CHAPTER II

Myth-Ritual Paradigm and the Contemporary Society

I

"Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under

every circumstance, the myths of man have flourished, they

have been living inspiration of whatever else may have

appeared out of the human activity and mind". 1 These words

of Joseph Campbell sum up the universality of the myth-making

process. As mysterious and inexhaustible treasures of

information about a culture, the social scientists, the

psychologists and •the poets and playwrights have all been

interested

Freud and

in the study of myths

Jung explored myths

in their different

for understanding

ways.

the

individual and the collective psyche, poets like Eliot and

Yeats went back to myths to look for a a vision of wholeness

that would regenerate a fragmented civilization and Eugene

Oneill used the Greek myths in an American setting to

underscore the permanence of certain human urges and

instincts. We see contemporary Indian writers like Raja Rao

and R.K. Narayan using myths in their novels to serve various

structural and thematic purposes and African writers like

Duro Ladipo, Obatunde Ijimere and Wole Soyinka deploying

mythical motifs in their plays and novels in different ways.

Defining myth is not an easy task as its meaning has

been changing from its Greek origin mytbos which meant

"speech" or "message" to the present dictionary meaning: "A

50

purely fictious narrative usually involving supernatural '

persons, actions, or events, and embo~ying some popular idea

concerning natural or historical phenomena" 2 . Social

scientists hold diverse views on myths; all however seem

agreed on one basic fact: that a myth is a tale or a

narrative. In Tristam Potter Coffin's definition "myths are

folk tales that are religious in nature and explain the

universe and its inhabitants. Such stories are considered

true by both the narrator and the audience and tell of

creation and regulation of the world"3 . Isidore Okpewho, a

Nigerian writer has also felt that " any narrative of the

oral tradition so long as it lays emphasis on fanoiful play­

[is] a myth" 4 . Hence, myths are narratives, in that they may

reflect nan's metaphysical quests, his vision of cosmic

existence and involve gods and heroes. Myths are different

from other genres like legend or fairy tales. Though all are

basically narratives myth has a religious dimension while the

others may be historical or fantastic. While legends may also

deal with the genesis of the world, a clear out definition of

legend and myth is not possible. Hercules is both a mythic

hero and a legendary figure. Legendary heroes and heroines

nay assume god-like qualities and their lives and

achievements may acquire.mythological significance. Even the

lives of ordinary human beings can become mythicised. The

tradition of maasti stones in Karnataka (India) can be taken

as an example here. Women who die along with their deceased

husbands on the funeral pyres as a token of Patiyrata Dharma

51

are said to acqure divine proportions and the living

societies not only worship such women but they are also

remembered through stones put in their names.

Myths may be classified according to the dominant

themes they portray. The cosmogenic myth relates how the

entire world came into being. An example may be cited from

dasayatara myth here, according to which creation came about

through the agency of an earth diver. God Vishnu as

Koormayatara (the shape of a tortoise) dived into the

primordial waters to bring up the earth. Another group of

myths describes the process of the discovery of a cultural

artifact or a technological process, e.g., the myth of

Prometheus who stole fire from the gods. Soyinka is

interested in these myths and he frequently uses the story of

Ogun, who in the Yoruba mythology is said to have discovered

iron. The foundation myths relate the process of cities

coming into being. The city Athence in Greec• is founded by

the godess Athena and there is a story attached to that.

Similarly the myth of Romulus and Romus is about the

foundation of Rome in the Roman mythology.

Myth seems to have had its roots in the oral tradition.

Its creation and preservation is done by the human society

through recitation and ritual. The question why myths are

created is answered by charles H. Long who says that myths

"result from euhemism, that is, the divinizing of the heroic

virtues of a human being" 5 . The play ~ Bacchae ~ Euripedis

contains an example of the social. coming-into-being of a

52

semi-European deity. Euripedis did not create the myt~ of

Bacchae; borrowing it from the Greek society, he rendered it

in the form of drama. Euripedis only recreated the myth of

Bacchae which the.Greek society had been preserving through

singing and rituals. Preservation of the myth is a conscious

act because the living society constantly borrows morals

and paradigms from the myth, draws sustanance for its life.

Euripedis' interest in Bacchae myth is inspired by the

dramatic elements in it which he could use for conveying his

philosophy and message without altering the myth drastically.

Soyinka, like Euripedis who understood the potential of the

myths not only transforms Yoruba myths to suit his purpose,

he does so by reinterpreting the Bacchae myth.

Myth - making is not the habit only of the primitive

mind; it is a feature of all ages. In Joseph Campbell's well

known words, " Myth is the secret opening through which the

inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human

cultural manifestation". 6 In our modern technological age,

even science is-incorporated i~ the process of another kind

of myth making. In crystal dynamics a defracted light is not

just a ray of light but it is "Raman-ray" or, the measurement

of heat is not done in degrees but.in the Fahrenheit which is

the name of the 18th century inventor. These individuals

transcend time and place to be linked with natural phenomena.

We also know how the human imagination tends to convert some

living figures of history into mythological symbols. Christ,

Buddha and in our time Gandhi are exam.Qles of this. While

53

Raja Rao in his nove 1 Kanthapura( 1938) depicts Gandhi as, an I

invisible but dynamic sprit who moved the impassive world of

Indian villages Richard Attenborough, an Englishman, making

a film on Gandhi nearly forty years after his death, adds yet

another dimension to this myth. Reducing nearly 20 years of

Gandhi's freedom struggle into three hours, he visualises him

as emitting a tender light from his everglowing eyes stuck in

a frail body with the w'ill power of the seekers of truth and

saints of both the east and west that can transform forces of

imperialism. Poets, playwrights, historians or film makers

have all been traditionally part of the myth-making proce~s.

Wale Soyinka also belongs to this tradition; he mythicises

some of the historical and heroic deeds, and conversely

imbues contemporary situations with mythic resonance.

~yth and ritual are inseparable and are two faces of

the same coin. While a myth is a narrative the ritual is a

performance. The Dionysian ritual, the Ogun ritual of the

Yoruba in Nigeria and the Holi festival in India are examples ---------· of rituals that originate in myth~n Euripedis' !.he. Bacchae

the Dionysian ritual is performed : men and women dressed up

in ivy wreaths and fawn skin participate in the Bacchic

ritual. Dionysus is the god of fruitfulness and vegetation,

espcially of wines, hence god of wine. The myth says that

Dionysus frees the human beings from mundane sufferings and

his worship brings elements of ecstacy in life. The yearly

rites in his honour gradually evolved into the structured

form of the Greek drama. The dithyrambic hymn sung in his

54

praise evolved into tragedy and comedy. 7 In India 1the day

before Holi, an effigy is burnt .on the streets. In the

northern parts this effigy is said to be of the she-demon,

Holika; in the southern ·parts, specially in Karnataka,· the

effigy-burning is connected to Shiva·s burning down of Kama

or Madana td ashes. Thris the same ritual is explained by two

different myths.~ the Yoruba land of Nigeria the Ogun

ritual is celebrated every year. The ritual protagonist

possessed by the Ogun spirit acts out the god's plunge into

the chthonic realm where he recreated himself after being

torn into piec'es in the cosmic winds. The Yoruba playwrights _.

including Soyinka are of the opinion that the Ogun ritual

contained the potential elements of all subsequent dramatic

performanc_e~

-~~dian narrative past is rich in myths, in both the

literary and oral traditions. Kahabharata and Ramavana

surviving in these two traditions, were written centuries

back and have been preserved in many Indian languages through

oral recital,performance as well as written text~These

· narratives have a two way relationship with the present

societ#ile poets and playwrillhts look up to these texts~ as inexhaustible sources of material for their own writing,

they in turn modify the ·myths through new interpretations. In

Indian mythology while there is one pan-Indian great

tradition of Sanskrit - there are many "little traditions" in

different regions of the country with local and regional

myths.

55

In the case of Africa it is difficult to talk about I

myths generally, because the six thousand or so oifferent

tribes have their distinctive orginal myths which have

sometimes been retained in their pristine form, and sometimes

they have undergone mutation through contact with other

tribes as well as with Islam and Christianity 8 . What has

been restored or preserved in English translation ( as for

example in Geoffrey Parrinders' African Mythology) must

necessarily be, a very small fraction of what is orally

available in the local languages.

In West Africa Nigeria is the largest country and here,

a lot of scholarly activity with regard to myths, oral

literature and fraditional drama has been going on. We also

know that a large number of writers in English have emerged

from this region. Inspite of large scale religious

conversion the mythology of Ibo, Yoruba and Hausa tribes have

not been replaced by the myths of Christianity or Islam.

In Chinua Achebe's Things fAll Apart, Gabriel Okara's ~

voice, Duro -Ladipo's Ob..a. ~~ Obatunde Ijimere's Iillt

Imprisonment a..f. Obatala and a large number of Wole Soyinka · s

plays the Nigerian world of myths and the gods and the

godesses occupy a significant position. Eaoh one of these

writers approach the gods ~n a different way. But

collectively their works introduce us to the Ibo, the !jaw

and the Yoruba world of myths. One of the problems that a

non-African reader faces while analysing their literary use

of myth, however, must be admitted at the outset. It is not

56

always easy to distinguish between the orginal form of a· myth.

and its 1 i terary reinterpretation because the reader OU'tside

the Yoruba culture is receiving information about the myth

primarily through a modern literary text.

The Yorubas are the most urbanised community in

Nigeria and a large number of them are Christians today. In

traditional Yoruba cosmology there is an elaborate hierarchy

of deities, which includes a supreme creator and some 400

lesser gods and spirits, most of whom are associated with

their own cults and priests. The Yoruba language has an

extensive literature of poetry, tales, myths and proverbs. In

Yoruba mythology 114 .~ is considered the spiritual home.

Literary activity in English began in this community as early

as 19th century. Ajayi Samuel Crowther the first Yoruba

Bishop is said to have written the first Yoruba dictionary

and collected the Yoruba myths and tales in English

translation 9 Spread of English education was part of the

missionary activity as a result of which today, we have among

the Yoruba's writers like Soyinka, who seem equally at home

in the indigenous tradition and in the Christian world view.

~t another facet of this biculturism is the production of

books which attempt to comprehend the African world in the

English language. Soyinka's Myth. literature And 1h4 African

World (1976) and Ulli Beir's Yoruba Myths (1980) are two

examples. f?'

51

For Soyinka understanding of his world begins from

reflect a myths, masks and rituals. These three aspects

comprehensive metaphysical-cosmic world view of the Yorub~

people. Soyinka's interest in them is not of a religious

person or an anthropologist, but of a creative writer. Myths,

rituals and masks are integral parts of Yoruba life and

include gods " who by the nature of their attitudes which in

addition to their manipulable histories have [become] the

favourites of poets and dramatists, modern and traditional''

[emphasis mine, this will be considered later with Ogun's

myth]. The rituals do not only posses dramatic qualities but

also testify to the existence of an indigenous theatre. For

myths

they

and rituals are "immensely

might lead to a theatrical

useful ...... .

revolution". 10

Soyinka

[because]

What are· these rituals, masks and myths and what roles do

they play in the traditional Yoruba or African society ?

Rituals have their origins in the

attempt to come to terms with the vast

primitive man's

immensity of the

cosmos that challenged him. In other words, rituals have

originated out of primitive man's meta~hysical quest to

unravel the mystery that surrounded him; in a way it is a two

way process, it is both an internal exploration of his own

being and the search for a relationship with the external

universe. Such explorations were aimed at harmonising the

relationships with his enviroment as well as harnessing the

"essence" in his own self and in nature for the good of the

community. The heroes who once dared the forces inimical to

58

self expansion have become part of the collective memory and

the rituals which re-enact these epic feats are "history,

morality, af·firmation, sup-plication thanks giving, a ,simple

calendrification" 11 . Hence rituals apart from their religious

value assume a dramatic dimension.

The rituals often include all the ingredients that are

normally associated with modern drama, the stage, the

audience, the shared faith or suspension of disbelief. The

stage of the ritual drama is just a place where it is

performed; it could be "the shrine of the deity or a historic

spot in the drama of people's origin or a symbolic patch of

earth amidst grain stocks on the eve of harvest" 12 . By virtue

of the drama of hero-gods performed there, a small patch

of earth, gains a sy~nbolic meaning. Accordingly, "the ritual

arena of confrontation" represents the chthonic realm .....

and in this

challenged" 13 .

incantations,

charged space the chthonic inhabitants

In a ritual, a priest starts uttering

the Oriki poetry in Yoruba, glorifying

are

the

the

gods, the participants, by way of choric participation not

only join the_ongoing ritual ceremony but also give spiritual

strength to the priest; in the process, the participants and

the priest both get spiritually charged, thinning into the

"chthonic realm", the abode of god• and spirits and transform

the whole arena into a sacred spabe. (The priest who is a

human agent can be looked at as the ritual protagonist; and

the participants are the human co~nmunity who share the common

belief). This leads to the "communal ecstasy" or "catharsis".

59

Nevertheless. the latter aspects correspond directly:to the

aesthetic world - the world of songs and music. Here, very

importantly, the use of the word "catharsis", which in Greek

means pity and fear, need not surprise us because it

corresponds to the 'communal ecstasy·. And the ritual drama

like the epic drama also "celebrates the victory of the human

spirit over the forces inimical to the self-extension14 .

