DEREK WALCOTT’S THE ODYSSEY: THE GATES OF IMAGINATION NEVER CLOSE! Betine van Zyl Smit ment of Latin, University of the Western Cape Bellville 7535 Abstract. Derek Walcott’s The Odyssey is discussed as an example of the refashioning of Homeric epic into a play that combines the old with the new. By incorporating elements from other works influenced by Homer and elements from the modern world, including his own Caribbean background, Walcott has created a drama that reflects the multiculturalism of the global world and testifies to the vibrancy of the classical tradition. Homer’s Odyssey is one of the best known and most influential works of literature in the world. It was composed in what we would regard as a small community.? Yet through nearly three thousand years its story of the heroic traveller Odysseus finding his way home in spite of many perils and obstacles has been translated and retold countless times and is familiar to many millions of people. In 1992 Odysseus was reincarnated once again, this time on stage in The Odyssey by Derek Walcott.? This version has subsequently been published. In this article I shall examine the way in which Walcott uses Homer’s epic as a framework to create a new work which, because of its incorporation of elements from various cultures, reflects facets of the modern world with its global culture. Modern dramatists who use ancient literary works as a basis for their plays usually have a particular theme in mind. A certain aspect of the model may thus come to dominate the new play.’ In his dramatization of Homer’s Odyssey Derek * Menelaus says these words in Derek Walcott’s The Odyssey: A Stage Version (London 1993) 35. All references in this article are to this edition. ? This article does not deal with the perennial question of the identity of Homer and the method of composition of the /liad and the Odyssey. For a good indication of the controversy see the review article by H. Pelliccia, ‘As Many Homers As You Please’, New York Review of Books 64 (20 November 1997) 44-48, * Walcott had previously drawn from Homeric epic in many of his poems and especially in his great ‘epic’ poem Omeros (London 1990). For an illuminating discussion of the relationship between Omeros and Homeric epic, see R. Whitaker, “Derek Walcott’s Omeros and the Classics’, Akroterion 41 (1996) 93-102. * A good example of this tendency is offered by the afterlife of Euripides’ Medea. The Greek tragedy is so rich in nuance and subtle in characterization that it has been interpreted in countless diverse ways by scholars through the centuries and also has served as inspiration to. numerous dramatists from Seneca to our own time. It is noteworthy, however, that the most 34 Scholia ns Vol. 7 (1998) 3-16 ISSN 1018-9017 Walcott has avoided this pitfall of oversimplification and has given the adventures of his Odysseus a splendid resonance. The many facets of the ancient hero are apparent, while aspects and themes from many later cultures have been incorporated to create a play that mirrors ‘many cultures co-existing in dialogue’.° Walcott’s background has given him roots in many languages and cultures. Born and brought up in Castries on the island of St. Lucia in what was then the British West Indies, he spoke English at home but was also fluent in the French patois, which was the lingua franca of the streets and the countryside.® Although his family was Methodist, he was educated by Roman Catholic laymen and Irish brothers at St Mary’s College. His honours degree studies in English, French and Latin developed his enthusiasm for and knowledge of the western tradition in literature. He began to publish poetry from an unusually early age. Inevitably the young Walcott was torn between the two worlds of his experience. On the one side was his environment, on the other his schooling. The natural beauty of the islands, their colonial heritage including that of the native Caribbean, African and Indian inhabitants, was exciting, but against the intellectually intoxicating European literary tradition there was a risk that this patrimony might seem inferior. Indeed, as John Figueroa has remarked, ‘There is little doubt that in his early days Walcott was much concerned in his poetry with themes of colour, discrimination and rejection, of being on the periphery’.” However, as he matured as an artist, Walcott seemed to resolve this conflict and succeeded in synthesizing these two worlds. It is this creative amalgamation of different cultures which finds expression in his stage version of the adventures of Odysseus. Derek Walcott has written many plays and most of them were first staged in Port of Spain at the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, which he founded in 1959 recent versions of this drama often present a one-sided view of the protagonist and thus flatten the many dimensions of the original. Thus, to cite a striking example, Jackie Crossland’s Collateral Damage: The Tragedy of Medea (Vancouver 1992) is a feminist interpretation of the action that strives to exonerate Medea from the responsibility for the murder of her children. In the process, it seems to me, the characters are simplified to such an extent that the play does not have much impact. * See S. Breslow, ‘Derek Walcott: 1992 Nobel Laureate in Literature’, World Literature Today 67 (1993) 271 * Biographical information about Walcott was gathered from: S. P. Breslow [5]; S. Brown (ed.), The Art of Derek Walcott (Chester Springs 1991); R. D, Hamner Derek Walcott (New York 1993) and J. Figueroa, ‘Derek Walcott—A Personal Memoir’, Kunapipi 14 (1993) 82- 89. 7 Figueroa [6] 83.“Derek Walcott’s The Odyssey: The Gates of Imagination Never Close’, B. van Zyl Smit 5 and directed until 1977.8 However, The Odyssey: A Stage Version was written for and first produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon- Avon in 1992, Like the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he received in the same year, this is proof that Walcott had long left the edge and moved right to the centre. As Stephen Breslow has remarked, ‘If we are entering an era in which multiculturalism is our central ideology, Derek Walcott must be acclaimed as one of our greatest cultural leaders’.” Walcott transforms the Homeric epic into a play which not only echoes the classical past, but also deals with many aspects of the present and quotes some of the many intermediate variations of the story of Odysseus, so that the end-product is a rich palimpsest where past and present, old and modern, colonial and post-colonial, pagan and Christian, are layered.’ Homer’s Odyssey has had a most active afterlife."' In addition to inspiring a multitude of poems and novels through the ages, it has formed the basis for a large number of stage versions among which are comedies, tragi-comedies, parodies, musicals, satirical dramas and tragedies.'* Walcott has preferred the neutral term ‘a stage version’, which encompasses his two-act play, where elements of high drama, tragedy, comedy and musical drama combine. Modem playwrights who base their work on a classical myth that is treated in an extant ancient drama have a ready-made framework in which to adapt the classical myth. Walcott has, however, chosen as his raw material a lengthy Homeric epic. Stage production entails a limited time span and could not accommodate the full epic narrative. Some of the stories from Homer’s Odyssey have been selected by Walcott and recast as dramatic episodes that are linked to provide a coherent whole.'? As in Homer’s epic the action does not proceed chronologically, but some scenes are flashbacks. The period covered is the same ten years from the capture of Troy to Odysseus” home-coming to Ithaca and his wife and son. The bare outline of the play is pretty much pure Homer. A prologue introduces the theme. The first scene is at Troy where the victorious Greek leaders are preparing to depart. The next transfers to Ithaca ten years later. * See B. King, Derek Walcott and West Indian Drama (Oxford 1995). ° Breslow [5] 271. As is apparent, I am dealing with the text of Walcott’s play, as I have not been able to see it in performance. ™ For discussion of this phenomenon see W. B, Stanford, The Ulysses Theme: A Study in the Adaptability of a Traditional Hero® (Oxford 1963); H. Bloom (ed.), Odysseus/Ulysses (New York 1991) and the introduction in G. Steiner (ed.), Homer in English (London 1996). " For more detail see J. D. Reid, The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts: 1330-1990's (New York 1993) 726. '° The first act has fourteen scenes while the second has six.