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Modern African Poetry and the African Predicament PDF

1978·12.62 MB·English
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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 condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the Net Book Agreement 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

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