Visionary mythopoesis in fictional and nonfictional prose the professional and literary elites of the post-independent nation-state
of Nigeria, but the soul-searching of the “interpreters” in the novel of
that title, and of Maren, the protagonist of Soyinka’s autobiographical
memoir,Ibadan, is far more intense and psychically wrenching than what
we see of Yode and the “Ex-Iles” inIsara.
Isara is thus replete with inscriptions of diverse but related mini-
narratives and tropes of new modes of “seeing” which do not,a priori,ex-
cludeanysource of knowledge. Some of these tropes and mini-narratives
are indescribably funny and intriguing, like the one involving the invo-
cation of the “Spirit of Layeni” by Sipe Efuape, the most irrepressibly
venturesome of the “Ex-Iles.” Even when, as in the following passage
where, in a consultation of the occult powers of the dead, the medium
happens to communicate in barely literate English, Efuape keeps his
options open:
Invocation of Spirit of Layeni. On the Questions of the Proposed Mystic Services by T. S.
Onayemi
Questions presented to the medium:
. Is it wholly profitable if this (Name of Business) is done and should there be
no course of shortening one’s life?
. What of sacrifice of commission to be duly offered every month?
. Is there any rule which can cause any ineffect on its part?
. What do you aware of the ingredient whether they are strong enough to be
compounded or not?
Sipe could not resist an indulgent smile. It proved something – he was not
quite certain what – but a large proportion of successful businessmen was either
illiterate or semiliterate. He turned to the second sheet of paper, which contained
the answers to the first. It was headed:
Paper II.Reply or Rejoinder of the Spirit to Questions as Numbered in Paper I.
What a punctilious civil servant this Onayemi would have made! Obviously
wasted in the private sector, but no doubt he kept good books in his business.
Sipe already knew the answers by heart but went through them again:
Question. No least course to regret the experiment.
Question. Inconstancy of this will issue serious fruits. (Isara,–)
The humor of this passage is nothing if not a veritable example of the
pervasive catachresis of the hybrid culture of colonized social and cul-
tural spaces: both supplicant and spirit medium, in the light of changed
conditions in the colony, communicate not in Yoruba but in English,
in bad, risibly ungrammatical English; moreover, the written exchange