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Wole Soyinka

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Wole Soyinka
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Wole Soyinka

Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka (born July 13, 1934) is a Nigerian writer. Some consider him Africa's most distinguished playwright. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, the first person of African descent to be so honored.

Soyinka was born into a poor Yoruba family in Abeokuta, Nigeria in 1934. He received a primary school education in Abeokuta and secondary school at Government College, Ibadan. He studied at the University College, Ibadan (1952-1954) and the University of Leeds (1954-1957) from which he received an honours degree in English Literature. He worked as a play reader at the Royal Court Theatre in London before returning to Nigeria to study African drama. He taught in the Universities of Lagos, Ibadan, and Ife (becoming Professor of Comparative Literature there in 1975).

Soyinka has played an active role in Nigeria's political history. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War he was arrested by the Federal Government and put in solitary confinement for his attempts at brokering a peace between the warring parties. While in prison he wrote poetry which was published in a collection titled Poems from Prison. He was released 22 months later after international attention was drawn to his imprisonment. His experiences in prison are recounted in his book [[The Man Died: Prison Notes]].

He has been an outspoken critic of many Nigerian administrations, and of political tyrannies worldwide, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. A great deal of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". This activism has often exposed him to great personal risk most notable during the government of the Nigerian dictator General Sani Abacha (1993-1998). During Abacha's dictatorship, Soyinka left the country on voluntary exile and has since been living abroad (mainly in the United States where he was a professor at Emory University in Atlanta). When civilian rule returned in 1999, Soyinka accepted an emeritus post at Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) on the condition that the university bar all former military officers from the position of chancellor. Soyinka is currently the Elias Ghanem Professor of Creative Writing at the English department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

In 2005, he became one of the spearheads of an alternative National conference - PRONACO.

Contents

Works

Plays

Novels

Poetry collections

Essays

Movies

Chronology

1934: Born Oluwole Akinwande Soyinka on July 13 in Ijebu Isara in Western Nigeria. His father Ayo was a school supervisor and his mother Eniola "a trader."

1957: Begins work for M. A. at Leeds but abandons graduate studies to work in theater; serves as play reader for Royal Court Theatre, London.

September 1958: Produces The Swamp Dwellers for the University of London Drama Festival.

February 1959: The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel produced in Ibadan; November: Writes, produces, and acts in An Evening without Decor, a medley of his work, at the Royal Court Theatre, London; attacks racism and colonial repression in Africa in these and other works.

1960: Returns to Nigeria; March: The Trials of Brother Jero produced at Ibadan; May: Acts role of Yang Sun in The Good Woman of Setzuan at Ibadan; October: completes, directs, and acts in A Dance of the Forests with his own acting company, 1960 Masks.

1961-1964: Directs plays by other playwrights, Ibadan; attacks political intriguing, corruption, and manipulation of mass media in The (new) Republican and Before the Blackout.

1960-1962: Rockefeller Research Fellow; attached to English Department at the University of Ibadan studying African drama; December: "Towards a True Theatre" (essay); writes political satire on based on emergency in Western Nigeria.

1962-1963: Lecturer, Department of English, University of Ife.

1963: Culture in Transition (film).

December 1964: Founds, with others, the Drama Association of Nigeria.

1965: The Interpreters (novel) published in London; April: Writes and directs Before the Blackout, Orisun Theatre; directs Kongi's Harvest, Lagos; September: records The Detainee for BBC in London.

1965-1967: Senior lecturer, Department of English, University of Lagos; criticizes personality cults and dictatorship in Africa.

April 1966: Revives Kongi's Harvest, Dakkar festival; June: Trials of Brother Jero produced, Hampstead Theatre Club, London; December: The Lion and the Jewel , Royal Court Theatre, London; shares John Whiting Award with Tom Stoppard.

1967: Head of the Department of Theater Arts, University of Ibadan; June: "The Writer in a Modern African State;" August to October 1969 imprisoned for writings sympathetic to secessionist Biafra; September: The Lion and the Jewel produced Accra; November: Trials of Brother Jero and The Strong Breed produced, Greenwich Mews Theatre, New York; Idanre and Other Poems.

April 1968: Kongi's Harvest, produced by Negro Ensemble Company, New York.

February 1969: The Road produced by Theatre Limited, Kampala, Uganda; Poems from Prison, London.

