Essays

Sule Emmanuel Egya

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1985 brought the pang of death. On 19 January Osundare woke up to the tragedy that his father, his greatest poetic influence, had crossed the river of life to the land of his ancestors. It was after a brief illness. Usually, Osundare’s father was never sick; his amazing reserve of energy and strength was expended on his farms. According to Osundare, “Baba was a man with the strength of iron. The only time he slept in a hospital was during the illness that led to his death.  I was by his bedside most of the five days he spent in hospital, but missed his dying moment because I was away in search of his medication. My mother was at his bedside throughout, and never missed that moment.”20

Being the first son, the tradition demanded that he shoulder most of the responsibilities, even if not materially but morally. He had been prepared for this task. But, in spite of his reverence for his culture, he was taken aback by some of the traditional demands which he saw as excessive. By the community standards, his father was a great man – an accomplished yam and cocoa farmer, with wives and many children; a man of traditional and social significance: a drummer, composer, singer, and humorist, nicknamed Ariyoosu (the one whose presence brings joy like the new moon). The entire community saw Osundare’s father as deserving of a great funeral. In their eyes, this would not be a problem because his heir had bagged a doctorate, was a university lecturer, a writer with rising popularity. They equated Osundare’s achievements with the kind of riches that should give his father the best funeral. A huge budget was placed before Osundare. He possibly did not have the money they wanted from him; further, he thought that the budget was outrageous. With difficulty, he got his kinsmen, some of them very reluctant, to trim down the budget. The funeral was held successfully, although not without some grumbling that Baba (Osundare’s father) deserved more. “But the event,” according to Osundare, “brought home to me the terrible excesses of some Yoruba traditional practices, especially those ones that could make you bankrupt in an attempt to satisfy traditional expectations. I love Yoruba culture – but without its owambe excesses.”21

What was crucial to Osundare was not spending money on ostentatious funeral, but the legacy his father left behind and how it could be sustained. Aguntasoolo was a man of his time but also a man of the future; or, precisely, a man who envisaged a space in the unfolding modernity for his children. There was a special bond between his first son Niyi and himself; he prayerfully watched how his son would become a western-educated version of him. After the gift of a fountain pen for his son, he had eagerly followed the progress of the boy through the stages of western education. His dream came fulfilled as he bristled with boundless joy the day his son brought a copy of his first collection Songs of the Marketplace to him. Osundare himself better describes the emotion of his father:

I will never forget the smile on his face and the pleasure in his soul the day I showed him my first book in 1983. He removed his cap, touched his head with the book, and said a very, very deep prayer. Then he sent for a keg of palm wine, summoned his friends, and proudly displayed what he said was the new addition to his family’s wealth. Father didn’t know how to read and write. In fact, he held the book upside down while trying to ‘read’ it. But he thumbed its pages, felt its texture, gauged its weight, and insisted on keeping the copy I brought. When one of his colleagues asked what use was the book to a man who could not read, Father shot back in his characteristically assertive way: ‘Iwe ni me mo; mo mi nu mi. Ki me mi wee, iwee mo mi (I may not know the book, but I surely know my inside/mind. I may not know this book, but this book knows me).22

Aguntasoolo’s deep conviction was that great wisdom, the type that would propel one to greatness, resided in a book, and his son, now able to write a book, was already imbued with that greatness. Osundare was a son after his father’s heart; he himself continues to cling, even if sentimentally, to the belief that without having the father he had he would not today have been the poet he is.

Notes

  1. The controversy surrounded J. P. Clark-Bedekeremo’s claim that the poet of the title referred to him and he threatened to sue the publishers of The Poet Lied.
  2. See Oyeniyi Okuonye, “The Margin or the Metropole?: The Location of Home in Odia Ofeimun’s London Letter and Other Poems”, Kunapipi: Journal of Postcolonial Writing, XXVII. 1 (2005): 93-107.
  3. See Chinweizu, et al. Towards the Decolonization of African Literature: African Fiction and Poetry and their Critics (Enugu: Fourth Dimension, 1980).
  4. Oral interview with Niyi Osundare.
  5. Niyi Osundare, Songs of the Marketplace (Ibadan: Horn Press, 1983).
  6. Biodun Jeyifo, “Introduction”, Songs of the Marketplace by Niyi Osundare (Ibadan: New Horn Press, 1983), vii.
  7. Ibid., xiii-xiv.
  8. Niyi Osundare, The Writer as Righter: the African Literary Artist and His Social Obligations (Ibadan: Hope Publications, 2007), 7.
  9. Ibid., 17.
  10. Ibid., 19.
  11. Ibid., 22-23.
  12. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (2nd ed., New York: Oxford UP, 1997), 105.
  13. Obi Maduakor, “Female Voices in Poetry: Catherine Acholonu and Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie as Poets”, in Nigerian Female Writers: A Critical Perspective, ed. Henrietta C. Otokunefor and Obiageli C. Nwodo, (Lagos: Malthouse Press, 1989), 85.
  1. Biodun Jeyifo, Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics and Postcolonialism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004), xiv.
  2. Donatus I. Nwoga, Interview with Ezenwa-Ohaeto, in Winging Words: Interview with Nigerian Writers and Critics, ed. Ezenwa-Ohaeto, (Ibadan: Kraft Books, 2003), 107.
  3. Dan Izevbaye, Interview with Ezenwa-Ohaeto, in Winging Words: Interview with Nigerian Writers and Critics, ed. Ezenwa-Ohaeto, (Ibadan: Kraft Books, 2003), 136.
  1. Email interview with Niyi Osundare.
  2. Niyi Osundare, Village Voices (Ibadan: Evans Brothers), 1.
  3. 19. Ibid., 2.
  4. Oral interview with Niyi Osundare.
  5. Ibid.
  6. A keynote lecture, “Homage to the Book”, Niyi Osundare delivered in Ibadan on 22 June 2012 at the event of University Press Plc Authors Forum.

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