Prof. John Povey
University of California, Los Angeles
Excerpt from his foreword to Politics in African Poetry

Africa constantly forces us to the reexamination of our strongly held beliefs and presumptions. Just as in this century the plastic art of Africa revitalized the jaded vision of European aesthetics, so did its dance rejuvenate the rhythms of Western music. In a similar way, if more recently, the development of an African literature, made available to us precisely because it is written in our own language, has forced both readers and critics to reexamine the presuppositions we bring to our understanding of all literature. We are forced to consider not only the works themselves, but more crucially the more profound question of the total relationship between a writer and his society. Determining the role of the writer, particularly the role of the poet, is essential if we are accurately to assess the situation in Africa in both its literary and political dimensions.

In the Western world, we are likely to consider only casually this fundamental topic of the writer's place in society. I fear that this may be for the depressing reason that we no longer feel with any intensity that the writer is largely the entertainer, or at best the stimulator of private thought and introspection. Our acceptance of the barrier between art and society provides the artist with only minimal purpose. It is suggestive to observe that we do not take this attitude concerning Russian literature. There we admire the writers who actively challenge the restrictions of the regime and dismiss those who parrot government adulation.

In our own country expressions of social challenge are usually found in books of an earlier generation such as Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath or Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Any true contemporary assertion of social function comes predominantly from Black writers. We see the political challenge in Black writing notably in the classic authors Wright and Baldwin and perhaps more intensely in the more recent works of Cleaver and Jones. This vehemence of Black writing may well have dual origins. Anger is the typical response to oppression, and resentment has motivated the declamatory work also found often in European writing challenging the economic hierarchy. But this tone may also provide for Blacks residual evidence of the connection with Africa where the usefulness of the artist has never been questioned; where he is seen as an important and valid spokesman within his community.

It has been asserted to the point of becoming tedious, that African art is conceived of as having directly functional utility within the community. The artist actualizes the beliefs and principles of his society, by making symbolic representation of these beliefs and principles in traditional plastic form. In this context there can be no debate about the vital role of the artist. The social need for his activity is too immediate and obvious to be doubted for it meets a specific demand. This truism is just as appropriate when applied to the literary artist. In traditional African society, the writer takes for granted his role, as spokesman, as historian, as advisor, as recorder. It is interesting to note that in themselves these are all respected functions in Western society. The difference is that such activities are not necessarily associated with the writer--if he is defined as a creative artist. These community needs are accomplished by the journalist, the sociologist, the historian, the public relations officer, even the advertiser.

Recent years have brought immense change to Africa but the tradition, though modified, remains inherently strong enough to give even the modern writer justification. If we ignore this resilience, we may too readily be tempted to seek some exact equation between the dilemmas of the writer from Africa and his equivalent in the West merely because of the accident of history that determines that he employs a residual colonial language. There remain considerable differences. We must also understand that even the most cosmopolitan African artist sees himself as working within an accepted African role. The literary artist, whether he works in the oral, or later, the written mode, assumes without question his legitimate position within his culture as providing a specific service required by his society.

The disintegration of that tradition under the impress of external force: of colonialism in all its economic, religious, and educational modes, may necessitate some re-thinking of his acknowledged function, but does not destroy it. We may ask if society which has changed so radically in all its political and economic ways can retain those expectations by which in the past it had justified its artists' work. The answer would be that those deeply held African associations had not entirely disintegrated, but had merely been forced into accommodation and adaptation. These modifications in turn require of the artist similar adjustment, but not a repudiation or a new start based on Western literary principles. The African writer could avoid abdicating from his past because the residue of the tradition remained powerful. Only a kind of artistic suicide could result from the rejection of the past in its entirety. For this reason, the battle to determine the appropriate new role suitable for the new society was one of modification, of extension of an accepted policy, not a recreation of an entirely new social aesthetic. Such changes engender urgent debate, some of it enlightened! Most important it was not only conducted by the writers themselves. Since they were arguing their social place, people within the society provided their interpretations and expectations. Intellectuals sought to define the aesthetic of social necessity. Readers defined audience by their selection imposing preferential obligations. Party members and the governments added their often contradictory recommendations Urging a commitment to social change, asserting obligations and duties convenient to their own needs.

Outside of Africa, the new literary critics, now familiar with this writing because it employed their languages, were arguing about literary purity, critical values, scorning the practical utility of poetry which had justified the expectation of earlier African societies. The poet suffered a battering from all sides and he struggled with his versification. Till now, no one has properly examined the pressures and contradictions on writers encumbered by political change.

The threads of this debate, both aesthetic and historical, form the theme of Dr. Olafioye's new book [Politics in African Poetry]. Although as a formal critic he must necessarily be concerned with the basic literary qualities of the verse he describes, the underlying theme of his book lies elsewhere. It provides a chronological survey of African literature but the survey is not the expected one listing major works and literary trends. It examines the development of the role of the poet in African societies which has suffered such dramatic change under the impress of external events. This basic cultural history provides the context for what amounts to a debate concerning the appropriate commitments and duty of the modern African writer and the effect that his decision will have upon his work: how it will determine his purpose and his audience.

Dr. Olafioye's exploration begins in those early days when there was little controversy concerning the poet. One would like to say that there remains little controversy were it not that Africa still suffers from the degeneration inherited from colonial attitudes that deprecated and ridiculed all elements of the tradition. It is difficult but necessary to accept that the popular image of Africa continues to be drawn from Tarzan and Daktari. To the degree that such attitudes remain it is true as Dr. Olafioye says: "The African writer is today the light that penetrates that darkness."

To challenge such condemning views it is essential to set the historical context by reaffirming the values of the African precolonial culture and more specifically, to explore the position of the oral poet within that milieu. It is with a later period after the publication of European language written poetry, with its international intellectual audience, that this book is primarily concerned. Dr. Olafioye argues that the poets even in this new situation remain true to their earlier roles as spokesmen, and that they become the articulators of the direction of national change.

This historical progress is particularly obvious in Ghana, when in the forties there was a surge of published poetry by Gladys Casely-Hayford and Raphael Armattoe and the Nigerian, Dennis Osadebay. There existed a curious dualism in their work. By all stylistic analyses it borrowed the formal techniques of British late-Victorian verse patterns. That was a palpable weakness, but their significance rested elsewhere. As Dr. Olafioye says:

The poets themselves lacked originality in that they did not use traditional elements to create a new frontier for the English language. But as simple as their style was, their message was clear: independence.

Here there is argued an early distinction between medium and message. The explosion of stylistic originality breaking the fetters of colonial values was yet to come. But the essentially African role of the poet as spokesman and philosopher could not have been more clear in the vigorous subject matter even though it was cloaked in Victorian rhymes. These poets whose verse is usually now considered to be negligible, except as a historical curiosity lending direction to the development of finer writing, must be better admired for their providing a rallying cry in a time of colonialism. They were the earliest pan-Africanists; albeit in stilted English, they affirmed the dignity of the past and the worth of African culture, rejoicing in the then fresh appreciation that "God has been so gracious, as to make you black and brown." They had no difficulty in justifying their role. If these writers seem archaic today, their role as pioneers should not be dismissed. It was only some twenty years later that the new more expressive poets found their voices.

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