This study proposes to venture into the common elements and differences inboth W.B. Yeats’s and Derek Walcott’s poems. It has been said that the youngWalcott was sympathetic to the Irish writers, such as Synge, Pearce, Yeats, andJoyce, because he intended to make himself master of the themes and rhythms of theexile or castaway that the Irish writers echoed in their works. Of the Irish writers,Yeats was especially a poet who a little more previously wrote of the same issue asthe young Walcott tried to and the young poet’s attention was deeply caught in theYeatean poetics, more specifically, in the Yeatean mask which echoes a solitary selfas an artist.
Walcott’s Crusoe as a poetic self echoes the Yeatean mask. More specifically, itis a parallel for a poet with his daily ritual of the poet creating a new poem in thedesperately isolated island. It is believed to be created by Walcott’s comparinghimself and his own country to Yeats and Ireland in terms of an exile, a castawayor a lost self, which reflects a solitary and artistic figure in his poems, such as in“Crusoe’s Island” and “As John To Patmos”. Despite this fact, Walcott is also a poetwho has built up the self-figure on a different base from Yeats’s heroic oraristocratic self. His poems are based on the Caribbean multi-racial backgroundcharacteristic of slavery, poverty, lost hope, and lost identity that have resulted fromthe colonial policy of the British government that stepped into the Spanish and theFrench shoes.
His Caribbean figure is a poverty-stricken, obedient, but patient, willfulcastaway, with his thick lips tightly closed. Although Walcott is a poet who hasdeveloped his own poetic self on the Yeatean base, which resulted in his fruitfulpoems, it is believed that he made greater efforts to weave the Caribbean spirit intopoems than others. Then, the Caribbean tropical landscapes, such as sea, wood, andsun, etc. are a poetic space which sublimated his themes into the Caribbean soul.