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Books by Niyi
Osundare
Songs of the Marketplace (2006)
/
The Word is an Egg
(2005) /
Pages from the Book of the Sun (2002) /
Two Plays (2006)
Thread in the Loom: Essays (2002) /
The State Visit (2002) /
Midlife (2005) /
Moonsongs (1988) /
The Eyes of the Earth (2007)
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Osundare's
Universe of Burdens
By Niyi Juliad
He made a noted exit. He made a noted
speech too - valedictory speech. Niyi Osundare, the literary
colossus, would rather not want to take his leave of this
beloved academic habitation now, but then, he had to go. It
was painful. Yes, it was the least desirable option. Also, it
was "premature" to repeat his original word. Compelled
by a superior reason to leave, Osundare did not choose to stay.
It was a marked moment that
signified a decisive delineation of boundaries between
sentiments and valid reason. And then, he left.
Now, he had to leave for good. But before then, he felt an
unmistakably strong urge to make a speech – long, total,
exhaustive and point blank – designed to rouse his audience to
intellectual soberness. He did not forget, too, to take his
eager audience through a laconic historical excursion into the
origin and meaning of “university” and other
associated terms and derivatives. The very substance of his
speech, UNIVERSE IN
THE UNIVERSITY, was very clear and outstanding. Now we know what
it means to behold the macrocosm of the world in the microcosm
of the university.
Poor man! Here, too, he spoke with elevated fondness about his
frustrated expectations and aspirations, and his damaged
emotions, which had for long been encased in the cask of time.
Nay, neither did he spare any mention of the pernicious inroads
made into the rank and file of the intellectual sheep by the
ravenous political wolves who had made their marked malevolent
contribution to the destruction of academic values and
intellectual traditions. At least, he was given the “uncommon
privilege” of making a valedictory speech, as a professor,
without the benefit of an inaugural speech, which was due to him
during the early days of his professorial anointment. Little
wonder then that his was a “valedictory speech of an unusual
sort”.
Osundare, a mere mortal, powerless, desperately wished he could
change a million things in his immediate academic world. But
wishes, it is said, are not horses. They are immobile, lifeless
products of imaginative leaps. Underlying his speech, as could
be discernibly gleaned, was a subtle acknowledgment of a
desperate need for a supernatural phenomenon to effect a turning
back of the hand of time. This was evident from his
nostalgic reminiscences and fond memories of the good old
academic days and times dotted by the impact and influential
presence of the past intellectual soldiers whose life, style and
doings now form an important part of the historical contents of
the nation’s premier university.
But alas! Little did he know that his echoes of truth were
waiting for him elsewhere to resonate and resound in the outside
world. Little did he know that he can run, but that he can’t
hide from universal truth. Much like the Biblical prophet Jonah
– Osundare being literary prophet himself – he defected
concerning the Nineveh of the premier university,
concerning enduring in proclaiming his God-given intellectual
ameliorist message, and headed to the Tar-shish of the
United States of America.
Like the windstorm that impeded and upset
the free-flowing course of the ship that harbored Jonah,
hurricane Katrina rudely hit New Orleans, where Osundare was
sojourning. While he lost part of his professorial dignity in
the smaller universe of the university of Ibadan, he lost all of
the paper evidences of his intellectual license, set afloat on
the ceaselessly drifting surface of flood waters brewed by
hurricane Katrina in the center of a larger universe.
Like the Osmosis of a bio-chemical process, the resonance of the
verity of his valedictory words journeyed from the region of a
lower concentration to the region of a higher concentration.
From a smaller universe to a larger universe. But what verity?
That unscrupulous human elements have always been responsible
for the blighting of whatever that was originally perfectly
founded for the general good, be it academic values,
intellectual traditions, human dignity or earth’s climate
system.
So whether it be cyclones, hurricanes,
typhoons, premonsoon heat waves, or bushfires, human selfish
activity has played a dismally saddening, added role in
affecting the frequency and the degree of natural disasters,
apart from underlying natural phenomena.
