'Soyinka's life is inseparable from his work, much of which arises from a passionate, almost desperate, concern for his society. This concern is apparent in his poetry, drama and essays, but is not merely literary. It shows itself in his letters to the Nigerian papers which can always be relied upon to rouse enthusiastic support or bitter opposition. Indeed it is this very concern, and the speed with which he translates ideas into action that puts him so often at odds with institutions and governments.' - Eldred Durosimi Jones

This year's Reith lecturer, the Nigerian writer and Nobel prize-winner Wole Soyinka, is a playwright, a poet, a novelist and a critic; but, as Durosimi Jones shows, his literary work cannot be separated from his political activism. For more than forty years he has spoken out against brutal regimes, and is apparently better known in Nigeria as an activist than as a literary figure. For his refusal to remain silent in the face of atrocities he was imprisoned and held in solitary confinement from 1967 until 1969. This experience resulted in his prison notebooks, The Man Died (1973): a powerful testimony not only to his own suffering, but to the suffering of thousands of people who, unlike Soyinka, did not have famous names to ensure that their experiences would receive world-recognition. His belief in the moral duty to resist brutality is stated explicitly in The Man Died, as this extract demonstrates:

'These men are not merely evil, I thought. They are the mindlessness of evil made flesh. One should not ever stumble into their hands but seek the power to destroy them. They are pus, bile, original putrescence of Death in living shapes. They surely infect all with whom they come in touch and even from this insulation here I smell a foulness of the mind in the mere tone of their words. They breed themselves, their types, their mutations. To seek the power to destroy them is to fulfil a moral task.'

His collection of poetry, A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972), also addresses this period of his life, vividly describing his experience of solitary confinement, which he likens to a living death in a metaphorical 'crypt'. Moreover it bears witness to the atrocities carried out in the prison. For example, in the introductory prose section to the sequence Chimes of Silence Soyinka records the horrifying ritual of execution that he cannot see from his cell, but reconstructs from what he hears.

'Five men are walking... slowly, wearily, with the weight of the world on each foot, on each step towards eternity. I hear them pause at every scrap of life, at every beat of the silence, at every mote in the sun, those five for whom the world is about to die.'

    next > Page 1 of 3

Comments