Soyinka shows how ritual drama is both "functional" and

"essential" as it spiritually galvanizes man and animates his

innermost being.and how it contains dramatic and theatrical

elements. He goes further into the examination of the myths

of Ogun, Obatala and Sango. Of the three gods. Soyinka finds

Ogun the most fascinating and dignoses the myth associated

with Ogun as a paradigim of Yoruba tragedy. Obatala's or

Sango·s myths do not interest Soyinka, much as he finds the

earlier a " f?nctionalist of creation" - dealing with just

the creation and the latter, "a destructive egotism''. But in

Ogun, he finds a god of creativity: "Ogun the essence of

creativity its~lf".

Soyinka has done an extensive scanning of the Yoruba

myths in his attempt to evolve a dramatic model of Yoruba

tragedy. He discuses these aspects in the essay titled ~'The

Fourth Stage" and sub-titled" Through the mysteries of Ogun

to the orgin of Yoruba tragedy" included in the book MY.t.h

literature and thA African World 15 . The first version of the

essay was written when Soyinka was in his early thirties.

60

Since then, the essay has been "improvised" and

obstacles" in it have also be-en removed. The

"elliptical

role of G.

Wilson Knight, the well-known Shakespearean critic and

Soyinka's Professor at Leeds in the final shaping of "The

Fourth stage" cannot be ignored as the manuscript was sent to

him "for his comments".

Soyinka finds the signs of the Yoruba tragedy in the

"Mysteries of Ogun or more closely in the choric ecstasy of

[Ogun] revellers". This reminds us of the origin of the Greek

tragedy in the festivals of Dionysus where the choric

revellers weari~g goat - skin, sang songs. But for Soyinka

there is an essential difference: "We did not find that the

Yoruba, as the Greek did, 'built for his chorus the

scaffolding of a fictive chthonic realm and placed there of

a fictive nature spirits, on which foundation... Greek

tragedy developed"(MLAW, p.142)The Greek chorus sang but the

Ogun choric revellers re-enact Ogun's mysteries ritually.

This seems to have made Soyinka say: "Yoruba tragedy plunges

straight into the "Chthonic realm'~, the seething cauldron of

the dark world will and psyche. the traditional yet inchoat~

matrix of death and becoming. In to this universal womb once

plunged and emerged Ogun, the first actor"(MLAW,p.l42). His

favourite god Ogun once plunged i~to the "chthonic realm'' or

the abode of cosmic spirits and emerged; but the word

chthonic realm has been described by Soyinka as "universal.

womb; inchoate matrix of death and becoming and the seething

cauldron of the dark world will-and psyche". This concise

61

definition of Yoruba tragedy made by Soyinka doesnot fully

convince . us because the details of the circumstances that

made Ogun plunge into the chthonic realm or the changes in

him after he emerged from there are not made clear here.

~oyink~ describes the Ogun myth in detail in his book

Myth.Literatur-e and.~ African World ..... according to which

"the gods were coming down to be reunited with man, in

particular to be re-united with human essence, to re-assume

that portion of re-creative transcient awareness which the

first deity Orisa-nla possessed and expressed through his

first continupus activation of man images" ( P. 144, MLAW)

because the gods were "anguished by a continuing sense of

incompleteness, needing to recover their long lost essence of

totality" (P.27 MLAW). But the gods' descent to earth was not

easy as the "immense chaotic growth had sealed off

reunion with man. "A long isolation from the world of man

created an ~mpassable barrier which the gods tried, but

failed to demolish. Ogun finally took over; he plunged into

the "chthonic realm". He was "literally torn asunder ·in

cosmic winds, but had rescued himself from the precarious

edge of total dissolution by harnessing the untouched part of ~

himself - the will" (p. 30. MLAW). While emerging out of the

chthonic realm Ogum "Armed himself· with the first technical

instrument which he had forged from the ore of mountain

wombs, he cleared the primordial jungle ... and called on the

others to follow" (p. 29 MLAW).

62

The myth contains a tragic situation, a tragic

character and a plot in its own natural way. The aspects

governing the tragic elements in the myth have their roots in

Yoruba philosphy. According to the Yorubas the moral well

being of the society depends on the unity of essence and the

self which means "eternity" (gods) and the "earthly

transcience" (human beings). Hence, according to Soyinka,

"Tragedy in Yoruba traditional drama is the anguish of this

severence, the fragmentation of essence from self"

(MLAW,p.145). In a nutshell it is the 'divine remoteness·

which causes tragedy. The Yoruba have a remedy for this. To

avert the tragedy the gulf must be constantly diminished by

the sacrifices, the rituals,the ceremonies of appeasement to

these cosmic powers which lie guardian to the gulf" (MLAW,p.

144). It is this gulf that Ogun diminished by sacrificing

himself in the cosmic winds and for this, he has come to be

known as "the first actor - for he led the others... first

suffering deity, first creative energy, the first challenger,

the conqueror of transition. And his first act was tragic

art" (MLAW,p.145).

The tragedy of Ogun was that when he plunged into the

chthonio realm or the metaphysical abyss, the powers of the

gulf had torn him into pieces, but Ogun had refused to be

destroyed completely in the abyss. He battled against the

cosmic powers and recreated himself by a "titanic resolution

of the will". And his will "reverberating within the cosmic

vaults usurp[ed] the powers of the abyss"and this- enabled

63

Ogun to emerge successfully out of the transitional abrss and

create the harmonious Yoruba world. This transitional abyss

is called "the fourth stage", the vortex of archetypes and

home of the tragic spirit (MLAW,p.149).

The concept of the fourth stage is exclusively a

contribution 'of Soyinka to the Yourba metaphysics. Soyinka

has used his understanding of psychoanalysis, his readings on

Greek tragedy and contemporary studies in anthroplogy and has

extended the concepts prevailing in the Yoruba metaphysics.

The Yorubas believe in the existence of three worlds: "the

world of ancestors, the living and the unborn" (HLAW,p. 26).

The world that surrounds ~11 the three according to Soyinka

is the fourth stage - the transitional or metaphysical abyss

where cosmic forces are both destructive and creative: a weak

self may completely be torn and a strong one may emerge

stronger after usurping the cosmic powers there. The beings

in these three worlds for the recreation of their self have

to plunge into the fourth stage as "The deities stand in the

same situation to the living as do the ancestors and the

unborn, obeying tne same laws, suffering the same masonic

intelligence of rituals for the perilous plunge into the

fourth area of experience" ( MLAW,p.148).

What is true for the gods is true for human beings too.

The mythic text can constitute the theoretical meterial for

modern drama. The experience in the transitional abyss which

Ogun's myth explains is an archetype of the cosmic battle.

64

I

Hence, "A tragic view of the theatre goes further and'

suggests that even the so-called realistic or literary drama

can be interpreted as a mundane teflection of this• essential

struggle" (p. 43, HLAW). This serves Soyinka as a foundation

for modern Yoruba tragedy in which not the gods but the human

beings participate. And central to this tragedy is the

experience of re-creating the individual self. In the place

of cosmic forces, in a modern tragedy we may have socio-

political situations and circumstances which destabilise man

from his roots. The Yoruba modern tragedy dramatizes the

living world:

On the arena of the living, when man is stripped of excrescences, when disasters and conflicts (the material of drama) have crushed and robbed him of self-consciousness and pretentions, he stands in present reality at the spiritual edge of this gulf, he has nothing left in physical existence which successfully impresses upon his spiritual or psychic perception. It is at such moments that transitional memory takes over, intimations rack him of that intense parallel of his progress through the gulf of transition, of the dissolution of his self and his struggle and triumph over submission through the agency of will. It is this experience that the modern tragic dramatist recreates through the medium of phy~ical contemporary action, reflecting emotions of the first active battle of the will through the abyss by dissolution" (HLAW,p.144).

Soyinka also seems to see a structural pattern in the

Ogun myth. The importance of the structure or technique of

the plot construction is evident to us from the reading of

Shakespeare. Shakespeare, while he dramatized the material

drawn from European history, folk legends, he borrowed the

plot structure developed in English drama by Lily in the

65

sixteenth century which had five acts : (a) introduction of a

situation, (b) a problem tied to it (c) climax (d) anti­;

climax, and (e) the dissolution. Soyinka integrates it with

the Yoruba myth. The Ogun myth is his source again and it has

a plot. The myth falls into five stages: it involves a hero;

the hero is faced with a problem; the hero mentally prepares -

himself to solve the problem; after equipping himself he

confronts the rival force and normalizes a tragic situation.

An anatomy of the myth is as follows:

l.The gods wanted to c6me to the human community;

2. they couldnot because they .were separated by the "transitional ether"-the forest-the gods fail;

3. Ogun takes the problem in his hands; he alienat~s himself, he plunges into the fourth area of experience and emerges with the weapon to destroy the chaotic growth;

4. Ogun cuts the for~~t and makes the way for the others;

5. gods led by Ogun, join the human community; essence and self are united, a tragic situation is averted and a hQrmonious world is created.

Narrative structure

Introduces a situation: a collective wish, a necessity

for both the gods the human community;

introduces a counter force; ties a problem to the situation established by the preceding situation;

an individual takes the situation into his hands and prepares himself mentally and physically to confront the opposite force; ·

t~e confrontation between the opposite forces;

' d:issolution of the conflict; culminates in an expose of ~he force inimical to the ~elfare of the human community ~nd a new psychic mood prevails.

Yet another, and an important aspect that is

discernible in the structural pattern of the Ogun myth is the

concept of a Ogun hero only around whom a play based on the

66

philosophy of the Yoruba tragedy is possible. Ariostotle '

highlights four impol'tant points about the Greek tragic

heroes: "First and foremost that they shall be good ... The

second is to make them appropriate ..... The third is to make

them like reality ... The fourth is to make them consistent and

the same thorugh out" 16 . Except for the first quality

goodness which is highly subjective, the rest are more

technical in nature and deal with questions of

representation. Soyinka's Ogun is so full of Greek qualities

that to an extent Soyinka's Ogun seems inspired by Dionysus.

Ogun, in Ul~i Beir"s book Yoruba Myths or in Soyinka's

" Myth. Literature .an.d. .t.h.e_ African World" has been described

as "the creative-destructive spirit"; he had brought the

divine and the human together and on another occassion under

the impression of drunkenness he had killed friends and foes

indiscriminately. His other qualities "restorative justice",

"Dionysian-Appollonian and Promethean Virtues," "essence of

creativity" and so on refer to his recreative and explorer

instinct. Ogun c_an be termed as Dionysian because he has the

dual nature of a cruel barbarised demon and a mild pacifier

and his dismemberment in the transitional abyss parallels

Dionysus' dismemberment in the hands of Titans. He is also

the Promethean impulse because he forged iron and the path to

the human community as Prometheus gave the knowledge of fire

to human beings. Against this general background of the

explorer god a paradigm of an Ogun character could be

evolved. An Ogun character could be any individual - high or

67

low by birth, rich or poor, ·weak or strong; he needs to be

sensible to understand a tragic situation of divine

remoteness where the self and essence are separated and moral

order has collapsed in a society. He decides to take up the

tragic situation in his hands and this coincides with his

alienation, and plunge into the transitional abyss where his

self usurps the cosmic powers. Here, he makes his will and

emerges with solutions. In a nutshell, an individual with

explorative instincts sees the agony and suffering of .his

society as his own and internalising within him the cosmic

influences he attempts to restore harmony. Along with this,

he enlightens his society about the forces opposed to the

social good. The paradigm of an Ogun hero can be perceived in

the serious plays of Soyinka. His comedies and some political

satires do not lend themselves to this kind of an analysis,

but the structural aspect discussd above can to some extent,

be traced in almost all his plays.

In her book ~ Sovinka and Modern Tragedv: A Study Q!

Theory and Practice Ketu. H. Katrak examines the myth of Ogun

but does not dwell on ritual theatre and the masks. The book

does not raise any issues that could problematise Soyinka's

claims on the Ogun myth. It doesnot ask some of the very

obvious questions: Whether Ogun be compared to Prom~theus and

Dionysus ? or How much of Soyinka's Ogun is borrowed from the

other cultural sources? or What form does the Yoruba Ogun

take when he is processed and recreated in the dramatic

imagination of Soyinka ?

68

It is neccessary to critically examine Soyinka's claim

that "Ogun .... is best understood in Hellenic values I

as a

totality of the Dionysian, Apollonian and Promethean

virtues". Dionysus· case in the Greek mythology is one of

divine jealousy, enimity and battle of ego: twice, in

different w~ys and at different points of time attempts were

made to destroy him; both the times by jealous Hera. Hera

prompted Semele to take a promise from Zeus to appear before

her in majesty as god of lightning, but when he appeared, she

was consumed by the flames, and the infant Dionysus was saved

by Zeus. Zeus took him up and enclosed him in his thighs till

he came to maturity. In ano~ther episode, when Dionysus was

growing up as Zagreus, in the underworld, Hera sent Titans

who tore him into picess, and again Zeus saved him. Based on

hierarchy, the Greek god-world is full of politics and

tension whereas the Yoruba world is just the opposite of this

and is primordial and evolutionary in nature. Ogun does not

belong to a divine world.which is horizontally divided and is

a site of constant friction. Ogun has fought battles and is

an undefeated warrior, however, he doesnot have an arch enemy

of the kind of jealous Hera who is constantly after his life.

Confronted by the natural growth on his way along with other

gods to the human world. According to Soyinka Ogun plunges

into the metaphysical abyss - the fourth stage - where he was

torn into pieces in the cosmic winds, but he battled for his

survival and recreated himself - corresponding in a way to a

large natural paradigm . As Bertolt Brecht puts it, " A man

69

is an atom that perpetually breaks up and forms again" 17 . A

deliberate attempt of Soyinka to read the Ogun myth with all

the euhemistic complexities has definitely enriched it. But

even this Ogun doesnot acquire Greek qualities. Soyinka's

creativity cannot be questioned but it is important to

recognise the different elements that fuse here.

