Small islands...through the eyes of poets, writers, musicians and scholars* Is paradise an island? The ancient Greeks believed that the spirits of their dead heroes inhabited the Elysian fields in the Isles of the Blest, far away to the west beyond Calpe and Abyla, the Pillars of Hercules. Centuries later, searching for paradise, the Irish monk Saint Brendan (484-578) sailed far into the Atlantic Ocean, where he came upon an island of unsurpassed beauty and fertility which he believed to be the ‘Promised land of the Saints’. Saint Brendan’s sacred island remained clearly marked upon most maps for over a thousand years. Even today, most travel agents have at least one ‘island paradise’ inscribed on their books with which to entice clients anxious ‘to get away from it all’. Is Hell an island? For millions of Africans sold into slavery, the island of Gorée, off the coast of Senegal, near Dakar, where they were held before being transported across the Atlantic, was the gateway to Hell. And few names evoke so readily the notion of Hell as that of Devil’s Island. Is desperate hope an island? Hundred’s of thousands of ragged immigrants trembled on Ellis Island at the entrance to New York harbour where, as they had their first glimpse of the hoped-for land of promise, they waited to have their immigration applications processed. Paradise or Purgatory, Heaven or Hell, islands leave no one indifferent – and least of all the world’s poets and writers, musicians and scholars, as reflected in the sampling of extracts that follow**.

Look, stranger, at this island now The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the ear May wander like a river The swaying sound of the sea. W.H. Auden (1907-1973). English poet. ‘Look, stranger, at this island now’ (1936). ....dawn came back and they were still in cities; No marvellous creature rose up from the water; There was still gold and silver in the mountains But hunger was a more immediate sorrow, Although to moping villages in valleys Some waving pilgrims were describing islands. W.H. Auden(1907-1973). English poet. ‘Paysage Moralisé’ (1933) L’honneur est comme une île escarpée et sans bords: On n’y peut plus rentrer dès qu’on en est dehors. [Honour is like an island, rugged and without shores; we can never re-enter it once we are on the outside.] Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711). French poet. Satires, vol. X (1694) v. 167-168. Are suffering grave problems of health And even more, of self-identity. For islands, being islands, Are more fragile, more sensitive to disorder, More vulnerable to outrages of every kind. But man must come to his senses. Inconsequential as he is, man can also be wise! René Carmen. Iles (February 1993, No.26). D'une manière générale, j'aime toutes les îles. Il est plus facile d'y régner. [Generally, I like all islands. There, it is easier to rule.] Albert Camus (1913–1960). French-Algerian novelist, dramatist, philosopher. ‘La chute/The Fall’ (1956). No man is an island, entire of himself, Every man is a piece of a continent, a part of the main. John Donne (1572-1631) English poet. ‘Devotions upon Emergent Occasions’ (1624) (Meditation XVII)). we are so many and many within themselves travel to far islands but no one asks for their story.... Denise Levertov (b. 1923-1997). Anglo–U.S. poet, essayist and political activist. ‘In Abeyance’. There were no lands of sunshine, heavy with the perfume of flowers. Such things were only old dreams of paradise. The sunlands of the West and the spicelands of the East, the smiling Arcadias and blissful Islands of the Blest – ha! ha! Jack London (1876-1916). American writer. ‘In a far country’ (1900). It is time to plant Feet in our earth. The heart’s metronome Insists on this arc of islands As home. Dennis Scott (1939-1991). Jamaican poet and dramatist., ‘Homecoming’. The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly. Because the music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees, or the contrary. Andrés Segovia (1893-1987). Spanish classical guitarist. New York Times, (16 February 1964). The shifting islands! who would not be willing that his house should be undermined by such a foe! The inhabitant of an island can tell what currents formed the land which he cultivates; and his earth is still being created or destroyed. There before his door, perchance, still empties the stream which brought down the material of his farm ages before, and is still bringing it down or washing it away,—the graceful, gentle robber! Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. ‘A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers’ (1849), in ‘The Writings of Henry David Thoreau’, vol. 1, p. 259, Houghton Mifflin (1906). The peace of white horses, The pastures of ports, The litany of islands, The rosary of archipelagos. Derek Walcott (born 1930). St. Lucian poet and playwright. ‘A Sea-Chantey’, in ‘In a Green Night’ (1962). At the end of this sentence, rain will begin. At the rain’s edge, a sail. Slowly the sail will lose sight of islands; Into a mist will go the belief in harbors of an entire race. Derek Walcott (born 1930). St. Lucian poet and playwright. Archipelagoes. Others will see the islands large and small; Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high. A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them, Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide. It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not, I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd, Walt Whitman (1819–1892). U.S. poet. ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’ (l. 16–23). Not in Utopia, -subterranean fields, - Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us, - the place where in the end We find our happiness, or not at all! William Wordsworth (1770-1850). English poet. ‘The Prelude’ (1850) bk. 12, 1. 204 ________________ * Source: adapted and expanded from Island Agenda : An Overview of UNESCO’s Work on Island Environments, Territories and Societies. UNESCO, Paris (1994). ** Suggestions on other quotations relating to small islands would be appreciated. Please send suggestions to UNESCO Focal Point for Barbados+10. e-mail: islandsBplus10@unesco.org; Fax: 33 1 45685808