Dabydeen talks about Guyana's first poet and Seecharran about Lord Campbell
Stabroek News
February 2, 2003
(The Fifth Diaspora Dialogue at the Guyana High Commission in London)
The fruits of a once great education system are fine minds. Two Guyanese examples were on display at the Guyana High Commission in London last week; Professors David Dabydeen and Clem Seecharran. They conducted the fifth of the 'Diaspora Dialogues' to a rapt audience of fifty ably chaired by another fine Guyanese mind, Dr Peter Fraser of Middlesex University. It was an event which reached for the intellectual sky. Often it touched it.
Both chose subjects of study and discussion that were well outside the Guyanese ethnic box. Dabydeen dealt with Guyana's first poet, the mulatto Egbert Martin and his work and Seecharran the life and times of Lord Campbell of Eskan formerly of Bookers. Clem's book on him is due to be published very soon by the UWI Press. It is a labour of love based on many interviews with Jock Campbell and much new research. Like the good historiographer he is, Clem refused to take the intellectually easy (and lazy) route of categorising Sir Jock as a 'white imperialist 'who raped the country. Instead he has explored the subtle nuances of his and his family's connections with the 'colony', Jock's own doubts about his role in the plantation economy, his 'Fabian socialism' and his friendship with Cheddi Jagan.
Seecharran, who has just been promoted to a full Professor at North London University was most moving when reading a passage from his introduction which vividly recalled his own childhood growing up on a logie on Rose Hall estate in Berbice, 'The Holland of the Tropics' where he 'surveyed the cane from our verandah 'and sampled 'the aroma of burnt cane and scalded cane juice'. He saw Guyana as no El Dorado but one where the sins of yesterday and its unique plantation system were being revisited on the citizens of today in the continuing racial tensions.
In 'Sweet Bitter Sugar' Clem argues that Bookers was a 'State within a state' in the then British Guiana. Jock Campbell was its 'President' but one full of benevolence and with some vision for the nation. Item; He refused to join the Peter d'Aguiar inspired 'Axe the Tax' panic about the 1962 Kaldor PPP Budget. He'd heard it called 'radical' but said' What's wrong with that, what have the Guianese got to be Conservative about?'.
Seecharran felt it was only because of the confidence gained in the last two decades by West Indian scholars that they were now able to tackle 'difficult' subjects like the life of a Kaffir. But he did accept that being a scholar in the diaspora meant he'd had the necessary distance from the ethnic cauldron of Guyana to be able to write a book about a white man.
Dabydeen in his contribution paid tribute to men of several different hues. Firstly, his friend the late Desmond Hoyte, whom he had seen just before his death. Hoyte he said was "urbane" and through the setting up of the Guyana Prize when President had realised that "Imagination is central to development". Hoyte would be missed by the thinkers of Guyana.
Ambassador Dabydeen also paid tribute to Cheddi Jagan, whose collected letters he was just editing. Among them, a short letter from the British Governor dated 8th then (hand)changed to 9th October 1953 suspending him as Prime Minister of the colony. The British troops were on their way and Cheddi to prison. Jagan was not to waste his time during incarceration.
Dabydeen produced his only known poem, written on toilet paper in the Mazaruni prison. Who knows how many others have been lost in whatever way. Dabydeen's roman a clef to Cheddi, whom he said he viewed "astonishingly uncritically" will be published in the future.
Before that, he turned his critical attention to Egbert Martin, the first Guyanese poet. He lived from 1862-1890.
His major work 'Leo's Poetical works', published in 1883 is scarce. Very scarce. Just one copy is left in existence -in the New York Public Library. Egbert, self taught, was a creature of his (colonialist) time with the book dedicated, in Latin, to the Governor of British Guiana. To Dabydeen, Martin had found and was able to convey the landscape of Guyana, `the sorrel and the mango', whilst using the idioms of Victorian poetry; `The poet is a magician, the philosopher's stone is his; It turns all baser metals to priceless rarities..'...figures, shape or fantasy. Transformed to purest Gold'. Dabydeen, himself in the van of contemporary West Indian and European poetry, rated Martin a major poetic talent, Guyanese or not.
It was a pleasure to be exposed to two such fine minds. The audience rose to it, mostly. Some could not avoid the seemingly ingrained Guyanese habit of 'I've listened to your views, now you listen to mine'. Vanity publishing by mouth.
And as is usual in Guyanese circles ,the talk graduated from the arcane to the profane and race. Dabydeen referred to Guyana's "Self mutilation - we never discuss ecology, gender or important issues like that" and Seecharran compared the tinderboxes of Guyana and Trinidad and their genesis. As usual, that discussion did not get far.
It was a stimulating evening, one brimful of the fruits of scholars. It made one proud to be Guyanese. Wherever we live.