Prometheus rebelled against the Olympian hierarchy

which was biased against the mortals. The gods did not want

their knowledge of fire to be shared with the human beings.

But Prometheus breaks the gods monopoly of fire and suffers

for humanity which.makes him a revolutionary, a rebel and a i

radical. But Ogun is not, because he is not antogonising the

supreme gods above him, who are not there in Ogun·s case and

he was not going to be banished from his legitamate world for

doing . good .to anybody. He forged a weapon-a matohet or a

sword; this makes him an inventor or an ingenuous god but

definitely not a ~ebel.

This does not mean that an Ogun character in a modern

serious play should not have Prom~thean qualities just

because Ogun in his myth does not have them. Soyinka's plays

emerge out of a socio-political situation which is full of

bloody coups, civil wars, draughts and famines. In a society

of this kind, anybody who raises his voice against the state

is bound to be a rebel, who thinks of an alternative policy

to the government's shortcomings is a definitely a Promethean

character.

70

The original Ogun may not have had the complex '

resonances with which Soyinka ~nvests hi~. The version

recorded by Geofrey · Parrinder in African

highlights the explorative instinct in Ogun and his saga of

clearing the forest which separated the divine and the human

worlds:

~e Yoruba of Nigeria say that Ogun, the god of iron, used to come down from heaven by a spiders web and hunt in the marshes, in the olden days when the earth was a watery waste. Later, the earth was formed by Great god, who set about arranging every thing in order. But he came to thick forest that his tools could not cut, since they were only bronze. Ogun alone, whose axe was iron, was able to clear :the way and he only did th\~ after other gods had promised to reward. (p. 79) ~

Going by this, Ogun is a hunter god and as there are a

number of versions of the same myth, minor variations exist

in the narrative. The myth listed in the book Yoruba .Myths by

Ulli Beir does talk of Ogun as a god of war, truth, valour

etc. what is not available in any of these books is the

detail about the fourth stage and Ogun's plunge into it. The

suffering aspect attributed to Ogun also appears to be an

addition by Soyinka. A god who suffers to bring back the

moral order, or the divine essence back to the humanity is

obviously a different version of Ogun. Ogun's action is a

heroic deed; the fruit of his individual achievement flows

down to the good of his fellow beings. This is a universal

phenomenon. In the society and in the human soul, there

often appears a schism, a disintegration and on the heels of

it comes death, slowly encroching upon life. This cannot be

71

resolved very easily. As Toynbee sees it only a birth can

counter death. 20 In many spiritual heroes in diffe~ent

civilizations, eg, Buddha, Christ, Mahatma Gandhi there is a

basic pattern of suffering, isolation, and through reflection

the birth of a new vision of life. To this extent the Ogun

myth has a universal dimension.

Although he draws heavily from the Yoruba world view

Soyinka takes advantage of the gaps in the myths: "by the

nature of attributes which addition to their manipulable

histories (emphasis mine) are dearer to poets and

playwrights" (p.l, MLAW). Soyinka 'manipulates' the available

story creatively so that the myth of Ogun becomes enriched by

material drawn from new sources.

One of the several sources may be -Friedrich Nietzsche's

essay ~ Birth Q! Tragedy. Words like 'torn asunder·,

'transitional abyss·, the concept of 'dismemberment',

individuation, Ogun as an artist and suffering deity have

their origin in Nietzsche. It is fairly obvious 'that

Soyinka's Ogun imbibes certain qualities which Niet~sche

finds in Dionysus. In a way Soyinka has acknowledged

Nietzsche's influence on him : "Our course to the heart of

the Yoruba mysteries leads by its own ironic truths through

the light of Nietzsche and phrygian deity" (p.l40, M~AW). The.

following passages from Nietzsche establish the affinity

between Soyinka's Ogun and Dionysus:

72

Divine and human world, each of which is in the right individuality but as a separate exist.enc_e alongside of another has to suffer for its individual for, universality, in his at tempt to pass beyond the bounds of individuation and become the ~ universal being, he exeperiences in himself the primordial contradiction concealed in the essence of things, ie., he trespasses and suffers (p.338).

Dionysus of the mysteries, a god experiencing in himself the sufferings of individuation, of whom wonderful myths tell that as a boy he was dismembered by the Titans .... Dionysos has the dual nature of cruel barbarised demon, and a mild pacific ruler ... the hope of the epos looked for a new birth of Dionysus, which we have now to conceive of in anticipation as the end of individuation ... And it is only this hope that sheds a ray of joy upon the features of a world torn asunder and shattered into individuals ... In the views or things here given we already have all the elements of a profound and pessimistic contemplation of the world, and along these we have. the mystery doctrine ~ tragedy : the fundamental knowledge of oneness of all existing things, the consideration of individuation as the primal cause of evil, and art as the joyous hope that the spell of induividuation may be 2~roken, as· the a~gury of a restored oneness (p.341) . .

So for in this chapter myths and rituals have been

discussed in terms of the Yoruba tradition and Soyinka's

dramatic use of them. There is yet another aspect in this

tradition that -·needs to be dealt with masks. Masks

objectify in visual forms ideas and philosophies which the

society can read, recognise and understand. Masks represent

gods, spirits and human characters by creating a sense of

distance between the masked participants and their social

identity. Masks very commonly appear in many African rituals.

Bangwa Night Society masks in Cameroon, Yoruba Gelede masks

and Ibo beauty and beast masks in Nigeria have been famous

73

for their artistic qualities. Masks are worn by men but in

Sierra Leone unusally women wear masks for ritual occassions. I

They have symbolic and performative functions, and can be

effectively used for the purposes of drama. 22

Masks can be of gods or ancestors. The participation of

masked persons in the social events and ceremonies is

symbolic of divine and ancestral presence. As the masked men

are either gods or ancestral spirits, they maintain

neutrality and the people - the kith and kin - who know the

original identity of the masked men also maintain d1stance as

it is seen in Thirigs fall Apart where Okwonko is one among

the nine mask-spirits egwuwu:

Okwonko's wives and perhaps other women as well, might have noticed that the second egwugwu had the springy walk of Okwonko, ... But if they thought these 2ihings they kept them within themselves. (p.79)

As in any dramatic performance, the social and personal

identity of the actor is irrelevant. The suspension of belief

has to be so complete that only the performative identity of

the masked figure is seen as real. The masks enjoy respect

from the people and insult to a mask is an insult done to the

god or a spirit. Ogun mas~ appears very frequently in

Soyinka's plays and the other characters can be seen to be

mortally scared of this, because Ogun is considered to be a

ferocious god.

Masks also mark change: change in the season, change in

the leadership through. death, change in one's life from

74

adolescence to youth or from life to death. The masks

connected with the change of seasons like the major mask

festival of the Afikpo-Ibo which mark the beginning of a new

agricultural year and masks connected with transitional

points of social life denote two concepts of time: one in

which time is endlessly repetitive or cyclical, as in

seasons; and the other linear time: which character

is exemplified in the process of growth and ageing; in this

case time is seen as an irreversible process.

When Soyinka uses masks in his plays he informs the

audience through the dramatic narrative about the nature of

the mask. Just as Yoruba mask is unfamiliar to a Ibo, a Ibo

or a Yoruba mask shall remain strange to a non-African

reader. Soyinka's plays need a general understanding of the

function of masks. A mask when it appears on the. stage is

meant to indicate the presence of divine and ancestral

spirits, change in seasonal time or social life. It could

also mean a combination of characters - human and animal

and represent a manifestation of contradictions in social

life as the mask conceals the real state of being and reveals

another. This understanding must remain an important

dimension in the examination of Soyinka's plays.

Myths, masks and rituals are interlinked; they are

manifestations of a civilization's understanding of man, his

relationship with his, his environment and the cosmos .. They

operate on various levels. Soyinka uses all these aspects in

75

his plays; his plays are steeped in the philosophy of Yoruba.

tragedy, structured on Ogun myth and designed with the

of various types. Besides this, there are various

uniquely Yoruba cultural elements which Soyinka uses in

m~sks

other

his

plays, like ·agemo· a religious cult of flesh dissolution,

sesan a kind of children's play, the concepts of the earth

mother, forest,spirits and gods. By discussing the myths,

masks and rituals, we have attempted to identify certain

common patterns that appear in Soyinka"s plays. But, how far

does Soyinka succeed in his venture of laying foundations for

an African modern theatre and Yoruba tragedy? What are the

problems he faces? These are some of our concerns in the

present chapter.

II

!ha Road. Kongi"s Harvest and !ha Baccbae QL Euripedis

were written at a time when Nigeria was faced with the

problems of a ne~ly independent nation trying to restructure

the economy, society and political system which were till

then controlled by the colonising power. A fight for power

and wealth had begun among the various ethnic communities in

Nigeria resulting in two coups ( Januar~ and July 1964) and

in the victimization of the minority communities by the

majority. This tension ridden political situation led to

nearly forty two months of civil war (1967-1970) leaving the

country divided along ethnic and religious lines and

economically devastated. The first two plays written before

the war reflect the mood of the .time which is marked by

76

bloodshed, greed and the premonition of a sinister holocaust.

The last play writ tell after the war and the release of

Soyinka from 27 months of imprisonment, portrays the

universal struggle for power and the ensuing human suffering

touching upon the problem of apartheid. In these plays

Soyinka is making an attempt to understand violence and

suffering in contemporary African society using his

creative imagination aided by Yoruba myths and rituals.

Because these plays have a thematic unity they have been

grouped together for analysis in this chapter.

~ R2ad24 presents an enigmatic protagonist referred

to as 'Professor· who maneuvers accidents on the road in

order to loot the wrecks. The myth of Ogun and the ritual of

egungun mask dance are used as the sub-text. In Kon"i's

Harvest Soyinka is presenti~g a megalomaniac African dictator

by dramatically deploying the myth of yam eating and the

ritual of harvest festival. In ~ Bacchae Q! Euripedis

Soyinka rewrites the Greek play by making the King Pentheus

stand for another African dictator and by representing the '

contemporary African society in the frenzied bacchanals. The

ritual of Diony~ian festival and flogging as community

cleansing are used as stage devices by Soyinka. Kristin

Holst points out the contemporary relevance as well as the

limitlessness of these concerns: "it is contemporar-y ... (T)hey

[the plays] document a time of transition. They reflect what

is still fresh in the memory of the living" 25 . This chapter

makes an attempt to analyse the three plays with special

77

reference to myths, rituals and masks and Soyinka's concept

of the Yoruba tragedy.

Before beginning ~ aQad, Wole Soyinka had spent some

years in writing plays of an entirely different kind. While

The. Strong Breed (1960) is a serious play with. a tragic

character Eman at the centre, The. Trials .Q!. Brother J..e.r..Q.

(1960) is a hilarious comic-satire on the gullible and

psuedo-religious men and ~ LiQn and ~ Jewel is a comedy

with a puny man imitating a western life style pitted again~t

a larger than life macho hero of traditional culture. Also,

in these plays Soyinka has handled themes where the belief of

the traditional society came in conflict with the modern

values resulting in death and suffering of the individuals.

~ Swamp Dwellers and 1.:.rut Strong Breed portray the

contemporary African society by involving myths and rituals

but operate on a very realistic level and employ a causal

structure. With ~ ~ Soyinka seems to begin a new kind of

playwriting in which he uses the tragic along with the comic,

the satiric with the mystic and the real with the abstract.

Moreover, we-notice a different kind of struc~uring in his

plays from now - the episodic. In Iha RQad, myths and rituals

occupy central position and unlike their realistic treatment

in the earlier plays, here they are used more on a symbolic

level.

is structured around a character called

Professor and his search for the meaning of a certain 'Word'.

Earlier he was a Sunday school teacher, an austere Christian

78

I

and after being thrown out of the church for pilfering its

funds now he is the proprietor of the 'Aksident Store'. In

addition to the income from the store Professor plunders from

the accident sites, forges driving licenses and in the

evenings, offers shelter, liquor and lecture to the drivers

and touts. Professor has nursed and cared for Mu·rano, a god-

man, finding him brutally injured in the back of a lorry; he

wants to see the divine nanifesting in Murano and hopes he

will be helpful in his search. Providing a sharp contrast to

Professor is Kotanu, a driver, who before the play has begun,

has decided to retire from driving after seeing death in an

accident. In the accident Kotanu has·killed an Ogun-possessed

mask-dancer (Murano) who was participating in the drivers'

festival of offering sacrifice to the god of road.

Frequenting the roadside shack of Professor are Particular's

Joe, an ulscrupulous policeman hoping to be bribed either by

Professor or the drivers and touts , and Chief-in town, a

corrupt politiqian looking for the jobless touts for his

political criminal activities. Each of these characters

reflect certain aspects of contemporary society. The single

setting continuing for the whole play includes the church and

its graveyard; adjacent to it is the roadside shack and the

lopsided 'bolekaja' (a Mammy Wagon) minus its wheels. Thus

the physical location hints at different dimensions: the

spiritual, the derelict industrial and the destructive.

