Achebe A Celebrated
Storyteller, But No Father Of African Literature, Says Soyinka


Also: Why He Wished Achebe Had Not Written His Last
Book; What He Told Ojukwu Before The War; Genocide,
And Other Issues
.


Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has described Africa’s most
well known novelist, Chinua Achebe, as a storyteller who
earned global celebration, adding, however, that those
describing Achebe as “the father of African literature”
were ignorant.

In a wide-ranging interview with SaharaReporters,
Soyinka paid tribute to the late novelist who died on
March 21, 2013 at 82. Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel
Prize for literature, also spoke on his personal relationship
with Achebe and other Nigerian writers; his regrets about
Achebe’s last book, There Was A Country: A Personal
History of Biafra; and his attempt to talk the late Biafran
leader, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, out of fighting a war.
Soyinka also answered questions about Heinemann’s
African Writers Series and scolded “clannish” and
“opportunistic hagiographers” fixated on the fact that
Achebe never won the Nobel Prize.
Below is the full text of the interview.

Question: Do you recall where or how you first learned
about the death of Professor Chinua Achebe? And
what was your first reaction?

Soyinka: Where I heard the news? I was on the road
between Abeokuta and Lagos. Who called first – BBC or
a Nigerian journalist? Can't recall now, since other calls
followed fast and furious, while I was still trying to digest
the news. My first reaction? Well, you know the boa
constrictor – when it has just swallowed an abnormal
morsel, it goes comatose, takes time off to digest. Today's
global media appears indifferent to such a natural
entitlement. You are expected to supply that instant
response. So, if – as was the case – my first response was
to be stunned, that swiftly changed to anger.
Now, why was I stunned? I suspect, mostly because I was
to have been present at his last Chinua Achebe symposium
just a few months earlier – together with Governor
Fashola of Lagos. Something intervened and I was
marooned in New York. When your last contact with
someone, quite recent, is an event that centrally involves
that person, you don’t expect him to embark on a
permanent absence. Also, Chinua and I had been
collaborating lately on one or two home crises. So, it was
all supposed to be 'business as usual'. Most irrational
expectations at one’s age but, that's human
presumptuousness for you. So, stunned I was, primarily,
then media enraged!

Question: Achebe was both a writer as well as editor
for Heinemann’s African Writers Series. How would
you evaluate his role in the popularization of African
literature?

Soyinka: I must tell you that, at the beginning, I was very
skeptical of the Heinemann's African Series. As a literary
practitioner, my instinct tends towards a suspicion of
“ghetto” classifications – which I did feel this was bound
to be. When you run a regional venture, it becomes a
junior relation to what exists. Sri Lankan literature should
evolve and be recognized as literature of Sri Lanka,
release after release, not entered as a series. You place the
books on the market and let them take off from there.
Otherwise there is the danger that you start hedging on
standards. You feel compelled to bring out quantity, which
might compromise on quality.
I refused to permit my works to appear in the series – to
begin with. My debut took place while I was Gowon's
guest in Kaduna prisons and permission to publish The
Interpreters was granted in my absence. Exposure itself is
not a bad thing, mind you. Accessibility. Making works
available – that’s not altogether negative. Today, several
scholars write their PhD theses on Onitsha Market
literature. Both Chinua and Cyprian Ekwensi – not
forgetting Henshaw and others – published with those
enterprising houses. It was outside interests that classified
them Onitsha Market Literature, not the publishers. They
simply published.
All in all, the odds come down in favour of the series –
which, by the way, did go through the primary phase of
sloppy inclusiveness, then became more discriminating.
Aig Higo – who presided some time after Chinua –
himself admitted it.

Question: For any major writer, there’s the inevitable
question of influence. In your view, what’s the nature
of Achebe’s enduring influence and impact in African
literature? And what do you foresee as his place in the
canon of world literature?

Soyinka: Chinua's place in the canon of world literature?
Wherever the art of the story-teller is celebrated, definitely
assured.

Question: In interviews as well as in writing, Achebe
brushed off the title of “father of African literature.”
Yet, on his death, numerous media accounts, in Nigeria
as well as elsewhere, described him as the father – even
grandfather – of African literature. What do you think
of that tag?

