English that is not the standard, imported, educated English, but that of the submerged, surrealist experience and sensibility, which has always been there and which is now increasingly coming to the surface and influencing the perception of contemporary Caribbean people. It is what I call, as I say, nation language. I use the term in contrast to dialect. The word dialect has been bandied about for a long time, and it carries very pejorative overtones. Dialect is thought of as 'bad' English. Dialect is 'inferior' English. Dialect is the language when you want to make fun of someone. Caricature speaks in dialect. Dialect has a long history coming from the plantation where people's dignity was distorted through their languages and the descriptions that the dialect gave to them. Nation language, on the other hand, is the submerged area of that dialect that is much more closely allied to the African aspect of experience in the Caribbean. It may be in English, but often it is in an English which is like a howl, or a shout, or a machine-gun, or the wind, or a wave. It is also like the blues. And sometimes it is English and African at the same time.* * *
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The mainstream poets who were moving from standard English to nation language were influenced basically, I think (again the models are important), by T. S. Eliot. What T. S. Eliot did for Caribbean poetry and Caribbean literature was to introduce the notion of the speaking voice, the conversational tone.2 That is what really attracted us to Eliot. And you can see how the Caribbean poets introduced here have been influenced by him, although they eventually went on to create their own environmental expression.
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1979-81 1984,1986
Calypso1
1
The stone had skidded arc'd and bloomed into islands: Cuba and San Domingo Jamaica and Puerto Rico Grenada Guadeloupe Bonaire2
5 curved stone hissed into reef wave teeth fanged into clay
2. For those of us who really made the break-Bird: American jazz musician Charlie 'Bird' Parker through, it was Eliot's actual voice?or rather his (1920?1955). Dizzy: American jazz trumpeter recorded voice, property of the British Council Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993). KJook: American jazz (Barbados)?reading 'Preludes', 'The Love Song drummer Kenny Clarke (1914-1985). of J. Alfred Prufrock', The Waste Land, and later 1. Type of folk song originating in Trinidad, often the Four Quartets?not the texts?which turned involving commentary on current events and us on. In that dry deadpan delivery, the 'riddims' improvised wordplay with syncopated rhythms. of St. Louis (though we did not know the source This poem is from Rights of Passage, the first of then) were stark and clear for those of us who at three books collected as The Arrivants. the same time were listening to the dislocations of 2. Caribbean Islands. The first two stanzas suggest Bird, Dizzy, and Klook. And it is interesting that, a creation myth in which the islands are formed in on the whole, the establishment could not stand a rock-skipping game called ducks and drakes. Eliot's voice?and far less jazz [Brathwaite's note].
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25 10 / NATION AND LANGUAGE
white splash flashed into spray
Bathsheba Montego Bay3
bloom of the arcing summers . . .
2
10 Th e islands roared into green plantations ruled by silver sugar cane sweat and profit cutlass profit islands ruled by sugar cane
is An d of course it was a wonderful time a profitable hospitable well-worth-your-time whe n captains carried receipts for rices letters spices wigs opera glasses swaggering asses
20 debtors vices pigs
O it was a wonderful time an elegant benevolent redolent time? and young Mrs. P.'s quick irrelevant crime at four o'clock in the morning . . .
3
25 But what of black Sam with the big splayed toes and the shoe black shiny skin?
He carries bucketfulls of water 'cause his Ma's just had another daughter.
30 And what of John with the European name who went to school and dreamt of fame his boss one day called him a fool and the boss hadn't even been to school . . .
4
Steel drum steel drum
35 hit the hot calypso dancing hot rum hot rum who goin' stop this bacchanalling?4
For we glance the banjo dance the limbo 40
grow our crops by maljo5
3. Jamaican city and tourist resort. 'Bathsheba': and revelry. seaside resort in Barbados. 5. Evil eye (Trinidadian dialect; from the French 4. From Bacchanalia: festival of Bacchus, the mal yeiix). Roman god of wine, celebrated with song, dancing,
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SOYINKA: TELEPHONE CONVERSATION / 2529
have loose morals
gather corals
