I’m nobody, dude. However, in these poems, the paradoxes of his identity remain largely unresolved. In Omeros, the final section ends with the hexameter: ‘When he left the beach the sea was still going on’ (325), and The Odyssey begins and ends with the stage direction ‘(Fade. You’re ugly, I believe it.
[17] Notably, Walcott also allows the content of the spiritual to push against the form inherited from classical epic, as these lines exceed the hexameter by one syllable. Walcott’s denial of serious canonical epic as his model is achieved through his use of Caribbean political satire, picong, linguistic wordplay and his undermining of Odysseus’ heroic status. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Turkeltaub argues that The Odyssey: regularly uses humour….by applying traditional epic formulaic structures to a broader range of subjects than they normally accommodate and thus redefining the heroic virtues that those structures encode so that they exalt mundane human experience.[38]. by Richard Allsopp (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p.375. (160). In Omeros, the narrator describes the political campaigner Professor Static in inflated terms as feeling ‘like the Pope’ and learning to ‘atone’ for the poverty of Saint Lucia. Finally, although the epic genre has been positioned historically at the centre of the Western literary canon, Pascale Casanova’s concept of a ‘world literary space’[41] transcending national borders provides a helpful framework through which to reassess the epic status of Omeros and The Odyssey as postcolonial texts. However, unlike the kaiso, this scene is not adapted from Homer’s Odyssey but is original. by Margaret Beissinger and others (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. Stroking me head He was also a prolific playwright, and adapted Homer’s Odyssey for the stage in 1993, and it is these two works which I will be discussing in this essay. This lighthearted interaction is much closer to picong as ‘continuous teasing at someone’s expense’ than the cursing of Odysseus in Omeros. In Walcott’s The Odyssey, he presents the episode on Circe’s island using the form of a kaiso – identified by Robert D. Hamner as a ‘(calypso-styled) chorus’ in his scene:[22], The island of Calypso
by Richard Allsopp (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p.256. Derek Walcott. This essay suggests an answer to this question: the terms of the epic genre itself are altered. Two colonial languages – English and French – spar against one another through Caribbean English dialect and creolised punning in French. However, his use of recognisably Homeric epic elements as a postcolonial writer suggests that his adaption of the genre is achieved through the kind of aesthetic compromise outlined by Casanova. (74). Crucially, this idea of the outsider performing for entertainment purposes connects Walcott’s work unexpectedly with Homer the poet, whose place of origin is still unknown, and who is described by Robert D. Hamner as ‘the itinerant bard who entertained the Greeks of his day before he and they were idealized by historical and artistic canonization.’[37] This connection shifts the conception of Homer away from the canonical poet, and closer to the margins, where subversive, postcolonial works are written, and where minorities are exploited for entertainment. In addition, although Walcott’s alignment of Omeros with the oral qualities of Homer’s work suggests closer affinities between Walcott and Greek epic than is usually acknowledged, Walcott’s representation of Caribbean politics and carnival satire draws classical epic into something distinctly Caribbean. [5] Indeed, Joseph Farrell agrees that Saint Lucia, the setting of Omeros, seems an ‘unlikely subject for a triumphalist national epic and an unlikely heir to the epic tradition handed down from Greece, Rome and Christendom.’[6] Walcott rejects this European, competitive conception of history as part of his status as a New World poet.[7]. xڵ][��֑~������e�b'�k�Yc�p$v7��)�wf�V�MbI��6�����T�ԩ�����NV]Z%��R�җ� [40] In addition, Turkeltaub’s argument that Homer used humour alongside epic formulae to expand out the genre, and to ‘exalt mundane human experience’ connects to Walcott’s desire to celebrate the ordinary Caribbean person. %PDF-1.3 The plosive repetition of ‘burn’, ‘black’ and ‘blister’ and the heavy use of monosyllables establishes a harsh tone, and connects the passage with Caliban’s cursing in The Tempest – a character frequently read as an allegory for the colonised subject in postcolonial criticism – through this shared sound pattern. God, what accent is that? [16] This stems from the poetry of slaves now living in the New World – who were some of Walcott’s ancestors – and served as the ‘beginning of poetry’ for that region.
