312
See also: Iliad 26–33 ■ Odyssey 54 ■ The Divine Comedy 62–65 ■
Ulysses 214–21 ■ A House for Mr. Biswas 289H
istory and memory have
always been a part of
the Caribbean literary
landscape, and writing from the
region has highlighted the struggle
to find a truthful voice that reflects
the reality of alienation in a colonial
situation. Caribbean authors—
contingent on who their islands’
previous colonial owners were—
write in Spanish, French, English,
or Dutch. Each writer negotiates
the known fragments of his or her
own history within the particular
postcolonial situation.Intertwined narratives
A towering figure in this literary
landscape is St. Lucian author
Derek Walcott (1930–). In 1992 he
was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature for “a poetic oeuvre of
great luminosity, sustained by a
historical vision, the outcome of
a multicultural commitment.”
Walcott’s magnificent and
hugely ambitious 300-page poem
Omeros (the Greek name for Homer)
endorses the judges’ claim. Epic
in length, it references Homer’sOdyssey and Iliad, while also
celebrating the landscape, people,
and language of St. Lucia. The
poem follows Dante’s The Divine
Comedy in its use of terza rima,
a three-line poetic form, or tercet,
in which the second line rhymes
with the first and third lines of
the next tercet. At the same time,
Walcott honors the tone and rhythm
of the local Caribbean patois from
the very beginning of the poem.
While some of the characters’
names, such as Achille and Hector,
are classical in origin, they are
also not unusual names for
St. Lucian fishermen.
Omeros interweaves time and
place to interrogate topics such as
slavery, American-Indian genocide,
and expatriates in the Caribbean.
Walcott fuses stories from Africa,
the US, London, and Ireland with
St. Lucian events to create a mosaic
narrative of collective memory.
Island life, memories of Africa,
and the vestiges of colonialism
remain the focus for Caribbean
writers as they attempt to make
sense of their disjointed histories. ■A HISTORICAL VISION,
THE OUTCOME OF A
MULTICULTURAL
COMMITMENT
OMEROS ( 1990 ), DEREK WALCOTT
IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Caribbean writingBEFORE
1949 Cuban writer Alejo
Carpentier publishes his novel
The Kingdom of this World,
which negotiates Caribbean
history and culture.1953 In the Castle of My
Skin, by Barbadian writer
George Lamming, is one of the
region’s key autobiographical
novels and wins the Somerset
Maugham award in 1957.1960 In Return to My Native
Land, Martinican poet Aimé
Césaire discusses négritude,
or black consciousness, as
a form of identity for people
whose ancestors had been
dislocated from Africa.AFTER
1995 To Us, All Flowers Are
Roses: Poems confirms Lorna
Goodison as one of the finest
Jamaican poets of the
postwar generation.US_312-313_Omeros_Psycho.indd 312 03/11/2015 15:21