What is the correct state of contemporary African Literary criticism?
This is certainly not a simple question to answer. It is also not in
any way a complicated question to answer. What is important, however, is
that a complete, thorough knowledge of African writers is compulsory
for anyone interested in contemporary African literature. Such a
complete, thorough knowledge is compulsorily necessary if we desire to
develop an abiding interest in contemporary African literary criticism.
Whether the African writer is liked or not liked is of no value, of
no importance, of no relevance, but he or she must be read and evaluated
dispassionately following the tradition Gerald Moore established in
1962. In fact, since that time when Moore published his Seven African
Writers, African literary criticism can rightly be said to have been
seen and accepted as a worthy enterprise of scholarly and professional
enquiry with its own distinct traits that must occupy closely the
“health of mind of the critic as the doctor with the health of the
body,’’ to borrow I. A Richards’ words (25). Clearly, since 1962
different kinds of value judgments, pronouncements and estimates of
comparative assessment and comparative greatness of African writers and
writings have been the concern or preoccupation of the literary critic
and reader. But their true worth and value to the development and
greatness of our literature and criticism can be said, rightly or
wrongly, to be still elementary. We may not accept it but the corpus of
creative, imaginative works and books known today in the domain of
established African literature far outnumbers the body of valuable
criticism when we speak, at least, in terms of books (or handbooks)
claiming originality, to the literature of contemporary African literary
criticism. Today, in Africa, we seem to have far more writers than
critics, and these critics, in the main, seem to be more concerned with
writers from their respective national or ethnic territories and
domains. This perspective needs immediate qualification.
Since the nineteen seventies, following the example of the already cited
Gerald Moore, “the intensity,” to quote Solomon Ogbede Iyasere, “with
which African critics have become engaged in the criticism and review of
African creative works” (20), has been remarkably phenomenal in the
development and direction of African literature and contemporary African
literary criticism. The significance of the development and direction
were such that attempted to curtail the dominance by foreign, that is,
Western, critics, of African literary enterprise, that is, African
literature and its criticism. Standards of critical tools and values
that were considered to be foreign to Africa were to be done away with
and jettisoned. As the editors of Presence Africaine put it, ‘’The soul
of our people will not be heard in the concert of nations until they
have regained their artists, their authority to judge and their
privileges as consumers and interpreters of their works of art. In short
they must retrieve the organic dimensions of their own vitality’’ (qtd.
in Solomon Ogbede Iyasere 21). And in the more blatant words of Joseph
Okpaku, also quoted in Iyasere’s essay, “The primary criticism of
African art must come from Africans using African standards. We cannot
accept either of the two existing approaches to criticism of African
literature. It is as undesirable to plead for leniency in criticizing
African works as it is absurd for Lewis Nkosi to ask that Western
critical standards be used”(21). When these words were uttered African
scholars’ nationalistic idiosyncrasies were in vogue in and outside the
arena and orbit of African literature and its criticism. At the time
black grains of African cultural features were greatly attractive to the
African traditional brain of the African-skinned intellectual. The
African scholar’s rhetoric of persuasion and conviction must be employed
in praise and defence of African artistic productions that were
adjudged by Western critics especially not to make the expected grade.
Ernest Emenyonu’s chastisement of Bernth Lindfors for his jaundiced
criticism of Cyprian Ekwens’s fictional art is too well known to be
re-visited here in full. But I hasten to quip here that both critics –
the African and Western, respectively, – were deeply concerned about the
ideas of literary value as they perceived them from their respective
rhetorical and moral stand-points.
The marks these standpoints (and others) have left on African
literary criticism today are discernibly the marks of the chosen tongue
of critical rigour of high value and the marks of the chosen tongue of
ethnic-national glorification of neighbourly art. While Lindfors’ chosen
tongue was universal and equally aided by its universal appeal
Emenyonu’s was “vernacular-traditional,” to borrow JP Clark’s words
(“Interview with John Pepper Clark” (16)), a mode that was not good
enough for the cause it meant to promote or serve. In his attack of
Ekwensi, Lindfors was defending and promoting universal criticism; in
his defence of Ekwensi Emenyonu was protecting his countryman from
universal annihilation. But we must make no mistake about it: Ernest
Emenyonu is an efficient, unique, sound elderly scholar and critic.
