Wole Soyinka
For beside this mystic integrity of Nature, this wisdom of the ages, Soyinka
also erects the remorseless exactions of historical experience, the ultimate
of which is the example of the “economic laws” of the Slave Coast:
:Hush! Mulieru, I knew you in the days of pillaging, in the days
of sudden slaughter, and the parting of child and mother. I knew you in the
days of grand destroying and you a part of the waste. Mulieru, you were
one of those who journeyed in the market-ships of blood. You were sold
Mulieru, for...
(who has been consulting his barks):...aflask of rum.
(–)
And significantly, this historical negation not only mutilates humans and
their relationships, but also worsts the forest-nature. The villagers attempt
to drive off their unwelcome lead with petrol fumes from the belching
exhaust of the hellish transport lorry, “Chimney of Ereko” and Agboreko
of “the sealed lips” and cryptic knowledge, medium of animist wisdom,
cautions:
The Chimney of Ereko. Ah, Baba, will you never believe that you cannot get
rid of ancestors with the little toys of children. ()
No doubt Agboreko intends in this admonition a cautionary lesson that
the sins and follies of the past, of the ancestors, cannot be wiped out by the
inventions and “sophisticated” artifacts of the present civilization, but still
the ancestors and the forest beings do retreat before the noxious petrol
fumes. They are after all vulnerable, their domination of the humans
not absolute. Indeed another aspect of their “vulnerability” is worthy
of mention, for not only petrol fumes but the first shafts of sunlight
send even Ogun and Eshuoro scampering away deeper into the dense,
impenetrable heart of the forest:
Noise of the beaters from a distance. Dawn is breaking. Ogun enters bearing
Demoke,eying the sky anxiously. He is armed with a gun and cutlass. The sun
creeps through; Ogun lays down Demoke, leaves his weapons beside him, flees.
Eshuoro is still dancing as the foremost of the beaters break on the scene and
then he flees after his Jester. It is now fully dawn. Agboreko and the Old Man
enter, Murete, very drunk, dragging them on. The sound of the main body of
beaters with the drummers continues in the distance () (My emphasis)
A Danceis not only an appreciation of the wisdom of animist thought
in its full respect for the integral totalization of the natureoutsideandinside
of man, it is also a criticism of it, a revelation of its historically determi-
nate limits. It shows the dialectical self-dissolution of animist-mythical