Chapter 12
Love, Religion, Art, and Traditionalism in Okigbo’s Poetry.
Christopher Okigbo, perhaps because of the turgidity of his poetry, has not enjoyed the robust literary criticism which his contemporaries -- especially Wole Soyinka, Kofi Awoonor, and Dennis Brutus -- have enjoyed. A close reading of his poetry shows that, until scholars pay a close attention to the four major themes which he explores, the misunderstanding about his poetry will likely continue. These four themes center on love, religion, art, and traditionalism. This essay, therefore, discusses these areas in order to bring clarity, understanding and a better appreciation to Okigbo’s poetic art.
I
The challenge posed by Okigbo’s architectonics is generally acknowledged. For example, Dan Izevbaye says: “Okigbo, like certain other poets, who have created a system of symbols, can be difficult to read.”1 David Cook notes: “Okigbo had to recognize that his feelings for T.S. Eliot might be one valid point of departure in the quest to find himself.”2 And Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier write: “The imagery of his poetry is often rooted in the groves, shrines, and sacred streams of his birthplace… A voracious reader, whose passion for classical poetry seems to be reflected in his own fastidious craftsmanship.”3 Perhaps the most serious indictment of Okigbo’s rigorous verse structure is that made by Ali Mazrui in his essay published in Presence Africaine, who says his verse is “untranslatable.”4
However, a close reading of Okigbo’s poetry, especially along the axis of love, religion, art, and traditionalism, reveals clearly that he might not be as impenetrable in his artistry as he is generally considered to be. When considered along these four areas, Okigbo’s verse is not only diverse, it is also interesting and illuminating. For example, his love poetry, which manifests itself in such pieces as “The Passage,” “Watermaid,” “Love Apart,” “New Comer,” and “Siren limits,” discusses the nature of love from three different levels of meaning, that is, real, imaginary, and spiritual.
Okigbo’s real love lyrics focus on concrete physical human relationships, such as is found in “New Comer,” where the poet exhorts his mother, Ana, to protect him against real and perceived enemies of this mundane world.
Ana of the panel oblongs,
protect me
from them fucking angels
protect me
my sandhouse and bones5.
The images, “panel oblongs,” “fucking angels,” and “sandhouse and bones,” suggest the negative forces of nature against which Okigbo prays to be protected. In the African cosmogony, parents -- that is, whether dead or alive -- are our first source of love because we originate from them. Okigbo trusts and believes in the love of Ana, hence he seeks her protection.
The image, “fucking angels,” suggests perverse sexual indulgence which is employed to castigate the hypocritical top church hierarchies who corrupt the minds of innocent souls. The image is employed to highlight the irony in human nature and in the human society. Furthermore, as an oxymoron, it challenges us to look more closely at the reality and not the pretence and frivolity of this world.
Later in this poem, Okigbo mentions other objects of human love: the new-born baby (the “day’s waking,” the “newcomer,” and the “draper of May”); and the poem’s dedicatee, Georgette, whom Professor D.I. Nwoga says is “the wife of the poet’s eldest brother. It is her child that is being welcomed in this poem.”6
A second form of love discussed in Okigbo’s poetry can be characterized as the imaginary love, which one finds in such lyrics as “Love Apart.” In this poem Okigbo discusses the love relationship between two souls whose love -- for one reason or another -- has dissipated or turned awry. Unlike in the past, when their mutual relationship was vibrant and warm, now their love, as of this moment, is comparable only to a tree with no roots and no sap. Indeed, their situation recalls what Leavis characterizes as “the effect depending upon a rejection of all the demands of politeness and social rejection… the intimate tete-a-tete, the confidant representing a restraint that is offered to be rejected.”7
The references to such negative images in the poem as the “moon,” the “two pines,” “our solitary stems,” “shadows,” “cling to each other,” “love with the moon,” and “kiss the air only,” completely dramatize the futility and demise of the current relationship between the two erstwhile lovers. Very few poems can be more successful in the development and execution of content and form as this poem. Of particular effect is the employment of the image “moon” to characterize love, which in mattes of connubial relationship, connotes fickleness, changeability and possibly death.
