VARIOUS VOICES IN AFRICAN POETRY: ANALYSIS ..., Slides of Poetry

Download VARIOUS VOICES IN AFRICAN POETRY: ANALYSIS ... and more Slides Poetry in PDF only on Docsity! VARIOUS VOICES IN AFRICAN POETRY: ANALYSIS OF POEMS OF BLACK AFRICA by OGUNYEMI, CHRISTOPHER BABATUNDE FINAL MASTERS DEGREE THESIS SUBMITTED TO Bo G Jansson Associate Professor Comparative Literature. Dalarna University Falun Sweden. 28" March, 2007 CONTENT PAGE Introduction.......... 0... ce cece cece eee eee eee ee eenae 3-4 Voices in African Poetry.............ceceeeeeeeeeneneeeeeeeenees 4-7 Contextual Analysis of Poems.................ceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee 7-17 Diction as an instrument of Poetic Communication......... 17-18 Observations. .............c ccc eee cece c eee ee eect ee ee een eees 18-19 (055 (od LESS (0) 19 Works Cited ...........ccccc ccc cc nce ec eee ee ee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeene ences 20 The voices in African poetry according to Soyinka encapsulate history and reality. While some poetry scrambles for self assertion, others struggle for identity. Some in the long run examines the powerlessness of man in the face of uncontrollable phenomenon Leopold Senghor’s poems are typical examples of poems that strive for self assertion, identity, self consciousness, black aesthetics etc while J P Clark’s poetry strive for the place of man in the face of natural and uncontrollable phenomenon. Some poems are psychological while some are grossly philosophical. Niyi Osunsare* s poems are mythical, cultural and philosophical. The same thing goes to Soyinka’s “idanre” personal feelings were also expressed in African poetry this makes the voices in African poetry very fundamental. According to Christopher Drummond in his critical essay published in African Postcolonial Literature in English series, he observes that “In A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972), Wole Soyinka presents seven thematic groups of poems composed during Soyinka's imprisonment for political protests against the Nigerian government. One of these thematic groups, titled "Four archetypes," comprises four poems--"Joseph," "Hamlet," "Gulliver," and "Ulysses"--each of which draws an analogy between Soyinka and the corresponding character from literature. In particular, the poem "Ulysses" employs allusions to Homer's Odyssey and James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), referring to both works for the archetypical figure of a wandering man who has become separated from his home and his past. Thus, by forming parallels between his life and the stories of Odysseus and Leopold Bloom, Soyinka not only dramatizes his imprisonment by the Nigerian government, but also examines the isolation of all individuals. In "Ulysses," Soyinka employs a first-person monologue that serves as the personal voice of the poet. In this fashion, Soyinka steps away from the Modernist (and sometimes Victorian) use of dramatic monologue in poetry, a technique which often produces a narrator who cannot be trusted to deliver the poet's meaning in his own words. Rather than using an intermediary such as Robert Browning's Duke of Ferrara or T. S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock, Soyinka speaks for himself, and thus initially "Ulysses" appears to function much like the poetry of Romantic authors such as William Wordsworth and John Keats. However, whereas the Romantic poets tend to write in a relatively straightforward first-person style that extols the individuality of man, Soyinka uses a more convoluted first- person narrative that seems to emphasize the loneliness which stems from that individuality. Thus, Soyinka uses the first person in poetry much like Joyce uses it in prose, employing a stream-of- consciousness technique that emphasizes the necessarily unique and isolated nature of each individual. In addition to the use of a first-person stream-of-consciousness monologue, Soyinka's "Ulysses" includes a profusion of impressions that flow together without any clear argumentative structure. By combining unorthodox syntax with images deeply rooted in personal experience, Soyinka presents the reader with a style of verse that is at once lyrical and ambiguous: It turns on quest cycles, to track a skein Of self through eyeless veils, stumble on warps Endure the blinds of spidery distortions, till Swine-scented folds and caressing tunnels Come to crossroads at the straits, between Vaginal rocks. This use of jumbled imagery parallels other such poems as Dylan Thomas's "After the Funeral" and (to a much lesser degree) Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." Like Thomas and Coleridge, Soyinka juxtaposes images in such a manner that the reader cannot find immediate and rational relationships between them. Thus, to a certain extent, the reader must derive his own meaning from the poem, allowing conscious thought to give way to the subconscious process of association (see "Mental Echoing" under Student Comment in the Coleridge file). At the same time, however, Soyinka did not write "Ulysses" as an exercise in purely subjective interpretation. Rather, by referring to Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses, Soyinka ensures that the reader (or at least the well- read reader) has a framework of symbolism in which to read. By means of these allusions to the archetype of Ulysses, Soyinka presents isolation as a major theme of the poem. This theme of isolation appears in two different ways, the first of which deals with the immediately obvious subject of Soyinka's imprisonment by the government of Nigeria. Like Odysseus, who became physically separated from his past life, wandering