The significance of language in You Must Set Forth at Dawn, therefore, consists in its contribution to the making of selfhood towards a better appreciation of the character of the author-protagonist. This kind of choice, as Anne Hoffman argues, ‘calls our attention not only to narration as an ordering activity aimed at producing coherence, but also to self as a construction out of disparate impulses’ (1991, p.10). Soyinka’s occasional and sparing resort to his native Yoruba in inscribing certain expressions in an attempt to create a special aesthetic effect in the narrative is however a constant reminder of the writer’s background which is a very crucial element in his construction of identity. Apart from drawing extensively on elements of Yoruba culture and mythology Soyinka engages in a kind of code-mixing that reminds the reader of his native Yoruba culture and the influence this wields on the author. This is evident in the use of animal names like ‘egbin’, ‘etu’, ‘igala’, ‘aparo’ as well as the injection of native expressions like ‘olori-kunkun’, ‘Ogun re e!’, ‘Mi o ri iku l’oju e’ which the writer goes ahead to footnote in the course of the narrative. In mirroring the subjectivity of the writer’s self, this attitude to language is also indicative of the cosmopolitan nature of the identity of writers or individuals generally in the postcolony. Again, as Isabelle de Courtivron contends, ‘contemporary bilingual authors are inevitably, hybrids and exiles. And through their experience of linguistic fragmentation, they express a more universal quest: the search for home, the hunger for return’ (2007, p.32). The impact of experience which includes education and other forms of knowledge embedded in the civilization to which people in the postcolony are exposed tends to lend justification to this idea of a linguistic tradition that defines the identity of the writer in a particular way. This identity is also not limited to language as it often constitutes a factor as well in generic determination of works of art produced in different places and under varying circumstances.
In a way, therefore, Soyinka goes beyond the understanding of the autobiography as what James Olney describes as ‘a fascination with the self and its profound, [and] its endless mysteries’ (1980, p.23) to create a postcolonial narrative in which the individual’s story in not complete without that of others in the community to which he belongs. In any case, Olney himself appreciates the peculiarity of the autobiographical imagination in African writing a distinction which prompts him to regard Achebe’s fiction for instance, as ‘supra-personal, multi-generational autobiography of the Ibo people’ and Ououloguem’s novel Le Devoir de Violence as ‘a symbolic autobiography of the entire continent and community of Africa’ (cited in Maduakor, 1987, p.160)iv. In addition to this is the kind of agency that Soyinka assumes in You Must Set Forth at Dawn which keys into the argument by Ibe Nwoga that:
People have only to know what is right for them and their society and they will struggle to achieve those aims. The African writer is operating within this context, varying in intensity of facts in different parts of Africa, but still demanding that he use his art in pursuit of public ends. (1976, p.13)
Nwoga’s view, as far as this agency implied by ‘the pursuit of public ends’ is concerned, finds companionship in the contention of another African literary critic, Adewale Maja-Pearce. As he puts it:
Always in Africa, it is the individual who must risk everything for an idea of what their societies could be, but this is inescapable in societies where the institutions of the modern democratic state are deliberately subverted by reactionaries who, lacking a larger idea of human relations, wish only to perpetuate themselves and their kind in power. (1991, pp.xii-xiii)
This kind of responsibility which Maja-Pearce talks about is clearly outlined by Wole Soyinka himself in a bid to give a kind of nationalistic definition to the concepts of patriotism and nationhood:
If one accepts Nigeria as a space that must move beyond what a politician once described as a “mere geographical expression” to what my vision dictates as a humanized space of organic development, then I may be moved to stop quibbling over mere nomenclatures. Until then, that unfulfilled promise, Nigeria, must remain only a duty that we on our part, must continue to urge upon those same “Governments of African countries” challenging them to realize their own pronouncements, denouncing them before the entire world when they fail to do so, and insisting in that case that they be treated as pariahs, as the real traitors to their own kind and to humanity in general. (Soyinka, 1996, pp.132-134)
Although Soyinka realizes that the battle for liberation of ‘that space, Nigeria, cannot be the duty and the burden of the writer and intellectual alone’ (Ibid, p.134), his approach to the question of exile in You Must set Forth at Dawn is one that goes a long way at suggesting the expediency of agency even when it bears its attendant costs including exile for the writer or the intellectual. The tension that results from the taking on of agency by writers in most African countries or even the developing world in general becomes one of the major precursors to nomadism on the part of writers and intellectuals with its attendant consequences on both the society as well as the individuals who become so alienated.
