Mário Vítor Bastos (Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa)
This paper aims at revisiting two main poems written by Derek Walcott, Another Life (1973) and Omeros (1990). A gifted poet, standing among the best of his generation writing in English, Derek Walcott (1930-) is the 20th century an icon for all Caribbean culture, its achievements, contradictions and anxieties, and a reference for its future. Among the many topics of interest explored by Walcott's writing, one notices the strong presence of the traditional western theme of the journey. For example, Another Life is basically a poem about individual courage, and the “journey” to be made in order to change one's life for the better, in the divided, hybrid context of the Caribbean culture, with its fears over a blank cultural identity or simply its loss. Both Omeros and Another Life are long narrative poems sharing the same general style, topics and realism, although Another Life deals directly with the poet's autobiography, and in Omeros occurs the melting of the personal and collective life in the Caribbean with its History. Yet, the ironic and heroic perspective in Omeros is established over one of the founding monuments of literary Western culture, The Odissey. The journey in Omeros evolves in space and time, both in the Caribbean archipelagos and Western Europe, on a long search and rediscovery of the historical roots of colonialism, slavery and, ultimately, of West Indies's identity. To summ up, both major poems by Walkott exemplify the coming of age of Caribbean culture in a post-colonial historical environment. As I hope to demonstrate, in the succeful exploration of the contradictions of colonialism in the West Indies and its inherent sado-masochism lies much of the achievement of Derek Walkott's narrative verse.
