Discourse | Issues In The Evaluation Of Contemporary African Literature (Part II) By Prof. Saleh Abdu | The Arts-Muse Fair
WORLD LITERATURE
The idea of a World literature
might have been mooted earlier than the 20th Century. However, the concept has
been readily traced to the works of Wolfgang von Goethe of Germany in the first
quarter of the 20th Century. From the different submissions by scholars on his
life, opinions and works, it can be deduced that Goethe's concern about
prevalent acrimony and wars among European and non-European nations in his
lifetime combined with his firm belief in the efficacy and immense redeeming
potentiality of literature to make him conceive, propose and pursue a unifying
literary practice of the global communities/nations. The literature he
conceived was so important that he preached that,
National
literature does not mean much at present. It is time for the era of World
literature and everybody must endeavour to accelerate this epoch.
Goethe, 1927.
In his close study of Goethe's
life and work, Birus (2017) arrived at the conclusion that the German sage
wished for a literature that could unite European and non-European communities
in what he describes as,
a
rapid blossoming of a multitude of European and non-European literatures and
the simultaneous emergence of a World literature --- mostly in English
translation
Goethe seemed to have crystallized
his conception and label of World Literature in the last decade of his life.
That was a time when he saw that literary scholarship was
breaking
through the traditional limits of occidental literature by re-evaluating
popular poetry and the literature of the Middle Ages and of the Orient. Birus,
2017.
In his analysis, Birus
surmises that Goethe's conception was at first based on what he earlier saw and
wrote in a letter to Adolf Friedrich on 27th January, 1827, as an "ever
increasing rapidity of human interaction". The global scenario then (not
very unlike the global information super highways of today) was further
described as a "highly turbulent epoch --- vastly facilitated by communication
--- constantly spreading activities of trade and commerce".
In his generously liberal
conception of World Literature, Goethe not only saw the unity of participating
nations, but also the "human spirit gradually attaining the desire to
participating in the more or less untrammeled intellectual trade". He, in
other words, saw literature as riding on the crest of the waves of an expanding
trade and communication in the world. (What is the fate of literature in our
era of global information super-highway?)
Goethe also saw popular
literature as a key player in the world and so enjoined that,
seek
out, get to know and cherish each poet in his own language and within the
specific area of his time and customs.
He noted and expressed high
hopes for a World Literature that promised
to bring the English, German and French together with the hope, as he
said, that "the disagreements that prevailed within one nation are
smoothed out by the views and adjustments of the others". The ultimate
effect of that kind of literature is immensely beneficial and may not just be,
a
matter of nations being obliged to think in unison, rather, they should at
least become aware of and understand each other, and, if love proves
impossible, they should at least tolerate one another.
In literature in general, but specifically
in the World literature of his conception, Goethe saw the germinal seed of
world harmony, if not world peace. He averse that if this literature of his,
cannot
be hoped to produce a general peace, it can be hoped that the inevitable
conflicts will gradually become less important, that war will become less cruel
and victory less arrogant. Goethe in German Romance.
That sums up Goethe's
conception of World Literature in which it would have been easy, faster to
locate African, or any other genre belonging to a group. However, as with many other similar ideas by
thinkers in history, the cross-current of events and prevalent socio-political
ideologies have tended to pounce on, distort and appropriate them into the
dominant, often imperialist, ideologies. Such has been the case with Goethe's
lofty conception of World Literature, which, for many decades after his demise,
was confined to only European nations and languages. For example, against the
grain of what Goethe meant, especially with regard to the international
character of his conception of World Literature, Werner Kraus, Professor of
Romance Languages and Literature in the German Democratic Republic, defined
World Literature in the following Euro-centric terms:
World
literature accordingly rises above all literatures as a super literature, with
its masterpieces towering above every normal horizon. World Literature thus
turns into a great pandemonium in which Cervantes and Rabelais, Dante and
Voltaire nod to each other.
The obvious Eurocentricism in
this post-Goethe conception of World Literature seems to foreclose the possible
participation of Africa and Africans in the genre. Issued in the last quarter
of the 19th Century, the consequence of such an imperialist, racist thinking
and pronouncement could be seen at work and perfectly reflected in the Hegelian
view of Africa as a continent without history; or the regard of the region as a
Tabula Rasa. Such weird thinking also reflected the 1884 Berlin rush to
scramble for Africa by the Europeans; to colonize/hegemonize its populace.
