‘Our Creole Painter’: Derek Walcott's Early Intermediality

Abstract

This article probes the complex interrelationship between Derek Walcott's poetry, Paul Gauguin's art, and Ernest Hemingway's prose. Following an overview of cutting-edge research into postcolonial artistic intermediality, it argues that Walcott admired Gauguin's depictions of Caribbean landscapes, but that this admiration was tempered by his awareness of the artist's racism. Having established the broad strokes of their relationship, the article hones in on the influence Gauguin exerted on Walcott's early lyric ‘Letter to a Painter in England’ (1948). Through close reading, it outlines the role Gauguin's synthetism played in shaping the work's aesthetic, especially with regard to its nonmimetic use of colour, and contends that Walcott's early imitation of Gauguin was inspired by Ernest Hemingway's intermedial imitations of Cézanne. However, unlike Hemingway, Walcott sought to ‘re-vision’ his model through visual-verbal translation.