Episodic, philosophical and absurd - the play comes to an end

with violence and death in which Professor gets killed, when

flouting all the ritual norms, he brings Murano under

79

possession. Kotanu succeeds Professor as the· proprietor of

the store. The play maintains all the thr~e unities of time

place and action and juxtaposes the church music with the

'agemo' mask dance.

contemporary situation,

Although a play dealing

~ ~ is dominated by

with

myth

a

and

ritual. Ogun is the central idea around which the play ~

RQad has been constructed. The Yoruba believe that the god of

road Ogun has to be offered sacrifices at regular intervals

for the good of the users of the road. The sacrificial animal

for his ritual is the dog. The ritual is celebrated in a

festive mood with egungun mask dance and the drums. At times

the Ogun spirit may become manifest in the mask dancer. The

ritual takes into account the existence of man in the cosmic

context. Unlike his material conditions man's relation with

the cosmic world does not change; therefore, the

significance of the myth-ritual remains relevent· to the

contemporary society. The Ogun myth also supposes that while

man should constantly strive to nourish the divine in him,

acquiring forbidden knowledge is sacrilegious. Hence, .any

irreverence or abuse of the sacred ritual is a blasphemy and

implies destructiqn and havoc. This philosophy seems to be

operating in ~ ~ and the events in the play are closely

connected to this.

In the elaborate opening scene at the stroke of five

the dawn breaks on the roadside shack revealing a rugged

fence and a corner of a church" with stained glass - window.

On the benches and floor of the road are sleeping Samson,

80

I

Salubi, Kotanu and many other touts and drivers. The stage 1

setting-" a corner of church", "the shack", the back ~

of a ;

I

"bolekaja", lopsided minus its wheels bearing the mispelt

inscription- AKSIDENT STORE ALL PART AVAILEBUL. and a gad-man

coiling under a table sum up in a nutshel1 the shabbiness and

desolation of these people who live off the thrown away junk

of industrial society. Objects like discarded beer case "the

empty cans", "a tin mug" amidst which they sleep highlight

their derelict condition. Meticulously structured, the scene

reflects upon all the important spheres of life: the

spiritual (the church), the moral (the god under the table)

and the social (the people sleeping on the road) and

foregrounds the rupture between the traditional wholeness of

life and the present fragmentation. ·

This general tragedy is further intensified: Samson

"ambling around aimlessly, stops to pick up crumbs from a.

plate lying on a table·. He flings a tin-mug up in the air

and lets it drop, drawin~& our attention to a "spiders web in

the corner" making these people appear like insects caught in

the web of a. run-down mechanical life. Sa.lubi wears a. second

hand blood-stained driver·s uniform and claims to be "a

private driver temporary unemploy". His statement: "All I

need now is a licence. It is only a matter of getting

Professor to forge one for me" (p. 153) emphasizes a corrupt

social set up because he has no hopes of getting it from the

proper authorities.

81

Salubi's and Samson's down and out lives are made

bearable by dreams. Taking turns, they play roles of

imaginary millionaires and fantasize about the ways of j

spending their wealth. Their desire encapsulates the

greed for possession and sensual gratification that makes

contemporary society, When Salubi becomes a millionaire he

would like to "marry ten wives", and when Samson attains that

state he would like to "drive along Marina at two o'clock.

All the firie girls just coming from their office, the young

and tender faces ... old bones like me must put fresh tonic in

his blood" (p. 156). Samson's charade of throwing money to

the policeman serves twin satiric purpose for Soyinka: of i

exposing corruption and its methods and procedures, so that

it becomes a social ritual.

Samson [dips in an imaginary purse he is about to fling them a fistful of coins when he checks his harid]. Now remember, officers first. Superintendent! [Flings coins. Salubi scrambles and picks up the

money] ~nspectors ! ... Sergeants ! ... Now that is what I ·call a well disciplined force. Next, those with one or two stripes... Excellent. Excellent. And now those who are new to the game ... You may; go now and good hunting friends. (p. 155)

The imaginary society enacted by Samson 'and Salubi

becomes real when Particulars Joe, a policeman and Chief-in-

town, a politician appear on the stage. They are the

objectification of the corrupt society which we have seen in

the "millionaires" fantasy. The ·policeman frequents the

Professor's shack in search of a driver. who has knocked down

a mask dancer, not with the intention of arresting him but

82

. ...--

probably to get his share of the brib~. Professor is a

professional forger of driving licenses a fact the policeman

knows but all that he wants is his commission. A P-olitician I

also frequents the shack looking for thugs who would help

him. The corrupt politician is a recurring ·figure in Nigerian

literature, appearing in a large number of texts including

Ache be· s M.an. Q.f. t.M People and Ben Okr i · s The. Famished fulAd.

Soyinka's roadside joint of deviants would have been

incomplete without this type.

Soyinka uses the image of the 'road' for the enactment

of his drama because the road, like the river is a running

space which has been inhabited by various forces and here,

man has to learn to co-exist abiding by self imposed

limitations. Soyinka seems to see this space at a particular

point of time in African life as_ a battle-field, hence

bloodshed ·and loss of life are as common here as day and

night. In the play, from the beginning till the end, we see

repeatedly the drivers and lay abouts returning to the

roadside shack, brutally injured and bleeding. There is also

a mass burial of the dead and funeral processions. Such

scenes establish a close, one to one relationship between the

corrupt ways of life and their consequences. The men the

politician hired, return brutally hurt. The stage directions

show how the drivers and touts return like an army from the

' battle field:

Enter two of the lay abouts, with broken heads. One collapses on a bench and the other rushes through water-pot, drinks like a camel, pours the

83

rest over his head and slides down besides the pot. (p. 187)

Enter three more of the touts, sup.portin-g one another. They flop down like a defeated army. (p. 190).

Such dangers occur, Soyinka seems to suggest, when man

transgresses his own limits to attain forbidden strength. If

a man challenges human laws in order to gain wealth~

knowledge or power, the consequences might destroy him.

Professor, the central character is mysterious and

absurd. He is perceived or misunderstood as a "millionaire",

"madman", "new born, fool". He "sleeps in the churchyard with

all that dead body"; (p. 154) like a tantric. Kotanu sees him

as "Adam re-planting the tree of life", Salubi on the

contrary, thinks of him as a menace," pulling up road signs

and talking all that mumbo-jumbo." (p.176). We see the

difficulty of any unified perception when Professor makes his

entrance in the following way:

Professor is a tall figure in victorian outfit- tails, top-hat etc., all thread bare and shines at the lapels from ironing. He carries four en0 rmous bundles of newspaper and a fifth of paper odds and ends impaled on a metal rod stuck in a wooden rest. A chairstick hangs from one elbow, and the other arm clutches a road sign bearing a squiggle and the one word, 'BEND' (p.l57).

While the victorian outfit historicizes him making

him incongruously out of place, the odd assortment of objects

around him accentuates his eccentricity and the oddity of his

84

quest. Soyinka uses a paradigmatic character - a searcher. a

quester to explore the complex African situation he is

dealing with. Professor is almost a Faust figure who with his

materialistic view towards life became a victim of his own

aspiration.

Professor's search revolves round wealth and power. He

wants to strengthen his knowledge with the essence of

Christian religion, Ogun spirit and death. In order to

achieve this, he wears various masks: of a devotee, a

preacher and a searcher. Accordingly, his involvement with

the church~ with the road, with the drivers and lay-abouts or

with Hurano-the godman. are all geared to an end. He had once

been a devoted Christian when he searched for the meaning of

'Word'. He knew more tban the preacher himself: "the preacher

directed his sermon to Professor for approval", also as

Professor himself was a good preacher- " three quarters of

the congregation only came to hear his voice'' (p.163). :But

while he seemed deeply immersed in religion he was actually

after money. He was thrown out of the church for having

pilfered money. The world around him has a meaning for him

because it is directly related to his intellectual curiosity,

but he does not have any human relationship to temper it. He

shelters the drivers, lay abouts and touts at his shack not

out of love or sympathy for them but because, first, they are

his potential customers; second,they buy forged licenses and

spare parts from him and they provide him with their

experiences for his search:

85

Professor:If any think I do this from the kindness of my heart you are fools. It is truie I demand •1 i ttle from you, just your presence at evening communion, and the knowledge that you offer me that your death will have meaning ... your lives whittle down the last obstacle to the hidden Word (p.229).

Professor is obsessed with 'Word' and 'Quest' and the '

terms are not explained in the text. In associating these

words with Proffessor who is already invested with a great

deal of absurdity Soyinka imbues these ideas with mystery,

absurdity and metaphysics.The 'Word' has several meanings:

Professor: What's the ministry's needle after all except for'sewing Word together or the broken flesh. (p. 196).

Murano, the one person in this world in whom the 'Word' reposes. (p. 186).

The 'Word· represents human -body in its ordinary sense

and in Yoruba metaphysics it is the divine essence because it

reposes in Murano; the godman. The Christian meaning is also

very close tp the Yoruba as it is in the sense of power of

"word made flesh". Hence Professor is linked both to

Christianity and the Ogun mask. Professor uses capital 'Q'

for his quest. And Professor's quest seems to be material

wealth as his own following words suggest: "understanef" the

. shop sustains our souls and feeds our bodies" (p. 195). To

achieve this end he peforms various wrong deeds: he pilfers

church funds; he steals from others; he uproots the road

signs and.causes accidents. Having sold the soul for his body

he is living a partial existence. This is explained in terms

86

of the separation of essence from self in the Yoruba

metaphysics. Hence Professor is a tragi~ character as

"Tragedy ... is the anguish of this severance, the

fragmentation of essence from self. Its music,is the stricken

cry of man's blind soul as he flounders in the void and

crashes through a deep abyss of a-spirituality and cosmic

rejection" (p. 145 MLAW.) Professor, like that mad king

Lear, stripped of excrescences, robbed and crushed of self-

consciousness by disasters and conflicts stands at the edge

of the spiritual abyss. Soyinka consciously plays upon this

similarity by using the famous imagery of flies and wanton

boys:

Professor: like flies you prove it ... like l~rvae on the day of the sanitary you prove it. (p.200)

mosquito inspector

How does one overcome this? How does one normalize a

tragic situation in one's own l~fe? Soyinka seems to suggest

this alternative through Kotanu, who is also connected to the

Ogun myth. Kotanu is passionate and sympathetic; he

understands pov~~ty and suffering as is testified by his

giving of the drive~·s uniform to Samson .. In addition, Kotanu

also offers Samson his driving licence Though a driver, he

refuses to kill a sacrificial dog for the god of road. His

love of life is further evidenced by his participation in

the funerals. Kotanu is not like Professor who charges a fee

for giving advice and for making driving licences and above

all, steals from the miserable touts.

87

Kotanu shows his broader vision of life by rejecting

popular ways of lif-e and doing -what he f-eels is right. Qne

reason for this is that Kotanu has the will to recreate

himself like Ogun. After the accident in which the masked

Ogun dancer got killed Kotanu has undergone the experience

of getting torn in the transitional abyss and recreating his

will. This process is dramatically shown by Soyinka:. "Its

getting dark Samson I can't see. His blood got my eyes. I

can't see Samson ... Samson ! Samson Samson ! "(p.109)

Kotanu's cry is that of a tragic soul in the dark abyss of

death and transition. After this incident a process of i

transformation sets in in Kotanu's life. He observes: "A man

gets tired of feeling too much" (p.166) and remarks At

least I will see a man's face before I bash in it. Driving

does not gQarantee you that" (p.169). All.these hint at a

new Kotanu.

' The character of Professor does not come anywhere near

a Ogun hero. An Ogun hero whenever confronted by an obstacle

in life. turns inward and looks for the source of energy and

usurps the cosmic self within and regenerated thus. destroys

the schism that has debilitated him. Kotanu. as we have seen '

has this potential. His reti~ement from driving is indicative

of his initiation into the process of drawing fresh life

from within. Professor's obsession:for material wealth is

eating up the essence of his self and leading him on a path

of extremities.

88

I

Investing Professor with the predatory aspect of the

' Nigerian society Soyinka makes .him prey on the gullibility of

the simple man. As a god of wine Ogun is a symbol of agrarian

society and in the play, Murano representing him is a palm

wine tapper. Professor has found him "neglected in the back of

hearse. And dying. Moaned like a dog whose legs have been

broken by a motor car. I took him ... looked after him... I

held a god captive" (p.156). Professor wants to bring Murano

under possession and see the divine manifesting in him.

Professor's use of Murano for his selfish purpose is

diabolic, because it entails a misuse of mystic power. He

want~ to know what is forbidden by the traditional wisdom.

This act of arrogance and transgression causes violation in

life's ethos causing the destruction we have already seen in

the beginning of th~ play. Also there are many drivers who

never returned from the road. Kotanu catalogues the departed

heroes of the road:

Where is Zorro who never returned from the North without a basket of guinea-foul eggs? where Akanni the lizard? ... where is Ope? where is Sapele Joe who took on six policemen at the crossing and knocked them all into the river? (p.167).

Sergeant Burma, Professor's business partner is the

last to be mentioned in the list. Reinforcing this central

theme. the images of death and destruction recur through the

play. Professor himself articulates it. It is like a

fisherman. "slapping a loaded net against the sand bank"

Below that bridge, a black rise of buttocks two unyielding thighs and that red trickle like a

89

woman washing her monthly pain in a thin river so many lives rush in and out between her legs ~nd most of it a waste" (p. 197)

This tragic social reality is explained through the

central character Professor. Imbued with arrogance and greed

Professor ignores what is hu~an in him and commits an act of

transgression that results in his death. Professor's attempt

to bring Murano under possession, culminates in violence and

death. Professor prepares himself mentally for "the final

confrontation" - egungun mask dance - and asks the touts and

drivers to prepare Murano-the godman for the dance. Finding r

them not obeying him, Professor" himself pulls up Murano,

takes him into the store where the egungun mask is kept.

