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00:09:29
00:11:33
00:09:29
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Transcription: [00:09:29]
[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.

[00:09:58]
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

[00:10:27]
[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"

[00:10:42]
[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."

[00:11:15]
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-

[00:11:33]