Items

• Tracts for the times: Art, Dialogue and Outrage by Wole Soyinka

  Andrew St. George reviews Wole Soyinka's essay collection, suggesting, "Soyinka sparkles and delights. He carries his credentials lightly but likes the sound they make when they drop...But criticism for Soyinka travels both ways down a broad street; these essays foster a taste for the inordinate and mischievous which works with and against Nigerian culture."
• The music of Milan

  [A review of Italian poet Vittorio Sereni's collections]...The first part of Sereni's masterpiece, "Un posto di vacanza" contains two snatches of quotation in italics. While his few notes for Stella variabile (1981) had indicated that the second is from his translation of "Ton Oeuvre" by the Malagasay poet Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, he had seen no need to point out that the first was of lines from an epigram by Fortini, "Sereni esile mito" (Sereni slender myth), which had cited his own war poem "Italiano in Grecia" to criticize its "perplessa musica" and attack his belief in youth: "Non sempre giovinezza e verita", Fortini writes (Youth is not always truth).
• The Lyrics of the President

  "This appears to be the first book-length study of President Senghor's poetry available in English. That fact alone is surprising, when one reflects that the past few years have seen the appearance of studies of Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka (three), Mongo Beti, and Peter Abrahams...Nevertheless, his book has the important merits of being pleasant to read, freshly written, free from any thesis-like fussiness and innocent of obscurity."
• Spring Announcements

  The short announcement mentions the release of Francis Cary [sic] Slater's new collection of poetry, "Dark Folk and Other Poems," along with a few other works also being published by Blackwoods.
• Specialist issues: Literature

  [A review of Research in African Literatures, volume 18.] It may be that there are "already too many little magazines and academic journals in existence, more than any of us can read or subscribe to, even in our own disciplines". This is how Sheila Roberts opens a review of a new English-language journal from an Afrikaans university in the spring 1987 issue of Research in African Literatures. The new journal sounds all too supernumerary, indeed. But where else might such a publication be knowledgeably noticed? More important, where else would such a notice be found jostled by reviews of Volume Four of the Unesco General History of Africa, Spracher, Geschichte und Kultur in Afrika (papers of the third conference of African linguists held in Cologne in October 1982) and Monica Wanambisi's Thought and Technique in the Poetry of Okot p'Bitek (1984)? These are only five of the twenty-five reviews which--as is usual in this journal--make up close on half the contents...
• Sounding the Sixties--2: The Commonwealth

  Derwent May considers the state of the Commonwealth, mostly through its production of literature: "The emergence of an African literature in English is undoubtedly the most extraordinary and significant development of the past five years...He has, however, been followed by other more discplined and less extravagent writers, of whom Mr. Chinua Achebe is unquestionably the chief; and other countries besides Mr. Tutuola's native Nigeria have made their contributions, the latest being Kenya, in the person of Mr. James Ngugi. Everyone is now conscious of the African writer; in poetry but especially in prose... Wonderful Africa has replaced the West Indies as the centre of interest."
• Sophiatown Style

  Critic Dennis Walder suggests that Lewis Nkosi in Tasks and Masks is "particularly persuasive on modern African poetry." Nkosi cites Ranaivo, Rabearivelo, Rabemananjaro as cosmopolitan Malagasy poets; Walder suggests that these poets "elicit from Nkosi close and sympathetic attention, and a convincing application of his overall argument - announced at the start as an obsessive idea that African writers are 'easily divisible' into two groups: those who see their society as unchanging, like a mask turned perpetually in the artist's hands, 'each time revealing nothing more than what it is, the work of some skillful carver who originally imparted to it its outstanding features'; and those writers who conceive 'of the act of writing as the carrying out of social tasks'." Walder writes, "As Nkosi applies this distinction, the remarkably rich and varied literary manifestations of the continent do begin to fall into a kind of order. And its application enables the critic to proceed to the level of insight which relates the different uses of, for example, traditional Malagasy folk poetry - the so-called hain-teny or proverb formula - by the poets concerned, to their respective personal and class positions: Rabearivelo, the 'deracinated' intellectual whose reworking of the hain-teny conceits read like translation; and Ranaivo, the rediscoverer of his own culture who integrates the hain-teny into his work, thus bringing together 'task' and 'mask'."
• Sheer ingenuity of Soyinka's plot