Soyinka: As you yourself have observed, Chinua himself
repudiated such a tag – he did study literature after all,
bagged a degree in the subject. So, it is a tag of either
literary ignorance or “momentary exuberance” – ala
[Nadine] Gordimer – to which we are all sometimes
prone. Those who seriously believe or promote this must
be asked: have you the sheerest acquaintance with the
literatures of other African nations, in both indigenous and
adopted colonial languages? What must the francophone,
lusophone, Zulu, Xhosa, Ewe etc. etc. literary scholars
and consumers think of those who persist in such a
historic absurdity? It's as ridiculous as calling WS father
of contemporary African drama! Or Mazisi Kunene father
of African epic poetry. Or Kofi Awoonor father of African
poetry. Education is lacking in most of those who
pontificate.
As a short cut to such corrective, I recommend Tunde
Okanlawon's scholarly tribute to Chinua in The Sun
(Nigeria) of May 4th. After that, I hope those of us in the
serious business of literature will be spared further
embarrassment.
Let me just add that a number of foreign “African
experts” have seized on this silliness with glee. It
legitimizes their ignorance, their parlous knowledge,
enables them to circumscribe, then adopt a patronizing
approach to African literatures and creativity. Backed by
centuries of their own recorded literary history, they
assume the condescending posture of midwiving an infant
entity. It is all rather depressing.

Question: Following Achebe’s death, you and J.P.
Clarke released a joint statement. In it, you both
wrote: “Of the ‘pioneer quartet’ of contemporary
Nigerian literature, two voices have been silenced –
one, of the poet Christopher Okigbo, and now, the
novelist Chinua Achebe.” In your younger days as
writers, would you say there was a sense among your
circle of contemporaries – say, Okigbo, Achebe,
Clarke, Flora Nwapa – of being engaged in a healthy
rivalry for literary dominance? By the way, on the
Internet, your joint statement was criticized for
neglecting to mention any female writers – say, Flora
Nwapa – as part of that pioneering group. Was that
an oversight?

Soyinka: This question – the omission of Flora Nwapa,
Mabel Segun (nee Imoukhuede) – and do include D.O.
Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola, Cyprian Ekwensi, so it is not
just a gender affair – is related to the foregoing, and is
basically legitimate. JP and I were however paying a
tribute to a colleague within a rather closed circle of
interaction, of which these others were not members.
Finally, and most relevantly, we are language users – this
means we routinely apply its techniques. We knew what
we were communicating when we placed “pioneer
quartet” in – yes! – inverted commas. Some of the media
may have removed them; others understood their
significance and left them where they belonged.

Question: Did you and Achebe have the opportunity to
discuss his last book, There Was a Country: A
Personal History of Biafra, and its critical reception?
What’s your own assessment of There Was a Country?
Some critics charged that the book was unduly divisive
and diminished Achebe’s image as a nationally beloved
writer and intellectual. Should a writer suborn his
witness to considerations of fame?

Soyinka: No, Chinua and I never discussed There was a
Country. Matter of fact, that aborted visit I mentioned
earlier would have been my opportunity to take him on
with some friendly fire at that open forum, continuing at
his home over a bottle or two, aided and abetted by
Christie’s [editor’s note: Achebe’s wife, Professor Christie
Achebe] cooking. A stupendous life companion by the
way – Christie – deserves a statue erected to her for
fortitude and care – on behalf of us all. More of that will
emerge, I am sure, as the tributes pour in.
Unfortunately, that chance of a last encounter was missed,
so I don't really wish to comment on the work at this
point. It is however a book I wish he had never written –
that is, not in the way it was. There are statements in that
work that I wish he had never made.
The saddest part for me was that this work was bound to
give joy to sterile literary aspirants like Adewale Maja-
Pearce, whose self-published book – self-respecting
publishers having rejected his trash – sought to create a
“tragedy” out of the relationships among the earlier named
“pioneer quartet” and, with meanness aforethought,
rubbish them all – WS especially. Chinua got off the
lightest. A compendium of outright impudent lies, fish
market gossip, unanchored attributions, trendy drivel and
name dropping, this is a ghetto tract that tries to pass itself
up as a product of research, and has actually succeeded in
fooling at least one respectable scholar. For this reason
alone, there will be more said, in another place, on that
hatchet mission of an inept hustler.

Question: One of the specific issues raised constantly in
recent Nigerian public “debate” has to do with whether
the Igbo were indeed victims of genocide. What are
your thoughts on the question?

Soyinka: The reading of most Igbo over what happened
before the Civil War was indeed accurate – yes, there was
only one word for it – genocide. Once the war began
however, atrocities were committed by both sides, and the
records are clear on that. The Igbo got the worst of it,
however. That fact is indisputable. The Asaba massacre is
well documented, name by victim name, and General
Gowon visited personally to apologize to the leaders. The
Igbo must remember, however, that they were not
militarily prepared for that war. I told Ojukwu this, point
blank, when I visited Biafra. Sam Aluko also revealed that
he did. A number of leaders outside Biafra warned the
leadership of this plain fact. Bluff is no substitute for
bullets.

