THE entire oeuvre and poetics of Professor Wole Soyinka speaks volume about the resourcefulness and ingenuity of a literary icon who is one of the finest writers to have come out of Nigeria, nay Africa. Incidentally, he is also the only Nigerian writer to have won the coveted Nobel Prize in Literature so far, thus affirming that, perhaps, there is something redoubtable about the renowned dramatist.
As revealed in his autobiography, Ake: The Years of Childhood, Soyinka started out as a precocious child who had an uncommon thirst for education and learning. He excelled in school and proved to be one of the promising leaders that would come out of Ijegba sub-ethnic group of the Yoruba.
Right from his youthful days, Kongi, as fondly called by friends, has shown a lot of exuberance, vitality and intellectual energy, which he has continued to deploy towards addressing inequities, injustices and myriads of wrongs that dot the socio-political landscape of Nigeria.
All that Kongi has known in his life is writing, acting and activism; they are his masterstrokes, little wonder his writing/acting career and activism, spanning over six decades, have grown intense without veering off their intellectual and ideological underpinnings.
He writes to survive, reveal the ills in his society and draw attention to the rottenness that pervades the fabric of the society.
Apart from being a social critic, he is also a cultural essentialist who valorizes his African (Yoruba) culture and projects it to the outside world, while at the same time, interrogates Euro-Western prejudices that query existence of the culture.
Soyinka as a prophet
To justify the claim popular among literary critics that a writer possesses prophetic powers, Soyinka – the enigmatic writer and an uncompromising advocate of justice – often infuses his works with events that predict or tell what will happen in future.
One of his works, perhaps his chef d’oeuvre, A Dance of the Forest, which was acted in 1960 to celebrate the independence of Nigeria from Great Britain, foreshadows the political instabilities in the country, nay the continent, despite the high hope that political independence fostered on Africans and their new nations.
The civil war in the world’s newest country, South Sudan, is probably reminiscent of the message that Soyinka attempts to communicate to his readers and the larger society in the play – that “a maniacal forest dance that could lead to fisticuffs” awaits African nations, because of unresolved fundamental issues among nations that formed nations.
His political activism
Activism is to Soyinka what blood is to life; he lives it and practises it passionately. Apart from fictionalising it in his numerous works, he either took up active roles in projects or protested against obnoxious government policies, most especially during the military government era in Nigeria. For example, he was actively involved in pro-democracy activities seeking to force the then military government to de-annul the June 12 presidential election.
While in the University College, Ibadan, Soyinka alongside other six students, who altogether called themselves “The Magnificent Seven”, formed Pyrate Confraternity as a way to kick against the social inequality among students from rich and poor homes in the university.
Soyinka, while speaking on the motive behind the formation of the group, was quoted to have said that the confraternity was conceived to respond to “stodgy establishment and its pretentious products in a new educational institution different from a culture of hypocritical and affluent middle class, different from alienated colonial aristocrats” in the university. His comment: “The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism,” is emblazoned on the confraternity’s website to further emphasize the ideological foundation of the group.
As a means to force the late General Sani Abacha military government to release the winner of June 12 election and restore his stolen mandate to him, Soyinka, having escaped from the junta, went outside the country to establish an invisible radio station, Radio Kudirat, as a counterpoint to the government-controlled media in the country which kept churning out propaganda about the infamous government.
He joined millions of Nigerians to protest against the election annulment. The January 2012 withdrawal of subsidy of petroleum products by President Goodluck Jonathan-led government similarly irked many activists who led Nigerians on nationwide protests. Professor Soyinka’s involvement in these nationwide protests was said to have further forced the government to rescind its decision on the subsidy withdrawal.
To also prove his love for social work and problem-solving power, he singlehandedly founded the Oyo State Road Safety Corps in 1984, which later metamorphosed to the present Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) in 1988 and became its maiden Corps Marshall.
Though his involvement in activism could be said to be waning due to old age, Kongi’s spirit is not, as his works have never stopped discussing societal ills and seeking an end to dictatorship or misrule in Nigeria and other African countries.
Soyinka’s Ogunnian essence
Writers often hinge their muse on something, personality or concept. For Soyinka, his muse is derived from Ogun, the Yoruba god of iron, hence his Ogunnian essence – a creative cum imaginative power that inspires him to write lofty fictions. As a devotee of the god, he eulogised him in his volume of poems, Idanre, as “the embodiment of Will… Ogun, the godfather of all souls who by road/Made the voyage home, made his being welcome/Suffused in new powers of might, my skin/Grew light with eyes; I watched them drift away.” His eulogy of Ogun nuanced by his devotion to the god, whose ways are inexplicable, presents a religious scenario where a worshipper sublimates the repressed materials in his unconscious to his god with a view to having a soothing divine essence released to his heart.
Criticism of his works
Many critics have described his works and poetics as being inaccessible, and derided it for its “over romanticisation with Euro/American styles at the peril of African storytelling”, no thanks to his highfalutin diction and obscurantist literary leaning; no one, however, has been able to fault the literary excellence of his oeuvre. The logic of his reasoning is deep, and his globalisation of the Yoruba pantheons has placed his works in global perspective with overwhelming readership worldwide.
Commenting on his poetics, for example, Adesegun Olukoya, described it as a writing style that “… eschews a mechanistic imposition of indigenous values and cultural traits on African literary works to satisfy the curious taste of foreigners who hunt all over the world for the exotic…,” noting that “(It) is intellectually engaging and aesthetically satisfying.”
Though Soyinka has also labelled his critics as, “Neo-Tarzanists, asking for the poetry of death and mummification,” Olukoya’s description of the octogenarian writer as being “intellectually engaging and aesthetically satisfying” is a truism that has received global recognition.
 |
| Wole Soyinka |
No comments:
Post a Comment