A Two-source PS Method for Face Reconstruction in Unconstrained Environments

The thematic and stylistic forms deployed in a poem by Nigeria’s foremost poet, Wole Soyinka, will be considered. By the end of the lecture you should be able to discuss the use of tradition in the poem and identify the traditional techniques used in the poem.

Wole Soyinka is one of Black Africa’s most distinguished writers. A foremost dramatist, actor, producer, poet and author of a number of satirical reviews, is also a bitter critic of the Nigerian society. A prolific writer he has published fifteen plays and a number of skits. He has also published three volumes of poetry, Idanre and Other Poems, A Shuttle in the Cryptand Ogun Abibima and an anthology Poems of Black Africa. Like Okigbo, he too was educated at University College Ibadan before he left for Leeds. Soyinka often explores human themes in his poems through his cultural milieu. He has won many international prizes including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. Abiku is both interesting and intriguing. The poet, among other things, expresses his culture consciousness in the poem. Now read his poem “Abiku” below:

In vain your bangles cast Charmed circles at my feet;

I am Abiku, calling for the first

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And the repeated time.

Must I weep for goats and cowries For palm oil and the sprinkled ash?

Yams do not sprout in amulets To earth Abiku’s limb’s

So when the snail is burnt in his shell Whet the heated fragment, brand me Deeply on the breast. You must know him When Abiku calls again.

I am the squirrel teeth, cracked The riddle of the palm. Remember This, and dig me deeper still into The god’s swollen foot.

Once and the repeated time ageless Though I puke. And when you pour Libations, each finger points me near The way I came, where

The ground is wet with mourning White dew suckles flesh – birds Evening befriends the spider, trapping Flies in wind- froth;

Night, and Abiku sucks the oil From lamps. Mothers! I’ll be the Suppliant snake coiled on the doorstep Yours the killing cry.

The ripest fruit was saddest;

Where I crept, the warmth was cloying.

In the silence of webs, Abiku moans, shaping Mounds from the yolk.

(Senanu and Vincent, 2001)

Soyinka’s Abiku seems to enjoy the anguish of the parents who are desperate to make him live. In their desperation, they engage the services of various medicine men and diviners who put “bangles” round his ankles, a kind of amulet “in vain”, useless, of no consequence. He enjoys his status as Abiku: “I am Abiku, calling for the first/And the repeated time”. In stanza 2 he makes the various rituals they perform to hold him down:

the goats they slaughter, the cowries they throw at crossroads, the palm oil they pour and the ashes they sprinkle as part of the ritual. He wonders if they are supposed to evoke his pity or make him weep. In stanza 3 he taunts the practice of cutting up the

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bodies of suspected Abiku. He urges them to sharpen their knives “And the repeated time, brand me/Deeply on the breast”. When he is reborn they will know him by the marks their knives have left on his body from the cuts they gave him from his early life.

He stresses the futility of their efforts “And when you pour libations, each finger points me near/The way I came,” and reinforces it in the next stanza where he casts himself in the image of a “Suppliant snake coiled on the doorstep” In that context the only option a mother has is “the killing cry.” This means that the desperate efforts of the mother to save her child will ironically amount to killing him. In the last stanza, he states that the older he gets the more devastating is his departure. “The ripest fruit was saddest.” He finds the love the parents show him to be “cloying” – sickeningly annoying. He complaints silently while all the time devising how to convert life to death or a grave”…

shaping/Mounds from the yolk”. The “mounds” are the graves or death and “the yolk”

is the life-giving part of the egg. Abiku here is implacable; no effort of the parents can alter his tragic destiny.

Abiku is the Yoruba word for a child that dies young to be reborn by the same woman over and over again. Soyinka explores the myth and essence of the capricious, elusive and tyrannical qualities of Abiku. The poem speaks of the uncontrollable cycle of birth end early death, until the two ideas of birth and death unite in the paradox of destruction of life only to beget life. The images are all drawn from Yoruba beliefs and practices about abiku. The real meaning of the poem cannot be fully understood if one is not conversant with the beliefs and practices of the Yoruba’s. Soyinka’s great quality as a poet is his ability to distance an immediate experience through the selection and deployment of expressive images.

SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE

Attempt a detailed analysis of some Soyinka’s poems other than “Abiku” that is discussed here.

4.0 CONCLUSION

Soyinka’s elaboration of his theory of art, culture, and the individual in society are the major features of his Myth, Literature and the African World. For Soyinka, the lessons of history and individual or collective struggle are often encoded in mythology.

He demonstrated that African peoples have rich cultural traditions and systems of knowledge that should be seen as alternatives to Euro-American traditions. As in his use of Western literary forms to explore the particularity of Africa’s problems, Soyinka’s theory shows his debt to two cultures—traditional Yoruba and Western European. From Yoruba mythology, he chooses the god of iron and metallurgy, Ogun, as the metaphor for artistic and technological creativity. By this choice, he makes Ogun a symbol of the kind of spirit that black Africa, like all other cultures in the modern world, requires to ensure spiritual health and social prosperity.

5.0 SUMMARY

In this unit you have learned the followings:

• The rich Biography of Wole Soyinka

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• The unique features of Wole Soyinka’s Poetry

• Influences on Wole Soyinka’s poetry

• An analysis of the themes and Techniques employed in Wole Soyinka’s

“Abiku”

6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT Read and answer the questions below:

1) Discuss the Biography of Wole Soyinka.

2) What are the unique features of Wole Soyinka’s Poetry?

3) Discuss the influences on Wole Soyinka’s Poetry

4) With adequate citations from the poem analyse the themes and techniques of

“Abiku”.

7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS

Abimbola, W. (1973). Sixteen Great Poems of !fa. New York: UNESCO, 1971. Achebe, Chinua. Morning Yet on Creation Day. Garden City: Anchor, 1975.

Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence. New York: Oxford UP.

Gibbs, J, (ed.) (1980). Critical Perspectives on Wole Soyinka. Washington DC: Three Continents Press.

Gikandi, S. (2003) (Eds.). Encyclopaedia of African Literature. London: Routledge.

Jones, Eldred D. (1973) The Writing of Wole Soyinka, London: Heinemann.

Katrak, K. H. (1986). Wole Soyinka and Modern Tragedy, New York: Greenwood Press.

Killam, G. D. (2008). Student Encyclopedia of African literature London: Greenwood Press

Nwankwo, C.(1990). “The Oral Foundations of Nigerian Written Poetry”. Literature and Black Aesthetic, Ibadan: Heinemann.

Obasi, U. (1998). “Teaching of Poetry in Nigerian Tertiary Institutions”, Ganga, Journal of Language & Literature, Unimaid, Vol.4, pp.37-48.

Ogungbesan, K. (1977). “Whole Soyinka and the Poetry of Isolation”. Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1977), pp. 295-312

Ojaide, T. (1988). “Two Worlds: Influences on the Poetry of Wole Soyinka”. Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 22, No. 4, Wole Soyinka Issue, Part 2 (Winter, 1988), pp. 767-776.

Ojaide, T. & Joseph Obi (2002). Culture, Society and Politics in Written African Literature: Texts and Contexts. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

Olajubu, O. “Oriki: The Essence of Yoruba Oral Poetry.” Second Ibadan Annual African Literature Conference. Ibadan, 11-15 July 1977.

Omole, P. S. “The Oral Poetic Tradition in Soyinka’s Poetry.” Second Ibadan Annual African Literature Conference. Ibadan, 11-15 July 1977.

Senanu, K.E. & Vincent, T. (1999). A Selection of African Poetry (New Edition).

Longman Group Ltd.

Soyinka, W. (1963). “From a Common Back Cloth.” The American Scholar 32: 389.

Soyinka, W. (1974). Idanre and Other Poems. London: Methuen..

Soyinka, W. (1981). Ake: The Years of Childhood. London: Rex Collings.

Soyinka, W. (1972). A Shuttle in the Crypt. London: Collings/Methuen.

Theresia de Vroom, (2003) The Many Dimentions of Wole Soyinka. Loyola:

Marymount University.

Umeh, P. O. (1991). Poetry and Social Reality: The Nigerian Experience. Onitsha, Bemax Publishers Limited.

Wright, Derek (1993). Wole Soyinka Revisited, New York: Twayne Publishers.

Wright, E. (1981). The Critical Evaluation of African Literature. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd.

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UNIT 3 THE POEMS OF CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO