This article is published in the Tasambo Journal of Language, Literature, and Culture – Volume 1, Issue 1.
Yomi Okunowo,
Ph.D
okunowoav@tasued.edu.ng
Department of English
Studies, Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria
Abstract
This paper analyses
pre-existing texts as rhetorical signifiers of meaning in Osundare’s poetic
oeuvre. These texts are recreated and appropriated as a metaphorical
representation of meaning within the cultural context of use in Osundare’s
poetry. I engage this as an aspect of Osundare’s literary idiolect because, in
-spite of the body of scholarship in Osundare studies, the deployment of these
pre-existing texts as metaphorical tropes of meaning in Osundare has yet to be
analytically examined. For analytical convenience, the topology of Osundare’s
metaphor design can largely be conceived as a matrix of two creative formats: ‘text-to-text’
and ‘word-to-word’ frames, and the former, being under-examined, forms the
focus of this paper. Metaphoric abstractions from existing prime and
second-order texts are what we described as ‘text-to-text’ metaphors. This is
when pre-existing texts or phenomena like proverbs and oral tales (second-order
texts), and actual events (prime-order texts) existing in the culture are
manipulated and textualized for meaning in the process of poetic composition.
Keywords: Text-to-text, phenomena, metaphor, meaning,
stylistics
Introduction
Understanding these texts as metaphor takes them away from the
ordinary general description of their incorporation and portends a level of
critical appreciation of the inexhaustible creativity these texts can afford
the African writer. Aesthetics of language and meaning are a priority in
Osundare’s deployment of metaphor. Largely, the rhetoric of metaphoric
persuasions engages our consciousness and works us through Osundare’s knowledge
and perspectives of political, social, and economic inequities, brutal power,
war-mongering, and vandalism of the ecosystem, including hardship of the
downtrodden and bloody events in world histories. The purpose is to alert and
give warning about the contemporary socio-economic and political events in the
world.
‘Text to text’ metaphor is a genre in which texts and events
existing in the 'socio-semio-linguistic life' of the poet are employed as
allegorical creativity. The employment of oral texts and actual historical
events and persons in the 'socio-semio-linguistic life' organized poetically
within a new, cultural experience, I will generally consider allegorical, being
that Osundare manipulated these preexisting texts into a proverbial and
metaphorical poetic experience. Additionally, because allegory has long been
accepted as a continuum of metaphorical expression in rhetorical traditions, it
has been suggested as both a manifestation and large-scale conceptual metaphor
(Crisp 2001: 5).
Furthermore, discourse, beyond the orientation of the sentence
as a basis of meaning analysis, is basic for the discursive analysis of a
literary text as a premise of getting at the meaning and eventually message.
Thus, for example, it will not be enough to metaphorically interpret metaphors
in the spectrum of linguistic analysis only, except discursively to showcase
our real-world experience (see Crisp: 11). Consequently, the discourses of the
identified preexisting texts, because they are creatively reworked into new literary
experiences, take the interpretive predication of allegory as metaphor because
they seem to present themes that are sustained larger than single metaphorical
meanings in sentences.
Theoretical
Basis
Critical to this paper are the concepts of stylistics, metaphor,
‘text-to-text’ metaphor, and ‘socio-semio-linguistic life’. I, therefore,
provide an understanding of these concepts in my analysis to explain Osundare’s
construction of and use of the ‘text-to-text’ metaphor.
On Stylistics: Arguments about
what Stylistics is and its purpose, including its modus operandi (See, for
example, Fowler 1971, 1996; Leech and Short 1981; Simpson 1997) are almost
countless in the literature. In all, because I work from the view that
Literature is not an autonomous subject; it gains insight from language,
linguistics, history, anthropology, and culture, etc, I claim no more than to
argue that Stylistics mediates between literature and other disciplines that
have a stake in it (literature). This symbiotic character makes Stylistics a
tool of inquiry into Literature as an object of culture and the language that
makes that literature communicates its trajectory of purpose and value. This
position suggests that Stylistics is an analytical tool that explains ways of
meaning- decoding how meaning and message are encoded in texts- particularly
literary texts.
On Metaphor: Views of
metaphor are countless in the literature (see, for example, Sacks 1977; Lakoff
and Johnson 1980; Mark 1981; Ortony 1979; Turner 1987; Goatly 1997). The
literary perspective of metaphor is that it is a “figure of speech” in which
one sense of an idea is used to veil (in a euphemistic sense) or to make
clearer, concretize and engender affective sensibility in the way we perceive
another idea. This is a device of meaning addressed by literary theory as a
symbol of meaning (Glucksberg, 2001) whereby two items of language are
collocated, where the attribute of one (describe as source) is transferred into
the other (described as target) to project it in the light of the meaning
obtainable in the other. In cognitive science, metaphor is conceived as a
thought process in which we conceptualize an idea in terms of another based on
our knowledge of the world (Lakoff and Johnson 1992; Lakoff and Turner 1989).
