A very personal reflection sparked on by Christopher Okigbo allegedly "betraying his art by swapping his pen for a pistol, and for putting ethnicity before his country."
At least not doing it for money. Nothing like this or Kanye the black ribbon in the white house imagined here changing his president's hairstyle ( Chimamanda does seem to think that hair is sometimes where it's at...
The most tedious part is providing the links (as footnotes) for my own easy future reference, that's all...
At best and at worst you could say that Okigbo was not a pacifist, was a national liberation fighter, just like Madiba Nelson Mandela who said, " I am prepared to die" I assume that Christiopher Okigbo would not espouse "passive resistance" or Gandhi's Satyagraha in the given circumstances, certainly not in whatever the conditions, so what should you reasonably expect standing is his shoes, when you do not find yourself in conditions that were similar to the conditions that promoted the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's "nonviolent resistance" and Dave Dellinger's Revolutionary nonviolence of a later date, or happy hippie Frank Zappa 's "I will love everyone I will love the police as they kick the shit out of me on the street "
Like many other courageous intellectuals, George Orwell for example fought on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War – and survived to write about it....
There is also the case of Federico García Lorca ever present for our kind estimation along with some of the many references to Lorca in Allen Ginsberg's poetry , memorable lines , such as
"Franco has murdered Lorca the fairy son of Whitman
just as Mayakovsky committed suicide to avoid Russia
Hart Crane distinguished Platonist committed suicide to cave in the wrong
America" ( Death to Van Gogh's Ear)
It should be worthwhile to engage with what I imagine would be e.g. Obi Nwakanma's response to such a vile estimation of Christopher Okigbo's nobler purpose reduced to "betraying his art by swapping his pen for a pistol, and for putting ethnicity before his country."), leaving aside what's unrevealed about his innermost thoughts about motivation, but considering all the biographical evidence at our disposal, all the heresies implicit in notions of treachery, treason, nationality, patriotism, culture, country, religion – Okigbo as "poet is priest" both as Igbo Brahmin priest and Igbo Kshatriya warrior, his praiseworthy ethnic loyalty (can't imagine some treacherous Jew joining Hamas) and last but not least taking into consideration the propensity of some writers and poets in particular to contemplate or even commit suicide we could even examine the various shades of motivation for attaining to holy martyrdom as enshrined in Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, questionable motives such as
"The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason" ,
and to not forget this consideration: Every mouth must be fed or the criminal intent implicit in Samuel Johnson's idea that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel", expanded by Bob Dylan the poet-songster singing
The latter can be easily applied to Saddam Hussein who wanted to expand the little terrified Empire of Iraq under his dictatorship by first invading the Islamic Republic of Iran (not much luck there) and later on by invading the oil-rich Kingdom of Kuwait after failing to extort the requisite protection money from them. However, we will have to wait and see whether "steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king" can or will be applied with substantial supporting evidence to the likes of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who aims at nothing less than the presidency of Nigeria; but I advocate caution: we cannot merely repeat what the Alhaji's enemies are saying and you had better not say the same about Benjamin Netanyahu who after all is not king of Israel. Try to also bear in mind when making comparisons between the present and the past, that very unlike today's Saudi Arabia, with regard to the first Islamic era of the Hijaz , the Prophet of Islam (s.a.w.) was a prophet and president of the first Islamic Republic based in Medina, he was certainly not a king (a very Judaic idea) and as far as we are concerned with systems of government in that neighbourhood, today ( the present) as you have heard before, Israel , is still the only democracy in the Middle East.
So, should the Palestinian poets give up their dreams of life beyond "occupation", should the poets desert their calling, throw away their pens as Ali Mazrui would say, should they - like Arafat , swap their pens for a pistol and some suicide bombs , should they put Arab ethnicity before country? It's a very controversial idea. Just yesterday this popped into my mailbox:
Fight False Palestinian History: Jews Are Israel's Indigenous People
There are several examples of Israeli poets who died fighting for Israel
Likewise, as Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu said over and over again, we shall have to revisit "the very foundations" of the Igbo ethnic enclave's incorporation into Lugard's dream of a unified Nigeria – the one that Alhaji Abubakar and one Peter Obi want to peacefully "restructure" to everybody's satisfaction – another miracle, more easily said than done...
This spontaneous & unedited first draft reflection is now being made public:
Since it's always good /relevant to situate the context, even if it's going to be a laborious effort , at the very outset I should like to be clear about this one thing: I know next to nothing about Ali Mazrui. I am more familiar and more impressed with Tariq Ali and of course, infinitely closer and more familiar with the greatest Ali of all, Imam Ali ( alaihi salaam) about which fact I have no doubt. In the words of the Holy Quran, " Say "Allah" and leave them to their babble!"
(Of course there are the incantatory solipsists who believe that the Almighty hath spoken, did speak and hath spoken to them only , hath spoken only to" them" ....but, " Lo! Allah is able to do all things."
Let me give one example about the importance of context : After the Battle of Khaybar, the Prophet of Islam (s.a.w.) asked Sa'ad bin Muadh to decide the fate of the Jews who had been defeated and captured as prisoners of war. Sa'ad's judgment on the vanquished Jews was simple : "Execute their warriors and take their women and children as captives" , whereupon the Prophet of Islam (s.a.w.) said, " Verily Sa'ad, your judgment is from heaven! " - a judgement which irritated me greatly and still does, considering that Sa'ad had been wounded in a battle against the Jews, a few months earlier and therefore must have been nursing unbridled ill-will towards those who had wounded him and caused him much personal suffering (physical pain). I researched this episode of Islamic history, even entered into some correspondence with the knowledgeable alims about the matter until I was told that (a) it corresponded with what Muslims understood corresponds with a Torah judgment to be passed on the vanquished enemy of the Jews (cf. The Bible and violence ) specifically Devarim chapter 20 and ultimately got Islam's infallible answer from a Moroccan elder who first asked me if I thought that it was OK that the Jews should continue to ride the Arabs like donkeys ? I told him that I didn't think so and then he referred me to the Quranic Judgement : Quran : 5: 33
"The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom"
So should poets fight for their rights ? What about the poets who belonged to the so called "Muhammad's Dead Poets Society"? Yes, we must admit that Jamal Khashoggi's prose probably sounded worse than poetry to the executioners' ears...
But back to the judgemental Mazrui, who I know so little about ( I guess that if I wanted to be famous I would probably want to sell myself as a specialist on Professor Toyin Falola or Professor Ali Mazrui although I'm not a historian and furthermore it would take some time to familiarise myself with their work , to digest it before I could ever hope to start doing justice to either of them. But that's what some people try to do, claim to be experts on those kind of scholars, lean on them , like a crutch a means to their own advancement. I thank the Almighty that I am not one of those...
: What I recollect most vividly , because I followed very closely at the time of their occurrence:
Last week we ( Better half & I) watched some of the Waldemar Januszczak Art Documentaries, three episodes dealing with Rococo Art … After which in my life of perception, so late in life, before the last stage of "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything" still on the pilgrimage to "the undiscovered country " which Professor Falola likewise fears is a place of no return ( to this "vale of tears" ) thanks to such late discoveries, life will never be the same again – because Waldemar Januszczak opened my eyes one again, once more giving sight to the blind, so to speak. It keeps on happening all the time, almost like what St. Paul must have surely meant when he penned, " I die daily"
It's 10.30 a-m and I'm listening to Fela's " Ikoyi Blindness" as I write this. That must have something to do with what I'm saying. The saying is "experience teaches a lot". It's cryptic, it's only words, big words, little words, big worlds, little worlds even shithole countries waiting to be born or to be born again, and, most importantly, he who feels it knows.
Who knows what kind of cigarettes Arthur Koestler or Mister Dylan could have been smoking, conceiving pretty word formations such as "Darkness at Noon" and " Darkness at the break of noon", respectively? And Ali Mazrui writing with the bent to provoke controversy, resentment, reassessment, revaluation at the point where existential life, art , religion and identity politics intersect. "Give me liberty or give me death !" screamed Patrick Henry, and if we are to believe the gospel reports, this was 1,800 years after Jesus of Nazareth expiated the sins of all mankind quoting the second line of Psalm 22 composed by his great ancestor King David "Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani" his final words from the cross. I seem to recall a pastor in Umuahia shouting that his final words on the cross were, " IT IS FINISHED !"
Re- "The Trial of Christopher Okigbo, in which Mazrui tried Nigeria's greatest poet – who had been killed in the Nigerian civil war fighting for Igbo secession - in an African Hereafter for betraying his art by swapping his pen for a pistol, and for putting ethnicity before his country."
That's a very poisonous - some would say questionable characterisation, fortunately not etched in stone but a judgement first cooked in the head - mind- heart- brain and then transferred to something a little more permanent, scribbled on paper, and as long as that paper does not perish ( for those who maintain that " the pen is mightier than the sword) metaphorically speaking , we have the iconic Ali Mazrui swallowing his tail just like a Ouroboros and thereby attaining to an endless round of publication eternity at least up to the nth edition before Jesus returns or " the conversion of the Jews"
The question arises, inevitably: How does one compare Christopher Okigbo perishing by the sword with the conscientious survivor Wole Soyinka's prison diary, "The Man Died"
One questions the art – it's not as if the poet as an artist, as a young man is welded to " his art" and that like a butterfly even a most passionate nation's poet laureate cannot metamorphose, burst into freedom as a prophet, a soldier or a spy in the service of the Almighty eye ….
Jimi Hendrix : Message to Love
Jimi Hendrix : If six was nine
PS Sorry that I haven't reda this over
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
No comments:
Post a Comment