CHAPTER FOUR

NIGERIAN INTERCULTURALISM -PHASE ONE :

WOLE SOYINKA'S THE LION AND THE JEWEL

Like India, Nigeria has a unique culture and historyt

Geographically Nigeria on the West coast of Africa is a

naturally well-endowed nation with a long experience of

migrations and invasions. Her more painful trials and

tribulations began with her contact with European nations and

their utterly reprehensible trade in human lives. From 1442

onwards, the whole continent of Africa found itself at the

mercy of the marauders of live human beings, with Nigeria

bearing a heavy brunt of the" inhuman trade "

Though many European countries had stakes in the African

slave venture. England had the dubious distinction of being

the world's leading nation in the business. The Quaker-led

anti-slavery movement in England and the arduous efforts of

William Wilberforce, at long last, led to a law forbidding

slavery being passed in Britain in 1807 and in the colonies

in 1833.

Africa's unhappiness did not end in 1807 however;

Britain merely proceeded from enslaving individuals to

enslaving countries. The foreign hand began to go into the

interior now, whereas during the slave-trade they had

274
operated from coastal settlements using greedy African

mercenaries to scout for slaves from among their own people

for them. To be a colonial power necessitated venturing into

Africa. British exploration into the insides of "Dark Africa"

began in 1856, with Sir Richard Burton and J.H.Speakes'

journey to the mouth of the Niger. Missionaries like David

Livingstone, followed the explorers within. It did not take

long for the colonialists - business associations and

government interests - to penetrate into Africa and establish

spheres of influence.

In the battle for Africa,Britain with her longer

experience in colonialism ( as in India) and sophistication

in political manouevring, managed to outwit the other

countries. To prevent Europeans from fighting amongst

themselves,the Berlin Conference was organised in 1885 which

helped Britain to consolidate her influence. No single

African was present at the conference. where Africa was

carved into pieces, with Britain getting the maximum slice of

the African cake, including Nigeria.

Nigeria was believed to have been first explored by

Lord Lugard. Inspite of attempts by Portugese, Dutch, French

and other European colonial interests, Britain kept

steadily (as in India) increasing and consolidiating their

powers here. By 1849, the British influence had been

275
established firmly but it was in 1885 with the setting up of

the Oil Rivers Protectorate that operations were regularised.

It was extended to become the Nigerian Coast Protectorate in

1893.

The British annexed what is today the Nigerian

capital, Lagos, in 1861. With their hold on this centre of

palm oil trade. the British gradually expanded their

influence onto the adjacent Yoruba mainland of Western

Nigeria.

Acquisition of the interior of Nigeria was accomplished

by Sir George Galahad, founder of the Royal Niger Company in

1849. From 1849 onwards, this company, like the Indian East

India Company, began to expand so rapidly, building trade

centres. forts, churches, hospitals and schools, that the

British Government felt constrained to intervene and assume

direct control with the establishment of the Protectorate of

Nothern Nigeria from Jan 1, 1900.

It was as late as in 1914, when Britain entered the

First World War, ( a war in which Nigerian soldiers,1 ike

their Indian counterparts, were made to fight, and in which

they acquitted themselves valiantly), that the separate

administrative units were amalgamated into the colony and the

Protectorate of Nigeria with Sir Frederick followed by Lord

276
Lugard as Governor General. It is "for creating this unity

that Britain termed itself as the founder of Nigeria. Even

Chinua Achebe acknowledged that " It created a big political

unit where stood autonomous communities before " .

Except for the slave-history, Indian and Nigerian

colonial experiences have considerable similarities. The tall

British claims, the fac^ade of a company, the ruthlessness of

the operators V>lBrs ^11 alike; only Britain was establishing

herself in Nigeria as a colonial master when India had

already initiated her freedom struggle. The Indian experience

being behind them, the British evolved a colonial strategy in

Nigeria that has been termed " Indirect rule", which was to

prove extremely rewarding and less taxing for them. Here,

Britain ruled the country, using the influence and the

institution of the Chiefs for their own ends. Turning the

traditional leaders loose on their own people by catering to

their greed,ego and jealousies was a well thought out British

ploy. This policy is believed to have left Nigeria less

exploited as compared to the French African nations but it

created such a fund of goodwill and respect in Nigerian

hearts for Britain and her culture, that it made

decolonisation of the mind difficult. What was worse was that

it left Nigeria with a heavy cross of memories of self-

betrayai, petty rivalries, internecine hatreds, and acts of

treason by their own leaders against themselves.

277
 This mode had the additional advantage of ensuring

logevity for British rule. By a promise " to strengthen your

[the Chiefs] authority and that of the lawjof the land and to

perpetuate your customj... in so far as this does not stand

2
in the way of what is iust and good", the latter being

determined by Britain; England had effectively exploited

inter~ emirate rivalry and their psycho-material weakness to

her advantage. Also,she made herself indispensable to them.

This method in addition also meant less investment of Britain

in terms of money, men and material.

Many methods and many kinds of relationships Wgre

designated by the amorphous heading of "Indirect Rule". It

was as Heussler puts it, " a matter of situations, no two

were alike ^. That Indirect Rule was an output of England's

Indian experience is embodied bv the fact that Nigeria's

first head had been in India. The precedents of Indirect Rule

3.r-^ actually many. It was an amorphous selection from the

aggregate of attitudes and habits growing out of Britain's

total experiences abroad. The British had fewer illusions

than the French about European acculturation or of the

necessity of "assimilating" their subjects whom they actually

meant to exploit. isolate and keep agrarian and

technolooically backward.

278
 Indirect rule did not mean ineffective or lax British

control - it was she who dictated the successor for example

of an emir. " Nothing could be done without or contrary to

the District Officer really ", though they had made it seem

as if British hands rested loose on the reins of power. Its

seeming elasticity was its strength. On the one hand. it

effected" an evolutionary process in which European

technology and modes of thought steadily eroded African ideas

and forms". while at the same time ensuring that the

Nigerian people were held back by giving them very little

economic development and democratic education. In other

words it took away from Nigerians their traditions and sense

of well-being while giving them a glimpse of the other world.

The idea was to make them feel inferior and ensure that they

kept coming to the British for more. Only those aspects of

tradition were retained which suited British interests. The

disruption that colonialism created was so subtle, yet

comprehensive and total that no aspect of life was spared.

Nnaemeka describes the British imposed governmental and

institutional structures as "designed for an alien domination

and control over the entire life of the indigenous population

rincludingl political.economic and cultural communication".

a desian and function that they performed admirably well.

The first-and the- target institution-that collapsed

under colonialism was the traditional self-sufficient

279
economy. Control of production and market had to be effected

to keep Nigeria in check. Agrarian Nigeria had to be turned

into one large market for British goods and supplier of raw

materials for their industries. To effect this, the whole

system had to be overhauled.

The introduction of materialism and capitalism as

envisaped. uoset the balance radically. Nigerian farmers were

coerced and caioled into cultivating cash crops which

destroyed the self sufficiency of whole villages. The class

divide- a feature hardly evident in pre-British Nigeria-

appeared and grew. Also with preferential tariffs for British

firms. native industries and enterpreneurship were

discouraged. Agriculture and economy in short were so

manipulated that Britain could exploit the Nigerian land and

its oeoDle thoroughly.

The colonial assault on Nigerian cultural organisation

was no less potent. Infact, the cultural factor is closely

linked in Nigeria (as in all colonial nations, but more so in

Africa) with socio-economic policies. The link in the control

of economic production with control of culture has been

dilated on by Amilcar Cabral. He pointed out how colonialism

sustains itself :

by the permanent organised repression of the cultural

life of the people concerned ...Tby] takCing] up arms

280
 to destrov or atleast to neutralise and paralyse

their cultural life. For as long as part ai that

people can have a cultural life, foreign domination

cannot be sure of its perpetuation .

There might not have been a special institution

for colonial assimilative administration like the Parisian

Ecole Col. in London, but the British hold on Nigerian

culture was far from ineffective. The Nigerians were made to

believe that " they 'must accept' modern civilisation or

oerish". The colonial British further asserted that "the

African There, Niqerianl has no choice because he has no

cultural traditions of his own, no religion. economic or

political background worthy of serious attention and

g
certainly no history, glory in the creative arts" . By

instil lino a culture complex in the Nigerian, the aim was to

assume the role of an eternal provider and reduce the

Nigerians to grateful acceptors and permanent receivers.

The Britisher's seeming policy of cultural laissez

faire was effective because it appeared loose, disinterested

and unforced. By operating from the master's position and by

using experience-evolved tactics.the acculturation Britain

achieved was deep and lasting. As it appeared optional, the

Nigerian wish to be Anglicised increased proportionately. The

policy was so successful that in the lonp run, its success

281
boomeranged on the British. The Nigerian/ desire to be

comoletelv like their rulers became so Dowerful that they

began to demand large scale modernisation and

industrialisation . demands that the British were loathe to

satisfy, aware as they were that it would lead to a loosening

of their political hold. But the process was inevitable.

Cultural encounters,it is true. are natural to

colonial experiences. Heussler describes colonialism as a :

cjuestion of intercul tural exchanges of lasting long

range importance to the study of men and society than

the transitory political aspects of colonialism with

o
which we arB more preoccupied ... .

Colonialism is however far from exchange, it

becomes instead a forcible foisting of the victor culture

over the vanguished. The colonial pressure gradually takes up

all the spatial geography of the mind of the colonized. The

visibility of colonial institutions and apparatuses of power

is perhaps designed for this very purpose. In addition to

"the imposing government offices are barracks and

cantonments, the church and the schoolroom" .

The Church and the missionaries served very

effectively to propagate an imperial culture through service-

oriented and public acculturation oroarammes. It is

282
noteworthy that the Church had supported slavery. Even with

colonialiBm. the missionaries helped to impose and endorse

theories and notions that strengthened imperial structures

and which have been designated by the term "Schweitzerism."

Schweitzerism may be de-fined as the creation of an Africa of

myth, of a primaeval paradise, vestige, land of cornucopia,

that reauired White intervention. Between curiosity and

mystifcation, fable and imposed image, Africa became more

distant. To the colonialist mind, Africa was a continent

that could easily be understood because the Africans were

considered simple-minded." Under^^tanding him and controlling

him want hand in hand "11 . they thought . when they had

neither understood him. nor could hope to comprehend their

cu1ture.

It is possible that the missionary who left the

comforts of Europe might have been very earnest about his

mission in Africa. But he was co-opted by the colonial

machinery in teaching the convert that being a good Christian

meant a rejection of his country,his past and his roots. As

Nqugi puts it, " The European settler robbed people of their

land and the product of their sweat, the missionary robbed

people of their soul. Thus was the African body and soul

bartered away for thirty pieces of silver and the promise of

a European heaven" 12 . It is also significant that

missionaries often became landowners and did their best to

28:
block nationalist movements. They tried to soothe their

ruffled flock with declarations that their present

unhaDpiness meant their future well-being, and a happy after-

life when they ought to have been ruffled themselves by the

exploitation of their flock by their compatriot colonialists.

The missionaries actually did more for British

colonialism than serve as . SOP5 for British consciences.

Their contribution was acknowldeged thus," The Bible is now

doing what we could not do with our spears" . It is not

surprising to note therefore that missionaries preceded,

accompanied and remained after the colonial period was over.

The services rendered by the missionaries gave the colonisers

important talking points to Justify colonial rule. The British

"gift" of health for example through the government supported

church activities and missionary hospitals was much trumpeted,

But as Achebe rightly points out, even if colonialism had

given some gifts to Nigeria. " if the attitudes are wrong,

then a whole lot of other things go awry. Depending on how it

is given a gift could become an insult and a juicy morsel turn

to oall" ^^.

Traditional religion and indigenous value systems were

seriously undermined by Christian ideology. The blow to

Nigerian religion was perhaps more than in India,

(significantly its revival was to become a part of the anti-

284
colonial struggle later). But the British could hardly rest

content with this: they supplemented their work here by

imposing an educational system that would lead to Nigerians

forever looking up to their world for a pattern of life. In

keeoing with the mvth of the "White Man's Burden" of

resDonsibi1ity.the colonialist loved to believe ;

in his peerless oretentiousness ... that he has been

the first and sole educator of black Africa, that the

dark continent was peopled with barbaric tribes of

illiterates and savages until the white man came

along, that literacy and the writing skill, in

particular were first imported by his selfless

executions as part of his civilizing mission .

The British educational system completed what

reliqious and economic subversion had left incomplete. The

colonial educational system supplanting traditional

principles emphasised the British values that England wanted

Niaerians to absorb. Colonial education was not only

irrelevant,it made the Nigerian, a White Man's subservient

Qo-between. It taught him a distorted history. In short

education made him ashamed of being a Nigerian. Colonial

education is intimately linked with racism as it was racism

that prompted their being taught that his was a shameful

history. To quote Ngugi :

285
 Like Prospero, the European coloniser instinctively

knew and feared the threat posed by men with

confidence in their own past and heritage. Why else

should he devote his military might, his religious

fervour and his intellectual energy to denying that

the African had true gods, had a culture, had a

significant past? .

Language is the most important defining force of

culture and identity. It is crucial to the creation of a

society. As colonial education was imparted in an alien

language, it helped to imprison the Nigerian intellectual in

an imported mental space. It collaborated with the bullet to

create total subjugation in Nigerians. The use of English was

aimed at making him Euro-centric and prevent him from

evolving his own self-definition in his community, time and

space. His own culture, sociology and philosophic concepts

were to be presented to him as primitive, savage to instil a

cultural complex. It was intended to and did create in

addition, an elite who were what Cabral calls the "lackey or

lapdoQS of the Whites" ^^.

In their urge to disown their people and eagerness to

flaunt their mastery ower the British language and etiquette,

the elite reduced themselves to caricatures. Their culture

became a matter of using forks and knives and speaking about

their experiences in Britain.

286
 It is another matter that the English language itself

became the vehicle of Nigeria's cultural renaissance . The

Nigerian Caliban not only become bilingual, but also learnt

to use and transform Prospero's language in such a way that

Prospero found himself unable to control it. If the lack of a

script had made imposition of English easier and more lasting

in Nigeria it also ensured that the British could not erase

the culture, transmitted as it was through oral memory and

imagination. It is for this reason that two cultures existed

side by side in Nigeria, and its intellectuals could resist

to some extent, Europe's colonial literary imperialism when

their consciousness was aroused.

The absence of traditional learning in the syllabi

came to be soon decried. This,in turn, led to the springing up

of "bush schools" which encouraged nationalist consciousness.

On the other side learning Romantic poetry made Nigerians not

only romanticise their past, but desire the same "liberty"

and intellectual freedom for themselves.

Another factor that hastened Nigeria's breaking into

nationalist consciouness was Britain's blatant racism.If

there was one defining attribute for British colonialism in

Nigeria that expressed itself in all spheres of policy, it

was racism. Even the most liberal of colonialists harboured a

287
sense of White superiority. Schweitzer himself had in his

famous statement voiced the paternalistic sentiment , "The

African is my brother" he said," but my younger brother,

Untold indignities and countless insults were heaped on

Nigerians for the colour of their skinj. Try as they might and

achieve as they may great attainments and high levels of

acculturation they were not still treated as equals. In other

words. while they were asked to disown their culture, they

were not in return, accepted as black skinned Englishmen. The

French Dolicy of assimilation did hold out greater promise,

though it too was observed more in the breach, of beinc

accepted as black Frenchmen. In the British controlled

African empire though, it was made clear and continuously

driven home that they could never ever become Englishmen.

While on one hand, it meant that British Africans including

Nigerians were comparatively less indoctrinated than French

Africans. it also served to alienate the middle-class elite

who sustained the British empire. The British racist policy

was aimed at convincing the Nigerian that because he was

dark. he was inherently incapable of governing himself and

should therefore accept, if not welcome the British governing

presence. When the middle-class elite found it impossible to

accent their self-definition as "half devil, half child "

(Kipling), rebellion began. It was because racism blocked his

avenues of growth and injured his self-esteem that he decided

to link himself with his own culture again. The linking of

288
the Intel 1ingentsia with the rural and the lower clasBes

where indigenous culture had survived helped in the launching

of the counter movement to White.racist, "superior"

assumptions. If colonialism had been an act of culture,the

process of recovery and liberation was an act of culture too.

