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Transcription: [00:05:01]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:05:35]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Now you're talking about uh his projection of images and and themes maybe.

[00:05:42]
{SPEAKER name="Mildred Hill-Lubin"}
Yes.

[00:05:43]
{SPEAKER name="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?

[00:05:51]
{SPEAKER name="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-

[00:07:00]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Mhm.

[00:07:01]
{SPEAKER name="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-

[00:07:07]