Derek Walcott: Europa

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

Europa

 

The Fortunate Traveller, New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1981

418-419

Allusion to Classical figure Europa and the bull/Zeus. There is also an allusion to the rape of Leda in the image of ‘gods as rutting swans’.

Relationship to Classical text Though not specifically referred to, the poem evokes the world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. However, here we see the natural world transformed into mythological figures, rather than the reverse: a tree suddenly becomes the body of Europa and a dark hill the pursuing bull.