Mahon grew up, was modelled on England’s, his remarks resonate in
an Irish, and especially in a Northern Irish, context.
2. See Taplin 2002, pp. 7–8. As Taplin emphasises, such a periodisation needs
to be considered with extreme care, and only as providing broad guidelines
towards the understanding of a more complex reality. MacNeice, for exam-
ple, thoroughly examined his classical education, as well as the nature of his
relationship with the classics, in his work, making his inclusion in the group
rather problematic.
3. The phrase was first used by Philip Larkin in D.J. Enright (ed.), Poets of the
Nineteen-Fifties (1955), and reprinted in Larkin’s Required Writing:
Miscellaneous Pieces 1955–1982.
4. In the Republic of Ireland, while secondary education did not become free
until 1967, the wide availability of Classics on school curricula throughout
the country meant that many Irish poets born south of the border in the
same years were also trained at least in Latin.
10 F. IMPENS

Works Cited
Arkins, Brian, Hellenising Ireland: Greek and Roman Themes in Modern Irish
Literature. Newbridge: The Goldsmith Press, 2005.
Harrison, Stephen (ed.), Living Classics: Greece and Rome in Contemporary Poetry
in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Larkin, Philip, ‘The Art of Poetry no. 30.’ Interview with Robert Phillips. Paris
Review 84 (Summer 1982). Accessed online at http://www.theparisreview.
org/interviews/3153/the-art-of-poetry-no-30-philip-larkin, on 13 June
2017. No page number.
Larkin, Philip, Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955–1982. London: Faber,
1983.
Stanford, W.B., Ireland and the Classical Tradition. Dublin: Allen Figgis, 1976.
Taplin, Oliver, ‘Contemporary Poetry and Classics.’ T.P. Wiseman (ed.), Classics
in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002: 1–19.
 CHAPTER 2

The Classics in Modern Irish Poetry

When Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, and Eavan Boland
started to rewrite classical literatures and mythologies in the late 1960s,
they indirectly engaged with a long literary tradition of classical rewritings
in Ireland. As W.B. Stanford pointed out in his seminal study, Ireland and
the Classical Tradition (1976), the classical history of the island dated as
far back as the fifth century, and the work of Christian missionaries in Irish
monasteries. With the colonisation of Ireland in the sixteenth century,
however, this native classical tradition had gradually faded away to be
replaced with one modelled on England’s.
Anglo-Irish writers, writing in English mostly for the Ascendancy and
an English audience,1 rewrote the classics in the same ways as their coun-
terparts on the bigger island, and ‘in the Augustan period in Ireland’,
Stanford notes, ‘classicism was as pervasive among Anglo-Irish writers as
anywhere in the English-speaking world’ (Stanford 1976, p. 91), as can be
seen for instance in the works of Oliver Goldsmith, Jonathan Swift, George
Berkeley, and Edmund Burke. While it later remained, in the nineteenth
century, a noticeable feature of the works, notably, of Mary Tighe, Aubrey
de Vere, Oliver Gogarty, and George Moore, the representation of the
classics in Anglo-Irish literature before the end of the century seemed to
present very few differences from classical receptions in England and else-
where. As W.B. Stanford writes, the work of ‘most of the more classical
writers’ (i.e. those re-appropriating the classics) did not ‘differ widely from
what was being written in other countries’ (Stanford 1976, p. 90).

