Derek Walcott, Tiepolo's Hound

John Thieme (University of East Anglia)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 4.1.1: Anglophone Writing and Culture of Central America and the Caribbean.
Vol. editors: Ronald Cummings (McMaster University), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège), Melanie Otto (Trinity College Dublin), Jak Peake (University of Essex), Abigail Ward (University of Nottingham)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2000

Places

St Lucia (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

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Tiepolo’s Hound

(2000), Derek Walcott’s most important poem since

Omeros

(1990), spirals around two narratives, both of which concern painting. It is both a verse-novel about the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, who was born on the, then, Danish colonial island of St Thomas, and the story of the poet’s quest to rediscover a fugitive detail in a painting by a Venetian master, an epiphanic flash of colour on the inner thigh of a white hound. Initially he recollects having seen this in a painting by Tiepolo in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. However, with the passage of time memory blurs and he becomes uncertain whether the painting is by Tiepolo or Veronese.

The poem is also about painting more generally. It links Walcott’s own life-long interest in pictorial art

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1074 words

Citation: Thieme, John. "Tiepolo's Hound". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 December 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8351, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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