The main argument of Lakoff’s metaphor theory is that metaphor
is a process of the brain concretized in linguistic form. Metaphor, according
to Lakoff and Turner involves understanding one domain in terms of another in
what they call “mapping across domains”. The mapping from a concept-source
domain to a concept-target domain is to make clear concepts or abstractions or
structures that may be poorly understood; in which case meaning could be
understood by ascribing the meaning in the source domain to the target domain
for understanding. For example, according to Lakoff and Johnson, the
correspondence between “love” and “journey” is understood in our knowledge
about “journey” (vehicle, travelers, destination, distance, etc.) and mapped
onto our knowledge about love (relationship, lovers, common goals, etc.).
Lakoff and followers’ metaphor polemic remains within the contentious conflict
between a “mode of thought” and a “figure of speech”. In this paper, I draw
insight from both schools of thought because metaphor is not centered on
verbalization alone, which is what Lakoff holds against the linguistic
perspective of metaphor.
There are other forms of discursive matrices, like myth,
allegories or stories, pictorial images, pictures, and symbols which can be
metaphorical and account for figurative interpretation (Kovecses, 2002) of
meaning. In any case, central to any theory of metaphor is the fact of
‘transferring ideas from one ‘element’ to help another ‘element’ to mean in the
sense of the first ‘element’ facilitating meaning and communication. However,
while Lakoff recognizes this, the representation of non-linguistic-based
metaphor in the conceptual metaphor frame remains a matter of how it is
linguistically manifested. Thus, fundamentally, one can say that cognitive
metaphor remains essentially at the sentence-level hermeneutic. Consequently,
in my analysis, the matrices of ‘text-to-text’ metaphor as non-linguistic
textuality are discursively accounted for to explain the thematic essence of
the metaphors so identified within the immediate and wider real-world
experience of Osundare’s poetry. All this means that linguistic analysis of
metaphor- both as “figure of speech” and “representation of thought/experience”
is necessarily developed through a discourse (text) beyond the sentence and
therefore requires discursive orientation to explicate meaning as it has been
applied it to explain aspects of Osundare’s thematic portfolio.
On ‘Text-to-text’ Metaphor: ‘Text-to-Text’ metaphor is interpreted as being domiciled
in the cultural contexts of its abstraction and it is context-user-dependent.’
Text-to-text is conceptualized as the deployment of preexisting texts
creatively reformulated and re-textualized into a new poetic experience. Unlike
‘word-to-word’ metaphor where lexico-syntactic creativity of incongruities
realize conceptual metaphors, ‘text-to-text’ metaphor takes the grandeur of
real-life events and oral tales as abstractions, and sometimes, as a provenance
of proverbs in Osundare’s poetry. What can be found as a ‘text-to-text’
metaphor in Osundare's poetry include l) reconstructed proverbs drawn as a
parallel to an abstraction of a known social event, 2) drawing a paradoxical
innuendo to parallel a similar real-life social event, 3) the deploying of
phenomena-texts as a trope of meaning and as frames of text-to-text metaphor,
and 4) drawing of known real-life characters as metaphors. I will provide
representative examples and analytically argue that Osundare extends these
existing texts into a metaphoric template within which he runs critical
socio-political comments as poetic texts.
On ‘Socio-semio-linguistic life’: This is an argument that means “ways of doing” and “ways of
meaning” (Okunowo, 2010); ways of viewing and interpreting the world based on
the writer’s historicity, “nativity” and “space” (Ojaide, 2007) in which the
writer is grounded. This is where the writer, according to Ojaide, derives his
vision and images. Thus ‘linguistic life’ will be the perceptions and use of
languages- creative, psychological, semantic, and pragmatic- in the contexts of
the mother tongue and languages in contact with the geo-space/speech community
of the writer. ‘Social life’ will mean events (social, economic, political,
environmental, cultural, etc) and the consequences of human interaction
(marriage, naming, burial, politics, conflicts and resolutions, migration, etc)
that define the Yorubas concerning themselves and other people in the paradigm
of ethnic or race relations and environment. Finally, semiotics will simply mean
signs and symbols of meaning or meaning signification and value- cultural or
linguistic. It is this ethos, this cultural make-up, and sensibility that the
writer abstracts to make meaning in his imaginative production of verbal
artifacts to be useful to his geo-space target.
