Construction of Identity in Derek Walcott’s laureate speech and poems
“Poetry
is finer and more philosophical than History; for poetry expresses the
universal, and history only the particular,” once stated the Greek philosopher
Aristotle. Derek Walcott has explored a variety of themes and ideas in his
plays and poetry. Of note, however, is the emphasis which Walcott places on not
only the History of the Caribbean but the construction of the identity of the
Caribbean person. The Nobel Prize in Literature 1992 was awarded to Derek
Walcott "for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a
historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment". Derek
Walcott’s laureate speech reflect the construction of the Caribbean identity as
expressed in a number of his poems.
The
construction of the Caribbean identity begins with acknowledgment and
acceptance of the past. Construction means the action of building something
and comes from the latin word construee which means to heap together.
Walcott demonstrates in his poetry that before the ‘heaping’ can begin, we must
make peace with our past. We must accept our history and all that it was
because it has made us into who we are today- as a people. He shows that he has
not always valued the stage we are at but eventually, he has come to realize
the value of what we have become. We have become this beautiful ‘melting pot’ because
of our history- the slaves, indian indentured laborers,sino- and arab
indentured labourers, etc and their singular as well as collective experiences.
Walcott realizes that the ‘groan’ of History is gone. This means giving into
the natural process of healing, moving forward without resisting the beauty
that is the new Caribbean and of course, never forgetting the past. In his
laureate speech, Walcott reflects on the time when he, accompanied by some of
his American friends, visited the central village of Felicity for Ramleela. He,
coming from a very educated and experienced background, expected the Ramleela
to be a failed small village skit but what he saw was far more superior. He stated, “I wanted to make a film that would be a long-drawn sigh over
Felicity. I was filtering the afternoon with evocations of a lost India, but
why evocations? Why not celebrations of a real presence?” (Walcott).
He saw that this was more
than acting for the people involved but more of a spiritual connection. He
noted that this was part of their spirituality. They were believers. He
recognized that his paradigm was one of looking for traces of sorrow and
melancholy which he could attribute to the sufferance of history. On the
contrary, he looked around him and saw only elation. The true meaning of
Felicity. That experience changed his point of view. He illustrates it as, “Break a vase, and the love that
reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry
for granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of
its original shape. It is such a love that reassembles our African and Asiatic
fragments, the cracked heirlooms whose restoration shows its white scars”[u1] (Walcott). In his poem Royal Palms, Walcott states, “If art is
where the greatest ruins are, our art is in those ruins we became” (6). He says
this after speaking of the visions of a battle/ war. He then states of the
people that there will not be found in that place any stone that bears the name
of the persecuted people nor how these people, without the skill for creating
things over fire, filled an extensive group of islands with people. “And those
who slew us, what was their disgrace? They are our fathers just as those they
slew, a bastard composition like the race...with disinherited dukes drawn to
the womb of weary Africa who had to let them in, the bronze hue of her bastards
is their tomb”[u2] (10 -14). Walcott’s awe and love for the process as
well as the result shows through in his writing in a real way. Walcott states
in one of his essays, Muse of History: “maturity is the assimiliation of the
features of every ancestor” (55) He goes on to emphasis that he accepts “this
archipelago of the Americas.”
