Stylistic and Thematic Rhythm
in the
Work of Abiola Irele
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay develops an approach to understanding the cosmos through imagination and reason across literature, philosophy and music in the work of Abiola Irele, a philosopher, critic and theorist of literature, music and culture whose writing is remarkable for its elegance, profundity and range.
Abiola Irele's "What is Negritude?" is a magnificent survey of the central ideas of an ambitious and conceptually and imaginatively luminous philosophy.
His 'The African Scholar" is a pioneering summation of systems theory in terms of convergences between contemporary science and mythology in terms of the Yoruba deity Eshu.
His "The African Imagination" grapples with what may be understood as the shaping matrices of imaginative expression emerging from Africa.
His "The Criticism of Modern African Literature" is a superb statement on the nature and study of literature in general and African literature in particular, while his essays on music project an immersion in consonances between Western classical music and African popular music.
How may such strategic theoretical and critical orientations by a penetrating explorer of African expressive forms and cognitions be correlated to give a unified picture of the cosmos approached from within these varied forms as studied by a person whose thought is both grand and incisive but who did not publish any effort to unify his various zones of interest?
Can such a unification be mapped through his exposition of Negritude, a philosophy that engages imagination and rhythm as primary principles for exploring being in general?
How robustly, however, does Negritude relate with reason and science, two central thrusts of Irele's work, even though his examination of science occurs in only one essay known to me, 'The African Scholar', though a trenchant examination that situates that engagement solidly in his thematic orientations?
To what degree was Irele an expositor of Negritude and to what degree was he a Negritude thinker, a person who tried to understand reality in terms of Negritudist ideas?
Irele's thought, spanning classical and post-classical African thought and expression, across various disciplines, looking into the past, present and the future, provides templates for mapping the creativity of the continent and the transformations associated with it.
An effort to unify the cognitive streams underlying his varied engagements will act like a lighthouse illuminating a vast terrain within and beyond the continental and transcontinental penetration of African creativities.
Stylistic and Thematic Rhythm
Stylistic and thematic rhythm unifies Irele's work. Stylistic rhythm is demonstrated in his exquisite weaving of ideas and expressive structures. Each sentence, each paragraph, is akin to a musical sequence, in which words are chosen with the exactitude of the most painstaking sonic art and arranged in strings of sensitivity to both precision and evocative force.
Abiola Irele and the Art of the Essay
The elegance of his writing emerges in his unique demonstration of the architectonics of the essay, his writing demonstrating the correlation of a style of thinking with a style of writing,
ideas and their mode of expression operating as one integrative unit,. Ideational processes are realised through linguistic expressions that do not simply express the ideas but dramatize the character of those ideas. He favours complex sentences where a number of subtle ideas are intertwined like powerful snakes, projecting conceptions which resonate in one's mind, at least in mine, for years to come.
ideas and their mode of expression operating as one integrative unit,. Ideational processes are realised through linguistic expressions that do not simply express the ideas but dramatize the character of those ideas. He favours complex sentences where a number of subtle ideas are intertwined like powerful snakes, projecting conceptions which resonate in one's mind, at least in mine, for years to come.
The validity of his constructions, the magic of his style and the unique nature of his humanistic genius adapting John Burnaby on St. Augustine of Hippo, emerge in his best work, in which the sentence, as a building block of the essay, achieves a communication of ideas that is both luminously logical and beautiful.
This effect is realised in terms of diction and the balance of ideas, the words in terms of which ideas are expressed and the relationship between these words within the rhythm of syntactic structure. The entire essay itself becomes a cathedral of ideas, composed of numerous, intricately interlinked concepts, yet suggesting depths of possibility of which the
superstructure realized by the expressed ideations are but the exposure to light of a complex foundation which may yield to careful study.
superstructure realized by the expressed ideations are but the exposure to light of a complex foundation which may yield to careful study.
His magnificent sentence structures are particularly evident in The African Experience in Literature and Ideology, most of the essays in that work being great, timeless pieces. "What is Negritude?", for example, exists in a unique universe in the expression of ideas. I have read some great essayists, but I wonder if I have read anybody who is Irele's equal, in terms of learning and architectonic power, in which each sentence is a carefully crafted diamond building up to a wonderful totality.
A quintessential Irele paragraph, in the range of knowledge it is resting on, its evocation of vast possibilities, while remaining a precise expression of a specific idea or ideas, constitutes a research project. The kind of scholarship that will do justice to Irele's work needs to address each sentence, at times each word, each phrase, with the level of attention one gives to similar units of expression in poetry and religious literature, while examining the total form represented by the essay and its inspiring context.
One expression that always comes to my mind is the expression "articulated resonance", his description of the role of the literary critic in "The Criticism of Modern African Literature" in The African Experience in Literature and Ideology.
