In Mahon’s poem The Hunt by Night

 Derek Mahon is widely regarded as one of the

most talented and innovative Irish poets of the late
20th century

 voluntarily leaved his native Belfast

 explores themes of isolation, loneliness, and

alienation in his poetry

 the figures through whom Mahon chooses to

represent himself are often figures of exile,
Romantic outsiders (Brown, 196), or displaced
Modernists (Dawe,221):
 Mahon’s work throughout the 1970s, ‘80s and
‘90s was widely praised for the intensity and
grimness of its gaze

 Focusing on the artist’s alienation from society,

Mahon continually seemed to question the role
of art in a corrupt and modern world
 Courtyards in Delft (1981) and The Hunt by Night
(1982) are volumes that resume the topics of war,
loss and decline

 The Hunt by Night was published three years after

the release of Mahon’s first volume of collected
works

 focuses in part on the dark, uncivilized side of

human nature

 This feeling of curiosity, this exploration of the

other world of foreign cultures
 Mahon says that as a child he started observing objects a lot.
He had no siblings, his father was a devout follower of the
protestant work ethic at the shipyard in Belfast, and his
mother was busy with housework most of the times.

 This is when Mahon became a “strange child with a taste

for verse (96)”. Instead of being involved with other humans
as a young child, he started observing animation in the
objects around him- “the way the light falls from the
window onto the kitchen tap and interacts with the cold
water”

 To disconnect oneself from the human community and to

start connecting with the inanimate world by locating
animation in it is a really unique kind of perspective shift.
 Mahon expects his readers to be visually
sensitive and observant of the various
intricacies of perspective, light, colors,
shadows, textures and frames; all of which
contribute to the production of meaning in art
(York 132)

 For Mahon, the world is a stage, a painting, a

construction site from where he moves in and
out at various points in a masterly poetic dance
 The Hunt by Night contains his handling of
stanzas from Rimbaud's "Bateau ivre” ("The
Drunken Boat”), a 100-line verse-poem written in
1871

 there are two long, unfolding sentences

 in each stanza, the lines first gradually lengthen

and then shorten, like a wave form

-> art is not static but is rather an “event” which is

organic, open and semantically fluid
 the title poem was inspired by 15th-century
Florentine artist Paolo Uccello’s painting of the
same name
 This painting is considered to be a watershed
moment in the development of perspective,
depth and dimensionality in Western art
during the early years of the Renaissance.

 The painting literally showcases a move from

two dimensions to three as the paltry two
dimensional hunters gradually start gaining
depth as they move towards the central
darkness of the forest in the painting where the
alleged prey is hiding
 A painting is a carefully thought out
interpretation of a collection of visual signs
gathered from the world (Gupta 3)

3 layers:
 the visual content-in-itself,

 the painter’s interpretation of it,

 Mahon’s poetic coating over these two layers.

 Mahon’s engagement with art creates an
interesting poetic event

 The experience of reading this poem is like

walking in an art gallery with Mahon as a tour
guide doling out cryptic poetic interpretations
to the reader who must work his way through
this maze like exercise of perspective building.
 The Hunt by Night

• evokes the much older cave paintings and their

juxtaposition of art and killing
 Modernity involved; changes
 Uccello’s aristocratic hunters of the 15th century
 the painer’s perspective
 concerned with a sense of “we” a first person plural
 talking about the contemporary generation
 Critical point of view; conflict transformation instead of conflict
management or resolution in peacemaking
Mahon’s poem crystallizes an entire history of art
around this motif of hunting in visual
representations as it charts its growth from cave
paintings ‘flickering shades..in a cave’ to Uccello’s
aristocratic hunters of the 15th century who are
‘rampant to pageantry’ and finally to similar scenes
sanitized on nursery walls in the modern world
where ‘ancient fears mutated to play/horses to rocking
horses/tamed and framed’ (Mahon 133).
 The poetic event created is the arrangement of
signs without one but various threads running
through them, connecting/disconnecting them in
multiple ways, defying a human’s wretched rage
for a singularity of order.

Mahon in fact mocks that ‘wretched rage for

order’.
 the use of EKPHRASIS (a literary description
of or commentary on a visual work of art) in
order to grant access to a worldview of ever
shifting perspective to his readers
 Conflict transformation theme
 intermingling of multiple perspectives, the play
of perspective
 meaning-making art : coming together of
author, text, context and reader
Gupta, Anuj. ‘A mile from where you chatter, s omebody screams’-
DEREK MAHON AND THE PLAY OF PERSPECTIVE IN
NORTHERN IRISH POETRY. St. Stephens College,
University of Delhi.
Mahon, Derek. New Collected Poems. County Meath: Gallery, 2011.
Print.
York, Richard. "Derek Mahon and the Visual Arts." The Poetry of
Derek Mahon. By Elmer Kennedy Andrews. Gerrards Cross,
Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 2002. N. pag. Print.

 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/jan/14/poetry
 http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/hunt.html
 https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/modern-ireland-in-100-
artworks-1982-the-hunt-by-night-by-derek-mahon-1.2549808