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In his Collected Poems, Derek Walcott resorts to mythological episodes from the Iliad and the Odyssey as well as from the Bible and lesser known Amerindian sources. Refusing to choose between what is often considered as conflicting origins, he seeks to initiate a dialogue between these various cultural references. In the more recent volumes of the collection, the poet increasingly hesitates between the use of metaphor and of the epic and the ideal plainness of an honest craftsman.
Though Derek Walcott uses myths - mostly allusions to the Iliad and the Odyssey - throughout the Collected Poems 1948-1984, these references are not the most visible aspect of his creation. In his early works, Greek mythological figures appear as metaphors or comparisons almost on the same level as others pertaining to the natural world. Increasingly, the story of Odysseus serves to articulate the poet's wandering existence, his conception of his art and the difficult question of homecoming.
In literary criticism, one cannot merely adopt the same approach as anthropologists, who consider that myths are those sets of representations thanks to which the members of a particular culture account for their origins and the foundation of their customs. Such an anthropological approach implies that the cultures studied have myths whereas 'developed' civilisations possess histories and legal systems, and master scientific reasoning. Postcolonial theorists have criticised this distinction which presupposes a questionable hierarchy.
A writer can adapt existing mythological systems, but can also be a mythmaker. Jungian critics have attempted to define representations belonging to the collective unconscious, a notion which is so ideologically loaded that it seems difficult to apply, particularly to writers from cultures outside Europe. Other theorists such as Charles Mauron1 have tried to use the notion of 'personal myth', combining Jungian concepts and more classical psychoanalytical methods. Roland Barthes has offered an even wider conception of the term which has little to do with traditionally consecrated meanings: for him, any object can attain the status of a myth provided it is appropriated by a number of people. In his 1957 essay 'Le Mythe aujourd'hui', Barthes considers that myths endow things with some sort of simplicity and essen-tiality.2
In 'Origins',3 one of the early poems in the collection, Walcott evokes myths (in the etymological...