Question: Your joint statement with Clarke balances
the “sense of depletion” you felt over Achebe’s death
with “consolation in the young generation of writers to
whom the baton has been passed, those who have
already creatively ensured that there is no break in the
continuum of the literary vocation.” How much of the
young Nigerian and African writers do you find the
time to read?


Soyinka: Yes, I do read much of Nigerian/African
literature – as much as my time permits. My motor vehicle
in Nigeria is a mobile library of Nigerian publications –
you know those horrendous traffic holdups – that's where I
go through some of the latest. The temptation to toss some
out of the car window after the first few pages or chapter
is sometimes overwhelming. That sour note conceded –
and as I have repeatedly crowed – that nation of ours can
boast of that one virtue – it’s bursting with literary talent!
And the women seem to be at the forefront.

Question: In the joint statement issued by J. P. Clarke
and you following Achebe’s death, you stated: “For
us, the loss of Chinua Achebe is, above all else,
intensely personal. We have lost a brother, a colleague,
a trailblazer and a doughty fighter.” There’s the
impression in some quarters that Achebe, Clarke and
you were virtual personal enemies. In the specific case
of Achebe and you, there’s the misperception that your
1986 Nobel Prize in literature poisoned your personal
relationship with a supposedly resentful Achebe. How
would you describe your relationship with Achebe
from the early days when you were both young writers
in a world that was becoming aware of the fecund,
protean phenomenon called African literature?