[20]‘ring composition’ (n.) OED Online (Oxford University Press, January 2016) [Accessed 2 January 2016]. One of Walcott’s major achievements was his Homeric epic poem Omeros (1990), which won him numerous awards.
�Cz�����GPU����1 -�2S�|��3�7���x|�-��i �j.�%��>��DзPC��7� `�(�p��� -3�t`i�f�Q���|BC�]� ?ĉ��x ���ڋ�^A��F&�B�`��J�����U��]S�5��p`;��[��)ɦO���l�(���?pyp��[�7�"y�>�� y�t|`JVݎ�\�<8��!։o̩��mQ�cٞ���d��L&� ��w|�:��\�2o�Q����P5lQ���x[�����`Y�"��5��tcsװ=��Ic\�N�� [9] Unitedpac Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia’s Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott interview on his extended poem Omeros, online video recording, YouTube, 25 January 2014 [Accessed 14 December 2015]. This political approach to epic in Omeros shows Walcott turning briefly away from the celebration of the Caribbean people explored earlier, and turning towards a critical engagement with the state of Saint Lucia after its independence in 1979. Andra moi ennepe mousa polutropon hos mala polla…[11]. Derek Walcott(23 January 1930) Derek Walcott OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. (Oxford University Press, 1989) pp.167-195. Furthermore, this passage uses the lexis of patois, where ‘my’ is replaced by ‘me’ and ‘have’ is used instead of ‘has’. Georgia Tindale is currently studying for an MPhil in Renaissance Literature at Cambridge, having completed her undergraduate degree in English with Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. This lightheartedness juxtaposes with the narrator’s explanation of Philoctete’s wound as coming from the historical wound of slavery: ‘He believed the swelling came from the chained ankles/of his grandfathers…’ (19) This resilience against a history of colonial oppression is a source of pride for Walcott in his people, as seen from his description of the slaves taken from Africa in Omeros ‘…they crossed, they survived. Ai-ee-o Furthermore, Walcott’s formal modelling of Homer fits his poetic practice more widely, since he describes taking an older poem and ‘model[ling] directly onto it…like an overlay, down to the rhymes and the metre, but out of my own background and landscape.’[14] This adaptation of epic form and language to a Caribbean background adheres to what Robert D. Hamner calls Walcott’s ‘creolization’ of epic,[15] and is epitomised in the play’s final song where Billy Blue moves into the form of a slave spiritual through his repetition of ‘rock’ and use of ‘amen’: For a rock, a rock, a rock, a rock-steady woman, Let the waves clap their hands and the surf whisper amen. Mais il est important de ne pas enfermer Walcott dans une problématique parfois réductrice. Similarly in Walcott’s Odyssey, the Cyclops episode in Homer is reconfigured by involving Odysseus in the Caribbean practice of picong. Although Walcott denies that Omeros fits the definition of an epic,[2] I posit that this denial is specifically of Western canonical epic, and that different kinds of epic – slave epics and the oral epics which Homer’s Odyssey began as – are brought to our attention by Walcott. With this in mind, Walcott can be seen to engage with classical epic using different levels of sincerity in the kaiso and Static’s speeches. Since Joyce’s Ulysses, the definition of epic as a poem which ‘celebrates in the form of a continuous narrative the achievements of one or more heroic personages of history or tradition’[3] has been called into question, and neither Omeros nor Walcott’s Odyssey fit this definition. This is reinforced earlier on, when the Professor begins his rallying speech, but is told by Hector: ‘The mike not on’, to which he replies ‘Shit!” (106). Captain, who treat we like swine, you ain’t seeing shore. Instead, Walcott wishes to celebrate the ordinary nature of the Caribbean people: ‘It is the ordinariness, not the astonishment, that is the miracle…worth recalling.’[8] In both The Odyssey and Omeros, it is the survival of these people from slavery which is truly epic, a people described by Walcott as ‘not groups of degraded people but [as] extremely strong.’[9] This postcolonial resilience is epitomised in The Odyssey and Omeros through verbal sparring, and is presented through epic allusion and references to another kind of epic: spiritual, slave epic. �a�_�o#���֧��{T�2�#���s|��ŧo����W�:s���i+���n]���V�U�_q�GU+u�5� \Kg쩧�L$�� Beginning with Omeros, the exchange between Philoctete and Ma Kilman demonstrates the resilience of the Caribbean voice through punning: “Mais qui ca qui revait-’ous, Philoctete?”. ( Log Out / The use of short lines and a rhyme scheme which shifts between alternate rhyme and couplets propels the lines into the rhythm and energy of a kaiso; elements which would be highlighted by the musical performance of the song on stage. On a sojourn with a poet-friend, Derek Walcott, the Nobel-prize winning West Indies poet, finds the ruins of a colonial house with a panoramic view of a lake in front of it. Furthermore, this use of Caribbean English in punning is significant, as calypso music was originally associated with the creole teasing songs towards a massa, the white slave owner, by slaves.
