The of T.S. Eliot on Derek Walcott & Edward (Kamu) Brathwaite.Charles E - Essay Example

NEW WORLD MODERNISM Kamau Brathwaite mentioned in "History of the Voice" that T.S.Eliot basically influenced the mainstream poets who moved from standard English to nation language. Derek Walcott, in "The Muse of History" - In many islands, the West Indian poet is faced with a language which he hears but cannot write because there are no symbols for such a language so his function remains the old one of being filter and purifier, never losing the tone and strength of the common speech as he uses the hieroglyphs, symbols, alphabet of the official one.

Eliot recalled that, "how much Irish way of speech is needed to bring out beauties of Irish poetry" and learned after Yeats death when " The music of poetry" was read aloud by Yeats for Eliot. Brathwaite and Wallcott too recall in the same way in their careers when Eliot read his poetry as a formative event. To meet Pound and get introduced to Yeats Eliot emigrated to London. Here Bathwaite and Walcott overheard the conversation in which Eliot learnt about the relationship between poetry and speech, live by the technology called phonograph.

Brathwaite came to hear "Eliot's actual voice - or rather his recorded voice property of the British Council (Barbados)", it gave a "poetic breakthrough" which he memorized where Eliot read "The Love song of the J.Alfred Prufrock", The Waste Land, and later the Four Quartets" (History of the Voice). Walcott lists that one of his most noteworthy memories of the adolescence (Leaving School) is "the Eliot's recording of the Four Quartets". For Brathwaite and Walcot listening to Eliot is equivalent to reading his texts by which their ability to understand the relationship of poetry to speech has developed.

For Brathwaite and Walcott the question of language is as important as the tradition. Martin Heidegger suggested that if the language is the home of the being then the usage of language, which is highly selective by a poet, could assist in shaping the identity of a person or community fundamentally. The Creoles heard on the streets are mixture of African and European languages are not regarded as the standard language of Europe and recognized as those with "broken" dialects. The Asian languages like Chinese and Hindi to have influenced the Creoles but still the language is looked as a multiethnic language.

Walcott is more suitable to intone Standard English with English and the diction or accent of French Creole to work with the traditional poetry and its written conversations. But Brathwaite is more concerned with representing national language or English Creole. These are the New world poets whose imaginative work has renewed and extending the capacity of English language through which it is conveying new rhythms, idioms, vocabularies and experiences. Reference:T.S. Eliot, Derek Walcott, and Kamau Brathwaite, Charles W.

Pollard, New World Modernisms, Retrieved 18 march 2007