reader: April Patrick

respondent: Verena Ollikkala

July 2, 2001

Derek Walcott, "Preparing for Exile"

Despair and isolation permeate the poem, "Preparing for Exile," evinced by images of "the death of Mandelstam"; the "shadow" blotting out his poem and scaring off his Muse; the "new odor in the air" (perhaps of panic-stricken sweat or decomposition), contrasting with the fresh and citrus smell of sea breezes and limes of the past; and of all his poems wanting "to hide." With these images, Walcott clarifies a sense of disconnection from and, indeed, a fear of the world. Experiencing detachment and near paranoid delusions, "my children’s eyes already seem like horizons," and "my cat, I know I imagine it, leaps from my path" to avoid him, images which elucidate an insecure, haunted psyche, untouched even by his closest blood relatives and a familiar pet. Clearly, the poet’s mood is not carefree, light or able to perform as he pleases. Rather, the poem conveys a sense of heaviness, foreboding, and the threat of having the free, creative expression of "his gift," which I hypothesize refers to his poetic ability, interrupted or extinguished.

Walcott heightens the sense of dread by transforming the moon into "an arc-lamp," an unnatural, invasive light such as the ones used in interrogation rooms, while the "inkstain on my hand" metamorphoses into a stain from having his thumb pressed onto a ink pad for fingerprinting by police. The fingerprinting and harsh lighting contribute to the sense of the impersonal which dominates the poem. The images imply impersonal encounters such as confronting Immigration officers when crossing national borders, having to submit to questions, examinations, searches, and photographs or acquiesing to the nation’s multiple tracking devices: numbers, stamps, labels.

The first line of the poems plainly tells us that when looking at the spoiling coconuts, he imagines "the death of Mandelstam," referring to the poet Osip Mandelstam. Born in Warsaw in 1891 to Jewish parents, a leather-goods dealer and a piano teacher, Mandelstam grew up in St. Petersburg, studying with tutors and governesses and later at the St. Pertersburg University. Mandelstam published his first poems in 1910. The importance of preserving cultural traditions became for the poet a central concern. He was a foremost member of the Acmeist School, a small group of Russian poets reactioning to symbolism. Mandelstam had close personal relationships with many of the members, such as Anna Akhmatova, who was silenced during the Revolution, and Nikolay Gumilyev, who was executed. Mandelstam welcomed the February 1917

Revolution but was hostile to the October 1917 Revoultion. He made frequent visits to the south, avoiding much of the Civil War troubles. He did not compose from 1925 to 1930 but turned to prose, writing children’s books, essays and translations. The Soviet cultural authorities were suspicious of his loyalty to the Bolshevik rule and, although he attempted to avoid politics, Mandelstam came to be regarded as a subversive and was hounded by interrogators of Stalin’s regime. To escape his influential enemies, Mandelstam traveled as a journalist in distant provinces. Mandelstam’s "Journey to Armenia" was his last major work published in his lifetime.

In 1922, he married Nadezhda Khazin, whose name means "hope" in Russian. She accompanied him throughout his years of exile and imprisonment. In 1934, Mandelstam was arrested for an epigram he wrote on Stalin: "And every killing is a treat/ For the broad-chested Ossete." Mandelstam was then exiled to Cherdyn.

After a suicide attempt, his sentence was commuted to exile in Voronezh, ending in 1937. In May 1938, he was arrested for "counter-revolutionary" activities and sentenced to five years in a labor camp. In the transit camp, Mandelstam was already so weak he couldn’t stand. He died in the Gulag Archipelago in

Vtoraia Rechka, near Vladivostok, on December 27, 1938. His body was dumped in a mass grave.

Most of his works were unknown outside his own country and were banned from being published during the Stalin era (1929-53). In order to preserve his poetry that became incriminating if written down, poems were committed to memory by his wife, other poets and friends. Nadezdha Mandelstam wrote a memoir of her life with Mandelstam entitled "Hope Against Hope."

