LITR 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Student Poetry Presentation 2008

Thursday, 10 April: Robinson Crusoe (complete, but especially 160 ("You are to understand that now I had . . . two plantations . . . ") through page 233 ("There was another tree . . . )

·        Dialogue with Robinson Crusoe / Poetry reading from Walcott: “Crusoe’s Journal” (92-4)

reader: Brouke M. Rose-Carpenter

Crusoe's Journal (1965/1970)

I looked now upon the world as a thing remote, which I
had nothing to do with, no expectation from, and, indeed,
no desires about. In a word, I had nothing indeed
to do with it, nor was ever like to have; so I thought
it looked as we may perhaps look upon it hereafter,
viz., as a place I had lived in but was come out
of it; and well might I say, as Father Abraham
to Dives, "Between me and there is a great gulf fixed."
                                                       -ROBINSON CRUSOE

Once we have driven past Mundo Nuevo trace             (New World)              
safely to this beat house
perched between ocean and green, churning forest
the intellect appraises
objects surely, even the bare necessities
of style are turned to use,
like those plain iron tools he salvages
from shipwreck, hewing a prose
as odorous as raw wood to the adze;                           
out of such timbers
came our first book, our profane Genesis
whose Adam speaks that prose
which, blessing some sea-rock, startles itself
with poetry's surprise,
in a green world, one without metaphors:                                   (St. Christopher ‘The Christ-
like Christofer he bears                                          bearer’ Christopher
in speech mnemonic as a missionary's                            Columbus)
the Word to savages,
its shape an earthen, water-bearing vessel's                              
whose sprinkling alters us
into good Fridays who recite His praise,
parroting our master's
style and voice, we make his language ours
converted cannibals
we learn with him to eat the flesh of Christ.

All shapes, all objects multiplied from his,
our ocean's Proteus;                                               (multiform sea god)
in childhood, his derelict's old age                                             
was like a god's. (Now pass
in memory, I serene parenthesis,
the cliff-deep leeward coast
of my own island filing past the noise
of stuttering canvas,
some noon-struck village, Choiseul, Canaries,               (Choiseul- Island in Solomon
crouched crocodile canoes,                                      Islands, Asian archipelago)
a savage settlement from Henty's novels,                                     (Canaries- Islands off N’W’
Marryat or R.L.S.,                                       Africa)           
with one boy signalling at the sea's edge,                                    (G. A. Henty, 1832-1902 though what he cried is lost.)                         popular novelist of British
So time, that makes us objects, multiplies                                  Empire)
                  our natural loneliness.                                              (Captain Frederick Marryat,

For the hermetic skill, that from earth's clays                              sea novelist: Mister      
shapes something without use,                                Midshipman Easy)
and, separate from itself, lives somewhere else,              (Robert Louis Stevenson,
sharing with every beach                                        1850-94; Treasure Island
a longing for those gulls that cloud the cays                                Kidnapped)
with raw, mimetic cries,
never surrenders wholly, for it knows                                        (Cays=Keys: low islands it needs another's praise                                         or reefs)          
like hoary, half-cracked Ben Gunn, until it cries              (Ben Gunn, marooned sailor
at last, "O happy desert!"                                       in Treasure Island-1883)
and learns again the self-creating peace
of islands. So from this house
that faces nothing but the sea, his journals
assume a household use;
we learn to shape from them, where nothing was
the language of a race,
and since the intellect demands its mask            
that sun-cracked, bearded face
provides us with the wish to dramatize
ourselves at nature's cost,
to attempt a beard, to squint through the sea-haze,
exposing as naturalists,
drunks, castaways, beachcombers, all of us
yearn for those fantasies
of innocence, for our faith's arrested phase
when the clear voice
startled itself saying "water, heaven, Christ,"                              
hoarding such heresies as
God's loneliness moves in His smallest creatures.

                                                -Derek Walcott

Brouke’s Break Down: “Barney Style”

Journal entry:   Separation/ Acting as two different worlds, “remote”- alone/ away.

“…as a place I have lived in but was come out of it.” – Once part of, but now he has completely disconnected himself from. 

“Between me and thee is a great gulf fixed.” -  Separation as permanent, “fixed” – unchangeable.  No plans of returning to old self or world. 

Poem:  

Stanza 1

·        “safely to this beach house/ perched between ocean and green…” – Peace, seclusion, rural.

·        “even the bare necessities/ of style are turned to use.” – Appreciation of life and uses.

·        Through true appreciation for raw and real emotion, we get the most beautiful ideas in their purest form.

·        “Word” – why capitalized?  Christianity.

·          Conversion to Christianity when colonized

·        “parroting our masters style of voice” – Mimic/ loss of originality

·        Loss of self and culture/ conversion

Stanza 2

·        Their world morphs into the likeness of others/ Replicas. 

·        “our ocean’s..” – Establish crossing of ownership

·        “filing past the noise of shuttering canvas, … Choiseul, Canaries, / crouched crocodile canoes” – Alliteration: “C’s”: sound of canvas. 

·        “With one boy signalling at the sea’s edge, /though what he cried is lost.” – loss of voice

o       Do we gain or lose the voice of a culture through Novels?

Stanza 3

·        “Something without use,” – From a use for everything to useless.

·        “Separate from itself” – loss of original culture; isolating self from self. 

·        “self-creating peace”

·        “So from this house…”- return to beach house.  Different tone: was hopeful, what is it now?

v     “learn to shape”-have to change, “nothing”-empty, “Intellect demands it’s mask”-trick your mind, “bearded face”-hiding, “attempt”-have to try, “squint through”- hard to see, “posing”-fake, “yearn for those fantasies”- want/ not realistic.

·        Trying to fit into their world

·        They were robbed of their world.  So it is our interpretation of what we want to imagine their world to be.

·        “hoarding such heresies as/ God’s loneliness moves in His smallest creatures”: rationalization of the colonizers, they needed our help, they wanted it, or it was for their own good.

v     “smallest creatures”: islands

·         The journals hold a time and culture this is gone. This is why we read them to travel back to that time. 

v     Do you feel there is a purpose to the way the stanzas are divided up? What?

Questions:

1.      What is Walcott saying about Robinson Crusoe?

2.      Now that we have read Robinson Crusoe and “Crusoe’s Journal”, what are the differences in the two perspectives?