Wole Soyinka
“Idanre” is thus perhaps best approached not from the aesthetic and
philosophical premises which undergird traditional epic or heroic po-
etic and prose narratives likeBeowulforSundiata, but from those which
subtend the elaborately allusive and internally self-divided modernist
“epics” likeThe WastelandorThe Cantos. Definitely, the first two of the
seven sections of the poem respectively titled “deluge” and “and after,”
are resolutely unmindful of narrative continuity, or of even clear mark-
ers or distinctions between the personae and avatars who show up in
these sections. With the rather fragmentary gloss that Soyinka himself
provides to these and other sections of the poem, with the accumulated
exegeses on the poem, and with some effort, the assiduous reader comes
to a sense of what events and which myths are being celebrated in these
two opening sections of the poem. Thus, “deluge” tells of the begin-
ning of time, of the emergence of culture – especiallyagri-culture –
and the neolithic revolution to the inception of the Iron Age, with
Ogun and Sango being the central protagonists. The second section,
“and after,” cinematically “fast forwards” to succeeding epochs and at
the same time “rewinds” again to earlier epochs. Particularly worthy
of note in this section is the poet’s considerable fixation on the para-
doxically tragic cost of the march of civilization, especially as reflected
in the carnage wrought on the roads (and highways) built to advance
progress:
And we
Have honeycombed beneath his hills, worked ores and paid
With wrecks of last year’s suppers, paved his roads
With shells, milestones of breathless bones –
Ogun is a demanding god (IOP,)Also worthy of note in these two non-mimetic, non-diegetic sections of
“Idanre” is the fact that they seem patterned on the traditional form of
the “ijuba,” the panegyric prologue of Yoruba chants, songs and theatre.
The “ijuba” typically combines a poet’s, singer’s or performer’s self-
presentation with terse, sometimes cryptic foreshadowing of the main
themes of the song, chant or performance to be presented.It is a matter
of surprise that these two opening sections are followed by two sections,
“pilgrimage” and “the beginning” which are more or less shaped by
conventions of narrative continuity. Consequently, of all the sections of
the poem, these two contain rounded stories which can be easily appre-
hended, even by the average reader. Perhaps this is because these are
the sections that deal with the specific myths and legends of Ogun in his