African Literature - Essay Example

African Literature Introduction The recent boom in the publishing of contemporary African literature, which has occurred side by side with the developments in the study of oral literature in Africa and the world at large, has been instrumental in the analysis of the relationship between oral African poetry and written African poetry. Although motivated by quite disparate circumstances, the effects of both these phenomena have shed light on the cultural aspects of the land. In spite of the harmful effects of the education of Africans in the languages and ideas of colonial nations which destroyed the traditional culture of the land, the recent developments in researches of the traditional culture of Africa have greatly contributed to the rich heritage of its traditions. As Isidore Okpewho maintains, "researches into African oral poetry and literature in general have intensified in an age when more and more African youth are going to school and the urbanizing programmes of their governments are increasingly threatening the traditional life styles that sustained such literature." (Okpewho, 3) Significantly, a study of the relationship between oral tradition and literacy can greatly contribute to the efforts to understand the nature of the creative imagination and, more importantly, to the understanding of the mentality of culture. The poems by several modern African poets exhibit a close relationship between oral African poetry and written African poetry. It is fundamental to realize that a careful analysis of to a range of poems in English from Africa can greatly help one in comprehending the relationship between oral African poetry and written African poetry. According to Geoffrey V. Davis, "the inclusion in a study of this nature of Malawi's modern poet Jack Mapanje, the writer of the collection of poems Of Chameleons and Gods, is particularly noteworthy not only because they stick closely to their topic - the relationship that exists between politics and artistic creativity - but also because they ably place Mapanje's work firmly within his tribal oral tradition." (Davis, 208) There have been several studies in the recent years which confirm the influence of the oral tradition of Africa on the contemporary black written literature, especially poetry and this paper makes a reflective exploration of the relationship between oral African poetry and written African poetry. The Relationship between Oral African Poetry and Written African Poetry A reflective exploration of the modern African poetry confirms the close relationship between oral African poetry and written African poetry. Significantly, several researches in the area have come up with convincing evidences to support the influence of oral tradition and poetry on the poetic works of several modern African poets. Landeg White is an important scholar who has spent a long time collecting oral poetry and popular songs in Southern Africa and his paper "Maps of Experience: Oral and Written Poetry from Southern Africa" offers a valuable evidence for the close relationship between the two modes of poetry. "The influence of the oral tradition on contemporary black written literature is the topic discussed by Landeg White in his paper Through an accurate survey of the Soweto poets and of the work of Dennis Brutus and the Malawian Jack Mapanje, White reveals the continuity between the two traditions." (Riemenschneider and Engler, 258) Therefore, the influence of the African oral tradition on the contemporary black written literature, especially poetry, is indubitable and the scholars who have researched in the area confirm that there is close connection between oral African poetry and written African poetry. In the 1980s, there was a significant rise of very promising Malawian poets, such as Jack Mapanje, Steve Chimombo, Felix Mnthali and Frank Chipasula, whose poetry clearly reflects the influence of oral tradition of Africa. Among these four writers, the first two exhibit marked difference in style with that of the latter two. There is a significant difference style and approach of Jack Mapanje and Steve Chimombo, who are still living in the country, in comparison with that of Felix Mnthali and Frank Chipasula, who are in exile. The style of the latter poets is highly explicit and direct, indicating the influence of the outside culture which offered them greater freedom to write according to their wish. Jack Mapanje has rapidly gained reputation as one of the leading younger poets of Africa since the publication of his first complete volume of poetry, Of Chameleons and Gods. An analysis of aesthetic ideology, form and communication in Mapanje suggests how the oral tradition and poetry influenced his written poetry. From the evidences of his various poems, it becomes evident that Malawi has become an oppressive country with a strong system of censorship. Thus, it becomes lucid that the poet's voice is muffled in his poetry and he expressed what he has to say carefully, indirectly and often in a cryptic style. Due to these characteristics, his poems are extremely difficult to decipher, especially to the readers who are not familiar with the oral traditions and political system of the country. "However, Mapanje has also gone to great lengths to evolve a consistent aesthetic ideology deriving from the historical and social conditions under which he writes. His poetry reveals several major stylistic features First, Mapanje makes extensive use of myths and oral traditions." (Ngara, 162) It is essential