Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2003 Artistic consciousness as spiritual survival: a reading of Tiepolo's hound Gregory Joseph Schmelzer Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Schmelzer, Gregory Joseph, "Artistic consciousness as spiritual survival: a reading of Tiepolo's hound " (2003). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 7933. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/7933 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Artistic Consciousness as Spiritual Survival: A Reading ofTiepolo's Hound by Gregory Joseph Schmelzer A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty In partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS Major: Literature Program ofStudy Committee: Laura Winkiel, Major Professor Neil Nakadate Ed Goedeken Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2003 11 Graduate College Iowa State University This is to certify that Gregory Joseph Schmelzer has met the thesis requirementsofIowa State University Signatures have been redacted for privacy Ill TABLE OF CONTENTS Abbreviations iv Original gifts: The expressive experience ofDerek Walcott's life and work 2 Preparingthe text: allegory, biography, craft 15 Camille Pissarro, Caribbean fatherof Impressionism 28 Howdirectly is the text linkedwiththe paintings? 38 Craft as prayer 42 Pissarro's family background introduces the theme of"erasure" 47 Illumination, anderasure; Multiple narratives in the Veronesepaintmg "Feast in the Houseof Levi" 50 The problem of "erasxore" in Caribbean history, andthe misattribution ofthe painting 58 "See, I make all things new" 59 Thechanging of the dogs 63 Notes 69 Works Cited andConsulted 77 Acknowledgements 82 IV ABBREVIATIONS: AL = Another Life CP = CollectedPoems TH = Tiepolo's Hound WT = What the Twilight Says Artistic Consciousness as Spiritual Survival: A Reading of Tiepolo'sHound Derek Walcott's writing presents issues of complexity and ofaccessibility. How do we understand the message, however, unless we have the background? The density ofhis language is not un-Shakespearian in its extended rhythmic quality, its reflectionof simultaneous and complex social models, its psychological precision, and its layered meanings as revealingcommentary on the possibilities of syntaxin English. But the force of his work derives less from the kind ofsocial awareness felt in Dickens or Miller or Chekhov than the individual psychological revelation of Defoe or Dickinson or Proust. Part ofthe difficulty in naming hisaffiliation derives from a privileged removal in timeandspace, in terms ofculture. Perhaps there is some ofthis in all artists' lives. Critical confusiongenerated by VladunirNabokov's work, which still continues, is probably equaled inthecase of Walcott, only for Walcott it appears to beless a case of confiision than neglect. Part oftheproblem, asPaul Breslin has pointed out, ishisdistance from either a quick identification aseither "post" colonial or"post" modem. The historic commentary under the umbrella "postcolonial" reviews a politics qualified bydominance or assimilation. Walcott sees that the role ofvictim asa capitulation, however, even in cultural terms; his work attempts to express a reality which iscompassionate, inclusive, and accepting ofa religious belief which is often surprised by itsown intuitions. The social commentary under the umbrella "postmodem" reviews an aesthetics ofartificial construct. Typography, technology, urbamty, move ustoward a world removed from nature. Walcott's aesthetics are closely linked to natural phenomena, the effects oflight and color in terms of direct observation, and the capture ofhuman expression. This essayreflects on the interlocking devices used by Derek Walcott in Tiepolo's Hound: the biography of Camille Pissarro, the history of the painting The Feast at theHouse ofLevi, Caribbean history and arthistory. Walcott has constructed allegories and metaphors within these frameworks thatreinforce hiscomparison ofprocess withprayer. Prayer, in this sense, brings persistence, integrity, andfriendship to the level of allegory. These arethe keys to survival. Artistic perception and process isantidote tothepsychological, ultimately spiritual, threat of"erasure." Original gifts: The expressive experience of Derek Walcott's life and work Derek Walcott gained world attention bybecoming thefirst writer from the Caribbean to receive theNobel Prize inLiterature. Hewas bomin 1930 in Castries, St. Lucia,in the British West Indies. His father, who died when Derek and his twin brother Roderick were one year old, was an amateur painter and