© The Author(s) 2018 11

F. Impens, Classical Presences in Irish Poetry after 1960,
The New Antiquity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68231-0_2
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 2. Lateral or “rolling” motion accomplished by wing warping
operated by a second lever.
These were the only controls used in the earliest gliders. It
remains to consider the third element of control, viz:
3. The directional or “yawing” control, which is accomplished by an
ordinary vertical rudder operated by a third lever.
The Wrights found the warping had all the effect anticipated but
had also certain secondary and undesirable effects. Whenever they
applied the warping lever to correct the rolling motion, the glider
responded as far as rolling control was concerned, but at the same
time would “yaw” or swerve out of its course to right or left. This was
a serious complication. For, in the moment of swerving, the high
wing which they desired to depress would advance faster than the
low wing, and solely by its higher velocity tended to develop a
greater lift and thereby neutralize the beneficial effect of the warp. In
many of their early glides, because of pronounced swerving, the
warp effect was entirely counteracted and failed to bring the glider
back to level; with the result that one wing tip would sink, at the
same time swinging backward until the machine was brought to the
ground. No amount of controlling could prevent this.
After much bewilderment on this point, the Wrights observed that
whenever a wing tip was warped to a large angle its resistance
became relatively greater and it slowed up while the opposite side
went ahead. They at once hit upon the idea of a rudder, previously
considered unnecessary, which they believed could be turned in
each case of yawing just enough to create a new and apposing
yawing force of equal magnitude.
They therefore attached a rudder at the rear, connecting its tiller
ropes to lever No. 2, and giving this lever a compound motion so that
one hand could operate either warp or rudder control independently
(or simultaneously in proper proportion to eliminate the yawing
tendency above mentioned). This combination is the basis of the
Wright patents and is essential in airplanes of today.
 Great success now ensued in their gliding experiments; the
machine was always in perfect control; could be manipulated in any
desired manner; turned to right or left, or brought down to earth with
safety.
Thus were the three elements of control applied by the Wrights to
their glider and the problem apparent in Lillienthal’s death was
solved. The next step was to install a power plant able to maintain
forward speed without resorting to coasting downhill by gravity; and
therefore capable of producing a horizontal flight.
In developing a power flyer aside from the question of control the
proper design was arrived at as follows:
Efficiency of Wings.—The Wrights knew from Langley and
Chanute that flat wings were inefficient and useless, and curved
wings essential; they did not know whether the amount of curvature
mattered much. To find this out by trials in gliding would be slow and
expensive. They adopted a better way—the wind-tunnel method,
wherein small-scale models were tested and compared for efficiency
in a blast of air. They made their wind tunnel 16 in. in diameter and
created a powerful air blast through it by means of an engine-driven
fan. Small models of wings were placed in the center of this confined
air blast, mounted on a balance arm which projected into the tunnel
from the outside. The air forces and efficiency of the models were
thus measured. A large variety of shapes were tested and one was
selected as best of all from the standpoint of curvature and rounded
wing tips. This shape was adopted in their flyer, and though on a
much larger scale fulfilled the predictions made for its efficiency in
the indoor wind-tunnel experiments.
The Wright glider was, of course, a biplane model. They tested a
small 6-in. model biplane and found that the two wings together were
less efficient than either wing by itself. However, other
considerations, such as rigidity of trussing, decided them to adopt
the biplane rather than a monoplane arrangement.
Low Resistance to Forward Motion.—The Wrights used their
wind tunnel also in choosing for the struts of their airplane a shape
which would present least head resistance to forward motion. They
found that a square strut had a resistance which could be decreased
by changing the shape to resemble a fish. The resistance of the pilot
himself was decreased by making him lie prone, face downward on
the bottom wing.
Propeller Efficiency.—Although little data on the subject of
propeller efficiency was available to the Wrights, they were able to
arrive at a very creditable design wherein two propellers were used,
driven from a single motor, and rotating one each side of the pilot.
The mechanical difficulties which have since embarrassed the use of
two propellers were less with the Wrights because they were dealing
with smaller horsepowers than are in use today; they therefore were
able to realize a very high propeller efficiency.
Motor.—When the Wrights were ready to apply a motor to their
glider, they found it impossible to secure one light enough, and had
to set about building one themselves. They adopted a four-cylinder
type, water-cooled, and their aim was to save weight and
complication wherever possible. Their first motor gave about 12 hp.,
which was raised to a higher and higher figure by subsequent
improvements until it reached 20 hp. In its earliest stages it was able
to give sufficient power for short horizontal flights.
Means of Starting and Landing.—One reason the Wrights could
use such low horsepower was that they employed auxiliary starting
apparatus to get up original speed. They knew that less horsepower
was necessary to fly an airplane after it was once in the air than was
necessary to get it into the air at the start, and they therefore rigged
up a catapult which projected their airplane forward on a rolling
carriage with great force at the start, so that all the motor had to do
was to maintain the flight in air. The Wright airplane had at first no
landing wheels, and was provided only with light skids on which it
could make a decent landing. Present-day airplanes, of course, have
wheels on which to roll both at starting and at landing and their
motors are powerful enough to eliminate the necessity for a starting
catapult.
 (Courtesy American Technical Society and Scientific American Supplement.)

Fig. 5.—Details of Bleriot XI monoplane.

