Soyinka At 76: The Making Of Kongi By Yemi Adebisi ,Senior Correspondent, Lagos ![]()
•Soyinka Tomorrow, Tuesday, July 13, 2010, the first African Nobel laureate in literature, Professor Wole Soyinka will clock 76 years. He is four years younger than his great contemporary, Chinua Achebe and one year older than John Pepper Clark. It would be recalled that Soyinka received the celebrated Nobel Laurel award in Stockholm, Sweden, 1986, incidentally, the year an equally famous Nigerian journalist, Dele Giwa, first Editor-In-Chief of Newswatch Magazine who was blasted off through the infamous letter bomb.
In the words of his elderly wife, Chief (Mrs.) Laide Soyinka on his (Soyinka's) emergence as the first African Nobel prize winner, she said, "That was the international stamp of authority that he is the King of Literature in Africa, indeed, in the Black World." Born on July 13, 1934 at Abeokuta, Kongi as he is fondly called by his close colleagues and associates is a great treasure to the generation of world writers and political critics. His natural endowment especially with the fluffy and whitish hair on his head since his days at his early 60s makes a unique representation of the sage. Though till date, he is like a symbolic representation of global literati, based on the books he has churned out and his rare wealth of knowledge, his prominence in the global political stadia is a standard. He has become a lone voice that can hardly be overruled by any standard in global context. The making of a 'Soyinka' started when he registered as a pupil in Saint Peter Primary School, Ake, Abeokuta, where his father was the headmaster, though got admission to a nearby grammar school in Abeokuta, where late Rev. Ransome Kuti was the principal but later moved to Government College, Apata, Ibadan. Though raised in a colonial, English-speaking environment, Soyinka's ethnic legacy was Yoruba, and his parents' apparently balanced Christian training with regular visits to the father's ancestral home in `Isarà, a small Yoruba community secure in its traditions.
He later attended University College, Ibadan, in 1954 for his preparatory university studies where he met his elderly wife, Laide, who was also reading Arts. He proceeded to University of Leeds where he became an accomplished doctoral degree holder. The United Kingdom began to celebrate Soyinka when he became a dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre, London. His love for African culture from birth could not allow him to forget his origin. His dream came through when he was awarded a Rockefeller bursary in 1960 for his exceptional brilliance, an opportunity that gingered him to return to Nigeria to study African drama. It was same year he formed a theatre group, The 1960 Mask. As dramatist, Soyinka has been influenced by several authorities and experts such as, the Irish writer, J.M. Synge, but links up with the traditional popular African theatre with its combination of dance, music, and action. He bases his writing on the mythology of his own tribe-the Yoruba-with Ogun, the god of iron and war, at the centre. He wrote his first plays during his time in London, The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel, a light comedy, which were performed at Ibadan in 1958 and 1959 and were published in 1963. Later, satirical comedies are The Trial of Brother Jero with its sequel, Jero's Metamorphosis, A Dance of the Forests, Kongi's Harvest and Madmen and Specialists. Among Soyinka's serious philosophic plays are, apart from The Swamp Dwellers, The Strong Breed, The Road (1965) and Death and the King's Horseman. In The Bacchae of Euripides (1973), he has rewritten the Bacchae for the African stage and in Opera Wonyosi, bases himself on John Gay's Beggar's Opera and Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. Soyinka's latest dramatic works are A Play of Giants (1984) and Requiem for a Futurologist (1985).
Soyinka has written two novels, The Interpreters (1965), a complicated narrative work which has been compared to Joyce's and Faulkner's, in which six Nigerian intellectuals discuss and interpret their African experiences, and Season of Anomy (1973) based on the writer's thoughts during his imprisonment and confronts the Orpheus and Euridice myth with the mythology of the Yoruba. Purely autobiographical works are The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972) and the account of his childhood, Aké (1981), in which the parents' warmth and interest in their son are prominent. Literary essays are collected in, among others, Myth, Literature and the African World (1975). In a nutshell, Soyinka has published about 20 works: drama, novels and poetry. He writes in English and his literary language is marked by great scope and richness of words which most people have grossly criticised. Most critics have oftentimes said that his use of words is too complex to understand especially for a novice.
