Tiepolo's Hound

By Derek Walcott

Book Overview

From the Nobel laureate, a book-length poem on two educations in painting, a century apart "Between me and Venice the thigh of a hound; my awe of the ordinary, because even as I write, paused on a step of this couplet, I have never found its image again, a hound in astounding light." Tiepolo's Hound joins the quests of two Caribbean men: Camille Pissarro--a Sephardic Jew born in 1830 who leaves his native St. Thomas to follow his vocation as a painter in Paris--and the poet himself, who longs to rediscover a detail--"a slash of pink on the inner thigh / of a white hound"--of a Venetian painting encountered on an early visit from St. Lucia to New York. Both journeys take us through a Europe of the mind's eye, in search of a connection between the lost, actual landscape of a childhood and the mythical landscape of empire. Published with twenty-five full-color reproductions of Derek Walcott's own paintings, the poem is at once the spiritual biography of a great artist in self-imposed exile, a history in verse of Impressionist painting, and a memoir of the poet's desire to catch the visual world in more than words.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374105871
• ISBN13: 9780374105877
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 1.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.6" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

The Painting

For reference, the white hound may be the one found in "Finding the Moses" by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. See also youtube's "Tiepolo's Hound: A Reading by Derek Walcott".

Tiepolo's Hound

With so many wondrous works, it is tempting to take Walcott's poetic virtuosity for granted. Of them all, this is my favorite, and this one features his virtuosity at its most shining. His effortlessly rhyming couplets sing themes of painting and poetry, biography and myth, existential pain and release,geography and spirit. And Pissarro the painter is duly celebrated.

"Coffee-table poetry and art"

Derek Walcott has always confessed his ambitions to be a painter of note.While poetry became his favourite wife, his love for painting never disappeared. Over the years he has continued to paint, and his art now decorates the covers of his poetry collections. "Tiepolo's Hound" seems one of the least personal of Walcott's books. While we get glimpses of the poet's life, he is more concerned to explore the life of Camille Pisarro to understand the heart of the individual bound to the calling of artist. It seems a tentative, searching exploration.Obviously identifying with their common Caribbean childhood and the influences of landscape and history they share, Walcott tries to see into the complex struggles of this artist who left the Caribbean for Paris, to become one of the fathers of impressionism.Seeking his epiphanic hound,he shares with us the painters who excited his artistic inspiration. Alongside his rhyming couplets he has placed twenty six of his own paintings-some very good, others less so.It is rare to find a book like this, coffetable poetry and art together by the same artist. Now seventy, this Nobel Laureate is not afraid to share his meditations on art and poetry-through art and poetry-warts and all.A collector's item.Walcott's readers must be patient with him, and try to go with him as he charts, quite bravely,his questionings of the artist's commitment and the cost."Whatever the age is, it lies in the small spring of poetry everywhere"(p66).A defining comment.Read "poetry" as the very heart of all art.