  Royal Court Theatre: The Lion and the Jewel by Wole Soyinka. This is the third play by Wole Soyinka to appear in London since last year, and this work alone is enough to establish Nigeria as the most fertile new source of English-speaking drama since Synge's discovery of the Western Isles. Even this comparison does Soyinka less than justice, for he is dealing not only with a rich folk material, but with the impact of the modern world on tribal custom: to find any parallel for his work in English drama you have to go back to the Elizabethans...It is tempting to linger over the sheer ingenuity of Soyinka's plot. But what comes over even more strongly in Desmond O'Donovan's production is his originality of scene construction (a sparring match in proverbs, reflected in a simultaneous wrestling bout), and the richly expressive range of speech idioms...
• Senegal's shining beacon

  Roland Oliver reviews Janet G. Vaillant's biography of Leopold Senghor. The book is "directed far more towards Senghor's contribution as a poet and thinker than to his career as a politician and statesman" which "makes agreeable reading."
• Remainders

  I've always had a soft spot for Madagascar, if only because the people are called Malgache, which sounds as if it ought to mean a soft spot ("I was abseiling down the bergschrund when I dropped my karabiners into a malgache"), and because of the soft musicality of their language. "Tsaroako ny tsikin'ny androko omaly/Izay manjary aloka foana, indrisy!" sings J. J. Rabearivelo in Love Song, which may be rendered (courtesty K. Katzner, Languages of the World, Routledge and Kegan Paul) "I recall the joys of days gone by / They waned alas to flit away!" But when I read that an armoured division of the Malagasy Army had been called in to destroy the dojo of an intransigent karate sect which had been terrorizing peaceable tourists (or, according to others, brutally to extirpate the only democratic opposition) I thought it was time to be better informed...
• Poet of Senegal

  Gerald Moore reviews two selections of Senghor's work; one with an introductory essay from Armand Guibert, wherein "he offers a good deal of material on the poet's origins and the formation of his style" followed by a collection of his work; and the second as Senghor's first new book of poetry for five years, which Moore calls "a disappointment." Moore ends the review by suggesting that "Africa has moved into a new era...of more direct self-expression free from obsessive reactions against assimilation, colonialism, and so forth" and that Senghor has "failed to make a new exploration of experience and his poetry has lost some of its relevance."
• Poet among the Presidents of Africa

  John Dickie and Alan Rake created a compendium of information about leaders and Presidents of different African nations, which critic John Young calls "useful and surprisingly readable."
• Paths to Refinement

  Both the virtues and weaknesses of the later Christopher Okigbo's poetry are visible in the first collection of his fellow-Ibo and young compatriot Micheal Echeruo….
• One man's map

  It is becoming unusual for reference books to be content simply to dispense information: often nowadays they are also intended to stimulate. Harry Blamires, in his introduction to A Guide to Twentieth Century Literature in English, discloses that he and his two fellow compilers have been free with their opinions, in the belief, it seems, that an unopinionated guide might put readers to sleep. Yet a book like this, encyclopedic in form, is more likely to be consulted than read, and it might be felt that utility rather than readability ought to have been teh primary concern...As the survey approaches the present, its drawing o the literary map--at least of the British one--becomes very crude indeed. A. N. Wilson is in, but not William Boyd, Malcom Bradmury is there but not David Lodge... Is Okot p'Bitek Uganda's sole literary contender? The editor has attempted the impossible with too little assistance and, struggling to be both authoritative and diverting, has ended up with a book which will satisfy few readers.
• Modern African Writers

  Modern African Writers: General editor, Gerald Moore. An important new series presenting critical studies of the works of Africa's leading novelists, poets, and dramatists. Wole Soyinka: Gerlad Moore. An account of the work of this remarkable Nigerian writer, best known as a major dramatist but also widely praised as a poet, novelist, and commentator.
• Longmans

  Selected works of the famous South African poet, whose verse portrays so vividly the atmosphere of his country.
• Literature as Symptom

  [Excerpt]: "It is not only the Russians whose literature, as last week's front-page article argued, is liable to be dissected for its bearing on social and political conditions. To a certain extent this happens anywhere--the Russians themselves, for instance, often do the same thing for that of capitalist countries, sometimes with very misleading results--and it is a useful enough pastieme so long as it is not allowed to determine aesthetic judgments...Even then, if white writers are excluded from consideration, as they tacitly were throughout the conference, the basis for any kind of critical generalization is still slight. Perhaps that is why both Mr. Donatus Nwoga's paper on the short story and Mr. Mphahlele's own on the novel consisted largely of lengthy quotations from a handful of writers. Even Mr. Ulli Beier, of Ibadan, who is the outstanding critic in this field, confined himself virutally to the writings of the Nigerians Christopher Okigbo and J. P. Clark and the South African poet Dennis Brutus, saying that he had not seen more than six or seven poems by such other promising writers as Wole Soyinka and Gabriel Okara. We are certainly far from being able to speak of African literature as a whole..."
• In Brief: Poetry

