THE TRANSLATIONS OF SEAMUS HEANEY

edited by Marco Sonzogni

Editor Marco Sonzogni draws together Seamus Heaney’s prize-winning book-length translations as well as the many individual poems and poets he translated over the course of his writing life.

Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf (1999) was hailed as a masterpiece, alerting readers to his extraordinary ability to tune into other poets and languages and render their work fresh and alive in his own voice. In fact, as this volume attests, from the very beginning translation informed over 50 years of Heaney’s critical and creative output, to which the posthumous publication of his translation of Virgil’s Aeneid Book VI (2016) made a fitting epilogue.

Heaney not only translated classic works of Latin and Old English but also a great number of poems from Spanish, Romanian, Dutch, Russian, German, Scottish Gaelic, Czech, classical and modern Greek, modern and Middle French, medieval and modern Italian, and more - brought together for the first time in this magisterial volume.

‘A huge book, an immense book. Such adventure and variety, such industry, such subjugation of self.’ Michael Hofmann, TLS