Extant Literature
Critics’ admiration for
Osundare’s stylistic and thematic profile is heavy, and this has largely
occupied the interest of critical scrutiny of the poet’s oeuvre. In particular,
the poet’s socio-cultural, political, and economic concerns and style of
conveying them have been well researched and documented in books and journals
(See, for examples: Na’Allah 2003; Okunowo 2010; Ogunsiji and Okunowo 2018;
Adegoke 2018, etc.). However, Osundare’s preoccupation with the metaphor he
tethers, particularly what has been identified as ‘text-to-text metaphor
remains a gap that this paper attempts to fill. For example, Osundare’s
metaphor-making is often more admired than adequately analyzed. For example, a
descriptive attempt is made by Demola Jolayemi (2003).
Jolayemi’s analysis of Osundare’s deployment of metaphors,
using Village Voices (1984) does not do more than
statistically highlight Osundare’s metaphors into types; what he calls
“anthropomorphic”, “animal”, “abstract to the concrete”, “synaesthetic, and
telescoped metaphors”. This is problematic because it is a typological
generalist view of metaphor-making that fails to acknowledge or see Osundare’s
other metaphorical activities. There is nothing substantial about the meaning
or semiotic sources of Osundare’s metaphorical meaning in Jolayemi’s effort.
Subject-based metaphorical analysis occupied the effort of Oloko (2018) and
Fortress (2018).
While Oloko shows how metaphor works in Osundare’s nature poems,
Fortress provides an analytical effort on the subject of “ruins, “temporality”
and “materiality”. These efforts represent the linguistic metaphorical notation
(word-to-word metaphor frame as a figure of speech) without an understanding of
the semiotic sources of the poet's metaphorical design. Amore’s (2018) analysis
of metaphor in Osundare’s poetry, for the most part, shows more interest in
demonstrating Lakoff’s theory of metaphor, using Osundare’s poem as material.
Amore’s take is therefore more of an analytical polemic of cognitive metaphor
according to Lakoff, leaving little to understand about Osundare’s use of
metaphor. This paper fills all these missing gaps, particularly that what has
been analytically presented as Osundare’s design of ‘text-to-text’ metaphor is
what can be found across the poet’s idiolect, where a such device is employed.
What is critical is the knowledge that these texts are already used, within the
culture, and are therefore capsules of meanings that may be reused, reworked,
and extended creatively, depending on the versatility and the purpose of the
writer.
At the level of
text-to-text hermeneutic, meaning is a producer of effect. Text metaphor brings
meaning to the table of the muse of the poet, how that text is reproduced as a
new poetic experience is hardly a focus of examination in Osundare criticism.
This is capable of problematizing aspects of efforts in translating Osundare’s
poetry into other languages. This may be so because the translator who is not a
Yoruba, lacks Yoruba thought and historicity. Moreover, these texts as semiotic
codes and as conceived in this article may lack correspondences in the target
languages, even when retained, because of the social condition of their
production. Thus, this stylistic explication of the ‘text-to-text’ metaphor as
rhetorically deployed by Osundare can mediate between the poetic corpus and the
translator’s language.
Methodology
Selected poems or extracts will be rearranged and focused
portions will be in bold or in italics depending on the materials under
analysis. This is for analytical convenience and clarity of reference. Texts
used as metaphors are identified and representatively categorized into four
sub-types thus: 1. proverbs as texts, 2. paradoxical texts, 3. phenomena as
texts, and 4. real-life characters as texts. For easy reference, we have
abbreviated selected poems under analysis thus: Horses of Memory (Memory), The
Word is an Egg (Word), Waiting
Laughters (Laughters), Songs of Marketplace (Songs), Village
Voices (Village), The Eye of the Earth (Eye),
and A Nib in the Pond (Nib).
Analysis
Proverbs as Texts
In Yoruba metaspeech, òrò, meaning a genre of
discourse, in this instance, could be a metaphor derived and reconfigured from
a proverb. Thus, it is common to hear the expression, as an annotation, at the
end of a speech: òrò tí mo so òwe ni mo fi pa, mi ò
bá enì kankan wí ait. (My speech is a proverbial discourse, directed
to no one). The annotation is itself a euphemistic statement on meaning that is
understood to be true but is now being used (the annotation) deliberately by
the encoder as a ‘veil’ to further incite the intended referent and meaning.
Indeed the proverbial discourse thus has a target and purpose in mind. This is
a case in public discourse where the speaker feigns ignorance of the target of
his òrò,.. which he ‘mischievously’ activated as a proverb, with a target
and purpose in mind.
This semiotic scenario is observable as a stylistic
reconstruction of meaning in Osundare’s poetry. For example, this metaphoric
canvas takes a grander dimension in Laughters (1990), where
“Waiting” and “Laughters” become the imagery and metaphorical canvas on which
diverse socio-political and ideological concerns of the poet are communicated.
Osundare does this in two basic ways. Firstly, a proverb is reconstructed and
then drawn as being parallel to an abstraction of a known ‘socio-semiotic
life’, as the metaphoric domain reference of the subject matter. Osundare then
deploys this in a tale-like narrative structure, by way of juxtaposition to
conceptualize similar meaning and to construe the social-political concerns he
intends as we have in (Songs; 33-4) thus:
Ignorance:
The cow is dying/For a
trip to London/Let it go/ it will come back/
As corned beef.
