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The Lion and the Jewel
, Dr. Semuwe of
Requiem for
a Futurologist
, the Old Man of
Madmen and Specialists
, Sebe Irawe of
From
Zia with Love
. Even the author’s father, as fictionalized in several episodes
in the life of the character of Akinyode Soditan in
Isara
, belongs in this
company of masters of language and its vast potential for liberating the
imagination and the human environment (
Isara
,
,
–
). In all of
these characters, the gift of language and the manipulation of verbal
rhetoric is so extensive, so often brilliantly executed that these protago-
nists’ presence in their respective imaginative worlds seems predicated
on strategies and effects of language usage. And in the way in which they
inhabit, and are in turn inhabited by their “tower of words,” they seem to
embody Heidegger’s description of language as “the house of being.”
So crucial indeed is the predication of the identity and subjectivity of
these protagonists on verbal mastery, that each of them, in their respec-
tive dramas, is called upon to either literally
talk
their way out of dan-
gerous, potentially fatal circumstances, (Brother Jero, Dr. Semuwe), or
into control and manipulation of other characters in the bitter struggles
for advantage, preferment or power (Brother Jero, Baroka, Dr. Semuwe,
and Sebe Irawe), or, at their most disconcerting, into undermining the
last foundations of their auditors’ hold on a secure sense of themselves as
centered, rational subjects (Semuwe, Professor, Old Man). This general
profile of the vital connection of masterful deployment of language and
signification to the construction – and deconstruction – of identity and
subjectivity as an index of a radical, almost absolute autonomy of the
self, provides a context for an emblematic reading of Professor’s offer of
a “sanctuary,” a refuge, in his “tower of words.”
The beginning of the concluding Part Two of the play throws a focused
light on the dense suggestiveness of the dramatization of these issues in
Wole Soyinka
The Road
. Interestingly, this illumination is produced by a clash of views
and attitudes concerning writing and its uses. Basically, the scene involves
a mini-drama around Professor’s act of transcribing into writing the
verbal accounts he has been given by Kotonu and Samson, driver and
driver’s mate respectively of the passenger lorry, “NO Danger, No Delay,”
concerning an accident they had witnessed and only barely averted on
the road. Kotonu and Samson of course can’t read or write, but they
are obliged to make a statement for the police files, and so they need the
services of Professor.
In differing ways all three are heavily emotionally invested in the
transaction of converting the verbal account of the accident into writing.
Kotonu is going over the accident mostly as a way of dealing with the
trauma of having been so close to the terrible carnage wrought by the
accident. Samson, for his part, hopes to get the writing of the account of
the accident over with quickly so that he and his mate can get back on
the highways. Finally, Professor is over-solicitous in getting the two men
to narrate their experience in the hope that their closeness to the car-
nage, their narrow escape from being victims, has mystical intimations
that he may somehow be able to read, thus advancing his quest for an
understanding of the link between life and death. Thus, what appears
on the surface to be a very simple operation in fact entails almost incom-
mensurable valences of intention and desire in the three subjects in the
encounter. Soyinka’s dialogue brilliantly captures the very
texture
of this
incommensurability:
.
(bangs on the table): But you bring back nothing at all. Nothing. How
do you expect me to make out your statement for the police?
: Ah, but you always manage Professor.
.
: On nothing? You exaggerate your notion of expressiveness in your
friend’s face. Call him here. (Kotonu comes forward. Professor glares an-
grily at him). It is only a degree of coarseness, that’s all. (Rummages among
the papers). I need a statement form. Here is one . . . now you tell me,
you who return empty-handed and empty-minded, what do I write! Well?
What happened at the bridge? You say the lorry overtook you – good.
[Writes] Lorry was traveling at excessive speed. You see, I can make up a
police statement that would dignify the archives of any traffic division, but
tell me – have I spent all these years in dutiful search only to wind up my
last moments in meaningless statements? What did you see friend, what
did you see? Show me the smear of blood on your brain.
: There was this lorry . . .
.
: Before the event friend, before the event. Were you accessory before the
fact?
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