Wole Soyinka was born on July 13, 1934 in Isara, Nigeria. His father, Ayo, was a headmaster at St. Peter’s Primary School in Ake Abeokuta. Tribal elders directed Ake, the village that Soyinka grew up in. He was exposed as a child to tribal gods and folklore, and was even consecrated by his grandfather to the god Ogun, ruler of metal, roads, and creative and destructive essence. At the same time, his mother was a devout Christian (Contemporary Authors). A child with strong curiosity and sensibility, Soyinka began studying at his father’s school and ascended the ranks until he completed his bachelor’s degree with a major in English at the University of Leeds in England (Postcolonial African Writers African Writers).
Soyinka had begun his writing career by submitting poems and short stories to various magazines. While at Leeds, however, he came to love Shakespeare, Japanese Noh drama, and a wide range of other genres of theater. He continued to experience and enjoy the theater at the Royal Court, where he was a play reader, actor, and writer in the writer’s’ experimental workshops (Postcolonial African Writers African Writers).
While Soyinka was studying in Europe, tensions were high in his homeland. During the nineteenth century, Britain had set up several colonial structures in Nigeria. These areas were only beginning to merge when, in 1960, Nigeria gained its independence. In Britain’s attempts to protect the interests of the multiple regions, it created intense rivalry between them, as they each sought to control Nigeria’s political center (Civil War). A coup d’état occurred on January 15, 1966 by a group that hoped to save the country from falling apart, but it was interpreted as a subterfuge to take over the country. General Ironsi, head of state, was then displaced in a countercoup on July 29. A new head of state was installed named Yakubu Gowon (Nigeria). Gowon and his followers believed that a tribe called the Igbo were responsible for the initial takeover of power and were a threat to the well-being of the country. With this belief, those involved in the countercoup went on to commit a horrific extermination of Igbo people throughout the northern region of Nigeria. In a mere two months, over 10,000 Igbo had been killed while thousands more were injured or dispossessed. Another 1.5 million people within the borders of Nigeria were refugees (Nigeria).
Even in the time following the massacre, Igbo people were discriminated against and refused compensation for their loses. The only way they could be safe, they decided, was to remain in the eastern region, overseen by Lt. Col. Emeka Ojukwu who was an Igbo himself. They would not recognize Gowon as head of state (Nigeria). Furthermore, the possibility of secession from the rest of the nation appeared attractive because of a discovery of oil centered in the eastern region (Civil War). A meeting was organized between Gowon and Ojukwu to iron out their differences, but cooperation did not last long. The agreements established at the meeting concerning the salaries of displaced people and who would serve as commander in chief came into dispute, and the conflicts quickly elevated again. On May 26, 1967, Ojukwu assembled several political organizations and declared the eastern region an independent sovereign state called the Republic of Biafra. The same day, the federal authority split Nigeria into twelve states. Lt. Col. Gowon assumed sweeping powers over all of the states and issued Decree No. 14 which banned political activities and implemented press censorship (Nigeria).
Soyinka had returned from Europe to Nigeria in 1959, while the country was only beginning to break apart. For much of his life, Soyinka had been influenced by Western values, lifestyle, and art (Postcolonial African Writers). Upon returning, he became involved in the preparations for independence by the country, but he was able to look at the situation with the eyes of an outsider. He was opposed to the corruption and the Nigerian civilian government takeovers. His contribution to the cause was writing a series of plays on corrupt power. In these plays he blended references to Yoruba traditions with European art and philosophy (Contemporary Novelists). This characteristic made him a unique voice in both literature and cultural politics.
One of Soyinka’s earlier poems, found in his collection Idanre & Other Poems, is entitled “Massacre, October ’66.” The poem clearly responds to the genocide that claimed the lives of 10,000 Igbo people. The title reads almost as if it preceded a research paper, but the poet’s language takes on a much more symbolic trajectory. He employs images of autumn, “dying leaves” and “brain of thousands pressed asleep to pig fodder” to illustrate the overwhelming devastation of the genocide. Without knowledge of the event, the reader of the poem would not be able to pinpoint exactly what the poet refers to, and in fact Soyinka has been criticized for being overly allusive in his writing (Contemporary Novelists).
Soyinka fiercely opposed the federal government’s violent treatment of the Igbo people as they tried to legitimize their new state (Contemporary Authors). Though Emeka Ojukwu had declared the Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967, “the federal government declared the action null” (Postcolonial African Writers). They attacked Biafra from two sides with an enormous supply of weaponry, and Biafra completely lacked the materials to fight back. They were pushed toward the coast where a sea blockade, internal division, and very little support from the rest of the world stopped them. Not only could they not fight, but the people of Biafra had no food. Due to starvation and war, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people died daily at the beginning of the war, and nearly 10,000 daily by the end. By April 1969, the population of Biafra had shrunk to a third of its original size (Postcolonial African Writers).
