- Music
- 10 Sep 15
His translation of Aeneid: Book VI arrives next March.
Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney passed away just over two years ago but this morning brings news that a previously unreleased work by the Derry literary giant will surface in 2016.
Heaney's translation of Aeneid: Book VI by the Roman poet Virgil, will be published by Faber in March.
The translation of the text, which concerns Aeneas' journey into the underworld, was undertaken following the death of Heaney's father in 1986. He continued to work on it over the decades, finally sitting down to finish the work in 2007.
Speaking on behalf of the Heaney family, Catherine Heaney said:
"Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid was a touchstone for my father, and one to which he would return time and time again throughout his life. This translation is the result of work and revisions carried out by him over many years – from the 1980s to the month before his death – and the decision to publish it was one our family took after long and careful consideration. However, given its theme of Aeneas’s search for his father in the afterlife, it would be hard to think of a more poignant way for us to mark the end of our father’s own poetic journey."
There will also be a limited edition published, with accompanying works by the artist Jan Hendrix, published by the Bonnefant Press of Banholt.