This compromise enabled him to secure the ultimate symbol of prestige from the Western literary centre: the Nobel Prize in Literature. I’m Blind Billy Blue, my main man’s sea-smart Odysseus. Before I dead Is the place to go [35] This can be connected with Odysseus’ performative picong here, but instead of using a speech pattern like dialect to mask his meaning from Cyclops, Odysseus dances about, imitating the accent of another culture to mask his true identity. Although Walcott’s use of humour in Omeros and The Odyssey is seen as a subversive transformation of the epic genre by critics like Lagapa, Daniel Turkeltaub’s work on Odyssean humour contradicts this by finding this subversive humour already present in The Odyssey.
These spiritual songs bookending the play draw it into another kind of narrative epic described by Walcott: the spiritual epic of slaves. Furthermore, the formal qualities of Billy Blue’s final song – where the final five lines chime together on a ‘-men’ or ‘-man’ sound – evoke the rhyming couplets described by Walcott in this sung epic: The blues is not… the individual voice… each new poet can contribute his couplet, and this is based on the concept that the tribe, inured to despair, will also survive: there is no beginning but no end. [38] Daniel Turkeltaub, ‘Penelope’s ‘Stout Hand’ and Odyssean Humour,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies, 134 (2014), 103-117(p.103). Situer Walcott dans le contexte postcolonial aide à identifier et à traiter des thématiques spécifiques à l’auteur. The narrator ironically describes the Professor speaking ‘with usual acumen’ here (106).
[17] Notably, Walcott also allows the content of the spiritual to push against the form inherited from classical epic, as these lines exceed the hexameter by one syllable. Walcott’s denial of serious canonical epic as his model is achieved through his use of Caribbean political satire, picong, linguistic wordplay and his undermining of Odysseus’ heroic status. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Turkeltaub argues that The Odyssey: regularly uses humour….by applying traditional epic formulaic structures to a broader range of subjects than they normally accommodate and thus redefining the heroic virtues that those structures encode so that they exalt mundane human experience.[38]. by Richard Allsopp (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p.375. (160). In Omeros, the narrator describes the political campaigner Professor Static in inflated terms as feeling ‘like the Pope’ and learning to ‘atone’ for the poverty of Saint Lucia. Finally, although the epic genre has been positioned historically at the centre of the Western literary canon, Pascale Casanova’s concept of a ‘world literary space’[41] transcending national borders provides a helpful framework through which to reassess the epic status of Omeros and The Odyssey as postcolonial texts. However, unlike the kaiso, this scene is not adapted from Homer’s Odyssey but is original. by Margaret Beissinger and others (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. Stroking me head He was also a prolific playwright, and adapted Homer’s Odyssey for the stage in 1993, and it is these two works which I will be discussing in this essay. This lighthearted interaction is much closer to picong as ‘continuous teasing at someone’s expense’ than the cursing of Odysseus in Omeros. In Walcott’s The Odyssey, he presents the episode on Circe’s island using the form of a kaiso – identified by Robert D. Hamner as a ‘(calypso-styled) chorus’ in his scene:[22], The island of Calypso
