Drops That Open Worlds. Image of Water in the Poetry of Euphrase
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto Drops That Open Worlds Image of Water in the Poetry of Euphrase Kezilahabi Katriina Ranne Master’s Thesis University of Helsinki Faculty of Arts Institute for Asian and African Studies African Studies May 2006 Tiedekunta/Osasto ҟ Fakultet/Sektion – Faculty Laitos ҟ Institution – Department Humanistinen tiedekunta Aasian ja Afrikan kielten ja kulttuurien laitos TekijäҏҟҏFörfattare – Author Ranne, Katriina Työn nimiҏҟ Arbetets titel – Title Drops That Open Worlds –The Image of Water in the Poetry of Euphrase Kezilahabi Oppiaine ҟ Läroämne – Subject Afrikan-tutkimus Työn lajiҏҟ Arbetets art – Level Aikaҏҟ Datum – Month and year Sivumääräҏҟ Sidoantal – Number of pages Pro gradu Toukokuu 2006 99 s. + runoliite 34 s. Tiivistelmäҏҟ Referat – Abstract Euphrase Kezilahabi on tansanialainen kirjailija, joka ensimmäisenä julkaisi swahilinkielisen vapaalla mitalla kirjoitetun runokokoelman. Perinteisessä swahilirunoudessa tiukat muotosäännöt ovat tärkeitä, ja teos synnytti kiivasta keskustelua. Runoteokset Kichomi (‘Viilto’, ‘Kipu’, 1974) ja Karibu Ndani (‘Tervetuloa sisään’, 1988) sekä Kezilahabin muu tuotanto voidaan nähdä uuden sukupolven taiteena. Kezilahabi on arvostettu runoilija, mutta hänen runojaan ei aiemmin ole käännetty englanniksi (yksittäisiä säkeitä lukuunottamatta), eikä juurikaan tutkittu yksityiskohtaisesti. Yleiskuvaan pyrkivissä lausunnoissa Kezilahabin runouden on hyvin usein määritelty olevan poliittista. Monet Kezilahabin runoista ottavatkin kantaa yhteiskunnallisiin kysymyksiin, mutta niiden pohdinta on kuitenkin runoissa vain yksi taso. Sen lisäksi Kezilahabin lyriikassa on paljon muuta ennen kartoittamatonta –tämä tutkimus keskittyy veden kuvaan (the image of water). Kezilahabi vietti lapsuutensa saarella Victoria-järven keskellä, ja hänen vesikuvastonsa on rikasta. Tutkimuskysymyksenä on, mitä veden kuva runoteoksissa Kichomi ja Karibu Ndani esittää. Runojen analysoinnissa ja tulkinnassa on tarkasteltu myös sitä, miten äänteellinen taso osallistuu kuvien luomiseen. Tutkimuksen määritelmä kuvasta pohjautuu osittain Hugh Kennerin näkemykseen, jonka mukaan oleellista kuvassa on kirjaimellinen taso. Kennerin lähtökohtaan on yhdistetty John Shoptawin teoriaa, joka korostaa runon äänteellisen puolen tärkeyttä merkityksen muodostumisessa. Foneemien analyysissä vaikutteena on ollut Reuven Tsurin teoria. Analyysiosio osoittaa, että veden kuva edustaa ja käsittelee teoksissa lukuisia teemoja: elämää, kuolemaa, fyysistä vetovoimaa, runoutta, mielikuvitusta ja (ali)tajuntaa sekä moraalia. Veden kuvan tutkimuksen pohjalta on nähtävissä, että Kezilahabin filosofia asettuu elävä/kuollut- ja elämä/kuolema -dikotomioiden ulkopuolelle. Avainsanat – Nyckelord – Keywords Kuva (image), lyriikantutkimus, Kezilahabi, swahili, afrikkalainen kirjallisuus Säilytyspaikka – Förvaringställe – Where deposited Humanistisen tiedekunnan kirjasto (Topelia), Helsingin yliopisto Ecoute plus souvent Les choses que les êtres, La voix du feu s'entend Entends la voix de l'eau. Listen more often To things than to beings, The voice of fire can be understood Hear the voice of water. Birago Diop, Senegal ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Besides Helsinki, I visited four other cities to collect material for this dissertation, and to discuss the topic. I’d like to sincerely thank: Azizi at Uppsala University, and the staff at Nordic Africa Institute, in Uppsala Farouk, Martin, and Giulia, at SOAS in London, and Helly elsewhere in London Riina in Gothenburg Peter and Marion in Mainz Miia, Terhi, Tiina, and others who have helped me, in Helsinki. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Untouched Water 1 Aims and Steps of the Dive –The Research Question 5 2 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE 8 Image: Reaching to the Skies Feet on the Ground 8 Listening to the Palpable 10 Sensing Images and Imagining Senses 14 3 KEZILAHABI AND RESEARCH – QUESTIONING EARLIER VIEWS 18 Kezilahabi’s Splash in Poetry 18 More than Political 22 Neglected Undercurrents 24 4 DIFFERENT POEMS AND WATERS 28 Dividing Waters 28 Flowing Lines of Swahili 30 Water as Image of Literature 33 5 WET LIFE 40 Turbulent, Lusting Life 40 Drinking the Finite Elixir 46 Drying to Death 54 5 DREAMS IN WATER 58 Power and Dangers 58 Dreams and Dissolving 63 Steamed into Hallucination 66 6 LIQUID ETHICS 73 Spirits and Judges within Water 73 Drowning in Greediness 76 Watering with Blood 80 7 CONCLUSIONS: CATCH OF THE SUBMERSION 85 BIBLIOGRAPHY 90 APPENDIX: THE POEMS IN SWAHILI AND MY ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 100 1 INTRODUCTION Untouched Water Iba Ndiaye Diadji, a Senegalese professor of aesthetics, sees water as intrinsic to African ontology. He also