Soyinka: Now – all right - I feel a need to return to that
question of yours – I have a feeling that I won’t be at ease
with myself for having dodged it earlier – which was
deliberate. If I don’t answer it, we shall all continue to be
drenched in misdirected spittle. I’m referring to your
question on the relationship between myself and other
members of the “pioneer quartet” – JP Clark and Chinua
specifically. At this stage in our lives, the surviving have
a duty to smash the mouths of liars to begin with, then
move to explain to those who have genuinely misread,
who have failed to place incidents in their true
perspective, or who simply forget that life is sometimes
strange – rich but strange, and inundated with flux.
My first comment is that outsiders to literary life should
be more humble and modest. They should begin by
accepting that they were strangers to the ferment of the
earlier sixties and seventies. It would be stupid to claim
that it was all constantly harmonious, but outsiders should
at least learn some humility and learn to deal with facts.
Where, in any corner of the globe, do you find perfect
models of creative harmony, completely devoid of
friction? We all have our individual artistic temperaments
as well as partisanships in creative directions. And we
have strong opinions on the merits of the products of our
occupation. But – “rivalry for domination,” to quote you –
healthy or unhealthy? Now that is something that has been
cooked up, ironically, by camp followers, the most recent
of which is that ignoble character I’ve just mentioned,
who was so desperate to prove the existence of such a
thing that he even tried to rope JP’s wife into it, citing her
as source for something I never uttered in my entire
existence. I cannot think of a more unprincipled,
despicable conduct. These empty, notoriety-hungry
hangers-on and upstarts need to find relevance, so they
concoct. No, I believe we were all too busy and self-
centred – that is, focused on our individual creative
grooves – to think ‘dominance’!
Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must
sometimes appear to others. JP remains as irrepressible,
contumacious and irascible as he was during that creative
ferment of the early sixties. Christopher was ebullient.
Chinua mostly hid himself away in Lagos, intervening
robustly in MBARI affairs with deceptive disinclination.
Perception of Chinua, JP and I as ‘personal enemies’?
The word “enemy” is strong and wrong. The Civil War
split up a close-knit literary coterie, of which “the quartet”
formed a self-conscious core. That war engendered a
number of misapprehensions. Choices were made, some
regrettable, and even thus admitted by those who made
them. Look, I never considered General Gowon who put
me in detention my enemy, even though at the time, I was
undeniably bitter at the experience, the circumstances, at
the man who authorized it, and contributing individuals –
including Chief Tony Enahoro who read out a fabricated
confession to a gathering of national and international
media.
But the war did end. New wars (some undeclared)
commenced. Chief Enahoro and I would later collaborate
in a political initiative – though I never warmed up to him
personally, I must confess. Gowon and I, by contrast,
became good friends. He attended my birthday
celebrations, presided at my most recent Nigerian award –
the Obafemi Awolowo Leadership Prize. JP was present,
with his wife, Ebun. What does that tell you? Before that,
I had hosted them in my Abeokuta den on a near full-day
visit. Would Achebe, if he had been able, and was in
Nigeria, have joined us? Perhaps. But he certainly
wouldn’t have been present at the Awolowo Award event.
That is a different kettle of fish, a matter between him and
Awolowo – which, however, Chinua did let degenerate
into tribal charges.
Well then, this prospect that “my 1986 Nobel Prize in
literature poisoned my personal relationship with a
supposedly resentful Achebe” – I think I shouldn’t dodge
that either. Even if that was true – which I do not accept –
it surely has dissipated over time. For heaven’s sake, over
twenty-five people have taken the prize since then! The
problem remains with those vicarious laureates who feel
personally deprived, and thus refuse to let go. Chinua’s
death was an opportunity to prise open that scab all over
again. But they’ve now gone too far with certain
posturings and should be firmly called to order, and
silenced – in the name of decency.
I refer to that incorrigible sect – no other word for it –
some leaders of which threatened Buchi Emecheta early in
her career – that she had no business engaging in the
novel, since this was Chinua’s special preserve!
Incredible? Buchi virtually flew to me for protection –
read her own account of that traumatizing experience. It is
a Nigerian disease. Nigerians need to be purged of a
certain kind of arrogance of expectations, of demand, of
self-attribution, of a spurious sense and assertion of
entitlement. It goes beyond art and literature. It covers all
aspects of interaction with others. Wherever you witness a
case of ‘It’s MINE, and no other’s’, ‘it’s OURS, not
theirs’, at various levels of vicarious ownership, such
aggressive voices, ninety percent of the time, are bound to
be Nigerians. This is a syndrome I have had cause to
confront defensively with hundreds of Africans and non-
Africans. It is what plagues Nigeria at the moment – it’s
MY/OUR turn to rule, and if I/WE cannot, we shall lay
waste the terrain. Truth is, predictably, part of the
collateral damage on that terrain.
Yes, these are the ones who, to co-opt your phrasing,
“diminished (and still diminish) Chinua’s image”. In the
main, they are, ironically, his assiduous – but basically
opportunistic – hagiographers – especially of a clannish,
cabalistic temperament. Chinua – we have to be frank here
– also did not help matters. He did make one rather
unfortunate statement that brought down the hornet’s nest
on his head, something like: “The fact that Wole Soyinka
was awarded the Nobel Prize does not make him the
Asiwaju (Leader) of African literature”. I forget now what
provoked that statement. Certainly it could not be traced to
any such pretensions on my part. I only recollect that it
was in the heat of some controversy – on a national issue,
I think.
But let us place this in context. Spats between writers,
artists, musicians, scientists, even architects and scientific
innovators etc. are notorious. They are usually short-lived
– though some have been known to last a life-time. This
particular episode was at least twenty years ago.
Unfortunately some of Chinua’s cohorts decided that they
had a mission to prosecute a matter regarding which they
lacked any vestige of understanding or competence or
indeed any real interest. It is however a life crutch for
them and they cannot let go.
What they are doing now – and I urge them to end it
