DEREK WALCOTT
205
It's a sort of Graham Greenish fantasy about the tropics that was perpetu–
ated. But Greece is a hot country, and you've got to ask: What has Greece
produced?
DM:
What other divisions have come into play in your life besides paint–
in!9'poetry, light/sound?
DW:
I suppose the biggest cleft, the biggest division, the biggest chasm is
cultural, in a way. Obviously - however jaded a subject it is, and I do feel
jaded talking about it - race is an enormous one. Not for
me.
I look at the
chasm, I don't share it. But it's obviously here. And it seems to have widened
every day in America. As an observer, I think the reality of saying this is a
further fact that the Constitution of the United States is so democratic. Not
only is the Constitution almost defensive in its democracy, it seems to say
daily that
despite
this or that, people are equal. And it's the despite part, I
think, that I experience as active day to day now. And that is quite frighten–
mg.
Not just racism. I think the examination that is required is to ask: Is
one inhabiting a kind of fallacy or fantasy, a sort of suspended Constitution
within one's daily life that is not enacted by various races, whether it's by the
Italian or the Jew or the Black or the Puerto Rican? And what holds that
fantasy together? It's basically fragile. It's more like a rotten string than
anything that really binds all the various races around the concept of democ–
racy. And that is, I think, perhaps the most frightening aspect ofAmerica.
As
absolutely beautiful and true as the ethics of the Constitution are, the reality
of them moves further and further away daily, I think. And one must, of
course, adhere to and believe in the principles that are there. But they have
been turning into a kind of gospel as opposed to a reality. You read the New
Testament and see the same thing, that men must love one another, and
Christ is the example, and so on, but nobody lives the New Testament. And
it may be that, in this democracy, the equivalent of the New Testament is in
the Constitution. So one does not actually live it; one can only believe that it
exists and pay homage to it, as a sort of inside faith, but not in practice. I've
spent some years in America now, and that separation is as if the Constitu–
tion were a church that you go into from time to time and come out of.
Monday morning you don't adhere to it; the citizens do not go by that faith.
DM:
So a person pays homage but goes away without being held to prac–
tice?
DW:
No, I'm not saying it's not practiced. There are some fantastically as–
tonishing things in the practice of democracy in America that continue.
Among them, the press's relentless, self-adoring idea ofjustice is useful.
Many
things work and keep the bonds strong. But it's the one constitution that says
you must do
this.
It's the closest thing to the New Testament instruction that
exists. But now, I think, it's become as remote, in a way, as the concept of
brotherly love. It's not a
paradox,
it's just a frightening kind offantasy.
