Visionary mythopoesis in fictional and nonfictional prose his childhood. The first American edition ofAk ́ehad on the cover of
the dust jacket a powerful imagist drawing of a child in flight from
an undeclared source of terror: this was apparently derived from the
episode in the narrative which tells of Osiki in whom Soyinka as a
child first discovered the reality of speed as an independent phenom-
enal entity. This comes from an episode that narrates how, in misjudg-
ing his weight on a seesaw platform, the hapless Osiki catapulted the
narrator-protagonist high into the air and in the resultant crash unin-
tentionally inflicted a deep gash in Soyinka’s temple. Finding himself
pursued for retribution, Osiki takes to his heels. But what starts as a
halfhearted pursuit soon becomes pure wonder as Soyinka is halted in
his tracks, totally rapt in his discovery of this thing that is motion –
in the wondrous dimension of speed. Iku’s brief appearance in the nar-
rative takes a different form from the phenomenal appearance of Osiki’s
natural gift for running to the auhor-narrator, but is no less memorable.
For Iku it is who, to the young Soyinka’s great fascination, dares to take
the illogicalities of the adult world to their absurd limits. The matter has
to do with Daodu, the school principal’s absolutist liberal rationalism
which holds that any schoolboy who can make a convincing and im-
peccably rational case for his defense will be exculpated of guilt for any
infraction, no matter how palpable the circumstantial evidence of guilt.
Iku raids the school principal’s own poultry for one of its prize kestrels
which he and his accomplices consume, but he brazenly but “convinc-
ingly” argues his way out of punishment for the misdemeanor on the
grounds of a “phlogiston” theory of “total and instantaneous combus-
tion” which, according to Iku “consumed” the rooster, he and his mates
merely completing what a small fire during a scientific experiment began.
Why are there such few members of Soyinka’s own peer group in
this childhood memoir spanning the age of two years to eleven? There
is no evidence whatsoever that the author was a child who totally kept
to himself and had no playmates, even though a central motif in this
memoir is the protagonist’s tendency towards inwardness and radical
individual autonomy. Indeed, the relative absence of other children in
the book applies equally to the author’s siblings. For even the two siblings
among a complement of six, who we are told in the prefatory “Dedica-
tion” inhabited the memory span of the contents ofAk ́e, are not given
as much narrative space as Bukola, Osiki and Iku and definitely far less
than the adult characters. This point is made, it must be quickly stated,
not to point out an artistic flaw; rather, the point assumes significance
only in relation to what appears to be the underlying premise of the