Numerology

Though Chapter XXXIII Section iii is not the centre of the book (the middle passage, if you will, which falls at Chapter XXXIII Section i, and whose numerological significance was noted by Callahan)49, the reason here is again a numerological one. In highlighting the section, Walcott continues his homage to Dante, whose use of the number three has been commented on by Ferrante, ‘the scheme of three interlocking rhymes and their relation to the Trinity is by now a truism.’50 _{Dante introduced the}

number three in many ways – three beasts, three mouths of Satan, three sinners in a wheel, the three books of the Comedy, three rivers,terza rimaand so on.

Yet in section XXXIII/iii, Walcott moves away from hexametric tercets and Dante’s

terza rima, confirming his tendency throughout the prosody to establish and then

confound expectations. If he was seeking an alternative to a scheme based on threes, one based on two/four/eight seems natural enough and has the possible virtue of being the other leg of the Platoniclambdaseries of the Pythagoreans. According to this

series, the numbers 1,2,4,8 and 1,3,9,27 ‘constitute the ‘world soul’, the cause of the reasonable, circular motions of the heavenly bodies.’51

Apart from one or two small and isolated cases referred to in the Annotations, Walcott’s venture into numerology concentrates on multiples of the number 3. The

49

Lance Callahan,In the Shadows of Divine Perfection, p. 125

50 _{Joan Ferrante, ‘A Poetics of Chaos and Harmony’ inThe Cambridge Companion to Dante, ed. by}

Rachel Jacoff. (Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 162.

51

Christopher Butler, ‘Numerological Thought’ inSilent Poetry: Essays in Numerological Analysised. by Alastair Fowler (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), p. 4.

number has the added resonance for Walcott and his themes that it was the Triangular Trade that first brought African slaves to the Caribbean. At the structural level of the poem, as well as in the verse itself, Walcott marches to Dante’s triple-beating drum.

Walcott refers explicitly in XVII/i/2 to ‘the battle’s numerological poetry’, but the clues begin to appear in the first line, divided into 3, 3 and 6 syllables ‘This is how, one sunrise, we cut down them canoes’, and, of course, in the tercet form and the predominance of ternary metre. The patterning persists through to LXIV/iii, the final section of the poem, which has 33 lines.

Callahan drew attention to the preponderance of three:

‘Fourteen of the forty two lines [in section II/iii], exactly one third, have catalectic endings, while nine of the remaining twenty-eight lines end with choriambs. There are also three anacreontic lines in this section, and three apparently irregular lines which may be divided into trimeter. In the midst of a somewhat chaotic prosodic scheme, unifying features abound.’52

In his note to this passage, Callahan also points out that Chapter XXXIII section iii is the only one not in tercets, and:

‘Each chapter is divided into three sections. The longest sections contain thirty-three tercets. There are three such sections. The shortest section

contains three tercets. Chapter III, section iii has thirty-three lines, as does the thirty third section and Chapter XXXIII, section i, the midpoint of the poem.’

Callahan went on to find threes in the plots and characters and in other aspects of the poem.

Further to this numerology, Walcott may be counting individual words, aiming at multiples of 3.

In considering whether this is more than random, we find from word-counting that all of the main characters’ names, including those of the island itself, occur a multiple of three times.53Clearly, in any selection of words, one in three might be expected to occur a multiple of three times. Randomly, therefore, six of these eighteen names might have been expected to fit this pattern.

However, the chance of all the characters who play a part in the story fitting this pattern is highly unlikely and we are led to conclude that this is deliberate on Walcott’s part.

53

The counts of names include all references to the individual, including those with apostrophe ‘s’,

e.g. the Major’s count includes ‘Major’ and ‘Major’s’ but not ‘major’ where it does not refer to him. The (RSM) Plunkett count excludes ‘Plunkett’ where that name refers to Midshipman Plunkett or to Maud Plunkett. Epithets used for Achilles, Helen, Hector and Ma Kilman have been included in their counts and no distinction is made between the Greek and the St Lucian, e.g. Achille and Achilles. Plurals (Helens, Achilleses, Hectors, Plunketts) are excluded.

Omeros 21

Seven Seas 39

Achille/Achilles/ ‘tamer of

horses’(XXIV/ii/27)/Homeros (XXX/ii/6) 168

Hector/ ‘road warrior’ (XLV/iii/4) 66

Helen/ ‘filly of Menelaus’ (VI/ii/2) 93

Philoctete/Philoctetes 72

Ma Kilman/ ‘caverned prophetess’ (XLVIII/ii/1)

30

Plunkett/the RSM 39

The Major (another name for Plunkett) 33

Dennis (another name for Plunkett) 9

Maud 84 (Midshipman) Plunkett 6 Mama 3 Warwick 3 Maljo/Didier/Statics/Professor Static 24 Lawrence 6 Afolabe 9 Iounalao/Hewannorra 9

There is no evidence in the poem or the commentators that Walcott holds particular beliefs about numerology, but certainly, once committed to using the number 3 in homage to Dante, he seems to have played with names enthusiastically.

Beyond this, other words of particular significance in the story also divide by three:

‘Wound’ (the damaged self) 39

‘Home’ (the seat of warmth and love, excluding the Marian Home) 39 ‘Door’/ ‘doorway’ (the way from one world to another, change) 42 ‘Canoe’ (the traditional, sustainable way of life) 42

‘Name’ (symbol of the lost African inheritance) 63 (‘Names’ is also divisible, at 27)

‘Sore’ (the site and evidence of the wound) 12

‘Eden’ (The perfect place, the place where all remains possible, St Lucia) 9 ‘Memory’ (The place where the wound is greatest, the seat of identity) 27 ‘Ants’ (The messengers from the African past who carry the secrets of the cure) 24

‘Nation’ (The group, bound by common suffering) 6 ‘Dialect’ (The language made personal to a place) 6

‘Khaki’ (The colour that is neither black nor white, the ideal compromise) 18 ‘history’/ ‘History’ (the past, particularly the past as dominated by Empire) 48 ‘Sunrise’ (opportunity, potential) 27

Though it again might seem that adherence to multiples of three lies outside the bounds of coincidence and that some if not all of these have been the result of

Walcott’s counting, there is no certainty. In counting these and a further 25 less significant words that have also been found that meet the condition, a further 60 or more were checked that did not. It is therefore safest to assume that, names apart, the counts divisible by three are a result of chance.