For what sort of exile is this poem a preparation? The anguish Walcott feels over his ancestors having been forced into exile from their native land, Africa, and taken to the West Indies as slaves, preoccupies him here as in many of his poems. Walcott straddles two worlds, not only because he possesses both African and European ancestry but in the physical sense of dividing his time between the United States and Trinidad. He lives in Boston, MA much of the year, teaching poetry at Harvard University and the University of Boston. Perhaps with each journey to America--a "neo-Europe"--Walcott struggles with the emotions of exile: anger at the mainstream culture of European-descendants in America, guilt over assimilating into American culture despite his loyalty to Trinidad, estrangement from the values and customs of his homeland and isolation from his people.

In an interview Walcott gave after winning the 1992 Nobel Prize, he mentions another form of exile that might get funneled into the poem, stating that he has known the "exile of divorce," having been twice divorced and currently separated from his third wife.

QUESTIONS:

For what exile is the poet preparing? To what does the phrase "my gift" refer?

Dr. White: (about exile) Even Trinidad was not his home. Exile, too, from St. Lucia.

Sylvia: I agree with your idea that his gift is poetry. And with the "shadow" eclipsing the page, I think Walcott means his creative ability is larger than him.

Dr. White: There’s not just a sense of despair but a threatening aspect to this poem. Every line is a question, like an interrogation.

Jennifer: The arc-lamp is like inside an interrogation room-they shine that bright light right on you. Also with the moon and darkness, and arc-lamp and eclipse, it seems something is happening with Light and Dark, Good and Evil.

Dale: I believe the "gift" could also be talking about creativity. In America, Walcott would be considered an African American. I think the African American experience for males, and I know first hand from my son who has had many experiences of this, is that they do get thrown in jail. They are pursuing creativity under oppressive circumstances. When my son sees a policeman he has to worry that he’s going to be stopped or worse. Policeman frequently target African American males.

Linton: Black males are definitely seen as guilty until proven innocent.

Verena: My family is very close to a Nigerian family whose son was coming to the U.S. to stay with us. He has very dark skinned as are most Nigerians. He was so mad when we met him at the airport over how he had been treated by Customs. He said, "Now I know I am black!"

Dr. White: Exile from the Caribbean to the United States is to a new world. West Indian idea of exile as opposed to immigration where ties to the past are cut. West Indies to America is not that big of a leap and so the feeling of being able to return home is greater. Temporary exiles. Like the Cubans coming here because they didn’t like Castro or Communism, fully intending to stay while and go back. Although their children who’ve grown up here feel that home is the U.S. and don’t feel the need to return to the West Indies. My point is that it’s not an absolute break. Going back and forth. In the post-colonial setting there is a greater passing back and forth between the colonized land and the land of the colonizer and the question becomes: How relevant are nations? Greater ease and affordability of transportation and communication--so much has changed just in the last decade--make it easy to go live in or at least be in touch with other countries.

VERENA’S RESPONSE

In addition to April’s biographical details on Mandelstam, I would like to note that Mandelstam’s story resembles that of many European Jews who found themselves suspended between cultures at the beginning of the 20th century. In an attempt to ameliorate this status, the young writer formally converted to Lutheranism in 1911. Walcott, too, converted: to modernism and an American way of life. Yet he is also suspended between his West Indian origins and his

Boston comforts and income.

The "arc-lamp" is merciless and cold. Immigrants and prisoners know these images well. "Shrugging sergeant" refers to the mechanical and inhumane bureaucratic procedures endured by humans when they must cross from one country into another. Walcott fears that he, like Mandelstam, may have "to hide" his writings in the future to avoid persecution. Walcott uses the image of the cat because cats are territorial animals who are not apt to relocate easily.

Therefore, the cat leaps from his path of exit, wanting to stay in its familiar home.

But Walcott is not only painting hopelessness. Exile is not only a loss-it is also a new beginning: his "children’s eyes are already like horizons" because a new generation will grow within a new country.