Book Review
Oseloka Obaze*
Saturday, 20 May 2006
You Must Set Forth at Dawn: A memoir
Wole Soyinka
(ISBN: 037550365X; Random House, New York, NY; 2006, pp 499.160; Price $26.95)
Available at: Barnes and Nobles
Wole Soyinka has always been a non-conformist and an enigma. His latest work does not disappoint one bit in that regard. Like the man and his esoteric use of the English language, the book seems meant to confound in many respects. So let me deal with the bad parts first, even though they relate to the form rather than the subject matter. A five hundred-page work without an index is evidently an anomaly. A book in which the acknowledgements and author’s bio-sketch are placed at the very end evidently angles at being different.
For others, there may be other shortcomings about this book, but then such limitations must be excused since an author of the stature of Wole Soyinka certainly has earned the right to format, paginate, and structure his work as he deems fit. After all, the honor is not to Soyinka that people read his book but to those who do so. In the case of Soyinka, I might add, the honor is to those who have the patience to wade through his works and the acumen to understand his obfuscation and pedantic inclination.
Now to the substance of You Must Set Forth at Dawn – Soyinka’s 29th, counting novels, drama, poetry, and collections of essay.
The title of this book is metaphoric, having been lifted from the opening lines of the fifth stanza of Soyinka’s poem, Death At Dawn, which speaks to the “wrathful wings of mans progression” and end in a whimper, “this mocked grimace, this closed contortion – I? If I were to cast the essence of this work in one bullet-point, I would lay it out thus: a personal narrative of a gripping public life, political activism, unsanctioned diplomatic forays, fixation with justice and rule of law, and utter abhorrence totalitarianism and disregard for the less intellectually imbued.
This book is the second strand of Soyinka’s memoirs. Its form and structure lead one to believe that there is yet another strand that would complete the trilogy that bring to totality Soyinka’s persona and life. If the first strand, Ake: The Years of Childhood," Soyinka's 1981 memoir about his childhood, was about innocence, You Must Set Forth at Dawn is about reflection and revelations that marks the era of national tribulations, waste, and concupiscence. It was also an era in which Soyinka was an activist and a conscientious objector to the emasculation of his fatherland. For some inexplicable reasons, Soyinka elected to write this book almost as an out-of-body experience. He is detached, distant, and outside-looking-in. Nonetheless, this book is a testimony, if not a concrete validation of Soyinka’s characterization of his contemporaries and himself as belonging to a “lost generation.”
Had he not already done so with another work, this is the book that would have rightly been titled, “The Season of Anomy.” You Must Set Forth at Dawn is a forthright and incessantly damning commentary about a nation disemboweled by its elite, its gonads fed to the ravaging bitches in full glare spectators - those “imbeciles, psychopaths and predators” who mistook the mayhem of extreme bad governance for sports.
It is not coincidental that Soyinka original working title for this book was an emphatic “Beyond the Word.” Whilst the book is about his bearing witness to the travesty made of his country in his lifetime, and the unflurrying of the goodness and foibles of his various interlocutors, it is in the main about Soyinka’s political activism and the undulating political landscape on which he pranced. Hence, You Must Set Forth at Dawn is more about the man and his politics than about his persona, which is craftily elusive and intentionally distant.
This is a book clinically written. In this book, the propinquity between Soyinka the person and Soyinka the activist is absolute. Even Soyinka has admitted this by acknowledging that in writing this book “I had to stand outside myself.” It is, therefore, devoid of any family life, revelations, and sentiments, except for perfunctory mention of his parents “the Wild Christian,” his father, “Essay,” and a rather dubious brother who disenfranchised him of his valued collection of art and artifacts. Why the surgical excise of his family’s role in his politics, one may ask? It is circumspection, perhaps, that drives such parsimony. After all, no one understands the tribulations of a Nigerian political activist better than Soyinka. He knows too well that it’s only in Nigeria that cops arrest and jail siblings of an accused or even a criminal for not knowing or revealing whereabouts of the person they seek. It is also only in Nigeria that the security goons and police would arrest an evening stroller or jogger for vagrancy, just to extort money or excise unbridled power.