"Play you foul-mouthed vermin of the road" (p.226), he shouts

at them. "They obey him slowly, beating out the rhythm of

agemo emerging from the bowels of the earth ... The egungun

continues to dance. The dance of the masquerade becomes

wilder, racked by spasms, the gradual build-up of possession"

(p.227). When the egungun has become thoroughly possessed; a

violent psychological mood builds up as a result of the

continuing dance :

Salubi watching intently dips his hand in his pocket and brings out a clinched first ... he slides an object along the bench ... Say Tokyo grasps the knife as Professor's stick hits Salubi's hands on the wrist, plung~s th~ knife in Professo~s back

There is a dead: stiffness of several moments ... , The mask appears to come to life suddenly lifts Say Tokyo Kid in a swift movement up above his head . . . smashes him savagely on the bench. Say Tokyo kid tries to rise, rolls over on the ground and clutches'the train of the mask to him. The mask still spinning, has continued to sink until it appears to.be nothing beyond a heap

90

of cloth and ruffia. (p.228-9).

The play comes to an end and with the death of

Professor. The "agemo" mask dance is symbolic of change:

change of leader, change in the season, change from life to

death. With the death of Professor, the "Aksident store" has

got a new proprietor Kotanu. He suggests a qualitative change

in the "Aksident store" business. The forging of licenses,

the consultation fee, thieving and ruthless exploitation of

the drivers and the touts may now come to an end.

The play is episodic and employs repetition as a

dramatic technique. When repeating an episode Soyinka uses

effects for variation- sound and light, mimicking and so

on. An accident Kotanu has had, for example, is not only

repeated but mimicked in detail. " A violent screech of

breaks. They look [Samson and Kotanu] forward, skirt an area

carefully and peer down a hole in the ground" (p. 155-6). The

words "the rotten planks", "the hole" blended with other

sound and light effects visualize an episode already

presented. Simila~ly Professor's relationship with the church

is discussed by Samson and Salubi more than once (p.162 to

164 and 205 to 206); Murano's ferocious nature is dramatized

at two places ( p. 124 and 228). The technique of repetition

and the change of dramatic medium from the verbal -to the

dance and music (the 'agemo' and ritual mode) makes the

performance complex and stylized.

It may be interesting to look at the reviews of two

91

different performances of ~ RQad one by a person who had '

not read the play, and the other by•a person who had. K.R.

Srinivasa Iyengar who saw the play at Commonwealth Arts

festival in September 1965, writes "I didnot quite

"understand" the play, but the production "bounced" me all

the same" 26 . He confesses that he has not read the play, but '

then the spectator cannot be expected to come with a prior

knowledge of the text. Ketu. H. Katrak who has extensively

worked on the plays of Soyinka reacts to another production.

She attributes the failure of the play to the problem of I

actualizing a powerfully written text. She writes: I

When they burst out singing, the dramatic place and purpose of their words seemed unconvincing. Only when one of them was talking to Professor ... the dramatic·. action unfolds and evolves ... The action did not develop with a sense of inevitability-a certain repetitiousness in the de'livery of the words seemed t0 flatten the 2~ergy and vitality of Soyinka's words themselves.

Her first ':reaction refers to the fluctuation in the

dramatic presentation, the shift from words to song and the

second, "the action did not develop with the sense of

inevitability" obv.iously refers to the episodic structure and

the lack of linear development of the play. The choice of the

medium is not fortuitous but conscious. Soyinka had written

a good number of plays which have communicated themselves

very well on the stage - like ~ Swamp Dwellers, ~ LiQn

and ~ Jewel and ~ Trials QL Brother ~ before he wrote

~ RQad. The failure of the play on the stage cannot be

attributed only to the use of the repetitive or episodic

structure which are all deliberately chosen dramatic devices

92

and indicate his attempt at finding a new form though the I

fusion of different elements.

Kongi"s Harvest (1968)

Harvest is, not a season of joy or plenty in this play

but it is an inauspicious moment of disaster.Kongi's Harvest

is Soyinka"s first attempt to write a political satire. The

play was first published in 1968 but before this it was

staged in Lagos in mid-1965. The play is woven around a

dictator called Kongi and indirectly refers to all the

dictatorial regimes the various decolonized countries of

Africa have experienced. The Nigerian north even now is very

much dominated by the Qhaa - the traditional rulers who are

basically Hausa Fulani Muslims and they wield lot of

political power. Soyinka satirizes and exposes both the old

and the new ruler~.

Kongi's Haryest28 ·is structured around the har~est

festival that celebrates the end of one season and the

beginning of another. In all agrarian societies man's

gratitude to bountiful nature is expressed through

celebrations at harvest time. In Yoruba society ritual

sacrifices are offered to the forc~s guarding the spiritual

gulf so as to bring divine influence on the human community

to purify it. The king is god in the Yoruba world. On the

harvest festival day a New Yam is presented to the king and

his eating of it is symbolic of cleansing the community.

93

Soyinka uses this ritual paradigm to comment upon the modern

politicians and rulers. Along with this, he deploys ideas of

his culture · like the Ogun hero, the Yoruba concept of

tragedy and the stage as chthonic realm to create a special

dramatic effect. He also uses the narrative structure of the

Ogun myth in this play.

Kongi·s Harvest is set in an imaginary country called

the Republic of Isma. Isma is derived from 'isms·, and by

inference Isma is a land of Isms. The play is in four parts ~

and it revolves around three groups of characters: (a) the

old king, Oba Danlola and his royal reverie, (b) Kongi, his

organizing secretary and the Fraternity Revolutionary Aweri

(FRA) and, (c) Daodu, heir apparent to Oba Danlola and Segi,

a mysterious woman who owns a bar. Oba Danlola regarded as

god by the people, enjoyed the royal privilege of eating the

first of the new Yam on the harvest festival day. Kongi has

usurped power from the traditional ruler, Oba Danlola. Now he

wants to be the spiritual head and so, he demands -.the

traditional ruler to present the new Yam to him in a gesture

of total submission. The Oba will voluntarily submit the new , . Yam and Kongi will grant reprieve to the political prisoners

awaiting execution. The play ·builds up to the harvest

festival day with each group looking forward to the

fulfillment of its scheme. In the place of the Yam Kongi

gets a severed head and Daodu and Segi, who wanted to

eliminate Kongi, fail in their maneuver. In the ensuing

scramble no one is left but Kongi with the head symbolizing

94

the continuation of the reign of terror in Isma.

The play opens with a short ,scene called "Hemlock"- a

kind of prologue. In this the playwright shows us a

traditional ruler, who in his continuous enjoyment of royal

luxury has forgotten his spiritual responsibilities to his

people. Through this degenerate king we are made to

understand the spiritual bankruptcy of the culture. The poem

discusses it.

The Its The Its The

pot that will eat fat bottom must be scorched squirrel that will long crack

foot pad ~ust be sore sweetest ~ine has flowed down

The tapers shattered shins And there is, oh-oh Who says there isn't plenty a word In a penny_ newspaper (p. 61)

nuts

The poem emphasizes the phenomenon of aging, and

wearing out and is obviously referring to the society which

is spiritually worn out and debilitated. Oba Danlola's

obsession for sensual and materialistic pleasures despite'the

loss of political power and imprisonment indicates his

indifference to life. Oba Danola by his cowardice and self

centered life has paved the way for the birth of an

unnatural child which ripped through its mother and swollen

up itself" signifying the unleashing of an evil sp_irit in

Isma. This evil spirit may well be Kongi since he is an

oppressive dictator. The title of the scene "Hemlock"

reminding us of Socrates serves as a contrast emphasizing the

hollowness of the present context. Socrates not only believed

95

in reason but also in exposing what is untrue for which

courage he was tried,and condemned to death. He refused to

run out of his country but accepted death in his own land.

The evocation of Socrates· life and ideas by contrast red~ces

the image of the Oba to nothing.

Oba Danlola is aware of his divine position in his

society and he knows how to play on the emotions of an

ordinary man. When the detention camp superintendent stops

the Oba who was dancing with the national flag wrapped around

his waist, the Oba prostrates suddenly before the

superintendent so as to create a sense of moral fear in him..

"I beg you not to cast subtle damnation on my head" (p.65)

says the superintendent, shocked and frightened. Soyinka

satirises and indicts the Oba for his buffoonery and

gullibility.

Oba Danlola.is old and half mad and once again through

him Shakespeare's Lear is invoked. The words of the

superintendent to the Oba "Kabiyesi, be your age ... an elder

is an elder" (p.62) reminds one of Goneril's advice to Lear:

"As you are old and revered, should be .wise./ Here do you

keep hundred knights and squires" (243-244 act 1 scene V).

Like Lear, the Oba also wants his Agbo Aweri, a council of

ministers: "What's a king without a clan of elders" (p.63).

Again like Lear to his daughters, in his raging madness the

Oba cruelly curses at his nephew who tries to reason out to

him the subtleties of diplomacy: "There may be another

son/ ... I will have after you "(p. 113). It may be recalled

96

here that Soyinka's particular reading of ~ ~ had

impressed the well known Shakespearean critic G. Wilson

Knight, when Soyinka was his student at Leeds. 29

Soyinka satirises the Oba's understanding of freedom

and politics ~o show that the Oba did not have any sense of

responsibility towards his people and the state. He does· not

value freedom:'' oh, what home coming this is! I obtained much

better service in the detention camp" (p. 100). His release

from the detention camp does not give him pleasure. He is

conscious of th~ status and provisions of a royal prisoner

because that is how he lived in the past as a slave to

sensual life in the four ~alla of' the palace. He proudly

says, "Get up. Get up man. An Oba Grade 1/ By the grace of

chieftaincy succession/Legislation section 11 nineteen

twenty one'' (p. 109). Given the normal comforts, Oba Danlola

would prefer the prison life. He cannot understand why he has

been divested of kingship. He is blind not only to the

subtleties of ~~litics and diplomacy, but also to the process

by which the king_ would be attributed divinity and made into

the spirit of harvest and life. The Oba could have performed

the role of the life giving ~pirit if he had saved the lives

of his five subjects awa~ting execution in Kongi's jail. The

Oba has more time for trivialities than for serious things.

Instead of appreciating the efforts of his nephew Oba Danlola

abuses him in the harshest terms:

My vital parts shall exhaust In my frivolous bed. Call me Wuroala Go hand the New Yam yourself. But count me out. (p. 113).

The rhetoric of sensuality marks his language. "I love

to have my navel/Ruffled well below my navel " (p. 64), "Find

me/such other ladle and I will/Shove it up your mother's

fundaments" (p. 101). This obsession with the sexual act

raises suspicions of impotence, a doubt confirmed by the

absence of children despite many wives. His failure to

regenerate his people has paved the way for a repressive

dictator like Kongi.

A breakdown in the moral order of the society is also

indicated in the case of the five political prisoners who

have been sentenced to death. Harvest is a season of

cleansing and spiritually energizing the society. Neither the

Oba nor the people around him are doing this. The essence is

separated from the self and the Oba is floundering in the

spiritual void. Lacking the will to recreate himself the Oba

is heading towards a total destruction.

Kon·gi, the present dictator of Isma has usurped power

from the Oba. In a way Kongi is the reincarnation of the

spirit of the Oba in a slightly different political set up,

and specially, with a diabolic intellectual fraudulence and

with more political power on the lives of the people than the

Oba. Kongi has the RAF, a kind of elders council the Oba

enjoyed, and its only duty is to entertain the debased,

98

ordinary and flirtatious sentiments of its master. Kongi

lives in "a retreat in th-e meu-ntains", just as th-e Oba lived

in the palace totally isolated from his people. Kongi also

wants that recognition "the spirit of harvest ... the justice

of the earth ... the spirit of planting ... the spirit of

inevitable" all of which symbolize his megalomania.

Kongi uses the enormous state resources under his

control for his ego boosting. He wants to be projected as the

man of 'positive scientificism· and the RAF has to debate and

suggest appropriate means of doing it. Kongi·s secretary

wants him to be p~ojected as " a benevolent father of the

nation" implementing i-~he " five year development plan". The

secretary also provides rhetorical titles for Kongi's various

profiles:

"A leader's temptation ... Agony on the mountains ... the loneliness of the poor ... The uneasy head .. ~A saint at twilight ... The spirit of harvest ... The face of benevolence ... The Giver of Life ... who knows how many other titles will accompany such pictures around the world".(p.9~)

Kongi's secretary caters to his ego further by

suggesting that a new era corild begin from the day of - the

harvest festival in the name of Kongi. "A H my-leader. After

the harvest. In a thousand years, one thousand A H. And last

year shall be referred to ~s I BH~ There will be only one

harvest worth remembering··. (p.92) Kongi aspires to be the

god, trangressing moral and spiritual imperatives of the

harvest ritual and in this violation of the traditional

wisdom Soyinka sees the origin of ~iolence and bloodshed in

99

society. Kongi puts in prison and tortures those who vdice

dissent. When a political prisoner has escaped from the

jail, he orders: "I want him alive if possible. If not, ANY

OTHER WAY" (p. 100). He plays with the lives of people. He

insists that his reprieve to some political prisoners should

remain a secret" until a quarter of an hour before the

hanging" ( p. 94).

Shakespeare is a constant frame of reference for

Soyinka and the parallels between Julius Ceaser and this

play are intermittent. Like Ceaser Kongi suffers from

epileptic fits and while Ceaser "foamed at mouth, and was

speechless" (243 Act I see III) Kongi is a demonic mass of

sweat and foams at the lips" (p. 131) .. The suggestion is that

power has corrupted and debilitated him. Segi, his mistress

before he became the dictator, says that "he was a great man"

(p. 79). The harvest metaphor central to the play reduces

Kongi to a weed, a weed that is out-growing the healthy crop

and calls in question the credentials with which he claims·

to be a messiah, a god, the spirit of harvest.