August 1970: Completes and directs Madmen and Specialists with Ibadan University Theare Arts Company in New Haven, Connecticut (at Yale?); play tours to Harlem; directs plays by Pirandello and others; Kongi's Harvest (film).

1971: A Shuttle in the Crypt (poems); March: revives Madmen and Specialists in Ibadan; acts Patrice Lumumba in John Littlewood's French production of Conor Cruise O'Brien's Murderous Angels, Paris; testifies before Kazeem Enquiry on violation of students' rights.

1972: Publishes his prison notes, The Man Died, London; July: produces extracts from A Dance of the Forests in Paris.

1973: Honorary Ph. D., University of Leeds; Season of Anomy (novel); Collected Plays I; August: National Theatre, London, produces Bacchae of Euripides, which it commissioned.

1973-74: Overseas Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge, and Visiting Professor of English, University of Sheffield; Collected Plays II.

1975: Edited Poems of Black Africa, London and New York; "Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Tradition" (essay); attacks Idi Amin in Transition.

1976: Ogun Abibiman (poems); Myth, Literature, and the African World; Visiting Professor, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon; Professor, University of Ife; September: Nairobi High School production of A Dance of the Forests; October: French production of A Dance of the Forests, Dakar, Gambia; December: produces Death and the King's Horseman, Ife.

1978: "Language as Boundary" (essay).

1981: Aké: The Years of Childhood (autobiography); Opera Wonyosi, an adaptation of Brecht's Three Penny Opera; "The Critic and Society: Barthes, Leftocracy, and Other Mythologies" (essay).

1982: Blues for the Prodigal (film) released; "Cross Currents: The 'New African' after Cultural Encounters" (essay).

December 1983: Die Still, Rev. Dr. Godspeak (radio play); Requiem for a Futurologist (play) produced at Ife university; Blues for a Prodigal (film); "Shakespeare and the Living Dramatist" (essay); (July) - Unlimited Liability Company (phonograph recording).

1984: A Play of Giants (play).

1985: Requiem for a Futorologist published; "Climates of Art" (Herbert Read Memorial Lecture), Institute of Contemporary Art, London.

1986: Nobel Prize for Literature. "The External Encounter: Ambivalence in African Arts and Literature" (essay), A Play of Giants (play), Fellow, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; Agip Prize for Literature; 1986 (October); Awarded of Nigeria's second highest honour, Commander of the Federal Republic, CFR.;

1987: Six Plays; Childe Internationale (play) republished.

1989: "The Search" (short story).

1991: Sisi Clara Workshop on Theatre (Lagos); A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play) BBC African Service; "The Credo of Being and Nothingness" (The First Rev. Olufosoye Annual Lecture in Religion, delivered at the University of Ibadan on January 25th, 1991; published.

1992: From Zia With Love.

1993: honorary doctorate, Harvard University.

1994: Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946-1965) (autobiography); Memories of a Nigerian Childhood; Flees Nigeria (November).

1995: The Beatification of Area Boy.

1996: The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis.

March 1997: Charged with treason by military dictatorship. Considered one of Africa's poets alongside Cesair,Senghor,Ohaeto, B'tek,Okigbo,Ohanyido,Okara,Clark and so forth. [link]

2005: Together with Nigerian elder statesman Chief Anthony Enahoro, he convened an alternative national confab under the aegis of PRONACO (Pro -national conference group). On the 26th of November 2005 he was conferred with the prestigious chieftaincy title of [Akinlatun of Egbaland] by the Alake (King) of the Egba people of Yorubaland where he hails from.

Biography

Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka was born on 13th July 1934, in the town of Ijebu Isara, close to Abeokuta, in Western Nigeria (which at that time was a British dominion), as second of six children of Samuel Ayodele Soyinka and Grace Eniola Soyinka. His father was the headmaster of St. Peters School in Abeokuta. His mother owned a shop in the nearby market and was a respected political activist for the local community. She followed the Catholic faith, although among his father's family and in the vicinity, there were many followers of the indigenous Yoruba religious tradition. Soyinka since the beginning had grown in an atmosphere of religious syncretism, which has had a great influence on his yet forming personality, because as a little boy he had contact with the traditional Yoruba beliefs and Christianity as well.

