despite the gift of language, Caliban remains too mired in nature for its edifying powers of reason and civilization. ” – (Paget, 20) “Break a vase, and the love that resembles the fragments is greater than the love that took its symmetry was a given when it was a whole.” (Walcott, Nobel Speech) The question of cultural fusion is central to Caribbean poetics and politics. The poetics of this "New World" claimed to emerge from a landscape devoid of narrative, without history. Yet Derek Walcott's poetry is full of allusions to history, of undermining the imposed past, of emphasis that language is central to knowledge, of a poet-speaker whose figure ensnares both the public and the personal. In his Nobel acceptance speech, Derek Walcott, contemplating “the proportions of the ideal Caribbean city,” proposes that “it would be so racially diverse that the cultures of the world – Asian, Mediterranean, European, African – would be represented in it. . . Its citizens would marry as they chose, by instinct, not by tradition, until their children found it increasingly pointless to trace their genealogy. He manifests a peculiar “schizophrenia” in which he is “convulsed by two styles,” but also works with it as a politics of parody of the colonizer/outsider whose influence has infiltrated his cultural coordinates. However, this parody is not entirely devoid of identification with “the intimate enemy” (Ashish Nandy, 1983), sometimes to the point of embracing the “other”. Walcott insists that no moment of “pristine” national “purity” should dominate the ima… half of the document……7. Gates, Henry Louis (Jr.). The significant monkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Print.8. Paget, Henry. Caliban's reason. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.9. Spivak, Gayatri. The death of a discipline. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Print.10. Torres-Saillant, Silvio. Caribbean Poetics: Toward an Aesthetics of West Indian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Print.11. Walcott, Derek.--Collected Poems. New York: Farrar, Giroux, Strauss, 1986. Print.-Dream on Monkey-mountain and other plays. New York: Farrar, Giroux, Strauss, 1970. Print.-Nobel Acceptance Speech, December 1992. Accessed April 13, 2014, 11:12 am http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1992/walcott -lesson.html12. Young, Robert JC Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, Race. London: Routledge, 1995. Print.

Topic > despite the gift of language, Caliban remains too mired in nature for its edifying powers of reason and civilization. ” – (Paget, 20) “Break a vase, and the love that resembles the fragments is greater than the love that took its symmetry was a given when it was a whole.” (Walcott, Nobel Speech) The question of cultural fusion is central to Caribbean poetics and politics. The poetics of this "New World" claimed to emerge from a landscape devoid of narrative, without history. Yet Derek Walcott's poetry is full of allusions to history, of undermining the imposed past, of emphasis that language is central to knowledge, of a poet-speaker whose figure ensnares both the public and the personal. In his Nobel acceptance speech, Derek Walcott, contemplating “the proportions of the ideal Caribbean city,” proposes that “it would be so racially diverse that the cultures of the world – Asian, Mediterranean, European, African – would be represented in it. . . Its citizens would marry as they chose, by instinct, not by tradition, until their children found it increasingly pointless to trace their genealogy. He manifests a peculiar “schizophrenia” in which he is “convulsed by two styles,” but also works with it as a politics of parody of the colonizer/outsider whose influence has infiltrated his cultural coordinates. However, this parody is not entirely devoid of identification with “the intimate enemy” (Ashish Nandy, 1983), sometimes to the point of embracing the “other”. Walcott insists that no moment of “pristine” national “purity” should dominate the ima… half of the document……7. Gates, Henry Louis (Jr.). The significant monkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Print.8. Paget, Henry. Caliban's reason. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.9. Spivak, Gayatri. The death of a discipline. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Print.10. Torres-Saillant, Silvio. Caribbean Poetics: Toward an Aesthetics of West Indian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Print.11. Walcott, Derek.--Collected Poems. New York: Farrar, Giroux, Strauss, 1986. Print.-Dream on Monkey-mountain and other plays. New York: Farrar, Giroux, Strauss, 1970. Print.-Nobel Acceptance Speech, December 1992. Accessed April 13, 2014, 11:12 am http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1992/walcott -lesson.html12. Young, Robert JC Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, Race. London: Routledge, 1995. Print.