Literature and Society

Feb 21, 2010 Features / Columnists, Guyanese Literature

By Petamber Persaud

It piques me how little appreciation we show towards the literature of our country especially when it is the only aspect of our life that embodies the whole of our collective experience. This literature that mirrors our society could also act as a barometer, an inspiration and a guide. This literature has documented our struggles and victories of the past and this literature could inspire us to protect our country from any external threat.
At this juncture of our history the ‘Song of the Republic’ could be a starting point in our literature from whence we could gird ourselves to defend and preserve our territorial integrity. When we perform the ‘Song of the Republic’ this year, we should be mindful of the sacrifices made by those who paved the way for us to have a better life and we should rededicate ourselves to the cause of nation building.
Read slowly and reverently the first verse:

From Pakaraima’s peaks of pow’r
To Corentyne’s lush sands,
Her children pledge each faithful hour
To guard Guyana’s lands
To foil the shock of rude invaders
Who’d violate her earth
To cherish and defend forever
The state that gave them birth

What sentiments, what a flow of patriotism, what a call to action, what a charge, what rhyme and rhythm, what rhyme and reason, what craft and technique and yet the ‘Song of the Republic’ almost never was. The following story will show the challenges the songwriter surmounted.
Four decades ago – sometime in late 1969, a competition was set in train to select an appropriate anthem to celebrate Guyana’s attainment of Republic status.
The story was that the writer of those words got his name in the ‘black book’ of the government of the day because a civil issue was determined politically against him. It is said the man’s outspokenness landed him many times in the ants’ nest and true to form, he wrote about this slight in his newspaper column. Afraid his entry may be treated with political discharge, he submitted the words to the competition using a nom de plume, Thomas Theophilus Halley, his father’s name. That entry won from 135 submissions. The judges were A. J. Seymour, Mrs. Stella Merriman and Milton Drepaul; the ‘judges made certain amendments to the entry so as to accord it greater suitability and make it eminently sing able’.
It was long after the announcement that his entry had won that he went forward to accept the glory. That writer, Cleveland Hamilton, was also a sedate yet busy legal practitioner that ever so often escaped the straightjacket to don the mantle of a poet, letting his imagination go as he immortalised people, places and events. Some of his popular pieces include ‘Requiem for Walter Rodney’, ‘Requiem for Father Bernard Darke’, ‘For Soweto’, and ‘For Steve Biko’.

We’ll forge a nation’s mighty soul
Construct a nation’s frame
Freedom our everlasting goal
Courage and truth our aim
Unyielding in our quest for peace
Like ancient heroes brave
With strength beyond the slave

This second verse embodies the meaning of our Republic. The celebration of Guyana’s Republic status on February 23 is associated with one of the first recorded struggles in our history for independence.
That event was labelled ‘the Berbice Slave Rebellion’ and it said to have started on February 23, 1763. As was the norm then, the enslaved were continually mistreated but on that occasion things came to a head.
An enslaved individual named Cuffy and his lieutenants took up arms against their brutal masters. The reciprocating violence was ugly but the enslaved people made good headway so much so they were in a position to bargain with the authority. That strike was the first strike for freedom that came many years later on August 1st 1838.

Guyana climb that glorious perch
To fame prosperity
Join in the universal search
For world wide comity
Your people whatsoe’er their breed
Their hue or quality
With one firm never changing creed
The nation’s unity

National unity is the theme of this poem held together in measured metres and rhymes.
And the literature of our country will reflect this moment; our literature will record for posterity how well we handle any threat. So let’s include our literature in what we do, for that literature would not exclude our responses in its annals.

Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@ yahoo.com
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