I say to the ancestor who sold me, and to
the ancestor who bought me, I have no such father. I want no such father,
although I can understand you, black ghost, white ghost, when you both whisper
“history,”........... “I give the strange and bitter and yet enobling thanks
for the monumental groaning and soldering of two great worlds, like the halves
of a fruit seamed by its own bitter juice, that exiled from your own Edens you
have placed me in the wonder of another, and that was my inheritance and your
gift. (64)[u3]
The
construction of the Caribbean identity further involves
validating it by combatting the views that others have expressed about us;
proving that we have in fact, evolved from a people divided to a nation as well
as facing our own beliefs that the American Dream is the only dream. This is
caught up with the search for identity which is ever present in Caribbean
dialogue.[u4] Validity is
the ‘state of being legally or officially binding or acceptable.’ Critics have
criticized the validity of the Caribbean people to be considered truly a
‘people’ for various reasons. Walcott states,“And here they are, all in a
single Caribbean city, Port of Spain, the sum of history, Trollope's
"non-people".[u5] A downtown
babel of shop signs and streets, mongrelized, polyglot, a ferment without a
history, like heaven. Because that is what such a city is, in the New World, a
writer's heaven” (Walcott). Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful,
prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era . Trollope was of
the view that this mixture of the races was the future only because slavery was
now not feasible. He felt that black people were created inferior by God and
needed to be guided by the Anglo saxons. So, while he felt that this new
concoction of people was the future, blacks still and always will need the help
of Anglo-saxons so that they don’t become savages again. (West Indian
Intellects in Britain). Walcott himself states at the end of Air, “there
is too much nothing here.”[u6] However, Walcott has demonstrated growth, maturity
and a change in thoughts in his writing. He shows in his writing that this
‘nothing’ has become a nation. He gave us
a peek into his thinking in in laureate. He states:
Consider the scale of Asia reduced to these fragments: the
small white exclamations of minarets or the stone balls of temples in the cane
fields, and one can understand the self-mockery and embarrassment of those who
see these rites as parodic, even degenerate. These purists look on such
ceremonies as grammarians look at a dialect, as cities look on provinces and
empires on their colonies. Memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb
remembering the body from which it has been severed, like those bamboo thighs
of the god. In other words, the way that the Caribbean is still looked at,
illegitimate, rootless, mongrelized. "No people there", to quote
Froude, "in the true sense of the word". No people. Fragments and
echoes of real people, unoriginal and broken.”[u7] Walcott
shows appreciation for this perceived ‘nothingness.
He likens it to heaven and states
that it is the writer’s heaven. Walcott appreciates the perceived ‘nothingness’
and shows deep love for the inspiration that this ‘nothingness’ has on a
writer. The construction
extends to the search for identity which is a common theme in the post colonial
Caribbean. The dual parentage of the Caribbean people, created by the binary
creations of the colonizers, though past, has continued to create identity
crisis in its offspring.[u8] This is a struggle which Walcott grapples with in his
writing. Walcott states, in A Far cry from Africa:
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
Walcott shows in his laureate speech and other writings that the
Caribbean people imitate America.This has been part of the search for identity
for some. He states, “An
assertion of power, its decor bland, its air conditioning pitched to the point
where its secretarial and executive staff sport competing cardigans; the colder
the offices the more important, an imitation of another climate. A longing,
even an envy of feeling cold (Walcott). The search for identity
has lead to many people of the Caribbean ‘adopting’ the parentage and likeness
of America. “America designates the attractive nuisance of North American
culture” (Breiner 198).
The acceptance of the Caribbean identity
involves acceptance of all that is us. Walcott speaks through Shabine in
Schooner Flight.
I’m just
a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a
sound colonial education,
I have
Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and
either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.
Derek
Walcott is one of the most important Caribbean writers of all time. He has
succeeded in recording many of the struggles of the Caribbean person onto
paper. His importance and contribution to the region and by extension, the
world, can not be denied.
Works Cited
Breiner,
Laurence A. An Introduction to West
Indian Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.
Campbell,
James. "You Promised Me Poems: Derek Walcott." Editorial. The Guardian n.d.: n. pag. Web. 23 Nov.
2015.
Walcott,
Derek. "The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory." The Nobel Prize in
Literature 1992. 15 Oct. 2015. Speech.
Walcott,
Derek. "A Muse of History." What
the Twilight Says. N.p.: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, n.d. 36-64. Print.
Schwarz, Bill. West Indian Intellectuals in Britain Studies
in Imperialism. N.p.: Manchester UP, n.d. Print.
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