When My People Personalise the Truth Turning and turning in the widening gyre; The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. – WB Yeats I always felt William Yeats and Chinua Achebe were discussing how people desecrate the truth. And its consequences in the…
Tag: Chinua Achebe
Origins of an Opintar
Origins of an Opintar “Birds got something to teach us all; About being free, yeah; Be no rain… Be no rain…” – Gil Scott-Heron, from the lyrics, I Think I’ll Call It Morning I proclaim myself an Opintar sometimes. Opinterity is the closest I know to freedom and joy. It is part aspiration, part practice. Many think…
Postponement of Elections and Chinua Achebe’s Spirit
Chinua Achebe was ostracised by the Western academy for his truthful but hard to swallow comments on two European intellectual sacred cows, Joseph Conrad and Albert Schweitzer in which he branded them as racists using the pretext of artistic expression. It is reputedly proposed by many around the world that his comments cost him the…
Sarcasm: Evidence of Genius
Sarcasm and ‘figures of speech’ are as old as language itself. From the Ivy League professor of literary criticism to the Oxbridge semantologist, from the illiterate farmer to the naked tribesman with a bone in his nose, no matter the language or the region of the world they all understand and use sarcasm and similar in varying degrees…