Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays

I must confess I do like some things in that statement, not least his juxtaposition of presidents and terrorists, for when a president pursues a terrorist the two become quite indistinguishable! Nevertheless, I consider Kundera’s position too Eurocentric, too d

ogmatic and therefore erroneous. If the novel came about in particular ways and circumstances, must it remain forever in the mould of its origin? If Europe discovered relativity in human affairs rather late, does it follow that everybody else did? And finally, can anyone seriously suggest that the novel proclaims no morality?

In the introduction to his book Ninety-nine Novels—the Best in English Since 1939 the British novelist Anthony Burgess states—correctly in my opinion—that “the novel is what the symphony or painting or sculpture is not—namely a form steeped in morality.”6 Needless to say, Burgess is not talking about what he himself calls black-and-white, Sunday-sermon, conventional morality. “Rather,” he says, “a novel will question convention and suggest to us that the making of moral judgements is difficult. This can be called the higher morality.”7

And yet we cannot simply dismiss the desperate plea of Milan Kundera, an artist speaking out of the experience of an authoritarian state that arrogates to itself powers to define truth and morality for the writer. No! We must recognize his special exigencies or, as he himself says, “how relative human affairs really are.” Or, as Burgess says, “that the making of moral judgements is difficult.”

We may have been talking about individualism as if it was invented in the West or even by one American, Emerson. In fact, individualism must be, has to be, as old as human society itself. From whatever time humans began to move around in groups the dialogue between Manoni’s polarities of “social being” and “inner personality” or, more simply, between the individual and the community must also have been called into being. It is inconceivable that it shouldn’t. The question then is not whether this dialectic has always existed but rather how particular peoples resolved it at particular times.

One of mankind’s oldest written records, the Old Testament, has a fine and dramatic moment when the prophet Ezekiel proposes to his people a shift in dealing with the old paradox. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” he says, superseding in that bold declaration the teaching that when fathers eat sour grapes their children’s teeth are set on edge.

Some years ago, John Updike after he had finished reading my Arrow of God wrote me a letter in which he made some interesting observations. I’d like to quote a paragraph from that letter because it has an interesting bearing on what I have been trying to say:

The final developments of Arrow of God proved unexpected and, as I think about them, beautifully resonant, tragic and theological. That Ezeulu, whom we had seen stand up so invincibly to both Nwaka and Clarke, should be so suddenly vanquished by his own god Ulu and by something harsh and vengeful within himself, and his defeat in a page or two be the fulcrum of a Christian lever upon his people, is an ending few Western novelists would have contrived; having created a hero they would not let him crumble, nor are they, by and large, as truthful as you in their witness to the cruel reality of process.

Of course a Westerner would be most reluctant to destroy “in a page or two” the very angel and paragon of creation—the individual hero. If indeed he has to be destroyed, it must be done expansively with detailed explanations and justifications, not to talk of lamentations. And he must be given as final tribute the limelight in which to speak a grand, valedictory soliloquy!

The non-Westerner does not as a rule have those obligations because in his traditional scheme and hierarchy the human hero does not loom so large. Even when, like Ezeulu, he is leader and priest, he is still in a very real sense subordinate to his community. But even more important, he is subject to the sway of non-human forces in the universe, call them God, Fate, Chance or what you will. I call them sometimes the Powers of Event, the repositories of causes and wisdoms that are as yet, and perhaps will always be, inaccessible to us.

To powers inhabiting that order of reality the human hero counts for little. If they should desire his fall they will not be obliged to make a long-winded case or present explanations.

Does this mean then that among these people, the Igbo to take one example, the individual counts for nothing? Paradoxical as it may sound the answer is an emphatic “No.” The Igbo are second to none in their respect of the individual personality. For whereas many cultures are content to demonstrate the value and importance of each man and woman by reference to the common fatherhood of God, the Igbo postulate an unprecedented uniqueness for the individual by making him or her the sole creation and purpose of a unique god-agent, chi. No two persons, not even blood brothers, are created and accompanied by the same chi.

And yet the Igbo people as we have seen immediately set about balancing this extraordinary specialness, this unsurpassed individuality, by setting limits to its expression. The first limit is the democratic one, which subordinates the person to the group in practical, social matters. And the other is a moral taboo on excess, which sets a limit to personal ambition, surrounding it with powerful cautionary tales.

