Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Derek Walcott’s poem "Jean Rhys" is a haunting reflection on the life and world of the Dominican-born British novelist, Jean Rhys. Through a vivid interplay of imagery and tone, the poem draws connections between colonial history, personal memory, and artistic isolation. Walcott’s approach is characteristically layered, using the physical and emotional landscapes of the Caribbean and England to reflect on Rhys’s life, while also grappling with broader themes of displacement, decay, and the ghostly remnants of a colonial past.

The poem begins with an evocation of photographs, "mottled with chemicals," a symbol of fading memories and histories that are slowly eroding with time. These photographs capture a bygone colonial world, where figures like "bone-collared gentlemen / with spiked moustaches" and their wives are depicted in the "Whistlerian white" of their verandas. The choice of Whistler, an American artist known for his soft, hazy portrayals, suggests a dreamy, almost ghostly quality to the colonial past. These images are faint, pale, and in need of being "pencilled in," emphasizing the fragility of memory and the ways in which these figures have been reduced to faded symbols of a long-gone era.

Walcott deftly connects this colonial history to the natural landscape of Dominica, where the "jungle turned tea-brown" and the "spiked palms" reflect both the passage of time and the violence of colonial rule, hinted at with the reference to an "axe stroke." The bay horses, blackening "like spaniels," further evoke the process of decay and dissolution, as the landscape itself begins to absorb and erase the remnants of colonial presence.

The poem then shifts to a more personal reflection on Rhys herself, whose childhood in Dominica is conjured through delicate, sensory imagery. The "malarial angel" and the "feverish child" suggest a fragile, sickly figure, perhaps Rhys as a child, surrounded by the oppressive heat and humidity of the island. Her grave is "cowered / under a fury of bush," buried in the wild, unruly nature of the Caribbean, as though both she and her memories are being swallowed by the landscape. Yet, this child’s sigh is "white as an orchid," a rare, pure sound in the midst of the untamed wilderness, and this purity becomes a motif that threads through the poem.

Walcott juxtaposes the stifling boredom of colonial Sundays with the vivid inner world of the child, a contrast that captures the duality of Rhys’s life. The "furnace of boredom after church" reflects the tedium of colonial society, yet the child, lying on a "lion-footed couch," is acutely aware of the natural world around her—the hills, the trees, and the sea. This awareness sharpens her senses, as though the silence and stillness of her surroundings heighten her sensitivity to the world.

As the poem progresses, Walcott introduces images of writing and art that symbolize both Rhys’s isolation and her creativity. The logs, "wrinkled like the hand of an old woman," refer to the passing of time and the decline of the old colonial order, but they also evoke the hand of a writer, suggesting Rhys’s own aging and her continued engagement with the past through her work. The references to London—the arches of the Thames, Parliament's needles, and London Bridge—contrast sharply with the Caribbean setting, underscoring Rhys’s dislocation between two worlds: the colonial world of Dominica and the metropolitan world of England.

The poem’s final image is one of profound poignancy. The child, lying on the "lion-footed couch," stares at the windless candle flame, a symbol of fragile life and flickering hope. Her right hand, "married to Jane Eyre," foreshadows Rhys’s future as a writer, particularly her most famous work, "Wide Sargasso Sea", which reimagines the story of the madwoman in the attic from "Jane Eyre". The image of her "white wedding dress" becoming "white paper" symbolizes Rhys’s transformation of personal and historical experiences into art. The wedding dress, a symbol of societal expectations and conformity, is replaced by paper, the material of creation and expression, suggesting that Rhys’s true marriage is not to any individual but to her craft as a writer.

In "Jean Rhys", Walcott delicately balances the personal and the historical, the Caribbean and the European, to explore themes of memory, displacement, and artistic identity. The poem is as much a tribute to Rhys’s life and work as it is a meditation on the legacies of colonialism and the complex intersections of place, time, and identity. Through his careful use of imagery and metaphor, Walcott captures the essence of a writer who navigated the spaces between worlds, creating a lasting impact on both literature and the imagination.

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