Today in African, especially in Nigerian literary criticism,
vernacular- ethnic critics have taken over or seem to have taken over
the business and profession of Nigerian literature and criticism from
the experts of natural instincts of truthful criticism and absolute set
of principles of taste and decorum. Critics of conscience are giving way
to critics of ethnic value, critics who encourage and father
commercialism. The meaningful call and avid promotion of an African
aesthetic which earlier critics and writers such as JP Clark championed
are now being controversially abused. In fact, JP Clark’s
“vernacular-traditional” literature and criticism is now being
bastardized as ethnic bigotry worshipped as useful criticism in several
quarters. Critics of this sort and mind speak of the works of authors
and writers from their ethnic, regional and “national” groups as texts
that must be studied and interpreted from the traditions and elements
that inspired and produced them. A critic outside the ethnic tradition
is censored disingenuously and disadvantageously to the extent that he
or she is accused of using strange, foreign elements and criteria to
judge, say, a Yoruba or Igbo imaginative literature. Deliberately, I
refrain from any specific example, I being from a miniature, wee
Nigerian ethnic group of no importance or consequence in contemporary
Nigeria. This speaks volumes or should speak volumes about our
contemporary criticism. But this is part of the problem of Nigerian,
nay, African literary criticism of the present time. And what will be my
defensible position if I say this or that book from this or that ethnic
or regional group does not meet the literary grade of imaginative or
realistic acceptability? As a critic and writer from a wee ethnic group
with no literary stronghold whatsoever and with no identifiable cult or
school of defenders, whatever my qualified attitude or position may be
or is, is of no value and will amount to no value. Our literature and
criticism cannot grow in good health this way. This view must be taken
seriously otherwise ethnic quacks and dilettantes will now be the
overseers of the “health of the mind” of our literature and criticism
“as [is] the doctor with the health of the body” (I.A. Richards 25).
This perspective and the sentiments it expresses may not be new, but the
general theory they espouse is the general theory that hints at the
dubious colour and odour that quackery and dilettantism are transmitting
to the nostrils of our critical quest and taste.
Many years ago, when my sense of criticism was just above its fledgling
state, as a young bird fledging to fly, I sent an essay to a Southern
African-based journal on the writer Lawrence Vambe of Zimbabwe. The
essay in question was on his very broad-themed book, An Ill-fated
People. The essay focused on the book as history, autobiography,
literature and orature, and several other concerns. The editor of the
said journal rejected it outright on the grounds that I could not be
making the claims I made (valid or not valid) because of the distance
between Nigeria and Zimbabwe. I think the said editor, going by his
name, as far as I can remember it, was a white man, probably a white
Zimbabwean, who could not stomach the intellectual claims I made for
Zimbabwe (and Africa). I branded him a racist and, out of frustration,
sent the same essay to a superior journal in the United States edited
then by a top-ranked scholar and critic in our discipline. The editor,
also a white man, accepted it in full. My critical articulation and
theoretical aesthetics appealed to him. He was not induced against me by
the malaria of racial malice or the “jaundice” of racial prejudice.
That publication helped immeasurably to stand me in elevated theoretical
and critical worth. This is in no way an exercise in
self-trumpet-blowing.
Of what relevance are the recalled critical judgments and acts of
experiences? The point is that I have witnessed a junior colleague in
one of our universities who was similarly discriminated against by two
Nigerian journal editors of two different ethnic regions of our country.
First, he sent an article to a journal whose editor seemingly detested
the writer focused on ostensibly because the said writer was not from
the editor’s ethnic base. Our young colleague sent the rejected article
to another editor of a journal from the same ethnic group our young
critic’s focused-on writer hailed/hails from. His article was accepted. I
then advised him to replicate exactly his experience by sending an
article on another writer whose ethnic region was/is different from the
same editor that accepted his earlier rejected article. The latter
editor rejected the article. Our essayist thereafter sent the article to
the earlier editor whose ethnic base is the same as the new writer
focused on. It was accepted without qualms. Thus the point is that in
contemporary Nigerian literary criticism considerations of literary or
critical values seem not to be the ulterior ends at issue. This is bad
as it is not lucrative to our critical sensibility and judgment and
imaginative experience and ethos. This perspective may appear to be a
controversial one, but it should not or ought not to be seen as such,
for it cannot be ignored in view of the fact that several of our critics
are losing their conscience to ethnic delusion. I say it again: Ethnic
values, ethnic peculiarities and particularities should not determine
our literature and criticism. If a poem is good, it is because it is
good. If a poem is bad, it is because it is bad. If a poem is neither
here nor there it is because it is neither here nor there. We must not
disturb our critical consciousness by debating this perspective. Ethnic
polemic or politics may serve its purpose, but we must let literature
and criticism remain what they must be. As Eliot famously said of
Arnold, we must not go for ‘’game outside of the literary preserve
altogether…’’ (23).
It may amount to literary heresy if we pay no heed to this concern.
The critic’s task, in the words of Northrop Frye, is to ‘’isolate
quality,” and nothing else (23).