Conceivably, the knowledge of these realities might explain, therefore, the curious distance between Soyinka the writer and Soyinka the protagonist. This ambivalence coupled with some obvious lacuna of facts and datelines may be deliberate, or indeed an extension of the cultured enigmatic proclivity that Soyinka covets as a writer who has become renowned for his obfuscation and linguistic comport. This aspect makes the book parched and lacking in familiar ostentation that is the hallmark of great memoirs.
One may forgive Soyinka for these lapses, in consideration that he may see his politics primarily from the drama prism and so too his rabblerousing involvement and narration of it. This may forgivingly account for his tendency towards kabuki and pantomime. But then Soyinka in his polemic writings have shown an acumen for philosophy; so, whilst he provides that pertinent dots between him and the events in Nigeria and its dissembling politics, he may indeed expect the reader to connect the dots with rectilinear or knurly lines. Non-Nigerian readers may find this book a tad too tedious to read, though Soyinka offers some succor through his copious interpretative footnotes.
If the spirit of African democracy has a voice and a face, they belong to Wole Soyinka. He has served Nigeria and her cause above and beyond the call of duty, all the while amplifying the pitfalls of the perverse leadership duplicity and culpable failures that have wrought bedeviling double standards on Nigeria. He embodies the principled political engagement by a few untainted and attentive Nigerian elite.
Soyinka has frequently been referred to as one of the surviving consciences of Nigeria. His ability to be outspoken ties in with his financial independence and mindset as a cosmopolitan, whose wanderlust and academic pursuits have rendered peripatetic and thus well-versed in worldly affairs including matters of good and bad governance. Once accused by a journalist of having ‘sold out’ to the Nigerian military, he had retorted, “quite truthfully, that not even the entire Nigerian nation, with all its oil wealth could afford me” (p.182). He has been incarcerated, exiled, and condemned to death for his views and activism. That he has survived it all to tell the tales is not just by his wit, but by divine intervention, which has ordained that his place in Nigerian politics as in the literary world will transcend the polite and cursory footnotes.
Since this book is mainly about the man’s politics, one must dwell on it. This is also clearly a book about political revelations. But certainly, while Soyinka has made some revelations, he knows more than he is willing to tell, if not about state matters, then about himself. Maybe he fancies himself someday as others already have; in a role not unlike his friend and literary colleague, President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. Like Havel, Soyinka is a prominent playwright and poet, and one of the leading intellectual figures and moral forces in the world. A well connected man as the book shows, who count as friends men such as Bertrand Russell, Soyinka’s detached reticence may be accorded to confidentiality and reserving the prerogative to be trusted again by his friends and allies. But as he readily admitted elsewhere, recently, the matter of “family is a private matter.”
There is perceptible anger, if not frustration, in this book. The first encounter is a personal and cultural one, which most Nigerians would readily observe. Soyinka is clearly miffed at the thought of his bosom friend, Femi “OBJ” Johnson, being interred permanently in Germany. In the Yoruba and Igbo custom, regardless of costs, loved ones who die overseas are brought home to rest. Soyinka details how he fought and won that war with Johnson’s family and his own demon’s of what might have been his inability to act appropriately.
Soyinka recounts how with his courtier of friends as close accomplices he tackled that challenge that is Nigeria and especially the vagaries of its confounding politics. He is unquestionably a firsthand witness and also an actor, who never believed in asking people to undertake tasks for which he would not himself volunteer. In tackling Nigeria, Soyinka proved that he was not one to give a pass on flaws of hypocrisy. He is merciless on politicians that err, be they civilians or military. It was in this context that he ribbed pioneer Nigerian nationalists:
The nationalist, the first –generation of elected leaders and legislators… had begun to visit Great Britain in droves….We watched their preening and ostentatious spending and their cultivated condescension, even disdain, toward the people they were supposed to represent…. Some turned student into pimps….They appeared to have only one ambition on the brain: to sleep with a white woman ….. On scandal after another was hushed up by the British Home Office.
