Longing for home: a complex emotion in Homer’sOdysseyand Derek Walcott’sOmeros

Abstract

Using recent affect theories, this article focuses on the role that emotion plays in new receptions of ancient texts, in this case the emotion of longing for home — for the place, as well as for the people — as we find it in the Homeric epics and in the modern Caribbean world of Derek Walcott. Longing for home in the Odyssey is portrayed as a contradictory emotion comprising both place attachment and grief, often felt with some ambivalence about returning home at all. I argue that, responding to this emotional tension, in his poem Omeros Walcott attempts to heal the historical wounds of slavery and a longing for a home that no longer exists through a new appreciation of and attachment to the landscape of St. Lucia. In addition, by challenging a Eurocentric view of racial dominance, it becomes possible to acknowledge anew the importance of Egyptian and other African influences on the Homeric tradition, influences that may have been neglected or dismissed, allowing for a new appreciation of the Homeric poem and place attachment in a post-colonial world.