Our last conversation at the
Pegasus Hotel poolside, Kingston,
Jamaica, 1993.
Sir Derek Alton Walcott,
KCSL, OBE, OCC (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was - a born St.
Lucian - Poet and Playwright.
He received the 1992 Nobel
Prize in Literature for his Homeric Epic Poem “Omeros” (1990), which many
critics view "as Walcott's major achievement.”
“For what else is there
I’m just a red nigger who
love the sea
I had a sound colonial
education.”
“I am the Caribbean”
He felt duty-bound to write
of the wind, and the memory of wind-whipped hair in the sun, the colour of
fire!
Derek Walcott stood on the
shoulders of giants at the pinnacle of a pyramid. Standing on the pinnacle of
the literary world higher than any Caribbean
thought process was willing to conceive.
This reality just blew my
mind as never before.
I have had one such stunning
moment before. That is when the iconic Jamaican, Herb Mckinley left the VIP
lounge at the Queens Park Savannah, in Port of Spain, Trinidad, to shake my
hands for winning the 400 meters West Indies championship in record time.
I, for once more, would stand
side by side, and be greeted by such a symbolic “Eiffel-like tower” in the
annals of literary history.
Yet he, meek and mild, as
humble as the biblical lamb, he said:
“Cliff, I thank you and Phoebe for coming!”
“We celebrate the return of the UWI Graduates,
Mona, Jamaica 1993.”
The conversation sparked off what was to
follow, gladdened by an emotional state of euphoria concerning when he got the
news?
From his lounge chair at the
Pegasus Hotel poolside there was brief silence.
Then, suddenly, a powerful,
emotional reaction, as if the whole Caribbean
had been vindicated from the chains of slavery.
The documentation, not just
thrilled, but his work was at last authenticated by the ultimate global
authority of the laureates.
Derek Walcott with ‘the gift
of gab’ -
“When the call came from Stockholm
at six o’clock one morning in October, I had just returned to my Boston apartment from my daughter Lizzie’s wedding in Trinidad.”
“On the phone was a voice
from Sweden, telling me I
won the Nobel Prize for Literature and that I should not leak the news to
anyone before one o’clock in Stockholm.”
However, within five minutes
I was on the phone with my wife Margaret in Trinidad.
She said “Stop making jokes!”
Derek Walcott “I am not
joking! I am more serious than a heart attack”, he reiterated.
In the Caribbean,
the news trickled out that day.
The Antiguan novelist -
Jamaica Kincaid - from her home in Vermont
put it in stereotypically blunt terms:
“I thought we were just part of the riffraff
of the British Empire until I read this man
and thought: Oh yes, that is me. That is us. It’s a great day to be a West Indian.”
Popular opinion echoed the
thought that the 1992 prize would go to Heaney or Naipaul. They were the
morning line favorites.
However, the Magisterial
Citation from the Swedish
Academy of Letters. spoke
differently – “Walcott! In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet.”
It praised Walcott’s
“historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment”, “his melodious
and sensitive style” was second to none.
In the meantime, the news as
I recalled came over New York’s
NBC.
I said to my wife Phoebe, a fervent student of
Literature; “Derek won the literature prize, the Nobel prize!”
“Yuh got to be kidding me! Are yuh sure!”
“Currently I am doing ‘Dream
on Monkey Mountain’ with my class. I know the
man!”
My response: “I partied with him in Cascade
and Diego Martin! He teaches in Boston!”
“Send him a congratulations
cable c/o English Department, Boston
University!”
The next thing I knew was
that UWI was going to Honor him. Walcott sent us an invitation to “Return of
the Graduates UWI, Mona, Jamaica, 1993.
My wife and I joined his
party at the Pegasus hotel in Kingston.
We met Derek at the hotel poolside that afternoon for Brunch.
The reconnection of lost time
between two friends was the passion of the moment.
We spoke about Trinidad and St Lucia with
such vivid recollection - as engraved in one of his poems:
“I’m just a Red Nigger who love
the sea. I had a sound Colonial Education.”
He looked forward to a
qualifying conversational engagement about my countryside experience.
He recognized my University of Columba Graduation gown. Hence my
academic status proclamation was clear and distinguishable.
As for love of the sea, I
simply decreed to be a small country village boy.
Walcott was eager to take
note of my story and skillfully shifted the concentration from him to me.
I, in one form or another,
treasure my Las Lomas #3 nurturing. Where I unioned with nature under the
covers of Cocoa,
Coffee, Immortal Trees, and Rice Lagoons.
I listened to the Sempe,
Yellow Tail. Doves, Pico Platt, Male Cobo, Red Neck King Cobo, Parrots and
Paraquit, at dawn and dust.
I tracked the Agouti, the
Lapp, the Tatoo, the Deer and the Iguanas by day, the Possum and Caymans at
night.
I fished the Waubeen,
Coscarob, Teta, Sardine and Cascadura by diurnal.
The shine of the fig leaves in
the moonlight after the rainfall scared me! The Tania leaves umbrellad me in
the rain.
The Yam, Cushcush, Dasheen, Edoes,
and Fig, sustained my hunger.
The Mangoes, Cocorite, Pomerac,
Cerrette seed, Yellow Plums, Cashew, Poirdoux, Pomceterre, and Balata to
mention delicacies.
This my native Bushman
Education. “I could smell ah deer and ah snake like a blood-hound on the harrow-chase.”
