Born on the Orkney island of Wyre in 1887, Edwin Muir settled in various
parts of Europe during the first half of the twentieth century - from
Glasgow, to Austria and Czechoslovakia throughout to 1920s, 1930s and
again after the war. Muir's poetry bears oblique witness to the most
traumatic years and events of this century, and is haunted by the
symbolic 'fable' which he longed to find beneath the surface 'story' of
mere events, as he came to terms with his own nature amidst the terror
and confusion of the European maelstrom. As Seamus Heaney has written:
'Muir's poetic strength revealed itself in being able to co-ordinate the
nightmare of history with that place in himself where he had trembled
with anticipation...His simultaneous at-homeness and abroadness is
exemplary.'