Encomium of Helen: Derek Walcott's ethical twist in Omeros

Notes

1. Patricia Ismond has called this the "Caribbean phase" of Walcott's poetry. In my own view, the publication of Walcott's Collected Poems in 1984 is a more appropriate dividing moment, with 1987's The Arkansas Testament already moving toward the ethical twist that I argue becomes central in Omeros (1990).

2. Not surprisingly, he has been accused by some critics of not being "black enough." They persistently oppose Walcott's "humanist" poetry to Kamau Brathwaite's "folk" poetry. See Ismond's "Walcott Versus Brathwaite," Charles W Pollard (28-29), and Bruce King.

3. Walcott's observations on Caribbean mimicry are to a large extent a response to books such as Naipaul's The Middle Passage and The Mimic Men.

4. The shift of emphasis is gradual. For example, Walcott points to "The Light of the World," a poem in The Arkansas Testament, as a direct precursor of some of the preoccupations of Omeros (Conversations 174).

5. Achille, one of Omeros's protagonists, is a St. Lucian fisherman who travels back to Africa in a dream and on waking up comes to terms not only with his African ancestry but, equally important, with the fact that he cannot predicate his identity on that African past. For Achille and for some other characters in the poem it becomes necessary to acknowledge their ambiguous position in geography and history: while their selves certainly emerged from the experience of colonialism and the middle passage, their bodies and identities are now part of, and should come to fully inhabit, the Caribbean.

6. For Levinas on ethics and alterity, see Totality and Infinity, particularly section 1.

7. Dussel writes:

  Levinas habla siempre del otro como lo "absolutamente otro." Tiende
  entonces hacia la equivocidad. Por otra parte, nunca ha pensado que el
  otro pudiera ser un indio, un africano, un asiatico. El otro, para
  nosotros, es America Latina con respecto a la totalidad europea; es el
  pueblo pobre y oprimido latinoamericano con respecto a las oligarquias
  dominadoras y sin embargo dependientes. (Metodo 181-82)

My translation:

  Levinas always refers to the other as that which is "absolutely
  other." Then he tends to become ambiguous. On the other hand, he has
  never thought that the other could be an Indian, an African, an Asian.
  The other, for us, is Latin America with regards to the totality of
  Europe; it is the poor and oppressed Latin American people with
  regards to the oligarchies that dominate them, but that also remain
  dependent.

A systematic exposition of Dussel's thought can be found in his Philosophy of Liberation.

8. I often refer to the narrator as the poet because the narrative takes the form of a poem and the story presents the narrator character as a writer.

9.The narrator's ambiguous and at times tense relation to the surrounding St. Lucian characters reflects some elements from Walcott's biography, particularly his growing up in a Methodist, mulatto, middle-class family in a primarily Catholic, black, impoverished milieu. For more information on Walcott's childhood and youth in St. Lucia, see King.