acclaim
visibility
If Okigbo had lived Soyinka would have had a ready contender. Soyinka, Achebe and Okogbo were primarily cultural visualizers and they did it particularly well, in their distinctive ways.On the claim that Amadi is as great a writer as Soyinka and Achebe, I wonder how valid that assertion is, though I have read only one piece of writing my Amadi, The Concubine, while I have read more from Achebe and Soyinka.As for Achebe, whose career I know less about, I get the impression that the power of Things Fall Apart did not need any special group to help promote. The work will always speak for itself. Achebe, like Soyinka, was also very active outside writing, Achebe with the founding of the journal Okike and his role in the civil war and Soyinka with editing Transition and his role in Nigerian politics, from the radio station hijack episode to his civil war incarceration to so many other engagements, so people must notice him.I have not looked closely at the social and economic contexts that contributed to Soyinka and Achebe's visibility, but the invocation of ethnic identifications as being responsible for that visibility looks to me be historically inaccurate, since Soyinka's visibility began with his co- founding of Pyrates at the University of Ibadan, where Achebe also was, continued with the regard in which he was held by his teacher at Leeds, Wilson Knight, one of the more prominent Shakespearean scholars of the 20th century, who openly expressed what he had learnt from Soyinka when the latter was his student-from what I recall, and to whom Soyinka dedicated his iconic essay "The Fourth Stage", continued with his time at the Royal Court Theater and his coming to Nigeria to conduct research on classical Nigerian drama through a British Council fellowship, foreshadowing the international character of his career, from a later fellowship at Cambridge to directing the international theatre institute in Paris, to giving the BCC Reith lectures, among other developments. I have serious doubts about ethnic components as being central to Soyinka's visibility.May God bring the great artist to himself and take best care of those he left behind.Great thanks for this, Ken-
'It was not grounded in responding to European misguided views; the world returned to Africa itself as the center, with its glories and its problems. That's why I resist all the time the need to continually read African thought as though it were still responding to colonialism'.Along similar lines, I do my best not to refer to any period in African cultural production as post-colonial., even though I recognize the historical value of the term. I prefer the terms 'classical' and 'post-classical' bcs I see creators inspired by Africa adapting ideas and strategies from a particular cultural architecture to create new developments in a later stage of growth. I dont see why Africa has to be continually framed in terms of its colonial experience.In the name of examining artistic legacies, though, I would like to look briefly at IBK's claim that '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'.
Achebe and Soyinka are simply unusually great writers. That fact cant be denied them. As for Soyinka, equaling Soyinka's achievement would be quite significant, on account of his quality of achievement across various genres.I'll read the rest of Amadi, particularly in relation to my favorite scene from the Concubine, one of the best pieces of writing I have encountered on the numinous in reference to an African context.thankstoyin
--On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:Elechi Amadi. I would have loved to have met him. In some ways his novels were the most widely taught African novels of all. I know that is heresy with many who know little about the actual teaching of afr lit, and imagine it is all wrapt up in one novel, Things Fall Apart. But the novels that I think were steadily taught in all the African universities I've known were The Great Ponds, The Concubine, Sunset in Biafra, The Slave. His particularly readable texts were historical realism, no doubt inspired by the same impulse that guided Achebe, which was to present, and preserve, the world of an Igbo Africa prior to the coming of the Europeans, and that meant not only showing the conflict, to give interest to his accounts, but like achebe to glorify the culture and language, thought, of what he was reconstituting as "traditional Africa." In short he, and the writers of that first generation, established a bedrock for our understanding of African literature, against which the subsequent generations could then react. My own belief is that it was that reading of his works, of his generation's work, that created what we can call the tradition of African literature. It was not grounded in responding to European misguided views; the world returned to Africa itself as the center, with its glories and its problems. That's why I resist all the time the need to continually read African thought as though it were still responding to colonialism. That was the past; we are past it ; and elechi amadi, along with achebe, Soyinka, ngugi, laye, kane—that whole generation of writers of the 50s and 60s—made it possible. The fathers, and along with aidoo, nwapa, etc—the mothers, of African literature. How appropriate that we salute his passing with the encomium coming from the 3d generation's spokesperson, osofisan.
ken
From: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, June 30, 2016 at 11:38 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Elechi Amadi Joins The Ancestors
Dayan ha emet
Elechi Amadi , another illustrious and unassuming Ikwerre elder gone, but not his literary legacy.
May his soul rest in perfect peace.
On Thursday, 30 June 2016 16:14:28 UTC+2, ibk wrote:PRESS RELEASE:
ADIEU, ELECHI.
I called him Elechi, simply and without formality, as many did, because he was that kind of man. In spite of his age and achievements, he had no airs. In his company you laughed easily; and you learned, because he was full of yarns and wisdom. Certainly I was proud to be his friend, this man whose books were among the ones that taught us how to write. His prose was crisp, his narrative style brisk, compelling; he knew the art of total seduction through the manipulation of suggestion and suspense; he was thoroughly familiar with traditional lore and the world of mystery, magic and fabulation. You enter his fiction, and you are instantly gripped!. Even as you turn the last page, you find yourself king for more... And now he too is gone. No one of course was born to live forever, and the consolation is that Elechi at least stayed long enough with us to a full and ripe age. Still, his departure is painful, for it marks another sad loss from that fine generation of pioneers whose writing established and defined our contemporary literature, and gave our culture a refining ethical direction that, for better or for worse, the younger ones have since jettisoned. Adieu then, humble hero and superb story-teller! May you have a smooth ride back home to the ancestors!
FEMI OSOFISAN.
June 30 2016.
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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