In a recent conversation with Seamus Heaney, I made the point that after Roy Foster’s monumental biography of Yeats, any further efforts at biography had been well and truly silenced. The advent of Bill McCormack’s book, Blood Kindred, made me think again.
Source: https://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/the-fascist-leanings-of-w-b-yeats-25976745.html
Can you help me with understanding the meaning of the bolded passage? Is the meaning that Foster’s biography is so great and brilliant that any next try to write a new biography would hardly overcome the one written by Foster? If so, why the past perfect (“had been well and truly silenced”) is used?
Answer
The conversation took place in the past. The writer is using reported speech (“I made the point that…”). When using reported (indirect) speech, tenses are shifted back so that e.g. past simple (e.g. “were silenced”) in the original speech, about a past event, becomes past perfect progressive (“had been silenced”). Consider: The mayor says “I was stupid to believe that the bridge would be finished on time”. The next day, a newspaper says “The mayor said that he had been stupid to believe that the bridge would be finished on time”.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : bart-leby , Answer Author : Michael Harvey