to comprehend that Jack Mapanje employs oral traditions extensively in his poetry, not in effort to mystify, but precisely because he wants to reflect the oral tradition of the land in his poetry. It is essential to realize that the oral poetry in Africa has a history as old as the continent itself, although the 'oral texts' which are accessible today are either those still performed or those transcribed or translated and therefore reduced to the written medium. Significantly, the oral poems which are still in performance pose various essential questions relating to the nature of orality itself as well as the manner in which performances are conducted. "The transcribed texts available in print pose equally vexing questions about their ontological status as texts, the ways in which critics should proceed when dealing with simulacra, the problems of translation and transcription, and so on." (Gikandi, 611) Therefore, it is essential to realise that oral poems in Africa, those that are still performed as well as those that are transcribed and reduced to the written medium, pose significant questions about the oral tradition of African culture. One of the essential ways to represent the oral poetry of Africa has been to bring about the conflict between the tradition and modernity though the poems. Several important modern African poets have been able to reflect this essential conflict, which makes their poetry major topic of analysis in a research of this nature. Thus, Steve Chimombo's Napolo and A Referendum of Forest Creatures deal with local myths and folk tales, which offer important material for poetic narrative structure and representation of political oppression in Malawi. "The most internationally acclaimed Malawian poet is Jack Mapanje, who in his Of Chameleons and Gods (1981) uses the conflict between tradition and modernity as a backcloth for investigating the uses and abuses of tradition and power in postcolonial Malawi." (Gikandi, 130) A reflective analysis of the works of Jack Mapanje confirms that this poet is best known for his volume Of Chameleons and Gods, incorporating a selection of poems written between 1970 and 1980, although he has published several other books including an important anthology of African oral poetry. He has been known as the most important southern African poet who has worked assiduously and self-consciously in terms of his aesthetic content. The arrest of this prominent poet by the government of Malawi as well as his poetic works demonstrates two essential aspects. "On the one hand, they illustrate the imaginative possibilities of adapting the aesthetics of oral poetry to the English language and the printed word. On the other, they demonstrate the ambiguities of that aesthetic in the jungle of post-independence African politics." (Vail and White, 280) Therefore, it is important to recognise that the poetry of Jack Mapanje is noted for the intermingling of the traditional oral poetry and the modern written poetry of Africa. The introduction to his volume Of Chameleons and Gods offers a convincing picture of Jack Mapanje's poetic concerns. According to him, he has been "attempting to find a voice or voices as a way of preserving some sanity" through the act of writing verse, and mentions the recurring temptation "where personal voices are too easily muffed" to be like the chameleon and "bask in one's brilliant camouflage." (Mapanje, vii) Therefore, Jack Mapanje maintains that the way forward for a writer is to learn from the 'traditional' artists of his society and he examines the forms of oral literature available within Malawi. Jack Mapanje develops two central arguments concerning oral culture that throw a great deal of light on his own poetic practice. Thus, Mapanje appeals for a return to the traditional literature and modes of thought as the source of metaphor and inspiration. Significantly, Mapanje, in suggesting this, is not advocating a nostalgic or neo-traditional literature of drums and masks. Instead, he maintains that "he wishes the new generation of young Malawian artists to have available, even when writing in English, something of the range of devices and destiny of metaphor the oral poet shares with audience Mapanje firmly rejects the notions, still current in some discussion of writing from East and Central Africa, that oral modes are simple and unsophisticated or that wit and polish and complexity in a writer are signs of Western influence To Mapanje, the language of the oral poet is sophisticated and mischievous, dense with history refined to metaphor, yet capable of dynamic effects of communication precisely because those metaphors are understood and have achieved currency." (Vail and White, 285) Therefore, it becomes lucid that Jack Mapanje effectively connected oral African poetry and written African poetry in his volume Of Chameleons and Gods. In a profound exploration of the various poems in the collection Of Chameleons and Gods, the relationship between oral African poetry and written African poetry becomes evident. The various poems of this collection exhibit Mapanje's significant concerns for the oral tradition and poetry of African culture and he clearly reflects these elements in his poetry. For example, in his poem "Glory Be to Chingwe's Hole", Mapanje refers to the hole on Zomba plateau known by the name of Chingwe, and this hole has direct associations with the oral tradition of the land. According to the oral tradition of Malawi, the wrong-doers were dropped into this hole as a punishment for their