From Islands to Portraits

Book excerpt: Throughout the long course of literature, islands have accumulated uncanny connotations of death, together with peculiarities of linguistic definition and expression. Since the age of discovery, after the Caribbean Islands, America itself, and later the archipelagos and atolls in the Pacific became known to travellers and conquistadores, islands have been sought, searched, explored and physically possessed as women; cultural recognition takes the form of sexual and physical possession (Venus was born from the sea, and is identified with an island). These are the themes of the first two variations discussed in this book.