Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Derek Walcott's "Midsummer: 19" presents a complex reflection on colonialism, art, and identity, drawing heavily on the life and artistic journey of Paul Gauguin. The poem layers personal and cultural history, using Gauguin’s experiences in Tahiti as a vehicle to explore broader themes of displacement, creativity, and the tension between idealized visions of paradise and the stark realities of exploitation and corruption. The poem is deeply intertextual, referencing the lives and works of other artists such as Cezanne, Watteau, and Puvis de Chavannes, as well as religious and mythological elements, ultimately crafting a meditation on the artist’s role in interpreting and transforming the world around him.

The poem begins by invoking Gauguin’s experience on the "quays of Papeete," the colonial capital of Tahiti. Walcott describes the "dawdling white-ducked colonists / drinking with whores whose skin is the copper of pennies," immediately situating the poem in the context of colonial power dynamics. The "white-ducked" colonists, in their casual indulgence, represent a superficial and exploitative presence in the tropical landscape, their interactions with the local population reduced to economic transactions. The comparison of the women’s skin to "copper of pennies" suggests both the objectification of these women and the commodification of their bodies in the colonial economy. Meanwhile, the colonists, in a state of nostalgic pretense, attempt to recreate the familiarity of the "metropolis" with a "straight vermouth," but the sun—the intensity of the tropical experience—has "scorched those memories" from the speaker’s mind.

Walcott moves from this colonial scene to a meditation on artistic vision, referencing Paul Cézanne and the pointillists. Cézanne’s method of "bricking in color, each brick no bigger than a square inch," and the "pointillists' dots like a million irises," reflect the meticulous, almost obsessive attention to detail in capturing reality. However, the speaker distances himself from these approaches, as the sun of the tropics has transformed his artistic perspective, burning away the precise, orderly methods of the European avant-garde. The speaker’s gaze turns inward, recognizing in his own "cheekbones" the legacy of multiple heritages—"the mule's head of a Breton," "the placid, implacable strategy of the Mongol." These references suggest a complex and layered sense of identity, drawing from European, Asian, and perhaps indigenous ancestry, reflecting the tangled history of colonization and migration.

The speaker acknowledges his bloodline’s pull toward "darker nations," despite looking like "any other sallow, crumpled colon," marking his arrival on the pier not as a native or a true colonist, but as someone caught between these worlds. This tension of identity is underscored when he declares himself "Watteau's wild oats, his illegitimate heir." Jean-Antoine Watteau, a French painter known for his idyllic, romanticized scenes of pleasure and leisure, represents the European tradition from which the speaker emerges, yet the speaker claims an illegitimate connection, rejecting Watteau’s idealized vision for something more complex and corrupted.

In the poem’s second half, the speaker turns to a direct confrontation with the myth of paradise. "I have never pretended that summer was paradise," he asserts, rejecting the conventional portrayal of the tropics as an unspoiled Eden. The "virgins" of this paradise, far from being pure and innocent, offer the "fruits of my knowledge, radiant with disease." This image encapsulates the corruption that lies beneath the surface of colonial visions of paradise. The speaker’s encounters with these women are not idyllic or innocent; they are tinged with the realities of disease and exploitation, and their bodies, symbolized by "clay breasts glowing like ingots in a furnace," are commodified and objectified.

Walcott delves deeper into the theme of corruption, rejecting the idealized visions of painters like Puvis de Chavannes, who sought to depict an unblemished, classical beauty. Instead, the speaker embraces the imperfections and decay of the tropical landscape, noting the "spot on the ginger lily's vulva," the "plantain's phalloi," and the volcanic landscape that "chafes like a chancre." These images of sexuality, disease, and volcanic destruction are emblematic of the darker, more violent forces at play in the colonial world, forces that the speaker confronts rather than idealizes.

The poem reaches a powerful climax as the speaker describes the act of painting itself as an eruption of blood: "I have felt the beads in my blood erupt / as my brush stroked their backs." The speaker’s creative process is likened to a religious experience, yet one tainted by sin and corruption. The reference to a "defrocked Jesuit numbering his chaplet" evokes a fallen priest, suggesting that the speaker’s artistic mission is both spiritual and deeply flawed. The "blue death mask" placed in the speaker’s "Book of Hours" signals a memento mori, a reminder of mortality that underscores the impossibility of achieving paradise on earth.

The closing lines return to the natural imagery of the Caribbean, where "the mangoes redden like coals in a barbecue pit," ripe with the same fiery energy that drives the volcanic imagery earlier in the poem. The "patient" palms of Atlas suggest the weight of the world borne by this tropical landscape, and the papaya, like the mango, ripens with the same inexorable force. These images reinforce the poem’s meditation on the tension between beauty and decay, creation and destruction.

In "Midsummer: 19," Walcott masterfully weaves together personal, cultural, and artistic reflections to create a poem that is as much about the act of creating art as it is about the historical and political realities of colonialism. By invoking figures like Gauguin and Watteau, and rejecting the idealized visions of paradise often associated with the Caribbean, Walcott presents a more honest, complex portrayal of the tropical world—one that acknowledges its beauty while confronting its corruption and violence. The poem’s rich imagery and intricate allusions invite readers to grapple with these tensions, ultimately questioning the role of the artist in representing a world that is far from ideal.

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