The gnostic, worldly and radical humanism of Wole Soyinka of Ayodele Ogundipe and H.L. Gates, Jr., is the lord of the crossroads
and the incarnation of liminality, two associated conceptions which are
central elements of Soyinka’s mythopoesis.
If the coupling of order and chaos, causality and contingency in the
passage quoted above fromThe Interpretersis strongly suggestive of the
modernists’ veneration of ambiguity, or perhaps even of the poststruc-
turalists’ celebration of radical indeterminacy, this should cause no sur-
prise since we do know that the influence of Western aesthetic thought
on Soyinka has been quite profound. More than one critic has pointed
out that Soyinka’s disquisition on the Ogun archetype in his important
essay, “The Fourth Stage,” and in some of the essays inMyth, Literature and
the African Worldbear a very strong resemblance to Nietzsche’s presenta-
tion of the Dionysian temper and sensibility inThe Birth of Tragedy.But
it is also the case that Soyinka’s coupling of order and chaos, causality
and contingency is also a derivative of Yoruba cosmological thought since
Eshu, as principle of contingency and chance, is always shown in Yoruba
sacred iconography by the side of Ifa or Orunmila, the Yoruba god of
wisdom and divination, endless fount of gnostic, doxological knowledge.
In bringing our discussion in this chapter to a statement of its perti-
nence to the organization of the other chapters of this study, it is necessary
to return to our emblematic reading of that scene of Professor’s rewriting
of the account he is given of a road accident by Kotonu and Samson. In
this regard, let us recall that we left off at the point at which Professor asks
for a “song of praise” from the auditors of his spellbinding discourses,
his “tower of words,” as he puts it. It would seem that his deployment
of his extraordinary linguistic and rhetorical skills, both in speaking and
writing, engenders from his auditors divided, heterodox responses. In the
scene, most of his listeners submit willingly to, and are transported by the
magic and poetry of his flights of speech; some are also enthralled but
remain somewhat detached; and not a few, led by Say-Tokyo Kid, are in-
timidated and hostile. Significantly, no one is indifferent to the presence
powerfully constructed by Professor’s strange, haunting discourses. This
differentiation of responses calls for a scrutiny of its analogical relevance
for Soyinka’s self-fashioning project, and more generally, for his writings
and the pattern of responses they have engendered.
Professor’s linguistic skills enable him to minister to the needs of his
underclass cohorts; he writes required briefs and reports for them, alters
documents which allow them to survive economically in a rigged, cor-
rupt and violent socioeconomic order. For these acts, our man is highly
valued and cherished; he does, at least on this count, after all provide