Tourism Nobel Prize Laureate Derek Walcott Begins

Tourism

Nobel Prize laureate Derek Walcott begins his oration with an anecdote about the village of Felicity in Trinidad, which is predominantly East Indian. The story begins as the local towns prepare for a Saturday performance of the Ramleela, which is a stage version of the Hindu epic Ramayana. Walcott describes vividly with rich detail the cane fields, reminding listeners that the Indians are here because they were brought here during colonial times to be indentured laborers. Now a vibrant Indian community is entrenched, adding richness and color to the tropical landscapes of Trinidad and Tobago. As Walcott and his American friends arrive, the Ramleela cast and crew are setting up their multiplicity of deities, one of which is a huge effigy constructed of local materials like bamboo.

Briefly Walcott draws a parallel between the Ramleela and his own stage production, or reinvention and reconstruction, of Homer's Odyssey, the screenplay that helped him earn the Nobel Prize in Literature. The distinction, Walcott quickly realizes, is that his play is designed as theater, whereas the performance of Ramleela is "faith." Moreover, as he observes the actors, Walcott realizes that a sense of complete joy and spiritual unity permeates the performance, which is much more than that: it is the genuine expression of spiritual elation. The culture that he observes unfolds before him and Walcott realizes that he has projected his own beliefs, ideals, and opinions onto the Indian community. The community lives up to the name of the village in which it lives, Felicity.

Walcott urges his listeners to cease making assumptions about the places they visit, and especially about the Caribbean. A sense of awe and wonder overtakes Walcott as he observes the Indian community, which he admits has been largely marginalized. Walcott makes a bridge between the colonial history of the island and its current and conflicted manifestation: "the past is the sculpture and the present the beads of dew or rain on the forehead of the past."

Then, Walcott launches into his central thesis, which is the misconceptions most North American and European visitors have about the Caribbean in general, which is that it is devoid of culture. The idea is that the Caribbean has become too fragmented to have a culture; or that the culture is seemingly shallow. Finding immense depth to the cultures of the Caribbean, and the Antilles in particular, Walcott invites his listeners to revisit the region with fresh eyes and see beyond their European sensibilities and ideas of how the world should be. Instead of projecting the postcard onto Trinidad, let Trinidad project itself onto the visitors. Walcott also points out that to the Western eye, the lush tropical landscape makes the visitor forget that poverty can be real even in the midst of eternal summer and expressions of joy.

Part of the reason for the prejudice against the Caribbean is due to the fact that its cities do not resemble those of North America or Europe. They are not organized or rigid, or gray in the winter. The cities of the Caribbean like Port of Spain are vibrant and real in their own right, reflective of the life, culture, and sensibilities of their denizens. Port of Spain is, according to Walcott, an "ideal city," not least in part because "a citizen is a walker and not a pedestrian" marginalized into segregated zones of passage. Walcott compares Port of Spain to ancient Athens, evoking the archetypal polis and again drawing attention to his Homerian interpretation. Cities like Athens evoke the collective memory. For Walcott, the landscape of the Caribbean contains fragments and whispers of the past that can be heard everywhere to the trained ear.

Yet the tourist projects depression onto the islands; at the very least a "pathos," as Walcott once again draws a parallel between Trinidad and Greece. Where Walcott sees joy, the visitor sees his or her own malaise and pity projected onto an imaginary blank slate. Rather than seeing the culture for what it is, the visitor perceives nothing more than a botanical garden with caricatured natives walking in it.

Then, Walcott lists some notable literary interpretations of the Caribbean to show how impressions and caricatures are formed. He begins with Graham Greene and At Last by Charles Kingsley. Walcott claims that At Last was the first English book to be set in the Caribbean. While its tone was "benign," the overall impression is like that of most visitors who see what they want to see and move on without a deeper or more penetrating look. Walcott asks that the islands unfold themselves as living poetry, and that the visitor does more than sail right on by without realizing that the islands are "writing themselves" in the trees. The multicultural streets of Port of Spain are a "writer's dream," claims Walcott. Indeed, Walcott's own writerly sensibilities were formed from his understanding and perceptions of his native Caribbean.

Walcott also mentions Alexis Saint-Leger Leger, who writes as Saint-John Perse, a Caribbean from Guadeloupe and the "first Antillean to win a prize for his poetry." As much as Perse can be celebrated for his writing, Walcott also describes the plantation system with a strange idealism. As Walcott puts it, "Caribbean genius is condemned to contradict itself." The colonial past of the Caribbean leaves its indelible mark on the landscape and its crumbling plantation houses. Those plantation houses are the ruins, the Caribbean counterparts to the acropolis of ancient Greece. What the Caribbean is today is an extension of its past.

The natives of the Caribbean, like Walcott himself, are caught between two worlds. Unlike the tourists, the natives do not see in their island some perfect piece of paradise. Their life is not lived inside a postcard. The tourist brings a dangerous misperception that could ultimately erase the cultures that thrive in places like Felicity. When "the benign blight" of tourism projects what it wants to see onto the Caribbean, the risk is that the Caribbean starts to live up to that false imagery. The real cultures and real people that live there and make the islands what they are could vanish or blend into the cartoon version.