Soyinka's poems, which show a close connection to his plays, are collected in Idanre, and Other Poems (1967), Poems from Prison (1969), A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972) the long poem Ogun Abibiman (1976) and Mandela's Earth and Other Poems (1988). Since 1975 before he returned overseas, Soyinka taught drama in various Nigeria's universities like University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), University of Lagos and University of Ibadan as Professor of Comparative Literature. In 1964, he formed another theatre group called "Orisun Theatre Company," in which he has produced his own plays and taken part as actor. His quest for political tranquility began during the Nigeria's civil war when Soyinka appealed in an article for cease-fire. For this he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring with the Biafra rebels, and was held as a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969. Friends and associates of Soyinka have concluded all arrangements to celebrate him for his worth to the world. Hoping that he will not be marooned on an island of the Save Nigeria Group or any other pro-democracy group on the day, Soyinka will again reap symbolic tributes on his birthday, Tuesday July 13, 2010. Apart from other programmes that may hold in his honour, Preemptive, a play written by Niyi Coker and directed by Segun Ojewuyi, both U.S.A-based Nigerian professors, will be premiered at the MUSON Centre. According to information gathered on the internet, an initiative of Lagos-based Zmirage Multi-Media Ltd, the staging of the play has been designed in a way that will invoke many of Soyinka's major plays. According to the Chief Executive Officer of Zmirage, Alhaji Teju Kazeem, the best of the country's drama/film industry, each of which will represent the hero/heroine of Soyinka's works, will glide on the red carpet at The MUSON, to make Preemptive comprehensively dramatise the essence of the great writer and activist. "Preemptive is one part of a project that includes an international cultural exchange tour of three countries and an essay competition," Kareem explains. "Project Preemptive focuses on how terrorism and a world polarised along racial, religious and cultural divides are redefining views about the Black Man. "But the premier is an opportunity to honour our own Nobel laureate. We will provide a galaxy of 76 celebrities on the red carpet, portraying characters from Soyinka's works, as a celebration of the icon's 76 creative years on mother earth." While celebrated actor and Delta State Commissioner for Culture, Richard Mofe Damijo, is expected to, on the red carpet, play Commander Hyacinth in Soyinka's From Zia with Love, uniquely talented actress, Ayo Mogaji, finds a mate in Sidi of The Lion and the Jewel fame. Going by the potential in such a match, many theatre lovers would, indeed, want to see Mogaji really play such a role on the stage. Similarly, Joke Silva, Olu Jacobs, Jimi Solanke and Kola Oyewo have been scheduled to respectively symbolise Sister Rebecca (Jero's Metamorphosis), Brother Jero (The Trial of Brother Jero) Chief Erinjobi (Camwood on Leaves) and Eleshin Oba (Death and the King's Horseman). Others include Bimbo Akintola (Iyaloja in Death and the King's Horseman), Duro Oni (Brother Jero), Ben Tomoloju (Chume), Segun Ojewuyi/Don Pedro Obaseki (Olohunde), Olumide Bakare (Baroka), Tade Ogidan (Chief Erinjobi), Segun Arinze (Salubi in The Road), Victor Olaotan, (Kongi in Kongi's Harvest) and Norbert Young (Eman, in Strong Breed). While the 'mock casting' will bring to memory the plays that made Soyinka one of the greatest writers the world has ever produced, friends of the sage said "although he (Soyinka) has remained indefatigable, still fighting at 76, he has not published any new literary book in recent years. It will be risky to say he has not been writing, really, since creative works are not done in the market place. But apart from his memoirs captured in You Must Set Forth at Dawn, published some five years ago, and his essays in the Interventions series, he has not published a play, a novel or collection of poems in the past seven years or so." Apart from the fact that his latest published play, The Beatification of an Area Boy, was released over 10 years ago, what appears to be his latest celebrated dramatic work, King Babu, a morbid satirisation of the late maximum ruler, General Sanni Abacha, which was on stage at the National Theatre till about 10 years ago, has not been published. In poetry, Soyinka's latest published work, Samarkand and Other Markets I have Known, is also about eight years old on the shelf. Like his friend, Achebe, whom he celebrates lavishly in a poem in which he dialogues with the author of Things Fall Apart in Samarkand, the Nobel laureate has, indeed, been very cold this past decade when it comes to novel making. Critics observed that essays and regular articles in newspapers and magazines appear to have marginalised the spirit that produced a crack literary flower such as The Interpreters. It is therefore assumed that the move for human freedom appears to top the priorities of Soyinka even as he is growing older. In this Soyinka Season, it is ironical to note that virtually all the living fighters of Nigeria's independence 50 years ago still have to be in the trenches today, fighting for true democracy, good governance and other indices of development. |
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