Derek Walcott
Saint Lucian · 1930–2017
Nobel laureate poet and playwright from Saint Lucia whose epic verse fused the rhythms of Caribbean speech with the classical traditions of Europe, forging a new language for the postcolonial experience of the sea, memory, and divided identity.
Wikipedia ↗“I who am poisoned with the blood of both, where shall I turn, divided to the vein?”
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“The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other's welcome.”
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“The sea is History. Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs? Where is your tribal memory? Sirs, in that grey vault. The sea. The sea has locked them up. The sea is History.”
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“Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.”
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“The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.”
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“Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves.”
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