This was what the ethnocentric movement of culture called

Negritude was reallv all about.

Negritude was the seeking of self and identity by

shaping group consciousness and re-affirming Africanness. It

was as Senqhor describes it. "the sum total of the values of

the African world "18 . It was a proclamation to the world

that their culture was special in answer to those who said

they had none. It was also a declaration to the world that

black power was born and that black was beautiful. It was a

refutation of Descartes' primacy to intellect ( "I think,

therefore I am ") to a proud assertion of their capacity to

feel ( "I feel, therefore I am" ) . "Emotion is Negro," they

declared "as reason is Greek" 19 . The African was delineated

here as a man of dance, rhythm and song. He was described as

intuitive rather than analytical, spiritual rather than

materialistic.

Negritude is both sub}ective and objective- it is an

act of becoming by black people. It is a militant assertion of

their autonomous existence and independent humanity, after

289
centuries of opDressive slave trade and European colonialism.

Inspired bv the urge to answer those who had reduced him to a

beast because he was Negro: he declared himself "noble", even

if primitive and superior thereby to the supposed depravity of

the White man. African communal ism and brotherhood was

further championed against a supposed selfish individualism

and debilitating nuclearisation.

Negritude was the movement towards the source. It

created a historical "myth of a created, usable past, a

counter myth to White Western myth. Fit was to be] The rich

black past of alory of mediaev^al empires ..." . It was the

^^

creation of a black mystique, a drawing upon traditions,

philosophy and indigenous artistic techniques and

inqredients. It was myth and also dream. As Nkosi declared,

Negritude was "an explorgition of the collective dreams of

black men, who had only just awakened [or were awakening]
from the niohtmare of colonialism " 21

Negritude had the power to transform through the mind.

It was shot through by the spirit of Romanticism. Geoffrey

Hunt sees it as a cultural response to collective insecurity

born of a society in transition 22

It confirmed their internal unity. Negritude developed

in other words a pan-African perspective. No wonder the

movement surged through all the various states of Africa and

290
beyond. In its search -for racial unity, Negritude became

pluralistic and comprehansive-an act of unified black faith.

Negritude also became chauvinistic and culturally

exclusive. As it was an effort to "rehabilitate Africa by

what can be termed as an 'ethnological' aspect ...Titl

attempted to redefine its terms and to revaluate Africa

within a non-Western framework. Here the concept of cultural

relativity was to help in sustaining a campaign whose purpose

was to establish the validity of African cultural forms in

their own right " ". Emphasis on African animism was

therefore natural in a movement that indicated and exalted

all the cultural institutions that were different from the

West. But that does not mean Negritude was either

anthropological or a going backwards in time. For as Achebe

points out that would imply " they were forward before" 24 . It

is rather a deproqrammina to some measure of Western

infusions. Born as a movement to counter Western racism, it

came close to becomina an anti-racist racist movement.

What is to be observed is that Western racism was

equally psychological in its need to "set Africa as a foil to

Europe, a place of negations at once remote and vaguely

is^milidir in which Europe's own state of spiritual grace will

be manifest "25 . Africa was " to Europe as the picture Twals

to Dorian Gray — a carriE-r on to whom the master unloads his

291
physical and moral depravities, so that he may go forward

erect and immaculate," 26 reassured that his own civilization

is neither fragile nor unworthy.

The felt need for an equal dialogue and debate with

the West might have been one of the self-conscious impulses

behind Negritude. But the Negritudinist<, were not trying to

reform only Westen ideas of Africa. Even when it communicated

"the unsDoken aspirations of a whole continent" 27 , there was

a tragic tension as Sartre had rightly deciphered in the

movement that was caught between " a nostalgic past in which

...Cit3 cannot completely enter and a future where it will

give way to new values" 28

Negritude was not only an intellectual

movement."....Its role as the ideological spearpoint of

African nationalism "29 had a profound significance in the

cultural and social evolution of Africa. The political

component of Negritude and the nationalistic movement into

which it naturally gave way makes it " an African crise de

conscience, and ...[al watershed " that marks the emergence

of modern Africa itself. Negritude was thus both an effect

and a strategy of decolonisation.

Leopold Sedar Senghor. later President of Senegal.was

one of the founding fathers of the movement. The African-

Negritude movement is believed to have begun when he met Aime

292
Cesaire of Martiniaue in Paris in 1934 during his stay there.

The term Negritude was first used in a Negro student

newspaper, "negre" itself having become a reactive term of

defiance and aggressiveness. It was envisaged as a

retaliation to the shame that had been hitherto heaped on the

Blacks down the ages. The movement actually originated

outside Africa among expatriate African slave descendents in

the West Indies to whom Africa was a concept, a myth, a place

where they had never been and which fhey did not really know.

Negritude also traces its links to Marcus Garvey's Negro

Zionism, the Cuban Negrismo Movement and the Haitian

Revolution. The African-American movement in America was both

inspired by and inspired the African-Negritude movement.

African American Negritude is believed to have begun in the

1920's: and the second phase of the movement is believed to

have been pronouncedly influenced by the African arm.

Negritude, in short was a coming to consciousness of Blacks

all over the world.

Leopold Senghor meant man»y things to many people. In

his concept of Negritude, Arabism, Greek Classicism, Marxism

and Humanism went in. A poet of passion and technical skill,

he declared, "Those who colonised us justified our politcal

and economic dependeance by the theory of tabula rasa : we

had, they assessed, invented nothing, written nothing. We had

neither carved, painted, nor sung" 31 . Though his theory was

29:
neither -factual nor a scientific demonstration of African

Dersonality and social organisation, but more of a personal

interpretation: he exhibited a political awareness that was

an implicit part of the movement's cultural offensive. His

writing in French and deep respect for France combined with

his greater concern with the place of the black man in the

world. than with actual mobilisation of the masses for a

political purpose have caused his detractors to condemn him

as a Black Frenchman or a French African. But that perhaps

does injustice to his literature, philosophy and politics;

though it is undeniable that he has not been entirely

unaffected by French cultural myths.

Aime Cesaire of Martinioue, the other founder-

propounder, is credited by Dathorne for having "humanised

Negritude. releasing it from prescriptive codification and

establishing it as an informed forum for poets ...with him

Negritude became not only a long catalogue of hurt but an

inventory of hope" . He asserted his blackness against all

external intrusions claiming further that the black man's

suffering had made him more human. This surrealism and

communism apart, there is in his rediscovery of Africanness

"a pagan fetish that was weird and fanciful" "'"\ He. in his

Discourse on Colonial ism 34 highlighted how colonial

activity and institutions dehumanise the people. He dilated

on how the relation of submission-domination that colonialism

inflicts and nationalism seeks to overturn create a flux in

294
self-definition and self-identity.

Each African thinker who entered the movement has

contributed to it adding further layers and dimensions to

Neqritude. The world events-like the first world war-had

Drovided oroof to the African that the White Man was neither

infallible nor self-sufficient. The Russian revolution and

the Marxist experiment with their ideology of equality and

dictatorship of the proletariat gave further impetus to the

movement. The whole of Africa came under the tremendous spell

of the passions and ideology of the movement.

It was when the Negritude movement was gathering

momentum that Akinwande Dluwole Soyinka was born and spent

his impressionable years. Soyinka was born on 13th of July,

1934 at Abeokuta to O.Idanre, a rector and lya Oluwole, who

took part in Nigeria's first women's movement. A Christian by

religion. and a Yoruban by race. Soyinka had both cultures

working on him from childhood. He grew up to a sense of

awareness of two worlds and the need to loin them. Even as a

child (as is recorded in Ake).Soyinka tried to reconcile the

two worlds by imagining an egungwu of St.Peter.Ruth

H.Lindberq views the difference between the child whose

experiences a^re being narrated and the adult narrating as a

child in Ake as a metaphor for the cultural gap, the play of

power between colonizer and colonized, pointing out that f

'"''the child narrator does not always manage to overrun British

295
cultural hegemony ... The Christian world takes o\'er his

imagination and cultural oaradigms ...Western thought

disrupts the rules of recognition in the discourse of the

African oast and present, class and cultural geography,

border between self and community^l 35

Soyinka who went to a Christian school and to

Government College, Ibadan was not unaware that he was

different from others.Ake is the record of how Soyinka

proceeded from being a colonial subject, a nascent, political

person, a hybrid intellectual to a "gbohun gbohun". As he

describes himself in the book : " I am made unlike anyone I

have ever met: I will venture to say that I am like no one

else in the whole world "^ .

Soyinka's bicultura1 ism made him different and enabled

him to see beyond the simplifications of Negritude. His five

years stay at Leeds University and in London after college,

his colonial education and knowledge of English literature on

one hand and his love and insight into his own culture on the

other, made him see into the falsifications of Negritude. He

could see Negritude as being too simplistic, narcissistic,

racist and impractical-what Nigeria needed was to feed the

hungry and build roads, not an ideology that would take her

to a dead end. Negritude might have helped to define African

culture but as seemed too obvious to Soyinka, it merely

296
endorsed the view of Africa as the "Other" to the West.

Creatina a religion of colour, speaking of a return to what

was a retrogade. warring tribalism was merely erecting a wall

of exoticism that would prevent Africa's real integration

with the world. The contrasting of a supposed Negro

emotivity, with White rationalitv,would only ensure black

subordination and create split personalities. As Soyinka

points out. " thev (the Negritudionist) merely replaced the

primal beast for the primal child" "* .

Overall. the Anglophone Africans having been less

divorced from their roots and always conscious of their

tribal past, had a lesser need than the Francophone-Africans

to go into the past. They may well find many of the premises

of the Francophone-inspired movement artificial and

outmoded. It was to them half-caste, not sufficiently African

and what was worse. a cheap exoticisation of their

traditions. The Anglophone Negritudinist was therefore

critical of what he saw as an attempt at the Frenchification

of Africa. He condemned the proponents of the Movement as

"alienated vicitims of French brainwashing," and their Africa

as beinq " the Africa of Paris efficiency apartments" . He

was also against the large-scale Marxification of Africa.He

did not want a substitution of the colonial ideology with a

European ideology. Also , he did not even in the Marxist

sense, find Negritude revolutionary enough; it did not give

him what he wanted. It seemed rather like a soporifier a

297
collective dream, -from which the African must wake fast for

their own good.

Though the whole of Africa did respond to Negritude it

was reacting to different aspects of it. If the South African

Negritudinist was concerned with apartheid and blackness,the

French Negritudinist with assimilation and blackness, the

British Negritudinist was concerned with the encounter of

39

traditional African life with the West , The Anglophone

Negritudinist in his work therefore expressed the tension

between the old the new, between the pull of the indigenous

oral traditions and the push of his Anglicised upbringing and

knowledge of English literary traditions. In charting this

new line. West (largely Anglophone) Africa and especially

Nigeria played a pioneering role.

The Anglophone Negritudinist, though he was

comparitively open in mind compared to his Francophone

counterpart may however be seen to be still harbouring

illusions and an ideology that believed that :

since our past has been vilified by imperialism and

since our imperialist education has tried to equip us

with all manners of absurd views and reactions to our

past, we do need to reclaim and rehabilitate

our,,,past, to repossess virtue and enter history to

298
 acquire a secure launching pad into our future 40

It was Soyinka who administered a corrective to

take Nigeria with him towards a synthesis with Britain rather

than confrontation, that is towards interculturalism. It was

his thesis that African culture can take pride (pn its past

without feeling at the same time, an urge to renounce Western

culture. Nigeria ought to lay claim to a global pool of

cultural achievements, not lust its own. The marriage of

native and alien traditions had to be free and equal with no

complexes colouring the vision, complexes which Anglophone

Negritudunists, inspite of its attempts could not resist.

Soyinka'5 cosmopolitanism and eclecticiBm in other words mads

him see that Negritude was a movement without a future.

Soyinka was not the only one to condemn Negritude.

Mphahlele described it as a mere " intel ligctual pastime of the

governing elite" 41 . While Ousmene Sembene went so far as to

say that "those who preach Negritude most ardently are often

most closely allied with those who profit from African

backwardness" 42
-^. Negritude was gradually being seen as a

handmaid of imperialism, and an aspect of the

autocoionisation of Africa. Negritude might have been the

breast plate of the African against imperial culture but.

there was a gradual realisation that if African culture was

worth anything at all "it should not require myths to prop it

299
up "^^. What was more dangerous, was that Negritude was

becoming a cult. As Christopher Okigbo points out, " where

you have this African feeling summoned up for the occasion,

put on like Sunday clothing, you have a bastardisation of the

idea of Negritude" 44

Though a host of eminent African writers including

Nigerians, had spoken ill of Negritude it was Wole Soyinka

who bore much of the brunt of the atavaistic fury of the

indigenists. In his refusal to join their camp, they saw a

"generation of opportunities lost for cultural liberation

..." 45 . What invited the maximum ire was his formulation and

commitment to what is called "Neo-Negritude."

Neo-Negritude was an attempt to restore balance to

African life and letters. Soyinka recognised the importance

of Negritude as a phase of growth, which Africans had however

to learn to outgrow. A habit and concept of convenience,

Soyinka did not want Africans to make what was a defence and

denial of cultural imperialism a permanent aspect of African

personality. He was only declaring that one ought to see the

individual and not the Negro in the African when he made his

famous quip :" A Tiger does not proclaim his tigritude; you

know it when he pounces ... The duiker does not proclaim his

duikertude - you see it in his elegant leap.." . Thus was

outlined both the bold refusal by Soyinka to turn his back on

500
other cultures, as also his refusal to proclaim his Negritude

from the rooftops.

Soyinka's Neo-negritudinist stance went beyond the

fallacies of Negritude. It was in a sense, a natural

evolution and a new, broadened Negritude movement. He was

aware of the various phases through which Negritude and the

African personality had passed before it came to the present.

In "Cross Currents," Soyinka describe^ how the writer begins

with ethnic submission, where, in the portrayal of the drama

of the cultural encounter, he dismissed his own. It was this

attitude of the elite and their writings that prompted the

emergence of what he calls the second category. This group

embodied the "Cartesian response" of Negritude. It was the

phase of Black affirmation where the black man was declared a

man of dance, rhythm and song; not a man of technology, reason

and rationalism. This simplified view was challenged by, in

Soyinka's opinion, the unfortunately "unmediated exposition"

of writers like Achebe who were content to portray a tragic

passage of history in their work while dealing with his

society and history at the moment of its encounter with the

European; while avoiding the denigration of the imported

culture, and [even while] presenting the weaknesses of their

own they eschewed passing a judgement on it. A fourth category

is identified as operating through stylistic bridges,

constructing a synthesis between black and white humanism and

technology. He declared this assumption to be as fallacious

301
55 the previous and yet another evasion of the inward eye.

This stance, was born in his opinion from a sense of

inadequacy and was indicative of a lack of standing among

his own people. They in his opinion, are only another side

to the frame of mind that had inspired the traditional

Negritudinist. In his own words, " the movement which began

with the war-cry of the revolution ... has found a latter day

successor in a call to be the bridge to bring about the

salvation of the world by a marriage of abstractions" 47

Soyinka's Neo-Negritude was different in that it did

not turn its back on the West or on Science. There could be

no "back to the womb " movement into innocence but only a

growth into greater knowledge. An identification of science

with the European present and mysticism with the African past

was simplistic. Soyinka rejected the idea that Science was a

Western phenomenon. This is where he was different from those

he termed as the fourth category of the Negritudinists.

Soyinka's Neo-Negritude viewed the past with balance

without mythifying or glamorising it like the fanatic

Negritudinist. It acknowledged that the past too had its own

play of power, that in tribal society community subsumed the

individual. The past was thus both a source of weakness as

much as of strength. It had to be admitted that it was the

inherent weakness of society that caused the rain to beat

302
down on them. A return to the past was neither possible nor a

solution to the problems of the present. It was only

escapist.

It was not as if Soyinka did not prize his heritage,

only he was more concerned with the future. His interest in

the past was only for its relationship to the future. His

African world was his source of strength, inspiration and

philosophy. But it was different from the Negritudinist's

Africa in that it was heterogeneous and pluralistic . As Bern

Lindfors points out :

There are different African experiences too, not only

one. Neither is there only one American or British

experience. I think people might take an effort to

define what is specifically African and there maybe a

certain way of life or philosophical attitude or

something which sets him apart ... The circumstances

are so varied in different part of Africa...It's an

extraordinary melange of different cultures, and it is

therefore exceedingly difficult to extricate one

single phenomenon which one can identify as

undoubtedly African... You can find exceptions [even

to colonialism]. The experience of certain areas of

colonialism has been very different from the

others^^.

