Fans of the late Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney are in for a treat with news that new work by the much loved poet - a translation of the Aeneid’s Book VI - is to be published next year.
His family and publisher Faber & Faber revealed this morning that the surprise new work will be released in March 2016.
Heaney, who passed away two years ago aged 74, was regarded as Ireland's best poet since Yeats. From his seminal collection, Death of Naturalist, his works were loved the world over and many of his most popular works were translations including The Testament of Cresseid and his best-selling version of Beowulf.
The book sees Virgil tell of Aeneas’s journey to the underworld. The hero meets a Sibyl (female oracle) who tells him he must find the fabled “golden bough” before Charon will ferry him across the river Styx to meet his father.
His daughter Catherine today 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"
She added " 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."
According to his publishers, Book VI captivated Heaney as a schoolboy, but it took on a special significance for the poet after the death of his own father in 1986, when he began translating and publishing passages from it.
In 2008 he told the poet Dennis O'Driscoll that Aeneas's venture into the underworld had been "a constant presence" for him.
The book will be published by Faber & Faber in March 2016.
