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A Critical Edition of Derek Walcott's Omeros Part 1 University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/46005 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. A Critical Edition of Omeros - Part 1 (Critical Introduction) D Barnard English and Comparative Literary Studies, Warwick University 0867693 A Critical Edition of Derek Walcott’s Omeros Part 1 – Critical Introduction by Donald Edwin Barnard A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English and Comparative Literary Studies University of Warwick Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies February 2012 Final version February 2012 A Critical Edition of Omeros - Part 1 (Critical Introduction) D Barnard English and Comparative Literary Studies, Warwick University 0867693 Table of Contents Part 1 – Critical Introduction 1. Introduction 1 2. Narrative 2.1 Themes 4 2.2 Achille, Hector and Helen 5 2.3 Philoctete and Ma Kilman 6 2.4 Dennis and Maud Plunkett 7 2.5 The Narrator 8 2.6 Structure 9 2.7 Timelines 10 2.8 Epic Features 12 2.9 Myth-making 18 3. Settings 3.1 Walcott’s Geography 21 3.2 Gros Îlet, St Lucia, the Caribbean 22 3.3 Africa 27 3.4 North America 29 3.5 Europe 31 4. Metaphor and Paronomasia 4.1 Metaphor 34 4.2 Paronomasia 41 5. Symbolism 5.1 The Risk of Allegory 45 5.2 The Iguana 46 5.3 The Island 47 5.4 The Sea 47 5.5 The Sunrise 49 5.6 The Dog 49 5.7 The Wound 50 5.8 The Swift 52 5.9 Sewing 54 5.10 The Canoe 55 Final version February 2012 A Critical Edition of Omeros - Part 1 (Critical Introduction) D Barnard English and Comparative Literary Studies, Warwick University 0867693 5.11 The Light 56 5.12 The Garden 57 6. Historiography 6.1 The Rejection of History 59 6.2 Historical Fact 60 6.3 Classical Myth 61 7. Intertexts 7.1 Borrow and Appropriate 65 7.2 Homer and Virgil 66 7.3 Dante 67 7.4 Hemingway 71 7.5 Heaney 72 7.6 Auslander 74 7.7 Walcott 76 7.8 Other Sources 78 8. Dualism 8.1 Contradiction 80 8.2 Pairings 81 8.3 Dualism not Binarism 83 9. Autobiography 9.1 The Stuff of his Life 88 9.2 Warwick and Alix 88 9.3 Norline 91 9.4 Introspection 92 9.5 Father Jesse 93 9.6 Other Models 95 9.7 Walcott the Writer 95 10. Dialects 10.1 Walcott’s Languages 98 10.2 Choosing the Third Way 99 10.3 Writing Back 101 10.4 The Vernacular 103 10.5 Moderation 105 11. Prosody Final version February 2012 A Critical Edition of Omeros - Part 1 (Critical Introduction) D Barnard English and Comparative Literary Studies, Warwick University 0867693 11.1 Metre 107 11.2 Form 109 11.3 Classical Metrics 112 11.4 Phrasal Prosody 118 11.5 Caesurae 120 11.6 Humour 121 11.7 Section XXXIII/iii 123 11.8 Numerology 125 12. Conclusion 131 Bibliography Appendix A Rhyme Types Used in Omeros Appendix B Structure of Chapter XXXIII/iii of Omeros Tables 7.4.1 Correspondences between Omeros and The Old Man and the Sea 72 11.8.1 Frequency of occurrence of names in Omeros 128 Part 2 – Annotations to Omeros Introduction 1 Book 1 2 Book 2 90 Book 3 131 Book 4 159 Book 5 180 Book 6 208 Book 7 242 Final version February 2012 A Critical Edition of Omeros - Part 1 (Critical Introduction) D Barnard English and Comparative Literary Studies, Warwick University 0867693 Acknowledgements The author is grateful for the support and guidance of the University of Warwick in conducting this study, and in particular for the close reading and knowledgeable commentary provided by his supervisors, Michael Hulse and John Gilmore. Their wide experience of poetry and the Caribbean kept me from many errors. If any remain, they are my own. My thanks are also due to my daughter Eleanor, who agreed I could follow in her footsteps, and to my partner Marilyn, who made it clear that her continued esteem depended on the successful completion of this study and who willingly made room for the time it required. Declaration The contents of this thesis are my own work except where references are given to published sources by other authors. The work is based wholly on studies undertaken for this degree and none of my findings have previously been published. The thesis has not been submitted for a degree at any other institution. Final version iv February 2012 A Critical Edition of Omeros - Part 1 (Critical Introduction) D Barnard English and Comparative Literary Studies, Warwick University 0867693 Abstract The thesis is a Critical Edition of Derek Walcott’s Omeros, consisting of a Critical Introduction and Annotations. The Critical Introduction analyses: Narrative Settings Metaphor and Paronomasia Symbolism Historiography Intertexts Dualism Autobiography Dialects Prosody. The Annotations comment on more than 1000 references that may be obscure and on specifics of narrative, language and prosody. This study presents new conclusions about some aspects of Omeros: It challenges the prevailing view that the work is written substantially in a variation of terza rima and shows that regular quatrains predominate. It demonstrates ways in which the metrics follow the sense of the narrative and takes a more balanced position on the use of Caribbean as opposed to classical metrics than that put forward previously. It identifies a paragraphic structure to the verse. It proposes a new prosodic structure for the significant Chapter XXX/iii. It extends Walcott’s recognised use of numerology into word counting the names of characters. It develops the idea of Walcott’s dualism and his use of pairing and contradiction as a dialectical method. It defines his wide use of paronomasia and shows that many of the puns have a metaphorical aspect beyond mere word-play. It analyses some of Walcott’s symbolism. It identifies intertextual links to his earlier works and to some thirty other writers, and suggests homage to Hemingway and possibly Heaney. It provides the first complete analysis of Walcott’s rhyme types in Omeros. In its analysis of Omeros and in the Annotations it has included commentary from across the critical literature, to provide some sense of other views on Walcott’s writing, and has included as many as possible of Walcott’s own comments on Omeros and on the writer’s task, as a background to understanding the poem. Final version v February 2012 A Critical Edition of Omeros - Part 1 (Critical Introduction) D Barnard English and Comparative Literary Studies, Warwick University 0867693 1. Introduction Once upon a time* This is how myths become universal and durable: treating the big themes - birth and death, loyalty and betrayal, loss and questing, victory and defeat, love and hatred. For centuries, writers have retold them for their own times and places. Omeros treats all of these, but adds others: exile and identity, exploitation and resistance, figuration and reality. In doing so it belies its title. It does not simply transplant the classic Homeric myths from one archipelago and era to another. That would contradict Walcott’s understanding of myth. Burnett writes, ‘To Walcott, myths confer cultural identity […] Distinctively, he sees geography as the determinant.’1 In his words: ‘Where have cultures originated? By the force of natural surroundings. You build according to the topography of where you live…[Y]ou mystify what you see, you create what you need spiritually, a god for each need.’2 Homer’s gods and heroes are not Walcott’s. They do not meet his need for a myth for his own time and place. Also, Walcott has said, ‘I did not plan this book so it would be a template of the Homeric original because that would be an absurdity […] you would be doing a third * The epigraphs are from Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Seeing Things’(from Seeing Things, London: Faber and Faber, 1991). See Critical Introduction: Intertexts: 7.5 Heaney for reasons to use this poem. 1 Paula Burnett, Derek Walcott: Politics and Poetics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), p. 94 2 Derek Walcott, ‘The Caribbean, Culture or Mimicry?’ reprinted in Critical Perspectives on Derek Walcott ed. by Robert D. Hamner (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997), p. 56 Final version 1 of 133 February 2012 A Critical Edition of Omeros - Part 1 (Critical Introduction) D Barnard English and Comparative Literary Studies, Warwick University 0867693 version of the Odyssey via Joyce.’3 He rejects such mimicry and sets himself a more heroic aim, a new way of seeing St Lucia and the Caribbean in a language beyond history, a ‘light beyond metaphor’ (LIV/iii/4 – references to Omeros are given as Chapter/Section/Stanza). It is not a straightforward text, or even one in which layers of meaning may be peeled away one by one. Everything resonates with everything else. Walcott said of it, ‘So the book is really not about a model of another poem; it is really about associations, or references, because that is what we are in the Americas: we are a culture of references, not of certainties’.4 A trans-oceanic, pan-historic range of material combines with a virtuoso poetic form.
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