Ignorance Kinsvice of superstition/Tyranny's nurture/
And wills/ Cowing
instead of kicking. (Songs; 33).
The words and structure of stanza one is
an abstraction and a reformulation of a Yoruba proverb (a second-order
text): À ngba omo ádìe sílè lówó ikú, ó ní won kò jé kí òwun re
àkìtàn lo jeunt: roughly translated
thus: ‘We are trying to rescue the chick from death, it complains of not being
allowed to seek food on the trash dump’. In both cases, the non-human referents
(chicks) are given human behavior. The implicit meaning here is safety and
preservation for which the behavior of the non-human elements is a
contradiction. Of course, we know that the cow is processed into "corned
beef' while the chick, scavenging food on the trash dump is exposed to being
preyed on by a hovering eagle in the sky above. The semiotics of this
proverbial textuality becomes the conceptual domain within which the thesis-
"ignorance" is interpreted and understood as sometimes apparent lack
of resistance to corruption and misuse of power on the part of a section of the
society, the meaning and theme Osundare is conveying in the poem. From this
template, Osundare constructs and metaphorically characterizes
"ignorance" in the lines of the poem as:
-Kinsvice of
superstition.
-father of unknowing.
-Tyranny’s nurture.
-wills cowing instead
of kicking.
The first two lines are a refigured translation of a Yoruba
idiomatic signification of ignorance; òmùgò baba àìmòkanmmarly
(stupidity father of ignorance), being an expression of the weakling of a
section of the society who should be resisting, “kicking” instead of
encouraging, “nurturing” tyranny and corruption. Thus:
Hitler armed ignorance/To fight the world/Won the first battle
against reason[…]
The pogrom/And a world set ablaze (Songs; 33).
Madaru steals public
funds/And blocks the road/With a sleek Mercedes
Custom-made from Germany/They sing his praises/And envy his
luck.
Madaru buys a crown/And
becomes a king./ And you ask:/
How could sheep all
agree/To give their crown to a wolf? (Songs;: 34).
Such a weakling and lack of resistance, aptly projected by the
metaphor, are taken advantage of, hence “ignorance” becomes, literally: “what
every master wants in his servant” and “what every baas wants
in his nigger” (Songs: 34). This conceptualization factors into the
socio-political consciousness of Osundare whereby he wonders and questions the
inaction or ineffectiveness of the oppressed to rise to confront the social
vices that plague the world: “How could sheep all agree/To give their crown to
a wolf?” (Songs: 34), the poet asks.
The juxtaposition of “sheep” and “wolf” is used to further
highlight the metaphorical significance of “ignorance” in the relationship that
is constructed between the mass of society and the corrupt tyrannical class.
“Sheep” and “wolf” are not friends, the aggressive one (wolf) preys on the
other (sheep), who is weak, meek, and lethargic, lacking resistance, defense,
and defiance against the aggression of “wolf”. Here the concepts of weakness (sheep)
and aggression (wolf) within the domain of animals, that is animal behavior,
are mapped to that of human behavior and relationship. Thus: Human is
Animal metaphor→ sheep and wolf, and further Mass of the
People as Sheep; Ruling Class as Wolf, where “wolf” oppresses
“sheep”. The referent here is the mass of the people, their meek, inaction
behavior, predicated on the metaphor of “ignorance” and “sheep”. This is in
contradistinction to the ruling class as the “wolf”, despotic, tyrannical, and
oppressing the larger population. This is the heuristic intent that the
textualized metaphors can ultimately be said to project.
However, the aghast expressed in the form of a rhetorical
question- “How could sheep all agree/To give their crown to a wolf?” brings to
mind Corazon Aquino’s Philippines, The Nigerian “June 12”, 1993, the 1989
China’s uprising, and lately in Nigeria, the “Endsars” youth uprising.
Successes at “people’s power” in the form of revolutionary remediation are
scanty but attempt at it and its brutalization are legion in history. These
efforts at “people’s power” have always been met with brutal force and
sustenance of poverty, which promotes ‘sheepism’, subjugation and division.
Thus, “sheep” agreeing “to give their crown to a wolf” is both an entanglement
of power, tyranny, and the subjugated marginalized mass of the people and the
effort that must be made to displace autocratic practices in modern societies.
It is in this that Osundare’s metaphor in these lines could be seen as both a
critique of the ruler and the ruled and of course the suggestive line of
revolutionary remediation.