Bleriot’s Contribution to Aviation.—Bleriot experimented a great

many years before he attained success and did so years after the
Wrights had successfully flown. But when he did obtain success, his
great ingenuity produced features of design which were a decided
step forward. He added a body to the airplane and produced a
machine which instead of being a pair of wings with various
appendages, was a body to which wings were attached, giving a
more shipshape and convenient arrangement. The motor, instead of
being located beside the pilot as in the Wright machine, was put in
the very front of the body ahead of the pilot where it was not likely to
fall on him in case of a smash. This location of the motor entailed the
use of a single propeller at the front, a “tractor” screw as it was
called, less efficient than the double propeller of the Wrights, but
better from the standpoint of mechanical convenience. The body of a
Bleriot, which was quite similar to the body of any bird in its general
arrangement, projected to the rear in a tapering form and carried at
the rear a rudder and elevator. The motor, pilot and tanks were thus
enclosed within the body and away from the wind. Bleriot’s
contributions were then, better location of the motor, adaptation of
the body or “fuselage,” elimination of the front elevator and
substitution of the rear elevator.
Nieuport and Fokker’s Contribution to Aviation.—A further
advance on Bleriot’s design was made by Nieuport and later by
Fokker. The former utilized the fuselage principle of Bleriot and
enclosed the whole framework, front and back, to give a stream-line
form, and even went so far as to make wind-tunnel experiments from
which he was able to choose a very efficient fuselage shape as well
as wing and strut efficiency.
 (From Hayward’s “Practical Aeronautics.”)
Fig. 6.—Nieuport monoplane.
Representing an advance in speed, due to covered stream-line body.
 CHAPTER II
TYPES OF MILITARY AIRPLANES AND THEIR
USES

