Poetry and versification: the burden of commitment linked me to lingering, unresolved sensations of my first climb up Idanre. I
abandoned my work – it was middle of the night – and walked.Idanreis the
record of that walk through wet woods on the outskirts of Molete, a pilgrimage
to Idanre in company of presences such as dilate the head and erase known
worlds. (IOP,)
The question that arises from this note by Soyinka himself on the origins
of the poem is: why does he need the symbolic framework of that walk in
the night in the woods of Molete on the outskirts of Ibadan to poetically
narrate and celebrate the central creation myths, the central aetiological
legends of the Yoruba people – which is what, in its substantive contents,
“Idanre” is about? The question is particularly pertinent given the fact
that not only does Soyinka propose that night walk as a “pilgrimage”
which recalls and reenacts an earlier “pilgrimage” to the “god-suffused”
rockhills of Idanre, he indeed speaks in that same prefatory note of both
“pilgrimages” – to Idanre and through the woods of Molete – as in-
volving not just himself but “in company of presences such as dilate the
head and erase known worlds.” Thus, the answer to the question of how
requisite the elaborate symbolic framework is for Soyinka’s expressed
purposes in writing this poem, surely, is that the poetic recreation of the
central myths and legends of the Yoruba people comes out of what must
have been a profoundly mystical or spiritual experience on those “pil-
grimages.” Presumably, these myths and legends came powerfully and
imaginatively alive for the poet on those “pilgrimages” and effected an
awakening, a turning point in his artistic consciousness. The challenge
to the critic or interpreter of the poem therefore lies in clearing a care-
ful interpretive space between the Scylla of literalism – “who or what
exactly are those “presences” that accompanied the poet on those lone
pilgrimages? – and the Charybdis of complete surrender to Soyinka’s
penchant for over-valorizing occult, esoteric experiences and phenom-
ena. In the meantime of course, there is also the more practical question
of the formidable obstacles to comprehension posed by the multiplicity
of nonlinear and fragmentary narratives embedded in the poem. Addi-
tionally, sympathetic identification with the protagonists of the drama
of the myths and legends explored and celebrated in the poem is often
blocked by ellipsis of technique and diction neither of which makes any
concession to readers used to the classical virtues of narrative linear-
ity, plot-driven action, clearly motivated or probable transitions between
episodes or “sections,” and a linguistic currency of simple, common
vocabulary.