In other words, Lindfors felt that though

colonialism did serve as a thread oi commonality in African

literature, it is wrong to impose uniformity and limited

definitions into it. Soyinka himself dismisses the concept of

pan-A'^fieinism thus, " What i^ black? What is Africa ? What

is pan ? 1 mean we all know the frying pan, we are right

inside it. But we leap into the fire direct when we come to

define pan-something or the other" 49 . In reality, while being

specifically rooted in the Yoruban world which he knows

best, Soyinka yet manages to sweep the whole world inu the

breadth of his vision. Though he is dismissive of pan-

Africanism, he believes in universal ism. As he put it, "Drama

and the arts do not obey the laws of political boundaries,

though they might respond to the events within.,,.,[they find]

rapport with audiences far from their natural linguistic

boundaries " .

The artist in the Neo-Negritudinist scheme of things

has a momentous role to play. This role is different from the

Negritudinist writers. His duty is to truth rather than myth,

reality than dream. He views the past impartially, his

characters do not reveal humanity to be "an inherent

possession of Africans, nor do they associate the ethical

life exclusively with traditional ways "51 . His concern is to

prepare his people for the future. While reasserting the

uniqueness and the dignity of their community and the things

they were perilously close to losing as a result of

504
colonialism, the African writer ought to, as Killam points

out, " identi-fy those things of real value to contemporary

society in the colonial experience." His role " in part,is to

find in the aspirations of his society"^ new ways of seeking

understanding in the light of traditional values as they are

52
confronted with modern ideas

In other words, it was part of the Neo-Negritudinist

writers duty to refurbish and render accessible the reality

of an African civilization through works of 1iterature,to

collaborate actively with historians, ethno-scientists and

others in retrieving the African past in the quest for a

contemporary self-apprehension• In isolating the universal

principles in traditional structures which are in tune with

egalitarian technocratic societies, the writer elicits the

requisite values which would allow the alien and the

alienated African to repossess themselves through self

apprehension to overcome the dislocation caused by

colonial ism.

A Neo-Negritudinist writer can perform his functions

well if, like Soyinka, he is a true product of the cultural

encounter, without losing his balance on either side.While

undertaking this iob, the Neo-Negritudinist writer has to

guard himself against the fallacies of Neqritude. Soyinka

>05
identi-fies thosE? -fallacies as the Cartesian fallacy,

manifesting itself in the naive acceptance of Eurocentric

assumptions in their self characterising definitions; the

aesthetic fallacy in appropriating for themselves," a

defeatist self-justifying aesthetic stance" in the contriving

of a self in the supposed grandeur of the cultural dilemma

that he termed "narcissm." The third objection he raised was

against the dialectical fallacy of self-resolution, where it

was assumed that if "the first movement (the thesis) is the

assertion of white supremacy that gave birth to negritude...,

the second stage (antithesis) is the countering of this

supremacist ideology with the birth of negritude, the third

stage (synthesis) resolves itself in the cancellation of the

racial concepts in both the thesis and antithesis with a

grand union '• - ^\ ft further danger was, as Soyinka was only

too well aware, of the use of African cultural heritage as a

racial label, a badge of authenticity and significance to be

displayed by stll and sundry. He rather saw it necessary to

unburden the African writer of the psycho-historical

imperatives which drove the African to the shelter of the

past even if the condition^that caused it might remain. The

writer is expected to depict a replete African world which

derives its deepest truths and resources endogamously and

not in exclusivist racial chauvinist terms. The African world

is rather, as Soyinka sees it, "a vast storehouse of

paradigms... of creating reality and social responsibility

306
discoverable in the mythology, plastic arts, music and
•=,4
idealism of ritual performances"" .

In Soyinka's scale of values, a writer did not assume

that an African humanity can save the world. He criticised

such a (Negritudinist) vision as simplistic declaring " we

whose humanity the poets celebrated before the proofs, whose

lyric innocence was daily questioned by the very pages of

the newpapers are now being forced by disaster, not foresight

to a reconsideration of our relattionship to the outer

world""''^. The writer in other words had to be realistic

rather than chauvinistic,open-minded rather than parochial,

if he was aiming at realistic and real artistic depth. As

Lindfors points out in connection with drama particularly,

"being conscious of Western traditions. Western modes of

writing ...[cannot be] a handicap. . . [ 113 can also enrich

African drama. An awareness of what has been done on stage by

others can make the writer more resourceful in his own

pi ayj/sir i ting .... I don't think Africans should resist the

stream [ofl enriching influence simply because it originates

in some foreign sources. It seems chauvinistic to insist on

the purity of a culture when those cultures are really

hybrids anyway. They absorbed influences from everywhere

..."" . In his own work Soyinka had portrayed his belief that

" it is neither right nor possible to be purist because even

traditional literature has never been purist "" . Not

307
SLipriBingly, he refused to turn his back on the West thereby

dis-1imiting his work. His work has never been culturally

neutral or divorced "ffOm its socio-cul tural environment

however. It has always been multicultural. His work is a

product of the cultural encounter; and he is unashamed of

borrowing from all cultures. He sees that as his human

birthright, as well as the way in which all cultural

conflicts mav be resolved. In his own words ;

I have never been really interested in clash of two

cultures, cultural conflict ..."O.K., you have got

conflict 7 ...The whole point of society is to resolve

the conflict...' So if you have got a conflict, don't

make mtich noise about it, resolve it . And I take that

attitude in my writing because I believe that culture

is not static anyway. It never has been " .

In other words, Soyinka believes his work is and

ought to be not about culture conflicts, but cultural

resolutions and his self-imposed cultural task is to be

unapologetica1ly syncretic; expanding, revitalizing and

renewing tradition through synthesis and experiment but

within the parameters of Nigerian tradition and continuity. It

is only in this way that the habit of Western imitativeness

can be unlearnt and decolonisation of the mind achieved. Even

to reject White culture meaningfully one ought to know what

308
it 15. Soyinka genuinely comes down in favour of the

traditional in his work but only after manifesting an

understanding of the West. As Hunt points out :

Soyinka reacts with vitriol to any interpretation of

his work as portraying cultural conflict and it is not

difficult to see why ? It is not the case for Soyinka

that 'Western culture' and "African culture' simply

see the same things but see them differently, hence

conflict. Instead African culture sees what the

European cannot " .

Soyinka has also made it clear that he does not have

any quarrel with Senghor personally. In fact Soyinka's Neo-

Negritude or his Africanism is obviously a declaration of his

faith in the African world. But at the same time, Soyinka's

Africanism is different from Negritude because through it,

Soyinka is able to stress the notion of cultural personality

and also locate its source while evolving a conceptual tool

and model for analysis. In his scale of values, evolution of

science and technology is not a counter - evolution to

tradition but a reinstallation of spiritualism in resonance

with materialism. The encounter of Nigerian with British

culture proceeded from the cultural nationalist's postures of

conflict between a supposed African traditionalism with

British Science to synthesise in Africanism. Soyinka's

Africanism is both intellectual and emotional; comingling

30'?
the mind which knowB with the heart that -feels. In his

search -for harmony, Soyinka can project into a mystical

African past, the need itself being a product of the chaos of

the present. In his championing of tradition, conformity is

not preached but eclecticism upheld. Soyinka is all ior the

right of artistic choice, but one dictated by social needs.

He was not attempting to popularise the archaic or even

making a political statement. If culture conflict was the

problem staring at the face of his people in the colonial

period,he worked at its resolution through a reconstuction of

the African world inspite of the terrorism of a colonialist

Eurocentric superimposed culture.

Soyinka'5 synthetic quality of mind equipped him to

work at the solution of this native-alien conflict in the

realm of culture. Again like Tagore, he had a holistic

approach- this enabled him to see the past, present and fLiture

in one stream.

What radical critics have missed is that Soyinka is a

highly selective traditionalist. He rather makes a "decisive

advancement in the movement towards placing an African vision

at the very centre oi contemporary awareness in a world in

which we cannot but have an abiding inteest" . It is

particularly significant that Soyinka saw the relevance of

the Yoruban world inspite of his colonial "inheritance and at

310
a time when the African mind was encumbered by the burden of

Western culture". He also felt it on him to " assume the

responsibility of not merely articulating African concepts

but of making them intelligible also to those whose world

view has been conditioned by the [West] ..." , The ease with

which he assimilates European culture models and the

confidence with which he constructs his African world while

critiquing European thought have been made possible by his

in tercu 1 tura 1 ism, |jy his total acceptance of the best values

wherever they may occur, without any prejudice. In fact in

exhibiting this eclecticism, he was displaying in a way the

cosmic total ism and harmonising tendencies of African

thought.

Soyinka's reliance on Yoruban tradition to explain

contemporary behaviour went beyond antiquarian interests. It

is an aspect of his reaction to the cultural encounter . Even

his religion was his means of rejecting foreign impositions.

By refuting Christianity and even Islam publicly, Soyinka's

rehabilitated "animism from the positive encrustations of

Negritude pundits and anthropological quaintness mongers,"

and became the spokesman of a suppressed silent majority that

had no prestige or social standing in a society in the throes

of modernisation. It was, as Nazareth points out. an

indication that Soyinka saw religious belief as a real social

force "' as also a political act. He rehabilitated Yoruba

311
religion -from the burden of dismisBal as superst i t iou5 and

non-compl e>! . H e proved that ritualism and innovat iveness did

coexist in Yoruban religion and that it had the capacity to

encounter new e x p e r i e n c e s and absorb them.

By highlighting its capacity to adapt and adopt, he

showed that it is p o s s i b l e for a scientific age to coexist

with a pre-industrial spiritual world view. Through the use

ofi Y o r u b a m y t h which declared man to be "perpetually bound to

the parellel impulses of two G o d s , Ogun and Obatala."

Soyinka could explain the e v e n t s in the chaotic n a t u r e of the

p r e s e n t , both in the colonial and post-Q.ridependence Br€t,

In fact S o y i n k a ' s theatre is a direct e m e r g e n c e from

the Yoruban w o r l d . Its Yoruba inspiration is unmistakable.

For e x a m p l e , Soyinkan h e r o e s are Ogun i n s p i r e d , creative and

destructive in n a t u r e . T h r o u g h them, S o y i n k a articulated his

ideals for a new political order in N i g e r i a . In fact Ogun is

Soyinka's dramatic m u s e . The g o d ' s fallibility and trust

impressed Soyinka as did the fact of his c r e a t i v e forge and

love for music and d a n c e . O g u n ' s vitality and energy and

above all his protean modernity made him Soyinka's natural

choice for self-projection.

;i2
 Obatala, the creator for embodying the patient, pure

Principle of Equipoise and Sango,God of thunder and lightning

for embodying the danger of dee^tructive egotism and for being

the symbol of swift retributive justice and Eshi.iorD for

being the unpredictable wayward Principle creating mischief

and havoc together with Oguin were profound influences on

Soyinka's mind and found their way into his work. Also in his

drama, one notices the incorporation of elements from African

orature, rituals and festivals. In the context of colonial

and in post-freedom conditions, it became necessary to do so.

In the unequal encounter of the colonial experience, it is in

fact imperative to reinstate the authetic values of a

society. Pertinently, culture and theatre itself have always

lent itself as , media of resistance. If colonialism is

ethnocultural supplanting , the oppressed community if it

does not have confidence in its culture, will have no life

beyond the cultural dictates of the oppressor.

The growth of Marxism had brought a new outlook and

deepening of the issues connected to the Nationalist

Question. Also given the British divide and rule policy that

catised Northern Nigeria to put a spoke in the nationalist

wheel out of a supposed fear of domination by other tribes

(and which delayed freedom by a couple of years), culture and

especially theatre had to, could and did play a significant

role. By emphasising the unity and similarity of the Nigerian

313
experience, as also its myths, rituals and traditions,

theatre could make itself and did become an aspect of

national struggle.

Just as the British-especially the institution of the

Church- had used theatre to export its culture so did the

nationalists use theatre for their own ends. And one of the

first responses was the folk opera. If the Church had

forbidden African musical instruments, the folk opera used

them with a venegance. Undeniably the Yoruban folk opera was

an answer to this nationalistic mood and need. The revival of

folk culture, which is represented with its use of Yoruban

traditions, musical instruments, songs and dances, has a

direct relation to the urge for cultural resistance.

Soyinka found Yoruban folk opera extremely popular in

the forties and fifties. He was not unaware of the power of

Nigerian orature which he describes as " a mine for creative

quarry as European ^nd Asian writers have obtained from their

classics" "'. Further " one of the most telling qualities of

African orature is.its economy of means. This may be seen in

the density of meaning compressed into a line of proverb and

in the spare uncluttered language, their control ... displays

an almost ruthless exclusion of convoluted jargon. Orature

being auditory places high value on lucidity, novel

syntax,precise and apt imagery ... we see no reason why these

31A
virtues of orature shc«ld be denied in literature" ^^. It has

•few parallels for its unpredictability, its link with the

people, its variety and nationalist use of culture. Not

surprisingly therefore Soyinka too adopted the' same

traditions that the folk opera did (like its proverbs,

metaphors, forms) but he used it to entirely deeper and

different effect. It is perhaps not surprising that Soyinka's

plays right from the start are Nigerian in this sense- in its

use of the sources and scope of tradition, especially

considering the fact that in the forties and fifties when

Soyinka was in school and college,the spirit of nationalismi

in theatre and outside was at its peak.

Very obviously traditional theatre was a social

phenomenon involving more than the spectacle on stage. It was

"an evoving canvas of society ...interaction of responses,

processes of thought" . This indicates that a dramatist who

writes to a traditional performance; style ought to have a

strong audience consciousness. It is possible that because of

his traditional background, Soyinka attempted to bridge the

gap between dramatic writing and performance styles and

idioms. It was the importance that he gave to audience

response that made him disapprove of Western theatre

architecture that made theatre rigid and inflexible. His

Brechtian ambience or perhaps his feeling that this was what

society needed made him break out of the proscenium, where

315
one felt like one were "looking through a frame at a

picture" ^^.

There have been times he has manipulated the European

theatre architecture and used it to different effect. He

would often rearrange the auditorium in such a way that the

picture frame effect was completely destroyed. He would oft^2r'

turn the table on the picture frame as with his production of

Sarif Eamson's Dear Parent and Ogre :

I decided that instead of figh^ng the picture frame, I

would produce this play exactly like a picture, so

that it was as if you were looking at a state of

reality in a very clinical way. The audience was

manipulated .. so in these productions in that way, I

collaborated with the picture frame

Soyinka does not see the proscenium as linked

with the cultural imperialism from Stratford. He rather saw

the mal f oriTiation as Victorian. In Soyinka's opinion, writers

ought not be conditioned by the proscenium—arch mentality

both because it was contrary to traditional requirements and

also because it inhibited creative instincts making it

70
subservient to the carpenter's skill

316
 For presenting his own p l a y s , Soyinka rejected the :

ubiquitious p r e s e n c e and use of the p r o s c p n i u m stage

.../ T h e r e is an ebb and flow in his concept of space

and environment. The large universe of his

pi a y s . . p r e s c r i b e a circle than a linear layout

Soyinka's stage space is a broad spectrum and a

71
dynamic environment w h e r e humans and g o d s interact

Erecting a platform stage w a s to prevent this

interaction and it w a s the creation of a barrier between

actor and a u d i e n c e . To contain the r e s p o n s e thus w a s to kill

the drama. As a d r a m a t i s t , in other w o r d s , S o y i n k a took his

cue from the fluidity and free ranging n a t u r e of traditional

theatre. Soyinka assumes there would be among the audience

people w h o think like him. It w a s i m p e r a t i v e on him to see

that his a u d i e n c e did not leave the theatre bored. To effect

this, he saw it necessary to use the traditional method of

throwing a cover of r e m o t e n e s s and speciality over what was

familiar. In this he w a s close to Brechts' idea of a

verfremungseffect.