Modern Airplanes Combining Best Features of Previous

Experiments.—The modern airplane, of which the Curtiss training
machine used at the U. S. Aviation Schools is typical, is a
combination of the best features referred to above. It is of the biplane
type for, as shown by Chanute, rigid trussing is thus possible, an
advantage sufficient to offset the slight loss of efficiency which exists
in the biplane. The landing gear consists of two wheels provided with
shock absorbers; the body is of the general stream-line type,
enclosed from front to back, containing comfortable seats for the
passengers and enclosing the motor and tanks away from the wind.
The motor is at the front where, in an accident, it will not be on top of
the pilot. The warping effect is obtained by hinging flaps at the wing
tips, the same effect being obtained while at the same time leaving
the whole wing structure rigid and strong rather than flexible and
weak, as was the case in the early warping type of machines.
Military Airplanes of Today.—In the modern airplane, therefore,
we see that matters of efficiency, to which the Wrights gave great
attention, have been sacrificed in favor of convenience, particularly
in favor of power and speed. This is the effect of military demands
for airplanes where power, speed, and ability to climb fast are vital
requirements. To escape from or to destroy an enemy, high speed
and ability to climb fast are, of course, prerequisites. Moreover, from
the standpoint of safety in maneuvering it is desirable to have a
reserve of power and speed. Therefore, the design of military
machines has tended in a given direction up to the present.
New considerations have arisen on this account, such as for
instance the question of landing. Fast machines in general make
high-speed landings, and are for that reason dangerous. The original
Wright machines were built to land at such a slow speed that
ordinary skids were sufficient to take the shocks. Nowadays the
high-powered airplane is likely to come to grief in landing more than
at any other time. The question of stability in flight has of recent
years been treated mathematically and experimentally, using of
course the fundamental system of “three axes control” first applied
by the Wrights. It has been found that by properly proportioning the
tail surfaces and properly arranging the wings and center of gravity,
any desired degree of stability may be obtained, such that a machine
may be made almost self-flying or, if preferred, may be made very
sensitive.
All of the above features of design have had consideration in the
latest types of military airplanes. Observe the high speed of the
latest speed scouts, where power is concentrated exclusively on
speed and climbing ability and landing speed is dangerously high.
We see the advent of the triplane scout, which is an attempt to
secure slow landing speed combined with high flying speed. We see
machines with the motor and propeller in the rear, or with two
motors, one to each side of the body out in the wings, the object
being to avoid interference of the propeller with the range of gun fire.
In short, we see the effect of many military considerations on the
design of the airplane. It will be interesting at this point to survey
what are these military uses of the airplane.
Aerial Fighting.—Fighting in the air is the most spectacular use to
which military airplanes have been put. The first requirements in a
fighting airplane are speed and climbing ability and these must be
obtained at all costs, because speed and climb are weapons of
defense and offense second only in value to the gun itself. The
concentration of motive power for speed and climb requires that as
little weight as possible be used; and therefore the fastest fighters
are designed to carry only one person and are very light and of
course very small. It is usual to have one gun fixed to the body and
firing through the propeller in the case of a tractor, and a second
adjustable aim gun pointing upwards over the top wing. This gives
the pilot a chance to fire a round at the enemy while “sitting on his
tail” or following from behind; and then when diving below the enemy
the second gun is available for shooting overhead. These very high-
speed fighters are difficult to land, due to their speed, and are
suitable only for the highest-trained pilots.
Directing Artillery Fire.—The friendly airplane is sent out over
the enemy’s positions, soars above the target, sends back signals by
wireless to the friendly battery regarding the effect of fire; practically
dictating the success of artillery operations.
Reconnaissance.—The friendly airplanes go out, usually in
squads for the sake of protection, and observe by means of
photographs or vision size of enemy troops, batteries, trenches, lines
of communication, etc.; report the situation to headquarters as a
source of daily photographic record of the operations of the enemy,
to such an extent that any change of the enemy’s position can be
analyzed. Of course the value of reconnaissance is lessened when
the enemy disguises his gun emplacements, etc. In reconnaissance
machines it is important to have two persons, one to steer and the
other to scan the countryside. The reconnaissance machine is
therefore a two-place type which may or may not have armament. It
need not be so fast, especially when convoyed by fighting speed
scouts. The two-place machines are frequently used for fighting, in
which case the pilot will have a gun fixed to the body and shooting
through the propeller, and the passenger, especially in German
machines, will also have a gun mounted in the turret so that it may
be shot in a variety of directions by the passenger.
Bomb Dropping.—This maneuver requires squad flights to be of
great value. The fundamental characteristic of a bombing airplane is
its ability to carry great weight. Such machines are of comparatively
large size and not particularly fast. Weight carrying is of course
incompatible with speed and climbing ability and therefore the
bombing machine must be a compromise if it is to have any
reasonable speed. It may be said that airplanes compare very
unfavorably with dirigible balloons for bomb raids because the latter
are able to carry several tons of bombs as against the airplane’s
quarter of a ton.
 Locating Submarines.—For coast patrol or submarine spotting,
the airplane is an important factor, for from an airplane it is possible
to see for a considerable depth into the water, and to locate hostile
submarines.
Training Student Aviators.—The training machine on which
prospective aviators secure their flying instruction may be
considered as a type in which great speed and power is not
essential, but in which reliability and ease of control is desirable. The
typical military training airplane in this country is a single-motor
tractor of moderate horsepower (about 100) having of course the
seats in tandem and furnished with dual control so that operation
may be from either pilot’s or passenger’s seat. The dual-control
system of training which prevails in this country differs from the
French method of starting the pupil out alone to try his wings; it
enables the pilot to keep a constant eye upon the pupil’s control
manipulations and to correct them instantly whenever they are in
error before any damage is done. A possible improvement in the
dual-control training machine will be the substitution of side by side
seats for tandem seats. At present, communication is difficult due to
the great noise of the motor; but with the adoption of side by side
seats such as is used in naval training schools, the pilot and pupil
will be able to communicate to better advantage.
 Fig. 7.—U. S. training airplane, dual control (Curtiss JN-4).
Speed 43 to 72 mi. per hr.; climbing ability 300 ft. per min.; 90 h.p.; weight fully
loaded 1,890 lbs.

