derek walcott essay

7/25/2019 Derek Walcott Essay

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Derek Walcott has studied the conflict between the heritage of European and West

Indian culture, the long way from slavery to independence, and his own role as a nomad

between cultures. "For every poet it is always morning in the world, and istory aforgotten insomniac night. . . . !he fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite

of istory." In these words from his ##$ %obel &ecture, poet and playwright Derek

Walcott gives voice to a concern that is not only highly visible thematically in hise'pansive body of work, but also central to his life and thought( the tension between

istory and the here)and)now te'ture of the *aribbean world into which he was born. is

poetic oeuvre can be seen as the chorus of many languages and many cultures, and as theproduct of a peculiar set of historical circumstances that made the small island of +aint

&ucia in the *aribbean the unlikely birthplace and home of perhaps the preeminent poet

writing in the English language today.

Walcotts widespread recognition as a poet came with I% - /EE% %I!0#123. It manifested his primary aims( to create a literature truthful to the West Indian

life. In !E F4/!5%-!E !/-6E&&E/ 0#73 and 8ID+588E/ 0#723 Walcott

e'plored his own situation as a black writer in -merica, who has become estranged from

his *aribbean homeland. !he very titles of such books as *-+!-W-9 0#1:3 and !E5&F 0#1#3 referred to his feelings of artistic isolation and alienation. +t. &ucia, where

he was born, belongs to a belt of French)speaking islands. Walcott himself is a nativeEnglish speaker and bilingual in also speaking *reole, the language of the rural areas.

Walcott;s has called himself "a mulatto of style." is most ambitious work is

considered the epic poem 48E/4+ 0##ects are

sufferings of e'ile and the contemporary *aribbean life. !he task of the bard is sing of

lost lives and a new hope. !he 4dyssean figure of +habine in ;!he +chooner Flight;e'presses his rage against racism and re>ection of colonial culture( "I;m >ust a red nigger

who love the sea, ? I had a sound colonial education, ? I have Dutch, nigger and English inme, ? and either I;m nobody, or I;m a nation."@- Far *ry from -frica,A 0#1$3 focuses on Walcott;s racial and cultural

consternation. !he poem highlights the parado'ical problem of recogniBing the individual

cultural components of one;s heritage without compromising the singular identity thattheir mi'ture creates. !he poet maintains @I who am poisoned with the blood of

both?Where shall I turn, divided to the veinCA !his severely pessimistic image illustrates a

conseuence of displacement isolation. Walcott feels foreign in both cultures due to his

lack of @pureA blood. -n individual;s sense of identity arises from cultural influenceswhich define his or her character according to a particular society;s standards. !he poet;s

hybrid heritage prevents him from identifying directly with one culture and creates a

feeling of isolation. !he title of the poem emphasiBes Walcott;s cultural instability as itimplies a type of alienation from -frica, despite its concentration on -frican themes.

Walcott was born in #< on the island of +t. &ucia, the posthumous child of a

civil servant and a schoolteacher, and the descendent of two white grandfathers and twoblack grandmothers. !hough his first language was a French)English patois, he received

an English education, an apprenticeship in language that his mother supported by reciting

English poetry at home and by e'posing her children to the European classics at an early

age. In "What the !wilight +ays," an autobiographical essay published in #G


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writes of the two worlds that informed his childhood( "*olonials, we began with this

malarial enervation( that nothing could ever be built among these rotting shacks,

barefooted backyards and moulting shingles that being poor, we already had the theaterof our lives. In that simple schiBophrenic boyhood one could lead two lives( the interior

life of poetry, and the outward life of action and dialect." Walcotts art arises from this

schiBophrenic situation, from a struggle between two cultural heritages, which he hasharnessed to create a uniue "creoliBed" style. is early poetry booklets, published in the

late #2ect matter.Hetween #12 and #G he published four volumes, which continued his

e'ploration and e'pansion of traditional forms, and which increasingly concernedthemselves with position of the poet in the postcolonial world. @!he *astawayA and

@4ther =oemsA 0#123 draws on the figure of /obinson *rusoe to suggest the isolation of

the artist. "-s a West Indian," Jatie Kones suggest, "the poet can be seen as a castawayfrom both his ancestral cultures, -frican and European, stemming from both, belonging

to neither. !o salve this split, Walcott creates a castaway who is also a new -dam L

whose task is to name his world. Walcotts castaway is a poet who creates and gives

meaning to nothingness." *oping with internal division remains a concern in @!he ulf,Awhich calls on the body of water separating +t. &ucia from the 5nited +tate as a metaphor

for the breach between the poet and all he loves, between his adult consciousness and

childhood memories, between his international interests and the feeling of community inhis homeland. Walcott e'plored these themes again in @-nother &ife,A a book)length

autobiographical poem that e'amines the important roles of poetry, memory, and

historical consciousness in bridging the distances within the postcolonial psyche.!his investigation transferred to his dramatic writings in the #G


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with a serious sub>ect humorously that of the problems faced by society worldwide.

owever, like the +poiler, the +addhu is ignored and misunderstood in society. !he

themes and issues dealt with are similar to those e'plored in @!he +poilers /eturn.A@&aventilleA recogniBes a continued European influence and counters that

influence by connecting with *aribbean and -frican pasts, constructing identity across a

black -tlantic through the discovery of what has been hidden. !he poem states a purposeand preoccupation the recognition that something has been lost, but the inability to

recover that elusive thing. !hroughout the poem, Walcott depicts the nearly indescribable

poverty in the *aribbean through lush imagery. !he speaker of the poem repeatedly callsattention to the nebulous uality of what he feels and the poverty)stricken people about

whom he speaks, @+omething inside is laid wide like a wound.A !he poet recogniBes that

something is missing and that the *aribbean people have lost their life, religion, and

culture. !he @deep amnesiac blowA prevents the *aribbean people from recovering ahistory that has resisted re)telling.

Walcotts poetry also e'amined the role of poetry through a continuing

e'amination of the relation of life to art. 8uch of his poetry reflects the tensions between

his role as an educator at a mainland institution and as a poet from a small island nation.Hut even before Walcott began spending most of the year away from the West Indies, his

e'perience as transient international poet, called to read and lecture around the world, hadsupplied his poetry with images of painful departures and the guilty homecomings. In the

title poem of @+ea rapes,A for instance, 4dysseus is portrayed as a divided man, who

finds himself both a husband going home and an adulterer unable to forget his trespasses.Walcotts works from the #7


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colonial legacy, the fragmentation of *aribbean identity, and the role of the poet in

addressing these concerns.

+ince winning the %obel =riBe, Walcott has continued to write prolifically,producing a new epic poem, @!he Hounty,A in ##$ and, more recently, a collection of

poems entitled @!iepolos ounds,A which e'amines the life and art of impressionist

painter *amille =issarro. In these works, he continues to e'plore the comple' legacy ofcolonialism with a poetic vision that recogniBes the range of traditions comprising his

beloved West Indies, and with a poetic voice that harmoniBes the discord between the

English canon and his native dialect.It is important to understand how Walcotts personal background influenced his

artistic perspective and his uest for a *aribbean aesthetic. e fills his verse with

ruminations on the nature of memory and the creative imagination, the history, politics

and landscape of the West Indies, his own life and loves, and his enduring awareness oftime and death.

derek walcott essay

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