by Richard Allsopp (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p.256. Derek Walcott. This essay suggests an answer to this question: the terms of the epic genre itself are altered. Two colonial languages – English and French – spar against one another through Caribbean English dialect and creolised punning in French. However, his use of recognisably Homeric epic elements as a postcolonial writer suggests that his adaption of the genre is achieved through the kind of aesthetic compromise outlined by Casanova. (74). Crucially, this idea of the outsider performing for entertainment purposes connects Walcott’s work unexpectedly with Homer the poet, whose place of origin is still unknown, and who is described by Robert D. Hamner as ‘the itinerant bard who entertained the Greeks of his day before he and they were idealized by historical and artistic canonization.’[37] This connection shifts the conception of Homer away from the canonical poet, and closer to the margins, where subversive, postcolonial works are written, and where minorities are exploited for entertainment. In addition, although Walcott’s alignment of Omeros with the oral qualities of Homer’s work suggests closer affinities between Walcott and Greek epic than is usually acknowledged, Walcott’s representation of Caribbean politics and carnival satire draws classical epic into something distinctly Caribbean. [5] Indeed, Joseph Farrell agrees that Saint Lucia, the setting of Omeros, seems an ‘unlikely subject for a triumphalist national epic and an unlikely heir to the epic tradition handed down from Greece, Rome and Christendom.’[6] Walcott rejects this European, competitive conception of history as part of his status as a New World poet.[7]. xڵ][��֑~������e�b'�k�Yc�p$v7��)�wf�V�MbI��6�����T�ԩ�����NV]Z%��R�җ� [40] In addition, Turkeltaub’s argument that Homer used humour alongside epic formulae to expand out the genre, and to ‘exalt mundane human experience’ connects to Walcott’s desire to celebrate the ordinary Caribbean person. %PDF-1.3 The plosive repetition of ‘burn’, ‘black’ and ‘blister’ and the heavy use of monosyllables establishes a harsh tone, and connects the passage with Caliban’s cursing in The Tempest – a character frequently read as an allegory for the colonised subject in postcolonial criticism – through this shared sound pattern. God, what accent is that? [16] This stems from the poetry of slaves now living in the New World – who were some of Walcott’s ancestors – and served as the ‘beginning of poetry’ for that region.
[20]‘ring composition’ (n.) OED Online (Oxford University Press, January 2016)
�Cz�����GPU����1 -�2S�|��3�7���x|�-��i �j.�%��>��DзPC��7� `�(�p��� -3�t`i�f�Q���|BC�]� ?ĉ��x ���ڋ�^A��F&�B�`��J�����U��]S�5��p`;��[��)ɦO���l�(���?pyp��[�7�"y�>�� y�t|`JVݎ�\�<8��!։o̩��mQ�cٞ���d��L&� ��w|�:��\�2o�Q����P5lQ���x[�����`Y�"��5��tcsװ=��Ic\�N�� [9] Unitedpac Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia’s Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott interview on his extended poem Omeros, online video recording, YouTube, 25 January 2014
This compromise enabled him to secure the ultimate symbol of prestige from the Western literary centre: the Nobel Prize in Literature. I’m Blind Billy Blue, my main man’s sea-smart Odysseus. Before I dead Is the place to go [35] This can be connected with Odysseus’ performative picong here, but instead of using a speech pattern like dialect to mask his meaning from Cyclops, Odysseus dances about, imitating the accent of another culture to mask his true identity. Although Walcott’s use of humour in Omeros and The Odyssey is seen as a subversive transformation of the epic genre by critics like Lagapa, Daniel Turkeltaub’s work on Odyssean humour contradicts this by finding this subversive humour already present in The Odyssey.
These spiritual songs bookending the play draw it into another kind of narrative epic described by Walcott: the spiritual epic of slaves. Furthermore, the formal qualities of Billy Blue’s final song – where the final five lines chime together on a ‘-men’ or ‘-man’ sound – evoke the rhyming couplets described by Walcott in this sung epic: The blues is not… the individual voice… each new poet can contribute his couplet, and this is based on the concept that the tribe, inured to despair, will also survive: there is no beginning but no end. [38] Daniel Turkeltaub, ‘Penelope’s ‘Stout Hand’ and Odyssean Humour,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies, 134 (2014), 103-117(p.103). Situer Walcott dans le contexte postcolonial aide à identifier et à traiter des thématiques spécifiques à l’auteur. The narrator ironically describes the Professor speaking ‘with usual acumen’ here (106).