MYTH, LITERATURE AND THE AFRICAN WORLD, Wole Soyinka, Cambridge,
1976.

This book begins with a preface (pp. vii-xii) introducing the
author's enforced absence from the University of Ife and hence his
role at Cambridge in validating the existence of African literature.
He provides some comment on his earlier essay, "The Fourth Stage,"
included in this book as an appendix and responds to a distortion of
the anti-Negritudinist position. He states the necessity of
reinstating authentic African values, and the resistance to this
effort.

Since the appendix, "The Fourth Stage" (pp. 140-160), was written
first, it is reviewed here first. It is a look at Yoruba tragedy
through a consideration of myth, especially the god Ogun. It starts
by contrasting the god Obatala and Yoruba mythology in general to
Apollo and the Greeks. It continues with Ogun's patronage of the
homeless, the orphan and the oath-keeper. There is the awareness of
the cyclic nature of reality.

   If we may put the same thing in fleshed-out cognitions, life,
   present life, contains within it manifestations of the ancestral,
   the living and the unborn. All are vitally within the intimations
   and the affectiveness of life, beyond mere abstract
   conceptualization. p. 144

One is aware of the distinctions. There is, at various levels,
mythic, traditional, individual, the theme of uprooting,
disintegration and recovery. There is the splintering of the
original God, the unsettlement of early ancestors, personal
knowledge of essential loss. This is seen in the drama of Yoruba
ritual.

   The Yoruba metaphysics of accommodation and resolution could only
   come after the passage of the gods through the transitional gulf,
   after the demonic test of the self-will of Ogun the explorer-god
   in the creative cauldron of cosmic powers. Only after such
   testing could the harmonious Yoruba world be born, a harmonious
   will which accommodates every alien material or abstract
   phenomenon within its infinitely stressed spirituality.
   pp. 145-146

There is the reaching of the abyss between stages and the mythopoeic
nature of music.

   It is necessary to recall again that the past is not a mystery
   and that though the future (the unborn) is yet unknown, it is not
   a mystery to the Yoruba but co-existent in present consciousness.
   Tragic terror exists therefore neither in the evocation of the
   past nor of the future. The stage of transition is, however, the
   metaphysical abyss both of god and man, and if we agree that, in
   the European sense, music is the 'direct copy or the direct
   expression of the will', it is only because nothing rescues man
   (ancestral, living or unborn) from loss of self within this abyss
   but a titanic resolution of the will whose ritual summons,
   response, and expression is the strange alien sound to which we
   give the name of music. p. 149

There is a contrast between Sango, god of lightning, and Ogun.

   Sango is an anthropomorphic deity; his history revolved around
   petty tyranny; his self-destruction was the violent, central
   explosion from ego-inflation. Where Ogun's human alienation was
   the postscript error, an exaction for his basic victory over the
   transitional guardians of the gulf, Sango's was 'in character', a
   wild vengeful slaughter upon menials who had dared to defy his
   authority. p. 151

There is the shattering of the original God, Orisa-nla, the
confinement of Obatala and the strong, though not exclusive, strand
of harmonious acceptance in Yoruba myth and culture.

   Ifa's cycle of masonic poetry -- curative, prognostic, aesthetic
   and omniscient -- expresses a philosophy of optimism in its
   oracular adaptiveness and unassailable resolution of all
   phenomena; the gods are accommodating and embrace within their
   eternal presences manifestations which are seemingly foreign or
   contradictory. p. 155

There is hubris in transition, in birth, in death. There is the
contrast between Dionysos and Ogun.

   Ogun's stave is more symbolic of his labours through the night of
   transition. A long willowy pole, it is topped by a frond-bound
   lump of ore which strains the pole in wilful curves and keeps it
   vibrant. The bearers, who can only be men, are compelled to move
   about among the revellers as the effort to keep the ore-head from
   toppling over keeps them perpetually on the move. pp. 158-159

There is the influence of palm wine on man and god, and the
celebrative dance across the abyss.

The first of the four main sections of the book, "Morality and
aesthetics in the ritual archetype" (pp. 1-36), looks at the drama
of the rites of passage of Obatala, Ogun and Sango. There is the
place of earth and heaven, and the totality of consciousness.

