Poetry and versification: the burden of commitment this poem to conflate myth and history and to merge willed pastoralism
with tragic catharsis in order to create the fetching lyricism of the first
section ofOgun Abibiman. This folkloricism is even more pronounced in
the following section, “Retrospect for Marchers: Shaka!” And not only
in the refrain which runs throughout the entire section, a refrain entirely
expressed in untranslated Yoruba words, the Yoruba cadences approx-
imating the harshly metallic and ecstatic rhythms of the music ofbata
drums. Far more profound than a tapping into oral poetic matrices in this
section is Soyinka’s recourse to a mode of poetic discourse which is alien
to the metropolitan, “British” traditions of English poetic discourse –
the use of self-addressedorikior praise poems which reorder cosmic bal-
ances and reciprocities between mankind and the gods, between the
human and the divine. This kind oforikipervades Shaka’s long dramatic
monologue in this second section, but it is particularly evident in the
following lines which both express the great hubris of Shaka and give it
a self-transcending communitarian ethic:
If man cannot, what god dare claim perfection?
The gods that show remorse lay claim to man’s
Forgiveness–afounder king shall dare no less.
My nightmare, living, was the sun’s collapse
When man surrenders judgment over
God or man. Shaka wasallmen. Would,
To the best of amaZulu, Shaka were also a man,
A leader yes, next to the imperfect god –
Would I be Shaka if I asked less?...What I did
Was Shaka, but Shaka was not always I.
Beset by demons of blood, Shaka reaped
Harvest of manhood when time wavered
Uncertainly and mind was transposed in
Another place. Yet Shaka, king and general
Fought battles, invented rare techniques, created
Order from chaos, colored the sights of men
In self-transcending visions, sought
Man’s renewal in the fount of knowledge.
From shards of tribe and bandit mores, Shaka
Raised the city of men in commonweal.
This last, this Shaka I, crave release
From masks, from cracked mirrors in the socket of skulls.
(OA,–)That Soyinka is very much aware that in lines such as these he could
be said to be rationalizing the megalomania and bloody excesses of the