Art And Morality In Political Culture (1)
Funmi Tofowomo Okelola
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Art And Morality In Political Culture (1)
Keynote address by Prof. Wole Soyinka at the first international conference on Culture on the theme, ‘Culture and the Challenges of Development in Nigeria’, organised by the Ondo State Ministry of Culture in Akure recently.
QUITE a number of factors – some purely fortuitous – have contributed to my eventual choice of the theme for this address, one which merely re-visits a familiar but clearly inexhaustible territory. Not least of such factors has been the recent seesaw politics of the very state that is hosting this cultural encounter. In the language of the classical drama of the Greeks, the circumstances would be known as peripeteia, or reversal — evocation of that condition need no elaboration for the people of this state. Peripeteia can be both positive or negative, depending on who is on the receiving end.
Another contributory factor, one of the fortuitous, is the fact that, very recently, I have been engaged in translating yet another of the works of the late illustrious novelist, D.O Fagunwa, who happens to be an indigene of this same state. The work in question is IGBO OLODUMARE — the centrality of that undertaking will be apparent as we proceed.
Most important of these factors, however, is that, in about a fortnight, we shall be celebrating what should have been the birthday of yet another indigene of a close neighbour of this state. Since, unfortunately, I shall not be here to share in the commemoration of that posthumous event, I have decided to dedicate this lecture to his memory, as a kind of prelude to the commemorative events. As the title suggests, my remarks straddle two fields that were very close to his heart — politics and art — about both of which he was passionate. Be it the literary arts — poetry especially, the plastic or the performing arts, he was an active partaker and promoter during his life.
There is, however, one more factor to acknowledge, and that is the timing of this event itself, which coincides neatly with the formal flag-off for the next national elections. It drags in its wake the perennial question: Will this be yet another triumph of the uncouth, the barbarian in political culture, or shall we witness some glimmerings of a genuine democratic culture? How much ordered and civilized rivalry shall dominate the proceedings, and/or how much mayhem will be let loose?
News and rumours of rapid recruitment, arming and positioning of thugs filter through every day, with consignments of arms being discovered just in time by the police or immigration. Already, at least one sitting legislator has been murdered, the relations of others kidnapped in circumstances that hint, not at the usual purpose of extracting monetary ransom, but at pressure tactics to make the targeted individual withdraw from the approaching contest.
The leaven of culture in the political dough has been vaporized, while the anti-culture of jungle politics is embraced as the national preference. Unspeakable bestialities are committed to gratify desperate aspirations or self-consolidation. Succeeding generations are being brainwashed into an understanding of politics as the survival of the richest and triumph of the vilest.
One tries and fails to distinguish between fact and fiction, between reality and imagination, between nightmare and the testimony of one’s eyes. Only the facts, the events themselves remain to stare one in the face, and these can be summed up in one dispiriting sentence: after nearly three decades of military autocracy, arbitrary violence and contempt for law, the civilian return has failed to restore basic civility into political proceedings. The law of the jungle prevails, and has received endorsement, in its most uncouth dimensions, at the very pinnacle of governance.
Memories are short; so let me jog yours with a few facts. If this sounds like an exercise in recriminations, so be it; the discerning will, however, also recognize in it a summons to renewal, one that requires a frank confrontation with the truth, a brutal acknowledgement of the malignant face of political existence, and a willingness to identify and isolate the authors of our predicament, including the monsters they have unleashed on the populace, the social deviants they brought into being, nurtured and empowered, and are still very much among us.
The matter is even more dangerous for any community if the original begetters are themselves still at large and in active service, instead of going into a retirement of contrition and self-effacing humility. It is not necessary to give such any names — the facts suffice in themselves without casting a gloom on these proceedings through the very trauma that their names awaken.
Thus, can anyone deny that one, at the very least — one entire state, the seat of Nigeria’s premier university, was handed over, strong-armed into the control a self-acknowledged, boastful King of Thugs who single-handedly sacked a sitting legislature, and with a full complement of the police looking on? Fact or fiction? Was there or was there not connivance and/or endorsement at the very highest level of governance?
Or again, does anyone wish to deny that yet another state was sacked in broad daylight, its public buildings — courts, radio station, legislative house — destroyed, its capital placed under siege for two to three days — again under the watchful eye, the physical presence of the police? And the question yet again: was this done without the active connivance of the very highest level of governance? Fact or fiction?
And what of that confessional exchange that took place in the presence of the man sworn to uphold law and order, sworn to defend the nation’s Constitution, an exchange that went thus:
Electoral godfather: You know you did not win the governorship election?
Embattled Governor: Yes, I do.
Did that dialogue come from the pen of a playwright with an overwrought imagination? Or is it taken from real life? Does the following Solomonic judgment fail to resonate in our ears: ‘You too, go and pay what you owe him’ Now that seems a perfectly logical procedure — you owe, you pay. However, there is a catch. The payment — in case anyone has forgotten — that payment, the basis of the dispute between godfather and protégé, was an illegal payment. It was to come from the state purse for electoral favours, the cashing of pre-signed cheques, not from a personal account but from the state’s very cheque-books. The debtor had, of course, been involved in the high drama of oaths taken in the dead of night, half-naked, kidnapping, imprisonment in a toilet, rescue thanks to a mobile phone, etc, etc. — in short, the kind of fictional drama you might expect from the pen of a Nollywood script writer.
