Psychoanalytic Criticism Point of View in 'A Far Cry from Africa' Poem

My paper is based on such critical approach of psychoanalytic and New Historicist Theory. It is generally accepted that new historicism is a literary theory based on the idea that literature should be studied and interpreted within the context of both the history of the author and the history of the critic. New Historicism acknowledges not only that a work of literature is influenced by its author's times and circumstances, but that the critic's response to that work is also influenced by his environment, beliefs, and prejudices. We could easily see these principles in the poem of A Far Cry from Africa Derek Walcott. There is definite historical context in it. The Walcott’s times affected his poem.

From the psychoanalytic criticism point of view literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author. The author's own childhood traumas, family life, sexual conflicts, fixations, and such will be traceable within the behavior of the characters in the literary work. But psychological material will be expressed indirectly, disguised, or encoded (as in dreams) through principles such as 'symbolism', 'condensation', and 'displacement'.

I feel they are significant author’ because they help to understand the author’s message and that’s why I used them to support my views.

Derek Walcott is a black poet himself. That’s why psychoanalytic criticism point of view is definitely seen in his A Far Cry from Africa poem. Its issue is the racial and cultural oppression, taking place during the times of Africa’s colonial occupation. Also it is devoted to the subsequent dilemma for Walcott himself, because he was born on the island of St Lucia in the British West Indies. As he grew up he became aware of his mixed racial ancestry - he had both white and black grandparents.

A Far Cry from Africa was published in 1962. It speaks on the history of a specific uprising in Kenya, occupied by the British, in the 1950s. Some members of the local Kikuyu tribe (Mau Mau fighters) fought a cruel 8 year long fight against colonization pressure, which they saw as illegal conquistadors on their land. And this is New Historicist Theory’s features, marked in the Walcott’s poem.

In the poem he is caught between love of the English language, with which he expresses himself poetically, and the ancestral blood ties of his African family, who have been oppressed by the very people whose native language he needs, to survive as a poet.

The author tried to say he lives on Santa Lucia, an island far away from Africa, his cry has a long distance to travel to reach African shores.

The first verses printed by hand, the future Nobel Prize winner in literature in 1948 himself sold piece by piece on the streets of Castry, the capital of St. Lusia. And in 1953, 23 years ago he had to break up with his homeland - at the tiny resort St. Lusia simply there was no opportunity to get an education. With Derek being topped with the most prestigious literary prizes, it was money from theatre productions that ensured his proper financial freedom.

A world that survived the tragedy of colonization and slavery, a world of stolen history that it struggled to recover to its own people. And he, almost alone, by titanic effort managed to create the impossible - to give to the reduced to a slave state, unabated humiliated people his own protohistory.

These poem verses will conquer instantly: the nobility of the spirit, the extremely living and powerful image (for the northern eye at times approaching psychedelic), the embarrassing mind of metaphorical scope, the lack of pity for yourself and humility. But the pride of the rhyme, Walcott’s rhyme in particular, is reveals the intelligence and susceptibility of the poet, representing the potential of the human race much better than the appeal to content.

Contrary to popular belief, rhyme in the process of scripture frees the poet. And Derek Walcott is the poet most liberating: precisely because he is the most inventive, most modern rhyme maker. He uses all rhymes: consonant, assonant, dactylic, visual, anagrammatical, truncated, compound.

No one wants to escape the geography that shaped him. The only way the universe exists is in minute parts. Most great poets did not enter territory more than thirty miles from where they come from. It’s a consultation with their experience. Even in exile, it is usually something of a not-so-remote settlement. The poet’s private location can become very fixed, focused. It becomes so private that it expands, moves into something else, into a different geography.

D. Walcott is full of patriotic sentiment, but again not of a military-mobilization nature, as is traditionally the case, and rather cultural, if negative, extremely politicized imperial and colonialist connotations are removed from this definition. This is what drew criticism of D. Walcott in his homeland. He was accused of both 'a lack of patriotism, a lack of nationalism, and a lack of radicalism, as well as a lack of focus on Africa and a greater focus on Great Britain and the United States'. D. Walcott's views are possible to carry to a position between 'moderate patriotism' (moderate patriotism) and 'global universalism' (global universalism). But D. Walcott, as a man with no unambiguous nationality (the son of a native of the Caribbean Islands with African roots and an Englishman), is far from any nationalist ideology, which often together with politics and strategy leads to the formation of mobilization, sentiments towards the creation of nation-states.

Reflections on the cultural memory and ancestral (in the broadest sense) roots of his people lead D. Walcott to multi-layered constructions reflecting different levels of understanding of his own history as part of world history.

Methodism and spirituality played a significant role from the beginning in Walcott 's work. He commented, 'I never separated a letter of poetry in prayer. I grew up believing it was a vocation, a religious vocation.' Describing his recording, he wrote, 'the body feels like it is melting into what it saw... It's ecstasy.... It's always there. It's a blessing, a transfer. It's gratitude, really. The more the poet retains, the more genuine his character is.' If you think the poem is advancing, you do make a retreat, a rejection of some silence that turns off everything around you. What you take is really not a renewal of your identity, but actually a renewal of your anonymity.

'Poets from Imperial Margins': metaphysics of space. The theme of the Empire is cross-cutting in the work of both poets. Everything starts with childhood, with the surrounding landscape, with colors. These are the same media, sources of inspiration. For Walcott, born on a small island in the West Indies, the nature of his country is the origins, memory of the whole people. But also for him it is the material that feeds the poetic imagination, gives spiritual food. Walcott's imperial theme is closely intertwined with language. English was not for him the second, acquired language. He had learned it since he was a child, receiving a colonial English education. Next to the imperial theme must certainly arise the theme of exile, which we find in his works. There were no poets left aside from the literary tradition of dedication.

Many West Indies writers have found themselves in a position of choice between national culture and English-European tradition. Walcott’s way is a synthesis, a wonderful alloy: based on European roots and brought up the Caribbean sun, his poetry has gained freshness of world perception, opening up new meanings of Western concepts and concepts.