Visionary mythopoesis in fictional and nonfictional prose expressions of spitefulness and vengefulness in the author-detainee’s in-
vestment in the power of words and language. One of the most egregious
expressions of the pole of negativity in this dialectic is the extensive use
by the author-protagonist of hyperbolic metaphor and imagery to dehu-
manize or bestialize many of his captors without providing any details
whatsoever to show action or behavior on the part of those so targeted
to convince the reader that the application of the hyperbolic metaphor
to them is warranted. Similar to this is the author-protagonist’s tactic of
comparing some of his captors with notorious figures culled from atroc-
ity legends of the Nazi death camps, again without indicating acts or
deeds of a scale of brutality to sustain the associations mobilized by these
analogies. In other words, language and words are excessively proffered
and just as exceedingly withheld according to a moral scheme whose
instantiations are so insubstantial that one is left with the conclusion that
these language acts are justified only because for the author-protagonist,
language and words often suffice as values unto themselves. A somewhat
lesser expression of this pattern, but one nonetheless frustrating for even
the most positive and generous readers of this work, is the author’s with-
holding of information on the scope, nature and location of actions and
initiatives proffered, through extraordinarily eloquent uses of language,
as countervailing moral and ideological forces to the bestialized and
anathematized despots who ordered Soyinka’s incarceration, plunged
the nation to war and then used the war to consolidate both organized
and random acts of state terror.
Perhaps the most troubling of these flaws, one which again is con-
summated by unquestionably dazzling feats of language use, is the scale
to which the author-protagonist actually permits himself to pour scorn
on the very human community of his nation-state which is the object
of his solicitude in his efforts to expose and oppose dictatorial terror
and sustain hopes of renewal. No matter how expansively one wishes
to read the following passage, this is what comes through clearly and
unambiguously:
But the words hammer strident opposition to the waves of negations that engulf
me, to the mob hatred that I distinctly hear even in this barred wilderness. It
nerves me to mutter – Brainwashed, gullible fools, many-headed multitudes,
why should your voices in ignorance affect my peace? But they do. I cannot
deny it. (TMD,)
It must of course be admitted that the textual context for this passage is
the honest expression by Soyinka in this work of the shifting moods that