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(a ‘home from home’, i.e. country house, holiday cottage). An island of peace in
contrast to tormented Belfast.
His tusculanum, leads on to the next two chapters, which discuss the pres¬
ence and meaning of pastoral poetry, first in Montague’s The Rough Field and
then in Heaney’s version of a pastoral, the ‘Glanmore Sonnets’. Since Virgil’s
eclogues, the pastoral tradition has turned to the idyll of peaceful life in times
of threat of violence. Pastoral scenes are places of the mind in contrast to the
real ones that had fallen victim to the devastations of war. Idylls, so to say,
bear a political message of resistance.
The penultimate essay examines how the radical appearance of otherness
and elsewhere in Mahon’s poems offer an approach to the question of place
in Northern Ireland, as also does Montague’s poetic transgressions of bound¬
aries. These two essays, while providing a conclusion to the profound research
carried out in the book, also open it up for further considerations regarding
the four emblematic poets treated here or even beyond their generation.
The double merit of Péter Dolmanyos’s set of essays is their firm structure
and the impressive amount of up-to-date literature that support his argu¬
ment. The external eye, since, after all, he is conducting his research in Hun¬
gary, will hopefully provide readers of this book with new perspectives.
Győző Ferencz
Executive President of Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts