Expatria(m)?

Abstract

The first couple of stanzas propose a contrast between two poets away from their native land: OVID, and BYRON; the next three stanzas list modes of displacement (a term gratefully snitched from Cora Kaplan): by force, by conviction, by choice. Attention then shifts to motives of one sort or another: adventure, in two senses, and above all, money. Once the uprooted individual has reached the terminus and quem for the time being, there are two choices: involved with the new environment that presents itself, or stay well away from it, gallantly aloof perhaps. Assuming the first choice, some kind of self-preparation, assimilation, or camouflage is advisable, and this cannot well be learned beforehand. The career of the incomer is metastable; in the long term, if not long before, it will follow one or two paths, upward or downward. The condition of ‘living abroad’ implies a kind of monstrously unequal contract between individual incomer and host country. It also implies an odd kind of quittance with the country of origin (as for example the convicts who, having arrived in Australia from Britain, were induced to put on a theatre performance clarifying their situation). The gloomy but obsessive subject of dying in foreign parts is touched upon, with the compensating reflection that displacement is a law of the natural Universe. An envoi neatly rejects the expatriate condition as a value.