Yes, indeed, these are just two scenarios from the
political culture that has been foisted on the nation during this past decade.
There are many, many more such depressing tales to tell. Since they all give weight to that common saying that ‘Fact is stranger than fiction,’ let us at this stage turn to a straightforward work of imagination that does not pretend to be anything but that, and see how fiction sometimes aspires to fact, especially as an insightful exploration of the psyche and conduct of humanity.
The most famous of Fagunwa’s works, most readers will agree, is OGBOJU ODE NINU IGBO IRUNMALE, which I translated nearly fifty years ago as THE FOREST OF A THOUSAND DAEMONS. At that time, I had resolved to translate nothing less than ALL of Fagunwa’s novels in order to make them accessible to non-Yoruba readers. Based on my translation, there have been others into Italian and French — that’s in case any of you are interested in the language trajectory of this Yoruba novelist. Now, if you are also curious as to why it has taken me nearly half a century to translate another of his works, the answer is very simple: Fagunwa is not an easy writer to translate! After the unexpectedly taxing experience of struggling through the first, OGBOJU ODE, I realised that I had better attend to my own writing — at least for some time — before attempting to tackle another product of that master of the Yoruba language.
I had, of course, read most of Fagunwa’s works as a young man, and I have to assure you that I find myself in good company when I say that I still find OGBOJU ODE the truest expression of Fagunwa’s creative originality and inspiration. Some of his other works are far too sententious, too preachy, over-loaded with moralising, much of it repetitious. The reasons for this, however, are worth acknowledging: it is useful to remind ourselves of the environment of the genesis of such works from time to time.
Fagunwa was a product of a remarkable phase in African socio-cultural transformation. Ours has been, from time immemorial, a densely mythological culture. That culture had been bombarded by the creative values of another, and in a most imperious way. It had become entangled in their confident explications of human existence and purpose, transmitted, most penetratingly, through religious literature and iconic representations — and by iconic, I refer to
pictorial representations of saints, angels, demons, heroes both historic and fictional, kings and queens, and even folkloric figures in children’s narratives — fairies, gnomes, elves, witches, goblins, Jack and the Bean Stalk etc. — those sorts of images. Such fictional mixed baggage of exoticism and ethical intent permeated virtually every facet of literary instruction, and was extremely seductive for its time. For those at the receiving end, but of a creative bent, a new nourishment, a new awareness of both social and imaginative formulation, not omitting the spiritual, had to be fashioned from this assailed template of an original cultural self-sufficiency, now rendered increasingly insecure.
Such was the background material of Fagunwa’s literary and religious education. He also drew inspiration from archetypes of the literature of the Quest — which is common to nearly all cultures we know of: man in search the very meaning of existence, man in search of wisdom, man in search of salvation — personal or communal — man in search of the philosopher’s stone that held the key to all existential conundrums.
Each protagonist of Fagunwa’s novels — but most transparently Akara-ogun and Irinkerindo — became localised variations on the theme of the pilgrim, such as in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, with some coloration from other literature of Quests including the Greek Odyssey. Fagunwa was quite upfront about this. His protagonists — or else the figures that his questing champions encounter in their adventures — constantly had a ‘message’ for the black race. That message was invariably bound in ethical precepts, and those
precepts were largely drawn from biblical moralities. This is what is responsible for the compulsive preacher in D.O. Fagunwa.
From the word ‘go’, Fagunwa’s literary Muse was one with that mission of improving the moral outlook of his fellow men and women, of imbuing the black race with a sense of destiny. Is it not interesting — barely two weeks ago, at a conference in Oshogbo, our own mimic Akara-ogun was heard breast-beating over the need for the moral upliftment of the black race etc, etc. Back to Fagunwa. Now, he was the genuine article, a ‘social critic’ before the expression became current, resentful of the warping of traditional mores, the rise of a mimic bourgeoisie, the confusion in the minds of the nouveaux-riches — which made his moralizing somewhat ambiguous, since he was clearly not averse from extolling the virtues of riches as a quest worth pursuing. The reward of each successful adventure appeared to be wealth, infinite riches.
Underlying Fagunwa’s purpose, however, was the impulse to re-interpret, augment, and hopefully reconcile his antecedent
world of traditional values with Christian teachings — traditional values such as respect of wives for their husbands, of children for their parents, pupils for their teachers, the individual for the community. Nearly every encounter, every episode in his protagonist’s adventures lends itself to a moralistic extract, if not in the action itself, then in the depiction of one character or another, sometimes simply through the strategy of character contrasts.
Well, so much for a reminder of what Fagunwa tried to achieve through his riveting tales of encounters with the iwin, ebora, anjonnu, and other forms of abami eda, to whom I generically invented the word ‘ghommid’ in my translation of OGBOJU ODE, a neologism that I have also carried into IGBO OLODUMARE, in order to preserve some continuity. Faced with the same problem, as I was when he undertook the translation of IRINKERINDO NINU IGBO ELEGBEJE, Dapo Adeniyi — I was gratified to note — has also continued the tradition of what I called ‘inventive naming ceremonies’ in order to find English equivalents for the inhabitants of Fagunwa’s universe, most of whom are unknown to the English and other languages. All that, by the way.