Derek Walcott: North and South

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

North and South

 

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

405-409

Allusion to Classical figure Venus (the planet), Consul, Roman legion

Allusion to Classical place Atlantis, Tyre, Alexandria, Parthenon, Carthage, African provinces

Classical/post-Classical intertexts The British Raj, the Reich (presumably the Third Reich), the American Revolutionary War

Further Comment Walcott quotes the Roman Republican motto Delenda est Carthago and refers to the common story that Carthage was sown with salt at the end of the Third Punic War.

The poem’s imagery presents an empire on the wane but also a culture in which inter-racial suspicion and bigotry persist.