argues that water is the most important substance to inspire African artists. (Diadji 2003: 273-275.) The importance of water can be seen in the poetry of Tanzanian Euphrase Kezilahabi, which is my subject of research. The image of water is present even in Kezilahabi’s non-fictional texts as a way of speaking about poetry. In the preface to his first poetry collection Kichomi (‘Twinge’, ‘Pain’, 1974), Kezilahabi (1974: xiv) describes nilivyoanza kujitosa katika ushairi ‘how I started to immerse myself in poetry’.1 Later he continues that, in order to understand the poems, lazima apige mbizi ‘one needs to take a dive’(ibid. xv). Correspondingly, Kezilahabi’s poems in Kichomi and Karibu Ndani (‘Welcome Inside’, 1988) are imbued with images of water, each more absorbing than the last. Water runs through many other African works of literature, too. My interest in the topic started to grow four years ago when I read two novels by Zimbabwean writers: Zenzele: A Letter for my Daughter (Maraire 1996) and Nervous Conditions (Dangarembga 1989). In both novels the image of river has a special, important meaning, and represents childhood. Later I started to catch sight of water everywhere in African literature: in Somali and Swahili poetry, in Season of Migration to the North (Salih 1991), in Nehanda (Vera 1993), in Matigari (Ngugi 1989), in Things Fall Apart (Achebe 1994), and in fairy tales. The commonness of the image is understandable, given the continual physiological necessity of water and the presence of it in everyone’s life, and the scarcity of water in many areas of Africa. Water is also a brilliant symbol for literature, for as Ivan Illich (1986: 24) observes, water “has a nearly unlimited ability to carry metaphors”; doing 1 My translation. All the translations (of poems and other texts) from Swahili into English in this dissertation are mine, except for one marked passage of Kichwamaji, quoted on pages 16-17, that is Diegner’s translation. The dictionary translation from Finnish and the poem translations from French into English are mine, too. In this dissertation the Swahili quotations are in italics, the English translations of them in single quotes, and other quotations in double quotes. research on the image of water means exploring almost any theme the poems deal with, often down to the muddy bottom. Water imagery is even more frequent in the literatures of countries drier than Tanzania, such as Somalia. In Somali poetry water is an extremely common image, and most often used for praising. This expresses the value and positive connotations of water in Somali culture. A researcher of Somali literature Mohamed Abdillahi Rirash (2001: 48) argues that everything Somali breeders respect in life is psychologically associated with sources of water; pastoralism is traditionally the most common source of livelihood in Somalia. The positive connotation of water is oftentimes employed in Somali love poems. Sometimes water is used as a metaphor for love itself, for example in the form of a rain cloud: “And love which is true / Is the rain cloud [with] lightning / The rain drops falling on it”(Johnson 1996: 205). Rain commonly depicts the beloved: “like the heavens dropping rain in a place where fresh grass [grows] [- -] are you”(ibid. 79).2 In Swahili love poems fruits and flowers are more common images than water, but it is notable that both are closely connected to water. The best-known Swahili poet Shaaban Robert also occasionally employs the image of water, for example to illustrate the significance of small steps in the poem Kiswahili (‘Swahili’): Mto huanza kijito, / Tone habari na ziwa ‘A river begins as a brook, / A drop is a notice of a river’(Robert 1994: 104). Besides, Fumo Liyongo –both a presumed poet and a literary character, the mythical hero of Swahili poetry – is told to have made songs of bathing (Lodhi, forthcoming). Kezilahabi was born on an island, and spent his childhood by Lake Victoria. Possibly this has contributed to the great amount of water in his poems, though the image does not occur as frequently as in Somali poetry. What makes researching the image of water in Kezilahabi’s poetry intriguing, is the variety of themes that water represents, and the 2 Since the writer of this dissertation is not competent in the Somali or Arabic languages, reference is made to the translated works. The translators are mentioned in parentheses. The original Somali or Arabic verses are not quoted (and some of the collections do not even have them). An exception is, however, made with the references to Somali poems from the collection Sagaal Dayrood – Nio höstregn –Yhdeksän syyssadetta (Tiilikainen, Axmed & Lilius 2001), which does not have English translations but, besides the original ver- sions, translations in Swedish (and Finnish, but those translations