Another imaginative love lyric is “Watermaid,” which derives from the African mythology of the water deity or goddess, commonly known as the “mammy water.” In this poem Okigbo seems to be enchanted, not only by the chance encounter with the watermaid, but by the majesty and the eroticism which she displays (e.g., the “armpit dazzle of a lioness,” “wearing white light about her,” “my lioness/crowned with moonlight,” “so brief with mirrors around me”).
Apart from the fact that the poem derives its origin from the African mythological complex which enunciates some basic moral principles about the goddess -- such as the need for anyone not to divulge any information about one’s encounter with her because of some serious ominous consequences -- the poem highlights Okigbo’s imaginative prowess at its highest. If technically the poet, for one reason or another, cannot enjoy or consummate love with the goddess, he can at least enjoy her intimate presence as suggested by the ocular images which dominate the lyric (e.g., the “waves distill her/gold crop/sinking ungathered”). Finally, the poem highlights a “certain mistrust” -- as symbolized by the goddess’s sudden disappearance -- which William Wimsatt, Jr., and Cleanth Brooks
If we come now to Okigbo’s spiritual love lyric, we find it in Heavengate, especially in “The passage” and “Initiations.” In these poems the protagonist struggles mightily in order to establish or regain a lost meaningful spiritual relationship with the “guardian angel.” In the “Introductions,” Okigbo explains: “Heavensgate was originally conceived as an Easter sequence… something like a mass, an offering to Idoto, the village stream of which I drank, in which I washed, as a child.” In “Distances” Okigbo expands on the ultimate kind of relationship he seeks to maintain with the goddess: “The self that suffers, that experiences, ultimately finds fulfillment in a form of psychic union with the supreme spirit” (LBTH, p. XI).
The “mother Idoto” we are presented with in Heavensgate is all powerful: the potragonist must offer her anything, and all things in order to secure her favor: the “fire that is dreamed of/… the rain that is dreamed of/… Rain and sun in single combat” (LBTH, p. 4.). We, the audience, do not know whether the goddess will accept the union which Okigbo solicits -- because the addressee of the poem remains silent -- but we presume she will be pleased, especially since the persona is apparently very penitent (“out of the depths my cry:/give ear and hearken,” LBTH, p. 3).
II
Religion, for Okigbo, is a hydra-headed beast consisting of Christianity and the indigenous African religion, of which he has to make the ultimate choice. The poet was brought up in the indigenous African religious culture; however, with the advent of Western colonialism, Christianity gradually replaced the indigenous African religion in the life of the poet. With the passage of time the poet soon discovers that the new religion offers him no hope, and no salvation. Consequently, he must retreat from Christianity and go back to his traditional African religion. Herein lies the poet’s religious dilemma. Professor R.N. Egudu writes about the negative impact of Christianity:
…the early Christian missionaries came to Africa not to sow the mustard seed of the kingdom of God
As part of Okigbo’s discontent and disappointment with Christianity, he lists several Christian officials for attack, including John the Baptist, Kepkanly, and Haragin. The bodily and spiritual injury which these apostles of Christianity have promoted, he says, continue to haunt his soul and mental consciousness.
With unremitting images and allusions -- e.g., “Dark waters of the beginning,” “Scar of the crucifix,” “waters of the genesis,” “man loses man, loses vision,” “preaching the gambit” and “way leads downward/down orthocenter” – he carefully and systematically lashes out at the Christian religion and its official. Later, he becomes very virulent and unsparing in his attack:
Square yields the moron,
fanatics and priests and popes,
organizing secretaries and
party manager; better still,
the rhombus -- brothers and deacons
liberal politicians,
selfish self-seekers -- all who are good
doing nothing at all;
the quadrangle, the rest me and you
Mystery, which barring
the errors of the rendering
witnesseth
red-hot blade on the right breast
the scar of the crucifix
(LBTH, p.7).