The use of d a n c e , m i m e and music w a s part of the

process. In addition to intellectual excitement, his plays

through t h i s , offer an a u d i o visual t r e a t . Even though his

plays are in E n g l i s h , it is his incorporation of these

317
elements that make his plays samples o-f Nigerian

intercLil tural ism. Noteworthy is the fact that through this,

Soyinka was able to catch the imagination of his people. His

Nigerian audiences very much enjoyed the language of drum and

dance, gesture and proverbial innuendoes; while to a Western

spectator they give a new dimension to theatre as a form

itself. His themes hold in them various opportunities to

bring in what he describes as "the profound universality of

miusic... a cohesive diemension and clarification ...The

singer is a rriouthpiece of the chthonic forces," as well.

The festival motif, as in Tagore, dominates in Soyinka's

plays whereby he can create the right ambience while

incorporating music, dance, symbol and mime. His theatre

itself becomes a festival that successfully marks the

evolution of a spatial coherence inspite of the disconnection

betweeen African heritage and modern experience through

colonialism. His use of Yoruban culture as a stable spiritual

groundwork on which modern processes miaybe superimposed

naturally miakes for harmonisation . While his Yoruban religion

charripionship was by itself an aspect of his nationalistic

impulses, he went beyond anti-colonial purges and rejection

of English learning and education and Negritudinist binary

oppositions of European and African sensibilities. Rather he

evoked reference points within his own culture through which

other cultures may be measured and understood. It is not

313
BLirprising that his. anti-imperialism often toDl-; mystical

"f ormEi.

I-f , Soyinka was able to initiate a new intercul tural

line, it was because o"f his vast reading and exposure to

European literature. His sttidy at Leeds University and stay

in England from 1954-59 was responsible for his deep informed

knowledge of British culture. The influence of this stay on

Soyinka is highlighted by the fact that it was during this

time that Soyinka began to write poems like "Telephone

Conversation", short stories and his first plays including

The Lion and The Jewel . as also eight features f orij^jB. B .C. As

play rBBder at London's Royal Court Theatre, he was exposed

to British culture at its best. He was a witness to the

momentous awakening to freedom of his country (which

occas'T'ion he celebrated with A Dance of the Forest) . Towards

the awakening of the consciousness The Lion and the Jewel had

undoubtedly been a major contributor by its presentation of

interculturalism.

Among the intercu1tura1 debts Soyinka' owes, one of his

primary debts was to Knight, Soyinka's teacher at Leeds :

Knight's insistence in his criticism upon penetrating

always to the structure of symbolism underlying

dramatic ritual, whether in Shakespeare or in Ibsen

[left a mark on Soy ink a ] . . . .But Soyinka appears to

319
 have outmatched Knight's symbolic and aesthetic

insights by his own welding of the complex,

metaphysical, the symbolic and the mundane to evolve,

[what was to become] a mega ritual synthesis uniquely

Soy inkean,

and which found their full fruition and

manifestation in his post-1960 plays.

Nietzsche too had linked drama with ritual believing

that drama ought to achieve communal consciousness. Like

Nietzsche and Knight or even Eliot, Soyinka grew to see

ritual as metaphysical rather than historical material for

drama. But his socio-politidal . concerns make him go beyond

them , on one hand and be in touch with reality on the other.

Brecht was another influence. Like Brecht, Soyinka was pre-

occupied with defining the experiences of drama in

relationship to the revolutionary praxis or liberated social

consciousness. But even if he shared Brecht's revolutionary

fervour, Soyinka did not feel obliged to enlighten his

audience. His mytho - creative nature might have

differentiated him from Brecht but did not make Soyinka

esoteric. His use of myth was only to highlight Nigeria's

current problems. In the Aristotlean sense, he was a

dramatist dealing with questions of "man in his environment,

the struggle for survival, the cost of survival, the real

meaning of progress,the necessity of sacrifice if man is to

320
make any progress, the value oi death, even the necessity of

death in man's life" . But his social consciousness makes

him more like Synge who too was a second language writer who

spoke of colonialism while revitalizing the colonial language

thfeugh incorporating his own traditions, though again Synge

was iar less political than Soyinka.

Soyinka acknowledged his debt to contemporary

dramatists, especially John Arden, Tom Stoppard and Jean

Genet. The Absurd and existential philosophers and dramatists

have had an impact on his thinking (his post —1960 plays

pronouncedly show their impact). Oriental dramas like

Kalidasa's Shakuntalam as also Tagore's philosophy have

left their own imipact on him.

Black American theatre on its part, helped Soyinka to

arrive at his own mode of writing. They transported the :

concept of theatre into that o-f the largely acceptable

idea of a vast political education arena compared to

which the missionary seal of an affluent writer in a

welfare state-simply becomes comic

Soyinka himself had always been aware of the

politico-educative power of theatre. His concerns are never

far from the questions of revolution, cultural strife.

or the relationship between ruler and ruled, master and

slave. Even ritual w a s a form oi political commitment that

Soyinka was to realise with time. In this,he was in

c o n s o n a n c e w i t h the traditional e>!pecations and role expected

of him as a w r i t e r . As D a t h o r n e points o u t , the writer in the

African context is "at o n c e inheritor and ... its custodian

and its 1 i b e r a t o r . . He is a spokesmian for his s o c i e t y " . In

s p i t e of being a public person the writer d o e s not create the

environment though, but brings the environment to his

creation. It w a s only natural then that cultural imperia 1 ismi

and cultural nationalism express themselves through the

writer. A writer in the present context had to be authentic

and synthetic, indigenous and outward looking. In being

intercu1tura1 in other w o r d s Soyinka was not at v a r i a n c e with

the traditional expectations from himi.

What was it, however,that Soyinka expected his

intercul tura 1 theatre to a c h i e v e for hirrr and his country ^

His intercu1tura1 theatre was to provide a fair

picture and a cross-cultural awareness to his people in order

to effect a iTfental l i b e r a t i o n . As Abiola Irele had pointed

ou t :

How [else] do we transmit a national culture to

N i g e r i a , if not through w o r k s of imagination ? This is

something that our people have not paid attention to.

 We are talking about modernisation and

industrialisation and so on, but we do not realise

that we cannot industrialise unle^ss we have tackled the

mind, the imagination and thus the attitude of people

to themselves, to their society, to work and so on.

How do you do these things if you cannot get to their

minds, to their imagination ? So literature is not a

lu>'.ury for us, it is a life and death stiiair ... The

Nigerian is a new man. How do we get to his mind '^ ...

by ...dramatising his predicament so that he can see

the choices and choose right

Soyinka's plays dramatise the choices and the

predicament. As he is a teacher, rather than a politician, he

does not take ideological choices himself. He saw his role as

proceeding beyond valoring his race and country. Without

claiming a superior humanity for the writer or allowing

people, parties or society to dicate to him, Soyinka sees

himself as a social conscience. A refusal to be so makes a

writer like him irrelevant to society :

When the writer in his own society can no longer

function as conscience, he must recognise that his

choice lies between denying himself totally or

withdrawing to the position of a chronicler and post-

mortem surgeon,. But there can be no further

 distractionrsl ... A concern with culture stenqthens

society ... The artist has always functioned in

African society as the record of the mores and

experiences of his society and as the voice of vision

in his own time. It is time for him to respond to the

essence of himself 78

The writer can chew deeper into social problems

if he refashions his thinking on intercultural lines so that

his WOTk.* not only highlight conflicts and their causes but

also indicate their resolution. For this, the intercultural

writer must know the society's decadent underbelly as well as

be able to predict the direction in which society ought to

move. "It is about time the African writer stopped being a

mere chronicler and understood also that part of his

essential purpose in society is to write with a very definite

vision ...he must atleast begin by exposing the future in a

79
clear and truthful exposition of the present"

Soyinka's delving into tradition as also his

incorporation of "forrr<^ treatments ad devices ...from African

oral tradition ...[was a] contribution to the revision of the

whole repressions upon which colonial ismi relies to justify

itself" ^^.

324
 Soyinka's project was to proceed beyond guilt and the

historical hang up oi using English. It- was also an attempt

to reach all Nigerians as the world outside - to use English

as a cementing -force. The use o-f an English that was

Nigerian in -flavour was part o-f his intercu 1 tur al ism. It did

not 5igni"fy that the writer -was docilel'y modelling himsel-f

a-fter Western literar'/ "fashions -it was achieving rather in

the cultural field what politics was to achieve in the

conte>!t o-f colonialism.

To turn his intercuItura1 literary pl^y into a

theatrical experience, Soyinka undoubtedly makes use of a

wide variet-/ of techniques and easily switches from one means

of expression to another. The message of a drama is expressed

not only by the 'verbal dialogue on which most literary

critics concentrate but also ior instance by the rhythm and

pace of the action, by the colours and shapes of the sets, by

the music and by the movements on stage.

Awareness of the theatrical dimension of drama and his

own acting and directing of plays have equipped Soyinka to

write good drama as also to break audience-actor and class

barriers, so necessary if the theatrical message of change

has to reach and touch the audience. In fact as soon as he-

returned to Nigeria in 1960, he employed the services of

experienced actors to -form the 1*^60 " M a s k s " . A new group

called "OrisLin T h e a t r e " was -formed in 1 9 6 5 among whom was

included W a l e O g u n y e m i . Actor training was the main purpose

o-f Orisun theatre and it specialised in shotgun guerilla

kind o"f political t h e a t r e . But when he teamed up with the

University of Ibadan, he transferred his group of young

professionalj to the university as its acting company and a

kind of drama laboratory.

Among the early and the most theatrical of Soyinka's

intercu 1 ttsral plays , on w h i c h S o y i n k a ' s reputation in world

theatre rests is The Lion and the J e w e l . T h i s play performed

as early as on 20,21st Feb 1959 in London and at the

University College ,Ibadan marks a crystallisation of

Soyinka's ideas of theatre.lt is an intercultura1 play in

theme and content as well for it is a play not only about

folk material but about the impact of the modern on tribal customs

It did not adopt the line of least r e s i s t a n c e , but rather

revealed a dramatist "whose religion is m a n ' s freedom whose

integrity is his shining armour" . W h i l e offering scope for

acting and presenting levels of m e a n i n g , it w a s at the same

time, richly e v o c a t i v e of the familiarity and sparkling fun

of life. It revealed a l s o what the Nobel Prize citation to

Soyinka had s a i d , that he " in a w i d e cultural perspective

and w i t h poetic o v e r t o n e s f a s h i o n s the drama of existence

3182
 The Dlay begins in the morning. There are no acts or

scenes in the play - but three divisions titled

"Morning","Noon","Night". Like Red Oleanders, this play too

obeys the Unities quite -faithfully. The action takes place at:

age' from the:

Times f'sslffn
./.. /... ..... .•! ,

8:

Like Red 01enders, in this play too, the road

becomes imDortant, as most of the action takes place on it.

The scene of the action is carefully chosen-the market

place with its traditional wares is situated in front of the

Bale's house as par tradition so that he can keep watch over

the village activities. While being factually correct,

Soyinka's choice of the market place also allows him to

present a colourful microcosm of Yoruban life. Further as the

Yorubans are basically a trading community-by locating the

play at the market place, Soyinka is transferring his

audience to the heart of Yoruban life.

Gibbs highlights the way the cultural encounter is

embodied in the setting of the olay. As he puts it i

y

327
 fl-between the busy world of the traders and the

classroom through which influences will seep into the

society, and under a [traditional1 tree known for its

depth and the generosity of its shade[Soyinka locates the

action]. With characteristic awareness of the impact of sound

effect. Soyinka indicates that a chant of the 'Arithmetic

Times' issues from the school room as the audience takes in

^84
the set

Sidi is the first person we meet.She is described

as

^:'- ^•^^:/c^,/// "(3) Her dress and action (carrying water

expertly on her head )imply that here is a village and a

village girl, traditional, untouched yet by modernity and in

tandem>jith the background of "the odan tree ." But in keeping

with the chant of the tables in English is the appearance of

Lakunle who hastens to accost Sidi. "//e? is or ess p-/ in nn nJd

jvn / te •;;;/7;v../3 -"/oe s'' (3) complete his attire. Unlike Sidi, he

is not completely of the village. In his dress, as later his

talk will conform, he is neither a Nigerian, nor an

Englishman - though his natural impulses betray his greater

inner Nigerianness which the English-aspirant in him

328
-frowns upon. His dres5-its incongrnity-in a village school on

a warm morning, marks him out as a figure of fun. All this is

conveyed even before the play begins.

The schoolmaster thinks nothing of leaving his charges

to court Sidi during school-hours. As soon as he appears on

the road, having sighted Sidi through the window, the

chanting of "three times three arB nine"(3) dies away. The

utter irresponsibility of Lakunle, the very attitude of

villagers to education comes through. Sidi does not think

much of Lakunle perhaps because 1 • of his pro-British

stance. He finds himself "wet for your [his] pains"(3) as he

seizes the pail from Sidi. She dismisses his attempt at wit

and parable, with "The school teacher is full of stories/

This morning " ( 4 ) . She is not entirely convinced about his

professions of loving her beyond her looks either. She is

intelligent and quick to throw back his words at him, finding

his superficial Westernisation funny.

Lakunle has been so taken in by British culture - so

influenced by colonial notions that he grows to find the way

the woman dress and even their daily chores ungainly. He

calls Sidi "an, illiterate goat", " a spider for carrying

loads the way you do " (4) worrying that it will cause her to

lose her neck soon. The coquette in Sidi emerges as she

"huffily exposeCs] her neck to advantage"(4) which however

only leads Lakunle to criticise her traditional dress for

329
showing too much; for being immodest. He repeats the colonial

argument that Nigerian women " run about naked in the

streets" (4) though as Sidi points out, she has "done the

fold/so high and so tight / can hardly breathe / have to

leave my arms so I can use them .../ or don't you know that?"

(4), Incidentally it was the missionaries who^when inspired

by the Lakunlian sense of modesty^introduced "Buba" or a

cotton blouse to be worn under the traditional garment.

The costumes in the play allow Soyinka to create a

distinct Nigerian ambience. The fact of Lakunle being dressed

in an ill fitting English suit would immediately strike the

audience that here is a man not at peace with his village and

commtmity. Such a man voicing views like the above abotit

Sidi's dress would only strengthen the idea of Lakunle, in

the audience's mind, as someone who is confused about his

roots, his culture and himself.

Lakunle and Sidi argue and misunderstand each other,

because Lakunle is too taken in by Westernisation. He sees

lewdness and comic, uncivilized behaviour where there is

none, when his outlook and talk ha\^ in fact marked him out

rather, as Sidi points out as "the madman of Ilujinle, who

calls himself a teacher!"(5). In his pride however, he

refuses to examine if there is any truth in the accusation,

seeing it rather as a mark of his superior acculturation. He

330
calls himself " a jewel to pigs ? / 1^ now 1 am

misunderstoDd by you '"' And your race of savages, I rise above

taunts / And remain unruffled " ( 5 ) . To call his own people

"pigs" and "savages" and himself who belongs nowhere, as a

"jewel" indicate more than Lakunle's misplaced pride. It

reveals how colonialism had influenced and manifested itself

even in the very backwaters of Nigeria as in a small village

like Ilujinle. The traditional chauvinist in him emerges

however when he declares Sidi as incapable of understanding

his worth (jewel) for having as a woman " a smaller brain /

Than mine"(5) and tries to justify it with science and books.

Sidi is more than angry. She wonders - her thinking

reveals her to be no simple country belle - how a woman can

be weaker when it is she " who pounds the yam / or bends all

day to plant the millet / with a child strapped to her

back?"(6). Lakunle refuses to answer her; instead he declares

how soon "you will have machines which will do / your

pounding, which will grind your pepper / without it getting

in your eyes"(6). Mechanisation after all is another aspect of

colonisation. While Lakunle welcomies it as a mark of progress

the naive like Sidi srB clearly impressed. "You really mean

to turn." she says, "The whole world upside down"(6). But

whether it was right or desirable to introduce the mechanical

magic of Lagos into Ilujinle; Sidi with her illiteracy, and

Lakunle who is too taken in with stories of how machines will

enable woman to "bathe in gold"(6), do not have the vision to

judge.

Lakunle seems to love Sidi. Refusing to give her back

her pail till she consents to marry him, he declares he

"will stand against earth, heaven and the nine/Hells ..."(8)

for her. But he wants her to marry his half-baked ideas as

well, seeing himself as he does as "a prophet" who with

Sidi's undying love would learn to "scorn the jibes of these

bush minds / who know no better "(7-8).