Whenever I recall that expression, I start laughing, and at times, sighing. I laugh because its like encountering something precious in the middle of the road, that road being the stream of the day and of one's thoughts, this form that one suddenly encounters being so wonderfully articulated and polished, one has to wonder, what kind of knowledge could have created something like this?
The expression implies a pyramid of knowledge of which that expression is the apex, an iceberg of which it is the tip, while the complex conjunctions of ideas that enable the expression are buried within its terse form.
In "Wangrin:A Study in Ambiguity" an introduction to Amadou Hampate Ba's The Strange Destiny of Wangrin,Irele makes the following assertion about Kaidara,another work by Ba:
"....it represents a transposition into an individual idiom of the original poem, which comes to bear the stamp of an individual sensibility, manifested in a personal relation to the universe of ideas and values of which the text is an expression in the original language of its composition".
What strikes me about this expression?
"....it represents a transposition into an individual idiom of the original poem, which comes to bear the stamp of an individual sensibility, manifested in a personal relation to the universe of ideas and values of which the text is an expression in the original language of its composition".
What strikes me about this expression?
His efforts to situate his concerns as a literary scholar within the broader canvass of the development and application of knowledge, particularly as this applies to the African condition within the continent and the Diaspora.
The quote could be described as centred in the subject of the transposition of discourse from one frame of conception and expression to another. Within this matrix, the operative or central ideas that emerge consist in a negotiation between polarities. These polarities are represented by the notion of an original or source discourse, an individual rather than a purely literal response to this source form and the target form into which the source form is being transposed.
Poetry is the specific discursive form that acts as the vehicle in the Wagrin quote but the quote suggests the relationship of this literary form to broader universes of discourse in Irele's highlighting of "...the universe of ideas and values of which the text is an expression..."
Another reference that relates this evaluation of a poetic work to questions of the transposition of discursive forms in general is the focus on language. Language as the encoding of the originary source of discourse and language as the framework of the target form to which the originating source is being transposed.
How can the translator, the transmitter, communicate as effectively as possible the discursive forms they are transposing? Is it through an effort at a literal reproduction? How possible is such literality, particularly when dealing with language, and with orally encoded rather than written discourse?
The difficulties involved here inspires Irele's focus on an "individual idiom" bearing "the stamp of an individual sensibility" indicating "a personal relation" to the discursive universe of the text.
The focus, therefore, is not on an effort at literal transmission but on an imaginative, if rigorous transposition. This tension between forms of movement of discourse, of ideas and techniques between cultural domains, could be said to haunt Irele's work, from his earlier work in the 70s at the University of Ibadan, and more recently, as an immigrant scholar in the United States.
I speak of haunting because the issue is foregrounded, chewed over, cross-examined, but, it seems, ultimately broadcasts its protean difficulties through the lens of Irele's work.
The quote could be described as centred in the subject of the transposition of discourse from one frame of conception and expression to another. Within this matrix, the operative or central ideas that emerge consist in a negotiation between polarities. These polarities are represented by the notion of an original or source discourse, an individual rather than a purely literal response to this source form and the target form into which the source form is being transposed.
Poetry is the specific discursive form that acts as the vehicle in the Wagrin quote but the quote suggests the relationship of this literary form to broader universes of discourse in Irele's highlighting of "...the universe of ideas and values of which the text is an expression..."
Another reference that relates this evaluation of a poetic work to questions of the transposition of discursive forms in general is the focus on language. Language as the encoding of the originary source of discourse and language as the framework of the target form to which the originating source is being transposed.
How can the translator, the transmitter, communicate as effectively as possible the discursive forms they are transposing? Is it through an effort at a literal reproduction? How possible is such literality, particularly when dealing with language, and with orally encoded rather than written discourse?
The difficulties involved here inspires Irele's focus on an "individual idiom" bearing "the stamp of an individual sensibility" indicating "a personal relation" to the discursive universe of the text.
The focus, therefore, is not on an effort at literal transmission but on an imaginative, if rigorous transposition. This tension between forms of movement of discourse, of ideas and techniques between cultural domains, could be said to haunt Irele's work, from his earlier work in the 70s at the University of Ibadan, and more recently, as an immigrant scholar in the United States.
I speak of haunting because the issue is foregrounded, chewed over, cross-examined, but, it seems, ultimately broadcasts its protean difficulties through the lens of Irele's work.
"The significance of [the Yoruba novelist D.O Fagunwa's ] work is thus inherent in the symbolic framework and connotations of his novels. A simple but valid interpretation of the pattern of situation in his novels suggests that his forest stands for the universe,inhabited by obscure forces to which man stands in a dynamic moral and spiritual relationship and with which his destiny is involved;in short,a mythical representation of the existential condition of man as expressed in Yoruba thinking.
