Classical Metrics

What is to be made of Walcott’s disclaimer, mentioned earlier, of any interest in ‘Latin scansions’? Callahan, in particular, has found many instances of apparently classical forms. However, after some fifty pages of detailed analysis in which he finds numerous examples of choriambs, amphibrachs, dochmiacs etc., he devotes a single page to the possibility that the prosody might be ‘meant to subsume indigenous cultural forms of the Caribbean’ and points to Walcott’s mention of Homer’s own ‘Greek calypso’ (LVII/i/12). He opens the possibility that Walcott might here, as in

22

Derek Walcott,The Old Bard Teaches a New Spell, (BBC Radio 3, London, June 26, 1992) cited in Paula Burnett,Derek Walcott: Politics and Poetics, p. 154.

other respects, be ‘making it new’, in the Poundian sense.23 Listening to Walcott reading passages from the poem encourages this latter view, rather than the classical one.24

The key characteristic of the metre inOmerosis variety. The rhythms are often

ternary, almost calypsonian, and are only occasionally regular for even a single line. Callahan finds repetition of particular figures provides cohesion among the variety.25 He sees frequent use of choriambs, amphibrachs and dochmiac groupings and has identified recurring patterns that form a kind of motif for the poem. He sees an explanation for some of the greatest apparent irregularities in the possibility that the verse form there is Aeolic four-syllable trimeter, e.g. three choriambs in I/i/13: ‘over its lost|name, when the hunched|island was called.26 However, here and in other places he ignores sense boundaries in identifying a classical form. In recordings, Walcott reads that line with a strong caesura that conflicts with Callahan’s reading.27 The importance Walcott attaches to the caesura in influencing metre is mentioned later in this section.

There are many possible choriambs, at least a dozen in the opening section. Callahan finds five in the first four tercets and within these, he notes the Adonic shape of ‘smiles for the tourists’, ‘jam in our jacket’, ‘give us the spirit’’. He finds many more as he analyses the rest of the poem, usually with a preceding or succeeding unstressed

23 _{Lance Callahan,In the Shadows of Divine Perfection, p. 54.}

24 _{Derek Walcott reads a selection of his own work:Collected Poems 1948-84 & Omeros(Argo,}

PolyGram Records double cassette, Catalogue No 522 222 4)

25 _{Lance Callahan,In the Shadows of Divine Perfection, p. 19.} 26 _{Lance Callahan,In the Shadows of Divine Perfection, p. 15.}

27

Derek Walcott reads a selection of his own work:Collected Poems 1948-84 & Omeros(Argo, PolyGram Records double cassette, Catalogue No 522 222 4)

Derek Walcott Reads: includes excerpts from Omeros, the Odyssey and his Collected Poems(New York: Caedmon Audio single cassette, Harper Collins ISBN 0-69451-460-8)

syllable, and says these appear as discrete syntactic units, not as random portions of the line.28However, Walcott’s reading tends to group adjacent pairs of stressed syllables together, which prevents the first two of these three being seen as discrete. Their groups as he reads them are ‘Philoctete smiles | for the tourists’ and ‘So, fists jam | in our jacket’. Also, the last example could more easily be read as part of a four- dactyl line, ‘give us the | spirit to | turn into | murderers’.

This is not in itself an argument against a classical theory and does not refute all of Callahan’s analysis, but makes the points that he overplays the classical figures at times and, more importantly, that reading the lines on the page loses what is key to the metrics, the Caribbean orality of the work and the specific influence of a St Lucian delivery. Walcott has written a Caribbean metre with occasional classical references, rather than the reverse.

There are places where the classical metre seems to be knowingly used. In some cases, choriambs are used because the rhythm fits the sense of the line (e.g. XXIV/i/3 and 7 where ‘widening the joy’ and ‘This was his garden’ express Achille’s opening spirit). The amphibrachic rhythm with which his Narrator pronounces ‘Omeros’ (II/iii/3-5) is a motif that recurs in telling phrases, in feelings: ‘I’m tired of America’ (II/iii/7), or in the Narrator’s epiphany: ‘the stroke of one spidery palm on a cloud’s page/an asterisk only. Achille with his cutlass’ (LIX/i/2).

Though Callahan sees a possible amphibrach in I/i/3 ‘the trees have to die. So’ and speculates that Walcott is deliberately using amphibrachic metre,29a better metric reading of this particular passage may be dochmiac, with emphatic stress on ‘have’, given its strong emotional content, and this is how Walcott reads it in recordings.30

Elsewhere, Callahan points to the use of other dochmiac figures, particularly in the African section, with XX/iii/19 ‘and you, nameless son’ and XXVII/iii/11-12 ‘with skinned, yellow teeth’ and ‘from the locked hand, and then’ and XXVII/iii/16-17 ‘with its own piercing chain. He fell hard and saw/the leaves pinned with stars’.31 Other examples may be found in VII/i/8 and 16 where Helen and Achille fight. As in classical Greek, this comes at moments of extreme agitation.