Audiences immediately took notice of Soyinka’s strong opinions against the treatment of the Biafra people, so it became international news when he was first arrested in 1965. He was accused of forcing a radio announcer to report incorrect election results at gunpoint, though his accusers never had any evidence of this. He was released after three months, but was arrested again in 1967 following a trip to Biafra to establish a peace commission. This time the police filed no official charge, but accused him of helping the Biafran people buy fighter jets (Contemporary Authors). The detention lasted for two years and for much of it, Soyinka was held in solitary confinement. Though he had no pens or notebooks in his tiny cell, he was able to find a creative outlet. He used materials such as toilet paper, cigarette packets, and homemade “soy-ink” to write several works that reflected his state of mind and the dreadful conditions he experienced. One of these pieces is A Shuttle in the Crypt, a book of poems (Postcolonial African Writers).
In the preface of A Shuttle in the Crypt Soyinka explains that the shuttle is a caged animal, a “restless bolt of energy,” that he identified with while in prison as a way to battle the dangers of isolation. The collection, he writes, “is a map of the course trodden by the mind, not a record of the actual struggle against a vegetable existence…” (Soyinka).
One of the poems found in A Shuttle in the Crypt is “A cobweb’s touch in the dark.” In this poem, the poet has an experience with a cobweb that causes him to think about the ancestral web. The poem contains five short stanzas, made up of three to four lines each that serve to explore feelings stirred in the poet by the web. By touching the web, he feels the “dark vapours of the earth exhaling. A thread of the web causes him to think of “things gone by, a brush of time.” In the end, however, “It slips,” and the moment is over (Shuttle in the Crypt). This poem is a clear example of how exactly Soyinka overcame his time in solitary confinement. Though he was stuck in a small cell with little external stimulation, he went inside himself and indulged his tendency to wonder and create (Abou-bakr). Like a shuttle, he was restless within his cage, but rather than being concerned only with physical freedom, he successfully transcended his captivity through mental exploits that covered time and space.
On January 11, 1970, Emeka Ojukwu, who had led the people of Biafra for three years, fled to Cote d’Ivoire. The attempt to exist as a separate entity had failed. The Igbo people were then, and are today discriminated against and were not reinstated in their previous jobs (Nigeria). After being released from confinement at the end of the war, Soyinka was forced into exile several times over the course of nearly thirty years. In 1994, a leader by the name of Ibrahim Babangida assumed power. Under this leadership Soyinka was charged with treason for his criticism of the military regime, and given a death sentence in his home of Nigeria (Contemporary Authors). He has written and taught in an array of settings, from head of the English Department at Lagos University to the overseas fellow in Churchill College at Cambridge University, to professorship and lectureship assignment in universities in Britain and the United Sates. He currently teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and is the President's Marymount Institute Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California(Postcolonial African Writers).
In the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1986, Thomas Hayes wrote about Soyinka that “His drama and fiction have challenged the West to broaden its aesthetic and accept African standards of art and literature. His personal and political life have challenged Africa to embrace the truly democratic values of the African tribe and reject the tyranny of power practiced on the continent by its colonizers and by many of its modern rulers” (Contemporary Authors). Soyinka is predominantly known for his novels and plays, but across all of his writing he advocated for democracy and justice (Femi). His understanding of the African conflicts and Western language and culture gave him the ability to make a devastating issue real for readers around the world.
Works Cited
Abou-bakr, Randa. "The Political Prisoner as Antihero: The Prison Poetry of Wole Soyinka and 'Ahmad Fu'ad Nigm." Comparative Literature Studies 46.2 (2009): 261-86. Print.
"Civil War: Postcolonial African Writers Africa." Encyclopedia of African History. London: Routledge, 2004. Credo Reference. Web. 24 March 2011.
Killam, Douglas, and Rowe, Ruth. The Companion to African Literatures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Print.
Femi, Euba. “Wole Soyinka.” Postcolonial African Writers African Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print
"Nigeria: Biafran Secession and Civil War, 1967-1970." Encyclopedia of African History. London: Routledge, 2004. Credo Reference. Web. 24 March 2011.
Postcolonial African Writers African Writers : a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook. Westport: Greenwood Press. 1998. Print.
Soyinka, Wole. A Shuttle in the Crypt. Hill and Wang, 1972.
"SOYINKA, Wole." An African Biographical Dictionary. Amenia: Grey House Publishing, 2006. Credo Reference. Web. 26 March 2011.
Soyinka, Wole. Early Poems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1998.
"Wole Soyinka." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2011.
"Wole Soyinka." Contemporary Novelists. Gale, 2001. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2011.
With a story like this one, it is easy to see komunyakaa's perspective on social change from poetry as a key factor in it's value. While we may deal with emotion,physical, cognitive, or domestic abuse in our western culture, few of us actually are affected by wars and threats made on our personhood. thank you for this insightfull view on your poet's life.
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