Osundare's Poetry and the Yoruba Worldview

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 13 (2011) Issue 1 Article 3 Osundare's Poetry and the Yoruba Worldview Christopher Anyokwu University of Lagos Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Anyokwu, Christopher. "Osundare's Poetry and the Yoruba Worldview." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.1 (2011): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1707> This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field. The above text, published by Purdue University Press ©Purdue University, has been downloaded 7511 times as of 11/ 07/19. This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. This is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. UNIVERSITY PRESS <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu > CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 < http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb > Purdue University Press ©Purdue University CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture , the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." In addition to the publication of articles, the journal publishes review articles of scholarly books and publishes research material in its Library Series. Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Langua- ge Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: < [email protected] > Volume 13 Issue 1 (March 2011) Article 3 Christopher Anyokwu, "Osundare's Poetry and the Yoruba Worldview" <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss1/3> Contents of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.1 (2011) <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss1/ > Abstract : In his article "Osundare's Poetry and the Yoruba Worldview" Christopher Anyokwu analyses the use of Indegienous Yoruba concepts found in Niyi Osundare's texts. Anyokwu postulates that Osundare appears to combine in his work concepts and traditions of Yoruba culture and Marxist ideology which, as Anyokwu argues, locates Osundare with other revolutionary-minded radical poets such as Pablo Neruda, Octovio Paz, Nicolas Guillén, Agostinho Neto, or Okot P'Biteke. Further, Anyokwu argues that a major aspect of the sources of Osundare's work, this perspective has either been under- theorized or examined only superficially in the critical corpus of Osundare's texts. Anyokwu both ana- lyzes and assesses Osundare's immersion in and deployment of his native Yoruba oral poetics and mythological concepts which underline the poet's commitment to fight against social injustice as common human task. Christopher Anyokwu, "Osundare's Poetry and the Yoruba Worldview" page 2 of 8 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.1 (2011): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss1/3> Christopher ANYOKWU Osundare's Poetry and the Yoruba Worldview In discussing the socio-cultural and metaphysical building blocks of the Yoruba worldview, Derek Wright suggests that "If Yoruba religious beliefs and mythology appear to be riddled with contradic- tions, it is partly because Yorubaland in southwest Nigeria is not a cultural unity, with doctrinal uni- formity or religious orthodoxy, but a region comprising a collection of cult practices, with many local variations, loosely organized around the Ifa oracle. The apparent confusion also owes something to a multipurpose pragmatism in Yoruba religious behaviour, underlaid by a belief in the indeterminate, many-faceted nature of truth and its expression as a variety of emanations from a single irreducible essence" (7). Overall, there seems to be a consensus on the socio-cultural context within which the traditional artist is located. According to S.A. Babalola, in his book Content and Form of the Yoruba Ijala , the Ijala chanter is usually a member of a professional guild, who must undergo rigorous training, sometimes spanning over a decade, in order for him/her to perform in public, particularly before royalty. During the apprenticeship period, the would-be chanter must engage in improvization, memo- rization, and mnemonic devices ( isoye ), and voice training, among others. After having been certified by the master chanter, the trainee raconteur could then perform in public (see, e.g., Barber; Finne- gan; Okpewho). The oral poet, during his/her apprenticeship, must study and internalize folk history, mythology, and the metaphysics of his/her people so as to be able to act as the mouthpiece of their culture (on myth and history in Osundare's poetry, see, e.g., Anyokwu). The poet is thus at once his- torian, seer, raconteur, dramatist, singer, and philosopher. But how does the modern and Westernized Yoruba poet function in an equally chirographic or scribal culture? In the following, I discuss African Nigerian poet Niyi Osundare's worldview we find in his poetry and other texts. Osundare acknowledges to having been brought up in traditional Yoruba oral culture: "my poetry is strongly influenced by Yoruba poetics. Mine is the figured fancy. Metaphor, simile, hyperbole, me- tonymy, and other figures of speech populate the lines as fishes do a fertile river. The concretizing power of these figures aids the transformation of the airy nothings of the imagination into sensuous, rememberable entities" ("My Poetry" 55). Osundare's poetry has also been influenced by Western poetry, notably by English Romantic poetry and Wordsworth's verse in particular. This convergence — rather than "influence" — can be explained by the similarity of African animist and Western naturist understanding of the world. The animist temperament has been traced to peoples' earliest attempts to understand and deal with the wonders of nature: both the Greek pantheon and the Yoruba worldview can be understood as an effort to humanize, negotiate, and harness nature for the benefit of human kind. Thus, different gods and goddesses in the Yoruba pantheon represent symbolically different as- pects of nature which people found inscrutable and mysterious. Accordingly, people did not only make gods of natural objects like mountains and hills, they deified and anthropomorphized flora and fauna, and rivers, lakes, and oceans became not just sources of nourishment but, more importantly, spiritual agents of protection and a holistic understanding of the world. In Osundare's poetry we encounter ful- some paeans intoned to mountains and rock-hills such as Oroole and Olosunta , rivers and seas like the Osun river, the Nile and the Niger, plants and trees such as the Iroko and Oganwo . According to Wole Soyinka, societies which still live in a close relationship with nature are gov- erned by a "metaphysics of the irreducible: knowledge of birth and death as the human cycle; the wind as a moving, felling, cleansing, destroying, winnowing force; the duality of the knife as blood- letter and creative implement" (Myth, Literature 148). However, Osundare's attitude to nature is am- bivalent. This is owing in part to his socialist humanism, an ideology which ipso facto is noted for its a- spirituality. Thus, like most Marxist artists, Osundare is liable to plead blandly that he merely deploys nature as a master trope, a grand poetic conceit, or stylistic symbolization of his people-oriented mes- sage. Owing to the plethora of flak and short shrifts, Osundare has received from his critics, Harry Ga- ruba has sought to rationalize Osundare's ideologic befuddlement: "Rather than see a contradiction

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