In this book, it becomes clear that Soyinka’s earlier encounter with Nigerian nationalists colored irreparably his vision and assessment of those who don agbada or khaki to play Nigerian politics. This might explain his harsh criticism of Nigerian military leaders. Of Gen. Babangida, whom he considered devilish, he said
“He would prove to be another devil with whom I would willingly share a table. If anything, he intrigued me far more than Olusegun Obasanjo. Suave, calculating, a persuasive listener and conciliator –but with sheathed claws at the ready- ever ready to cultivate potential allies, he had a reputation for meticulous planning.”
In Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, he saw “one devil for whom in my calculation, no spoon existed that was long enough to justify the risk of an impromptu snack.”
Soyinka does not spare Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, whom he suggests “his deprived childhood” to be a source of “his deep-seated sense of insecurity.” Though he still considers him a “qualified friend,” he notes that Obasanjo “represented a model of power of an unusual –and dangerous- kind, most especially as he remained basically insecure and thus pathologically in need of proving himself, preferably at the expense of others” (p.186)
You Must Set Forth at Dawn is a book full of revelations, which in actuality brings into public glare the political animal in Soyinka and the extent to which he was steeped in national politics, which may led some political leaders to see him as meddlesome. While his dalliance with Biafra earned him a prison term and resulted in his book, The Man Died” he maintained some questionable affinity to General Babangida and loathed General Abacha. Indeed, it was said, that it was Soyinka who gave Gen. Abacha the moniker “deaf and dumb.”
Soyinka was unforgiving of Gen. Sani Abacha and perhaps so for MKO Abiola’s death, which he described as “one of unmatchable, lingering cruelty.” He reveals also prior awareness that Abiola was destined to die in prison, courtesy of an informant he referred to as “longa throat,” so named in mimic after the Watergate’s infamous “Deep Throat.”
As factual as his efforts are, one is inclined to question some of his opinions and conclusions. For instance, while his foray into Biafra is well known, the motive which he imputes into the founding of Biafra begs the questions and despite his caveat, trivializes the trauma the Igbo had undergone in prewar Nigeria. Assigning motive is the prerogative of a writer, but that does not preclude a line based on supposition. Rather, in this case, Soyinka waxed affirmative when he wrote:
The discovery of oil in huge reserves in the East, largely in the Niger estuary, played a role, unquestionably, in the propulsion of the Biafran leaders toward secession, but it would be a distortion of history and an attempt to trivialize the trauma that the Igbo had undergone to suggest, as some commentators have tried to do – that it was the lure of the oil wealth that drove them to seek a separate existence. When a people have been subjected to a degree of inhuman violation foe which there is no other word but genocide, they have the right to seek an identity apart from their aggressors.
Soyinka’s delving into his pro-democracy credentials is a reluctant form. But certain segments of his recount were dead giveaways that once in exile, he got his story of events secondhand and, perhaps, in embellished form. What was interesting was his admission, after all, that his pro-democracy role was so romanticized by some, that after Abacha’s and MKO Abiola’s deaths some expressed the belief that another scion of Egba (Soyinka) should step in where Ernest Shonekan had failed. But it may have been more of a flight into fantasy and an attempt to draw similarities between President Havel of Czech Republic and Soyinka that led some people to urge Soyinka to run for the Nigerian presidency, which he smartly declined.
Keen followers of Nigerian political scene will find certain aspects of this book doggy. Perhaps, this was deliberately done. Soyinka on several occasion resorted to use of initials for certain individuals, including the heretic Yoruba “Major BM,” who swore that given the chance, he would dispense with Pa Awolowo by tying him to the stake and shooting him on account of his tribal traits. Several others, also designated merely by their initials, led this reviewer to believe that such interlocutors were still very much around but were also people very dear to Soyinka’s heart and worthy of protection.