In 1939 when Wole was barely a five years old boy, World War II broke out. The home of the Soyinka family had electricity and radio (chiefly thanks to his father), so little Wole listened with curiosity to the news from war-torn Europe. This information was almost completely dominated by Adolf Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany. Soon enough, Hitler embodied the world's evils to the young listener.

About year 1940, after attending St. Peters Primary School, Soyinka goes to Abeokuta Grammar School, were he won several prizes for composition. In 1946 he is accepted by Government College in Ibadan, at that time Nigeria’s most elite secondary school. Upon completion of his studies at college Soyinka moved to Lagos, where he found employment as a clerk. During this time he wrote some radio plays and short stories that were broadcasted on Nigerian radio. stations. After finishing his course in 1952, Soyinka began studies at University College in Ibadan, connected with University of London. During this course he studied English literature, Greek, and Western history.

In the year 1953-1954, his second and the last at University College in Ibadan before moving to Leeds in England, he worked as an editor for “The Eagle”, a non frequent periodical of humorous character. On the second page of this journal, he wrote commentaries about academic life, often criticizing stingingly his college's students. Well known for his dogged tongue, he is said to have courteously defended affronted and insulted female colleagues. He soon began to write his first publication, a short radio broadcast for Nigerian Broadcasting Service National Programme called "Keffi's Birthday Threat", which was broadcasted in July 1954 in Nigerian Radio Times.

Later that year, Soyinka moved to England, where he continued his studies in English literature, under the supervision of his mentor Wilson Knight. He became acquainted then with a number of young, gifted British writers. Before defending his B.A., Soyinka successfully engaged in literary fiction, (at that time he publishes several pieces of comedic nature). After that, he stayed in Leeds with an intention of earning an M.A. Influenced by his promoter, Soyinka decided to attempt to merge European theatrical traditions with those of the Yoruba people.

In 1958 his first major play emerged, titled “The Swamp Dwellers”. One year later he wrote “The Lion and The Jewel”, a comedy which aroused an interest in several members of the London Royal Court Theatre. Encouraged Soyinka leaves his doctoral studies and moves to London, where he worked as play reader for Royal Court Theatre. At the same time, both his plays were displayed in Ibadan.

In 1960, awarded with Rockefeller Research Fellowship, Soyinka returns to Nigeria. In March he produced in Ibadan his new satire “The Trials of Brother Jero”, which establishes his fame as Nigeria’s foremost dramatist. His play “A Dance of The Forest” wins a contest for official play for Nigerian Independence Day and on 1st October has its premiere in Lagos. Soyinka establishes an amateur ensemble acting company Nineteen-Sixty Masks. With the money gained from Rockefeller Foundation for research on African Theater, he buys a Land Rover and began traveling throughout the country as a researcher of the Department of English Language of University in Ibadan. In one of the essays published at this time, he criticizes Leopold Senghor's negritude, as a nostalgic and indiscriminate glorification of the black African past that ignores the potential benefits of modernization. “A tiger does not shout its tigritude”, he declares, “it acts”.

In December 1962 his essay “Towards a True Theater” was published. He began working for the Department of English Language of University in Ife. Soyinka discussed current affairs with “negrophiles”, and on several occasions openly opposed the government censorship. At the end of 1963 emerges his first feature-length movie “Culture in Transition”. In April 1964 his famous novel The Interpreters is brought out in London. In December, together with other scientists and men of theater, he founds Drama Association of Nigeria. This same year he resigned his post at the University, as a protest against imposed pro-governmental behavior by authorities. A Few months after that, he gets arrested for the first time, accused of underlying tapes during reproduction of recorded speech of the winner of Nigerian elections, but he got released after few months confinement, as a result of protests by the international community of writers. This same year he also wrot two more dramatic pieces: “Before the Blackout” and comedy “Kongi’s Harvest”, and a radio play for London BBC called “The Detainee”. At the end of the year Wole Soyinka got promoted to headmaster and senior lecturer in the Department of English Language at Lagos University.

In his political speeches at that time, he criticizes on several occasions the cult of personality and government corruption in African dictatorships. April 1965 brought a revival of his play “Kongi’s Harvest” on I International Festival of Negro Art in Dakar, Senegal, where another of his plays “The Road” was awarded the Grand Prix. In June Soyinka produced his play “The Lion and The Jewel” for Hampstead Theatre Club in London.