Even as I observed the water
grass dewdrops at dawn, I yearned to run like a deer, as I embraced the
fragrance from the hot pitch under my feet during the midday sun after ah
Passing-Cloud.
At dust the croaking frogs
tuck me in to enjoy the ‘honey-dew of slumber’ on my grandmother’s dress. And a
razor-grass pillow on the ‘hard-box factory-wood flooring’ welcomed me.
Derek provoked his point as
he lived his point.
A point man who opened up the
sea for those who want to travel that route with the love of the islands as his
passion unfolded.
He crystallized ‘the
midsummer sea, the hot pitch, this grass, these shacks that made me jungle, and
razor grass shimmering by the roadside, the edge of art.’
The persona of a country boy in the reality of
his union and blend with nature - he knows the woodlice are humming in the
sacred wood, nothing can burn them out, and they are in the blood.
The dwelling place of his
soul.
He described his own
preparation partly in terms of learning to see and love the island where he was
born:
I had my country village
association.
Walcott, to capture ‘the feel
of the island, bow, gunwales and stern as jealously as the fisherman knew his
boat.’
‘That education would mean
nothing unless life were made so real that it stank.’
He spoke of the
transformation of The Little Carib Theatre Workshop, to the Trinidad Theatre
Workshop, founded in 1959.
His group met on Friday
evenings to do improvisations and scenes from plays just imagined.
I was a witness to this
narrative, having lived in Trinidad, and
frequented his home in Cascade and Diego Martin, and often supported his theatre
readings as time permitted.
Walcott had an important
gathering of smart people on his team.
He had the likes of the
established Errol John and Errol Hill. The rest is the recorded history of the
pathway to the kingdom of laureates.
He was such a man I chose to
call friend!
He offered me a copy of his ‘OMEROS’.
I humbly asked that he gifted it to my daughter Lisa.
She is the future and can
bear witness to a man I called friend. Walcott signed the book with Lisa in
mind!
“What else is there
but books, books and the
sea.”
The four New Testament Evangelists
(Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) – as ordinary-size people sat on their
shoulders; Walcott, though smaller, inspired by William Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton,
‘saw more’ than other eyes could see in the field of literature from their
shoulders.
‘Forty years gone, in my
island childhood, I felt that the gift of poetry had made me one of the chosen’,
a biblical implication of his spirit.
The phrase also appears in
the works of the Jewish Tosaphist Isaiah di Trani (c. 1180 – c. 1250):
‘Should Joshua the son of Nun endorse a
mistaken position?’
‘I do not hesitate to express
my opinion, regarding such matters in accordance with the modicum of
intelligence allotted to me. I am the Caribbean!’
‘I was never arrogant
claiming, My Wisdom served me well.
Instead I applied to myself
the parable of the philosophers.
For I heard the following
from the philosophers,
The wisest of the
philosophers asked: ‘We admit that our predecessors were wiser than we.’
At the same time we criticize
their comments, often rejecting them and claiming that the truth rests with us.’
How is this possible?
I, Cliff, bear witness to an
unrestricted lesson on philosophy from my friend the Laureate!
Walcott was in the moment!
He was destined to receive an
honorarium from the University of the West Indies, Mona , Jamaica,
later on that evening .
Anxiety mounted, as I
observed Walcott’s then argument with butterflies fluttering inside me. I was
elated by his rap with an ‘Oxford, Bostonian, Caribbean accent’, I call “Walcottian ‘in dialogue.’
We continued the conversation
with an engaging aire of camaraderie.
I looked up at the table and
experienced a feeling of extraordinary power.
There sat six people in the
circle, they had no place to go. They were a captive audience for the next
several minutes.
There was nothing shy about Walcott’s
poetic voice.
It demanded to be heard, in
all its sensuous immediacy, philosophical, historical, bibliographical
references and the biblical complexity of his parabolic nourishment.
The wise philosopher
responded:
"Who sees further a
dwarf or a giant? Surely a giant for his eyes are situated at a higher level
than those of the dwarf.
But if the dwarf is placed on
the shoulders of the giant who sees further?
This is why I said my
Daughter Lisa is the future!
So too, my daughter, like the dwarfs astride
the shoulders of her Mother and Father, her giants.
She has mastered our wisdom
and moved beyond it. Due to our wisdom she has grown wise and is able to express
all that we taught, but not because she is greater than we are, but because, we
her parents, remain in her eyes, worthy of emulation!
A teacher by trade!
I realized the opportunity to
persuade the table that my cause was just, my argument sound!
I felt capable of capturing
the audience sympathetic attention.
I remained alert to the
opportunities to use a question to advance a key point of my narrative.
Walcott’s family is of
English, Dutch and African descent, reflecting the complex colonial history of
the island that he explores in his poetry.
But my family tree shows
that.
I am of Spanish, French
Creole and African descent, a mixture of our Colonial birthright.
I appreciate Walcott’s oral
arguments, which seldom accommodates set speeches. His argument is a
conversation, a discussion between knowledgeable communities and his ‘inward
hunger’, having done his homework on a “Hot Bench”.
Walcott felt the Colonial
burden: He saw the fragmentation of Caribbean
identity.
He envisioned the role of the
poet in a post-colonial Era. He then developed the persona of ‘an elated,
exuberant poet madly in love with English’. He became strongly influenced by
modernist poets as T.S.Eliot and Ezra Pound.
Yet the beauty of the islands
was his perpetual nostalgia. ‘I am the Caribbean!’
Dr.Cliff Bertrand
Former NYC ,Board of
Education ,School Administrator
