(Page numbers given refer to Collected Poems: Derek Mahon [CP]: The Gallery Press, 1999)
Poem Title |
Original Publication |
CP Page no |
82 |
The Mute Phenomena |
The Snow Party,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975 (The poem was simply given the title ‘After Nerval’ in the original publication.) |
Length / Form |
Fourteen lines, as in Nerval’s sonnet, but the meter is irregular. |
Allusion to Classical figure |
Pythagoras |
Allusion to Classical place |
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Relationship to Classical text |
Following Nerval, Mahon’s poem alludes to the ‘Golden Verses’ (vers dorés) attributed to Pythagoras and, specifically, the supposedly Pythagorean tenet, rendered in French as ‘tout est sensible’ (‘Everything is susceptible’, in Mahon’s version). However, Nerval is actually quoting from Delisle de Sale’s De la Philosophie de la Nature (1977) and specific notions attributed to Pythagoras therein. (As noted in G. le Breton, ‘Le pythagorisme de Nerval et la source des ‘Vers dorés’. La Tour Saint-Jacques 13-14 (janvier-avril 1958), p.79-87. See also ch.8 of F. Burwick, Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination. The Pennsylvania University Press, 1996) |
Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts |
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Classical/post-Classical intertexts |
The poem is a very free interpretation of Gérard de Nerval’s ‘Vers dorés’, from the sonnet sequence Les Chimères (1854, appended to the short story collection Les filles du feu). |
Further Comment |
Nerval’s theme chimes with the ecological concerns which run through The Snow Party and with Mahon’s sense of the transient ‘man-made’ world encroaching, temporarily, on the natural order. Consequently, his reworking is far more scathing and cautionary than the French source. |
Further Analysis |
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