Omeros
By Derek Walcott
Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux
Nowhere is there a claim, either in the book or on its jacket, that Derek Walcott’s Omeros is an epic, even though the title, style, and subject matter bring it in close proximity to the epic tradition. Is it an epic, and if not, what sort of narrative poem is it? I leave the matter of classification for someone more qualified for the task. For my part, I can point out that it does have some epic characteristics. Walcott has written in a loose hexameter and has employed many epic conventions, albeit to a small scale.
In the introduction to his epic poem Genesis, Frederick Turner explains one of the intentions behind the epic structure: “These rigidities compel the action again and again to come to a point, a focus, to collapse the wave function of possibility, to choose one path of plot.”
Walcott’s poem is less disciplined in this respect than what we would expect from an epic; his chapters, although fairly equal in length, are not always neat divisions of plot. Rather than a long, continuous narrative that never loses sight of its impetus and destination, Omeros is a collection of plots, subplots, and characters strung somewhat loosely together by the author’s various underlying concerns. In fact, what the story lacks in grandness is compensated for by the wide range of concerns, a quality frustrating to the reviewer who wants to give an overall view of the book.
Some background in the history of Saint Lucia, the island where most of the action takes place, and of the people of the Antilles would be helpful in understanding parts of the book, something myself did not have. But the reader ignorant of historical background will be carried through any difficult passage by Walcott’s consistently beautiful language. The natural world is animated with character by his attention to detail, and the most striking metaphors and similes crystalised to simplicity by such self-contained images as “that conch-coloured dusk low pelicans cross,” “Seven Seas, as blind as a sail in rain,” and an extended metaphor of Sunday strolling across a wharf in Lisbon dressed ina cream suit.
The weakest parts of the book are those about Major Plunkett, who fought in the Battle of Saints so that he could afterwards live on the island on a pension. It is understandable that Walcott would be less moved by Plunkett, who is trying to write a history of British imperialism in the Caribbean. However, the reader will find that the book invites re-reading even immediately after the initial attempt.
The names and situations bring much of the Trojan War and the Odyssey to mind. One character, Achille, a poor fisherman, competes with another fisherman, Hector, for the love of the island beauty, proud and independent Helen. Unlike his ancient namesake, Achille lacks the pride that would lead to either bloodshed or sulkiness, and he allows Helen to go to whomever she chooses. There is also Philoctete, whose fetid leg would was opened by an anchor, and there is Seven Seas, a mysterious blind old man whom the narrator calls Omeros. (I leave it to the reader to discover Walcott’s provocative etymology of the name.) And there is the narrator, who progressively plays a greater role, until he is subtly identified as Walcott himself. He leaves his island for a self-imposed exile in Boston. There he sets out on an odyssey through Spain, England, Ireland, Greece, Venice, and even Toronto, before returning to Saint Lucia.
The most powerful episodes of the book are those in which the poet slips his characters into prophetic dreams or fantasy. Achille follows a swift up a river to Africa, where his father is troubled to learn that Achile cannot remember his real, African, name. “What’s the difference?” asks Achille. “In the world I come from / we accept the sounds we were given.” He tearfully learns, though, that in losing his name, he has become merely the shadow of it.
The narrator sees the ghost of his father on a street in Boston, and is told:
One you have seen everything and gone everywhere,
cherish our island for its green simplicities …
the shadows of grape leaves on sunlit verandahs
made me content. The sea-swift vanishes in rain,
and yet in its travelling all that the sea-swift does
it does in a circular pattern. Remember that, son.
After the poet returns to Saint Lucia, he is met in his sleep by all the personae of Omeros: Seven Seas, a blind vagrant he saw in London, and Indian shaman, a marble bust of Homer, and a goat in an old stone theatre. These merging personae reveal to the narrator what it is he has learned in his wanderings.
Most of the closing scenes in the book take place along the seashore in January. Walcott creates a sense of change and the beginning of a new era by evoking the two-faced god Janus. (“Ah, twin-headed January, seeing either tense.”) The inhabitants of the island can begin to come to terms with their identity, which is neither the aboriginal race of the islands nor the people that were once transplanted there by colonists as slaves. Standing at the shore, everyone can conclude the wanderings he or she has made on this island which now belongs to each, and to which each of them belongs.
