Songs of Enchantment

1
Songs of Enchantment

• Ben Okri

2
Ben Okri (1959- )

• born in Minna, Nigeria
• published his first novel at 18
• moved to England, attended the University of
  Essex
• The Famished Road (1991), Songs of Enchantment
  (1993)
• honorary doctorates from universities of
  Westminster and Essex

3
Ben Okri

• influence of his childhood on his writing
• childhood determined by his father's library
• reading African, classical, and European myths as
  a child

4
Influence on his writing?

• mixture of African and European traditions
• adaptation of stream-of-consciousness technique
• colonial idea natives can only imitate
• postcolonial writing not imitation, but new
  style of writing

5
History of Nigeria

• Nigeria multi-ethnic nation (Ibo, Yoruba,
  Hausa, Fulani)
• different ethnic groups forced to coexist
• artificial boundaries drawn by colonial regime
• after WW II Britain regarded Nigeria as a
  "costly colony"
• 1950 new constitution power split between
  central and local authorities

6
History of Nigeria

• 1963 Nigerian independence
• four regional governments
• series of military coups
• 1967-70, civil war
• writer Wole Soyinka imprisoned
• contemporary life determined by poverty and
  corruption

7
Oil

• 80 of government revenue generated by profits
  from Ogoniland
• profits reaped by Shell, Texaco, Chevron, and
  Texaco
• in 1995, Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged
  for protesting the exploitation of the Ogoni
• dictator General Abacha
• colonialism neo-colonialism ruling elites

8
If this is the country you live in, what do you
write about?
9
What is the role of the colonialism for your
writing?
10
Role of Colonialism

• two options
• 1) write about the destructive legacy of
  colonialism
• - fueling of inter-ethnic rivalries
• - destruction of African culture, oral
  traditions
• - contemporary misery as an outcome of
  colonialism

11
Role of Colonialism

• second option
• 2) stress the survival of African culture
• - write not about colonialism but the clash
  between tradition and modernity in urban Nigeria

12
What elements will your writing have?
13
Elements

• African mythic tradition, cultural beliefs
• survival linking European and African elements
• no element is privileged
• two alternative realities

14
Songs of Enchantment

• We didn't see the seven mountains ahead of us.
  We didn't see how they are always ahead, always
  calling us, always reminding us that there are
  more things to be done, dreams to be realised,
  joys to be re-discovered, promises made before
  birth to be fulfilled, beauty to be incarnated,
  and love embodied. (3)

15
Songs of Enchantment

• We were unprepared for an era twisted out of
  natural proportions, unprepared when our road
  began to speak in the bizarre languages of
  violence and transformations. The world broke up
  into unimaginable forms, and only the circling
  spirits of the age saw what was happening with
  any clarity. (3)

16
Songs of Enchantment

• This is the song of a circling spirit. This is a
  story for all of us who never see the seven
  mountains of our secret destiny, who never see
  that beyond the chaos there can always be a new
  sunlight. (3)

17
Abiku

• An abiku is a child who has had a hard time
  deciding, that it wants to be born into a mortal
  existence, so it keeps coming and going between
  this world and the spirit world until it finally
  decides which world it wants to embrace.

18
Abiku

• Usually a child is deemed an abiku when it is
  born to a woman who has had repeated miscarriages
  or children who die at a young age. The child who
  finally survives is called an abiku because it is
  believed to be the same spirit that tried to be
  born as the other children.
• Puspa Naidu Parekh and Siga Fatima Jagne,
  Postcolonial African Writers A
  Bio-Biblio-graphical Critical Sourcebook (1998)

19
How do we react to this idea?
20
Reaction

• alternative system of belief spirits as part of
  this world
• spirits as real
• Toni Morrison, Beloved ghost of murdered
  daughter returns

21
Songs of Enchantment

• When we were being taught mathematics under a
  dying silk-cotton tree the face of a penitent
  oppressor of our people stared at me from the
  trunk. On one day I saw the radiant face of
  Pharaoh Akhnaton, on another the faces of the
  unborn. When I stared at them, mesmerized, the
  teacher flogged me for not paying attention.
  (4-5)

22
Songs of Enchantment

• In the English class my spirit-companions sang
  polyphonic chorales at me in a blending of seven
  traditional languages. It became impossible to
  concentrate. (5)

23
Songs of Enchantment

• There were even times when the spirits whispered
  in may ears and I blurted out what the teacher
  was going to say moments before he did. The worst
  thing was that I seemed to know our examination
  questions before they were set, and I knew the
  answers as well. The teachers found this very
  peculiar. Suspicious of the accuracy of my
  answers, they often failed me because they
  thought I had been cheating. (5)

24
Spirit companions

• protagonist's parents take him out of school
• spirit companions are recognized as real, not
  fictional

25
Spirits

• not Okri creates fictional characters (spirits)
  to counter the poverty of real-life Nigeria
• but belief in abikus as part of African
  worldview a belief he then uses in his fiction

26
Spirits

• spirits traditional belief, African culture
• but spirits are not "pure," but hybrid
• they feed the child ancient and modern, Western
  and non-Western knowledge
• this hybridity is Okri's own adaptation of the
  abiku myth

27
Abiku

• abiku child as a fictional character
• abiku as a metaphor for postcolonialism
• postcolonialism as surviving the cultural death
  of colonialism
• abiku postcolonial subject on the verge between
  death (colonial past) and future
• future not "purity" of African culture but hybrid

28

• Yes, those relentless spirit-companions of mine
  poured into me the prophecies of Nostradamus and
  the wild visions of African mystics and the
  theories of Pythagoras and hundreds of useless
  facts. Meanwhile I walked barefoot in a world
  breaking down under the force of hunger.
  Meanwhile I staggered beneath the demonic smile
  of the yellow sun which sets bushes and
  newspapers alight. (5-6)