RE-INHABITING THE ISLANDS - The University of North Carolina at ...

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Dante‘s Malebolge 35 in Sulphur Springs. Walcott follows Omeros down a ―goat-track‖
(283) outside his ―white hotel‖ (279) to the boat of a ―charred [Charon-like] ferryman‖
(287), who takes the poet and his Virgilian guide into a lagoon near Soufrière.
Transported into the lagoon underworld, they hike through the ―foul sulphur of hell‖
(289) and the babbling dead souls of St. Lucia‘s condemned real estate agents and
political traitors, ―who in elected office, saw land as views / for hotels and ‗elevated‘ into
waiters / the sons of others‖ (scare quotes mine 289). Wondering whether his poetry has
actually helped the victims of the island‘s traitors or inadvertently earned him a spot
beside the sell-out politicians, Walcott wakes up from the nightmare without an explicit
answer, but with a clear head. He goes down to the beach and sees Philoctete making
New Year‘s benediction, washing in the ―blessed space‖ (295) of the surf. They wave at
each other and exchange morning greetings.
Following his observation of Philoctete‘s ritual, the narrator Walcott explains his
motivations to write about Achille by describing how the fisherman‘s work was quiet and
strong. He goes on to lament how the cyclopean ―eye[s]‖ (299) of cameras and
―simplif[ying]‖ (297) gaze of History have dehumanized these noble men and
marginalized their work while simultaneously focusing attention on them. Evaluating
Walcott‘s treatment of the native fishermen, Buell writes: ―local work, life, landscape,
become realized both as navel and periphery of global space and deep time with a
resourcefulness few but Joyce have equaled‖ (Writing for an Endangered World 95).
Reacting to the cruel primitivism of tourists and their cameras ―flying to capture the
scene / like gulls fighting over a catch,‖ Achille yells at them and chases them away only
35 Malebolge is Dante‘s name for the eighth circle of Hell, a place for frauds which
literally translates from Tuscan dialect as evil ―purse‖ or ―pouch‖ (Raffa).