Now, again, Osundare has been another mortal victim of man’s
thoughtless negligence and destruction of the only habitat that
was designed for him by a Superior Intelligence. Nature has been
stripped naked and elements therein denatured. Who would rescue
man from this impending collective suicide?
Osundare must have imagined here too, in his inventive mind,
that he could do something to salvage the larger universe in
this regard. For while he was here in the smaller universe
of the university of Ibadan, he evidently supposed so. But in
his critical moment of wishful frenzy and undying quest for the
impossible return of the exact old seasons of
distinctive intellectual pursuit and academic excellence, he
seemed to temporarily banish to an oblivious corner of his
literary mind the fact that yesterday is gone. That today is in
its half-disked placement and tomorrow, though not yet beheld,
is curiously fast in coming. That, according to the Good Book,
wicked men and impostors, will proceed from bad to worse. That
the trend, the ceaseless trend, gropes in the chariot of time.
That the scene of this world is irredeemably changing without
recourse to a reversal of succession of days and times.
But, how does time move in such a mysterious manner that both
its origin and destination are not known? Why is it never
returning? Osundare may need a vivid reminding on this. Let it
be made clear that time moves in one direction only, much like
traffic on a one-way street. Whatever the speed of its forward
movement, time can never be thrown into
reverse. Therefore we live in a momentary present and, being in
motion, it flows ceaselessly into the past. There is no stopping
it.
The past, in its own case, is gone. Could
it be called back? No. To attempt that feat is the same as
trying to make a waterfall tumble uphill or an arrow fly back to
the bow that shot it. The past has been won or lost. No longer
is there any control over it. But the future is different. It is
always flowing towards us but not from us as is the case with
the past and the transient stay of the present. With each tick
of the clock, man journeys a step farther down the corridor of
time. I believe Osundare is somewhat, though likely reluctantly,
aware of and flowing with this reality of the stream of time.
However, given the power and the creative space to bestow a
material form upon the utopian ideas welling up in his inventive
mind, Osundare would, no doubt, invent another universe for us.
An earth planet where the intelligent beings therein will never
again be gifted or dignified with the power of choice that could
be misused to destroy values. An
“academic universe” wherein when we walk in the sun, we can
see our shadows and when we walk in the sand we can see our
footprints.
But, unfortunately, by no means has any
mortal been granted a power of such an immense proportion.
Otherwise, Osundare and the likes of him would have been able to
do something of note in this regard. But, in truth, hope for
this situates elsewhere. No, it does not lie even with the few
rightly-disposed mortal men.
So, know this, Mr. Osundare, sir, that there are myriads of
noble-minded people – old and young, men and women – who
thoroughly empathize and sympathize with you and your family.
Know, too, that when there is a will, there may not necessarily
be a way, when overwhelmingly besieged by and submerged in an
ocean of depraved men. That the most potent will may
succumb, in a collaborative despondency, to a mass of vitiating,
unrepentant pressures of fateful suppression. That each day
slips by with its own worries and dissatisfactions not capable
of being resolved by the apparent messianic potentials of the
succeeding days. That only the Supreme Being who made the
universe itself can and will set matters straight in his time
(REVELATION. 11:18)
Last line: May I be permitted to further console you with some
borrowed words from your own radiantly arranged poetic lines?
So, then, as the house runs away and forgets its roof and the
stone gathers its moss and smiles for all its pains, may you
continue to sew the rags of a broken sky. And when the day runs
away and leaves its sun, simply pick it up and ask for a song.
Niyi Juliad niyijuliad@yahoo.com
posted 30 January 2006
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Niyi
Osundare, who was born in Nigeria in 1947 and is currently a
professor of English literature at the university of New
Orleans, is considered the greatest living Nigerian poet. Most
of his books are published in Nigeria;
The Word is an Egg,
his latest collection, appeared earlier this year. Just
recently, two books of his,
Pages from the Book of the Sun:
New & Selected Poems and
Thread in the Loom: Essays
on African Literature and Culture, were published in the
United States by African World Press. His work has been
translated in Dutch, German, Korean and French, and has won many
literary awards, such as the Noma.
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update 8 July 2008 |