It is pertinent to note here that the act of writing itself is a form of defiance and subversion which the state views as a serious transgression against its authority. For the writer and intellectual, there is always a desire to be able to perform this act which for him is also a profession without any iota of hindrance. Soyinka makes this point in You Must Set Forth at Dawn as he writes about the informing principle behind his independence play A Dance of the Forests in which ‘the enemy, as I had identified it, was power and its pitfalls’ (p.53). The reaction of the establishment to such creative brazenness is always to read a kind of insurrection into the work of writers:
The view was not shared by cultural bureaucrats, quick to smell out subversion. They cautioned that the play contained a subversive message. It had won the contest for the official theatre presentation for the occasion but was now deemed a damper, unsuitable for a festive occasion. (p.53)
The fact that Soyinka had to stage his independence play at an alternative venue goes to show the beginning of conflict between the intellectual tradition and the postcolonial state right from the onset. The passion for creativity and the theatre as agents of Soyinka’s activism can be seen in the way he combined his private theatrical activities with research at the University of Ibadan. But the establishment often has its own way of dealing with such transgression as Soyinka’s relocation to the new University of Ife even fails to provide an anticipated shield from professional alienation. The banning of works of writers, their prohibition from teaching and the introduction of grand regulations which tend to interdict intellectuals in the academy has often been a major strategy in controlling dissidence. This is evident in Soyinka’s resignation from Ife, along with five other colleagues, after the pronouncement of ‘a new university credo’ by the authorities of the institution urging support for ‘the government of the day’ (p.61). His exile from the university community, as executed through the response of the institution to resignation notices served by the six lecturers, is even more instructive in the understanding of the power relations which often result in professional alienation and physical exile of intellectuals from the academic space:
We gave the university the required three months’ notice. Obedient to instructions from the Ministry of Education, however, the university responded by accepting the resignations—but with immediate effect. All resigning lecturers would be paid three months’ salary in lieu of notice, and we were ordered to vacate our university residences within forty-eight hours! (p.62)
The violence which attends the eviction of intellectuals from the academic community, which ordinarily should be their habitat, is exemplified by the manner in which the ministry handled the implementation of the forty-eight hour notice:
To leave no doubt whatever in the minds of the anticredo group that the government’s intent was understood, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Education filled his white Mercedes-Benz with thugs, invaded Sam Aluko’s house, terrorized his wife and children, flung their furniture and luggage all over and out of windows, and smashed a few household items. They left, warning that they would return after twenty-four hours. They tried also to find the residences of the other lecturers but failed—in any case, they were not eager to remain too long on campus, and two of us actually lived off campus. (p.62)
The kind of scenario presented by Soyinka above validates the claim made by Micere Mugo that:
in some of the most repressive regimes a writer does not have to be engaged in any serious revolutionary activity to be targeted for harassment. The simple act of speaking out and breaking the terror of silence imposed by such states is enough of a “crime.” Indeed, most writers under neocolonial dictatorships find their creativity censored, stifled, and targeted for vicious attack by the system. Through the use of terror, the offending systems go all out to impose silence in yet another effort to close another channel for raising the consciousness of the people. This is particularly so when the artistic works reach their primary audience. (1997, p.84)
Since most writers, especially in Soyinka’s generation, were based in academic institutions, such institutions, as the author hints at in You Must Set Forth at Dawn, became targets for the unleashing of the power of the state which contributed to the alienation of creative writers and intellectuals from the ivory tower. This kind of exiling influence is more visible today in the form of an unabating brain drain which sees the best intellectual resources of the African continent relocating mainly to the West from where they live relatively comfortable lives devoid of the kind of intimidating terror they have to contend with at home.
Soyinka’s engagement with creative exile comes to the fore in various parts of the book. But it is more clearly outlined in the section titled ‘Three Lost Years’. This section tells of the impact of the writer’s commitment to activism on various other fronts, including his winning of the Nobel Prize, which tends to make it difficult for him to concentrate on his primary vocation of writing:
I handed over 1987 to the Swedish deity of dynamite and fulfilled my duties, swearing silently that the moment the next beauty queen was crowned had better be recognized as my hour of liberation. I had been stretched to the limit. My constituency was always wide—in the creative industry, in home politics and those of the continent, in issues of human rights—which, for me, includes the right to life, a commitment that led to my creation of a national Road Safety Corps and the unglamorous labor of hounding homicidal maniacs off the Nigerian highways and educating them the hard way. (p.335)
Good essay!