wrong-doings. Although the oral testimonies of the origin of 'Chingwe's Hole' have greatly varied, there is an important consensus about its historic significance. In the second and third stanzas of this poem, there is a rather obscure reference to a Chewa myth which also suggests the close relationship between oral African poetry and written African poetry. Significantly, the Chewa myth is the Chewa version of the Greek myth of Pygmalion and this poem clearly illustrates the incorporation of the oral tradition and poetry of Africa in the poems of Jack Mapanje. "Chingwe's Hole, you devoured the Chief's prisoners / Once, easy villagers decked in leopard colours / Pounding down their energies and their sight, You choked minstrel lovers with wild granadilla / Once, rolling under burning flamboyant trees. / Do you remember Frog the carver carving Ebony Beauty / Do you remember Frog's pin on Ebony Beauty's head" (Mapanje, 44) Therefore, the various poems in Of Chameleons and Gods illustrate how the poet incorporates the elements of African oral tradition and poetry in his poems. There are various other poems in the collection Of Chameleons and Gods which significantly reveal the poet's dependence on the oral traditions and poems of Africa. The various references to the folk tales and oral songs of the culture ultimately indicate the essential relationship between oral African poetry and written African poetry. The poem "On His Royal Blindness Paramount Chief Kwangala" is an important example for this characteristic of Mapanje's poems. "I admire the quixotic display of your paramountcy / How you brandish our ancestral shields and spears / Among your warriors dazzled by your loftiness / But I fear the way you spend your golden breath" (Mapanje, 57) Similarly, a reflective analysis of the poems in the collection Of Chameleons and Gods confirms that the poet effectively refers to important persons of the oral tradition. Thus, there is an important reference to John Chilembwe in the poem "Before Chilembwe Tree" and the poet refers, here, to the first Malawian rebel missionary who rose against Nysaland Colonial Government under the banner of Christianity. According to oral traditions, John Chilembwe did not die at the hands of the colonialists, but went to heaven through the nsolo tree. "Didn't you say we should trace / your footprints unmindful of / quagmires, thickets and rivers / until we reached your nsolo tree / Now, here I seat my gourd of beer / on my little fire throw my millet / flour and my smoked meat while / I await the second coming." (Mapanje, 18) In his poem "Drinking the Water from its Source", Mapanje suggests that it is important to drink the water from its source navely. It is interesting to note that the poet effectively makes an essential effort to drink the water from its source, i.e. write the poems on the basis of their oral traditions. "Distancing ourselves now our metaphors sharpen / We say drink the water from its source navely / Probably thinking of its purity, our salvation / Or the dead empire." (Mapanje, 33) The message conveyed by these poems is clear to the readers and the poet is effective in using the oral tradition and poetry as the basis of the themes and topics of his written poetry. Therefore, the various poems in the collection Of Chameleons and Gods exhibit the influence of oral tradition and poems on the written poems by modern poets such as Jack Mapanje. Conclusion In conclusion, it is essential to maintain that the poems by Jack Mapanje, especially those in the collection Of Chameleons and Gods, reveal the essential relationship between oral African poetry and written African poetry. Various modern poets of Africa exhibit this fundamental relationship between oral tradition and modern poetry and it is one of the basic characteristics of the ideology and form in African poetry with regard to its implications for communication. "An interesting case is that of Jack Mapanje, whose use of myth and oral tradition is at least partly determined by factors other than the poet's social vision - by a desire to find an effective medium of communication with the people. Even so, that aesthetic ideology is consciously formulated." (Ngara, 189) Therefore, the various works by Mapanje fall firmly within his tribal oral tradition and the impact of the African oral poetry is greatly evident in the poetry of this Malawian poet. In short, a reflective exploration of Jack Mapanje's anthology Of Chameleons and Gods confirms the influence of the oral tradition of Africa on the contemporary black written literature, especially poetry, and it becomes indubitable that there is an important relationship between oral African poetry and written African poetry. Works Cited Davis, Geoffrey V. Southern African writing: voyages and explorations, Issue 11. Rodopi. 1994. P 208. Gikandi, Simon. Encyclopaedia of African literature. Taylor & Francis. 2003. P 611. Mapanje, Jack. Of chameleons and gods: poems. Heinemann. 1991. Ngara, Emmanuel. Ideology & form in African poetry: implications for communication. James Currey Publishers. 1990. P 189. Okpewho, Isidore. "African Poetry: The Modern Writer and the Oral Tradition." Oral & written poetry in African literature today: a review. Eldred D. Jones, et al. James Currey Publishers. 1988. P 3. Riemenschneider, Dieter and Engler, Frank Schulze. African literatures in the eighties. Rodopi. 1993. P 258. Vail, Leroy and Landeg White. Power and the praise poem: southern African voices in history. University of Virginia Press. 1991. P 280. Read More