Year 1967 is the year of severe political tensions in Nigeria. In May begins The Biafra War, which aim is to separate from Nigeria reach in oil Biafra Region, populated mostly by Ibo community. Soyinka becomes chief of Cathedral of Drama in University of Ibadan. In August he secretly and unofficially meets Ibo leader Chukuemka Odumwegu Ojukwu in the Nigerian town of Enugu, with the aim to persuade him to stop the actions tending to separate Ibo land from Nigeria. Out of an order of President Gowon, Soyinka is arrested and imprisoned. This same year in September his play “The Lion and The Jewel” is produced in Accra, and in November “The Trials of Brother Jero” and “The Strong Breed” are displayed in Greenwich Mews Theatre in New York. Also appears a collection of his poetry called Idanre and Other Poems.

In 1968, also in New York, the group Negro Ensemble Company shows “Kongi’s Harvest”. Soyinka translates from Yoruba a collection of poems of his compatriot D.O. Fagunwa, called "The Forest of a Thousand Demons: A Hunter's Saga". In October 1969, when Biafra Secession comes to an end, the amnesty is proclaimed, and Soyinka leaves the walls of his prison. First few months after the release, Soyinka spends on his friend’s farm in southern France, where he tries to come round after the period of mental stagnation. There emerges one of his most prominent masterpieces, “The Bacchae of Euripides”. In London appears a tome of his poetry, Poems from Prison. At the end of the year, he returns to his office of Headmaster of Cathedral of Drama in Ibadan, and cooperates in founding of the literary periodical “Black Orpheus”.

In 1970 he produces “Kongi’s Harvest”. At the same time a film of the same title is being produced. In June 1970 he ends another play, called “Madman and Specialist’s”. With the intention of gaining theatrical experiences, along with the group of fifteen actors of Ibadan University Theatre Art Company, he goes on a trip to famous Eugene O’Neil Memorial Theatre Centre in New Heaven, Connecticut, where his new play has its premiere. In 1971 appears his poetry collection A Shuttle in the Crypt. In March “Madmen and Specialists” is exposed afresh in Ibadan. In Paris, in the French movie of Conor’s Cruise O’Brien called “Murderous Angels”, he acts Patrice Lubumba. He also testifies in a process of violation of student's rights. His book The Man Died, a collection of notes from prison is issued the same year. In April, concerned about political situation in Nigeria, Soyinka resigns of his duty at the University in Ibadan, and goes on a few years voluntary exile. In July he shows in Paris some fragments of his famous play “The Dance of The Forests”.

In 1972 he's decreed a Honoris Causa doctorate at University of Leeds. Appears another of his novels Season of Anomy, and Oxford University Press issues his Collected Plays 1. This same year National Theatre of London, which actually commissioned the play, shows “The Bacchae of Euripides”. In 1973 the plays "Camwood On the Leaves", and "Jero's Metamorphosis" are first published. During the period of 1973-1975, Soyinka devotes himself to scientific activity. He undergoes one year probation in Churchill College in Cambridge University, and gives a series of lectures at some European Universities.

In 1974 “Collected Plays 2” is issued by Oxford University Press. In 1975 Soyinka is promoted the editor of “Transition” magazine in the capital of Ghana, Accra (where he moves for some time). On the columns of that periodical, he attacks again the “negrofiles” (in his essay “Neo-Tarsanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition”), and military regimes, protesting against military revolt of Idi Amina in Uganda. After political turnover in Nigeria, and subversion of military government of President Gowon, the same year of 1975, he returns to his homeland and takes command of the Cathedral of Comparative Literature in University in Ife.

In 1976 appears a collection of his poetry Ogun Abibiman, and an essay’s collection Myth, Literature and the African World, where Soyinka explores the genesis of the mysticism in African theatre and, using examples from literatures of both continents, appoints the similarities and the differences between European and African cultures. In Institute of African Studies at the University of Legon in Ghana, he gives a series of guest lectures. He also graduates as Professor on the University in Ife. In October the French version of “The Dance of The Forests” is displayed in Dakar. In Ife “Death and The King’s Horseman” has its premiere.

