Wole Soyinka
aetiological fiction of the coming of the iron age to Yorubaland reaching
back and forward to universal myths of gods who become incarnate and
of humankind aspiring to transcendent, divine essence. Correspondingly,
the theme of the partial in the whole, the fragment in the totality inheres
in the Atunda myth which is nothing if not a symbolization of violence
as a necessary, perhaps inevitable dimension of identity formation.
If Soyinka in this poem does not quite manage to successfully work
through the antinomies and paradoxes of the diverse traditions which
informed this very inclusive and open-ended vision of the phenomenon
of humanity and its complex and contradictory yearnings, it is neces-
sary to bear in mind that this is, after all, a relatively early work in his
corpus. Indeed, it is perhaps best to see the poem as prolegomenon
to, and wellspring of ideas, tropes and plot fragments for other artisti-
cally more successful and intellectually more mature works in Soyinka’s
corpus. Even more pointedly, “Idanre” can be validly seen as clearing
ground and preparatory exercise for the superb, startling fusion of lyric,
dramatic and narrative poetic modes in the plays of Soyinka’s mature
dramaturgy likeThe Road,Death and the King’s HorsemanandThe Bacchae of
Euripides. And by a reverse interpretive logic, the ease with which these
modes are fused in these plays affords a rereading of “Idanre” which is
not unduly intimidated by the disjunctures and tensions between these
modes in the tumultuous sweep of that poem’s thundering stanzas and
lines.
There is far less to speculate about the gestative origins ofA Shuttle in the
Crypt, Soyinka’s second volume of collected poems, than the enigma of the
origins of “Idanre” in that phantasmic night walk in the woods of Molete
in Ibadan. Soyinka informs us in the Preface to the volume: “Except for
two or three poems in the section ‘Poems of bread and earth,’ this volume
consists of poems written in gaol in spite of the deprivation of reading and
writing material in nearly two years of solitary confinement (vii).” Since,
in the opinion of this writer, this is Soyinka’s most accomplished collection
of poetry, he obviously turned the extreme privation of incarceration in
solitary confinement to extraordinary creative expression. This fact is
central to any consideration of the nature and scale of the achievement
of the poems collected in this volume, especially those gathered in its two
central sections, “Phases of Peril” and “Climes of Silence.”
The cultural myth of the spiritual quester who goes into seclusion in
the wilderness of a desert or a jungle and returns with a heightened,
deeper sense of the nature of evil and the resources needed to confront it
is a major aspect of the quest motif in Soyinka’s works, including works