Derek Walcott Quotes
The discontent that lies in the human condition is not satisfied simply by material things.
Walcott, Derek. Conversations with Derek Walcott. Edited by William Baer, University Press of Mississippi, 1996.
The translation into the word "love" includes love of things as well as people. The Eigen translation is "All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of those relationships with people and those thiongs about which a person is passionate." The Greeks had 7 diffferent words for love od different kinds and things. But the Latin in which this was written is a much less precice lanaguage, quite like English in that respect. The object of the passion might be people, a political movement, a area of study and inquiry like science or mathamatics, the production of something as in art music or literature--even a sport. But if the quality of the object of the passion is poor, the happiness rarely lasts.
Sir Derek Alton Walcott, KCSL, OBE, OCC was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was the University of Alberta's first distinguished scholar in residence, where he taught undergraduate and graduate writing courses. He also served as Professor of Poetry at the University of Essex from 2010 to 2013. His works include the Homeric epic poem Omeros (1990), which many critics view "as Walcott's major achievement." In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Walcott received many literary awards over the course of his career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen's Medal for Poetry, the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry White Egrets and the Griffin Trust For Excellence in Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award in 2015.
