Articles - Carnival’s riotous behaviour lessened Written By: Jacques Compton

From my vantage point it appeared to have been so. Perhaps some of the camera operators had been mindful of the criticism that, in the past, some of them had chosen to concentrate on those erotic displays by some of the revelers, some of whom, though, did succeed in presenting themselves to the TV cameras as the unruly and the licentious, and to announce their blatant invitations to intimacy. One young woman was seen to begin to discard some parts of her costume, and for a moment I feared that she had preferred to be in the nude.
I was reminded of Julius Caesar’s edict “Nemo violare licet in hortibus Caesaris.” (No one is allowed to desecrate the sanctity of Caesar’s gardens.) In other words lovers must find an alternative venue as their trysting place.
For this year’s Carnival it was, in truth, the very first time that I had such a kaleidoscope of colours. Dazzlingly brilliant, indeed!
And the women! Oh la la! I have travelled to several parts of the world, and I have seen many very beautiful women, but from the display of pulchritude at this year’s Carnival I am firmly of the opinion that Saint Lucia has the most beautiful women in the world. Don’t tell me otherwise.
Carnival, when it first started in ancient Rome one thousand years ago, had been a celebration in honour of the Roman god, Bacchus, known in ancient Greece as Dionysus, god of fertility and of wine who also inspires Poetry and Music. The drunken and riotous revelry associated with the rites at the festival, known as Bacchanalia, in honour of Bacchus, came to be known as bacchanal.
In the Caribbean Carnival has taken on a definite revolutionary change from the original Roman festival. It has become in these parts, street theatre at its best, and one in which almost the entire population participates. What the Honourable Derek has called “mass art,” and “the expression of a people with a fantastic original genius for the theatrical.” The “essential law of carnival,” continued Walcott “is movement . . . an anarchic and restless force always on the move” and I should add, also, sculptures on the move.
From the colourful and artistic creativity that I have seen here, I predict that the Saint Lucian Carnival, were it to continue with, and improve on, that outstanding and breath-taking creativity, would soon be ranked amongst the best of the world’s Carnivals.
A word about the commentators at this year’s event. The electronic media managers must exercise greater care and select people with a gift of language. Two in particular at one of the T. channels revealed a poverty of vocabulary that was pitifully on display, and one young man, I recall, gave out some questionable historical information about the Empress Josephine, a mulatto.  Napoleon Bonaparte was Josephine’s second husband. She had been married, previously, to the Count Beauharnais. So when she married Napoleon she was already a lady of rank, the Countess Beauharnais.
There is still controversy concerning Josephine’s birthplace. Both Saint Lucia and Martinique claim her. There is a statue of her in the Parc Floral in Forte-de-France, Martinique. Dr Michael Louis, a former Chief Education Officer in Saint Lucia and whose doctoral thesis was on the Post-Emancipation period, is a graduate in Sociology and History and the author of a book on the Empress Josephine which the community of Paix Bouche in Saint Lucia claim as her birthplace.
One more observation. The weather, which had been threatening on both afternoons, eventually broke out in furious downpours which underlined that the choice of dates for the Carnival from it being a pre-Lenten festival, to the Hurricane Season, was always a risky venture.
The people of Saint Lucia have never been told the real questionable arguments for the change of dates. The rain, however, did not stop the revelers. There will no doubt be many absentees at work after the Carnival, headaches and flu, and, of course, an increase in the population nine months hence.
The essence of the Carnival this year was distilled in the chant by the jogging revelers: “Ma Malay,” or was it “Pas Malay,”a shortened version of the French Creole “Moin pas malay.” That about summed it up for them.