I would like to focus this essay on the West Indian poet and playwright Derek Walcott. This poet attracted my attention because he is an Anglophone poet that writes in English but he did not born in the British Islands . Besides Derek also speaks a patois based mainly on French language, so I thought that could be a fairly interesting reason to refer to him in terms of dialectal variables in literature. He has written poetry and drama in both English and Creole dialect.
Derek was born in St. Lucia , an island belonging to the West Indians Archipelago that was under British Colonialism until 1979. This is the reason why Walcott feels a mixed identity and this topic is very important because it is going to be evident along his poetry. Another thing which will get an important value is the balance Derek reaches between his native Caribbean tongue and the English he has learnt in the school. As Derek declares in the Hirsch interview about his poetic language:”… It was no problem for me to feel that since I was writing in English, I was in tune with the growth of the language. I was a contemporary of anyone writing in English anywhere in the world. What is more important, however—and I'm still working on this—was to find a voice that was not inflected by influences. One didn't develop an English accent in speech; one kept as close as possible to an inflection that was West Indian. The aim was that a West Indian or an Englishman could read a single poem, each with this own accent, without either one feeling that is was written in dialect” .
According to my way of thinking, I consider that Derek does not want to compete with the languages that constitute his bilingualism as to him both languages have the same importance as well as both dialect speakers are important(English-English and West-Indian English). Walcott tries to harmonize the conflict between the English canon and his native dialect. His intention could be to direct a message (a poem or a play) to a cosmopolitan reader, but it is in that point in which I found he is considering a language (in this case English-English) more dominant or oppressive than the other because Walcott is aware that there are more people who speaks English than his native dialect.
Derek never denied his admiration for the English language as is clearly reflected in his poem “ A Far Cry from Africa ” (1962) lines 29-30: “ how I choose/ between this Africa and the British tongue I love ?”
But, Walcott also loves his vivid dialect, the traditions of his birthplace and what it could be more important to him, his racial and cultural heritage.
In the poem I have mention above “ A Far Cry from Africa ”; we can observe the cultural and ethnic problems that Derek has. In the poem, the poet is concerned about his mixed heritage and double identity as he has both African and European roots. We find an example in lines 26, 27 and 28 “ I who am poisoned with the blood of both, /Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? /I who have cursed ”. Yet another example could be appreciated in his poem “The Schooner ‘Flight'” , lines 40-43: “ I'm just a red nigger who love the sea, / I had a sound colonial education, /I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,/ and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation ”. Derek does not consider himself only nigger (offensive term for black people used until well the end of 80s decade) or only Dutch, but he considers that he has much to do with the mixture of all of it (he consider himself half nigger, half Dutch and half English mixing here races and nationalisms) and it is in that point in which he gets that balance between the languages that form his bilingualism. If he would consider himself only nigger probably he could only write in his native dialect on the other hand if he would consider himself just as English, he only could write in English, but as he does not consider one but all of them, he is able to write either in English or in his native Caribbean tongue at will.
I surprisingly realised that the English that Derek uses in some of his poems is an American-English. I have found some examples in his poem “ The Schooner ‘Flight' ” in line 6 “gray” instead of “grey”, in line 11 “neighbor” instead of “neighbour”, in line 18 he uses “ain't” rather than the negation form “do not”, in line 152 Derek uses “harbor” instead of “harbour”, in line 205, Walcott uses “li'l” rather than “little” or like in line 468 in which the poet uses “archipelagoes” rather than “archipelagos”. I also would like to comment something that has attracted my attention. In this poem in lines 390-394: “ Be Jesus, I never see sea get so rough /so fast! That wind come from God back pocket! / Where Cap'n headin? Like the man gone blind! / If we's to drong, we go drong, Vince, fock-it! / Shabine, say your prayers, if life leave you any!” we can observe how Derek is using a dialect of the English language not Standard English. The lines are written in the way they are pronounced, as an example of that we have “ Cap'n” in stead of “Capitain”. Most of the ‘Americanism' mentioned earlier has this phonic characteristic too.
After many readings such as his poems “ A Far Cry from Africa ” and “ The Star-Apple Kingdom ” , among others, I have realised that Derek uses to make use of a language very elegant in his poems. In his work we can appreciate a mixture of linguistic influences such as the patois of his native Caribbean tongue (although is more frequent in his plays than in his poems), the English and the splendid Latin and Greek of the classics (Homer, Virgil among others). All these influences give his poetry a richness of lexicon and fluency.
In order to conclude with my essay I would like to include an idea that has came to my mind while I was reading and do the search for information about the poet. I think is clear that Derek has an enormous identity conflict which is exposed along his work. But why does Derek write his complete work in English instead of in his vernacular language? As I said before he has lot of linguistic influences but probably the reason by which Derek writes in English is due to his desire to demonstrate to the whole world that he is able to write in perfect English as well as in his native dialect.
Essay, Sea Changes: Post Colonialism in Synge and Walcott by Sandra Sprayberry. http://www.clemson.edu/caah/cedp/Ireland%20PDFs/Sprayberry.pdf
I will use the term ‘English English' for the more standardised dialect of English Language in Britain (RP) as Prof Rob Pope suggests on his book ‘The English Studies Book'. Routledge Ed; 2002.