Earlier at the beginning of “Initiations,” Okigbo mentions John the Baptist for attack. In the quotated lines above he elaborates and mentions “priests,” “popes,” and “deacons” -- the big guns of the Christian church hierarchy for criticism. The fact that Okigbo attacks these people openly and with satirical venom suggests not only his personal bravado and disappointment, but his absolute rejection of the Christian orthodoxy.
Some Biblical images and allusions mentioned in “Initiations” deserve mention and analysis because they are important and interesting. They include “John the Baptist,” the “rainbow,” and the “crucifix.” John the Baptist is responsible for baptizing the young Jesus on the River Jordan; he is often called the “morning star of the Kingdom of God
Although the benefit of the indigenous African religion, which Okigbo prefers, is not discussed to any appreciable degree in his work, it is suggestive, as he makes implicit in Siren Limits, that is, it offers hope: “The self that suffers, that experiences, ultimately finds fulfillment in a form of psychic union” (LBTH, p xi). Furthermore, he can now finally hope to escape the hell of pain and torture inflicted on him by the Christian religious dogma.
III
The principle of art as a dominant fundamental force of value is recognized in Okigbo’s poetics. For Okigbo, truth, beauty, vigor, and proportionality and balance -- all this is the essence of the poetic endeavor. Furthermore, poetry, for him, is like tapestry, or metaphysics in which one can discover something of value. As he makes explicit, “the poetic metaphor” is “an attempt to elicit the music to which all imperishable cries must aspire” (LBTH, p. XII). And he believes in Locke’s dictum that “Truth is eternal.” To be sure, Okigbo would agree with Professor Laurence Perrine about the following definition of poetry:
Poetry takes all life as its province. Its primary concern is not with beauty, not with philosophical truth, not with persuasion, but with experience.10
At each and every turn in his verse, he employs images and allusions that highlight his aesthetic development as a poet. For example, in “The Passage” he speaks of the “Dark Waters of the beginning.” As a poetic metaphor, this expression symbolizes the rigor and the intensity of the poetic enterprise which, although structurally and emotionally appealing, is fundamentally difficult to articulate or process, especially at the beginning. Elsewhere in this poem, he says that “solitude invites/a wagtail, to tell/the tangled-wood tale,” which is a direct allusion to the seclusion and isolation to which the artist is perennially consigned in his quest for poetic truth.
In “Initiations,” Okigbo speaks of “duty, obligation,” which of course has always been the responsibility of the artist. The phrase recalls Shakespeare’s aesthetic credo regarding the responsibility of the poet both to himself and to society: “he looks before and after;” what Wordsworth says “is the rock of defense for human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love.”
In “Watermaid” he speaks of “So brief her presence/ match-flare in wind’s breath;” this expression not only characterizes the behavior of the watermaid who disappears quickly from the poet’s sight, but more importantly -- especially from the aesthetic point of view -- it recalls the flashes of inspiration which comes immediately upon the poet which he must utilize quickly in the course of his writing.
And finally in “Lustra,” he writes: “so would I/to where springs the fountain/there to draw from,” which recalls the fact that, in matters of artistic creativity, the artist must always try to relocate to any areas of the natural world where he can always gather inspiration or momentum in order to perfect his craft.
From all that we have discussed above regarding poetry and poetic art, it is clear that, for Okigbo, the poetics that must be pursued and promoted should not only be objective, comprehensive, and society-oriented, it must also center on nature, human sensibility, and universal concerns.
IV
In his “Introduction” to the Labyrinth Poems sequence, Okigbo writes: “Cleansing involves total nakedness, a complete self-surrender to the water spirit that nurtures all creation” (LBTH, p. XI). This statement completely foreshadows Okigbo’s celebration of, and his dedication to his traditional African cultural background.
From the quoted lines above, which center on the ritual sacrifice which the poem’s protagonist must undertake in order to regain redemption and forgiveness from Mother Idoto, Okigbo lays out all the foundations of the internal and external perspectives of his indigenous African cultural mythos.
