For those of us who are following Wilson Harris in the tradition of Guyanese literature, there is no doubt that he has transformed the literary landscape of the region, and we would be unwise (as would the rest of the world) to ignore his blazing signposts as we try to chart our way forward.

As a writer of fiction and as a fellow Guyanese, there are certain lessons that it has been my privilege to learn from this extraordinary writer. Like Wilson, I have spent many years out of Guyana. But from him I have learned that nationalism is not necessarily important for the creative artist. He gave me confidence in the idea that my imagination can be my homeland and that it can be fed from many sources.

Each of Wilson Harris's novels is a dense nexus of dream, myth, archetype, and prophecy that cuts clearly across the conventions of much Caribbean literature—a literature which mainly focuses on the purely historical features of slavery, colonialism, or indentured labor and which surrenders to an overwhelmingly materialist view of the post-Columbian period. I can think of no other English-speaking writer who deals with pre-Columbian myth and history reaching back through time to the Aztec and Mayan civilizations and who weaves threads from other civilizations as well, Greco-Roman for example, into a complex picture of the present. His work is courageous and visionary. It is revolutionary both in content and form, a melting-pot of the material and spiritual history, not just of the region but of the deepest levels of all humanity. He is not afraid to draw on whatever tradition—European, South American, Asian, or Judeo-Christian—that will give form to his ideas. In that sense his writing is a benison and a living example of redemption through integration.

There is no doubt that we experience, when reading his novels, the sense of a writer who is at some level possessed. This tradition, the tradition of Dante, Milton, and Blake, has mainly deserted modern European literature. The Amerindian shaman who was also in touch with spirits and was able to time travel, communicating his insights in the poetic, oral tradition is similarly an increasingly rare phenomenon on our continent. In modern times the sacred is dangerously under attack from the profane. Science and rationalism, for all their benefits, are hunting down and destroying other sorts of wisdom. Imagination is on the run. Much contemporary writing throughout the world has eagerly and exclusively embraced the profane surface of daily life and deals with the face of things. Wilson Harris deals with the archaeology of human experience and knowledge. The mysterious links and structures that so often remain hidden from us are revealed and shown to have a beautiful and cohesive pattern. The work is a rare repository of the sacred and the visionary. He is the man who can see the mask behind the face and write about it.

It seems to me that Wilson is the most Dionysian of writers. And in some ways this is terrifying to many people. We should not underestimate the terror that can be produced by his work. The books speak to us in tongues. Many people in this secular age do not have the framework in which to receive them. Dionysus is a god of rapture as well as a deliverer and a healer. All these qualities are present in Wilson Harris's work. He understands ecstasy too—a rare gift these days and a dangerous one. For the writer who only seeks commercial success or tabloid popularity, these extremes of inspiration and this rigorous integrity are things to be avoided. For the writer who addresses his fellow human beings from a certain tragic consciousness and who knows that if his audience does not listen they run the risk of being destroyed, these qualities possess a poignant risk. Here we have a writer of great intellect as well as passion who pits his imagination against certain titanic forces of emptiness, tyranny, and death that are at work in today's world.

Dionysus is a god who will overwhelm those who ignore or deny him. We cannot say we have not been warned.

It is no reflection on the man himself, whose gentleness and grace is known to many, if I say that his work is like a leopard loose among us. Everyone regards it with awe and no one quite knows what to do about it. But admire it, we do. And it is no coincidence that the leopard, or tiger/jaguar as we call it in Guyana, is both the sacred animal of our region and, according to classical tradition, the favorite animal of Dionysus. The creature is astonishingly beautiful, exceedingly graceful, untameable, powerful, elegant, and highly dangerous. In the Rupununi district of Guyana where I spend much of my time, stories of this beast are legendary. It makes no compromises. It does not negotiate. The danger as far as the reader is concerned is that the illumination from the burning bright tiger of Harris's work is too dazzling after the shadowy world of half-lies, sentiment, and complacency that is the province of much modern fiction and most modern politics.

I should not like this essay to concentrate so much on the power of the work that it neglects to mention Wilson Harris's sense of humor and the delicate irony he uses in playing, for instance, with the fictional autobiographers who frequently dictate their work to him. There is a great deal of delight in this playfulness.

However, it is the power and originality of the work that is most impressive. It is groundbreaking work. And in some ways I imagine that he must suffer from the isolation that all true innovators have to bear. Those in the vanguard are often way ahead of their time. When I talk of the danger in his work, it is not to say that the work is harmful but that the author takes death-defying risks with form. Such pioneering work invites attack from the forces of reaction and others are initially too timid to follow where such a writer leads. That is the challenge for the generations of Guyanese writers who follow in his footsteps. Who will dare to pick up such a mantle?

Few modern writers possess the qualities of the prophet and seer in addition to possessing an inspired gift for fiction. Wilson Harris has such gifts. What many of us feel about his genius is, perhaps, best expressed in the words of Coleridge:

Weave a circle round him thrice
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.