데릭 월콧(Derek Walcott)의 탈영웅적 시학

Derek Walcott’s Unheroic Poetics: from Omeros’s Subversive Perspectives of Homer’s Epic Heroes

This study aims to discuss Derek Walcott’s unheroic poetics from Omeros’s subversive perspectives of Homer’s epic heroes. The title and fictional character of this long poem, Omeros is Homeros in ancient Greek and Homer in modern Greek. The poetic figure, like Homer as a humble, blind, hard, and lonely bard, is a sightless, and homeless poet and castaway reflecting the colonial wound and aftereffect of St. Lucia. And his figure is like those of Walcott's real characters. Walcott’s real characters, such as Hector, Achille, Philoctete, Helen, Seven Seas, Ma Killman, unlike Homer’s epic heroes, have humble backgrounds and live hard lives. Hector, Achille, and Philoctete are fishermen. Seven Seas is Omeros or a person like Omeros. Helen is a maid and waitress. Ma Killman, a sybil and obeah who cures Philoctete, runs a cafe. They also have physical or spiritual wounds and pain because they are double victims first afflicted and exiled by the white colonialists and then by the majority black nationalists who have copied the white colonists’ or masters’ practices. Therefore, they are the subversive figures of Homer’s epic heroes. Walcott’s characters are humble but noble because they are willing to heal their trauma of colonial history and maintain their national identity or spirit. Their nobility comes from the lonely, painful knowledge learned from isolation and suffering. They don’t depend on any gods to cure their painful wounds. Only their healing source is from the primitive intelligence and medicine distilled from the Caribbean nature, which represents an immense wound. Yet the truth we shouldn’t leave out is that there is no everlasting cure for the wounds in Walcott’s long poem.