shame-facedly – is to confine Chinua’s achievement space
into a bunker over which hangs an unlit lamp labeled
“Nobel”. Is this what the literary enterprise is about? Was
it the Nobel that spurred a young writer, stung by
Eurocentric portrayal of African reality, to put pen to
paper and produce Things Fall Apart? This conduct is
gross disservice to Chinua Achebe and disrespectful of the
life-engrossing occupation known as literature. How did
creative valuation descend to such banality? Do these
people know what they’re doing – they are inscribing
Chinua’s epitaph in the negative mode of thwarted
expectations. I find that disgusting.
China, with her vast population, history, culture – arts and
literature – celebrated her first Nobel Prize in Literature
only last year. Yet I have been teaching Chinese literature
on and off – within Comparative literary studies – for over
forty years. Am I being instructed now that those writers
needed recognition by the Nobel for me to open such
literary windows to my students? Do these strident,
cacophonous Nigerians know how much literature – and
of durable quality – radiates the world?
Let me add this teacher complaint: far too many Nigerians
– students of literature most perniciously – are being
programmed to have no other comparative literary
structure lodged in their mental scope than WS vs. CA.
Such crass limitation is being pitted against the
knowledgeable who, often wearily, but obedient to sheer
intellectual doggedness, feel that they owe a duty to stop
the march of confident ignorance. For me personally, it is
galling to have everything reduced to the Nigerian enclave
where, to make matters even more acute, there are
supposedly only those two. It makes me squirm. I teach
the damned subject – literature – after all. I do know
something about it.
So let me now speak as a teacher. It is high time these
illiterates were openly instructed that Achebe and Soyinka
inhabit different literary planets, each in its own orbit. If
you really seek to encounter – and dialogue with – Chinua
Achebe in his rightful orbit, then move out of the Nigerian
entrapment and explore those circuits coursed by the likes
of Hemingway. Or Maryse Conde. Or Salman Rushdie.
Think Edouard Glissant. Think Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Think
Earl Lovelace. Think Jose Saramago. Think Bessie Head.
Think Syl Cheney-Coker, Yambo Ouologuem, Nadine
Gordimer. Think Patrick Chamoiseau. Think Toni
Morrison. Think Hamidou Kane. Think Shahrnush
Parsipur. Think Tahar Ben Jelloun. Think Naguib
Mahfouz – and so on and on along those orbits in the
galaxy of fiction writers. In the meantime, let us quit this
indecent exercise of fatuous plaints, including raising
hopes, even now, with talk of “posthumous” conferment,
when you know damned well that the Nobel committee
does not indulge in such tradition. It has gone beyond
‘sickening’. It is obscene and irreverent. It desecrates
memory. The nation can do without these hyper-active
jingoists. Can you believe the kind of letters I receive?
Here is one beauty – let me quote:
“I told these people, leave it to Wole Soyinka - he will
do what is right. We hear Ben Okri, Nuruddin Farah,
even Chimamanda Adichie are being nominated. This
is mind-boggling. Who are they? Chinua can still be
awarded the prize, even posthumously. We know you
will intervene to put those upstarts in their place. I’ve
assured people you will do what is right.”
Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was
converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the
Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive
power of his genius. If he thought that dynamite was
eviscerating in its effects, he should try some of the gut-
wrenching concoctions of Nigerian pontificators. Please,
let these people know that I am not even a member of
Alfred’s Academy that decides such matters. As a ‘club
member,’ however, I can nominate, and it is no business
of literary ignoramuses whom, if any, I do nominate. My
literary tastes are eclectic, sustainable, and unapologetic.
Fortunately, thousands of such nominations – from simply
partisan to impeccably informed – pour in annually from
all corners of the globe to that cold corner of the world
called Sweden. Humiliating as this must be for many who
carry that disfiguring hunch, the national ego, on their
backs, Nigeria is not the centre of the Swedish electors’
world, nor of the African continent, nor of the black
world, nor of the rest of the world for that matter. In fact,
right now, Nigeria is not the centre of anything but global
chagrin.
Chinua is entitled to better than being escorted to his grave
with that monotonous, hypocritical aria of deprivation’s
lament, orchestrated by those who, as we say in my part of
the world, “dye their mourning weeds a deeper indigo than
those of the bereaved”. He deserves his peace. Me too!
And right now, not posthumously.
It is not all bleakness and aggravation however – I have
probably given that impression, but the stridency of
cluelessness, sometimes willful, has reached the heights of
impiety. Vicarious appropriation is undignified, and it runs
counter to the national pride it ostensibly promotes. Other
voices are being drowned, or placed in a false position,
who value and express the sensibilities between, respect
the subtle threads that sustain, writers, even in their
different orbits. My parting tribute to Chinua will
therefore take the form of the long poem I wrote to him
when he turned seventy, after my participation in the
celebrations at Bard College. I plan for it to be published
on the day of his funeral – my way of taunting death, by
pursuing that cultural, creative, even political communion
that unites all writers with a decided vision of the possible
– and even beyond the grave.


Source: mobile.saharareporters.com/interview/saharareporters-interview-exclusive-achebe-celebrated-storyteller-no-father-african-litera

Immense thanks to sahara reporters for giving us this wonderful real interview that avoids the much-travelled sad road of Nigerian interviewees who ask trivial questions even when the subjects throw "life lines" that should be seized and pursue serious follow-up questions, who do not listen but go armed with questions on ill-formed and uninformed ideas, etcetera. A lot of thanks to Soyinka for calling a spade nothing else - as always - by debunking myths, fabrications and outright lies, and hopefully laying all sorts of ghosts to rest.
Now, let the tribal jingoists begin even if they won't read this thought-provoking sad but great piece.

Too long,its good dat prof wole clarified all those nonsense speculations going round.

Nice interview, but whoever chose this title is as despicable, tribalistic, ignorant and trouble-monging as Adewale Maja-Pearce. Of all the things the revered Prof. said, this is what you picked? Hide your scruffy face in shame!