The Northern Irish poet Derek Mahon published in 1982 a version of Gerard de Nerval's sonnet sequence Les Chimares, Nerval's best-known work both inside and outside France. In the English-speaking world there is a tradition of translating this sequence which began with the symbolist poet Arthur Symons. In this tradition Nerval is presented as a strange bohemian, a 'fol délicieux', or as a type of poète maudit? Mahon's text does not allude in any way to this tradition, or to the quotation of Nerval by English-language poets like Eliot in The Waste Land. Instead it appears as a fresh translation aimed at a public unfamiliar with Nerval. But there is another tradition which Mahon's Irish public would recognize, and this is the wealth of translations and Versions' which Irish poets publish as part of the body of their work...