Derek Walcott: Homage to Gregorias, A Simple Flame and The Estranging Sea

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

Homage to Gregorias, A Simple Flame and The Estranging Sea

 

Another Life, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973

189-223

Length / Form A long poem sequence, divided into chapters. Another Life is comprised of four such sequences of which the last three are detailed together here (‘The Divided Child’ is the first sequence).

Allusion to Classical figure Circe, Venus, Persephone, Dionysus, Midas

Allusion to Classical place Thermopylae, Greece, Rome

Relationship to Classical text The Odyssey and Ovid’s Metamorphoses seem to be the classical texts most clearly evoked but none of the classical images are sustained long enough to be more specific.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts ‘Peccavi. I have Sind’ (sic.). As in ‘The Divided Child, Chapter 5’, the misspelling of the translated Latin highlights the often farcical imposition of classical Western education and culture in this colonial setting.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Dionysiac references are presented as part of Walcott’s foray into the language and style of ‘Old Masters’ such a Baudelaire, Gauguin and Van Gogh (Walcott studied as a painter for a time with his friend Dunstan St Omer). The sequence is full of intertextual references, to the point where it is difficult to connect any of these specifically to the classical material.