Dramatic parables: ritual, anti-ritual, the “festival complex” : I pleaded insanity.
: Who made you insane?
(by rote, raising his eyes to heaven): The Old Man, sir. He said things,
hesaidthings.Mymind...Ibegyourpardon, sir, the thing I call my mind,
well, was no longer there. He took advantage of me, sir, in that convalescent
home. I was unconscious long stretches at a time. Whatever I saw when I
came to was real. Whatever voice I heard was the truth. It was always him.
Bending over my bed. I asked him, Who are you? He answered, The one
and only truth...
: Hear hear.
: Same here.
: Always at me, he was, sir. I plead insanity.
: Hear hear.
: Same here.
What is this, Bero? Where is Father?
: Within the cycle.
: That’s good. The cycle of As. Tell the Old Man that – he’ll be
pleased.
: Where is he?
: Where the cycle is complete there will As be found. As of the beginning,
we praise thee.
(shutting her ears): Oh God!
(pointing to the MENDICANTS): Do you still want to see him?
: As–Was–Is–Now.
: Shut up, you loathsome toads!
(–)
There has been an extensive critical discussion of the meaning of
“As,” of its use as a concept-metaphor signifying both the surfeit and
the ordinariness of evil in the order of things in nature and society.
This is due in large part to the extensive use by Soyinka in this play of
irony of the species of the grotesque. And nowhere is this more evident
than in the deployment of the conceit of “As.” For, on the one hand,
there is its very obvious and very explicit allusion to one of the most
venerated mantras of grace and providential order in Christian liturgy –
“As it was in the Beginning, Is Now and Ever Shall Be, World Without
End.” Simultaneously and contrastively, there is its assimilation to the
cultic traditions of an imaginary, savage deity who feeds on human flesh,
a deity who presides over bloodbaths and mangled human bodies. Thus,
although “As” defies any simple, unambiguous exegetical analysis, it is not
the case, as many of the play’s critics have suggested that “As” finally defies
comprehension. At any rate, it is also the case that “As” is elaborated
performatively in the play with prismatic clarity, either in the mode of