Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
'The foolery of beings whom I have fashioned closer to me weary and distress me.
Failure to act is to make my long rumoured ineffectuality complete and to act is to be guilty of contradiction.
Perhaps the only hope is to turture awareness from their souls so as to reveal the mirror of original nakedness, so that perhaps, in new beginnings...'
From a speech by Forest Head in the concluding sections of A Dance of the Forests
When I met Abiola Irele who wrote a great essay on the cosmological significance of the forest setting of the expression of that speech, he expressed his view that Soyinka might have written this play too early in his life, the play being so raw, unrefined in its opaque power.
On the contrary, the more I reflect on this play and another great and raw early work of Soyinka's, the mini-epic poem Idanre, the more I conclude that these works were written at the right time.
They demonstrate the master's genius in its uncompromising flowering into the core of its powers, the metaphysical vision that is most powerfully expressed in such works as the first two and the last essay of Myth, Literature and the African World, the poetry collection A Shuttle in the Crypt, the autographical work The Man Died and the spellbinding, though not as rounded in polish as the others I just mentioned, the play Death and the King's Horseman.
Someone once asked me "Does Soyinka have readily quotable lines like Shakespeare has?"
Lines that sum, up some piercing insight about life, readily memorable lines
Of course he does.
That speech from Forest Head is the best summation known to me of a fundamental question in the philosophy of religion-if God exists, why does God allow evil and suffering?
Soyinka's work also demonstrates memorable images.
Some of my favourites are from A Shuttle in the Crypt.
One of them is both a sequence of lines and an image.
"A choir of egrets
servers at the day's recessional
on aisles fading to the infinite"
The evocation of the procession of egrets in flight, visualised as mass servers in a mass constituted by the solemn beauty of the setting sun at the conclusion of the day- the poem elsewhere likens the sun to a communion wafer-the egrets again likened to a progression extending into infinity, is magnificent in its capturing in a few lines the experience of nature in a moment of wonder.
All the more remarkable in that this sacramental perception of nature takes place from within a prison cell, in Soyinka's 18 month imprisonment during the Nigerian Civil War.
Another wonderful image is from The Man Died.
It is the image of a blank sheet of paper through which Soyinka evokes primal beginnings in his exhilaration at receiving fresh sheets of paper after long starvation of means of writing while in prison.
The sheet of paper becomes for him like the tender scent of a beloved niece, the marvellous sight of shore by a person long adrift at sea , and leads into his great meditation on emptiness as a condition enabling existence, a meditation best appreciated in relation to his presentation of another meditation on the subject in A Credo of Being and Nothingness and which be better understood in relation to his concept of the abyss of transition, the space or process of becoming that links emergence, dissolution and re- emergence, expanding his original depictions of this idea in terms of birth, death and rebirth and the living, the ancestors, and the unborn, derived from Yoruba cosmology and correlative with other cosmologies that either believe in reincarnation or like the Catholic concept of the Communion of Saints, believe in the idea of a bond or traffic of one kind or another between life on earth and life after departure from the earth.
Other remarkable images in his work are-
the blind man in the Cathedral of the Visitation, his sightless eyes looking within the guise of the evil one's pursuing him,
the point of termination of eternity,
the seekers of the past waiting to give guidance to seekers in the present at the intersection of primal waters,
the cave of the heart within the flames of which one may take refuge as one invokes invisible helpers to come forth "in terraces of light" compelling darkness to withdraw,
all in A Shuttle in the Crypt.
Others are the-
two old women, Iya Agba and Iya Mate, enigmatic and powerful, in Madmen and Specialists,
funnily cunning Brother Jero Brother of The Jero Plays,
the moment of realisation of vocation by Eman in The Strong Breed in which, in a moment outside space and time, he perceives his destiny through a mental enactment involving his father who is not physically present but is psychically bonded to his soul,
and the great lines from the fantastic ritual sequence at the core of Death and the Kings Horseman as Elesin Alaafin drifts further and further into the beyond in the death trance he induces as he dances the ritual dance meant to enable him liberate spirit from body so he may escort the departed Alaafin in his passage through the world beyond-
Olohun Iyo- the sweet tongued praise singer- has repeatedly invoked the question of whether or not Elesin is ready for this most mysterious of journeys, a journey of no return, and Elesin has repeatedly affirmed his readiness.
Speaking for the departed Alaafin, Olohun Iyo queries-
'the darkness of this new abode is deep
will your human eyes suffice?'
Elesin responds-
'the seven way crossroads confuses only the stranger
the horseman of the king was born in the recesses of the house'
Olohun Iyo as the Alaafin urges Elesin to send emissaries if he cannot come-
'If you cannot come send my horse
if you cannot come send my dog
they will lead me through the gates alone'
Elesin insists that he is indeed coming.
Olohun Iyo bursts into into a frenzy of praise-
'Shall I tell what my eyes have seen?
shall I tell what my ears have heard?
He marks Elesin's deepening movement into trance-
'Are the drums on the other side
tuning skin to skin with ours at Osugbo [ a place of ritual conclave]?'
'Do the sounds of gbedu [ a kind of drum] cover you then
like the sounds of royal elephants?
is there a light at the end of the tunnel
a light I dare not look upon
do you see those whose touches are often felt
whose wisdoms come suddenly to the mind
when the wisest have shaken their heads and uttered
'it cannot be done?' '
Recalling these lines has an effect on me like participating in a delicately but deeply emotive ritual.
Other remarkable lines from the same play
'the river is never so high that the eyes of a fish are covered
the night is never so dark that the albino fails to find his way home[ since his light coloured skin will provide illumination] .
Good writing leaves its imprint on the minds of readers, particularly if the readers are receptive.
The quotes in this piece may at times be imprecise since they are written from memory.
Also posted on
Wole Soyinka Dancing blog
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