Paradoxical Text (Real
Social Event)
In this frame, Osundare
simply identifies a social concern, draws a paradoxical innuendo to highlight
its absurdity, and makes it a metaphoric template on which he runs critical
social commentaries in the light of the thesis of the identified social
concern. “Udoji” in Osundare’s Songs of the Market Place illustrates
this metaphorical design.
Udoji
We ask for food and water/To keep our toiling frames
On the hoe/But they inundate us with udoji
Now pockets burst with arrears/But market stalls are empty/
Gari is dearer than
eyes/A naira cannot buy a yam
When a bribe is too heavy/It impoverishes the giver/
Tell the givers of this bribe/That what we need/
Is more than money can
buy (pp.35-36).
The socio-economic hardships and the mounting complaints and
agitations of the workforce in Nigeria in the face of the brazen corruption of
the ruling class brought about what was later known as the “Udoji Award” in
Nigeria's socio-economic history. Given the atmosphere of the oil boom in the
cultural milieu of Nigeria, the government of the day, in its unguided economic
wisdom, awarded salary bonuses to the labour class. The award, at best, was merely
a palliative, short-lived balm that later turned into a long-lasting economic
doom, culminating in the excruciating economic austerity measures of Nigeria’s
Shagari’s administration (1979-1983). The aftermath of that economic miss-step
is many and telling, and such are the commentaries of the many consequential
paradoxes of the economic bonanza being recalled as a means of social
apprehension in this poem. The paradox in stanza one is used as a metaphor to
coerce and correspond to “Udoji”, the name of the government official who
headed the panel that recommended the award. The name “Udoji” bears the meaning
the paradox evokes in the poem. In “Udoji”[1] (Songs: 35), ‘udoji’ is a prime-order character,
reconfigured as second-order textuality. The character is therefore to be seen
as representing the event itself constructed as Waste/Poverty is Udoji metaphor.
For Osundare, the event that the name symbolizes is a national bribe to the
unsuspecting populace. The word “Udoji”, a name, draws its conceptual semiotic
meaning from the observable socio-economic consequences of a particular real
event and not from what resides in the word (Udoji) itself. One is not certain
the extent to which Lakoffian theory of metaphor can account for this cultural
phenomenon, because there is no immediate direct correlation between the actual
features possessed by the source, “Udoji” and target domains ‘waste/poverty’ in
the textuality of the metaphor being constructed here. The knowledge to be
derived from the source (Udoji) is exercised by a historical event, which helps
us to understand “udoji” as it correlates with the target ‘waste/poverty’.
Similarly, the orientation of the paradox in Waste/Poverty is Udoji metaphor
parallels an oral tale (a second-order text) in the same poem (Songs:
stanza 1; Udoji: 35), where the goodwill of the persona “stepmother” is
misplaced because the consequence of the goodwill has turned out to be
undesirable. “Udoji” is not a “conventionalized concept” by the meaning imbued
in it in the context or by the ‘normal’ meaning that can be abstracted from it
for metaphor-making. Moreover, the target of the metaphor in this instance is a
multiplicity of socio-economic problems engendered by the “salary award” on
which Osundare comments, as a committed poet. This is the type of metaphorical
textual strangeness in the literature that incites culturally induced meaning,
rather than pure linguistic structuring.
Phenomena as Text
Metaphor.
The characterization of
phenomena as metaphors is in the special sense of the ascribed sentimental
meaning in the culture. The historicity of their existence encapsulates their
being constructed as metaphors. These elements are prime-order text being used
as interpretive tools of a fictionalized second-order poetic discourse. They
are therefore semiotic signs, representing ideas and mapping those ideas into
the thesis being projected as a message within Osundare’s rhetoric of poetry.
Our analysis takes on a popular automobile, Mercedes (Benz),
which in the recent past acquired ‘fame and opulence notoriety in the social
psyche of the rich and the poor of the society to which Osundare refers.
“Mercedes” is generally considered a luxury automobile, generally affordable by
the rich. It is a symbol of affluence, justifiably so, observing gnawing
impoverishment and the criminal lofty height to which the lower hierarchy of
the society and the corrupt ruling class have lifted the object. Why is this a
stylistic element? And what is the interpretive significance of Osundare’s
poetry? I found that there is a repeated figuration of “Mercedes” which appeals
to the popular semiotics of the idea being conveyed on each occasion of its
deployment as a metaphor. The repeated figuration suggests the use is not
fortuitous but a stylistically measured emphasis to make readers recognize the
image the metaphor constructs and the meaning it construes into the message
being communicated within Osundare’s thematic spectrum.
It is a symbol of
success, therefore a social symbol of being on the highest level of the social
hierarchy of the society. Thus this perception becomes the mapping orientation
of Social Distance is Mercedes metaphor by which the image of
the criminally imposed gap between the poor and the very rich in that society
is to be understood. Thus, “Mercedes” is constructed as a symbol of social
breakthrough or success in the following lines:
Wise ant/You have lined up your chilly hole/With the windfall of
sabbatical summers
Merry ride in
the Mercedes/Of your clever harvest. (Nib: 27).