As recent as 1930 for example,
Courtney Hodgson, a British adventurer on the West African coast, was quoted,
without reservation by Linfors, as saying,
West
Africa is too crude, too brutalizing, to nourish the afflatus of a poet or the Scabies
scribandi of the novelist. Linfors 2002:2
The rabid Eurocentricism did
not go unobserved by discerning people such as T S Elliot who decried the rate
at which non-Europeans were having European culture imposed on them in the name
of World Literature. He is thus quoted as warning that.
a
World culture which was simply a uniform culture would be no culture at all. We
would have a humanity de-humanised. It would be a nightmare.
Literature, for the culture
that it essentially is, is unique and should be conceded as a unique endowment
to a people. It cannot be otherwise. In this regard, it constitutes a people's idiosyncrasy
of which Edward Wilmot Blyden says,
a
sacred gift, given for some divine purpose to be sacredly cherished and
patiently unfolded. Blyden, p2
MODERN AFRICAN LITERATURE
Early African literature was
as global as any could be. But, largely due to the character of subsequent
interaction with a second wave of non- African people from the middle of the
16th Century, the continent of Africa and the people were degraded and devalued. For example, an
experience of the West African tropical climate on the coast may explain
Hodgson's unfortunate racist remark about a whole territory in 1930. Unknown to
Hodgson, it was in the year in which he uttered those uncharitable words, 1930,
that talented West Africans in the interior published books of stories plays
and poems which are today's Classics in Hausa studies. The pioneer works of
Abubakar Imam, Tafawa Balewa, Abukar Tinau and a couple of others under the
tutorship of a British Colonial officer, Rupert East, are excellent literary
pieces by any global standard. What standard was Hodgson using to adjudge a
whole region as incapable of producing a poem or novel? And, it is the same
West African coastal areas that in subsequent years produced Wole Soyinka and
Chinua Achebe to further belie Hodgson's jaundiced statements.
When it is a question of
culture and inherent values, Africa and Africans, especially the latter, can be
seen to have conceded so much after its contact with Western Europe. Didn't pre-colonial
Africa have things to show, to be proud off? Achebe laboured to educate his
African readers that Africans did not hear of civilization from the white man. Africa
had abiding dignity and inherent nobility as evident in Achebe's portrayal of
people like Ezeulu in Arrow of God
and the well thought out trends of social, political and economic events in
life in the novels. But, Achebe's stories may be faulted as mere fiction. What
of these quoted words of Lord Macaulay in his report about a visit to Africa
read to the British Parliament on 2/2/1835:
I
have travelled across the length and breadth of Africa. I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I
have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that
I do not think we would ever conquer this country.
Macaulay’s submission above
about his physical visit to West Africa which is part of Africa Hodgson
reported on and which also informed Hegel to write that "Civilization
started in the East and ended in the West --- Africa has no place in
History". The irreparable damage such statements caused for Africans could
not be undone even with Hegel's subsequent phrase which says "except for
what came to dark Africa from the East"; nor by the subsequent knowledge
Africans have had to the effect that Europe itself fed from the same Eastern
civilization.
Agysimba (Jahn's other name
for it) or Negro Black Africa, has been unique in its experience in the world.
It had hosted several African regions and Arab-Asian peoples for many decades
prior to the invasion of the region by Western Europe. Unlike many global
regions and communities, Negro Africa had a rigorous experience of hosting
others as described by Blyden (1888):
Three
streams of influences have always penetrated into negroland: one from Egypt,
through Nubia, to Bornu, to Hausa; another from Abyssinia, to Yoruba and Ashanti;
the third from the Babary states across the desert to Timbucktoo.
Before 1500 AD Africa had had
many years in interaction with other peoples. In his documentation of these
historic links, Jahn (1966) speculates that the possibility was there to
suggest that Juan Latino (the Latin medium poet) and Alfonso Alvares (Portuguese’s
medium poet) might have had their predecessor in form of Afro-Asian or
Afro-Greek poets.
Those were no mean poets! They
were world-class poets as could be found. The Afro-Arab poet Al-Shaddad Al-Absy
was one of the Seven Golden Poets of Arabia. His unique Romance writings formed
the model of Don Quixote’s and other European Classics.
ANA
MANDATE: A REMINDER
In his ANA Inaugural Speech in
June 1981, Achebe identified one major reason why writers need an association.
Writers and their career forever needed protection in matters of
"contracts, copyright, translation, royalty negotiation", he
said. He observed that by nature
writers, whom he described as "refractory individuals", are not
readily inclined to groups and groupings, are often difficult to drag into and
made to remain under one umbrella. It is partly because of this that writers
are not the best of friends with governments. Achebe elaborates:
Writers
are by instinct and (one may add experience) somewhat skeptical of governments.
