In the genre of prison diaries, we can add Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Detained, there's also
Molefe Pheto's nerve-wracking "And Night Fell: Memoirs of a Political Prisoner in South Africa" (I met him in Stockholm in the later 1970s was in correspondence with him briefly and met him later in London, where he worked at the Commonwealth Institute). Common to all of them: civil courage extraordinaire. Those political prisoner diaries and many others of that genre say the very same thing that's encapsulated in that famous Soyinka quote "The man dies who keeps silence in the face of tyranny" .
I daresay that apart from the author of that line arrogating to himself a monopoly of its interpretation (nice expression to arrogate to oneself) and thank goodness, Mr Soyinka is not likely to do that, he is not that arrogant (arrogant a word closely related to arrogating to oneself) – so how can anyone else be as dogmatic as to say that this could be the one and only meaning : "death" here means sliding into a state of nothingness, into the void! ?
Is Chidi willing to start interpreting his own poetry, for posterity? With the Bible, they're still doing it. Hopefully, that should not diminish the particularities or the universality of the divine poetry - although in some cases, as in the case of e.g. the posthumous Jesus, there's the inevitability in committing the biographical heresy ( " God's only begotten son" etc. poetically ascended to heaven. Amen. Will soon be coming back again.)
Of course, outside of the theological theatre of make-belief, death is pretty final. Full stop. Whilst you live, like e e you may write to your heart's content about "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, maybe, later and a big maybe depending on if you've been a good boy – maybe later the 72 Virgins somewhere up there but down here/ over here in this dimension, once you're dead and done, you ought to know in advance that you're not going to be able to get it up again when your six feet down - but in life after death may be, or as Prince hamlet put it
" what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause -"
or as Prince Chidi Anthony Opara gallantly puts it ,
" "death" here means sliding into a state of nothingness, into the void!
By which he does not mean sliding into a state of somethingness, into the earth's vagina, into that terminal null and void., until the resurrection of the dead….
Just kidding. Retard.
Well what Mr Soyinka really means – and this is fundamental – he means that something inside a man dies when he keeps silence in the face of tyranny. Now, who wants to wax poetic about the thing that dies inside a man – inside of a man when he countenances evil, is violently opposed to it in his heart but is afraid - too cowardly to speak out?
Best Regards…
Adeshina, et al,
"The man dies who keeps silence in the face of tyranny"--Wole Soyinka.
"death" here means sliding into a state of nothingness, into the void!
CAO.
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