Loss of Origin
Many of Walcott’s poems, including “Names,” “Becune Point,” and “Map of the New World,” deal with the problem of not knowing one’s own origin. When the British colonized St. Lucia, they killed the indigenous population, and repopulated the island with enslaved African labor, as well as emigrants from the British colonies in India. For many of these people, any knowledge of their own origin was destroyed through their forced or coerced migration to St. Lucia. This lack creates a divide between them and the colonizer, who clearly remember, and often fetishize, their own European origins. Without a clear sense of origin, the speakers in Walcott’s poems often have to search for an authentic voice rooted in an internal sense of identity, rather than just the inferiority imposed by colonizers on the people of St. Lucia.
Writing in English as a Person from a (Formerly) Colonized Nation
“Ruins of a Great House” and “Map of the New World” exemplify Walcott’s concern with the problem of writing in English as a person whose people were enslaved and oppressed by the British. The very fact that Walcott speaks English is a product of the colonial violence that wrenched his ancestors from their homeland and murdered the people of St. Lucia. That context makes it ethically difficult for a poet writing against colonization to publish in English. Walcott’s poetry often asks, “how can I find a place within the English poetic tradition as a poet criticizing the history which made English writing so widespread?” He models one answer to this question in “Names,” where the poet celebrates the way the people of St. Lucia have transformed the English names given to places on the island, rendering them celebratory when they were originally intended by the British as dismissive or mocking.
The Presence of History
“Becune Point” explicitly discusses the poet’s relationship to history, and this theme is also important in “Names,” “Ruins of a Great House,” and “Map of the New World.” In “Becune Point,” Walcott is torn between attempting to be in the present, and his perception of the ties that bind contemporary St. Lucia both to Africa and India—where his ancestors were stolen from—and to the history of British colonization—the history that defined the past of St. Lucia. Although St. Lucia had been liberated from the British by the time these poems were written, Walcott constantly emphasizes that the effects of colonization cannot be so easily gotten rid of. Those effects are written into the land, as in the decaying colonial house which inspires “Ruins of a Great House,” but they are also psychic, as in the disorientation of the speaker in both “Becune Point” and “Map of the New World.”
Self-Discovery
“Love After Love” argues for the importance of self-discovery. This argument hinges on Walcott’s surprising assertion that it is possible to become a stranger to oneself. Although we know ourselves better than anyone else, and there is a piece of us that loves us more than anyone else ever could, it is still sometimes possible to completely forget or ignore who we really are when we become too enamored with the outside world. To find yourself again after this process takes work and empathy, according to Walcott; it requires the willingness to extend love towards yourself and take the time to get to know yourself again. This same theme appears also in “Map of the New World,” where the speaker wanders across the sea in an attempt not only to find his homeland, but to find out what kind of poet he wants to be. The poem suggests that self-discovery is not only important in becoming a better individual, but is also necessary for the creation of a post-colonial literary alternative to the Western canon.
Western Artistic Legacy
In conjunction with the problem of writing in English, Walcott is also concerned with the problem of deriving poetic and artistic inspiration from the Western canon. Many of the “great” figures in the history of Western literature also perpetuated colonial violence. This is especially a problem when it comes to art, as in “Becune Point,” because colonial depictions of colonized land run the risk of replacing the real thing; Walcott worries that when he pictures the beauty of the island, he remembers it through the lens of Impressionist painting, rather than seeing the island as it really is. At the same time, Walcott draws a lot of inspiration from major Western writers and artists; throughout his career, he engaged with famous painters like Camille Pisarro and canonical works like the Odyssey. Rather than rejecting these works, Walcott recognizes that they are often both beautiful and insightful about the nature of the world. His poetry instead works to transform the ideas which speak to him, often by putting old poems in new contexts.
Relationship with Nature
Many of Walcott’s poems are extremely concerned not only with nature, but with the difficulty of describing nature as a poet. “Map of a New World” and “Becune Point” are explicitly about this problem. In both poems, it is difficult to live an authentic relationship with the land as a colonized person, because the land is always bringing up memories of violence. Nevertheless, it is essential to push past that violence in order to see the beauty of the natural landscape. Rather than just returning to the physical island, it is important to rediscover a way of seeing and being on the island that observes the land for how it is, rather than focusing on the associations it brings up.
Faith
Religious belief isn’t explicit in many of Walcott’s poems, but his Methodist upbringing and Catholic schooling influence much of his work. In “Becune Point,” he dismisses Western Christian art as actually making belief more difficult, likely because it perfects and makes explicit what should be mysterious and strange. Although Walcott never explicitly states what he does believe in, he ends the poem by stating, “the thorned acacias deepen my belief.” In contrast to Western Christianity, when it comes to the acacias Walcott isn’t concerned with specifically what he believes in; rather, the feeling of belief is valuable in and of itself. The conclusion of “Map of a New World,” in which the wanderer is asked to “wrench his heart’s wheel and set his forehead here” parallels the ending of “Becune Point.” Although religious belief is never referenced in “Map of a New World,” the context of Walcott’s complicated relationship to faith suggests that he might again be referring to the idea that connection to the land is a kind of belief for its own sake.
