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

This shift marks what I call an ethical twist to the traditional politics of identity in (post)colonial struggles for emancipation (of course, I mean a shift in emphasis, not an abandonment of one set of questions for the other). My understanding of ethics here is essentially Levinasian: the primacy of respect for alterity, the acknowledgment of the other's irreducible difference, what Edouard Glissant terms the other's "opacite" (203). (6) While for Levinas the other remains rather abstract, in the Argentinean philosopher Enrique Dussel's work the Levinasian other becomes identified with the concrete subaltern colonized masses that have been the exploited nuts and bolts in the imperial construction of a European modernity that also writes them out of existence. (7) It is those questions regarding the way alterity relates to power, as opposed to questions regarding true identity, that come to fore in Omeros.

Of course, this shift does complicate the poet's understanding of identity. As the poem progresses, the reader begins to realize that, with the questioning of the rhetoric of identity, the poem's narrator may discover himself as having more in common with the oppressors than with the oppressed. His role in the questioning of authoritarianism becomes increasingly unclear, and more often than not he realizes that, in spite of his critique of current power structures, he is securely on the side of authority. The poet finds himself writing lovingly about "his people," yes, but he also understands that he is "loving them from hotels" (228). (8) Caught between worlds, the Caribbean poet is forced to revaluate his alignment with subaltern populations that he often takes for granted. In Omeros the pretension that comes most powerfully under scrutiny is the claim that the poet can "speak for the subaltern," to echo Spivak's famous formulation, a claim that we can recognize in such foundational figures of committed poetry as Aime Cesaire and Pablo Neruda, and that often serves as the moral ground and justification for artistic/literary production in (post)colonial societies.

The narrator's dilemma in Omeros is that while as a Caribbean poet he does share at least some cultural background with the subaltern (the identity link), he finds himself differently positioned in the spectrum of power. He is both identified with the subaltern and forced to acknowledge the subaltern's alterity. (9) In fact, the poet is caught between the duty to question power and the subaltern's questioning of the poet's power. Before the metropolis, the poet must speak; before the subaltern, he should remain silent and listen, unless he wants to repeat a silencing gesture that is in fact intimately tied to colonial authoritarianism.

Nowhere is the ethical quandary of Omeros more clearly seen than in the poem's treatment of Helen, one of its main characters, whom both Plunkett and the narrator transform into an emblem of St. Lucia. Indeed, the reader is informed that because of its beauty and because many empires fought wars over it, historians have referred to St. Lucia as the Helen of the Caribbean. For both Plunkett and the narrator it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish among the ancient Helen of Troy, the island, and the actual St. Lucian woman who is Achille's lover and Plunkett's maid. Both of them decide to honor her: Plunkett by writing the history of the island and the narrator by writing the poem that we hold in our hands. But Helen remains too distant and proud throughout the whole poem for Plunkett ever to feel entirely comfortable with his own version of her. The major perpetually lusts after her, and his history buries Helen beneath layers of mythical parallels that allow for her vicarious possession. Like Plunkett, the narrator is endlessly fascinated by Helen's beauty and repeatedly paralyzed by her disdainful attitude. Both characters consistently try to counteract her alterity by clothing it with poetic imagery.