SOURCE: Duytschaever, Joris. “History in the Poetry of Derek Mahon.” In History and Violence in Anglo-Irish Literature, edited by Joris Duytschaever and Geert Lernout, pp. 97-110. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988.

In the following essay, Duytschaever applies Walter Benjamin's literary theory to Mahon's poetry and his attitude toward history. Duytschaever sees in both Benjamin and Mahon an ambivalence toward history and the transcendence of art.

Although Derek Mahon has been rising toward major status during the last decade both as a poet and as a translator, his relatively small poetic output still deserves a wider international audience. Critical attention has not exactly been scant, but the problem is that some of the best criticism has appeared in small Irish periodicals or in Irish newspapers which are not readily accessible abroad¹, while some of the worst criticism is easily available on the stacks of our libraries. Robert Hogan's splenetic and schoolmasterly entry...