Callahan notes that the first time perfect iambic hexameter appears coincides with the first specifically classical allusion (I/ii/2 line3). Also that while I/ii/1-16 consists of 48 decasyllabic lines, I/ii/17-20 has only 3 lines out of 12 of that length. He

speculates that this may be to reflect the transformation being undergone by the trees.32

Elsewhere, in I/i/4 line 3 Walcott introduces a perfect dactylic tetrameter line ‘give us the spirit to turn into murderers’ that catches the swing of the axe and/or the starting of the chain saw and in II/ii/14, he switches into a classical anacreontic metre when

29

Lance Callahan,In the Shadows of Divine Perfection, p. 9. 30

Derek Walcott reads a selection of his own work:Collected Poems 1948-84 & Omeros(Argo, PolyGram Records double cassette, Catalogue No 522 222 4)

Derek Walcott Reads: includes excerpts from Omeros, the Odyssey and his Collected Poems(New York: Caedmon Audio single cassette, Harper Collins ISBN 0-69451-460-8)

Derek Walcott Reading from his Poems(The Poetry Archive CD, ISBN 978-1-906324-05-6)

31

Lance Callahan,In the Shadows of Divine Perfection, pp. 30-31.

invoking Omeros, ‘with the conch’s moan, Omeros’, as he will again in Stanza 22 ‘of a girl’s throat, Omeros’. Both lines use the amphibrachic stressing of ‘Omeros’ spelled out in II/iii/3-4, rather than the dactylic one used in modern Greek and in II/iii/1. The anacreontic form appears in LXIV/ii/7, where it serves as a classical counterpoint to the reader being urged to abandon classical metaphor: ‘or just think, “What a fine local woman!” and her’.

These instances support Callahan’s contention that, in a reversal of traditional metrical practice, Walcott is restricting the use of the strictest metres to the most crucial lines.33 The deliberate use of classical metrics to point up key passages is entirely in keeping with Walcott’s method. He plays similar tricks with form. In IX/ii/1-9 he uses form to show the storm turning everything upside down. After an opening quatrain of rhymes followed by a conventionalterza rimagroup, the waves

in stanza 3 turn everything to the reverseterza rimaformaba cac dcdetc

(afraid/boat/about, weight/white/wet, oar/ashore/more, under/thunder/founder). Only when Hector regains control in stanza 8 does theterza rimareturn to normal

(while/wall/will).

The reader is repeatedly wrong-footed in his expectations of the metre. Walcott speaks of Emily Dickinson’s ‘slant of light’ being ‘ a figure of irregular scansion within the frame of the window of the poem [stilling] the human subject... into vacancy and reflection’.34 InOmeros, it is the appearance of regular, rather than

irregular, scansion that gives the reader pause for reflection. What may appear chaotic, tropical, in its rich metres proves to be deliberately structured.

33

Lance Callahan,In the Shadows of Divine Perfection, p. 19.

Brathwaite pointed out that the calypso employs dactyls.35 Any sustained writing using ternary rhythms, where pairs of unstressed syllables abound, is likely to throw up matches to such classical forms as adonics, aeolics, anacreontics or choriambs. However, though Walcott is conscious above all of the effect of his rhythms and introduces a classical metre where it is appropriate, it is less sure that he is following a specifically classical metric project. Too often, a more extensive classical reading depends on ignoring additional unstressed syllables, or supplying missing ones. Also, the classical forms do not always fit with syntactical units as closely as Callahan suggests, and his syntactic reading often depends on splitting pairs of stressed syllables when Walcott reads them together.

There is also a programmatic objection to the idea that Walcott is engaged in a major use of classical metres. Such a project would work against his approach to metaphor in the poem, where he seeks to leave behind ‘all that Greek manure’ and portray the islanders as they are. Callahan recognises this when he points out that a post-colonial text operates in a politically charged theatre and that Walcott ‘could not follow too closely the templates provided by the imperial tradition.’ He suggests that the choice of classical metres, by going back to formative figures that pre-date the imperial tradition, actually supports Walcott’s project of moving beyond the colonial

influences: ‘By implementing these ancient meters, Walcott is colluding with an oral tradition as much as a literate one, and once again positioningOmerosin the space

between two apparently Manichean options.’36However, there is another possibility,

35

Edward Kamau Brathwaite,History of the Voice,p. 17.

one that fits better with Walcott’s vision of the islands as a place for making new. He may be using specifically Caribbean rhythms.

Callahan recognises the similarities between rhythms inOmerosand the Caribbean

cadences ofkaiso. He points out that the liberal use of amphibrachs produces a

cadence that mimics syncopation, a feature thatkaisoemploys without exception.

Also thatkaiso’s continual emendation of the beat is quite like the prosodic technique

at work inOmeros.37 It is possible, given Walcott’s stated aversion to classical

metrics, that his programmatic decision was a political one, an attempt to avoid aligning the work too closely to the Eurocentric tradition. It is equally possible that his decision was made for him by another choice he had already made, which was that he would write in a version of English Creole and in a tone that was natural to the islands.

He developed a characteristically fluid metre that needs to be heard in order to fully appreciate its form. It contains many double or even triple unstressed syllables and pairs of stressed syllables, together giving cadenced rhythms natural to the speech of the islands and avoiding the metronomic binary rhythms of iambic/trochaic verse. These produce what could be seen as ternary metres close to classical (i.e. pre- Western) oral tradition, a parallel he will have been happy to play upon, given his Homeric theme. From there, it would be easy to use classical figures as an occasional emphatic device.