The tremendous adventure of existence in which man is engaged is dramatised by the adventures of Fagunwa's hunters who go through trials and dangers in which they must justify and affirm their human essence [exempliyimg] the hunter [as representing] the ideal of manhood in traditional Yoruba society [ demonstrated in ] ijala poetry...organised in relation to the hunter's perception of world of nature[ expressing]the particular ideal that he pursues:the unique combination of physical and spiritual energy that is the the privilege of man in the universal order,and which the traditional image of the hunter represents in the highest degree [pointing to ] cosmologies of the different African cultures [ as revealing] an intelligence of the world centred upon the privileged position of man, an imaginative and symbolic organisation of the world not simply in human terms,but in a comprehensive relation to man.
For the Yoruba,the balance of human life,the very sense of human existence,consists in the dynamic correlation of individual responsibility and the pressure of external events and forces.In the oral literature,the understanding that human life is as much a matter of chance as of conscious moral choice is what determines its social function-their illustration of the moral and spiritual attributes needed by the individual to wrest a human meaning out of his life".
These passages are a superb summation of the qualities I find compelling in Irele's writing, demonstrating the solidity of a house and the fluidity of a piece of music, evoking T.S Eliot's "... the stillness...the dancing " and W.B. Yeats "who can tell the dancer from the dance? "
For the Yoruba,the balance of human life,the very sense of human existence,consists in the dynamic correlation of individual responsibility and the pressure of external events and forces.In the oral literature,the understanding that human life is as much a matter of chance as of conscious moral choice is what determines its social function-their illustration of the moral and spiritual attributes needed by the individual to wrest a human meaning out of his life".
These passages are a superb summation of the qualities I find compelling in Irele's writing, demonstrating the solidity of a house and the fluidity of a piece of music, evoking T.S Eliot's "... the stillness...the dancing " and W.B. Yeats "who can tell the dancer from the dance? "
Irele is very good in the concise and strikingly stimulating summation of cosmological ideas.The combination of precision and evocative power demonstrated by this particular summation makes it one of the best brief descriptions I know of an animistic cosmology,as well as one to which which nature is central.
Thematic rhythm emerges in his creation of resonance between diverse subjects as he ranges across music, literature and philosophy, seeking unifying thematics of African creativity. Cosmological rhythm is demonstrated within Irele's thematic explorations through his conjunction of Eshu, the Yoruba Orisa cosmology principle of indeterminacy and the structure and dynamism of the cosmos as understood in modern science, as speculated upon in his "The African Scholar".
Image Above A diagrammatization by Iyanifa Fayele of the Odu Ifa, the organisational categories of the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge
Subsuming these instantiations of rhythm as an expressive and thematic principle in Irele's work is his lyrical translation in his essay "What is Negritude?" of Leopold Sedar Senghor on rhythm as a principle of cosmic dynamism:
"Rhythm is the architecture of being; the internal dynamic, which gives form; the system of waves which it sends out towards Others.
It expresses itself through the most material, the most sensuous means: lines, surfaces, colours, volumes in architecture, sculpture, and painting; accents in poetry and music, movements in dance.
But in doing so, it guides all this concrete reality towards the light of the spirit. ... it is in the same measure that rhythm is embodied in the senses that it illuminates the spirit."
Beautiful. Demonstrating the opaque luminosity of great religious poetry.
Luminous in evoking something sublime, gloriously exalted, yet opaque in not being exactly open to interpretation in purely ratiocinative terms, being more imaginative than intellectual and in so being, stimulating breadth of response at speculative, emotive and intellectual levels.
Elizabeth Harney in "Rhythm as the Architecture of Being: Reflections on a Black Soul", in Third Text, 24: 2, 215 — 226, also quotes an equally rich translation of those lines from Senghor.
Irele, however, seems particularly rich in his elucidation of the conceptual architecture of Senghor's Negritude, its imaginative brilliance.
Irele's expositions implicitly dramatize the force of central insights of Senghor's thought into African cosmologies though in terms of Senghor's own slant on these cosmologies.
Irele also projects the controversy inviting aspects of the Senegalese thinker's reflections. Irele's expositions, though, clarify the wealth of these ideas even in their controversial nature, as in Senghor's focus on emotion as particularly African.
Irele's demonstration of the creative complexity of even these controversial ideas suggests they are rich enough to be open to refinement, thereby arriving at possibilities taking Senghor's ideas thought beyond their limitations.
Also published on Facebook
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.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CALUsqTShnpwUXCLijj56mu89y7n2D1JKZeGtrgPis0nRVPdrDA%40mail.gmail.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment