Wole Soyinka
ought to be acknowledged that the most powerful artistic works do not
simply copy or “reflect” nature and society. At any rate, Professor’s flights
of utterance and metaphor enable him to push far beyond the limits of
mimetic representation to thereby gain access to those figural resources
of language and signification which, as poststructuralists remind us in
their theory of articulation, open up vast and unsettling possibilities of
meaning and non-meaning, identity and agency.What is particularly
noteworthy here is that Professor not only leaps ecstatically into domains
of language use which disrupt and destabilize demarcations between the
literal and the figurative, the functional and the ludic, the demotic and
the hieratic, he also wrests from this radical linguistic and significatory
disruptiveness an identity which the other characters in the play seem
willing to validate and celebrate. We see this in the unabashed (and
successful) call by Professor for himself tobehailed by the other characters
as a benefactor through his fantastic flights of language and rhetoric:
.: It is true I am a gleaner, I dare not be swayed by marvels. Stick to the
air and open earth, wet my feet in morning dew, glean words from the
road. Remain with the open eye of earth until the shadow of the usurping
word touches my place of exile. But I broke my habit. I succumbed to the
flaunting of a single word, forgot that exercise of spirit which demand that
I make daily pilgrimage in search of leavings. I deserted my course, and –
rightly–Ilostmyway.Thatwasthevengeance of the word. (His man-
ner changes gradually, becomes more deliberate, emphatic, like someone
giving a lecture. And they listen, attentive, as if to a customary lesson in
their daily routine.) But don’t we all change from minute to minute? (Turns
in his chair, half-facing them) I pick my word only among rejects... My
task is to keep company with the fallen, and this word rose in pride above
spiked bushes. We must all stick together. Only the fallen have need for
restitution. (He turns round to his table, waves them off)Call out the hymn.
Any song will do but to restore my confidence make it a song of praise. But mind you
don’t disturb me. I feel like working. (Falls straight on his papers as the group
sings his favorite praise-song) (CP,–)(My emphasis)
To read this scene allegorically again from Professor’s way with language
inThe Road, there are obvious gaps between, on the one hand, his mo-
ments of pragmatic, rational discourses on “business” activities to sustain
supplies for the “Aksident Store” and, on the other hand, his discourses
on “the word” which entail the use of language in very abstruse, elliptical
ways, presumably to gain access to the numinous domains of being and
consciousness. For it is incontestable that Professor privileges the latter
over the former; and he certainly seems to be superciliously unmindful
of the fact that his written version of Samson’s and Kotonu’s account