This is an outright criticism of academics that predicate their
academic success on material acquisition, returning from sabbatical leave with
expensive cars instead of concrete contribution to knowledge. The pursuit of
wealth is dangerously prioritized over the pursuit of knowledge. The race for
material acquisition has therefore found its way into the academic arena as
associated with the symbolic “Mercedes”. Thus Windfall is Agricultural
Produce by the word “harvest” and by this implication, Agricultural
Produce is Mercedes. The “harvest” in this context is conceived as wealth,
projecting the psychology attached to “Mercedes”- the materialistic tendencies
that have entered the fabric of the academic community, tendencies which are
consequences of the display of ill-gotten wealth, infecting a hitherto sane
community of academics.
The understanding of
“Mercedes” as a metaphor in this context is further implicated by its
culture-specific thought process, where such adulatory phrases as “òbòkún
olóyé”, “mèsí olóyè! Premium ” (Descriptive praise names that
describe the fabulous luxury in the magnificent automobile) are used as praise
names for the object and its fortunate possessor- a socially induced
blank-check approval without questioning the source of this ‘wealth’ in the
metaphor of “Mercedes”:
Madaru steals public funds/And blocks the road/With a sleek Mercedes
Custommade from
Germany/They sing his praises/And envy his luck (Songs: 34).
What this tells us is that the cultural environment has
repercussions for the conceptualization and construal of the metaphor, and
therefore projects meaning that expresses the ‘world-view’ of that geo-space.
“Madaru” is a second-order fraudulent character in the semiotics, the name is
descriptive of the character’s nefarious practices. “Madaru” and
“Mercedes” are interplayed as a symbolic metaphor of corruption and we would
think that the alliteration in the words is a rhetorical linkage. Thus, Corruption
is Mercedes and Madaru is Criminal metaphors. Further
in the following lines:
Several government people/Have passed through these streets
Several Mercedes tyres have drenched/Gaunt road
liners in sewer water
(Songs;
Excursions: 9).
The messiahs peep at/The tattered hordes from the paradise
Of a Mercedesed distance
Their fences are high/Their gates wild with
Howls of Alsatian
soldiery (Laughters: 56).
In Songs, a sharp contrast is drawn between the
criminal opulence of the Mercedes (i.e. “government people”)
and the poor larger society (“gaunt road liners”). Ironically, the poor larger
society who is forced, directly or indirectly to wait in broken down public
facilities- “road with sewer water”- uncared for by “government people”, to
wave and sing the praise of the same passing “government people”, safely
ensconced in their Mercedes cars. In Laughters, the same sense
of transitivity between the ruled/poor and the rich/politicians is constructed.
In this regard, I observe the manipulation of the noun “Mercedes” into a verbal
adjective “Mercedesed”. It metaphorically defines “distance” as the property of
the noun “distance” predicated on the rich-poor, have-have nots socio-economic
inequality gap. This is the socio-economic inequality between the ironically
described “messiahs”-“government people” and the suffering “hordes” of the
larger society.
Following this “Mercedes” can be conceptualized metaphorically
as Mercedes is Wealth; socio-economic iniquities and inequality,
beyond its literal meaning as an automobile object. This tells us that
“distance” has nothing to do with distance as a spatial phenomenon. The
metaphorical object stands as an instrument of social distance, political
arrogance, and arrant display of misuse of power and criminal disregard for the
welfare of the larger society, as further lamented in these lines:
Who shall save us/From a sea red with death’s threat
And the armed legion/Of mercedesed Pharaohs? (Nib:
15).
Our man becomes a locust seen once/In several seasons
His Mercedes thunders through the street/Our
dust-laden mats announce the departure
Of the man of power (Village:
48).
The incitation of the “Mercedes thunders” with the resultant
“dust-laden mats” is a metaphorical representation of oppression and arrant
disregard for the human condition by “man of power”; hence Mercedes is
Oppression. Again, from the extract below, it is surprising to see “Akilapa”-
another second-order text character-metaphor, suddenly appearing as the owner
of a Mercedes car given Akilapa’s family’s
poor social status:
Akilapa’s father washed clothes/For a living/His mother spilt
palm-kernels
For their meatless
meals/Their son walked naked/Till his testicles could put
A baby in a woman’s womb/Akilapa left the village
one year/Coming back the next
With a glittering Mercedes/And
city women with buttocks
Like galloping
mountains/And they say the stars did it. (Village: 64).
