Soyinka: Cryptic Interpreter
The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka is an exercise in expanding the awareness of the realities of postcolonial Nigeria. We cannot understand Nigeria as a linear story like Cinderella or Macbeth. The story of Nigeria in the postcolonial era is beyond plot. Postcolonial Nigeria is an endless stream of countless events in which everyone must find their own identity, meaning, and purpose in society as life happens to them.
The battle between Good and Evil or Eros and Thanatos in the world is unending. In parallel, Soyinka adopts the divinatory concepts represented in the Ifa odus, #1 Ejiogbe (Light of creation/creativity) and #2 Oyekun Meji (All-consuming darkness or death). The two constitute the transforming cycle of creation and destruction controlled by Ogun, the God of Iron and King of the Yoruba Pantheon. There are 256 oracular octagrams of odu in Ifa literature. (cf Hexagrams 1 and 12 of the I Ching).
The novel features an ensemble of five main characters who are Interpreters playing different roles in the story. They are young men, high school buddies and recent university graduates from overseas. Bandele, historian and academic; Egbo, Foreign Office executive; Kola, artist and academic; Sagoe, journalist; and Sekoni, engineer-turned-sculptor. The ensemble represents the coming of Light, the light of progress and development to Nigeria through their skills.
The Interpreters return home to a rapidly changing society in 1960s Nigeria. They become the “Interpreters” of new Nigeria. Nigeria’s elite after Independence rather than being triumphant in overcoming the darkness of British colonialism assimilates and continues it. The indigenous elites capture the habits of British stationary banditry. The Ifa odu # 46 Oyekun Ofun (Times of radical change) represents this period.
The novel opens with market sensibilities in the Club Cambana Cubicles in bustling Lagos. Drinking beer is a western value of white-collar consumption and becomes essential to everyday enjoyment to the Nigerian. Imagine Lagos without cold beer. In the same scene Sagoe, the journalist, admonishes his fiancée, Dehinwa, to use wigs, another market commodity as was trending at the time among female educated, white-collar workers. This is despite Sagoe holding fast to core traditionalist values. (Later in the novel, a minor character fumes with disappointment when his partner drinks palm wine instead of champagne.)
An interesting and prescient aspect of The Interpreters is the thematic use of the marketplace, its interactions and its demands to understand Nigeria. Nigeria, was a creation of the British colonialists as a palm oil producing colony. Palm oil was necessary to lubricate the machines of the burgeoning industrial revolution in Britian. There were other derivatives of palm oil for the market – soaps, detergents, cosmetics, explosives, margarines, frying oils etc.
Local markets had existed in Nigeria for centuries. Nonetheless, colonisation imposes a radical change in the market participation and attitudes of Nigerian peoples.
Modernity is nothing but the introduction of Western market consumption into Nigeria. Falola (2009) argues the reasons Nigerians got an education from the British were to acquire literacy skills as clerical staff, to accept all goods and services British as the best money could buy, and to tame Nigerians with Christian religious subservience. As such, what Soyinka calls Interpreters, Falola would call Intermediaries – a small elite of naïve ex-colonial bureaucrats to enable colonial interests more efficiently at the expense of the indigenous population.
What then happens to the traditional or primordial Nigerian way of life they grew up with?
The Interpreters must find their own identities in the evolving new Nigeria through the marketplace. These persons are part of the nascent middle class in Nigeria earning income and prestige from their professions. White-collar workers are market participants projecting Western middle-class values through consumption. Nonetheless, the Western life-style is expensive. Agrarian practices are no longer sufficient to pay one’s way through life and not prestigious. The change thus encourages people to engage in corruption, conspicuous consumption and power shows. The unrelenting demand for luxury goods results.
The growing problem of corruption in 1960s Nigeria began in colonial times. Rowley (1999) argues colonial powers did render the institutions of governance in African colonies weak as a strategy. A colony with strong institutions acquires the facility to kick the colonial power out. It is no surprise that contrary institutions of management litter Nigeria’s bureaucracies.
The wants and needs are delineated masterfully by Soyinka through the experiences of his main characters and the people they encounter. Tensions and ambitions reveal the need to belong and and be somebody, Nigeria’s progress is secondary. Selten (1961) affirms ‘economic gain’ and ‘social acceptance’ are the most compelling determinants of human behaviour. Soyinka expresses this reality in an indirect manner.
Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy published in 1925 reflects the transition of America from agricultural economy into an industrialised capitalist one. Clyde Griffiths, the protagonist, transitions from poverty to a managerial position in his uncle’s factory and dreams of becoming rich. His ambition proves a mirage and he dies in the quest to fulfil it. Similarly, in Soyinka’s The Interpreters, the progress and development of Nigeria also becomes a mirage.
The desired escape from Oyekun Meji seems unlikely and the darkness of colonisation persists as neocolonialism or auto-colonialism. In odu #46 Ifa warns that the times of Oyekun Ofun though provides great opportunities for progress, the dangers of external influences as neocolonialism needs effective tackling. The etutu (cure) for any possible setbacks does not require the sacrifice of white rams or any material thing. The cure is human honesty, commitment and unqualified prudence. Public servants do not pursue the cure, they pursue narrow self-interests and the expense of the country.
The joint adoption of competing traditional and western modes of organisation and values turns the Interpreters into self-conflicting dualists of varying proportions.
