The gnostic, worldly and radical humanism of Wole Soyinka of the “interpreters,” the eponymous protagonists of the novel; each of
them has posed for Kola in his execution of the painting, Kola having
in the process assimilated the “essential” traits of each of these diverse
orisato each of his friends. The first highlighted section of the passage
recodes the dismemberment of the supreme deity, Orisanla, by his slave,
Atunda, while the second highlighted passage inscribes the bloody myths
of Ogun, god of war and creativity, with his complex and contradictory
traits: “insatiable in love and carnage, explorer, pathfinder, protector of
the forge and the creative hands, companion of the gourd” (of palm wine).
Kola’s painting assimilates this deity to Egbo, and we have seen earlier
that Egbo’s childhood rejection of the “prostration obeisance” resonates
with the young Soyinka’s enactment of the same emblematic refusal
as narrated inAk ́e. Thus, apart fromThe Interpreters, other fictional and
nonfictional works, as well as theoretical essays of Soyinka, have appro-
priated aspects of these Ogun motifs for ideal, symbolic constructions of
an artistic identity and authority that is fundamentally humanistic but is
riven by great contradictions. Of the essays of Soyinka which participate
in this vast machinery of self-fashioning, “The Fourth Stage,” “Morality
and Aesthetics in the Ritual Archetype” and “The Credo of Being and
Nothingness” are particularly noteworthy. And imaginative works such
as the long narrative poem “Idanre” in the collectionIdanre and Other
Poems, the dramatic mythopoem,Ogun Abibiman, and the playsA Dance of
the Forests,The Road, andThe Bacchae of Euripides, all entail strong thematic
and emblematic foregrounding of this structure of self-invention through
the Ogun motifs. That these are all part of a vast, complex and dialog-
ical fashioning of a “self” derived from, but paradoxically set against
the grain of tradition is clearly indicated in the following conversation
between Soyinka and Ulli Beier:
: Now let us talk about the way in which some of these traditional Yoruba
concepts have been used in your plays. If I am not mistaken, it was in
A Dance of the Foreststhat you first used some kind of Yoruba symbolism in
aplay.
: Yes, of course by that time I had written a draft ofThe Lion and the
Jewel,butthatwasaverydifferentthing.Itwasonadifferentlevel...
: The striking thing aboutA Dance of the Forestsis the character of Ogun.
This image of Ogun has accompanied you through your later writing; but it
has been said that the Ogun of your play is a rather personal, “unorthodox”
orisa – that in fact, you created a new kind of Ogun.
: Hmmm...thatistrue.
: But of course, even in purely traditional Yoruba terms, it is quite a
legitimate thing to do. Ogun has never been a rigidly defined being; the