Absence of a detailed accounts of the founding and his role past, present, and future within the Pyrate Confraternity was a conspicuous and certainly a deliberate and defining omission in this memoir. Given that some in Nigeria have blamed the Pyrates, of which Soyinka is reportedly the top Capone, of contributing to the rise of cults in Nigerian universities, one would have expected him to offer some clarity on the issue. Soyinka and his fellow Pyrates have reacted to such allegations as arrant nonsense and balderdash, but this glaring omission points to the issue being fraught with controversy.
The gaps, chasm, and deliberate pass on several other issues, some too critical to gloss over, suggests that this volume is the second of a series, the first being Ake. Why not? Such a gifted and endowed personality as Soyinka can certainly afford to parse and package his life and undertakings, treating the political, the academic, the family, and the intensely personal components as he would treat the different Acts in his many theatrical plays. To borrow from Winston Churchill: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.” Certainly, there are many more issues of substance, anecdotes and revelations from the repertoire and hat from which Soyinka pulled out the present magical rabbit and memoirs. The issues he raised are as perceived. His memoirs resonate with palpable realities of present day Nigeria, to which Soyinka is no stranger.
As can be gleaned from Soyinka’s present book, Nigeria is inherently a nation with historical amnesia. Unfortunately, the erudite and outspoken lot, of which Soyinka is the bulwark, will not allow the nation to self-destruct on grounds of ambivalence by those whom ought to fight for its survival or in the least speak the truth in matter of national interest. Of the latter, Soyinka has never been found wanting.
Readers familiar with Soyinka’s work will find this memoir refreshingly fluid and far less tedious and confounding than his previous works. Quite out of character, his style this time around is inviting, smooth, and conversationally folksy. Where he employs poetic license, the cadence is purposeful to the hilt. Therefore, those who have read other works, which in form and style are replete with Soyinkasque, will appreciate that reading this is one, unlike Soyinka’s other books, is a walk in the park.
Those attuned to Nigerian politics will also find this book interesting. But for others, it might be a tad distance, perplexing, and tough to dissect and digest. But then, that is the nature of Nigerian politics. On the flip side, those unfamiliar with Nigerian politics will find some events confusing (although a chronology at the front of the book helps). This might make You Must Set Forth at Dawn tedious and a-not-so-easy read for non-Nigerians. The absence of an index may have been intended to make people to read to book in its entirety, to find out if they merited a mention. But then, it may be the nature of the subject matter.
Though optimistic, Soyinka’s memoir hinges on Nigeria and its dark history and paradoxes. Perhaps the title of the book was meant to be a dead giveaway. In closing, Soyinka proves himself the antithesis of the protagonist of his most famous poem “Abiku,” by his declaratory admission that his forced exile and peripatetic life, while necessary, may not havebeen the best idea. To that notion, he states, “I am back in the place I never should have left."
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*Mr. Oseloka Obaze, an aspiring writer, is a member of the Kwenu.com Book Review Forum, which is dedicated to the promotion of books with Igbo and Afrocentric themes. He is also a supporting Member of the African Writers Endowment (AWE). From 1999 to 2005 he served on the editorial board of INYEAKA, the journal of Songhai Charities, Inc., a New Jersey community-based charity founded and run by Nigerians based in New York Tri-state area in the United States, first as its founding Publisher and later as the Editor-At-Large. He is also on the editorial board of The Amaka Gazette, the journal of the Christ the King College, Onitsha Alumni Association in America. His collection of poems, “Regarscent Past: A Collection of Poems” was among the top three finalists in the poetry category in the African Writers Endowment Publishing Grant Program for 2004.
He reviews books and arts strictly as a hobby.