I don't feel I've arrived home until I get on the beach. All my life, the theater of the sea has been a very strong thing.
Derek WalcottRead
This is Port of Spain to me, a city ideal in its commercial and human proportions, where a citizen is a walker and not a pedestrian, and this is how Athens may have been before it became a cultural echo.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the beauty and ideal proportions of Port of Spain, comparing it to ancient Athens, emphasizing the importance of active engagement with one's environment.
In this quote, Derek Walcott expresses his admiration for Port of Spain as a vibrant city that embodies both commercial and human ideals. He contrasts the experience of a citizen as an active participant in the city—described as a 'walker'—with that of simply being a 'pedestrian', suggesting a deeper connection to the urban environment. By invoking Athens, he draws parallels between the historical grandeur of a city that once thrived with cultural richness and the potential of Port of Spain to embody such aesthetic and communal values.
Themes
Port Of SpainAthensCityCultureWalkPedestrian
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about urban development, one might quote Walcott to highlight the importance of active participation in city life.
More from Derek Walcott
All quotes →Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next.
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A long time ago, I thought, as a writer in the Caribbean, 'I don't ever want to have to write 'It was great in Paris.'' Because I don't think, proportionately speaking, that one's experience in a city as opposed to, say, a village in St. Lucia, is superior to the other.
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My mother was a schoolteacher and very, very encouraging. She understood what it meant when I said I wanted to be a writer; both me and my brother wrote.
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When I went to college - when I read Shakespeare or Dickens or Scott - I just felt that, as a citizen of England, a British citizen, this was as much my heritage as any schoolboy's. That is one of the things the Empire taught, that apart from citizenship, the synonymous inheritance of the citizenship was the literature.
Derek WalcottRead
The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.
Derek WalcottRead
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