Notwithstanding, Soyinka uses his ensemble of characters to reflect corruption/bureaucracy versus morality in Nigeria. We see the consequences of corruption on the fate of engineer turned gifted sculptor, Sekoni. His successful but rejected power station project due to corruption makes him run mad and he later dies. Sekoni’s death symbolises the immanence of Oyeku Meji, Death, despite the man’s conscientiousness and gifts. Only he among the Interpreters impacts society with the Light of progress.
Furthermore, Sagoe who faces “bureaucracy” in gaining employment and publishing the truth about Sekoni’s death in his newspaper. He learns newsprint is just business, a market thing.
Sagoe and Dehinwa form a romantic relationship on the understanding they must conserve traditional values. The highly rational Bandele, the history professor, is an advocate of modernity through rational principle over traditional sentimentality. Egbo, the Foreign Office clerk and aristocrat, is conflicted between rising in the civil service and becoming a chief of his people. Both tradition and modernity work for Egbo. The artist, Kola, is another dualist who decides to paint the Yoruba Pantheon of Gods after Sekoni’s death.
Kola ascribes his friends to the Gods in the Pantheon painting according to their real-world persons. Thus, Kola becomes an Interpreter through his visual art. Words are unlikely to accomplish this feat. His painting draws on the mythology of the Yoruba Gods archetypes to offer fellow Interpreters their true identities in the new Nigeria. The attributes of his fellow Interpreters do not immediately resemble those of the Gods. Intuition or a knowledge of Ifa are necessary to provide an acceptable match for an Interpreter and his assigned God.
Two examples. Kola represents Egbo as the Yoruba God, Ogun. His character fits with the archetype of Ifa odu #150 Ogunda Oshe. Egbo is a man of action and his word, very capable. Ifa warns he should avoid promiscuity, infidelity and contempt for others. He goes on to seduce a female student who turns up at Bandele’s place in his absence with her assignment. She falls pregnant for him causing disruption between Bandele and his fiancée, Simi. He fulfils a condition of Ogunda Oshe through his worship of Oshun after his parent’s death in a local creek.
Kola represents Sekoni as the God of Thunder and Lightning, Sango, through the archetype of Ifa odu #19 Ogbe Odi. Sekoni builds a viable power station creating electricity like lightning. He displays wisdom, innovation and ingenuity in his works. Ifa warns that he should avoid conflict and envious enemies because of his gifts. Sir Derinola and the village chief who rejects his project prove his enemies. Kola knows he also envied Sekoni’s gifts. A further warning is Sekoni should not carry other people’s problems, Nigeria’s problems, on his head to avert loss. It symbolises those with the ability and commitment to bring progress and prosperity to Nigeria lose much or everything. A personal Oyekun Meji happens to Sekoni again after he completes a sculpture named “The Wrestler,” a metaphor for an individual’s fight with entrenched forces just to better Nigeria.
Alas, misfortune forces Sekoni, the engineer, back into the Arts like the other Interpreters. Soyinka may be telling us through silence that Nigeria is not ready for the great feats of science and technology.
The search for a new Nigerian identity and appropriate values after Independence is not merely an overcoming of the clash of the present traditional and Western values. Odu Ifa #252 Ofun Ika signifies a time of struggles between the disrespect of tradition and rebellion against established hierarchies. The cure is heartfelt respect for creation. However, the past and its values begin to seem moribund amidst the changing values. But the Interpreters must cling to or confront them in conserving their identity. Living in limbo is a distressing existence.
What makes the wholesome Nigerian civilisation unlikely is the market. Ake (1973) states Nigeria will only hold together for as long as there is oil wealth to share – a market. This prediction appears plausible. Most empires and some nations collapse because of market failures. Inequality and political instability ever threaten postcolonial Nigeria in battles of its markets.
The narrative of the novel is cryptic. Soyinka uses the stream-of-consciousness approach to narrate the story. While one can classify the technique employed in Ulysses as art-for-art-sake or experimental, Soyinka uses it to tell the ever-elusive truth about Nigeria and its collective consciousness. How better to delineate modernity? Nigeria’s truth is that its past and future are as pervasive to a Nigerian as the present.
Calling the narrative chaotic is a fact that misses a greater fact. The story of Nigeria is unnarratable in any linear or cyclic progression because of the relentless interruptions of history or future projections plaguing it. It requires a continuous expansion of awareness that arrives through flashbacks, flashforwards and hallucinations.
Surprisingly, visual art does a better job at it. That is the story of Nigeria.
Grimot Nane
References
Abimbola, Wande (1977). Ifa: The Ancient Wisdom, Oxford University Press.
Ake, Claude (1973), “Oil Wealth and the Political Economy of Nigeria.” In The Nigerian Review of the Social Sciences, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1-11.
Dreiser, Theodore (1925), An American Tragedy, Horace Liveright.
Falola, Toyin (2009), Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria. Indiana University Press.
Rowley, C. K. (1999). The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking in Africa, European Journal of Political Economy, 15(4), 757-777
Joyce, James (1922), Ulysses, Silvia Beach, Paris.
Selten, Reinhart (1961), Evaluation of n-Person Games, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, vol. 117, no. 1, 1961, pp. 50-60.
Soyinka, Wole (1965), The Interpreters, Andre Deutsch, London.