Through Daodu who possesses the qualities of

leader Soyinka presents a counterforce. Unlike the

Kongi, Daodu does . n~t use his farm house or

belongings for dancing or diabolic meditation; he

a true

Oba and

personal

provides

work and shelter for the poor there. He is a successful

farmer too, growing prize winning yams. He has true followers

among the people who are not paid stooges. Thus, Daodu stands

100

. .. . ·~ : .. ,.

out among the three leaders of people, meriting praises like

"Spirit of Harvest", "democratic prince", w-hile the Ob-a ,and

Kongi stand for luxury and personal gain, causing death and

destruction to people.

The peaceful and the dynamic elements co-exist with

equal power in Daodu making him approximate to the figure of

an Ogun hero. The creative side of his nature is manifest in

his social work; the dynamic power is revealed in episodes

like the following. Impatient with the Oba, who was enjoying

his dance with his wives and relatives, Daodu in a fit of

emotion halts the ceremonial ecstasy of dance: "At its height

Daodu moves with decision, pulls out the ceremonial whisk of

Danlola and hits the lead drum with the heavy handle. It

bursts... Daodu and Danlola face each other in a long,

terrible silence"(p.lll). We also know that he had plotted

to eliminate Kongi and save the five men awaiting execution. I I

Daodu can relentl~ssly remove from his way hurdles that cause

him obstruction.

Daodu confides his emotions to Segi : "I feel like some

decadent deity, let me preach hatred Se.gi. If I preached

hatred I could match his barren marathon, hour for hour,

torrent for torrent ... ". His angry out burst "I hate to be a

mere antithesis to your messiah of pain'' (p.98-99) risembles

Ogun's plunge into the seething cauldron of transitional

abyss, and the dark world of total disintegration, and

recreation of the self. However, there is an elem~ntal and an

essential difference between Ogun and Daodu. Unlike Ogun

101

Daodu did not isolate himself from his world; he undertakes

his inward journey while being part of .the crowd. Like

Emerson's a still point in a turning wheel" Daodu can

achieve a balanced state of mind while in motion. Even in a

public place like Segi"s bar he can think clearly and act

decisively.

By showing courage in the face of a predatory enemy and

mobilizing a campaign against Kongi, Daodu becomes like Ogun

the agent "of restorative justice". Unlike Kongi and the

Oba who lack political vision and the will to create a better i

society Daodu is interested in bringing back harmony to the

society. Kongi wastes the wealth of the state to become "the

spirit of the harv~st" without a thought about the spirit of

cultivation. ·The .Oba compromising with Kongi, barters the

state but Oaodu by his humane attitude embodies the life

offering spirit o~ harvest. Oaodu himself does not make this

claim but the logic of the play invests him with this

symbolic function.

In the character of Segi, described as "Kongi's

mysterious woman" Soyinka has created an enigmatic character.

Her appreciation of the leadership qualities in Daodu arises

out of a complex situation. In Daodu she has perhaps ~ound a

man. who can defeat Kongi. Segi's mystery lies in her past

relationship with Kongi with whom she has lived till he

became the dictator of Isma. She may be parceived as a king

maker and an important person in the power game of Isma.

102

\

Segi is also a leader of sort who has been democraticalli

elected as their head by the women corps. Her opposition' to

Kongi co~ld be ideological because she herself has faith in

democracy, and also because Kongi has imprisoned her father.

It is also possible that Kongi has cheated her. Hence she

declares ""Let it all end tonight. I am tired of being the

' mouse in his (k)at and mouse game" (p.129). Like lady Macbeth

Segi is not only a woman of inspiration, but of action also.

She is an active participant in the plan to kill Kongi: "Let

everything go as planned" (p. 129).

The play P+Oceeds towards the day of the harvest

fest'ival . and the public place which is the ritual arena. In

this arena, the ritual protagonist re-enacts the saga of the

hero gods who cha-llenged the cosmic forces inimical to self

extension in order to purify the society. The plot to kill

Kongi by Daodu is a microcosmic representation of the heroic

battle of the gods. And Daodu is our ritual protagonist here.

True to its ritual backg~ound the scene uses songs, dance and \

offering and the whole community participates in the event

to receive the spiritual benediction.

Even though Segi and Daodu fail to eliminate Kongi on

the festival day ("We have failed again, Segi" p. 129) they

are not figures of defeat. Daodu has succeeded in br-inging an

awareness of the anti-people policies of Kongi. Doudu

preaches voilence as the only means of overthrowing a

dictator and this is in line with the Ogun paradigm where the

iron weapon plays a part. After the harvest day holocaust

103

when many people, including Oba Danlola, are leaving Isma,

Dandu and Segi refuse to leave their people, reaffirming

their faith in democracy.

The severed human head in the play has raised some

questions and doubt. James Gibbs writes:

"I am not, however, convinced, "that ~ presentation Q!. the. severed bead" can ever be made an effective contribution to this drama. My objecti~n to the severed head begins on the level of the stage-craft: it is manufactured, it is not certain that the audience will recognize what it is ... they will be confused as to whose it is. If they guess wbose

3Jt is they may be at a loss as to

what it means".

The use of artificial property cannot be a substitute

for the dramatic talent of the actors. "Kongi · s mouth wide

open in speechless terror" may effectively bring out the

horror even if the severed bead does not. Gibbs is silent

over a similar situation in Euripedis' ~ Bacchae. How did

the Greeks manage Agave carrying the severed head of her own

son in an age where neither synthetic property nor the light

effects were as sophisticated as today ? Or perhaps

gods are seen to be more powerful than the African' ones

Greek

The question of "whose bead it . ? .. 1S. is less important

than the realisation that it tapes the place of a new yam.

There was no harvest but for the harvest of human flesh

death and devastation. The severed head is Segi · s father's

and a few suggestions towards the end of the play clearly

indicate this. Segi's father had escaped from the prison and

we are given the following information:

104

a burst of gunfire which paralyse~ everyone... The secretary . . . obviously shak'en. Hesitates looking at Segi especially but drawn dutifully to Kongi. He goes up to him and whispers in his ear. Kongi relaxes gradually... His eyes fixed on Segi as confident spider at a fly, ... snaps an instruction to the secretary. The man hesitates but Kongi insists, never taking his eye off Segi. (p.128).

"(N)ever taking out his eye off Segi" Kongi "snaps an

urgent instruction to the secretary. And the secretary

"hesitates" but Kongi "insists" - all of this anticipates .

serious consequence concerning Segi and it can be speculated

here that K6ngi has ordered the killing of Segi's father,

more specifically chopping off his head. "I shall soon return

with season's gift for the leader " (p. 129) says Segi and

the words "Segi throws open the lid in it, the head of an

old man" establish that the head is Segi's father's. It can

be speculated here that Segi out of her anger, has decided to

expose Kongi 's diabolic and cannibalistic nature by

presenting him with the severed head of her own father. This

may be her way of protesting. The idenitity of the severed

head is in any-case a secondary question. The real focus

is on its symbolic implication: there was no agricultural

harvest but only a reaping of destruction.

Soyinka, using the idiom of harvest says that the moral

well being of a community depends on the spiritual strength

of man. The spiritual energy does not come on its own but it

has to be earned regularly. Therefore on the one hand the

ritual ceremonies demanding a spiritual introspection of the

105

self are necessary and on the other, a dynamic political

will is imperative to keep the community alive. It is 'the

new Ogun who combines the two needs. The traditional idioms -

the ritual paradigm like the harvest festival or agemo mask

dance are preserved as sources of renewal. Thus Soyinka

weaves in the myth and ritual of his culture with the

rendition of contemporary political situation to bring out

the elemental nature of man's relationship with his

community.

The Bacchae of Euripedis. (1973).

Ritual is a communal event giving each participator

the sense of being part of a larger entity. Violating the

rules of a ritual amounts to sacrilege and the person

responsible for it gets destroyed for the ·transgression. This

message of ~ ~ and Kongi"s Harvest is also repeated in

T..h.e.. Bacchae Q.f. Euf:ipedis. Arrogant Professor spied on the god

man and got killed. Kongi considered himself above the

harvest ritual at his own cost and in T..h.e.. Bacchae QL

Euripedis 31 Penth~~s refusing to accept Dionysian "communion

rite" spied on the ritual orgy inviting his own death.

Soyinka, once again, uses the myth- ritual paradigm to talk

about yet another dictator and the contemporary socio­

political situation - discrimination against women, slavery

and apartheid.

106

In the Greek world Dionysian ritual orgies wine,

' dance and revelling - have been understood as life affirmin-g.

Suffering can also attain this quality of ecstacy. The ritual

of flogging as cleansing is used here by Soyinka and this is

an element found in Yoruba philosophy. There are basic

differences in these two rituals. In the Greek ritual the

whole community participates as one to attain divine ecstasy

and this is a collective experience. But, in the Yoruba

ritual one person (the flagellant) suffers and the rest of

the community, while suffering with the flagellant gains the

spiritual essence. Flogging as a cleansing ritual is not a

new element in Soyinka"s plays. In his early play ~ Strong

Breed he used this same theme. When Soyinka adapts ~

Bacchae, he grafts the Yoruba philosophy on the Greek

experience with a view to widen the scope of the play.

~ Bacchae ~ Euripedis is a post-Biafra civil war

play which he wrote in response to a commission from the

National Theatre of Great Britain. Euripedis" original play

had attracted Soyinka during his undergraduate days at

Ibadan. In his book Myth. literature ~ ~ African World

Soyinka wrote about the fundamental similarities between the

myth of Ogun and Dionysos pointing out some ''conclusive

evidences for the thesis that the Yoruba religion is derived

from the Greek" ( p. 13-14 MLAW). "Ripped in pieces at the

hands of the titans for the (by him) uncalled acts of

hubris, a divine birth, Dionysos-Zagrues commences divine

existence of the destruction of the self, the transitional

horror" (p. MLAW) has a parallel in the myth of Ogun, who

107

also experienced the process of being literally torn asunder

in cosmic winds,. of rescuing himself from the precarious edge

of total dissolution by harnessing the untouched part of

himself, the will" (p. 30 MLAW). Further Soyinka finds

similarities between Dionysos· thyrsus and "the ~ Q..g_un"

borne by the male devotees of Ogun" (p. 158 MLAW). While

Dionysos' festival is marked by revelling of men and women

decked in ivy-wreaths and drowned in wine the Ogun revellers,

men and women, " are decked in palm fronds ... palm branches

in their hands" (p. 159, MLAW). Like Dionysos, Ogun also

encourages wine sci that it "creates a challenge to the

constant exercise of will and control " (p. 159). Soyinka

uses these interesting similarities in the adaptation of the

Greek play.

In ~ Bacchae Q! Euripedis, Soyinka relying on the

translation of Gilbert Murray, William Arowsmith and David ,.

Greene has borrowed lines from the original and has kept

the names of the characters unchanged. But he has also u~ed

lines from his Id~rire "a passion poem of Ogun''. In addition,

Soyinka seems to have made an attempt to contemporise and

Africanise the play. To bring in the new elements of

apartheid and dictatorship, Soyinka makes some changes: the

chorus is turned into a group of slaves headed by a black

man. Dionysos' fight for his acceptance and a new order

which is not in the original play, is subtly manipulated here

to include the cause of the blacks. The use of two spectacles

portraying negative and positive effect of wine involving

108

Heraclit~s and the Christ figure is a new addition and

finally, in the last scene the suffering of a mother is

replaced. by the happy note of communal harmony. Our objective

here is not judging the success of the synthesis of the two

traditions but attempting a new reading of Soyinka.'s T..he.

Bacchae Q! Euripedis without constantly comparing it with

the original.

God Dionysos, at the time of Eleusis annual festival in

Thebes, has returned from many Asiatic countries to Thebes,

the land of his mother. The seductive power of his cult has

lured many in Thebes including Agave, Pentheus' mother and

her two sisters and, a large number of women who have

deserted their homes and children for the mountains. Kadmos,

Pentheus' grand father and Tiresias, the Greek philosopher

have accepted Dionysos and are celebrating his festival. The

slaves in Thebes have found a special meaning in the

Dionysian ritual. Encouraged by the new order of Dionysos

they are prepared to fight Pentheus who imposes only on · them

the annual scapegoat ritual. Into this changed situation

Pentheus returns only to become a victim of it, like Okwonko

in Things EAll Apart whose return to Umofia from his exile in

Mbanta, cost his life. Pentheus refuses to accept the

celebration of Dionysian ri.tual and considers the excesses o·r

women devotees, the old men and the slaves to be obscene. He

wants Dionysos to be caught and caged. An angry Pentheus

disobeys Kadmos and Tiresias and insults Dionysos by cutting

his hair. He slaps an old slave.and attempts spying on the

109

Maenads and ultimately gets torn into pieces by his own

mother. In the fall of Pentheus Dionysos acts as an agent.

The use of the flogging ritual conveniently Africanizes

the play, but a comtemptirising takes place on the language

and material level also. Soyinka occasionally uses colloquial

' words like "yakkity-Yak" and the rhetoric of modern time like

these: "coup de etat", "old age pensioner", "campaigning to

secure our national borders", "I want immediate results". On

the material level, the Greek object thyrsus gets modernized

when we see a collapsible version of it. The stage direction

describing " the emotional colour and the temperature of an

European pop scene and the black hot gospellers who

themselves are often first become physically possessed

reminds us" of todays culture. Similarly Pentheus· dress and

stage manners "militaristic in bearing and speech" indicates

a contemporary ~ictator. Most important, apartheid practised

in Soyinka's Thebes belongs to the modern world.

