Description

Original softback. Limited Edition. Excellent Condition.

Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish,

Seamus Heaney

Sweeney Astray is Seamus Heaney’s version of Buile Suibhne, one of the major achievements in the canon of medieval literature. The story centres on the fate of Sweeney, the king of Dal-Arie in Ulster, who was cursed by saint, turned into a bird, and driven astray for years until the curse was fulfilled by his death. The story itself is rich in incident and implication but it also forms the setting for some of the most vivid and poignant poetry in the European tradition. ‘We have to go to King Lear,’ Seamus Heaney writes in his Introduction, ‘to find poetry as piercingly exposed to the beauties and severities of the natural world.’

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Derry: Field Day 1983

ISBN Hbk 0946755035

ISBN Sbk 0946755043