poet, and Walcott felt his own gifts to be anextension ofhis father's. Both grandfathers were European (one primarily Dutch, the other English) and both grandmothers primarily African. Complex genealogy is not unusual inthe Caribbean, and isa source ofsome ofWalcott's precise perceptions about history's convergence m individual identity. His mother Alixwas head teacher at a Methodist school that provided English instruction on the island for children not being raised with a tutor, including a good portion ofthe island's French Catholic majority. Walcott began wnting innotebooks ata young age, practicing the meters and methods ofclassic canonists, while hearing an everyday speech sprung out ofmultiple cultures, in aplace where nature is an immediate experience. He has expressed his beliefin "the element of surprise" while exemplifying the mastery oftradition.^ His power ofvisual observation was also mformed by traditional training in painting by a friend ofhis father's who became a mentor in his teen years. Walcott studied at St. Mary's College in St.Lucia from 1941 until 1950. He began writing hisfirstserious playat the age of seventeen. Hisfirst collection of Twenty-Jive Poems, privately published whenWalcott was eighteen, received critical noticein London as well as four Caribbean cities. He founded theSt. Lucia Arts Guild where Henri Christophe, his first dramatic production, wasperformed, and graduated from the University College of the West Indies. Hethentaught at Jamaica College in Kingston. In 1958 he received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to study theater inthe United States, and the next year founded the Theater Workshop inTrinidad, where he subsequently invested nearly twenty years ofeffort. He continued towrite both for the theater and inverse, receiving an Obie award for the play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur fellowship, the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetiy, and the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature. He has written eighteen collections ofpoetry including In a Green Night (1962), The Castaway and Other Poems (1965), Sea Grapes (1976), The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979) and The Fortunate Traveller (1982). Collected Poems was published in 1986. He has also written three book-length poems, the autobiographical iz/e (1973), Omeros (1989) an epic of the Caribbean, and Tiepolo's Hound (2000) apoetic quest linked v«th art history. Twenty ofhis plays have been published, mcluding Henri Christophe, The Sea At Dauphin, Ti-Jean and His Brothers (based on afable about outwitting the devil). Drums and Colors, Dream on Monkey Mountain, Remembrance, Pantomime (based on the Crusoe story), Malcauchon, or Six in theRain^ and The Joker ofSeville (acommissioned adaptation from Tirso de Molina's 1630 original ofdon Juan).^ Walcott's interviews have also been published in Robert Hamner's CriticalPerspectives on Derek Walcott (1993), and Conversations with Derek Walcott (ed. William Baer, 1996). Acollection ofWalcott essays. What the Twilight Says, appeared in 1998. His work covers a wide range ofartistic endeavor— setdesign and theory, songwnting, journalism, artcriticism, painting, essays, writing and producing plays, and most sigmficantly, his poetry. Atmid-2003 Walcott has thirteen titles in print, and another fifteen monographs are available about his work. The vocal representations and cadences that exemplify Walcott's poetry were developed inhis writing for theater, and his sense ofhistory has helped steer the course of Caribbean theater. Yet, even as his recognition broadens with the further publication ofthe plays, critical opinion subordinates his dramatic output to his achievements inverse. He is known for revision in both endeavors. Goldstraw's 1984 annotated bibliography tracks numerous variants, opening with the example offour full text versions of"Sea Grapes" from January through July of1976 (1). But John Thieme notes, "To afar greater degree than is the case with the poetiy, Walcott seems to see his plays as 'works mprogress'... reflect[ing] the extent to which he regards his dramatic utterances as provisional" (204). Walcott uses both as vehicles for viewing histoiy, from which viewers will "remember" their own revisions (in the sense that all history is simply away of telling "the stoiy.") Walcott also wrote songs for some plays. His use ofBob Marley lyrics as the epigram to the poem "Light of the World," reveals his affinity with popular culture as well as his musical interest. Walcott's paintings, which provided playbills for