The contrast that is drawn between sudden wealth by the metaphor
of “Mercedes” and previously known poverty (represented in part by “meatless meals”)
of the poetic persona has a ring of criminality to it, therefore Mercedes
is Crime metaphor. The semiotics of “Mercedes”, ambiguously
encompasses public applause, which in turn puts the approving larger society;
“they say the stars did it”, into complicity. This suggests that the larger
public gives consent, and therefore has a hand in the public collective
tragedy. This is the paradox and the contradiction Osundare draws from the use
of “Mercedes” as a metaphor within the semiotic milieu of “Mercedes” generated
in the culture. It is therefore a case where the metaphorical subject
instantiates different levels of pragmatic interpretations that relate to the
socio-political economic events/problems referenced in the poem. In all, one
thing that is assured in this stylistic metaphoring and engagement of meaning
is the pungency of semantic-pragmatic familiarity which always resonates in the
perception of meaning, either in the reading, interpretation or performance of
Osundare’s poetry. Following this, we can claim the metaphorical reading of
“Mercedes”, for example, thus:
MERCEDES = WEALTH/ECONOMIC SUCCESS:
“merry ride in
the Mercedes of your
clever harvest”.
= INSTRUMENT OF OPPRESSION:
“several
Mercedes tyres have drenched gaunt road liners in sewer water”. “his Mercedes thunders
through the street, our dust-laden mats
announce the
departure of the man of power”.
=
CORRUPTION/ILLEGALITY:
“Madaru steals public
funds and blocks the road with a sleek Mercedes”.
Akilapa left the village one year/Coming back the next/With a
glittering Mercedes
=
SOCIAL/ECONOMIC GAP/DISTANCE: “the messiahs peep at the
tattered hordes from
the paradise of a mercedesed distance”.
The emerging social kaleidoscope from the metaphor of “Mercedes”
is a bewildering picture of a malfunctioning society. One, therefore, discerns
a feeling and atmosphere of frustration in the poetic context in which this
paradigm exists (see similar textualization in the play The Wedding Car (2005), Days (2007)
- Yoruba cultural interpretation of the days of the week as associated with the
beliefs that exist in the semiotics.
Real-Life Characters
as Texts
There are two levels of
the poetic composition of real-life characters and places. The first level is
that in which such characters and places are transformed into poetic personae
and characterized for ‘mere’ veneration, remembrances, and acquaintances; as in
the poems “Goshen, Indiana”, “for Mary, for Valley Avenue” (Midlife:
81-2), “Atewolara- for Tunde Odunlade” and “For Okot p’Bitek” (Nib: 29),
to cite few examples. These personalities are co-workers, colleagues, close
associates, or people with whom Osundare shared encounters and experiences,
including places of unforgettable encounters and experiences. This set is not
my focus as they do not yield direct textual metaphoricity to meaning other
than acknowledgment of their presence in the poet’s life. The second level,
which is the focus of our analysis, is marked by the infusion of real-life
characters into the poetic text as a representation of semiotic signs to
interpret meaning based on their globally recognizable socio-political
ideologies, which either recognize justice, freedom, and egalitarian society or
not. This perspective recognizes two sets of real-life characters. One set represents
a struggle for a just society, while the second set represents the opposite. It
is thus deliberate poetic craftsmanship of metaphor of opposites to highlight
socio-political evils and the struggle against them. It also underscores the
consciousness intended and incited by the characters as poetic metaphors. My
first example is taken from Laughters (1990):
But for how long can the hen wait/Whose lay is forage for
galloping wolves?
Ask Sharpeville/Ask Langa/Ask Soweto/
Where green graves cluster like question marks
Ask Steve/Ask Walter/Ask Nelson
Who seed waiting moments with sinews of fleeting seasons/Ask
The metaphor of our strength/Ask
The strength of our
metaphor. (Laughters: pp.37-8).
The central theme implied here is focused on patience, hope,
and triumph. In communicating this meaning, Osundare seeks to
mobilize perseverant consciousness, particularly against despotic, tyrannical
societies, where freedom, equal opportunity, and basic human right are
suppressed and denied. The names “Steve”, “Walter” and “Nelson” are configured
as images of struggles embodied in “Sharpeville, Langa and Soweto” against the
“foraging galloping wolves” (the despotic political class). We do know that
Steve Biko and Nelson Mandela struggled against the evil of the Apartheid
regime of South Africa. While on the other hand, Walter Rodney, a political and
human right activist struggled against the tyrannical political class of his
time; his seminal publication, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972),
remains a classic in the studies of African political and economic history.
Of course, Osundare’s metaphoric intention here is to use the
actual historical events, the life long struggle of these personalities and,
perhaps, their successes as a signpost-catalyst, on which other struggles may
be apprehended and encouraged, with the possible dividend of victory over
tyranny. Thus, STEVE, WALTER AND NELSON ARE PATIENCE, STRUGGLE, STRENGTH, HOPE
AND VICTORY metaphors, whereby the “Laughters” in “Waiting Laughters”
become the long-awaited consequence, corresponding to that victory. Hence, the
interpretive insinuation is a metaphor that engineers hope, in the face of
dismal circumstances, on the premise of persistent struggle, with the hope of
displacing despotism and enthroning justice and egalitarianism.
