LITR / CRCL 5734:
Colonial & Postcolonial Literature
Student Poetry Presentation, 2003
Walcott, “Ruins of a
Great House”
Kim Herrera – reader
Kelley Gutridge – respondent
Robert Buffum – recorder
Pictures passed around
Definition of intertextuality (http://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hf10278.html)
- “A literary work not simply the product of a single author, but of its relationship to other texts and to the structures of language itself … any text is constructed of a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another” (Julia Kristeva)
- the readers’ own previous readings, experiences and position within the cultural formation also form crucial intertexts.
- “Theorists of intertextuality problematize the status of authorship, treating the writer of a text as the orchestrator of … the already-written rather than as its originator” (Barthes)
- Texts draw upon mulitiple codes from wider contexts – both textual and social.
- “The boundaries of texts are in various genres and media; no text is an island entire of itself … and the relationships b/w codes within a genre may shift over time… intertextuality blurs the boundaries b/w texts and the world of lived experiences.
The pictures
(advertisements) draw opinions in. We
bring in our own codes to understand pictures of advertisements … our culture
influences how we see advertisements as well as texts.
We use imagery to decipher pieces of text.
Walcott’s poetry brings in other works to help the reader as well as
himself (or the speaker) to understand his work, and the speaker in the poem is
trying to deal with his own history.
Walcott begins
his poem with an exert from Brown’s Urn Burial.
Question: Why does Walcott
slightly alter Brown’s wording of the poem?
Poem read
Many gothic
images: carnal houses, unknown, dragons’ claws.
It also reminds me of an earlier poem we read by Walcott – “Koeing of
the River” – factory like tools buried underneath, cattle droppings.
The speaker is saying farewell, and the image of a fallen empire is
suggested by the “marble like Greece, like Faulkner’s South in stone.”
The empire of slavery once in season is now gone.
The “leprosy of empire” suggests the ruins of a great house- a once
empire. On page 20 Walcott alludes
to Kipling’s poem “Recessional.” “Recessional”
is a warning – a moral responsibility those in power should have – and the
last lines to almost every stanza except one states “Lest we forget! Lest we
forget!” Kipling is reminding
England that they were once conquered by an empire – the Roman Empire.
John Derbyshire’ article, “A Nest of Burglars” states that
recessional refers to the hymn sung at the end of an Anglican service when the
minister and choir withdraw to the vestry.
“This famous poem had something for everyone.
Imperialists could thrill to the implicit message that the British Empire
was God’s will. The more
skeptical could nod with approval at the lines suggesting that the whole show
might, after all, be just a flash in the pan … even pacifists found something
to like in it. One of them, the
socialist and anti-imperialist Jack Mackail, wrote a letter thanking Kipling, in
heartfelt terms, for having written the poem.
In a polite response, Kipling denied any pacifistic intent: ‘Thank you
very much but all the same seeing what manner of armed barbarians we are
surrounded with, we’re about the only power with a glimmer of civilization in
us … this is no ideal world but a nest of burglars, alas, and we must protect
ourselves against being burgled.’” Kipling’s believed great power must be
accompanied by great humility. In
the next stanza we have explorers in “charnel galleons” – merchant or
fighting ships – these explorers also being poets (writers).
This brings me back to the beginning of the poem.
Brown’s poem is about one’s past, one’s ancestral bones (past).
Persons living in the past question their past, but Brown seems to be
saying that we should look at now, the present first.
(forgot to say – maybe the past cannot be stated exactly as it was but
just like Walcott slightly distorts Brown’s words maybe others like Hawkins,
Raleigh, and Drake distorted the past. Maybe Walcott who is living in the
present is saying that he should be concerned with what is going on now, in the
present.) Walcott’s history is not etched in stone; he is unable to
encrypt his own history. How is
Walcott dealing with his identity, his past?
In the last stanza Walcott quotes lines from John Donne’s “Mediation
XVII”. Other parts of meditation
recited: “Perchance he for whom
this Bell tolls, may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him: And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as
that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me,
and I now not that … All mankind is of one Author, and is one volume; when one
Man dies, one Chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better
language, and every Chapter must be so translated; God employs several
translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war,
some by justice, but Gods hand is in every translation; and his hand shall bind
up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie
open to one another…No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a
piece of the continent, a part of the main...any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the
bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” All
of these other works layer the poem. All
are a part of Walcott (trying to identify his history). In this same stanza Walcott refers to Albion, which means
Britain – England was once a colony herself.
Question: Keeping the concept of intertextuality and Walcott’s poem in mind, how does Roy’s novel (and others we have read) compare with “Ruins of a Great House”? Is the conflict of self-identity (or even cultural identity) solved or somehow dealt with?
Kelly Gutridge
states that in Roy’s novel the protagonist, Rahel, reflects back on her
childhood to help her deal with adulthood (her identity).
Kelley reads exerts from pages 272-273.
Rahel is walking to heart of darkness … like an introduction to history
house and heart of darkness. The
decay of the house – progressive destruction.
She revisits history in a sense. The
gothic in the history – the repressed ghosts of the past.
Both, Walcott and Roy use gothic conventions.
Dr. White –
What about intertextuality? Text
does not exist without previous text.
Natalie- You
bring things into the text. How is
he using…
Kayla – Roy
uses intertextuality of twins. The
allusions develop characters.
White –
…allusions, reference to a previous work.
Like Elvis hairstyle. Another
word, “sampling” – elements of previous music into new remixes of music
– popular cultural level.
Kim –
self-reflection is also intertextuality.
? – …its
our history of Anglophiles … ashamed …
White –
reflective, extremely self-conscious – not very heroic.
This all happened before and we are replaying it.
Kayla – What
Walcott learned and rejected previous text … take what you learn.
Walcott’s grappling with it.
Greg –
…rejecting history…Donne’s “Meditation
17”… history in ruins, slaves buried in fields.
Kayla –
Donne says everything that happens to man happens to me.
Kim –
faction – real person and making them fiction
Natalie-
…more like you practice what you preach
Kim –
…written nice and pretty but not happening in reality
White – intertextuality – postmodern- not heroic… self/other – shifting self to other… “difference”, “intertextuality”
- not like an original text
- all texts rely on other texts
- no independent self [sic] the other
- another term for meditation – communication between two groups
- compassion