Types of Airplanes.—To suit the foregoing purposes flying

machines exist in seven distinct different shapes at the present time,
namely: monoplanes, biplanes, triplanes, single-motor tractors,
single-motor pushers, double-motor machines and marine airplanes.
The last four types may be either monoplanes, biplanes or triplanes.
In order to understand the adoption of one or the other type for
military use, it is well to run over the characteristics of the seven
types mentioned.
Monoplanes.—The simplest form of airplane is the monoplane
which is fashioned after the manner of a bird (see Fig. 34). There are
two things to say in favor of the monoplane: first, that the passengers
have an unobstructed view forward and range of gun fire upward
because there is no wing above them; second, the aerodynamic
efficiency of the monoplane is superior to any other type. But when
the bird design is applied to a man-carrying apparatus, it becomes
impracticable to construct spars to take the place of the bird’s wing
bones; and therefore to give the wings proper strength it becomes
necessary to truss them with numerous tension wires stretching from
the running gear out to various portions of the wings. There are also
wires running from a vertical mast above the body to a point on the
top part of the wing; these wires, while they give the wing no added
strength during a flight, are necessary in order that the shock of
landing shall not break the wings off sharp at the shoulder. It is
characteristic of monoplane construction that from a point below the
body and also from a point above the body a number of heavy wires
run outward to various points on the wings; and it may be said that
the strength to be secured from this construction is not all that could
be desired.
Biplanes.—The biplane is an improvement over the monoplane
from the latter standpoint; in the biplane there are two parallel
surfaces separated by vertical sticks or struts, thus forming
parallelograms which are susceptible of being trussed by means of
tension-wire diagonals in a manner familiar and well understood in
case of bridges. It is possible to build up biplane wings of great
rigidity and strength by this system, much more easily than in case of
monoplanes. However, the biplane type is from the standpoint of
efficiency inferior to the monoplane. This is due to the fact that the
vacuum above the bottom wing which is so necessary for high duty
is somewhat interfered with by the upper wing; thus while in a
biplane the upper wing operates about as efficiently as it would
operate in a monoplane, yet the lower wing has its efficiency
materially reduced and the resulting overall efficiency of a biplane
compared area for area with the monoplane is about 85 per cent. as
great. However, recent developments of the airplane have more or
less put efficiency in the background and as a result today the
biplane is more popular than the monoplane. In addition to the
greater strength of biplane wings their span may be less than the
monoplane for the same supporting area. This makes them less
unwieldy. Moreover, for certain reasons a biplane machine of high
speed may be landed at a lower speed than equivalent monoplanes.
Triplanes.—What is true of the biplane is more true in almost
every item of the triplane, that is, it is comparatively strong, compact,
and of low landing speed, but of reduced efficiency.
 Fig. 8.—U. S. speed scout triplane, single seater.
(Curtiss Model S3), 55 to 115 mi. per hr.; climbing ability 900 ft. per min.; 100 h.p.;
weight fully loaded 1,320 lbs.

Single-Motor Tractors.—The single-motor tractor received its

name simply because the propeller is in front and draws the machine
forward; but this location of the propeller necessitates a distinct type
of airplane, wherein the power plant is located at the very nose of the
machine. The tractor type has the pilot and passenger located in or
to the rear of the wings in order that their weight may balance the
weight of the motor. This means that the view and range of fire of the
passengers is obstructed in a forward direction by the wings, and in
machines such as the U. S. training machine, the passenger, who is
practically in the center of the wings, can not look directly upward nor
directly downward. Moreover, as concerns gun fire, the propeller of a
tractor obstructs the range straight ahead. In the tractor the tail is
supported at the rear and on the same body which contains the
motor and passengers; this body constitutes a stream-line housing
for the machinery, seats, etc., and therefore has low wind resistance.
The tractor is a very shipshape design, compact and simple and is at
present the prevailing type on the European war front. However, it
has disadvantages which are only overcome in other types. One of
these disadvantages is of course the obstruction to range of gun fire.
The present practice in fighting airplanes is simply to shoot the gun
straight through the circle of rotation of the propeller on the
assumption that most of the bullets will get through and that those
which hit the shank of the propeller blade will be deflected by proper
armoring. An attempt is made to insure that all the shots will get
through by connecting the gun mechanism mechanically to the motor
shaft in such a way that bullets will be discharged only at the instant
when their path is unobstructed by a propeller blade. This practice is
possible of course only in guns which are fixed immovably to the
airplane.

Fig. 9.—Fuselage diagram, Curtiss “R4” reconnaissance biplane.

Speed 48 to 90 mi. per hr.; climbing ability 400 ft. per min.; 200 h.p.; weight fully
loaded 3,245 lbs.
 Fig. 10.—An American pusher biplane design.
Crew in front, motor and propeller in the rear, tail support on outriggers.