Similarly, one can conceive “Brutus”,
“Soyinka”, “Ngugi” and “Mapanje” in terms of metaphorical signification as
constructed by Osundare in the following lines:
And Brutus’s ballad,
and the Apartheid dragon/And Soyinka’s shuttle in the General’s crypt
And Ngugi’s travails
on the Devil’s cross/
And Mapanje’s
chameleons and Band- it gods.
(Midlife: 60).
It is important to observe that the first set of ‘characters’ (Laughters:
37-8) are political elements while the characters in (Midlife: 60) are
‘literary’ elements. The relevance of this is that both sets dovetail into the
same thematic abstraction from politics, through the phenomena they are
associated with; politics and literature, respectively. It is also important,
for the metaphorical validity argument, to note that the characters are
incorporated into the poetic composition, as poetic personae. In this way, it
is not for mere adulation but for the interpretive trope of meaning that farm
into the socio-political preoccupations of Osundare’s poetry.
The characters are canonized, both in their persons and their
literary works, as metaphors of the well-known struggle against the vicious
tyrannical hegemony of Apartheid and the despotic, brutal military hegemony in
Africa. Thus they represent the struggle against injustice, tyranny, and
apartheid, in which case, their works become, by way of metaphoricity, the
tools/weapons that, literally continue to fight these socio-political evils.
This is much appreciated on the observation that the works of these writers can
prod the guilty conscience of political despots, stir and mobilize the
consciousness of the larger society and then incite civil disobedience, which
in many cases has recorded incarceration or exile of some of these characters.
For example, Ngugi’s imprisonment and eventual exile were not unconnected with
his post-independence socio-political views of Kenya expressed in his works of
which Devil on the Cross (1987) is one. The same can be said
of Soyinka, imprisoned and exiled on many occasions for his political activism.
Soyinka’s pieces: A Shuttle in the Crypt (1987)
and The Man Died (1972)- banned in Nigeria, express some of
his socio-political views and his incarceration in the hands of the military
junta that ruled Nigeria for over fifteen years. Mapanje’s case is even more
pathetic, all his works are banned by the tyrannical ruling class in Malawi. He
was arrested and imprisoned between 1987 and 1991 for his socio-political views
expressed in his collection of poetry Of Chameleons and gods (1981).
Following this
explanatory discursive analysis, the metaphorical abstractions and interplay
can now be expressed thus: LITERATURE IS WAR, therefore BRUTUS’S POETRY IS A
WEAPON against APARTHEID AS WAR, SOYINKA’S POETRY IS A WEAPON against MILITARY
HEGEMONY AS WAR, NGUGI’S PROSE IS A WEAPON against DESPOTISM AS WAR, therefore
becoming “Ngugi’s travails”, and MAPANJE’S POETRY IS A WEAPON against DESPOTISM
AS WAR. We can take the characters-writers as warriors and their writing as
weapons of war and construct the metaphor interplay as Brutus, Soyinka, Ngugi,
and Mapanje are Writers→ THE WRITERS ARE WARRIORS and therefore BRUTUS’S
BALLAD, Soyinka’s A SHUTTLE IN THE CRYPT, Ngugi’s DEVIL ON
THE CROSS, Mapanje’s OF CHAMELEONS AND GODS ARE WEAPONS OF WAR.
We can imply and establish, by way of extension, and at a more grandiose level
that LITERATURE COMPOSING IS FIGHTING WAR metaphor conceptualizes the struggles
against tyranny, injustice, and oppression in Africa. Conversely, with a
similar analytical orientation is Midlife 49, where historical figures like
“Hitler”, “Bokassa”, “Pinochet” and “Botha” represent different evils that
construct “man’s inhumanity to man” in which the metaphor is analytically
constructed as HITLER, BOKASSA, PINOCHET, BOTHA ARE EVIL metaphor, constructed
from the conceptual domains of politics and human behavior.
Conclusion
What I have analytically
argued is that Osundare’s incorporation and rhetorical manipulation of used
texts in the reality of our culture into new literary text-poetry and
experience project both the realities that are familiar and that which are
created. ‘Text-to-text’ metaphor can therefore be seen as drawing what had
existed in parallel to what is ‘new’ in the socio-cultural and political
historicity of both Nigeria and the global world.
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[1] Osundare’s
annotation (Song; 35): In 1975, following the release of a Salary Review
Panel headed by Chief Jerome Udoji, government workers and some in the private
sector received inflationary salaries and arrears. Chief Udoji’s person became
a metaphor for this bonanza.
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.36349/tjllc.2022.v01i01.003
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