Modern African Poetry and the African Predicament

1978·12.62 MB·English

MODERN AFRICAN POETRY AND THE AFRICAN
PREDICAMENT
By the same author
POETIC HERITAGE: IGBO TRADITIONAL VERSE
(with D.I. Nwoga)
CALABASH OF WISDOM AND OTHER IGBO
STORIES
FOUR MODERN WEST AFRICAN POETS
THE STUDY OF POETRY
MODERN AFRICAN
POETRY AND THE
AFRICAN
PREDICAMENT
R.N.EGUDU
Professor and Head of English Department
University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria
© R. N. Egudu 1978
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1978 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in Delhi
Dublin Hong Kong Johannesburg Lagos
Melbourne New York Singapore Tokyo
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Egudu, Romanus
Modern African poetry and the African predicament
1. African poetry - Political aspects
I. Title
809'.1'04 PLSOIO
ISBN 978-0-333-23964-3 ISBN 978-1-349-15943-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-15943-7
The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the
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This book is sold subject
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Contents
Acknowledgements Vll
Introduction I
I Images of Colonialism 6
2 Negritude versus Assimilation 30
3 Responses to Apartheid 45
4 Appraisal of Post-colonial Politics 79
5 Attitudes to War 104
6 East African Poetry and Social Disparity 125
Notes 143
Index 153
Acknowledgements
I wish to express deep gratitude to the University of Nigeria,
Nsukka, for the grant that facilitated the initial research on
this project; to Mr R. C. Nwamefor of the University of
Nigeria Library for helping me locate some relevant
material; to Mr J. C. Anafulu of the same library for
preparing the index to the book; and to my wife, May, for
her encouragement.
I and the publishers also wish to thank the following who
have kindly given permission for the use of copyright
material. African Universities Press for the extracts from
two poems from Reflections: Nigerian Prose and Verse;
J. P. Clarke for the extracts from his poems in A Reed in the
Tide and Casualties: Poems 1966-1968; and Rex Collings
Ltd and Hill & Wang (Division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
Inc) for the extracts from A Shuttle in the Crypt by Wole
Soyinka, copyright © 1972 by Wole Soyinka.
East African Community for the extracts from poems by
Behadur Tejani from the anthology PubLications; East
African Publishing House for the extracts from Song of
Lawino and Song of Prisoner by Okot p'Bitek; Eyre
Methuen Ltd and Hill & Wang (Division of Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, Inc) for the extracts from poems in Idanre and
Other Poems by Wole Soyinka, copyright © Wole Soyinka
1967.
Heinemann Educational Books Ltd for the extracts from
Poems from East Africa, edited by D. Cook and D. Rubadiri;
Another Nigger Dead by Taban 10 Liyong; Seven South
African Poets, edited by Cosmo Pie terse; Satellites by Lenrie
Peters; 'Viaticum' by Birago Diop, 'Lines of our Hands' and
'Leaf in the Wind' both by Bernard Dadie, from French
African Verse, edited by J. Reed and C. Wake; the poem
'Viaticum' ('Viatique') first appeared in Birago Diop's
Leurres et Lueurs published by Presence Africaine, Paris,
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1960. The Bernard Dadie poems are also reproduced by
permission of Editions Seghers; Nocturnes by L. S.
Senghor, translated by J. Reed and C. Wake, is also repro
duced by permission of Editions du Seuil; A Simple Lust by
Dennis Brutus is also reproduced by permission of Hill &
Wang (Division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc), copyright
© Dennis Brutus, 1963, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1973; Labyrinths,
With Path of Thunder by Christopher Okigbo, is also repro
duced by permission of the Africana Publishing Company.
Oxford University Press and Editions du Seuil for the
extracts from Leopold Sedar Senghor: Prose and Poetry,
edited and translated by J. Reed and C. Wake, copyright ©
Oxford University Press, 1965; Penguin Books Ltd for the
extracts from Modern Poetry from Africa, edited by Gerald
Moore and Ulli Beier (Penguin African Library 1968), copy
right © Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier, 1963.
The publishers have made every effort to trace all the
copyright holders but if any have inadvertently been over
looked they will be pleased to make the necessary arrange
ment at the first opportunity.
R. N. EGUDU
July 1977
Introduction
Socrates in Plato's Dialogues said of himself as an
artist / philosopher:
I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and
all day long and in all places am always fastening upon
you, arousing, persuading, and reproaching you. You
will not easily find another like me, and therefore I would
advise you to spare me. I dare say that you may feel out of
temper ... and easily strike me dead ... and then you
would sleep on for the remainder of your lives, unless
God in his care of you send you another gadfly.l
This statement, made by Socrates in defence of himself
against the accusation that he was intruding into the life of
other people in his society, is a succinct manifesto which
should guide all socially conscious artists at all times and in
all places. It has delineated in as precise a manner as
possible the primary functions of any artist in his society:
namely to persuade, and to reproach where and when
necessary. It has also demonstrated that moral courage and
fortitude with which a conscientious artist should discharge
these functions.
The question whether the literary artist should or should
not be concerned in his works with what is happening in his
society has through the ages been the issue over which
artists and critics have argued and disagreed. In late
nineteenth-century England, for example, the originators
and promulgators of the art-for-art's sake movement held
the view that art and the artist should be autonomous and
insulated from social realities. They rejected any opinion
which tended to associate art with a didactic objective and
social commitment. Their artistic creed was that 'good art is
static, above desire or loathing; bad is kinetic - either
I
2 MODERN AFRICAN POETRY AND THE AFRICAN PREDICAMENT
pornogr<}.phic or didactic'.2 The artists and critics who
belonged to this aesthetic cult were not concerned about the
various problems in their society. They regarded art as
autonomous and independent of society.
Although literature may not and should not usurp the
office of a pulpit-sermon or political propaganda, it is
difficult to see how this art, whose primary objective is
communication (or expression) and whose primary means
of accomplishing it is language (which itself has a duty to
communicate), can fail to evoke some response or reaction
from the reader; for every communication system operates
on the basis of a stimulus-recognition-response relation
ship. The artist is a member of society, and the content and
style of his work are affected by social reality. This fact
makes readers respond readily to the work, for it is of
relevance to them. One's response to a literary work may not
be a simple course of physical action (and it does not have to
be); it may be only a mental or emotional reaction, which
can ultimately lead to action - physical or intellectual.
The need for art to have human relevance has been
emphasised by a Nigerian critic, Kolawole Ogungbesan,
who said that 'the writer is a member of society and his
sensibility is conditioned by the social and political
happenings around him', for 'these issues form a part of the
substance of life within which his instinct as a writer must
struggle.3 And commenting on Leopold Sedar Senghor's
statement that 'African literature is politically committed',
Dr Ogungbesan said: 'It could hardly have been otherwise,
for if we cannot now say that colonialism gave rise to
modern African literature [we can at least say that] the
colonial situation very much influenced that literature.4
There is therefore some natural compulsion about
commitment in literature to what is happening around the
writer. For example, Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist,
poet and critic, once said:
In giving expression to the plight of their people, black
writers have shown again how strongly this traumatic
experience can possess their sensibility. They have found
themselves drawn irresistibly to writing about the fate of