Derek Walcott, born 1930
The tensions in Walcott’s poetry are
in so many ways personal and autobiographical—there is always a space
of division, a split between the rough streets where he grew up where an Island
patois was the lingua franca, and the immense resources
the poet in him has discovered in the English language.
Some notes from Walcott’s biography:
Born (with his twin brother Rodney) on the
Caribbean Island of St. Lucia, which has been described as a place of cultural
collage—the home, historically of a wide range of people, from indigenous
peoples whose culture has been all but wiped out, to Spanish explorers, to
descendants of slaves and a multi-ethnic group of peoples drawn to the beauty
of the island and more. Africans brought to work as slaves on the island’s
plantations. East Indian, Chinese, Portuguese, and Irish immigrants.
Mother white, Father (an artist who dies shortly
after Derek was born) black . Mother becomes headmistress at a Methodist school.
The neighborhood largely Roman Catholic—he is protestant. His first
language is English—the society spoke mostly French Creole. He is of
mixed heritage in a predominantly black society.
On British scholarship, attends the University
of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica.
An interpretive Reading of “The Fortunate Traveller”
( In which the title character is the speaker of the poem, and the word “fortunate”
is highly ironic).
Apocalypse in the epigraph and the conclusion.
Poetry that works by repetition. Note that
the steeples of the 1st line, reminiscent of Europe, have transformed in line
36 to recall more of Africa.
Poetry that works by allusion to other poems
(remember “read as natural law’/ “red in tooth and claw”)
Here we might see an allusion to another Caribbean giant of poetry, Aimé
Césaire. Look on page 649. Now, “Mercy” becomes “Merci,”
but both are significant, of course, as a single word that signifies greatly.
And we might also see that the way the one word is scrawled might call to
mind another scrawl across a document “Exterminate all the Brutes.”
The ominous tone established right from the
beginning. How a briefcase becomes a coffin. Already the opinions about relief
agency work is established (the cynicism).
Here’s a loaded line “I gave my
word.” Why is this transaction occurring on a cold bench instead of
a boardroom or comfortable office. 2 possibilities (A) the “tractors”
are a code word for weapons. (B) the tractors are not legitimate (stolen?
From a country upon whom a trade embargo is enforced?). Either way, it is
a transaction that breeds mistrust, which, we learn, occurs for good reason.
In my reading, the bulk of the poem deals with
how this man develops the mindset to be able to con the most needy of nations,
the most pathetic of victims. One might take as the point of departure the
transformation of the speaker from “a Sussex don” to an world
relief worker as the moment he witnessed the scene where “children pounce
on green meat with a rat’s ferocity.”
Regrettably, he’s transformed from this
deeply human reactor to the cynic. How has he transformed these children into
his potential victim?
1.
Statistics. Ten million, 765 thousand, etc.
2.
Change of perspective. Look at 40-57, where the plane takeoff allows the reverse
telescoping that condenses, and clouds, and turns humans into insects (and
indeed, turns people like the traveler into cockroaches, who we usually see
as the nastiest of insects.
3.
Abstract justifications. The souls of the millions who starve will “Lighten
the world’s weight and level its gull glittering estuary.” (Where
else have we encountered estuaries?)
4.
Later, another abstraction that also means multitudes. How the tree would
swarm if all those who starve were flies on it.
5.
One more—that everyone does this. There is the traveller’s inside
of the plane/boat/train cabin and outside the earth shows its rib cage. We
turn away to read. Or “We cared less for one human face than for the
scrolls in Alexandria’s ashes.”
From justification to guilt and another way
to alter the vision of the humans of the world. Look at the whiskey with which
he tries to attack his guilt (not long after the mention of “Iscariot’s
salary.” Look at how his vision of the world has become, perhaps forever,
warped. Just after “Indeed, indeed sirs, I have seen the world./ Spray
splashes the portholes and vision blurs.”
The phrase "heart of darkness" a
frequent visitor to postcolonial literatures. What happens when the h of d
is characterized as the holocaust? (It becomes solely the purview of the white
race (indeed, some might say the whitest of the white race)).
Guilt, again, and its aftermath. Tries to wash
guilt off with reeds, turning the lagoon red.
What is the next passage about. God dead in
Europe, perhaps, but the vigil of His Body (note the capitalized words) is
still kept “in the heart of darkness of this earth.”
In the end, the traveler is busted buy the
same men who promised justice in the first stanza. His personal downfall brings
images of the apocalypse—this one perpetrated by the insect life which
has been so predominant. Are these, as before, metaphorical for the starving
millions who will rise up in revolt? Or are they now real insects, seemingly
inconsequential but in the greatness of their numbers a force to be reckoned
with?
Also might deal with the biblical implications
of faith, hope and charity.