I began by describing—all too briefly—an aspect of the question of the “ownership” of art among a major Igbo group. I will end by quoting what an American anthropologist, Simon Ottenberg, reported about another group. He is describing an Afikpo carver at work on ritual masks:

Sometimes his friends or other secret society members hear him working in the bush, so they come and sit with him and watch him carve. They give him advice telling him how to carve, even if they themselves do not know how. He is not offended by their suggestions … I felt myself that he rather enjoyed the company.8

Clearly, this artist and his people are in very close communion. They do not all have to agree on how to make the best mask. But they are all interested in the process of making and the final outcome. The resulting art is important because it is at the centre of the life of the people and so can fulfil some of that need that first led man to make art: the need to afford himself through his imagination an alternative handle on reality.

There is always a grave danger of oversimplification in any effort to identify differences between systems such as I have attempted here between “The West and the Rest of Us,” to borrow the catchy title of Chinweizu’s remarkable book.9 I hope that while drawing attention to peculiarities which, in my view, are real enough at this point in time I have not fallen, nor led my indulgent reader, into the trap of seeing the differences as absolute rather than relative. But to be completely sure let me restate that the testimony of John Updike and certainly of Anthony Burgess does not encourage the notion of an absolute dichotomy between the West and ourselves on the issues I have been dealing with.

And I should like to go further and call to testimony a very distinguished witness indeed—J. B. Priestley—who wrote in a famous essay, “Literature and Western Man,” as follows:

Characters in a society make the novel … Society itself becomes more and more important to the serious novelist, and indeed turns into a character itself, perhaps the chief character.10

Priestley could be speaking here more about the fictional use a novelist might make of his society rather than the real-life relationship between them. But in either case the level of understanding of, and even identification with, society he implicitly demands of the writer is a far cry from the adversary relationship generally assumed and promoted in the West.

The final point I wish to address myself to is the crucial one of identity. Who is my community? The mbari and the Afikpo examples I referred to were clearly appropriate to the rather small, reasonably stable and self-contained societies to which they belonged. In the very different, wide-open, multicultural and highly volatile condition known as modern Nigeria, for example, can a writer even begin to know who his community is let alone devise strategies for relating to it?

If I write novels in a country in which most citizens are illiterate, who then is my community? If I write in English in a country in which English may still be called a foreign language, or in any case is spoken only by a minority, what use is my writing?

These are clearly grave issues. And it is not surprising that very many thoughtful people have exercised their minds in seeking acceptable answers. Neither is it surprising that less serious people should be handy with an assortment of instant and painless cures.

To the question of writing at all we have sometimes been counselled to forget it, or rather the writing of books. What is required, we are told, is plays and films. Books are out of date! The book is dead, long live television! One question which is not even raised let alone considered is: Who will write the drama and film scripts when the generation that can read and write has been used up?

On language we are given equally simplistic prescriptions. Abolish the use of English! But after its abolition we remain seriously divided on what to put in its place. One proffered solution gives up Nigeria with its 200-odd languages as a bad case and travels all the way to East Africa to borrow Swahili; just as in the past a kingdom caught in a succession bind sometimes solved its problem by going to another kingdom to hire an underemployed prince!

I will not proceed with these fancy answers to deeply profound problems. To those colleagues who might be tempted into a hasty switch of genres I will say this: Consider a hypothetical case. A master singer arrives to perform in a large auditorium and finds at the last moment that three-quarters of his audience are totally deaf. His sponsors then put the proposition to him that he should dance instead because even the deaf can see a dancer. Now, although our performer may have the voice of an angel his feet are as heavy as concrete. So what should he do? Should he proceed to sing beautifully to only a quarter or less of the auditorium or dance atrociously to a full house?

I guess it is clear where my stand would be! The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world. This is, of course, putting the c

ase in its utmost extremity; but it becomes necessary to do it in defence of both art and good sense in the face of what I see as a new onslaught of barbaric simple-mindedness.

Fortunately, in real life, we are not in danger of these bizarre extremes unless we consciously work our way into them. I can see no situation in which I will be presented with a Draconic choice between reading books and watching movies; or between English and Igbo. For me, no either/or; I insist on both. Which, you might say, makes my life rather difficult and even a little untidy. But I prefer it that way.

Despite the daunting problems of identity that beset our contemporary society, we can see in the horizon the beginnings of a new relationship between artist and community which will not flourish like the mango-trick in the twinkling of an eye but will rather, in the hard and bitter manner of David Diop’s young tree, grow patiently and obstinately to the ultimate victory of liberty and fruition.