~ Bacchae ~ Euripedis opens in the midst of the

annual festival of Eleusis and Thebes that is charged with

the Dionysian frenzy. While "a smell and sweat of harvest

Ripeness" informs the joy and jubilation of the harvest

festival "the bodies of the crucified slaves in the skeletal

stage'' lined up by the road side and the "dim figures of

slaves flailing and trading" even during the festival portray

a world of discrimination, organized murder of the slaves.

The skeletons are of those killed in the scapegoat ritual or

110

a rebellion. The indisposed skeletons are here presumably to

warn the slaves against possible rebellion. The call given by

Dionysos seems to have instilled cour~ge and strength in the

slaves. They don't want to be scapegoats any more and die

profitless deaths.

[Slave] Leader: Flogged to death? In the name of some unspeakable rites?

Herdsman: Someone must cleanse the new year of the rot of the old or, the world will die. Have you ever known famine? Real famine?

[Slave] Leader: why us? why always us?

A

Herdsman: why not?

Leader: Because the rites bring us nothing

king

Let those who profit bear the burden of the old year dying : (p. 237).

or a slave the mother earth makes no

distinction who is offered as s~crifice. She responds to the

ritual of sacrifices with bountiful harvests. Having known

this Pentheus has been forcing only the slaves for this

ritual and that has obviously been bringing "generous

harvest". The Eleusis myth-ritual demands that the leader or

the king should sacrifice himself to bring a renewal to the

mother earth. But Pentheus has been evading it and his

distance from the ritual had bred in him ignorance, arrogance

and audacity, making him one of the worst tyrants. On the

contrary, the slaves who sacrificed their lives and

consequently gained communal strength pose challenges to the

king. Rebellions and resistances have become the order of the

day. The skeletons lined up in front of the palace testify to

111

this. Dionysos - the symbol of life and ecstasy and knowledge-

is opposed to Pentheus. The slaves and Tiresias are well

aware of this.

[Slave] Leader: You hesitant fools ! Don't you understand? Don't you know? We are no longer alone - slaves, helots, the near distant dispossessed ! This master race, this much vaunted dragon spawn have met their match. Nature has joined forces with us.

Tiresias: ... And Thebes -well, Let's just say the situatitin is touch and go. If one more slave had been killed at the cleansing rites, or sacrificed to that insatiable altar of nation-building ( p. 242).

The two instances explain a tensed up socio-political

situation which is a creation of Pentheus. People with power

impede the normal flow of spontaneous life. In the raucous

violence against consciousness Pentheus is a kin of Professor

and Kongi. Suffering or Dionysian revelling are seen as

periodic necessities of life which in their different ways

bring renewal.

Soyinka has used the figure of Tiresias the need to

explain the communal significance of the ritual of voluntary

suffering. A blind seer of the Greek myths who appears only

once in the original play has been turned into a servant in

·Soyinka"s play- "the one who looks after dogs" in the king·s

household. According to him the Eleusis ritual of flogging

and the Dionysian ecstasy are cleansing rituals: "They must

be cleansed. Filth, pollution, cruelties, secret

abominations~ a whole year· s accumulation" ( p. 242) and they

112

both, in general make fertile the resources in man that

generate self knowledge. And to experience that self

knowledge he has offered himself as a voluntary flagellant.

Tiresias: I have longed to know what flesh is made of what suffering is made of. What suffering is. Feel the taste of blood instead of merely foreseeing it. Taste the ecstasy of rejuvenation after long organizing its ritual. Some thing did begin. Perhaps those lashes did begin something. I feel a small crack in the dead crust of the soul (p. 243-244).

The small crack in the dead crust of Tiresias· soul

suggests the rejuv~nation of his inner self. Tiresias is

aware that his symbolic suffering has broader implications

and influences the vitality, harmony and morality of his

society. To some extent Mahatma Gandhi's experience of the

fuller realization of the human self has similar mystical

overtones. Rationalizing the concept of Satyagraha Gandhi

wrote in Harijan: "It is not possible to see god face to face

unless you crucify the flesh". 32 Gandhi and Tiresias- one a

historical figure, another mythical, were both leaders of

people. Both have similar feelings so far as the human body

is concerned: it housed the divine essence and to realise it

some form of suffering or crucifying the flesh is essential.

Through the slave leader and Tiresias Soyinka has

introduced the theme, tone and the forces that lead to the

conflict. Both the slave leader and Tiresias insist that the

individuals should voluntarily accept suffering for the good

of themselves. In their views it is also clear that anybody

113

( !

1

who opposes this, comes to be naturally eliminated. Soyinka

has made this philosophy explicit in his introduction to: a

particular production:

I see ~ Bacchae, finally, as an insightful manifestation of the universal need of man to match himself against Nature ... the Ritual sublimated or expressive is both social therapy and reaffirmation of group solidarity

Man affirms his indebtedness to earth, dedicates himself to the demands of continuity 3~nd invokes energies of productivity.

Dionysos is the divine fount that guarantees the cycle

of regeneration within. Through wine and dance, spontaneity

and suffering which are the sources of self knowledge,

Dionysis becomes an invincible force. While accepting him

means life the denial of him is death. The opening lines of

Dionysos emphasize this.

'

Dionysos: I am the gentle jealous joy. Vengeful and kind. And essence that will not exclude,nor be excluded. If you are man or• woman. I am Dionysos. Accept. (p.235)

His existence encompasses the universe - "that will not

exclude" and hence cannot be ignored. The only approach to

him is accepting him in totality. He is an embodiment of· all

the forces in Nature and so, his mother is "Semele my mother

earth".

The appearance of Dionysos against the background of

the dead bodies, flailing slaves, and smoking Semele's tomb

has a significance. Dionysos is aware that in Thebes he has,

been called "a bastard son of Semele" and his followers have

114

been discriminated against and ill-treated by Pentheus. To

get justice for his mother and his followers, he has retu~ned

to Thebes and if he is not accepted he swears to seek

''vengeance on all who deny my origin". Dionysos "is a beauty

of calm rugged strength, of a rugged beauty, not of

effeminate prettiness" emphasizes more masculine features

than the androgynous traits. One possible reason is that he

is Ogun in disguise who is a ferocious god, "Lord of the road

of Ifa" and a hunter god. Ogun is described "as the god who

turns children into blood", "who bathes in blood". This

apart, Soyinka may, be rendering Dionysos as contemporary, as

in the modern time~ gender models are sharply differentiated

quite op~osed to practice of ancient civilizations. Greek

gods and goddesses were not aggressively gendered and the

brave epic heroes in Homer could be seen weeping. Among Hindu

gods too Shiva has an ardhanareeshwara image privileging

androgyny. The contemporary version of Dionysos has to be

categorically masculine.

A flint of cosmic energy of destruction and creation,

Dionysos by his arrival in Thebes has ignited the encrusted

souls in men and women there. As a result, they have taken to

his rituals. The women are dancing on the mountains, the

slaves are drowning themselves in wine and the oldmen like

Kadmos and Tiresias are als6 dancing in the street. -They are

all an extension of the divine energy of Dionysos and when

they invoke him, they attain all that he stands for freedom,

destructive and creative power and divine wisdom. The women

115

reflect a "kind of radiant peace, like the sacred grove of

deity" and a miraculous harmony of the beastly powers. The I

disruption of the Maenads testifies to the poetic power of

both Euripedis and Soyinka.

Herdsman: Her voice was dear And strangely tuneful in those echoing hills, I heard her... That air of peace still controlled their action ... And such beauties' We do have some treasures in the Thebes. Young supple lambs, maidens who have yet to know man. Such yet and gold flow through the air when they let for their hair. They brushed their clothes, then Fastened them at the waist with ... well, tell me I am lying. Snakes ! L..i.Y.ft snakes ! I see their tongues still flickering clearly as I see you now ! . . . . ................ Have you ever seen a woman nurse a fawn. Exactly like ~ ~hild? or a wild wolf cub? I mean To the point where she gives it suck? From-her-own breast ! .......... She/ Topped a rock and ... out of that rock sprouts-water ! clear, spring water, as fresh as dew (p. 279).

They are one with Nature. Under their control they have

"wine spring", "milk, creamier than morning". In addition,

the Maenads possess ,all those powers which make them

supreme: their "arms were flashing like blades", "There was a

force with them; it drove them/Uphill their feet hardly

touching the ground" (p. 280). Likewise Kadmos and Tiresias

reflect the divine wisdom of Dionysos which they use on

Pentheus to bring him back to right path. Kadmos advises

Pentheus: "Don't blaspheme son. Have some respect/For

Heaven." (p. 255). To those who oppose Dionysos, dea·th will

come from any one of these several manifestations of

Dionysos - the slaves, the old men and the Maenads who have

destructive power. The fate of the victim of Dionysian divine

116

power will be of the cattle that were torn off by the Haenads

on the Kithairon mountains.

Pentheus is the only person in Thebes who refuses to

accept Dionysian orgies and to recognize the

Dionysos. This may be attributed to his absence

divinity of

in Thebes

when Dionysos came there. As a result, he could not become a

part of the slow process of change. We have already compared

him to Achebe's Okwonko whose exile in Hbanta alienated him

from the slow changes that took place in Umofia during his

absence. So, when he returns to Umofia it is difficult for

him to belong. This added to the inherent flaws of pride and

rigidity caused to his fall. Similarly, Pentheus too has

physical power that misleads him. His fate is obvious, as he

fails to develop, fails to take-note of the miraculous

changes operating in Thebes. Coming out of Soyinka's Nigeria

ravaged by Biafra ci~il war, Pentheus is described as

"straight" militaristic in bearing and speech. Like other

dictators in Soyinka's works - Professor or Kongi, Pentheus

appears late in the play and brags, barks and makes a show of

arrogance and powe-r. Apart from the _state machinery, his army

which carries out his orders at times unwillingly

Pentheus does not have a single follower in his persecution

of Dionysos. In this, his situation resembles more of Kongi's

than of any other dictator in Soyinka's world. The proximity

of Pentheus to the supreme political power has made him

intolerant, as we see from the time of his first appearance.

117

Pentheus: I shall have order Let the city know at once Pentheus is here to give back order and sanity ........................ Let every one Know I have returned to re-impose o-rder. Order. (p. 256).

These words reveal a man maddened with power and not

mellowed by wisdom. ""I want them/ Hunted down. Chained and

caged behind the ba~s of iron··, speak of his excessive faith

in physical power and his indifference to humanity. Pentheus

does not know that his order cannot bring the spiritual

essence to his state.

Pentheus is a tragic character in its Yoruba meaning.

He has been robbed of his consciousness, as a result, he is

floundering in the void of a-spirituality. Blinded by ego he

commits a series of sacrileges. He places the temporal power

above the divine which is the costliest of his mistakes and

he commits several other blunders. When an old slave talks

about his understanding of Dionysos and his divine power

"Pentheus fetches him a slap which knocks him flat". He

insults and instigates a god by "shearing off his hair".

Against the wishes of the Bacchantes and the elders Pentheus

gets Dionysos chained and captured in order to put him behind 1"1-.tbu

the bars of iron: "He insults your king. He insu 1 ts. Load hl~t~.. "

with chains The man is insane" (p. 270). He unleashes

similar treatment on the women: "we netted a few. The rest

escaped ... I want them /Hunted down" (p. 250). In the same

breath he orders the destruction of Dionysos" hut: "Pry it up

with iron bars, demolish ... " (p. 202) In several incidents

happening around him he fails to see a power beyond his

118

limits. His palace has been "Raged ... to the ground, reduced

it I To utter ruins". (p. 276) while the herdsman sees

"Miracles", "A radiant peace" in the Bacchantes Pentheus only

imagines "Drunkeness", "the wild music" and "topping around

the bushes". All these episodes expose his own limited self

He fails to adapt to the new situation. Just as any species

becomes extinct when it fails to adapt itself to the changing

conditions the life style of Pentheus anticipates atrophy

death, and elimination.

As a being and the leader of his people and king he has

certain responsibilities and the duty to maintain a balanced

approach to the laws of the Universe. His failure to perform

this expected role contributes to his fall. Even when

Tiresias and Dionysos teach him, it all falls on deaf ears.

Earth and ether provide man with bread and wine: bread

nourishes man and the ether contained in wine washes the

soul. The life of Pentheus should be guided by these

principles as these are complementary principles in life ..

Tiresias:Shal~ I tell you what to look for this being? Think of two principles, two supreme Principle in life. First principle of earth, Demeter, goddess of soul what you will .

Second, principle

the opposite, and

Ether, locked in the grape until

. . . Bread. complementary

released ... by 111an.

Think of it as more than drug for pain Though it is that. W~ wash our souls, our

parched and Aching souls in streams of wine ... (p. 259).

119

Dionysos also teaches this philosophy to Pentheus,

creating· with his divine power• two spectacles which depict

the devilish as well as divine nature of wine. The first

episode presents the horrifying marriage ceremony of

Hippoclides and Agariste, in which, under the influence of

wine, the bridegroom, by his irresponsible and vulgar dance

forfeits his bride. In the second tableau Christ turns water

into wine in the marriage of Cana. With these spectacles and

his magic power Dionysos stirs the inner divine resources in

Pentheus which escaping the principles of Dionysos and Ogun

remains barren. B~fore his death, coming under the impact of

wine Pentheus wears the fawn skin and ivy wreath-the ritual

dress of Dionysos and gradually rises above his arrogance,

audacity and ego and sees the other possibilities of life. He

recognizes a bull: "Are you a- bull'? There are horns

newly/Sprouted from your head" (291) which is a symbol of

Dionysos himself - the beastly and divine power in man. And

later on the Kithairon mountains where his mother tears him

into pieces Pentheus feels or experiences the physical -·

manifestation of the Dionysian power. Thus, like a demon or

a king opposing god, in Hindu mythology Pentheus has a

glimpse of the divine before his final destruction.

