Dáin do Eimhir = Poems to Eimhir

by Christopher Whyte, Christopher Whyte (Editor)

Written mostly during the 1930s, this collection contains 48 love poems addressing a universal 'eimhir', or woman. At the heart of the poems is a sense of lamentation for lost love and opportunity yet they are also sharply political.

Genres: Poetry

295 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Christopher Whyte (Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin) is a Scottish poet, novelist, translator and critic. He is a novelist in English, a poet in Scottish Gaelic, the translator into English of Marina Tsvetaeva, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Rainer Maria Rilke, and an innovative and controversial critic of Scottish and international literature. His work in Gaelic also appears under the name Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin.

Whyte was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in October 1952, educated there by Jesuits at St Aloysius College, and took the English studies tripos at Pembroke College, Cambridge between 1970 and 1973. He spent most of the next 12 years in Italy, teaching under Agostino Lombardo in the Department of English and American Studies at Rome's La Sapienza university from 1977 to 1985.

Whyte first published some translations of modern poetry into Gaelic, including poems by Konstantinos Kavafis, Yannis Ritsos and Anna Akhmatova. He then published two collections of original poetry in Gaelic, Uirsgeul (Myth), 1991 and An Tràth Duilich (The Difficult Time), 2002. In the meantime he started to write prose in English and has published four novels, Euphemia MacFarrigle and The Laughing Virgin (1995), The Warlock of Strathearn (1997), The Gay Decameron (1998) and The Cloud Machinery (2000).

In 2002, Whyte won a Scottish Research Book of the Year award for his edition of Sorley Maclean's Dàin do Eimhir (Poems to Eimhir), published by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies. He has also compiled some anthologies of present-day Gaelic poetry and written critical articles and essays.

Reviews

[Eilidh Fyfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

u are a beauty somhairle

[Raven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maclean is widely heralded as Skye's great poet of the 20th century, and one of the most powerful voices writing natively in a Celtic language. Fans of Irish and Scottish myth and culture will find familiar themes thrumming beneath the surface of his verse, but he's a modern poet and writes about war, Communism, political philosophy, and being torn between love of one's land, romantic love, and the desire to serve one's country. I'm glad that during the year it took me to slowly work my way through all the poems in Gaidhlig that I read "Homage to Catalonia" for context on his struggle about the Spanish Civil War... he didn't go, but he badly wanted to. The loveliness of his work has the bloom rubbed off in places by gender role assumptions and connections that I'm not particularly fond of, but I will forgive much for thoughtful work steeped in a Celtic worldview and alluding to places I've been and legends I know.

[Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite poets,and if you can get around the dual language aspect,it's very good.
I like to hear his work as spoken poetry,and I find it helps to know the cadence that he uses,but I just love his work.

[Katherine Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, just beautiful.

I would honestly rate his work amongst Donne and Shakespeare, the emotion that just one of his four line poems evokes is unbelievable.