In 1977 one of his foremost spectacles, an adaptation of Bertold Brecht's "Three Penny Opera" called “Opera Wonyosi” is staged, and in 1979 Soyinka directs and acts one of the major roles in Jon Blair and Norman Fenton drama “The Biko Inquest”, which story is based on the story of Steven Biko, a South African student and human right activist beaten to death by racist policemen. In 1981 comes out Wole Soyinka’s first autobiographical novel, called Ake: The Years of Childhood.

Soyinka founds another theatrical group (after Nineteen-Sixty Masks), called Guerrilla Unit. Its aim is to cooperate with local communities analyzing their actual problems and then, giving response to some of their resulting anomalies in short sketched-performances. He also writes the essay “Cross Currents: The New African’ after Cultural Encounters”. In 1983 the play “Requiem for a Futurologist” has its primeval performance at the University of Ife. In July Unlimited Liability Company issues a long play record, titled “I Love My Country”, where most famous stars of Nigerian popular music, play songs composed and provided with lyrics by Wole Soyinka. On the turn of 1983-1984 he directs his new movie "Blues for a Prodigal", which has its premiere in 1984. This year also another of his plays “A Play of Giants” is released.

The Years 1975-1984 are for Soyinka a period of increased political activity. During that time he is among authorities of University of Ife and supports state government where, among other duties, he is responsible for public roads security. He continuously criticizes corruption in government of President Shehu Shagari, and often founds himself at odds with his successor, Mohammadu Buhari. In 1984 a Nigerian court banes The Man Died and in 1985 the play "Requiem for a Futurologist" is printed in London.

1986 is undoubtedly his year of major glory and, incidentally, over several violent and repressive African regimes. The Royal Swedish Academy awards him with Nobel Prize for Literature, as the one “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence”. This way the foremost Nigerian dramatist became, at the same time, the first African laureate of Nobel Prize, enrolling for good to the history of world’s literature, and to the heritage of human nation. The Nobel Lecture which Soyinka proclaimed on this occasion, devoted to the person on South African politic Nelson Mandela, criticizing apartheid and politics of racial segregation of then South African government. This year brings him another award - Agip Prize for Literature and at the end of it, his awarded with Nigerian national decoration, Commander of the Federal Republic.

In year 1988 in New York appears his new collection of poems Mandela's Earth, and Other Poems, and in Nigeria appears another essays collection entitled Art, Dialogue and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture. The year 1990, the second part of his memoir called Isara: A Voyague Around Essay comes out. In July 1991 the BBC African Service transmits his radio play “A Scourge of Hyacinths”, and the next year (in June 1992) in Siena (Italy), his play “From Zia with Love” has its premiere. Both the performances are very bitter political parodies, based on events which took place in Nigeria in 1980’s. In 1993 Soyinka is awarded with Honoris Causa doctorate at the Harvard University. The next year appears another part of his autobiography Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946-1965). The following year brings the publication of the play “The Beatification of Area Boy”. In November 1994 Soyinka flees from Nigeria through the border with Benin and then to United States. In 1996 his book The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis is first published.

In 1997 Wole Soyinka was charged of treason by the government of General Sani Abacha. In 1999 emerges a new tome of poems of Wole Soyinka entitled Outsiders. His newest play released in 2001, is called "King Baabu" and is another strong, political satire on African dictatorship. In 2002 a collection of his poems Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known is printed by Methuen. And in 2004 utters WS: A Life is Full, an illustrated biography of Wole Soyinka by Bankole Olayebi, with more than 600 photographs since 1934. The latest release of WS is a memoir called "You Must Set Forth at Dawn", published in april 2006 by Random House.

Wole Soyinka has four children, one boy and three girls from his wife Laide. He had 2 children prior to his first marriage.

See also

External links

Nobel Prize in Literature: Laureates (1976-2000)
1976: Bellow | 1977: Aleixandre | 1978: Singer | 1979: Elytis | 1980: Miłosz | 1981: Canetti | 1982: García Márquez | 1983: Golding | 1984: Seifert | 1985: Simon | 1986: Soyinka | 1987: Brodsky | 1988: Mahfouz | 1989: Cela | 1990: Paz | 1991: Gordimer | 1992: Walcott | 1993: Morrison | 1994: Oe | 1995: Heaney | 1996: Szymborska | 1997: Fo | 1998: Saramago | 1999: Grass | 2000: Gao

 

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