Christopher Okigbo’s Poetics and the Politics of Canonization
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| Conclusion The contestation that Okigbo’s death was simply suicide rather than an act of self-sacrifice belongs to the political competition over the canonization of the worthy dead. Many historical events generate struggles over meaning, especially with regard to such ultimate evaluations as condemnation and canonization. Some heroic deeds inspire memorials essentially because the victims died fora cause, and the cause, rather than the victim, spurs sanctification. Importantly, how acts of self-immolation are viewed overlong periods of time requires critical intervention. As this paper has hopefully demonstrated, Okigbo conveyed in his poetry a keen sense of patriotism and personal anguish at the upheavals in his homeland’s polity. But despite critical observations that his work is suffused with the trope of death, it is not evident either from his poetry or from historical circumstances that his death in that war was a mere suicidal act. Motivated by his self-giving impulse, his poetry and death embody the symbolism of African rites of passage as viable models for mourning as well as rousing heroic chants sublimating that experience. Suicide is a phenomenon that reaches beyond the question of dying to the problem of laying one’s death dramatically at someone else’s door. Viewed through the Kantian prism of ethical action and self-immolation in the name of a higher duty, Okigbo’s poetry and the trajectory of his life classify him appropriately as a gen- 45 “Elegy for Alto in Path of Thunder, Downloaded from Brill.com06/12/2023 10:27:53AM via free access 278 abba Matatu 49 (2017) 260–279 uine martyr who gives his life in the service of his community. Evidence from his poetry shows that what is misconstrued as a haunting death-wish is actually the poet’s paradoxical sense of envitalizing dejection over the impending national catastrophe, his will to tragic heroism, and the transmogrification of the military into a monstrous force, all of which leaves him in a state of disgust and destructive anger. Thus are we left with the realization that there is a clear boundary between the death-wish and the desire to fight to the death. And for offering himself to fight to the death rather than watch in idiotic humility the genocide perpetrated against his community, Christopher Okigbo fully merits the rousing paeans sung in his honour as one of the greatest martyrs of our age. Download 153.51 Kb. Share with your friends:
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