Walcott, "Map of the New World" (413)

reader: Suganthi Senapati
respondent: Jill Petersen
recorder: Brenda K. Rambarran
July 5, 2001.

Upon reading Walcott’s, ‘Map of the New World", it reminds the idea which is best expressed by T.E. Hulme that, ‘thought is prior to language and consists in the simultaneous presentation to the mind of two different images". (Hulme 84).

In Walcott’s poems these images form a ‘visual chord’ in the mind- a mental image which unites them. In order to communicate thought, there must be what he called the ‘passage from the eye to the voice,’ or the process of forming sounds which stand for images.

It is very true that Walcott has made a major shift in poetic taste and poetic practice. The repudiation of conventionally ‘poetic’ imagery, the organizing of symbolic images, incidents, fragments of conversation or of memory without any explanatory links that would lower the pressure of meaning, the arresting of attention by imagistic shock or emotional anti-climax, the purging of self-pity by irony as well as the complete suppression of the poets own personality and his appearance only through the persona of his invented character-all this adds up to a new poetic style of English poetry.

In ‘Map of the New World I Archipelagoes,’ he has given dialectic as well as symbolist dimension and a tone of intellectual irony. Many of his poems achieve ironic comment on the decadence and corruption and emptiness of modern civilization by collocation without comment, or any sort of casual linking, images from the present and from the past.

The very first line of the poem is quite intriguing.

‘At the end of this sentence, rain will begin.

At the rain’s edge, a sail’.

Walcott strikes the reader’s vision with rain. The rain is a metaphor for tears representing Odysseus tears because he is set off for a long voyage or it could be the Greek poet homer while creating this wonderful myth his eyes glistened with tears, or it could be Walcott’s tears in which he sets his sail in search of his islands which are being colonized.

‘Slowly the sail will lose sight of islands

into a mist will go the belief in harbours

of an entire race’.

Odysseus is drifted far away from Ithaca, there by he lost the sight of the islands. Inspite of the hardships Odysseus is determined to get back to his home land after twenty long years but on his return he found his island undergone a great change. Same way Walcott hints his own belief of finding out his islands, at the same time he is also aware of the changes that might have occurred due to colonization.

‘The ten-years war is finished

Helen’s hair, a grey cloud.

Troy, a white ashpit

By the drizzling sea’.

The Trojan war had lasted for ten years and Helen is brought back to Ithaca. But she has lost her youth and turned old. Walcott is ironically talking about the time which is lost here. Troy is portrayed as a white ashpit by the drizzling sea. Walcott brings the scene of war and its effect in one line.

‘The drizzle tightens like the strings of a harp.

A man with clouded eyes picks up the rain

And plucks the first line of the Odyssey’.

The falling of the rain is compared to the strings of a harp which is musical. And what a way to end the poem! A man with clouded eyes picks up the rain , could be Odysseus on his return he is troubled because his wife Penelope couldn’t recognize him and his island is not the same. Same way Walcott is worried about his lost identity. And this initiated Homer to create Odyssey and Walcott this wonderful poem.

These lines are the best example portraying Walcott’s identity as an ‘imagist’. He completely arrests the attention of the readers by bringing this sudden shift which is his unique style. He is very successful in uniting the first line of the poem with the last line. He seems to be very casual in doing so not attempting to exert pressure and his creativity achieves its height.

Walcott is aware of the complexities.