   To speak of space, music, poetry or material paraphernalia in the
   drama of the gods is to move directly from the apparent to deeper
   effects within the community whose drama (that is, history,
   morality, affirmation, supplication, thanksgiving or simple
   calendrification) it also is. This is not to suggest that such
   drama always operates on this level. Casual secular entertainment
   may also involve the gods -- the gods are quite amenable to
   fustian, nowhere more so than in their most sacred oriki
   (praise-chants) -- but pieces do not concern themselves with
   creating the emotional and spiritual overtones that would
   pervade, as a matter of course, the consecrated spot where the
   divine presence must be invoked and borne within the
   actor-surrogate. p. 5

There is Sango, as lightning, as retributive justice, as one
surprised by the use of his thunderbolt unjustly, and enraged
against the High God. There is the saintly, suffering Obatala. There
is Ogun, patron of the orphan, the homeless and the oath-keeper.

   And Ogun is also the master craftsman and artist, farmer and
   warrior, essence of destruction and creativity, a recluse and a
   gregarious imbiber, a reluctant leader of men and deities. He is
   'Lord of the road' of Ifa; that is, he opens the way to the heart
   of Ifa's wisdom, thus representing the knowledge-seeking
   instinct, an attribute which sets him apart as the only deity who
   'sought the way', and harnassed the resources of science to hack
   a passage through primordial chaos for the gods' reunion with
   man. p. 27

In the beginning there was a single Deity, but he had a servant,
Atunda, who hurled him into the Abyss where he shattered into the
many fragments which are the gods. The shard of creativity is Ogun.

   His world is the world of craft, song and poetry. The
   practitioners of Ijala, the supreme lyrical form of Yoruba poetic
   art, are followers of Ogun the hunter. Ijala celebrates not only
   the deity but animal and plant life, seeks to capture the essence
   and relationships of growing things and the insights of man into
   the secrets of the universe. p. 28

There is the gulf of transition, whose divine guardians are
presented with appeasing gifts, sacrifices and rituals. There is the
one acting the role of the god and the movement of his own
consciousness and there is the significance of music.

The second part of the book, "Drama and the African world-view"
(pp. 37-60), begins by contrasting not Western individualism with
African communal theatre, but rather African, "cohesive
understanding of irreducible truths" (p. 38), with Western spasmodic
intellectual fads. It proceeds to ritual space, and contrasting
examples on European and African stages. there was the 1965 London
performance of J.P. Clark's SONG OF A GOAT:

   The staging of the play was not particularly sensitive, in
   addition to which there were the usual unscripted happenings
   which seem to plague amateur productions everywhere. A rather
   lively goat, another practical mistake, tended to punctuate
   passages of intended solemnity with bleats from one end and
   something else from the other. p. 45

The theme of the play, the tragedy of sexual impotence, did not go
over with the London audience who figured this was now treatable by
medicine, psychiatry or adoption. While the details of the plot are
acknowledged as anti-social, what's underlined is natural harmony.

   Where society lives in a close inter-relation with Nature,
   regulates its existence by natuaral phenomena within the
   observable processes of continuity -- ebb and tide, waxing and
   waning of the moon, rain and drought, planting and harvest -- the
   highest moral order is seen as that which guarantees a parallel
   continuity of the species. p. 52

Thus, actually it is the impotent husband acting as if the situation
was normal who is the most anti-social. There is also the
significant awareness that African traditional society and religion
are not static, but incorporate into their repertoire continuing
experience, so, for example, Sango can assume responsibility for
modern electricity.

Next comes a look at the Yoruba play OBA KOSO, a play of the tragedy
of Sango, a king whose attempt to have two powerful subordinates
destroy each other results in one victor claiming Sango's throne,
and Sango, despite hanging himself, joining the gods. There are
archetypical aspects of this play, issues of cyclical continuity
that have been felt by various peoples who have seen it in
translation.

The third part of the book, "Ideology and the social vision (1): The
religious factor" (pp. 61-96), considers the invalidity of literary
ideology and the place of social vision in literature.

