OríkìGenesis
Olabiyi Yai's Oríkì Philosophy as a Paradigm for Human Development
The Meaning of this Work and What Inspired It
This is a construction of an idea of human development from Ọlabiyi Babalola Yai's interpretation of particular Yoruba terms, the philosophical term orí, the literary genre oríkì, the disciplinary concept ìtàn and the designation of a particular lifestyle, àrè.
These ideas are reworked in terms of a vision of human growth within the dynamism of existence. This is done through quotations from Yai's essays, contextualized by my own reframing of the significance of those quotations, placed in square brackets, with the entire sequence prefaced by quotations from other contexts that reinforce the thrust of the vision I am distilling from Yai's work.
My evocations of the kola nut, the egg, the proverb, the parable and the riddle are transpositions of Yai's references to Yoruba metaphors in his text that inspires this one.
Visual art evoking ideas of creativity suggested by knotting and unknotting represented through the elegant swirls of the Ghanaian Akan symbol Nyansapon, as shown in its traditional form above and its adaptation as a company logo by VeliaAfrica, shown below, and spirals of progression, recreation and infinity in the opon ifa circular template and the Nsibidi art of Victor Ekpuk are invoked here to complement Yai's soaring thought.
This is part of a project exploring Yoruba aesthetics through a study of the writings of two philosophers of Yoruba art and aesthetics, Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal. Abiodun's work is directly influenced by Yai and that of Lawal is indirectly related to it.
This piece is a development from my first response to reading Yai in the light of these investigations, "Exploring Intersections of African Discourses: Celebrating Ọlabiyi Babalola Yai, Scholar Extraordinaire of African Arts and African Philosophies." (academia.edu( PDF), Scribd (PDF), Facebook, LinkedIn, Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal, Philosophers of Yoruba Art blog, Twitter).
Quotations and Interpretations
The months and days are the travelers of eternity. The years that come and go are also voyagers. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. I too for years past have been stirred by the sight of a solitary cloud drifting with the wind to ceaseless thoughts of roaming.
From the opening lines of Japanese poet, Matsuo Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Quoting different translations of the lines, first two sentences and last sentence by Donald Keene. Third sentence by Sam Hamill. All from "Narrow Road to the Deep North, Opening Paragraph, Ten Translations" at the website of David Barnill, scholar in nature writing. Other superb resources, such as US and Japanese nature writing may be found on other sections of the site. Accessed 8/31/2020.
[In this painting, Good Morning, Sunrise by Victor Ekpuk] the spiral is an Nsibidi sign [ a Nigerian Cross River region ideographic system] meaning journey, but it also suggests the sun and eternity. Ekpuk's strong palette of warm reds, deep blacks, cool blues and whites contributes to the overall sense of animation.
From the website of the Smithsonian exhibition, Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art.
Orí is essence, attribute, and quintessence… the uniqueness of persons, animals, and things, their inner eye and ear, their sharpest point and their most alert guide as they navigate through this world and the one beyond.
The ideal artist … is an àrè [ as understood in Yoruba]. No etymology of the word has been attempted, but the most plausible one would derive it from the verb re, which means to depart.
Lagbayi, the Yoruba transcendental sculptor, lived as an àrè. An àrè is an itinerant, a permanent stranger precisely because he or she can be permanent nowhere.
[An àrè is a person who approaches life as an] oríkì, an unfinished and generative art enterprise. Oríkì [saluting and invoking the essence and expression of cosmic and individual being in sentient beings' efforts to understand and navigate the cosmos in relation to their own identity, a process] inseparable from ìtàn, to spread [in time and space], to shine, irradiate, investigate, illuminate.
[ An àrè is committed to pìtàn, to splitting in multiples the kernels of possibility, separating and ingesting the two lobes of the kola nut of being and becoming, hatching the egg of tomorrow in ways visionary, splitting open the luminous core of the proverb that is life, untying the knot of the parable of existence, unloosening its radiance, de-riddling history, shedding light ] on human existence through time and space [in the spirit of ] Òrúnmìlà [Eleri-Ipin, Witness to Creation] Opìtàn ilẹ Ifẹ, He who deriddles ìtàn, i.e., unravels history throughout Ifẹ territory [ the womb and consummation of terrestrial time in Yoruba mythology,
Jacob Olupona's City of 201 Gods: Ilé-Ifè in Time, Space, and the Imagination explores the depth and complexity of Ile-Ife in the Yoruba cosmos. My "Ile-Ife : Geographical, Affective, Metaphysical and Mystical Interpretations by Awo Falokun" is a very short but imagistically evocative excursion into these ideas from one perspective].
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