Sidi finds his Western style courting too wordy - in

short "nonsense". Her innate intelligence makes her see into

Lakunle's talk. He merely, she declares, tries to "deafen me

with words which always sound the same / And make no

meaning"(8). Even earlier she coufd see that he was merely

choking himself with "big loud words / And no meaning ? You

and your ragged books / Dragging your feet to every threshold

/And rushing them out again as curses / Greet you instead of

welcome " ( 5 ) . She is too aware of what the village thinks of

him and that she has to live with them. She therefore refuses

to be taken in by Lakunle's declaration of bride-price as " A

savage custom, barbaric, out-dated, / Rejected, denounced,

accursed, / Ex- communicated, archaic, degrading, /

Humiliating, unspeakable, redundant, / Retrogressive,

remarkable, unpalatable"(8): demanding it as a precondition

to marry him. She does not see bride-price like Lakunle does

as an "ignoble custom, unfamous, ignominious / shaming our

heritage be-fore the world /Sidi , I do not seek a wife / To

fetch, and carry, / To cook and scrub, /To bring forth

children by the gross . . . . " ( 8 - 9 ) . She can see neither why

Lakunle "scDrn(s) / child bearing in a wife " nor why he

should see bride -price as the equivalent " of buy(ing) off

the market stalls / you'd be my chattel, my mere property"(9).

Rooted as she is in tradition,she sees Lakunle's refusal to

pay her bride price as an attempt to make her "A laughing

stock 7... A cheap bowl -for the village spit " ( 8 ) ; a manner

of announcing that she was "no Virgin / That I was forced to

sell my shame / And marry you without a price " ( 8 ) .

The bride price, an inverse kind of dowry system is a

complex traditional institution. A kind oi insurance on the

success of a marriage, it is a recompense offered by the

groom to the bride's parents for bringing her up and a kind

of apology for creating a rupture in the family. Importantly

the girl is protected by the community through this

institution " .

Lakunle wishes to upturn tradition, more because he

cannot afford bride-price than from real conviction. He

wishes to opt out o-f tradition not for a wholesome way o-f

life but for the superficialities of Westernisation that he,

with his colonial mentality mistakes for real culture.

Western culture does not surely lie in "Together we shall sit

at table / -Not on the floor - and eat, / Not with fingers,

but with knives / And forks and breakable plates / Like

civilized beings / .... I will not have you wait on me / ... /

No wife of mine ...shall eat the leavings of my plate - /

That is for the chi1dren."(9) Also, leaving the left-overs

for the children is hardly as healthy or hygienic, or

wholesome as leaving it for the wife was. Lakun." le's

Westernisation is only skin deep - it merely lies in walking

"side by side and arm in arm / Just like the Lagos couples I

have seen/High heeled shoes for the lady, red paint / On her

lips. And her hair is stretched / Like a magazine photo. I

will teach you / The waltz and we'll both learn the foxtrot /

And we'll spend the week-end in night clubs" / Oh, I must

show you the grandeLir of towns ./ We'll live there if you

like or merely pay visits "(9-10).

A significant fact that emerges here is that villages

look to the cities for direction. Cities -where colonial

administration is centred- become the crucible for

Westernisation and by extension, orogress itself in the

Western sense. The nightclubs in cities however are hardly

indices to Westernisation and progress, but it is such trivia

and the adjuncts, which are new to Nigeria, that serve to

attract and tempt superficial minds like Lakunle's . Lakunle

-Ji o ^
however 15 not an exception but the rule, representing those

who end up in colonial cultural encounters taking the bad

-from both cultures, instead of synthesising the good.

Sidi is incapable of understanding Lakunle. She even

"finds his kissing, that "strange unhealthy mouthing ... so

unclean "(10) and r^fuseB to be Lakunle's wife in that

"modern" sense. She does not see it as Lakunle does as the

^way of civilized romance"(10). It merely means to her " a way

... to avoid / payment of lawful bride-price / A cheating way,

mean and miserly "(10). This makes her a "bush girl" to

Lakunle. "uncivilized and priipi t ive" ( 10) The poor man hardly

realises that he is mierely repeating the insults heaped on

his race by the coloniser .. Fed as he is on English novels

and bookish concepts of roiifance (" the sweetening of the soul

/ with fragrance offered by the stricken heart "(10) ) ; he can

not appreciate or accept village attitudes and village

opinions even though he has grown up with them.

It is at this juncture that yet another product of

Westernisation presents itself-the photographs of Sidi in the

magazine. As the girls excitedly narrate to Sidi how the

photographer has returned , Soyinka introduces the mimic-

elemient in the play, while the dialogues used continue to

throw further light on the cultural encounter. When the group

recalls the photographer's previous visit, they mime out what

had happened then. While the audience BTB being informed of

previous events, they are also being treated to a masquerade.

The language used to describe Western and there'fore

novel machines is revealing. That Soyinka is able to transfer

himself to a place and B-ra where machines were unknown and

convey how people then reacted to it through short, two word

descriptions in English speak volumes of his mastery over

theatrical tools, including the English language. The motor

car^ the photographer, " the stranger from the outside world

(111 ~ drove, becomes " the devil's own horse "(11); his

cafTiera, whose action a girl " demonstrates ...amidst admiring

titters "(11) becomes in its turn, " the one-eyed box" (11)

and the photographs themselves turn "images" (11).

The magazine transforms Sidi into a desirable

important person in the village. She herself with her friends

discovers she is really be^iHiiful, that she could "look as if,

at that moment, the sun himself had been your lover "(11).

While the effect of such attention could have alarming

repercussions on a village girl, as they do; what is worse

is that she is noticed by the Bale through it. He realises

that her beauty has banished "his image ...in[to] a little

corner somewhere in the book, and even that corner he shares

with one of the village latrines "(12).

Sidi is wonderstruck that she could be "miore esteemed"

as the book seems to indicate "Then Bale Baroka/The Lion of

Ilujinle"(12) and "The Fox of the Undergrowth"(12). The

beast-metaphors used -for the Bale indicate both his standing

and his cunning ; while the thought content indicate that

Sidi thinks she is more "famovis f now ] than that panther of

the trees"(13). To celebrate her triumph, she cajoles her

friends to join in at "the dance of the Lost Travel 1er"(13) .

That the Nigerians are inherently fun-loving and

naturally theatrical is indicated in the ease with which the

group launch into an improptu song and dance masquerade.Even

Lakunle who had been standing with a "kindly, fatherly smile

for the children at play "(13) and inspite of his declaration

of distaste for "this foolery ...game of idiots"(13) enters

into the spirit of the dance with enthusiasm.

An important thing to note is the wav the village

functions like a unit. Everyone knows, everybody else. A small

event like the re-visit of the photographer is enough to send

the whole village on a holiday and into a spontaneous burst

of festivity. There is adequate time and leistsre and love

for music and dance. When he is forced to oarticipate in the

masquerade, Lakunle proves to be an expert. As the drum beats

gain in tempo and crash, Lakunle enacts to perfection the

way the photographer had on his last visit on discovering

that his car had broken down, abandoned it picked up his

camera, pocketed a -flask of whisky and begun trekking. His

reaction to the snake and monkey, his repeated swigging at

his whisky, his falling into the lake and meeting with Sidi

is re-enacted with elan by Lakunle and others to different

tttnes and rhythms of the drums and to the full use of

"gagan" and "iya ilu". Just as the whole village playacts

accompanying Sidi and the imprisoned protographer to be

judged by the Bale, the Bale himself appears, as if on cue.

To LakLinle's "good morning" Baroka launches into a

harangue on its meaning 1essness. "Guru morin guru morin,

ngh-hn ' That is / All we get from 'alakowe' ...Will guru

morin wet my throat ?/ Well, Well, our man of knowledge, I

hope you have no / Query for an old man today "(16) While the

Bale seems to be respectful to Lakltnle, he like everybody

else is laughing at him at the same time.

The Bale is a man-of-the-people. But even as he plays

with his people, there is no mistaking his position there.

There is a wily miethod in his every move. In the flashback,

the way he deals with the photographer is

significant.He is hardly awed by the modern appurtenances. He

orders the photographer thrown to the ground before showing

him sympathy and "pleading" with the villagers to let him go

on his behalf. In other words, he wants the photographer to

know who the miaster is. It is Chiefs like these vjho preserved

338
tradition knowing as they did methods by which to stall

modernity, 0-ften they were hand-in-g love, however, v-jith the

British , together conspiring how to keep Nigeria backward

and poor. The Bale's character here is used by Soyinka to

hold a mirror to these Chiefs.

The Bale handles Lakunle with kid gloves. Knowing

Lakunle's dislike for himself and tradition, and aware of

both his ego and the contradictions in his personality Baroka

teases him, when Sidi declares this :

You played him to the backbone

A court jester should have been the life of you

instead of school (17)

[ He replies in a kind of mock-admiration ]

"And where would the village be, robbed of

Such wisdom as Mister Lakunle dispenses

Daily "^ Who would tell us where we go wrong 7

Eh, Mister Lakunle "(17).

If the language suits the character, they also suit

the situation and the milieu from which the play emerges.

Lakunle's language has a bookish tinge to it while Sidi and

Baroka's language carry the impression, feel and weight of

native Yoruban culture. Fluent Yoruba becomes fluent Yoruba-

suggestive English, while the others speak a different,

though still evocatively flavoured tongue. This was in

33^
keeping with Soyinka's rejection of Western conventions in

the language of drama.As is his wont, Lakunle uses the

coloniser's words to abuse Baroka for wanting to marry Sidi. He

calls him "insatiate camel of a foolish doting race "(18)

unaware that he is condemning himself as well in that

statement.

Sadiku of the old world cannot see why Sidi should

refuse the honour of being the Bale's last wife. That would

mean by tradition that" when he dies and that should not be

long; even the Lion has to die sometime - well, when he does

it means that you will have the honour of being the senior

wife of the new Bale. And jus.t think, until Baroka dies you

shall be his favourite. Mo living in the outhouse for you.

Your place will always be in the oalace; first as the latest

bride and afterwards, as the head of the new harem ... It is

a rich life, Sidi I know I have been in that position for

forty one years "(20), adds Sadiku.

Sadiku does not realise that there have been

revolutionary changes ushered in by the colonial encounter.

That it can no longer seem aft honour to marry father and then

son, that merely being the Bale is not enough to tempt a girl,

that a woman might desire to be the only wife of a man does,

not strike her. The women's position seems to have been

changed for the better in some areas though very slowly,

340
under the impact of B r i t a i n . They still have a long way to

Q o . The woman o n c e she lost the favour of her husband-used to

be banished traditionally to the o u t h o u s e and even abandoned.

The fate of such women - all the women in the harem - were

hardly "rich" as Sadiku s u g g e s t s and even believes herself,

it i s .

Sidi has been sufficiently educated by L a k u n l e ' s talk

and the sense of her sudden importance to see Sadiku's

proposal as no h o n o u r . S h e rather sees it as the L i o n ' s ploy

to regain his " i m p o r t a n c e " as the one man w h o has possessed

"The Jewel of Ilunjinle " ( 2 1 ) . Obviously colonialism has had

its impact even if through the likes of L a k u n l e on a village

girl in sis remote a p l a c e as I l u j i n l e . Even S a d i k u can see

this -she holds the "popinjay responsible " for Sidi's

transformation. Perhaps m o r e than L a k u n l e , it is the West

through its m e s s e n g e r - the p h o t o g r a p h e r - that has turned the

head of Sidi .

The Nigerian ambience comes through both in the

language and m e t a p h o r s used in the e x c h a n g e like " the dew

moistened leaves on a Haramattan morning "(22) or " Ogun

s t r i k e me dead if I lie "(12) as also in the m i m e introduced

at this j u n c t u r e . It n a r r a t e s the manner in w h i c h the Bale

conspired to keep away modernity in order that his position

be m a i n t a i n e d . A group e n t e r s to lay the railway line to "the

7,A:
rhythms of the work gang's metal percussion "(23) as the

White Surveyor . with " his usual box o-f bush comforts "(23)

is enacted consulting his map and directing the work. The way

the Bale handles the situation is recounted and is extremely

revealing. After assessing the situation the Bale himself

appears with a girl bearing a calabash bowl containing pound

notes and kola nuts. The Surveyor's anger disappears . He

wants more and he gets it. Predictably, the "truth now dawns

on him, atlast [i.e.] that he has made a mistake. The track

really should go the other way. In fact (scooping up the

soil) the earth is most umsuitable, could not possibly

support the weight of the railway engine "(24). The Bale has

achieved his purpose and to celebrate the agreement as

tradition dictates " a gourd of palm wine is brought ... and

a cola-nut is broken "(24). Baroka and the Surveyor depart,

arms around each other, both happy to have satisfied their

personal interests. Ilujinle's welfare be damned. Thus

Lakunle points out. was "Trade / Progress, adventure,

success, civilization / Fame, international conspicuosity

...All [which was] within the grasp of Ilujinle was kept

away" (24). It suggests the fact that Nigeria was denied its

quota of progress because the British themselves were not

incorruptible and the Chiefs were selfish and clever, loving

as they did "this life too well / To bear to part from it And

motor roads / And railways would do just that, forcing /

Civilization at his door. He foresaw it / And he barred the

342
g a t e s , securing fast / His d o g s and h o r s e s , his w i v e s and all

his / Concubines "(24).

The -flash-back narration by the procession through

m i m e r e v e a l s the way historically indirect rule kept Nigeria

backward, denying it the fruits of the cultural encounter

like scientific inventions, industries and communication

s e r v i c e s . At the same time this m o d e of p r e s e n t a t i o n is both

theatrically e f f e c t i v e w h i l e also throwing light on the way

the repertoire oi traditional masguerades is built up,

through little d e t a i l s and historic facts.

Local e v e n t s and everyday occurences were turned

into m i m e s e q u e n c e s - to the delight of the w a t c h e r s who not

only got to know the n e w s but could participate themselves in

the ever e x p P a n d i n g r e o e r t o i r e of traditional masquerades.

L a k u n l e , inspite of his h a r a n g u e s against the B a l e , in

heart e n v i e s him. H i s W e s t e r n i z a t i o n is only superficial,

in fact to most Nigerians, Western culture meant only

superficialities - and h e n c e it d o e s not stop him from

dreaming of traditional polygamous pleasures. However he

quickly recollects h i m s e l f , trying to m a k e a virtue of a

comipulsion by declaring that he would stand " Alone .../ For

p r o g r e s s , w i t h Sidi as my chosen sou 1-mC\te , " ( 2 5 ) .

34 3
 Certain lines - like the lines describing Sadiku

recall Shakespeare's Cleopatra description - and unmask

Soyinka's debt to him. Another time Baroka speaks the

Shakespearian language is during the seduction when he tells

Sidi,"What an ill-tempered man I daily grow / ,. soon my

voice will be / The sand between two grinding stones"(43).

Rituals are as much a part pf everyday Nigerian life

as of drama. The way tradition is expanded and updated makes

Yoruba culture live and vibrant, topical and relevant to

Nigeria, inspite of extraneous factors and forces . Their

incorporation into English drama makes Nigerian drama in

English such as this one, more Nigerian than English.

No love is lost between Lakunle and Sadiku. She

wonders why ^ should not, if he has no money take a farm

for one season for Sidi to pay her bride price. As she puts

it, " you are a clever man. I must admit that it

[Westernisation 1 is a good way for getting out of it "(34).

Lakunle proceeds in answer, to give her an oration on

Modernity, on what Ilujinle lacks and ought to have.What is

Lakunle's vision for Ilujinle ? What is his concept of " a

transformation "/ Other than man having one wife (without

paying bride price) modernity consists in "buy[ing] sattcepans

for all the-women / clay pots are crude and unhygeinic "(34)

when science really has aroved the opposite . Looking forward

344
to an industrial ised life and an tirbanisd e>;i5tence, he

predicts that there will be motor roads soon " to bring the

city ways to us "(34). The ruler shall "ride cars, not horses

/ or a bicycle at the very least "(34). Traditional ecology

will be harmed, "forests "burnt"trees cut "to" plant a

modern park for lovers . We'll print newspapers everyday /

with pictures of seductive girls / The girls that win beauty

contests"f34). Modernity is surely more than modelling, tea

drinking and open courting. Newspapers ought to be valtied for

things other than carrying seductive photographs. Nigeria

will not be judged as Lakunle thinks by its beautiful girls,

" School oi ballroom dancing " and its citizens' capacity to

" throw a cocktail party "(34). There is nothing shameful in

cooking in earthen pots or in the palm wine habit and nothing

necessarily progressive in ballroom dancing and tea-drinking.

But Lakunle taken in as he is by the outward sheen of

colonial British life, wants to opt for an imitative

superficial kind of existence instead of a full blooded

unabashed traditional kind of life-style with some reforms

and some lessons learnt from Britain and her culture.

In contrast to this is Baroka's talk, intended as it

is to impress Sidi by for his modernity while his

uninterrupted wrestling even as he converses is to show her

his physical strength.It is organically potrayed and

choreographical1y related to what both Sidi and Baroka are

34 5
undergoing.

What is remarkable is the way the conversation is

carried through r i d d l e s and proverbs. Proverbs have always

been part and oarcel o-f daily life and talk in A f r i c a . There

seems to be a proverb that fits into every n u a n c e and change

of m o o d . Every metaphor and image is rooted in the s o i l . In

fact the richness of the play in earthy traditional

agricultural images and animal metaphors sharpens the sense

of the village milieu. In this section the language has a

sexual tinge to i t .

Sidi behaves in a bold p r o v o c a t i v e fashion with the

Bale. In this context, Soyinka mentions the fact of

" C h r i s t i a n ' s on my / fathers' shrines " ( 3 S ) . Having tolerated

that ultimate i n s u l t , Baroka s e e m s to imply, he can put up

with anything. Ironically the B a l e c o m p l i m e n t s her rudeness

with a statement that she is not prey to "the new immodesty

,. this new and s t r a n g e d i s e a s e ..." ( 4 4 - 4 5 ) , and for wearing

a stock w h o s e threading has been d o n e at the village loom.

Both facts r&iBr to changes wrought by the cultural

encounter. At this p o i n t , the B a l e r e f e r s to yet another

invention of the cultural encounter - the stamp. Sidi

describes this invention in a poetic f a s h i o n , as " a tax on /

The habit of talking w i t h paper ?"(45).

>A6
 The Bale is abreast of new discoveries. It is not the

schoolmaster alone who uses stamps, the Bale intends to make

them himsel-f. The mystery of the machine at Baroka's bedside

is revealed - it is the stamp making machine built by the

palace blacksmith so that "Ilujinle / [can now] boast its own

.../ stamps / And here it stands, child of my thoughts "(A6).

Ogun is the god of Iron and hence of machines." Ogun has said

the word "(46) and therefore the machine works. While

indicating the prevalence of Ogun worship among the

Nigerians, it also allows the Bale to pretend he wants a

"head of beauty" for the 5tamps(46). At the "same time, he is

clarifying to Sidi that he does not really wish to keep

Ilujinle backwards, and he has the welfare of his people deep

at heart which makes him do what no other town chief has done

- make stamps. Incidentally, it will not really harm Baroka's

position though it might bring some foreign ways into

I 1 Li j i n 1 e ,

As long as miodernisation does not threaten his

position, he like those of his ilk welcomes it. He can even

use it to spread a sense of his power. But even otherwise,

the Bale has a vision - he has thought over matters, unlike

Lakunle. Here is his poetic pronouncement :

I do not hate progress, only its nature

Which makes all roofs and faces look the same

34 7
And the wi?ih of one old man is

"^hat here and there ......

Among the bridges and the murderous roads.

Below the humming birds which smoke the face

of Sango, dispenser of the snake-tongue lighting

[ he is referring here to the pollution caused by planes ]

between this r moment

And the reckless broorri that will be wielded

In those years to come, we must leave

[he can see the inevitability of modernity and science

colonialism has brought in 1

Virgin plots .... rich decay

And the tang of vapour rising from

Forgotten heaps of compost.1ying

Undisturbed .,.(A7).

Ilujinle is to be the pristine preserve of tradition,

untouched by the West as long as he can stall its influence.

"The wolf of sameness," that is masked beneath "the skin of

progress " (47-48) is to be kept away from Ilujinle's door as

long as he can manage it.

It is at the moment when he is physically approaching

Sidi that Baroka brings in the thesis of old and young,

modernity and tradition that they supposedly symbolise

merging and uniting for a creative fusion. If the first mark

of the union was to be the Western stamp, more wonders were

348
bound to c o m e .

While L a k u n l e paces "furiously, he d i s c o v e r s that the

m u m m e r s arB acting out B a r o k a ' s supposed downfall. Lakunle is

struck at the m e r c i 1 e s s n e s s of Sadiku for having sold her

hLisband' s s h a m e " to the rhymiing rabble / gloating in your

disloyalty "(51). T h e actual d a n c e is striking.As Soyinka

describes it, -ij-,^, ,,,:.,-> ;../,„•; r.er m ,:: tor LurBc! /7/cve/'/&-7/;,,"( 51 ) the

d a n c e of v i r i l i t y . T h e r e is a variation as the d a n c e r s change

from the athletic miovement to comic m o v e s to become next a

figure of taunt and r i d i c u l e and last of all fall a victimi

to the k i l l , scotched by the agility of the m o t i o n s of the

women. Sadiku j o i n s in e n t h u s i a s t i c a l l y and rriakes Lakunle

"the young sprig of foreign wisdorr. " pay so that he does not

"demean" himfself in their " e y e s " ( 5 1 ) . Actually she picks his

p o c k e t : and L a k u n l e is u n a b l e to stop the p a y m e n t .

Many a theatrical victory has been achieved by the

incorporation of this Nigerian ritual dance here. The

modernity of Yoruban tradition and the agility and quickness

of the mummers to adapt is driven homie. Sadiku's first

loyalty is seen to be not to her h u s b a n d , but to her people.

That neither s h e . nor the oeople are afraid of Baroka is

shown -they are not scared to turn his supposed ignomiiny into

a public f a b l e . It could p e r h a p s be an im.pact of the British

p r e s e n c e or caused by the w i n d s of modernity blowing on them.

What is the g r e a t e s t d r a m a t i c s u c c e s s of this is that just as

349
the dance is taking place and the people Are celebrating

Baroka'B "fall", ironically it is the opposite that is

happening,

L a k u n l e is a w a r e of B r i t i s h c o n s t r u c t s - the Court and

the Legal S y s t e m , though he might be living in the Nigerian

backwaters. Seeing Sidi in tears d r i v e s L a k u n l e to imagine

that the Bale has beaten h e r . He d e c l a r e s he would take

Baroka to the central court to demand redress. Here Laktinle

is portrayed as u s u a l , as being full of the s e n s e oi British

fairness and British j u s t i c e , hardly realising that the

Baroka is too clever for the law to take hold of him.

On learning the t r u t h , if L a k u n l e d e c i d e s to stand by

Sidi, it is not an act borne of love or conviction but one he

intends to do in imitation of what he has r e a d . He declares

significantly that he would marry her now but w i t h o u t "bride-

price". Sidi can no longer object to it [only "virgins" are

entitled to b r i d e p r i c e ] and he would have the s a t i s f a c t i o n to

have lived by his " p r i n c i p l e s ". Though personally unwilling

but prodded onto it in blind imitation to British role

m o d e l s , he is surprised at S i d i ' s r e a c t i o n . She is unwilling

to wait for the "praise s i n g e r s , / And such a number of

ceremonies ....[to] be p e r f o r m e d " (55) in her hurry to get

married. If L a k u n l e thinks them n e c e s s a r y , it reveals his

Migerianity w h i l e at the same time u n c o v e r i n g the fact that

he 15 beginning to reconsider his decision to marry the

"•fallen" S i d i . S i n c e La!<L4ie's W e s t e r n i s a t i o n is skin d e e p , it

does not take long for his decision to imitate his British

literary heroes to e v a p o r a t e .

It is right that Sidi gives the Western style

m a g a z i n e to the W e s t e r n i s e d man as she p r o c e e d s to marry the

B a l e . Her spirited d e f e n c e of her decision to L a k u l e has been

the basis on which critics have concluded that Soyinka is all

for tradi tion.

As she kneels at S a d i k u ' s feet for her blessings

before departing for her h u s b a n d ' s h o m e , the m u s i c i a n s sing

the traditional song of union and childbirth. """here is

general celebration all around and even L a k u l e finds a new

partner during the f e s t i v i t i e s . N o sad t h o u g h t s or unhappiness

is allowed to cloud the mind of the a u d i e n c e at the end of

the play. The atmosphere created by the Yoruban song and

d a n c e and music here as in the other p o r t i o n s of the play as

also the i n c o r p o r a t i o n of the m a s q u e and pantomine elements

add colour and v e r v e to the play. A b o v e a l l , each of these

e l e m e n t s are introduced not far m e r e e f f e c t . They are rather

in tandem w i t h the e v e n t s in the p l o t .

But there are departures and innovation within

tradition t o o . The m i m e of the W h i t e Surveyor is different

-from the D a n c e Q-f the Lost T r a v e l l e r - it is nearly like the

"-flashback" o-f the W e s t . It may have been introduced as an

economic d e v i c e but it is in keeping with the Yoruban concept of

time than to its tradition of festival theatre. In the

Yoruban cycle of time the p a s t , present and future coexist.

The M i m e oi the Lost T r a v e l l e r too d e a l s w i t h past time but

is acted out by the oresent actors mimicing the roles of the

actors of the past eve?nt, Sidi and Baroka a l o n e pantomining

their past r o l e s . T h e M i m e of the W h i t e S u r v e y o r on the other

hand is not playacting as in the first mime. Here the

contemporary actors leave the s t a g e to past a c t o r s and past

e v e n t s . T h e B a r o k a who a p p e a r s here is the B a r o k a of fifteen

years back not the present B a r o k a playacting the past as in

Mime -One.

Sovinka's treatment of time here is in harmony with

the Yoruban concept of T i m e - he starts w i t h the present and

goes into the p a s t . The introduction of the Yoruban concept

of T i m e into an E n g l i s h play thuis by Soyinka is to prove a

point. As Walsh s u g g e s t s , it o e r s u a d e s us that here is a

society which even if it has failed to deal with time in an

o b j e c t i v e and p u r p o s i v e w a y , has succeeded in dealing w i t h it

in another . His treatment of time and Yoruban traditional

elements all m a k e his play not only different and culture

specific. but also fltiid. They take it beyond normal limits

and give it extra d i m e n s i o n s . They serve as " reminderCs]

that Soyanka is not merely adding colour to a basically

English form but [that his play is] soaked in the ritual
87
traditions of Yoruba drama and masques "

The Baroka story dance for one is completely in the

Yoruba masque and rittial tradition - which is a distinctive

and African idiom of cultural expression. The masque in the

play rriight have been envisaged in the tradition of stylised

and masked dramatic dance but this represents a substantial

deviation in style from the superficial use of e'^^otic forms

familiar in the miusical. The miodesty of this innovation

establishes the transitional nature of this work. The

playwright is drawing on the stylised form. of African

performance traditions and challenging his audience to accept

them. The mask worn is used generally to invoke the spirit

of gods in a dance but here it is used to symbolize the Bale.

The mask is worn here because the scotching of Baroka's

libido is being celebrated ritually working as a dramatic

contrast to actual events while at the same time also

expressing Nigerian culture and attitudes. The naturalness of

the occasion (stories travel fast, especially when the hero

is their Chief, whorri they both love and hate), the

authenticity and its suggestiveness are only equalled by

their dramatic necesity and cultural significance.

It must be noted that along with the above facts, the

matter of Sidi's choice of Baroka over Lakunle have led many

critics to conclude that The Lion and the Jewel is a

Necritude play. Whether the conclusion is justified or not,

requires examination. Is Sidi's choice really a mark of her

opting for tradition rejecting Westernisation 7 Does she when

she chooses a man of native wisdom instead of an English-

educated younger person, choose tradition "^ If Sidi is the

embodiment of beauty, is the contest for her, a competition

between a supposed African fertility against Western

sterility 7 Does Sidi really prefer the Bale as her last

conversation with Lakunle seems to imply 7 If it is so, it

would mean that Soy ink a is extolling the vigour, cunning and

life-style of traditional people against the less spontaneous,

more wordy, more intellectual nature of the British culture

and its African adherents as all Negritudinist writers had

done.

Lakunle can hardly be considered a representative of

the Western culture. As Soyinka himself clarifies, there is :

no clash (in the play) because there is no Western

culture. What you have is a misconceived, very narrow

and very superficial concept of Western culture, as

stated by Lakunle. Lakunle is ...[a composite of] a

sort of Biblical gleanings, the occasional magazine

' ...poorly digested .... How can you say Lakunle

represents a culture 7 He is a limbo. There is no

354
 culture in a limbo ,

To attach Western concepts like modernity,

liberation and progress with Lakunle is to make a gross

•falsification. The pioneer of modernism has to be deeply aware

of things. Lakunle hardly represents Enlightenment; he is a

hypocrite and weakling, unfit to be a teacher. He, of all

people, cannot herald the revolution against superstition. He

has no conviction or vision of his own; and inspite of all

his big talk to the contrary, he has as much belief in the

local tradition as anybody else in the village. His

departures, if any ar^ born of his poverty than from any real

ideology. He does not represent Western civilisation but

rather its harmful impact on gullible colonial subjects. He

can symbolise nothing but, as Gibbs points out, "the vulgar

and the tawdry ... someone who has been blown

off his feet by the winds from the West ' .

Soy ink a considers those who see Lakunle as a

representative of Western culture to be " the victims of

colonial aristocracy and the usual quota of retarded

students." Apart fromr them, no one would even " see Lakunle

as a young educated man. A man and especially a school

teacher with simple ideas of foreign values is not , in these

parts considered educated. He is nothing but a figure of fun

„90

355
 Lakunle's obiiviousnesB to the taunts showered at him

create laughter. His ego and vanity make him seemingly

contemptuous of what he really desires as also supposedly

immune to public opinion of him.- As Moore points OLit,

"Lakunle's pretended contempt is partly a compensation for his

lack of wealth, strength, or good looks, just as his moral

refusal to pay bride-price is rooted in his inability to do

so. Lskunle's claims to sophistication will scarcely, prevent

his being dismissed as a ' bush man ' when he reaches the
91
city. This is the pitiful part of his dilemma" , and the

irony of the colonial situation. However Anglicised they

might be, they were never accepted as equals to White

Eng1ishmen.

Nevertheless in the village, Lakunle enjoys being the

so-called champion of Westernisation, modernisation and

Drogress. It offers him some compensation for his lack of

status, wealth and position in society and he sees in that, a

way to match up to the richer well-established and powerful

Bale Baroka. He is merely a struggling school teacher, poor

ineffectual and weak like "hundreds of whom I know, who think

they can match characters like Baroka with imperfect weapons,

with notions of what a modern society should be" '^. Such

characters, continue Soyinka "are taken as being a dead-

end, a purely transitional character who in that sense anyway

can be considered as the obverse of Baroka." " Even if he is

356
the obverse of Baroka, he cannot hope to equal him in

strength because of the split in his psyche that the colonial

encounter has created in him. He therefore cannot behave

naturally. His initial refusal to take part in the pantomine

for example is due to his Westernisation, but his obvious

enjoyment of it when coerced to participate indicate that

Lakunle, after all, is a son of the soil.

In Lakunle, Soyinka is really satirising the foreign-

returned "Nigerian" showing off his suits and superficial

knowledge rather than the West itself. Lakunle "for me," says

Soyinka ;

is a caricature. We have caricatures like that in our

society; there sre walking caricatures all over the

place. The 'been to' are caricatures ! I suspect

sometimes that those who say Lakunle is 'flat' feel

uncomfortable, they feel they are being got at. He is

based on those who thought "This girl has to be

impressed by my canvas shoes'

While Lakunle is so convincing perhaps because he

is inspired from real people, it is undeniable that he is a

farcical figure. There is no reason why such caricatures

cannot be introduced in the play " so long as one does not

suggest that they represent the normi..." "• .

357
 The language Lakunle uses suggests his artificiality

and superficiality too. It exposes him as a foolish disciple

of the superficiality of Western civilisation. Aspiring to

the Western ideal of romantic love, Lakunle uses a "humorous,

modern day continuation of a style of seductive verse that

runs from Ovid....[to]...Johnson" . His windy effusions

stand out in contrast to the weightier verse of the

"illiterate" Bale. His language ends in deflections and

anticlimaxes. When he allows his natural instinct to express

itself freely, he becomes creative. He has his own fund of

energy and spirit, but which he tries' to dam in in his effort

to be like his British role models. As Soyinka himself points

out, "*The Dance of the Lost Traveller' shows us creative

energy in Lakunle. Lakunle is a performer , he enjoys his

role. And that is why at the end of the play, I made sure

that he is not a tragic character. In the final dance, he is

already creating for himself a new madonna," forgetting all

his past reading and British heroes. His love like

his Westernisation is skin deep. But it is this

characteristic in his nature, that enables him to bounce

back, regardless of whatever tragedy or calumny befalls him.

If Lakunle does not represent the West as much as its

harmful effect on a naive shallow kind of person , what does

Bale Baroka represent ?

358
 Barcka was inspired by Charlie Chaplin who when in his

-fifties took to wife a seventeen year Oona O'Neill. Soyinka

admits that he is based on :

Charlie Chaplin and ... the old men. I knew in my

society who at seventy and eighty would still take

some new young wives - and always seemed perfectly

capable of coping with the onerous tasks which such

activity demanded of them ' 1 just sat down and that's

how Baqfoka came into existence. 1 knew th'at some of

these old men had actually won these new wives against

the stiff competition of some younger men, some of

their school teachers, who came to ' the villages....

Mind you, the younger mgn didn't speak the language

that those girls understood and they were beaten by

the old man. Thats how The Lion and the Jewel came to

be written

Baroka, like the chiefs hg, represents, has the

capacity to turn his own weaknesses to advantage. Men like :

him Bre not ignorant of the march of progress, they

arB not ignorant at all. They know how to manipulate

and how to handle those who BTB confused by the ideas

which at~e just coming in. They will pretend ignorance,

but in actual fact, they are forestalling the event.

It is important to know this, to know how to deal with

innovations

359
 In this s e n s e he u n d e r s t a n d s m o d e r n i s a t i o n better

than L a k u n l e does.

Soyinka is -fond of this creation of h i s . He considers

Baroka :

one D"f the richest and most m i s c h i e v o u s character I

have ever created. I love the old m a n . I think he is

a wily reactionary bastard but he is so throughly

grotunded in his r o o t s that he w i n s . I mean,never

mind whether he is on the side of tradition or

r e a c t i o n , the important thing is that he has no doubt

whatever about w h e r e he comes from and w h e r e he belongs

He even knows how to m a n i p u l a t e , how to keep under

check, in control the p u t a t i v e forces of a new order

w h i c h threaten his b e i n g , his c o n t e n t m e n t , his

entrenchment in his little backwater of African

society 100

Neither L a k u n l e , the school teacher nor the headstrong

Sidi,nor the cunning crone Sadiku standing for a cerebral

future, an intelligible present and a p a s s i v e conventional

past is any match for B a l e and his energetic conservatism. He

can play and o u t m a n u o u e v r e every one b e c a u s e of the force of

his c o n f i d e n c e that comes from his belief in life. H i s i=. the

360
native wisdom contrasted to Lakunle's imported knowledge.

Baroka seems to enjoy challenges. Instead of forcing

Sidi to marry him, he tries to win her instead, well aware

that a Westernised man is her beau. He wishes to make a

public point and show off his prowess to his commLinity re-

establishing his postion as its natural leader, inspite of

the forces of colonialism and the winds of charge that they

ushered in.

But if Baroka wins Sidi it is not because he

symbolises YorLsban culture.He is merely exploiting certain

aspects of his culture for his own benefit," I wouldn't say

that Baroka represents tradition as such, he represents a

last ditch defence against external intervention in his

• 101
little pocket" . He wants to keep Britain away as much as

he can. If he is traditional by choice, it is because he

enjoys more privileges in that system. Also, as Gibbs points

out ,Baroka cannot represent static traditional African

values as firstly Yoruban society is no static community :

The tradition in which he exists is constantly

changing; Bales have to be pol itfcolli^ agi 1 e, they have

to come to terms with new developments and anticipate

change. Baroka is highly intelligent and a survivor he

is in his own way responding to the winds of change

which arB blowing by trimming his sails .

361
Bar ok a thus is no mere :

stereotype reactionary . It suits his character and

position to keep modern influences at arm's length

but his seduction of Sidi by means of the stamping

machine and magazine photographs show that he is well

able to make those influences work for his own

convenience . He is far more secure in such dealings

4.1-
than 1Lakunle
. 1 103

It is his cunning, energy , will power that stands

in contrast against Lakunle's naivete, indecision and

dishonesty.

Again if Baroka was to be a figure of tradition in the

Negritudinist sense, he would not only have refused to use

"stamps" for his own ends but also not be drawn and presented

as
a corrupt chieftan who bribes the government officials

to ensure that civilisation is kept at bay, atleast

for as long as possible. He is the voluptuous beast

who 'loves his life too well to bear to part from

it' . We need not take Lakunle's word for it, taut

Soyinka presents himr as a great lover of women who

must have a new wife atleast every five months, yet

Soyinka offers him the Jewel on a bed of roses. The

conclusion may be dramatic in the sense of being

362
 une>!pe'cted but its social vision is unclear, all

though there? is little doubt about its anti-feminist

assumptions

But is Baroka's social vision unclear ? Rather it

is through Baroka that Soyinka is voicing his own dislike

for the sameness and imitativeness of modernity. Again

Soyinka is not advocating a polygamous superstitious

traditionalism as is obvious in the fact that Baroka is not

presented as an ideal. He is not entirely traditional

himself -he has allowed a school, a palace staff union and

is intending to makes stamps. What Soyinka is very obviously

advocating is that one ought not to abandon tradition to

become an ineffectual foolish imitator like Lakunle.

Synthesising the best from both cultures ought to be the

aim. The play as all his pronouncements on the cultural

question has always promoted synthesis as the way to meet the

cultural encounter colonialism ushered in .No wonder the

character he draws whether it is Lakunle or Baroka are

depicted as intercultural each evolving his own level and

type of intercultura1 ism in response to the cultural

challenges, and in proportion to his own mental capacities.

Even Sidi , whose choice has been the focus of so mtich

critical attention is a product of the cultural encounter.

She is hardly the upholder of her tradition as her choice

might stiggest. She might dress with plaits and wrapper like

36:
a traditional yotrng maiden and love to sing, dance and

pantomine like any African v i l l a g e g i r l . But even if she is

the embodiment of fertility and beauty and the zest for

l i f e , it 15 not as if the two c o n t i n e n t s and w a y s of life are

aspiring for her , contesting to win h e r . For just as Baroka

and L a k u n l e are not entirely two d i f f e r e n t p o l e s is terms of

culture, Sidi too" is at o d d s with the role prescribed to

young w o m e n " "". Even her insistence on b r i d e price is not

based on her belief in it as in the end she m a r r i e s Baroka

withovit it. Sidi r e j e c t s Lakunle's Westernised opinion on

the issue of bride price only because it would affect her

s t a t u s in her f r i e n d s - circle . She gets Westernised in her

own way after the photograph^. S h e s e e m s to be using Laktmle's

ideas in rejecting Baroka initially. She ultimately ends as

Lindfors puts it, " by taking from Baroka the supposed

traditionalist what she refused from L a k u n l e , the supposed

1 O^
modernist : miarriage w i t h o u t bride p r i c e " .

By fTiarrying Bale she is really miaking the best of a

bad situation . S h e s a v e s her pride , while ensuring a

future life of c o m f o r t . Marrying Lakunle was equivalent to

rtiaking her s i t u a t i o n and s h a m e p u b l i c . S h e would be mocked

forever by Lakunle and o t h e r s for her gullibility . In

securing her ends, she rrrakes light of his traditional

custofTis. She leaves the asking and other traditional

ceremonies" and all that n o n s e n s e to s a v a g e s and brabarians

364
(5ic)"(55). The Bale can aiiord to as easily make light of

tradition. Hence their marriage can be solemnised without

prior ceremonies, Sidi like Lakunle and Baroka is thus

intercultural- she makes a selective choice oi traditional

and (Tiodern customs.

It is un-fair in this context to make much of Sidi ' s

choice as a choice of tradition. Her choice has been

dictated by circumstances -some D"f which are of her own

making - and may be traced to her sudden and intoxicating

(for her) interaction with a different culture and world

through its object - magazines and stamps. If she chooses

Baroka , it is becaus-e he was the lesser evil for her

personally. As Lindfors puts it, nothing would have

"prevented her from responding more favourably to a

Governrrrent minister albeit a virile one . ,,107

Sidi is not a symrbol , as allegorical minded critics

concluded who quite predictably therefore saw her choice as

a conscious opting for tradition . Sidi is rather a simiple,

unprotected [she is not shown as having a famiily] village

girl who grows too bold by the turn of events which leads

ultimately to her own downfall. Her encounter with modernity

turns her head, Fromi the tiftie . the Lagos man camie with his

camera and car. her troubles begin . Illiterate but

intelligent, she is willing to learn. Aware through Lakunle

of the world beyond , she is depicted as being conscious of

>65
her ignorance. ThoLsgh happy with her friends, she is

quick to adapt to di-f-ferent situations and different people.

Soyinka himself had this to say about Lakunle and Sidi :

They represent a particular phfSse of development

They are creatures who responded, especially Sidi.

She responds instinctual 1y to new experiences of a

culture, a foreign one .... it's just the [way] any

village girl would have ... She judges the magazine

by certain yardsticks... . She has no other means of

judging what her photographs there represent. In so

far as that is concerned, she is only to be

sympathised with .,. She is caught also in a phase of

development ... and to suggest that , she is more

corriplex ... is to be dishonest..." 1 on

But would a village - girl like Sidi is supposed

to be dare to mock the headman in his bed''. In this sense,

Sidi hes been carried to an e>;treme »Soyinka may in this

play only be making a theatrical contributiuon and

sim.pl i fi cation to make a provocative contribution to the

debate about the direction in which African society should

miove. Soyinka is therefore working with extremfes rather

than the typical. Significantly even Nandini of Red

01eanders had a Sidi - like daring and " modernity". Not

surprisingly therefore the qualities of high spiritedness

and independence which arB found in somre Yoruban women are

'66
represented in an extreme form here,

Again Sidi when she chooses Baroka does not choose

tradition. Lakunle and Baroka in fact :

are selves of this same soul. Lakunle standing for the

new self is rejected for the other self making the

pl<X.y more than the dilemma of the traditional versus

old, but a dramatisation of the moments of doubt and

subsequent choice of the psyche in a given moment.

109
Culture contact here is instrumental

Haney too sees in this early Soyinkan play ,

inspite of its suppossed incomplexity. the subtler state of

mind in which discurssive logic no longer precludes a vision

of the underlying unity of life -a postulate that is upheld

as a fundamental truth by the Yoruban tradition to which he

1 lO
belongs ". In other words, what these critics recognise

but do not name, and which make this play different, is

Soyinka's intercultural vision. It is interculturalism that

structures the play and its characters and makes them

meaningf Li 1 .

The play also satirises the pretensions on both sides

and in both classes but the satire is controlled, never

abusive. From the politico -economic angle the play depicts

how a village was kept poor and primitive on purpose.The

Bale was often—they were British stooges—the only rich man

367
in the village while others like Lakunle were poor. The latter

class worked hard for a living. The women would grind, pound

yam, pull water and help in -farming. The bonds of cohesion

and sense of community were tremendously strong though.

They sang and danced, aided by a little palm wine in gay

abandon, unaware of urbanisation, modernity or indLsstry .As

long as people did not challenge the Bale they were not

disturbed by him. If anyone dared to challenge his feudal

authority or importance as Sidi did in the play, the Bale

would teach him or her a sound lesson. The Bale knows how to

tackle the White man as well. When the British surveyor

comes to the village, he bribes him with money and sends him

back. This reveals how corruption was not unknown in British

Nigeria, and had found its way to the very backwaters.

On the intel1ectual-educational front, the play

reveals the little or no importance that the colonial

Nigerian attached to education. If Lakunle takes to teaching,

it is only because he is too lazy to work at farming. In fact

to trust young children to the likes of Lakunle [as Sidi

playfully points out to him in the play] is to jeopardise

their future. He takes tim.e off for courting Sidi during

school hours. The school takes an unpermitted holiday when

the photographer arrives.lt is this carelessness towards

education, Soyinka seems to imply that made Nigeria fall an

easy victim to colonialism..

:;68
 In Thg Lion and the Jewel a cross section oi society

is sought to be forwarded. The ruling class. (Bale) the school

teacher (Lakunle), the farmer, the servants, the visitor

from the city, the White man, the old and the young are all

presented. The feudal nature of colonial society comes

through where the whole village is like an extended family

whose head is the Bale. The play becomes an admirable

social record in this sense, especially of the British

influence on the traditional fabric.

Socially speaking, the colonial encounter brought

Western ways to Nigeria, Giving up their traditional dress,

men like Lakunle became an image of sartorial inelegance. A

cultural mi:>!-up characterises these men. They begin to look

upon their people as Westerners would . Alienated from

tradition on the one hand, they see themselves as better

civilised due to their Westernization on the other. Such

cultural mulattoes look to books for clues on how to behave,

They would be tragic figures, if they were not so funny .

The impact of Science on the agrarian society is

profound. They try to interpret cars and cameras in Nigerian

terms, and become confused and perplexed in their reaction

to it. Sidi for one is stunned by her encounter and her

innocence of the outer world undoes her.

'69
 Western ways however have not made the position of

women any better in Nigeria. They continue to be playthings

in the hands of men. Polygamous practice meant that the

women, when the men tire of them, find themselves in the

outhouse. A vast age difference would also creep between

the husband and his youngest wife. As par tradition she (the

youngest wife) marries the oldest heir of her first husband.

As head wife, she enjoys some privileges.

It is hardly surprising in these circumstances that

there is an unspoken enemity between the sexes and a sense

of the sisterhood of women. It is for this reason that

Sadiku is shown in the play as gloating over her husband's

impotence and including a girl like Sidi, a challenger and

young enough to be her daughter, in celebrating it.

Lakunle being half- Westernised finds himself slipping

often into the traditional habit of treating women as

inferior beings (they have smaller brains, he thinks ). He

finds himself nursing polygamous desires as well.

Religion wise, colonial Nigeria is seen here as a

place where old and new religions peacefully coexist. Converts

like Lakunle refer to Sango as often in their speech as The

Bible - Lakunle addresses Sidi as "the sum of fabled

perfections / Prom Genesis to the Revelations / Listen not to

370
the voice of the infidel (19), while at the same time in

voking Sango the infidel God as witness and judge. Ogun,

Sango and traditional Yoruban myths go hand in hand in the

play with references to "Ruth, Rachael, Esther, Bathsheba..."

(19) . As Soyinka saw it, the challenge of the colonial

encounter was not the choosing between The Bible or Ogun,

between Brtain and Nigeria, between modernity and tradition,

as effecting a synthesis under Nigerian terms and parameters

by the Nigerians themselves. He therefore terms those who see

the drama as a play about the battle of Africa and the West

as "adopting the line of least resistance ... Remember this

play came out at a time when African writers themselves were

agonising about their being torn between two cultures ... A

lot of it was very artificial. It was just easy material and

the play came out during the period of when everyone was

writing about it. It is so ironic to find a play I had

written for the enjoyment of Baroka (as a character) being

''11
taken to represent this theme "^ .

The play is neither about Nigeria and the West nor is

it saying " that the old ways of life, with chieftancy,

polygamy etc. are to be accepted because they arB African

and natural and that Westerisation is to be rejected,

[though however] the Westernisation represented... is pseudo

Westernisation? ^. Instead it is, as Moore points out, " a

a direct confrontation of colonial and racial attitudes of

the West t o w a r d s Africa either as p a r a d i s e of i n n o c e n c e or a

jungle. T h e moral of the P^^y could be 'Man , be thyself

. . . . ' . In the colonial era in w h i c h it w a s written, it

was really an a r g u m e n t for i n t e r c u l t u r a l i s m as the way of

facing reality given the fact that the best solution in the

present s t a t e of a f f a i r s was to allow both cultures to flow

into o n e ' s soul.

Soyinka's interculturalism is seen not only in his

thematic vision but also in his theatrical art. This has

caused c r i t i c s to regard the play as b e i n g - even w h i l e it is

seen as retaliating to W e s t e r n n o t i o n s of Africa- in the

tradition of Western sex comedies. It has been called

Aristophanic and the " r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of a d i a l o g u e with the

European tradition of comedy of plays about impotence"

However it is admitted that it "employs a dramatic

convention substantially different from t h o s e found in the

European tradition and p r e s e n t s a view of an old suitor

114
quite unlike that of conventional European comedy" . The

difference in S o y i n k a ' s stance and approach that mark

him out from o t h e r s - both Western and indigenous traditions-

is his capacity to i n t e r w e a v e them, or in other w o r d s , his

interculturalism.

The difference in the n a t u r e of this comedy has been

caused in other w o r d s , due to its being situated in "the

magnetic field of a t t r a c t i o n and repulsion between three

characters caught in an amusing African variation of the

classic love triangle ... " '. The difference lies in

Soyinka varying the archetypal theme of rivalry between

sev.es and between youth and old age to m a k e it relevant to

Nigeria and her e x p e r i e n c e of the cultural encounter and

to achieve t h i s , he has m a d e " the r e p r e s e n t a t i v e of youth,

L a k u n l e and S i d i . . . a d v o c a t e s of a very q u e s t i o n a b l e form

116
of p r o g r e s s ."

That there has been a Western influence in the

presentational style of this play m a y b e seen in the way

Soyinka has written it down . It s h o w s his awareness and.

perception of the necessity to explain the d e t a i l s of what is

spontaneous in Yoruban drama to prospective non-Nigerian

audiences and readers.lt also revealed S o y i n k a ' s a w a r e n e s s of

the H o l l y w o o d and Shavian t r a d i t i o n s of presention,

Soyinka's intercu1tura1 theatre-consciousness is also

responsible for making the play e f f e c t i v e and successful as

theatre.Even when following the U n i t i e s , he did it not so

much as a concession to Western dramaturgy as to his

consciousness of what makes good theatre . When he

incorporated Yoruban e l e m e n t s , the s a m e c o n s c i o u s n e s s guided

him. It w a s for this reason that his play m a k e s for popular

viewing in s p i t e of the fact that w h i l e e n t e r t a i n i n g he is

also edLicating and revealing something of the body and soul

of a people's life.

373
 I-f Soyinka was able to achieve this, it was because

his intercultural vision guided him at every stage. The way

the setting has been chosen, the manner in which the aural

and visual senses in-form and serve as comment on characcter

and events, his handling of time, characterisation and

dialogue, in short, the totality o"f the experience the play

presents speak volumes of both Soyinka's knowledge of his

country and the West as also his early mastery over the

theatre. The acknowledged vitality and unquestionable power

of the plsy lies both beca*-(se it was conceived

intercultural1y as also in the fact that Soyinka never

allowed himself to lose his theatre consciousness. And if the

play has a remarkable staying power and is assured of a

niche in posterity,it is because it presented in the

intercultural mode, a- faithful record of the cultural

encounter that his country went through in colonial Bra,

374
NOTES :

Chinua Achebe, "ft-frican Writers and English Language",

Morning Vet On Creation Day (London : Heinemann, 1975 ) 47.

^Qtd. in Robert H. Heuesler, "Research on Pre-British

Northern Nigeria : A Note on Limitations and Potential" The

)
South Atlantic Quarterly 9, g. ^ ( Aut. 196fe ) : 529.

-r

"'Robert H. Heussler, "Indirect Rule in Northern

Nigeria, "The South Atlantic Quarterly 6S.3 (June 1968):509.

'' Ibid.510.

"' I bid. 500.

Tony Ike Nnaemeka, "Cultural Influences, Modern

Changes and the Sociology of Modern African Political

Communication," Journal of Black Studies 20.3 (Mar.1990):309-

310.

7
Amilcar Cabral, "Nationalist Culture," Unity and

Struggle:Speeches and Writings (London: Heinemann, 1980)139-

40,

^Adrian Roscoe, "Mother is Gold j_ A Study in West

Afri can Li terature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1971) 1.
 HeuBBler, "The Legacy of British Colonialism," The

South Atlantic Quarterly 310.

10, ane Wilkinson, "The Nobel Prize in Italy," The

Literary Half-yearly 28.2 (July 1987):40-41.

11 Achebe, " Colonialist Criticism," Morning 5.

Ngugi Wa Thiongo, "Church , Culture and

Politics",Homecoming ; Essays on Afri can and Caribbean

Literature, Culture and Politics (New York : Lawrence Hill,

1972) 32.

•'•'^'An English Official Otd. in Claude Wauthier, The

Li terature and Thought of Modern Africa }_ A Survey , (London:

Heinemann, 1978) 219,

^ Achebe, "The African Writer and the Biafran

Cause," Morning 80.

•^^Albert S. Gerard, "1500 Years Critical Writing in

Black Africa, "Research in African Literature 12.2 (1981):

1A7.

16 Ngugi, "Towards a National Culture," Homecoming 9,

17Cabral , Uni ty and Struggle 61

376
 •'•^atd. in Will-fried F. Feuser, "Wole Soyinka: The

Problem o-f Authenticity, "The Literary Half Yearly 28,2 (July

1987^ : 205.

1 "9
Eldred DuroBimi Jones, The Writing of Wole Soyinka
(London : Heinemann,1972) 9.

20 Ezekiel Mphahlele, The Afri can Image (London : Faber,

1962) 24.

'7 1

^ Lewis NkD5i , Tasks and Masks i_ Themes and Sty les of

Afri can Literature (Harlem ; Longman, 1981) 8.

^ Geoffrey Hunt," Two African Aesthetics: Soyinka

Versus Cabral , " Marxism and Af r i can Li terature , ed . G e o r g e ^ .

Gugelburger (Trenton, New Jersey : African World Press,

1986)90.

•^"Abola Irele," Negritude: Literature and Ideology"

Modern Black Novel ists \_ A Col 1 ection oi Critical Essays. ed.

M,G.CoDke(New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1971)5.

24
Kalu Ogba," Interview with Chinua Achebej " Research
in African Literature 29.1(1978):2.

^"Chinua Achebe," An Image of Africa," Research in

African Literature 29.1(1978):2,

^^Ibid.3.

377
 ^ Nadime Godimer," The Interpreters: Some Themes and

Directions in African Literature,"Kenyon Review 32.2 Issue

1(1970):9.

"^Qtd.in O.R.Dathorne, The Black Mind: A History of

Afri can Li terature (Minneapolis: Universty of Minnesota

Press,197A) 319.

TO

'~ Abiola Irele," Negritude: Literature and Ideology,"

Modern Black Novelists : A Col lection Of Critical Essays (New

Jersey: Prentice, 1971)22.

^'*^Ibid. 312-13.

•^'^Dathorne, Black Mind 312-13.

^^Ibid. 312-13.

^'Ibid. 317,

3A Aime Cesaire. Discourse on Colonialism Trans..Joan

Pinkham (New York : Monthly Review Press, 1972).

"'^'Ruth.H. Lindeberg, "Is this Guerilla "^s^r-^B.r^-> The

Narrative Strategies of the Political Subject: Wole Soyinka's

Ake", Research in African Literature,21.^ (1990) ;63.

'"' Wole Soyinka, Ake: The Years of Chi 1 dhood (London:

Rex Collings, 1981) The Title Page.

:78
 ^ Wole S o y i n k a , " The External Encounter: Ambivalence

in African A r t s and L i t e r a t u r e , "Art D i a l o q u e and Outrage:

Essays in L i t e r a t u r e and C u l t u r e ( Ibadan.New Horn P r e s s , 1988) 23

^ ^ F e u s e r , The Literary Half Yearly 207.

^'^Dathorne, Black !^ind 3 1 5 .

40

Chinweizu Onwuchekwa Jervvie, Ihechekwu Madubuikwe,

Towards the Decolonisation of African L i t e r a t u r e ( plMAQU.:

F o u r t h D i m e n s i o n , P.N.B., 1964) 2 5 .
'^-'•DathDrne, 3 0 0 ,

42
N k o s i , T a s k s and M a s k s 1 5 .

43

Ann Tibbie, "Introduction," African-English

Literature : A Survey and Anthoiogy (London : Peter Owen,

1965) 3.
'^'^Qtd .in Nkosi , 7 .

"^^Qtd in Feuser , The Literary Half -;_ Yearl>' 2 0 4 ,

46 "

Wole Soyinka, Lecture: The Scholar in African

S'Ocietvj " 2 2 Jan 1977 (other data not a v a i l a b l e ) Courtesy :

Ken Goodwin.
47
W o l e S o y i n k a , "Cross c u r r e n t s : The New African after
Cultural C r o s s - c u r r e n t s , " Art D i a l o q u e and Outrage 180-81.

'79
 Sarbani Sen ," Whither African English Literature'^

A Tete-a-tete with Berth Lindfors, "A-frican Literature Today ,

ed. R.K.Dhawan (New Del hi:Prestige, 1994) 16.

49
Soyinka ,Lecture 50,

"'"Wole Soyinka ," Theatre in African Traditional

Culture^" Art Dialpque and Outrage 203.

"^Bernth Lindfors, ed. Perspectives on Nigerian

Literature (London : Heinemann,1979) 203.

'^ G.D.Killam, ed . Af r i can Writers on Af r i can Wr i ting

(London : Heinemann, 1973) viii.

"'"Maduakor Obiajuru, "Soyinka as a Literary

Critic,"Research in African Literature 17.1 (1986):26

•=,4
" Biodun Jeyifo," Introduction,"Art,Dialoque and
Outrage y, >'. i v .

""Wole Soyinka," The Writer in the Modern African State,

Art Dialogue and Outrage 20.

^^Sarbani Sen," Whither African English Literature '^ A

Tete-a-Tete with Bernth Lindfors," The Commonwealth Review

4.1 (1992-93):15.

•" ' Edd. E.M.Iji ," Wole Soyinka and Predecessors ;

Deviation, Conformism and Non - Conformism" Afri can

380
Li t e r a t u r e Cpmes of Age , eds. C.D.Narasimhaiah and Ernest

Emenyonu (Mysore: Dhvany ei 1 oka , 1988) 1 3 2 .

58 James G i b b s , "Soyinka in Z i m b a b w e : A Question and

Answer S e s s i o n , " The Literary Half-Yearly 2B.2 (1987):98.

" H u n t , " Two African Aesthetics," Marxism and African

Li t e r a t u r e 9 0 .

Stanlay Macebuch, "Poetics and the Mythic

I m a g i n a t i o n , " Critical P e r s p e c t i v e s , ed. G i b b s 2 0 3 .

61 F e u s e r , The Literary Half Year Iy 2 1 3 .

62
Jeyifo," Introduction"Art xiv

63
•"Peter Nazareth, An_ African View of Literature

(Evanston, Illinois : North West University Press,1974)69.

64

Stanley Macebuch, "Poetics and the Mythic

Imagination," Critical P e r s p e c t i v e s on Viol e Soy ink a , ed .

James Gibbs (Washington:Three Continents Press, 1980)202.

"Wole S o y i n k a , " C r o s s C u r r e n t s : The New African After

Cultural E n c o u n t e r s , " Art 153.

C h i n w e i r u , et a l . D e c o l o n i z a t i o n 246-47.

Wole Soyinka," Post-Mortem for a D e a t h of the King's

Horseman, "Art 3 3 7 .

^^ "Soyinka in Zimbabwe"93.

38;
 ^"^Ibid. 105.

70 Wole Soyinka, "Who's Afrfl^d of Elesin Oba ^" Art 116,

71 Joel Adedeji, "The Aesthetics of Soyinka's

Theatre." Before Our Very Eyes 120-21

7'7
Wole Soyinka," The Fourth Stage," Art 147-48.

"Edd. E.M.Iji ,"Wole Soyinka and

Predecessors,"Afri can Literature Comes of Age 136.

-74

Eldred Jones." Wole Soyinka: Critical Approaches,"

The Critical Evaluation of Afri can Literature, ed. Edgar

Wright (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1973) 65.

'"Wole Soyinka," Drama and the Idiom of Liberation,"

Art 10,

76 Dathorne 3

Abiola Irele "The Criticism of Modern African

Literature,"Perspectives on African Literature,

ed.Christopher Heywood (London: Heinemann,1971) 23.

78 Wole Soyinka," The Writer in Modern African State"

Art 20.

79
Otd. in Bernth Lindfoirs, "Wole Soyinka: When are
you coming home '^ , "The Bl ind Men and the El ephant and Other

382
Essays In Bio-Cr 1 ti cism (Adelaide: Centi-E' For Research in New

Literatures in Engl ish , .f^B? > 37 .

From Resolution of First Congress of Negro Writers

in Paris in 1956. Qtd. in The Lion And The Jewel: York Notes,

ed. James Gibbs ^Harlow, Essex: Longman York Books, 1986)35.

^•^Shiv. K. Kumar, " Wole Soyinka: His Pen is a Hand-

Grenade," Commonwealth Fi ction3 ed. R.K.Dhawan (New Delhi:

Prestige Publishers, 1988)73.

"Qtd. in Radhamani Gopa 1 akr ishnan , At_ Oqun ' s Feet; Wole

Soy inka. the PI aywriqht (Tirupati :Sri Venkateswara

University, 1986) 1.

83
"'Wole Soyinka, "The Lion and the Jewel" Col 1 ected

Plays 2 1974(0><fDrd : Oxford University Press , 1982) 3 .

Subseqent quototations are from this edition and page

numbers are given in paranthesis within.

an
James Gibbs, Wole Soy inka Modern Dramatists

Series (Hong Kong ; Macmillan, 1986)47,

8:"'A.R. Radcliffe," Introduction ," African Systems of

Kinship and Marriage (London: O.U.P,, 1975) 43.

86 William Walsh, Commonwealth Literature

87 Gilbert Phelps," Two Nigerian Writers: Chinua Achebe

^R3
and Wole Soy ink a," PBI lean Guide- to Engl ish Literature 8_

The Present. ed. Boris Ford (Hammondsworth, Middlese>;:

Penguin, 1980) 339.

"Soyinka in Zimbabwe" 79-80.

Gibbs, Mole Soy inka 52.

^Wole Soyinka," The Autistic Hunt," Art 304,

"^-^Gerald Moore, Wole Soyinka (London : Evans, 1973)27

9'7
"^"Soyinka in Zimbabwe " 80.

-Ibid. 86,

9A
^^Ibid.67.

9*1
^Ibid.74

''^Roscoe 241

97
"Soyinka in Zimbabwe" 87

''^Ibid. 67.

''^Ibid.e6,

^'^^'Ibid.72.

^*^^Ibid.80.

'84
 ^^^Gibbs, Wole Soyinka 52.

•1 A " ? "

"•'Moore , Wole Soy ink a 27.

-^ S.E.Ogude," Wole Soyinka and the Philosophy of

Acceptance, "Li terature and National Consciousness, eds.

Ernest Emenyonu N. and Ebele Eko ( n.p; Heinemann, 1989)

165.

^*^^'Gibb5, Wole Soyinka 52.

Bernth Lindfors, ed. Criti cal Perpectives on

Nigerian Literature (London : Heinemann, 1979) 244.

^'^'^Ibid. 244.

108
"Soyinka in Zimbabwe" 73

1 OQ

B.M.Ibitokun, "The Pseudo Selves : An Aspect of

Soyinka'5 Dramaturgy," Wor1d Literature Written in Engljsh

21.1(Spr. 1982) 28,

William S. Haney II, "Soyinka's Ritual Drama :

Unity, Post- Modernism and the History of the Intellect",

Research in African Literature 21.4 (1990)33.

•^•'••'•"Soyinka in Zimbabwe "80,

1 12
•^•^"-Nazareth 6"

1 l"^i
" "Gerald Moore, Twelve Afri can Writers (London

38;
Hutchinson, 1980)221

114 Gibbs, Mole Soy inka 29.

115 Lind-for5,Bl ind Men And The Elephant 38,

K.E.Senani ,"ThoughtB on Creating the Popular

"heatre,"Critical Peroectives,ed. Jammes Gibbs 77.

386