SOURCE: Pikoulis, John. “Louis MacNeice in the Thirties: The Minute after the Minute after the Minute after.” Irish University Review 21, no. 1 (spring-summer 1991): 130-46.

In the following essay, Pikoulis surveys the poems written by MacNeice in the 1930s, observing that they contain numerous uses of alliteration, follow a rhythmical and repetitive syntax, and incorporate themes of life, Christianity, and humanity's purpose.

Louis MacNeice wrote very consciously at the end of an era. “We shall go down like palaeolithic man / Before some new Ice Age or Genghiz Khan,” he predicts in “An Eclogue for Christmas”; “It is time for some new coinage, people have got so old.” The resources he brought to meet this historical crisis were several: memory (recalling all that has been achieved against the gathering dark), a relish of individuality as a measure of integrity, humility and a savouring of the moment. The strongest of these is...