First of all, the ritual ceremonies are expressive or personal, involving the poem’s persona who must be naked and barefooted; other participants include the “players of loft pipe organs,” the “wind players,” and the mammy water who appears and disappears every now and then, sometimes leaving him with a sense of fulfillment, at other times leaving him behind in isolation, with a strong feeling of disappointment and sorrow.
Equally fascinating is the moral lesson which the poem offers: that is, all that glitters is not gold. True, the poem’s persona struggles mightily to behold or at least to be in the company of the “white queen;” ironically, he finds “not my queen,” but “a broken shadow” (LBTH, p. 12). At still other times, his frustration deepens as he discovers to his chargrin and consternation that:
The stars have departed,
the sky in monocle
surveys the world under
The stars have departed,
and I -- where am I?
Stretch, Stretch, O antennae,
To clutch at this hour,
Fulfilling each moment in a
broken monody
(LBTH, p. 13).
A “broken monody” is the finale of the protagonist’s cultural quest, a world which, as Mathew Arnold reminds us in “Dover Beach
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.11
In conclusion we discover that Okigbo explores the themes of love, religion, art, and traditionalism in his verse, and he employs a wide variety of architectonics -- including classical and metaphysical motifs, Biblical allusions, and the indigenous African mythological sources -- to develop his work. This effective handling of content and form gives Okigbo’s verse some objectivity which, as Dan Izevbaye points out, endows his work with “integrity.”12 Although Okigbo’s vigorous employment of abstract imagery has led to the charge of “untranslatability,” as Alli Mazrui views it, there is no doubt that this divergent critical reading of Okigbo work by our modern critics has its fundamental value: it will expand -- and continue to expand -- not only the aesthetic range of Okigbo’s poetry, but also the frontiers of the African critical milieu in general.
Notes
1. Dan Izevbaye, “From Reality to Dream: the Poetry of Christopher Okigbo” in The Critical Evaluation of African Literature, ed. Egar Wright (London: Heinemann, 1978), p. 121
2. David Cook, African Literature: A Critical View (London: Longman Group, Ltd, 1977), p. 38.
3. Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier, Modern Poetry from Africa (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Ltd, 1976), p. 257.
4. Ali A. Mazrui, “Meaning Versus Imagery in African Poety,” Presence Africaine, No. 66, 1968, 47.
5. Christopher Okigbo, Labyrinths: Poems (London and Ibadan: Heinemann, 1977), p. 17. Further quotation from the volume will be abbreviated parenthetically in the text as LBTH, followed by the page number (s).
6. Donatus Ibe Nwoga, West African Verse (London: Longman, 1967), p. 176.
7. F.R. Leavis, Revaluation: Tradition and Development in English Poetry (New York: Norton Library, 1947), p. 93.
8. See William K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Cleanth Brooks
9. R.N. Egudu, Modern African Poetry and the African Predicament (New York: Macmillan, 1978), p. 11.
10. Laurence Perrine, Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1963), p. 9.
11. Mathew Arnold, “Dover Beach
12. Dan Izevbaye, “From Reality to Dream: the Poetry of Christopher Okigbo,” The Critical Evaluation of African Literature, p. 124.
Works Cited
Arnold, Matthew. The Portable Matthew Arnol, ed. Lionel Trilling. New York
Cook, David. African Literature: A Critical View. London
Egudu, R.N. Modern African Poetry and the African Predicament. New York
Izevbaye, Dan. “From Reality to Dream: The Poetry of Christopher Okigbo.” The Critical Evaluation of African Literature, ed. Edgar Wright London
Leavis, F.R. Revaluation: Tradition and Development in English Poetry. New York
Mazrui, Ali A. “Meaning Versus Imagery in African Poetry,” Presence Africaine, No. 66, 1968.
Moore, Gerald and Ulli Beier. Modern Poetry from Africa . Harmondsworth, Middlesex , England
Nwoga, D.I. West African Verse. London
Okigbo, Christopher. Labyrinths: Poems. London and Ibadan
Wimsatt, William, Jr. and Cleanth Brooks
ort History. New York
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