   Let it be noted that in a culture where the mystical and the
   visionary are merely areas of reality like any other, the use of
   such expressions does not connote a higher perception of the
   imaginative faculty. pp. 65-66

There is a summary of the incredible plot of William Conton's novel,
THE AFRICAN, with its blend of inter-racial romance, traditional
African spirituality, panAfrican political vision and Christian
forgiveness. There is a look at the Lewis Nkosi's play RYTHMS OF
VIOLENCE, urging a multi-racial South Africa. There is other
material referenced, and the significant point that although much
literature is directed at the Christian West, this is not the
exclusive spiritual background of the African continent. There is
Hampate Ba's TIERNO BOKAR, a look at a Muslim sage and Islamic
tolerance.

Besides Islamic and Christian influence, there is the African
tradition. This can be manifested even in a secularized garb. This
leads to several pages concerning ARROW OF GOD by Achele.

The fourth section of the book, "Ideology and the social vision (2):
The secular ideal" (pp. 97-139), begins with a 1920 prophesy for the
conversion of all African polytheists to Islam or Christianity,
Mongo Beti's KING LAZARUS and Oulouguem's BOUND TO VIOLENCE which,
among quite a series of happenings, conveys the colonialist impact
of Islam.

   Oulouguem's verdict is a painful one -- a sanguinary account of
   the principal rival to the Christian mission in Africa cannot be
   anything but provocative. Oulouguem pronounces the Moslem
   incursion into Black Africa to be corrupt, vicious, decadent,
   elitist and insensitive. At the least such a work functions as a
   wide swab in the deck-clearing operation for the commencement of
   racial retrieval. p. 105

Armah's TWO THOUSAND SEASONS, dismisses both monotheistic missionary
and enslaving religions, as well as sentimental nostalgia for an
unhistorical past.

   The secular vision in African creative writing is particularly
   aggrassive wherever it combines the re-creation of a pre-colonial
   African world-view with eliciting its transposable elements into
   a modern potential. The process may be explicit, as in Armah's
   Two Thousand Seasons, or, as in Sembene, may rely on the reader's
   capacity for projection. The shared knowledge of what now exists
   and the prior assumption of a readership subjectively attuned to
   the significations of posed comparisons is part of the armoury of
   the novel which, depending on the moralities of the conflicts and
   events, does away with the need for utopian presentations.
   Assuming an unsympathetic readership, it remains a threat, a
   potent one, because its justifying paradigm has been woven from
   the authentic heritage of that society. p. 115

Sembene's GOD'S BITS OF WOOD is considered with its plot of the
strike by railway workers, and Camara Laye's THE DARK CHILD and THE
RADIANCE OF THE KING. Soyinka then contrasts the works considered
above with the products of Negritude. Negritude is rejected because,
for all its stridency, it accepts the racial stereotype that the
African is intuitive, where the European is rational. Actually, such
compartmentalization is not African.

   As our Cartesian ghost introduces himself by scribbling on our
   black brother's -- naturally -- tabula rasa the famous
   proposition, 'I think, therefore I am', we should not respond, as
   the Negritudinists did, 'I feel, therefore I am', for that is to
   accept the arrogance of a philosophical certitude that has no
   foundation in the provable, one which reduces the cosmic logic of
   being to a functional particularism of being. I cannot imagine
   that out 'authentic black innocent' would ever have permitted
   himself to be manipulated into the false position of countering
   one pernicious Manicheism with another. He would sooner, I
   suspect, reduce our white explorer to syntactical proportions by
   responding: 'You think, therefore you are a thinker. You are one-
   who-thinks, white-creature-in-pith-helmet-in-African-jungle-who-
   thinks and, finally, white-man-who-has-problems-believing-in-his-
   own-existence.' And I cannot believe he would arrive at that
   observation solely by intuition. pp. 138-139

Thus ends the main part of the text and this review which considered
the appendix first. It was a treat to read such an introduction to
African literature by so brilliant a thinker so very capable of
expressing his thoughts.

Michael McKenny September 6-7, 2002 C.E.


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