The Literary Corner: Jonathan Peters on Wole Soyinka (side a)

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Brooks B. Robinson: The Literary Corner: Black Writers of the World

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{Second speaker??} The world was choked in wet embrace of serpent spawn awaiting Ayentallas(?) rebel birth monster child.

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Wrestling pachyderms of myth - [[Orunsila?]], Orumila, Esu, [[Efa?]], were all assembled.

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Defeated in the quest to fraternize man. Wordlessly, he rose. Sought knowledge in the hills.

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Ogun, the lone one, saw it all. The sacred veins of matter and the second laws.

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Sagun's spent thunderbolt save him a hammerhead.

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His fingers taught Efco, and it yielded. To think, a mere plague of finite kills stood between the gods and man.

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He made a mesh of elements: from stone of fire, and air fruit.

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The worlds of energies.

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He made an anvil of peace. And kneaded red clay for his mold.

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In his hand, the weapon gleamed, borne of primal mechanics. And this pledge, he gave the Heavens:

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"I will clear a path to man (?). May we celebrate the stray electron defined of patents. Celebrate this plating of the gods, canonization of a strong hand of a slave who set the rock in the revolution.

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All hail Saint Atundah! Fifth revolutionary grand iconoclast at Genesis."

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[[music]] Excerpt from the writing of Wole Soyinka. Today on the literary corner, you will hear professor Jonathan Peters discuss Soyinka's life and works. Professor Peters resigns at the University of Maryland in the Department of African American studies. Peters is an expert on African literature and culture, having as his major work "A Dance of Masks" Senghor, Achebe, Soyinka. Peters is known for his outstanding work on Wole Soyinka. And now the interview with professor Jonathan Peters on Wole Soyinka.

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{Speaker name= "Jonathan Peters"} Wole Soyinka started writing drama, in the-, around about 1960. I think he probably started in 1959. It's curious that he had started with short stories, but in 1960 he wrote his first major play which was called "A Dance of the Forests" and it was designed to celebrate Nigerian independence. Nigeria became independent in 1960 and Soyinka is a Yoruba from Western Nigeria. He's written several plays since then some short plays, but since 1965 he extended to write major plays, full-length plays that is, except for one play I think which is the second, a sequel to his "The Trials of Brother Gerlad" and he calls this "Gerald's Metamorphasis" I think is the title of it

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Uh- he's written plays as you indicate and that's his major forté, but he's also written fiction and he's written poetry. Poetry I think was, may have been a first love, what with dramas you know you reach a wider audience

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{Speaker name= Brooks B. Robinson} Yes. Now, how does Soyenka compare with some of the other major writers, African writers, for example [[?]] and [[?]], etcetera.

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{Speaker name= "Jonathan Peters"} Well, Soyenka is primarily a dramatist, and I believe there is no question at all that he is the foremost dramatist in Africa, in Black Africa today. He's written about a dozen or more plays, just off the cuff, and this is unparalleled, not just in quantity of course but also in quality because he's a poet, he's a writer who has evolved over the years. It's difficult I think to make a comparison between a poet and a dramatist, and singer as a poet, or a poet and a novelist and [[?]] is a novelist, but in fact I did make this attempt in the study I wrote on the three writers-

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Mildred Hill-Lubin: I think they all have their strengths they have major interests we cannot I think to a large extent uh identical and so there are differences in their approaches uh actually based on excellence, novelist. I don't think Soyinka is a good novelist in the sense, in that sense because these ideas tend to come across in the kind of complex way his poetic images come in the poetry, so, it's not as accessible as one might want a novelist to be.

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Brooks B. Robinson: Now you're talking about uh his projection of images and and themes maybe.

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Mildred Hill-Lubin: Yes.

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Brooks B. Robinson: Um what are some of the major themes he develops in his writing and does he uh project these themes in all the genres in which he works?

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Mildred Hill-Lubin: To a large extent, yes. I think it's interesting to look at the major ideas that Soyinka has developed at-at least from my perspective, especially when one is talking for an American-an American audience.Uh, It's difficult sometimes for Africans to understand some of Soyinka's position, but if we understand some of the philosophical ideas and the cultural ideas that he has.. I think it makes it very easy to understand what he is doing. I would put these ideas on a number of categories. One is his view of histories. He sees history in terms of a cyclical pattern.. that there is a cycle of history and that this history is a repetition more of balance than it is of creativity, although he does see life in a creative destructive pattern, but there's been a emphasis towards balance in human affairs. And also and this is very important, important when dealing with a non-African audience; he does not see the culprit as European man, as the Whites-

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Brooks B. Robinson: Mhm.

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Mildred Hill-Lubin: -over there. But he see this as a basic tentative human nature that we have a proclivity towards evil and that this is what we see in history-

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[Jonathan Peters] Record of history is a catalog of the wars of mankind where from one generation to another we exploit people. That is the way he has looked at society as a social visionary.

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[Brooks Robinson] Okay. Now you've done extensive studies and analyses of his uh... many works. Uh... is there one thing in particular that uh you found uh... exceptionally exciting or exceptionally interesting as it compares to other writers that are talked about or anything that you really find remarkable?

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[Jonathan Peters] Well I like, first of all, I like so many things about Wole Soyinka cause it's very hard to pinpoint one, but I like the way he has made use of the African concept of time. There's the idea that in Western civilization and culture now that time is linear; you move from today to tomorrow and time moves along that phrase and you can go back and pinpoint the year 1000, and the year and the year 2000, and the year 450 B.C. In the sense that time, time is something which moves in a chronological fashion. In African, in African concepts, the idea is that times, time zones, as it were, exists contemporaneously at the same time. The past, the past is still here, [Brooks Robinson] Mhm. [Jonathan Peters] the present is here and the future is already somewhere in the making. [Brooks Robinson] Mhm. [Jonathan Peters] So that you can move from one area to another. And this is one of the most interesting ideas that Soyinka has developed. This idea that all of these phases exist already. And there's a special ritual that you have to perform to cross the barrier from present life, for instance, to go into the past and you cross that barrier to go into the future. So that idea of time, I think, is very very interesting because we find that there are 2/3 of the world's people, for instance, believe in the idea of reincarnation, that people will be born again, and Soyinka explores this idea, the idea of death...

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[Jonathan Peters] In terms reincarnation, he uses the concept called: abiku child the belief of the Yoruba that a child can be born, die, and be reborn to the same family. So that's the idea of reincarnation and he uses these abiku child as a metaphor of the cycle of violence because the child is born before it can move to maturity, it is- it dies and there is that kind of pattern which we see in life.

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That's a very interesting concept, and I think this is a way in which a creative writer has used very, very, very, imaginatively something which comes from the matrix of culture, religion, and philosophy of his people and I think it destroys- that myth still needs to be destroyed, the myth that Africans had no culture, no philosophy, no religion until the white man came to them and brought his own religion and culture

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[music] You've been listening to Jonathan Peters discuss the life and works of Wole Soyinka. Now an opportunity to hear readings of Soyinka's work. Here's Jonathan Peters reading from Soyinka's "Kongi's Harvest"

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[Jonathan Peters] From Soyinka's play "Kongi's Harvest" and it reads "This is the last our feet shall speak to feet of the dead, and the unborn cling to the hem of our robes we thought the tune obeyed us to the soul, but the drums are newly shaped and stiff arms strain on stubborn crooks, so delve with the left foot for [[?]] the left again for [[?]] once more for- with the left alone, for disaster is the only certainty we know."

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Notice the suggestion about disaster which Soyinka is always talking- [Brooks Robinson] the violence [Jonathan Peters] about. The idea of violence, the idea of tragedy that- a lot of tragedy exists in life and this is because Soyinka saw what was happening to Africa after independence. Instead of-

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Jonathan Peters: It would help all of Africa's peoples. Leaders got themselves entrenched into power and with doing the very same thing that the former masters did.

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Brooks B. Robinson: Yes.

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Jonathan Peters: The whole situation in Africa was one which made Soyinka feel very very pessimistic. And therefore his work, from, say, the road on, seems to be very very pessimistic, sometimes nihilistic and downright atheistic at times.

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Brooks B. Robinson: Yes.

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Jonathan Peters: And the prognosis that he made, the ideas that he had suggested about the disaster which was-- which would ensue, because the same cycle, the same pattern of repetition would follow was, in fact, fulfilled. Nigeria, his country, became involved in a civil war.

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Brooks B. Robinson: Of Course.
Jonathan Peters: In the Nigerian Biafran war and Soyinka himself became a prisoner and was-- and was in prison using trumped up charges which were never formerly presented to keep him in prison during most of the length of the war until he was released.

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Brooks B. Robinson: But he's released now and he's writing again.

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Jonathan Peters: He's released now and he is writing again and my feeling is--

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I've read his most recent works my feeling is in his works now there is a movement beyond that nihilism and therefore he's projecting visions,

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I believe, at this point are of an Africa changing but still the same of an Africa that has a lot of potential for development of an Africa where peoples and cultures intermingle, interface,

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with each other and that hopefully there will be a change because Soyinka believes against the principle of Yuroba cosmology, which does not see a change in the pattern, Soyinka believes that there is a possibility for a change in that cycle of violence and that man can redeem himself from--

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[music] [Speaker: Brooks B. Robinson] You have been listening to the interview on the life and works of Wole Soyinka with Jonathan Peters of the University of Maryland. This has been a literary corner of black writers of the world. Technical assistance provided by Bob Chan. I am Brooks Robinson. The literary corner was made possible by funds from WHA radio in Madison, Wisconsin, a service of the University of Wisconsin extension.

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