Cry. Far.

History is illusive. It’s tauntingly simple and overwhelmingly complex. It’s something that one can discover, remember, imagine, and create. And much like Derek Walcott’s own description of his play, “Dream on Monkey Mountain,” it can be “illogical, derivative, contradictory.”[1]

But what does that mean? In the face of its own absurdity, why is history important? Why do authors like Walcott try to understand it, deal with it, and “create” despite and because of it?

In Walcott’s poem, “A Far Cry From Africa,” he literally opens up a can of worms (“Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:/ “Waste no compassion on these separate dead!”) revealing his “mixed” ancestry and his search for a place within it. This poem is at the relative beginning of Walcott’s long and fruitful career of explicating the un/importance of history, of genealogy, of identity.

I Who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?[2]

Can we turn from Africa, from history, from genealogy and live? Why? Why not?

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[1] Walcott, Derek. Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970, 208.

[2] ---. Collected Poems: 1948-1984. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1984, 18.