We fear them even when they bear gifts; even when their gifts are channeled
through innocuous-seeming parastatals like the National Council for Arts &
Culture. This skepticism is healthy and appropriate. ANA
Review, 2016, pxii
But, writers need a stronger
body beyond their individual selves, an association, to assure them of a
conducive environment to enable the society to protect them and protect itself
as well. For, Achebe opines, the greatest possible social protection comes with
a more enlightened and informed society. In Nigeria, the need for more free,
performing writers is greater as, Achebe lamented, ignorance had twined and
twisted its tentacles in the populace to the extent that we the citizens were
to blame: "so prodigious is our ignorance of ourselves and the things that
belong to our peace.". Achebe's prescient diagnosis foresaw what we are
witnessing today in form of the emergence of three dangerous forms of
fanaticisms which he said writers should come together to fight. These are Religious
fanaticism, political fanaticism and tribal fanaticism.
Today Nigeria has been
diagnosed as a state on the brink of failure; a state stalked by homebred,
self-inflicted malaise: Hausaphobia, Igbophobia and Yorubaphobia. One of the
recent prescriptions for the nation's condition has been the recommendation of
the invention of a New Tribe by some of our intellectuals. Elimination of the mutual fear and distrust
across the Nigerian old tribes would do the magic of inventing a new from the
old tribe. ANA, from inception in 1981, was charged with the task of banishing
ignorance, especially ignorance of one another, by Achebe, who emphatically
added that Nigerians needed to know "what belong to our peace".
But, has the government of
Nigeria given the writers the recognition, the protection to write freely? Has
the society encouraged and ensured full participation by all citizens in
reading the written books? How much have the writers themselves done to make
their stories more accessible, more relevant?
Before closing this paper, I
need to say something about one of ANA's oversight in its operations all these
years. This is no other than literature in indigenous Nigerian languages. In
the Inaugural address in 1981, Achebe opened and closed his address with
glowing tributes to Abubakar Imam who died shortly before the inauguration of
ANA, an event which he was to attend. Achebe said he had been looking forward
to meeting Imam whom he had never met beyond his writings, and someone who
reminded him of Fagunwa and Peter Nwana, two Yoruba and Igbo language writers,
respectively. That ANA's take-off agenda had a strong element of indigenous
language literature drive can be gleaned from Achebe's last remark about the
late Imam:
"One last word. When I
said in my opening remarks that I had particularly looked forward to the
participation at this convention of the late Abubakar Imam, what I had in mind
was that his presence would have given a powerful and venerable indication on a
new emphasis on, or even awareness of, literature in indigenous Nigerian
languages. There are, however, I am glad to say, other writers here today who
will represent in our deliberations the crucial interest of our native tongues,
and who will display at the poetry reading tomorrow some of the literary
harvest already gathered in the prosecution of that interest." pXiv
How much honour has ANA given
to this wish by Achebe?
Perhaps much has been done.
But, much more needs to be done.
CONCLUDING
REMARKS
ANA has been working for the
past thirty-six years and the results are modest. Indeed as Denja (2015) avers "We already have a place in
World Literature with great writers such as Achebe, Soyinka, Lark and several
other younger writers following in their footsteps". But, that is not a
reason enough for ANA to rest on its oars. When the tune changes, as it clearly
has in recent years, especially with the prevalence of the digital glitz, the
dancer must learn new dancing steps.
I would love to share in the
belief that no award "confers any excellence on a piece of writing, it
only acknowledges the presence of merit in a given writing based on the
criteria governing such an award" as a good diagnosis of literary prizes
and prizing. I however, while commending ANA for the literary awards it has instituted
since 1981, like to request the association to consider working towards
achieving the following:
1. Persuading the Government, through the Minister of
Culture and the National Council of Art and Culture to institute National
Poetry Merit Award to last of 5 years.
2. To encourage state
Governors and Local Government Chair/men and women to to also institute
literary prizes in the schools under their purview.
3. Visit and seek audience
with members of the legislature for a sensitization session on promoting
reading and literary production/activity in their constituencies.
Finally, on the place of
African literature in World Literature, I wish to advise writers to strive to write
good literature, which easily comes with faith in what they do with a dose of
fidelity to their cultural base. It is not only that 'Literature does not grow
in a vacuum', the fact is that it cannot thrive and luxuriate in an
inauthentic, or borrowed culture. This means as writers we must immerse
ourselves into our, and not other’s culture, and cultural practices. World
recognition is easier built on home recognition, and, as Denja (2015:26) also
sagely says," cultural authenticity is very important in the creative
sphere because that may be all a writer has to contribute to world
literature"
Concluded.
Concluded.
**********
Being text of Keynote Address and the 36th ANA
International Convention Professor Saleh
Abdu of Fegderal University, Kashere Currently on Sabbatical as Dean,
School of Postgraduate Studies, Gombe Satate University at Benue State
University, Makurdi on 26th - 28th October, 2017
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