This brings me to a salient point relating to bad belle criticism and
good belle criticism in especially contemporary Nigerian literary
criticism. There is a third brand of criticism, which is in-between bad
belle criticism and good belle criticism. The first is induced by the
malaria of malice and jaundice of petty prejudice, the second by the
sweetness and scent of friendship, the third by the stress and distress
of balanced appreciation and the hallucination of objectivity. I am
inclined to also style the last mentioned pine-apple-face criticism. The
merits and demerits of a “studied” work are ranked on the scale and
prison of rough, ugly, scarred beauty mixed with the juice of approval
and disapproval at the same time depending on the bad belle and good
belle moods of the ‘’critics.” I hope the metaphors are not misplaced or
misapplied ones that are offensive to our literary sight and tongue.
Clearly the three types in varying guises are engendered by the
mantic of manipulation of our literary and artist consciousness. The
three types were, for instance, demonstrated when Achebe released his
There Was a Country shortly before his demise.
A useful point to make at this point pertains to African writers who
are equally unusually distinguished critics. Chinua Achebe, Wole
Soyinka, J.P. Clark, Ngugi wa Thiong’ O, Es’kia (Ezekiel) Mphahlele,
Lewis Nkosi, Isidore Okpewho are all famous writers, who have made their
mark as first rate critics. They are “ancients,” grand-elders, who are
being imitated by several modern writers who are critics as well. But
the critical and literary habits of the latter seem to be significantly
different from those of the former. While the grand-elders, for
instance, were patient to preserve their art from impurity and
contamination, the moderns are in a hurry, usually, to taint their
literary value with hasty publications (for promotions) that trivialize
their art. (I refrain from naming examples of the poetic culprits). Yet
our contemporary critics in several instances turn a blind eye to their
numerous flaws. Materials that should have been employed to the
advantage of the new writers are theoretically and critically utilized
against them through ill-judged remarks of no serious or profound
aesthetic, moral, environmental, political and cultural values.
Uncritically scintillating remarks and critiques of our critics relating
to our new writers become our new writers’ banana peels. But not all
our contemporary critics of my generation are of the un-aesthetic grade.
Some there are among us who are really creative critics. I have such
persons as Damian Opata, Remy Oriaku, JOJ Nwachukwu-Agbada, Hope
Eghagha, Gbemisola Adeoti, Isidore Diala and Sunny Awhefeada in mind.
They belong to their classes of generations, but they are critics to
reckon with. Apart from Damian Opata, Remy Oriaku and Sunny Awhefeada,
they are remarkable writers as well.
In a remark pertaining to Achebe’s stature and status as African
writing path-finder, Ernest Emenyonu states as follows: ‘’Chinua
Achebe’s remarkable influence on contemporary African Literature is as
much as in the establishment of the art of the African novel in his
fiction, as it is in the articulation of African poetics and aesthetics
in his extra fictional pronouncements. He is as much the father of the
modern African novel, as he is the forerunner-theoretician of African
literary criticism’’ (xv).
This remark, as nice and as justifiable as it is or may be, will be
taking with some pinch of salt by some persons who are exceedingly good
critics. I know that it has ruffled a lot of feathers in some quarters.
But we cannot dispute this fact: Achebe is a great writer and will ever
remain great – as Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Isidore
Okpewho are great writers who will ever remain great. Soyinka and
Okpewho, for instance, are undisputable eclectic
‘’forerunner-theoretician[s]’’ in myth scholarship and criticism. We can
say the same thing of JP Clark who is the father of Oral Literature in
Nigeria, as we can glean from his Ozzidi corpus and translations. I
expect new and worthy experts in the area of contemporary African
literary criticism to challenge openly, with decorum, our elders in the
profession in such a manner that will be beneficial to our aesthetics.
Many of us seem to be too squeamish or to be too cowed by the
achievements of our literary elders and mentors to attempt to open or
break new grounds. Socrates taught Plato and Plato taught Aristotle.
Each mentor and each mentee broke new grounds in scholarship. But there
is hope that the generation(s) of the Femi Osofisans, Niyi Osundares,
Tanure Ojaides, Adebayo Williams are worthy examples to cite in this
connection. These four mentioned writers are well-languaged writers who
are also very unique theoreticians and critics breaking new grounds in
form and style – to the glory of our literature and criticism – as our
Christian-minded literary brothers and sisters will put it, but not in
the manner of Nollywood. In the last stretch of phrases one may perceive
a dose of humour/laughter a creative critic should endeavour to imbed,
if necessary, in his or her enterprise. Achebe does this excellently
well in his essays in Morning Yet on Creation Day. So also does JP Clark
in his The Example of Shakespeare.
One more issue. Why do our contemporary critics wait for the West to
applaud our writers before they themselves do so? We must now learn to
discover our writers (and critics) for the West rather than the West
doing the discovery for us. This is imperative for the growth of our
contemporary literature and criticism. Indian literary scholars have
been doing this for years. They do not wait for the West to tell them
who is a good or talented Indian writer. They objectively and faithfully
‘’sell’’ their writers to the West. Doing what I am hereby recommending
will give Nigerian (and African) literary community its greatest
happiness in no distant time.
