Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Antillean love

I've seen it a lot and i still like it as much as the first time i read it. The whole speech 'The Antilles: Fragments of an Epic Memory' is good, i believe it was the Opening address delivered at the Eighth Conference on West Indian Literature, Mona, Jamaica, May 1988, but i might be wrong. Perhaps it was his nobel acceptance speech.

“Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape. It is such a love that reassembles our African and Asiatic fragments, the cracked heirlooms whose restoration shows its white scars. This gathering of broken pieces is the care and pain of the Antilles, and if the pieces are disparate, ill-fitting, they contain more pain than their original sculpture, those icons and sacred vessels taken for granted in their ancestral places.”
Derek Walcott

2 comments:

Nicholas Laughlin said...

It's the Nobel Prize address, yes.

Glad to see the blog is thriving.

Dylan said...

I knew you'd help me out. Thanks.