lost for ten years after the fall of Troy, Soyinka spent several years confined in prison, struggling in a metaphorical "swell of dancing seas and pygmy fountains" not to "lose the landmarks of my being". Beyond the comparison with Odysseus, however, the poem goes on to draw a connection with Joyce's Leopold Bloom, as hinted in the full title of the poem: "Ulysses--Notes from here to my Joyce class." Whereas the allusion to Odysseus seems to work more as a comparison to the specific isolation endured by Soyinka in prison, the allusion to Bloom expands the analogy to include the isolation experienced by all individuals within society. Like Bloom, whose wanderings through Dublin symbolize the ironic loneliness of man among his fellow men, Soyinka explains how he has become like "a boulder solitude amidst wine-centered waves" (Soyinka, p. 29). Indeed, the intensely personal nature of Soyinka's imagery echoes this solitude with a stream-of-consciousness technique comparable to that used by Joyce in Ulysses. Thus, by alluding to Homer and Joyce, Soyinka parallels his specific experience of imprisonment with the more general experience of isolation entailed by the unique consciousness of each individual. This use of archetypes may derive from the works of Carl Jung.”(Wole Soyinka and the Archetype of Ulysses). Various voices which would be examined according to the Poems of Black Africa include Alien perspective, Ancestors and Gods, Animalistic Phases, Black thoughts, Captivity, Compatriots, Cosmopolis, Early passage, Ethics, Exile, Indictment, Land and liberty, Man in Nature, Mating cry, Mortality, Poets passage, Praise singers and Critics, Prayers and Invocation. These various classifications were made by Soyinka in the anthology. CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS African poets use various voices as thematic preoccupations in their poetry. On alien perspective, some poets such as G. Adali Mortty, Mazisi Kunene David Diop and others reflect on the typology of foreign images in African poetry. The portrayal here is that no matter how an African learns to become a European, there is still a very magnificent landslide difference between them. G. Adali-Mortty uses his poem “belonging” to substantiate this voice in poetry. The poems remarks that: You may excel In knowledge of their tongue, And universal ties may bind you close to them; But what they say, and how they feel- The subtler details of their meaning, Thinking, feeling, reaching- These are closed to you and me for evermore; Are, indeed, the interleaves of speech -our speech-which fall on them No more than were they dead leaves In dust-dry harmattan, Although, for years, they’ve lived And counted all there is tot count In our midst! 10 The poem goes on and on to explain the exploitation of man from being a beast and the transformation he goes through. This situation in African poetry is metaphysical. An ordinary person may not know what the poet tries to explain. But of paramount significance is this theme because it portends the originality of man as he moves in time and space. These poets combine some elements of metaphysics with nature, love for the land, originality. They borrow a leave from some 7" century metaphysical poets. The Columbia Encyclopaedia remarks that: Metaphysical concerns are the common subject of their poetry, which investigates the world by rational discussion of its phenomena rather than by intuition or mysticism. Drypen was the first to apply the term to 17th- century poetry when, in 1693, he criticized Donne: 'He affects the Metaphysics... in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts.' He disapproved of Donne's stylistic excesses, particularly his extravagant conceits (or witty comparisons) and his tendency towards hyperbolic abstractions. Jounson consolidated the argument in Tue Lives or tue Ports, where he noted (with reference to Crowley) that 'about the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets'. He went on to describe the far-fetched nature of their comparisons as 'a kind of discordiaconcors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occultresemblances in things apparently unlike’. Examples of the practice Johnson condemned would include the extended comparison of love with astrology (by Donne) and of the soul with a drop of dew (by Marvell, Columbia Encyclopaedia) The difference here is that African metaphysical poets are different in their approach to poetry. They prefer to address those aspects of life and customs which are beyond ordinary comprehension regardless of what the Eurocentric critics would say. Similarly, Black thoughts are visualised in Poems of Black Africa a typical instance is “Black Mother” by Viriato da Cruz. The poem goes the way: Your presence, mother, is the living drama of a race Drama of flesh and blood Which life has written with the pen of centuries Though your voice Voices from the cane plantation The paddy fields, the coffee farms, The silk works, the Cotton fields Voices from plantations in Virginia From farms in the Carolina il Alabama Cuba Brazil Voices from Brazilian sugar plants, From the tonga drums, from the Pampas, from factories, Voices from Harlem District South, Voices from slum locations, 's wailing blues going up the ppi, echoing from rail road wagor Voices weeping with Carrother*s voice “Lord God what will we have done” The poet suddenly remembers his past, the slave era. The poem is melancholic about the travails of slavery and the agony of pain it brought on the entire black race in the world. The zig zag structure is to suggest that Africans were not happy with their previous and present experiences in the hands of imperialists. Although the poem is not written during the slave time, it re-invokes the African past and the sudden spread of black people all over the world. Slavery and colonisation spread the black people all over the world and gave them a new home. While mother Africa weeps for loosing her children to ungrateful people who still “enslave” the blacks with obnoxious policies and world order, globalisation and racism, the “colonisers” smile to the bank with their exploits. The poet wonders which sin the blacks might have committed to subject them to these kinds of agony, pain and undue treatment. All over the world, the blacks have one agonising tale to tell or the other. This is a feeling of black thought which some poets still carry in their canon in Africa. Bernard Dadie practically manifests his feelings in his poem entitled “I thank You God”. The poem goes on: I thank you God for creating me black For making of me Porter of all sorrows, Setting on my head The world, I wear the Centaur’s hide And I have carried the World since the first morning White is a colour for special occasion Black the colour for everyday And I have carried the World since the first evening. Tam glad 12 Of the shape of my head Made to carry the world, Content With the shape of my nose That must snuff every wind of the World Pleased With the shape of my leg Ready to run all the heats of the World. I thank you God for creating me black For making of me Porter of all sorrows Bernard Dadie is returning to his past situation as a naturally created black person. He is influenced by the principle of black aesthetics of Baraka and the quest for black revolution. The poem may be viewed by a white person as a racist poem but Dadie is only trying to explore the African soul and the zeal to stand firm by the travails of the past. He journeyed through a long “meeting” from the “morning” to the “afternoon” and finally to the “evening”. This symbolises the movements of the historical evolution of the black persons from being a free moral agent in their respective kingdoms to the advent of the European. The coming of the Europeans to Africa subsequently brought slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism which grossly led to the exploitation of human and natural resources. An article on Scramble for partition of Africa best explains this evil, the article reports that: Established empires, notably Britain, Portugal and France, had already expropriated vast areas of Africa and Asia, and emerging imperial powers like Italy and Germany had done likewise on a smaller scale. With the dismissal of the aging Chancellor Bismarck by Kaiser Wilhelm II, the relatively orderly colonization became a frantic scramble. The 1885 Berlin Conference, initiated by Bismarck to establish international guidelines for the acquisition of African territory, formalized this "New Imperialism". Between the Franco-Prussian War and the Great War, Europe added almost 9 million square miles (23,000,000 km?) — one-fifth of the land area of the globe — to its overseas colonial possessions (wikipedia publication) Dadie is just remembering his gory past. This leads to the issue of “captivity” in African poetry. The theme of captivity here refers to the collective and personal experience one gains from a contact with external forces. However, most South African poems express their captivity by the white minorities. The expressions of apartheid policy on the blacks and the subsequent limitations blacks suffer in their day to day activities. Denis Brutus uses his poems not only to denote his prison experiences but to capture the phenomenon of captivity the people suffer. Wole Soyinka’s “purgatory” is a poem that extrapolates this issue in a succinct chunk. 15 Those who expect death by installment are those who have no means of livelihood. The government does not give any form of assistance to her citizens in form of social security which countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark etc give to sustain those teaming populations of both lazy and unemployed. That is why the rate of crime and security breakdown is alarming. To Richard Ntiru, compatriots should be vividly directed to the down trodden in our society, his poem, “The Pauper” exclaims: Pauper, pauper, craning your eyes In all direction, in no direction! What brutal force, malignant element, Dared to force your piteous gate? Was it worth the effort, the time? You simply lean on a leafless tree Nursing the jiggers that shrivel your bottom Like a baby newly born to an old woman. What crime, what treason did you commit That you are thus condemned to human indifference Showing compatriot to the living ones gives a sense of place. That is the main preoccupation in the poem. Richard Ntiru presents a gory image of poor and rejected African person. Poverty becomes the order of the day because the pauperism is no longer a hidden agenda! Some are born into it, some inherit it, and some come to it by chance. Ntiru tries to find a place for them in literature of consolation. This is because in Africa, we live a communal life as opposed to the individual life of a European! The rate of divorce, mental disorder and imbecility are not as high in Africa because the Africans work together to eradicate problems. One man downfall is perceived as a downfall for all! Ntiru has used his poem to show concern for the abandoned people. African poetry moves to the cities and demonstrate the city situations with the use of imagery, metaphors and ironies. The city recklessness, prostitution, drunkenness, creativity constitute some of the cosmopolis voices we hear in poetry. In Okot p* Bitek “Song of Malaya” he ridicules with scorn prostitution and indolency. The poem which is just in five lines attempt a capsule presentation of life in totality; what it should be and not what it ought to be. The poem reports: Sister prostitutes Wherever you are I salute you 16 Wealth and Health To us all. In Africa, it is common to hear “my brother” or “my sister” while there is no degree of consanguinity between the addresser and the addressee. P Bitek is only showing love and attention for those girls that out of poverty “sell their bodies for money”. He admonishes them that while they look for “wealth”, they should consider that they put their “health” in jeopardy. Well he ends up that everybody including him needs good health. Unbridled quest for materialism, lustfulness, greediness make one to dabble into prostitution. He similarly use another poem to advise women who find themselves in this dastardly act. In “ Karibu” part VII, he advises that: Sister Harlots Wherever you are Wakeup Wash up Brighten up Go gay and clean; Lay Your tables Bring in fresh flowers... Load your trays With fresh fruits Fresh vegetables And plenty of fresh meat.... The hungry lions Of the world Are prowling around... Hunting! The imagery of “lion” is to suggest the masculinity in African men! What the poet is trying to assume is that instead of the woman to take to prostitution, they could as well get themselves set for any “hungry lion” meaning any serious minded suitor who is very desperate for marriage at all cost. This reason underscores the motive behind bride price system in Africa. Men pay good bride price to recognise and appreciate virginity. A girl who keeps virginity before marriage is accorded much respect and honour not only to her parents, but to her husband. Modernization has changed many things in Africa. Most of these poets use their poetry as voices to change any form of sociological inherence which may limit the growth and the development of Africa as unique black people. B S uses “The Bastard” to ridicule and admonish girls who 17 allow city lives to degenerate into having bastard children. This is against African culture and tradition. The poem remarks: An unlucky creation His mother, a street walker; His lying father, A champion at producing bastards Its not his fault, Poor innocent bastard, That in slums he’s brought up By a mother that has no husband Though many husbands he sees Caressing his mother On a stool or lumpy bed. Poor bastard, Dumped on the ground to make room For his nocturnal fathers, Or on the mat to spend his horrid nights Among the steaming pots of food And walking rats. An unlucky creation, These bastards, Before birth heavily and mercilessly tormented With a rope tied tight round the mothers waist To strange the foetus Or his unformed head Squeezed with hands rough and murderous. Other themes which African poetry discusses include ethics, indictment mortality, prayer and mortality. African poets are of the opinion that literature mirrors life and it portends the historical evolution of the African people. These poets have experienced the socio economical situation cum political problems in their various countries. They have used their poetry either as protest or as warning, caution on the need to solve the militating problems ravaging the human society. That is why African literature has been perceived by critics as “weeping literature” The literature of “lachrymal” as Charles Nnolim would rightly say. This situation gives African poetry a unique significance to the development of arts and culture. The principle of black aesthetics lends an axiomatic credence to the continuous survival of the black soul. 20 are embedded in art, custom, experience and worldview.Thus, the African poetry has been protesting political stagnation, economical strangulation, and cultural alteration among the people and their contact with the outside world. Soyinka uses his poem to show the voice of protest against the odds in society. The same view is expressed one way or the other by Denis Brutus, Clark, Ntiru among other poets. Leopold Sedar Senghor protests about the projection of blacks as being inferior. These are the various voices which poets want to communicate to both their African audience and their European counterparts. In their arrays of communication, they use colourful images like metaphor of alienation and protest to illuminate their messages. To sum up, African poets are very unique in world poetry because of their ability to coin language, present their messages and carry their audience along. 21 WORKS CITED Boulton, Marjorie. The Anatomy of Poetry. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. Drummond, Christopher “Wole Soyinka and the Archetype of Ulysses.” African Post colonial Literature Series. New York. 2005 Emenyonu Ernest. Literature and National Consciousness. Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books. 1990 Eyoh, Luke. Socio- “Political Protest and Poetic Imagination in Clark- Bekederemo’s Poetry.” Working Papers. Journal of English studies of the University of Port harcourt, Port harcourt, April, 2003 Trele, Abiola. The African Experience in Literature and Ideology. London: Heinemann, 1981 Maduka, Chidi T .The Intellectual and The Power Structure. Port Harcourt and Zaria: University of Port Harcourt and Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1999. Maduka Chidi T and Luke Eyoh. Fundamentals of Poetry. Uyo: Scholars Press. 2000. Marvel. ’Poetry” www.columbiaencyclopaedia.org Soyinka, Wole ed. Poems of Black Africa. London: Heinemann. New edition. 1999. Wikipedia. www.wikipedia.org “Scramble for Partition” Wellek, Rene and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. New York. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. 22