‘Pius Seamus': Heaney's Appropriation of Aeneas’s Descent to the Underworld

In his essay ‘Mossbawn via Mantua’, Seamus Heaney turns to James Joyce to point out how Joyce’s wanderings in Europe allowed him to ‘establish conditions where his writing could more easily restore a sense of novelty and freshness to old and familiar objects. From the viewing deck of Europe ordinary Irish things were presented and represented to the mind in an unusual way’. ¹ Referring to Joyce’s experience, Heaney suggests that it is possible for a modern writer both to re-define his or her identity and to review ‘the Irish homeground […] in the light of certain European perspectives — classical, medieval and modern’. ² Thus, the classics are one of Heaney’s favoured observation points from which he is able to ‘get a closer view of [the Irish] ground by standing back from it’. ³ Among the great voices of antiquity, Heaney resorts to Virgil in particular (as the title of the poet’s essay makes clear) to reassess his Irishness.