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16 pages 32 minutes read

Derek Walcott

Love After Love

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1976

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Background

Cultural Context

Much of Derek Walcott’s work is marked by his background as a West Indian man with a diverse racial and ethnic heritage. Walcott’s work is inspired by his upbringing in Saint Lucia, which is an island country in the West Indies (eastern Caribbean.) Although Saint Lucia was originally home to Indigenous peoples, it was eventually colonized first by the French and then later by the English.

The English and French fought over control of the island for many years, and this colonial warfare is what ultimately led to many of the religious disagreements that Walcott experienced when growing up on the island. France, a Catholic nation, exerted a tight control over the island that led to Saint Lucia becoming predominately Catholic in practice; however, a minority of islanders, including Walcott and his family, were Methodist—a Protestant Christian denomination. In fact, the French even gave the island its name: Saint Lucia, for Saint Lucy of Syracuse.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Saint Lucia was a hub of the slave trade for both France and England. Many of the island’s residents, including Walcott, can trace their lineage back to enslaved African peoples. Although the British Empire abolished slavery in 1834, its fraught history cannot be divorced from the island of Saint Lucia or its people. Moreover, the French and British who colonized the island erased much of the Indigenous and African cultural heritage of its people.

Walcott’s work deals intimately with the effects of colonialism and post-colonialism. Although Saint Lucia became an independent nation during Walcott’s lifetime, his poetry is some of the first to be lauded for its exploration of the Caribbean point-of-view. “Love after Love” is a noticeable departure from Walcott's exploration of colonialism and post-colonialism in his work. Instead of political and social ideologies focusing on displaced, dispossessed peoples, “Love After Love” turns inward to query the individual self.

Ideological Context

Ideologically, Walcott’s spirituality and religious background also influenced his poetry. As a Methodist who grew up as a minority in the largely-Catholic Saint Lucia, Walcott and his family dealt with some particular difficulties. According to Walcott himself during his 1986 interview with Edward Hirsch:

Coming from a Methodist minority in a French Catholic island, we also felt a little beleaguered. The Catholicism propounded by the French provincial priests in St. Lucia was a very hidebound, prejudiced, medieval, almost hounding kind of Catholicism. The doctrine that was taught assigned all Protestants to limbo. So we felt defensive about our position (Walcott, Derek. “The Art of Poetry No. 37.” The Paris Review, 1986).

This sense of defensiveness seems to manifest in an intense focus on spiritualism and religion in many of Walcott’s poems. For Walcott, poetry is ritualistic and functions as a type of prayer. Poetry is for Walcott an extension of himself; it is not a hobby or even a career or passion. Poetry is a vocation chosen for him by God.

Although “Love After Love” doesn’t address religion or spirituality directly, the poem’s focus on reigniting one’s passion for oneself suggests a balanced view of the self. This belief or practice in a balanced self-image aligns with aspects of spiritualism. Moreover, by learning to love oneself as the speaker instructs in “Love After Love,” one can better defend one’s beliefs against outside forces that seek to mold or manipulate.

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