Imitations of Transcendence Derek Walcotts The Season of Phantasmal Peace

Abstract

Derek Walcott, the acclaimed Saint Lucian poet and playwright, notably proclaimed that he had ‘never separated the writing of poetry from prayer.’ This essay confronts Walcott's The Season of Phantasmal Peace, reading it as a meditation upon a moment of transcendence which is alternately figured as the ideal experience of artistic beauty, love, and God. To do this it explores links to the French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé, whom Walcott is known to have been influenced by, as well as exploring the prosodic, symbolic, and figurative complexities of the work.