Abstract:
In his essay on Derek Walcott, ‘The Sound of the Tide,’ Joseph Brodsky claims that “the literature of a realm in decline flourishes anew at the periphery of that realm.” Brodsky has Walcott most in mind, but he is also responding to the situation where the realm expands beyond the nation, taking in other societies whose relations to the centre are various, frequently problematic and always troubled by the axis that runs from centre to periphery. Empire, in short. What interests me in this paper is the literature that travels from the periphery to the centre, in consequence of migrations that are no longer necessarily carried out in the interest of Empire. .....