{"id":18241,"date":"2017-03-27T09:27:02","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T13:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=18241"},"modified":"2017-03-27T09:27:02","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T13:27:02","slug":"derek-walcott-becomes-the-volcano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=18241","title":{"rendered":"Derek Walcott becomes the volcano"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Orlando, FL) I\u2019ve settled on a poem with which to express homage to the late Derek Walcott: his \u201cVolcano\u201d (1976)<\/p>\n

Joyce was afraid of thunder
\nbut lions roared at his funeral
\nfrom the Zurich zoo.
\nWas it Trieste or Zurich?
\nNo matter. These are legends, as much
\nas the death of Joyce is a legend,
\nor the strong rumour that Conrad
\nis dead, and that Victory is ironic.
\nOn the edge of the night-horizon
\nfrom this beach house on the cliffs
\nthere are now, till dawn,
\ntwo glares from the miles-out-
\nat-sea derricks; they are like
\nthe glow of the cigar
\nand the glow of the volcano
\nat Victory\u2018s end.
\nOne could abandon writing
\nfor the slow-burning signals
\nof the great, to be, instead,
\ntheir ideal reader, ruminative,
\nvoracious, making the love of masterpieces
\nsuperior to attempting
\nto repeat or outdo them,
\nand be the greatest reader in the world.
\nAt least it requires awe,
\nwhich has been lost to our time;
\nso many people have seen everything,
\nso many people can predict,
\nso many refuse to enter the silence
\nof victory, the indolence
\nthat burns at the core,
\nso many are no more than
\nerect ash, like the cigar,
\nso many take thunder for granted.
\nHow common is the lightning,
\nhow lost the leviathans
\nwe no longer look for!
\nThere were giants in those days.
\nIn those days they made good cigars.
\nI must read more carefully.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two of \u201cthe great\u201d are named\u00a0in this poem: Joyce and Conrad. Joyce is a foil for Walcott: an exiled former subject of the British Empire who wrote Ulysses<\/em>, to which Walcott, from a different Atlantic island, replied with Omeros<\/em>. It turns out that lions did roar at Joyce\u2019s funeral, and one can risk the pathetic fallacy that they roared for\u00a0the\u00a0master\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know Conrad\u2019s novel Victoria<\/em>, but Wikipedia suggests why Walcott might like it (as long as it can be read as \u201cironic\u201d). Apparently, it describes yet another colonial island-outpost, this one in the Pacific, from European and subaltern perspectives–offering that double vision that fascinates Walcott. And according to Walcott, it ends with two lights shining on\u00a0the ocean horizon, one a cigar and one a volcano. Seeing a similar pair of lights on the sea off his Caribbean home, Walcott imagines them as messages from Conrad, who is only “rumored” to be dead because his words still speak.<\/p>\n

Walcott, the future Nobelist, has every right to place himself in these men\u2019s company. He strives to write great works, to make his own mark. The poem relates a\u00a0moment, however, when he considers whether it might be better to devote himself to reading: in fact, to become the \u201cideal reader.\u201d That is a ruminative life, more modest, quieter, although Walcott’s character still compels him to be the “greatest reader in the world.”<\/p>\n

\u201cVolcano\u201d adopts a rhetoric of decline. \u201cAwe \u2026 has been lost in our time\u201d; \u201cso many take thunder for granted.\u201d But I think the narrator\u00a0pokes a little fun at himself for that mood when he says, \u201cIn those days they made good cigars.\u201d It\u2019s not really that culture has declined and all the great ones have passed. That\u2019s simply what a person feels when he or she pledges, \u201cI must read more carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Walcott gone now, I\u2019d like to think of him as a light from far offshore, sending his slow-burning signals for a long time to come. Best to enjoy them, not try to outdo them, because\u00a0they really don’t make writers\u00a0like Derek Walcott any more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Orlando, FL) I\u2019ve settled on a poem with which to express homage to the late Derek Walcott: his \u201cVolcano\u201d (1976) Joyce was afraid of thunder but lions roared at his funeral from the Zurich zoo. Was it Trieste or Zurich? No matter. These are legends, as much as the death of Joyce is a legend, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fine-arts","category-notes-on-poems"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18241"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18247,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18241\/revisions\/18247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}