--Chirping : It is not my intention to subsidize the fire by adding more free fuel to it, but here goes:
Some imaginings about the domestic market in Nigeria: if Nobel Laureate Soyinka, and Messrs Achebe and Amadi's claim to fame had been exclusively based on their literary output in Yoruba, Igbo and Ikwerre respectively, then IBK's thesis would have been even more incontestable, given the relative numerical strength of Yoruba in terms of numbers of speakers, the Yoruba people's creativity in ART, literature, music, dance, drama, in short of the performing arts, not to mention Yoruba's proven strength as a literary language, the size of the Yoruba reading public considering Nigeria's non-reading generations the numerical strength of Igbo speakers vis-a-vis Ikwerre cheerleaders for Elechi Amadi in Ikwerre (a kind of colonial pidgin Igbo) - the Ikwerre people in whose midst I lived at Ahoada for a good one and half years of acculturation (as I will be making clear on some other pages, who, why, when,where, but not here)
And then Soyinka, Achebe and Amadi would have only been accessible to the rest of Nigeria through translations into the various indigenous mother tongues and into English, Scandinavian languages which are mutually understandable ( Swedish, Norwegian and Danish) French, Dutch, German, Russian and Chinese.
Acclaim, "Visibility"(exposure by media and as seen in living colour and on TV) the uses and misuses of invisibility - it reminds me of these lines from Derek Walcott's Another Life :
"Submarine,
the seven-foot-high bum boatman
loose, lank and gangling as a frayed cheroot,
once asked to see a ship's captain, and refused,
with infinite courtesy bending, inquired
" So what the hell is your captain?
A fucking microbe? "
China ! One point three billion Chinese literati jumping up and down like Beatles girl fans pulling their hair and screaming Ma Long ! Ma Long !! or Mo Yan! Mo Yan!!! - Shakespeare and Soyinka can take a back seat, Shakespeare and Soyinka 's Nigerian fans fans outnumbered one tone thousand to one this living century...
There's all that classical Chinese Literature available in translation. Take Mo Yan for example ( I've only read his phantasmagoria critique of existential life in China Life and Death are Wearing Me Out , was terribly impressed and concluded that only Amos Tutuola comes close, except that Tutuola needs no translation into Yoruba – if you know what I mean)
So what next ? We vote for the next Nobel Prize winner in Literature?
What would happen then ? The French Language freaks want it and so does Philip Roth!
On Thursday, 30 June 2016 16:14:28 UTC+2, ibk wrote:Dear Chidi,Thanks for the information. How are the mighty fallen. I contacted him a few years ago when I was thinking of my daughter who studied Creative writing and Drama in the UK to turn of his novels into a film.He was a great writer in the league of Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe (his Government College Umuahia fellow alumnus) but as he did not have the huge backing of a resourced Yoruba or Igbo group behind him (and his role in the Nigerian civil war), he did not get as much acclaim as he deserved.When I was in touch with him he was in his mid-70's but I hope and pray he hit the 80's before he departed to meet his ancestors.May his soul rest in perfect peace.On 30 June 2016 at 11:38, Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:Ace story teller, Elechi Amadi has just joined the ancestors. He will be greatly missed.
CAO.
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Sunday, July 3, 2016
Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Elechi Amadi Joins The Ancestors
Why?: Nearly every time someone invokes or references Soyinka, even informally, the the Nobel fact comes into play. Why? Why don't we also see this reference unnecessarily and repeatedly associated ad nauseam with others, such as Walcott, Morrison, Bunche, Luthuli, King Jr., Sadat, Tutu, Mandela, Annan, Maathai, Obama, Sirleaf, Gbowee, and Sir Arthur Lewis? Perhaps, what (the bolekaja critics) Chinweizu and Madubuike say of Soyinka in "Toward the Decolonization of African Literature" somewhat holds.
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