  The Song Atlas is an ambitiously compiled anthology, painstakingly edited by John Gallas. The book sets out to embrace alphabetically samples of verse from countries as far ranging as Afghanistan and Zimbabwe (the editor has been unable to find a nation beginning with X). In these days of superfluous poetic gallimaufries, this is a gatherum which at least seems to have some purpose. It consists of piece which Gallas acknowledges to have been found and translated by a multitude of hands. The quality (and, indeed, the comprehensibility) of these poems is variable, but that is to be expected, given the cultural divergence involved... And from Uganda, Gallas proffers a similarly minimalist thought-provoking oddity by Okot p'Bitek (1931-82): "Where's / the Eyeshop? / When will I ever see Ms Right? / I ogle her with anger." ...
• At the crossroads of cultures

  [Excerpt]: Nadine Gorimer reviews Chinua Achebe's collection of essays Morning Yet on Creation Day. "Named by Christianized parents after Queen Victoria's beloved; master of the colonial master's tongue, splendidly appropriating it to interpret his country's and people's past; bold user of freedom won by Africa against white domination; Albert Chinualumogu became Chinua Achebe is himself the definitive African experience... Alternatively, there are writers who regard the category "African writer" (with its concomitant, African critic?) as a patronizing relegation to literary provincialism. Achebe quotes Nigeria's finest poet, Christopher Okigbo: "There is no African literature. There is good writing and bad writing--that's all." ..."
• African Playwright and Poet

  We must hope that the reception given at the Royal Court last night to verses and songs by Mr. Wole Soyinka and to his one act play The Invention will make this Nigerian writer less suspicious of the London theatre than he gives the impression of being. Whenever he allowed a reader or a character to speak directly to the audience, the audience responded. It went more than half way towrads doing so even when Mr. Soyinka plainly was not addressing it. If he thinks this was prompted by the thing he hates most, a patronizing attitude on the part of a white audience, it will be a pity. It was prompted by respect for his gift for words. When his words were clear, clarity was their most striking quality. At those times he had written briefly, without repeating himself, and then suddenly the wish to do just that, to say it all over again, became too strong for him. What his last comment was on the relationship between the races most of us will never know. For instead of making it at the end of The Invention he made a joke, or else, figuratively speaking, he mumbled. So the comment was lost. For us, a pity.
• African Honeymoon

  Frank Norman writes an article regarding his trip to South Africa and how his preconceived notions of the country line up with the actuality. He discusses he and his wife's flight in, how he has been warned by friends to "trust no-one," and South African apartheid. At a cocktail party with friends, he meets Oswald Joseph Mtshali, the poet, of whom he says: "His poems are lyrical and powerfully composed. They are a cry of anguish for the plight of the black man in South Africa and are often devastatingly critical of the Vorstere regime. But it cannot be said that they are a call to arms, which is doubtless why publication has been permitted -- in order that the world can see how liberal the South African Government really is." "In the evening Nadine gave a cocktail party for us, so that we could meet some of the local literati, journalists and the like. Notable among the guests was Oswald Joseph Mtshali, a black African poet whose book, Sounds of a Cowhide, is a run away bestseller among both black and white readers."
• Africa on Record

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• A World of Riches

  Putting novels, plays, verse, essays and so on into literary categories is an important but not very impressive exercise. It matters because the written word is so huge, various, and surprising that some sort of mark is needed for tourists--and we are all tourists. But one category that does not work is that of "black African literature." Africa is too rich and too varous for that box to hold very much...
• A Literature in the Making

  Professor J. P. R. Wallis writes of the development of poetry and literature in South Africa. He suggests that "the insurmountable obstacle in the way of those who would discourse of South African literature is that as yet it does not exist," in that the Union of the nation has "not unity in any intimate spiritual sense of the word." Wallis continues in exploring the different authors that are working in South Africa, such as poets F. Carey Slater, Roy Campbell, and Charles Murray, among other prose writers.
• An astonishing first novel

  "Patricia Finney was 17 when she wrote A Shadow of Gulls."