The death of Pentheus takes place in the ci~cumstances

in which Professor is killed in T..W:. Ro.ad.. When Professor

attempted to spy on Murano the godman he was killed. The

ritual is not to be spied upon but to be participated in.

Living in the world of ignorance Pentheus does not know that

120

the Maenads are ferocious and would kill those who spy on

them. Wh-en the herdsmen had mistaken Agave to be mad and

wanted to save her, they were hunted down. The herdsm~n had a

narrow escape: ''The Haenads were swift upon their feet,

rapt, unseeing, / ... Agave raced towards me, she flew close"

(p. 280). Pentheus· journey towards the Kithairon mountains

therefore suggests his death and destruction.

The Maenads, the slaves and the two oldmen are

different facets of Dionysian spirit. In this the Maenads

represent the physical power, the indomitable cosmic energy.

Pentheus gets various treatment by all the four group. The

slaves accuse him of tyranny. The oldmen initiate him into

the process of enlightenment and Dionysos makes him realise

the divine essence in him and the Maenads devour enabling him

to become one with the cosmic energy. The power of Maenads

matches the brute force of Pentheus with which he had cut the

hair of Dionysos, chained and imprisoned him. The play would

have been incomplete without this scene describing the

devouring of Pentheus by Agave and the Maenads which is a

visualization of the incident that is shown on the stage.

The officer: And snood, touched her face and hoped for recognition .f He mouthed a last departing plea in silence, his voice I Broken from the fall. She foamed at the mouth, her eyes/Rolled with frenzy. Agave was mad, stark mad/ Possessed by Bacchus, blind t:o all plea for pity/ She seized the waving arm by the wrist, then/Planked her foot upon his chest and pulle~Tore the arm clean off the shoulder.The tongue/Of· Pentheus stretched out in agony, his mouth ran blood/But no sound came. ( p. 299).

121

In the original ~ Bacchae Agave repents and curses

Dionysos for killing her own son. But in Soyinka's T.hf:.

Bacc·hae .Q..f. Eur iped is she immediately rea 1 i zes that the

renewal of the earth required the death of a tyrant who is

her own son. Agave heaves "a soft sigh" after realizing her

act. There is an immediate reversal of events at the end of

the play. A tragic situation is turned into a scene of

community rejoicing. The imposition of the Yoruba myth and

the ritual sacrifice results in the changed ending.

Agave [Suddenly Calmer]: Let no hand but mine laid on him I am his mother. I brought him to life I shall prepare him for grave [she turns towards the ladder, stops] How did he die ! (p. 306)

When Agave tries to bring her son's severed head down:

a powerful red glow shines suddenly as if from within the

head of Pentheu~, rendering it near luminous ... from every

direction. Reactions of horror and panic. Agave screams and

flattens herself below the head, hugging the ladder" (p.307).

Tiresias tastes the red liquid spurting from the head and

announces "It's wine slowly, dream like'' all move towards

the fountain and drink. Agave also joins and drinks it.

The death of Pentheus has benefitted the community in

spiritual regeneration, in breaking the various barriers of

discrimination and in establishing a new order. Tiresias

voices the significance of Pentheus' death for the

contemporary society in these words.

122

Tiresias: Perhaps our sustaining earth Demands ... a little more Than token offering in her own needf~l revival.

Pentheus joins the spirits in the world of the dead and

he is purified. The Yoruba world view believes in the co-

existence of the three worlds - the world of the dead, the

living and the unborn. Death is seen as an agent of

purification. The ritual sacrifice and the Yoruba philosophy

are informed by the cyclical concept of time and hence, ~

Bacchae Qf Euripedis ends on a note of happiness, a communal

rejoicing.

When the play was staged in National Theatre at the

Oldwic (England), according to the available reviews

despite Soyinka's own production of the play - it did not

succeed. The failure has largely been attributed to the use

of amateur artists coming from various linguistic and racial

backgrounds. This ~ade Albert Hunt describe the production as

"Amateurs in Horror". He observes that the opening scene

the slaves drinking the wine did not communicate a sense of -.

communion. His catalogue of mistakes in the production is

quite a long one:

The company that presents Soyinka's play contains a drummer who cannot drum, dancers who can't dance, and actors whose only concept of narrative - acting is to begin every speech in the flat clipped tones that used to characterise British war ~ovies, and then to rise in a gradual crescendo towards controlled emotional wallowing. Where the play calls for ecstacy, the girls in the chorus offer a well-bred limitation of a hop at the local disco; where the play calls for horror, we're given a

123

crude imitation which spurt pink final assertion attempt, by his

of a Madame Tussaud head, out of paint. The strength of Soyinka's is fritted away in a grotes~~e

production to express release.

Soyinka was working with a few amatuers in England and

not with his regular troupe·that he formed in the 1960s

called ~ .l.illill. Masks. Use of American slang, the gestures of

black American gospellers and the disco and pop singers

styles are deliberate devices deployed by Soyinka. It is a

mistake to assume that Soyinka is attempting to contemporise

the play only on the linguistic and property level. Albert

Hunt's comprehension of the last scene that represents the

"communion rejoice" is completely mistaken. By extending the

last scene Soyinka has taken a lot of liberties with the

original text and those who are conditioned by Euripedis ~

Baccbae will naturally suffer a shock quite unconsciously.

~ Bacchae Q! Euripedis is an adaption and this demands a

fresh out look and much more seriousness than the original

Greek play because there are two texts instead of one,

palimpsestically inscribed upon each other demanding a

special alertness on the part of the viewer.

III

A writer works within a given tradition. A tradition

includes language, philosophy of life, and knowledge encoded

in the form of myths, rituals and festivals as well as

existing literary texts. A writer born into a tradition

naturally inherits its culture, language and philosphy but to

124

make it his own he has to learn it, earn it, explore its

history. Only when he has internalised it, does he become a

part of his world. And so when he grows, all that he has

imbibed in him also gets an extension. Thus, the vitality of

a tradition depends on the individual writer and his

contribution to his tradition. In this sense Soyinka is part

of a Yoruba tradition of myth, rituals, language and

philosophy because he has learnt it, worked at it and works

with it. He also inherits another literary tradition from

Europe and most of his work arises out of the contradiction

and overlapping of these two traditions.

The Yoruba Myths and rituals are a constant source of

inspiration for Soyinka. However, he works with .other

traditions also-for example- The Absurd Theatre, the Greek

Drama and Shakespeare~ The absurd theatre technique in ~

~ is so dominant that the success of the character of

Professor entirely rests on it. The characters of Kongi and

Oba Dan lola in Kongi's Harvest are developed on' a

Shakesperean model. Like Peter Brook who experimented with

Orghast staging it at Persepolis and with Hahabharat,

Soyinka too is propelled by the same need to rediscover the

origin, the root experience of the ritual drama. The

Dionysian ritual and the Ogun ritual w~re therefore ~ttempts

in this direction. Realising the importance of using a multi­

ethnic or mixed race cast in his plays Peter Brook has said

that·~- .geography is bunk". 35 Soyinka must have also thought

of this as he also employed the "mixed cast" in The. Ba.ccha.e

125

Q_f_ $uripedis and also insists the same for the producers ·,in

his note. Thereby Soyinka synthesises in him the Greek, the

Absurdist and Shakespearean traditions.

Myths and rituals were a result of the primordial man's

interaction with the cosmic immensity around him. To that

extent, they talk of the past society, past heroes,

everything of the past but also makes the past come alive in

the present. Soyinka widens the scope of certain myths and

rituals so as to make them relevent for the present. A

sacrilege in the past meant a direct abuse of divine power.

Recognising the present social identity of a masked man in a

ritual ceremony, or refusal to wear the ritual dress of Ogun

on his festival day as in ~ Bacchae ~ Eurioedis are

examples of ritual trangressions today. Soyinka .sees these

acts as violating the deep rooted faith of the community and

causing a rupture :in its harmonious functioning. However, for

Soyinka, these transgressions belong to an organic commun_ity.

The present society with its many complex forces has many

different causes of disharmony and discord, and he attempts

to study them in terms of the religious and moral codes of

the

for

myth

Yoruba world. Accordingly, he goes deep into the

their spirit, the Ogun myth, the harvest-ritual and

of flogging as community cleansing which now not

talk of past, they become relevent at a symbolic level.

myths

the

only

The Ogun myth serves as a convenient device for Soyinka

to posit his views on social change and the inadequacies and

the imperati~es of political life. An Ogun hero is a

126

·---

multifaceted dynamic character: he could be a political

revolutionary, a spiritual man or an ordinary human being

aware of his limits. What is more important, he knows the art

of harnessing the supreme potential of the human self when

forces hostile to human expansion threaten the peace and

harmony of the society. He does this not in total isolation

and for the sake of personal pleasure but for the sake of

humanity. His life has therefore a message- both social and

political. While he advocates restraint and spirituality to

counter an acquisitive and meterialistic life in the same

breath, he encrourages bloodshed, revolution and conspiracy

to cleanse the society of political greed and power

obsessions. Thus the Ogun hero embodies a commitment to art

as well as to life in its varied aspects.

•.

127

1

Notes

Joseph Campbe 11, The.. H..fu:..(l lii.t..h .u.. Thousand Faces, New Jeresy, Princeton Univer~ity Press, 1949 first edn, 1986 11 edn, 1972 rpt. 1973, p. 3.

2 C.T. Onions,Shorter Oxford Dictionary, GB, OUP 1933 rpt, 1968, p. 1306.

3 Tristam Potter Coffins, "'Folk Tales"', E..un.k. and Wagnal's Encyclopaedia. Yo...L.. l.O. Editor-in-Chief, Robert S. Philips, USA, RR Donnelly & Sons Co., p. 327. (Publication date not mentioned)

4 Is ldore Okpewho, "Rethinking Myth", A.L.!. , No. 11, p. 19.

5 Charles H. Long "Mythology"', E.u.n.k and Wagnals Encyclopaedia YQ!. 18. Eds. Robert S. Philips, USA, Rand McNally & Co-date not mentioned. p. 215.

6 Joseph Campbell, p. 37.

7 .George Duckworth, "Dionysus"' Collier's Encyclopaedia Yo...L.. a. Bernard Johnston, Editor in Chief, New York MacMillan Education Co. 1950 rpt. 1987, p. 240.

8 James Wellard, "Africa", l:1.a.IL.. tU.t,h and Magic ed.

9

Richard Cavendish, London; Marshall Cavendish, 1983, p.9.

David W Crabb, "Languages of the World Kwa Languages", Encyclopaedia Britannica._ Yo...L.. ~ ed. Philip W. Goetz, First edn. 1768-1771, 15 edn. 1987, p. 771.

10 Wole Soyinka, Myth. Literature and ~ African World, London, CUP, 1976. rpt, 1979, p. 1. and 9.

11

12

13

14

Ibid. ,

Ibid.,

Ibid. ,

Ibid.,

p. 5.-

p. 3.

p. 9.

p. 2.

15 Wole Soyinka,Kyth. Literature. and t.hft African ·World, London, CUP, 1976; rpt. 1989.

16 Aristotle, ~ Oomolete works Q! Aristotle YQ1 z. ed. Jonathan Barnes. New Jeresy UK, Princeton Univ. Press, 1984, p.2327.

17 Bertolt Brecht, Brecht an Theatre: Letters and Notes ed. James Willet, London, Methuen, 1964; rpt 1968, p. 15.

126

18 Geofrey Parrinder African Mythology London, Hamlyn, 1967.

P~ul

19 Ibid., p. 79.

20 Joseph Campbell, p. 16-17.

21 Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Birth of Tragedy'', Moderns Qll.

Tragedy ed. Irwing Howe, Newyork, Fawcet world library, 1867 p. 338 and 341.

22 Adams Moni, "Interpretation of Masks in Black Africa", Bashiru, Vol 11, No 1. (p. 47-55). Unfortunately I have lost the publication details of this article which I collected at CIEFL Library, Hydrabad, India.

23 Chinua Achebe, Things [all Apart, London, HEB, 1962, p. 79.

24 Wole Soyinka, Collected Plavs 1. London, OUP, 1973. All references to;this text.

25 Kristin Holst, Criticism and Ideology: Second African Writers Conference Stockholm 1986. ed, Uppasala; Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1985, p. 3.

26 K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, "Wole Soyinka's Ih.e. F&a.d." lJio.. cheers ~Commonwealth Literature ed, 1970, p. 149,

27 Ketu H. Katrak · ~ Soyinka and Modern Tragedy London, Greenwood Press, 1986, p. 61.

' 28 Wole Soyink~. Collected Plays 11 London, CUP, 1973, All

references to this text.

29 James Gibbs, "Shakespeare and the Living Playwright," Shakespeare's Suryey ed. Stanely Wells, London, CUP. 1987, p. 170·.

30 James, Gibbs; ~ Soyinka, Publishers Ltd, 1986, p. 95.

London, MacMillan

31 Wole Soyinka Collected Plays 1. London, OUP, 1973. All references to this text.

32 Quoted in Stanely Jones, Interpretation London, Hodder p. 112.

33 Ketu H. Katrak. p. 70.

129

Mahatma Gandhi: and Stoughton,

An. 1948

34 Albert Hunt, "Amateurs in Harrer" Critical Perspecti¥es o.n. H.Q..l.e.. Soyinka, ed, London, Heinemann, 1981, p. 115.

35 Richard Schechner, et ·al, "Talking with Peter Brook" T.D.R J 109, Spring 1986, p. 54.

130