Single-motor Pusher Airplanes.—The pusher type has

popularity because the propeller and motor rotate to the rear of the
passenger, who takes his place in the very front of the body and has
an open range of vision and gun fire downward, upward and
sideways. Another point in favor of the pusher is that the oil and
fumes of the motor do not blow into his face as in the case of the
tractor. The disadvantage of the pusher is that the motor, being
located behind the pilot, will be on top of him in the case of a fall.
Another disadvantage is that the body can not be given its shipshape
stream-line form because to do so will interfere with the rotation of
the propeller. Therefore, the body is abruptly terminated just to the
rear of the wings and it is just long enough to hold the passenger
and the motor, the propeller sticking out behind. The tail surfaces are
then attached to the airplane by means of long outriggers springing
from the wing beams at points sufficiently far from the propeller axis
so as not to interfere with the propeller.
 Fig. 11.—U. S. army battle plane.
Two 100 h.p. motors; speed 85 mi. per hr.

Double-motor Machines.—In order to combine the advantages of

the tractor and pusher types and eliminate their disadvantages, the
double-motor machines have been developed. In these there is no
machinery whatever in the body either in front or back, and the
passengers may take seats at the extreme front as is desirable. The
body then tapers off to the rear in stream-line form and supports the
tail surfaces. The power plants are in duplicate and one is located to
each side of the body out on the wings. It is customary to enclose
each of these two motors in a casing so that the whole power plant
presents a more or less stream-line shape to the wind, the propellers
projecting from the front or rear of these stream-line shapes. It may
be said that in the double-motor airplane it makes very little
difference whether the propeller is in front or behind so that while a
“twin-motor” machine may be more accurately specified as a “twin-
motor pusher” or a “twin-motor tractor,” it is usually sufficient
indication of a machine’s characteristics to call it a twin-motor
machine.
By adopting this twin-motor form we bring in new disadvantages.
One of these is due to the fact that the heavy motors are now
located some distance from the center of gravity of the machine.
This requires stronger supporting members between the motor and
the body. It also makes the lateral control comparatively logy for now
the heavy masses are far from the center of gravity, resisting the
pilot’s efforts to use the lateral control. The second disadvantage in
the twin-motor type results from possible stoppage of either motor. In
this case, of course, the propelling force is some distance off center
and is also reduced to one-half its value requiring energetic exercise
of the control wheel to maintain equilibrium. It is reported, however,
that twin machines can continue to fly and even climb with only one
motor running. In this country the twin-motor type has not developed
as was hoped at first, and on the European firing lines it is not so
numerous as the single-motor tractor type.
Marine Airplanes.—The possibility of mechanical flight having
once been established and wheels having been applied to the
airplane so that it could start from and land on the ground, the logical
next step was to substitute some form of boat for the wheels so that
flights could be made over the water.
Experiments were made in France by M. Fabre in this direction
and in this country by G. H. Curtiss. The latter, in his flight down the
Hudson from Albany to New York, equipped his airplane with a light
float to provide against forced landing in the river. Pursuing this
general idea he made some experiments under the auspices of
Alexander Graham Bell’s Aerial Experiment Association, in which a
canoe was substituted for the wheels, and in which an attempt was
made to start from the surface of the water. Success did not come at
first and this plan gave no satisfaction. Curtiss next turned his
attention to the hydroplane type of boat and made a series of
experiments at San Diego. The hydroplane appeared to be much
better adapted to his purpose than the canoe had been, and he was
able to obtain success.
 Fig. 12.—Thomas Type H. S. seaplane. Double pontoons.
Speed 47 to 82 mi. per hr.; climbing ability 270 ft. per min.; 135 h.p.; weight, fully
loaded 2,600 lbs.
 Fig. 13.—Curtiss Model F flying boat.
Speed 45 to 65 mi. per hr.; climbing ability 150 ft. per min.; 90 h.p.; weight fully
loaded 2,100 lbs.

The Hydro-airplane (or “Seaplane”).—From analogy to the

airplane one might at first imagine that a suitable hydroplane would
have a wide span and fore and aft length; but such proportion would
give a very poor stability on the water, and would require auxiliary
hydroplanes in the same way that an airplane requires auxiliary
guiding surfaces. So Curtiss, with his customary eye for simplicity
and convenience, adopted a type of hydroplane which had the
general proportions of an ordinary boat, i.e., was long and narrow,
thus obviating the necessity of auxiliary hydroplanes at the tail of the
machine. To prevent the machine’s tipping over sidewise, “wing
pontoons” were attached at the lower wing tips to prevent capsizing.
Fig. 14.—Building a flying boat hull.
Note wing stumps and hydroplane fins.