Christopher Okigbo’s Poetics and the Politics of Canonization

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Matatu 49 (2017) births, deaths, and rebirths inherent in African rites of puberty. Diala suggests that the mysterious interchange between the drums denotes the centrality of the transformation of mourning into morning through the invocation of the spirit of spring:
Drawing on the Igbo heroic tradition expressed in the drum poetry of the abia slit-drum and the centrality of music (egwu) in the Igbo person’s symbolic attempt to mitigate the terror (egwu) of death, Okigbo typically digs beyond the formulaic wit of the African drum fora surrealistic idiom to transform the sobriety of the funeral occasion to arousing affirmation of the enduring value of human life. The poet is thus uplifted by his recognition of the possibility of tragic redemption.39
Thus, Okigbo’s poetry, with its rousing drums, apprehends death as medium for the celebration of life. The person embraces the full range of his mortal condition and this embrace endows him with the courage that sublimates the terrors of death. It is here that the poet and his persona coalesce into the soldier who, in defiance of death, will chose in the end to face an armoured vehicle alone:
He died as he lived, making, by his own choice, an impossible standalone against the advance of an armoured column. All his life had been a storming of barricades. And he had the generosity to give himself.40
Through Okigbo’s experience, we recognize the distinction between an exhibi- tionistic gesture which inflates the ego and a tragic death, in which the ego is sublimated in order that the values of life maybe extended and reborn. A reappraisal of his death and its significance would reveal. then. that he does not seek a beautiful death that offers the individual liberation from the mundane trivialities of life. The trajectory of such an exhibitionistic impulse typically unfolds the smallness and futility of suicidal gestures which serve no purpose save as a selfish proclamation of principles pushed too far.
That Nigeria is conceived as a doomed nation is clear from the Path of Thun-
der sequence. We can easily seethe connection between national history and the poet’s personal narrative, both of which the sequence mourns in anticipation of their tragic outcome. According to Diala, personal narrative coalesces
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Isidore Diala, “Okigbo’s Drum Elegies Ben Obumselu, Christopher Okigbo: A Poet’s Identity Downloaded from Brill.com06/12/2023 10:27:53AM
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Matatu 49 (2017) and assumes a singular tragic trajectory especially with the latter’s assumption of responsibility to influence the former Thus, Elegy for Slit-Drum” both explores the political hiccups of the First Republic and creates a picture of grief- stricken mourners. The refrain Condolences which is widespread in the poem connects up with the tradition of African dirges in which mourners and consol- ers share the burden of sorrow at the scene of bereavement. The persona is not expressing a death-wish but is merely interpreting the general upheavals that were a forerunner to the coup as ominous portents that heralded an imminent doom, worse than a coup, for the nation What he foresees is similar to the
Yeatsian rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born:
And a great fearful thing already tugs at the cables of the open air,
A nebula immense and immeasurable, a night of deep waters—
An iron dream unnamed and unnameable, a path of stone
[…]
And the secret thing in its heaving threatens with iron mask
The last lighted torch of the century
“Elegy for Slit-Drum,” in Path of Thunder 66
Obumselu, however, establishes connections between Okigbo’s Elegy of the
Wind,” Lorca’s “Preciosa and the Air and Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind,”
which he locates at the heart of European poetry. Though fully acknowledging
Okigbo’s originality, Obumselu argues that throughout his career Okigbo integrates insights from various cross-cultural influences and then subjects them to an original synthesis. It is particularly through the metaphor of Oedipus that
Okigbo privileges the personal danger and public veneration that are possible consequences of accepting the call to a perilous public, saving intervention.43
Once the persona has become transformed into the poet himself, Elegy of the
Wind” will ultimately constitute a poem of passion, sober resolution, preparation for ultimate heroism, and leave-taking:
The passion that precedes the definitive act of self-giving necessarily needs to beset in relief for either the moment of ultimate heroism or martyrdom to be seen and appreciated in its full and proper perspective
41
Isidore Diala, “Okigbo’s Drum Elegies 100.
42
Diala, “Okigbo’s Drum Elegies Ben Obumselu, Cambridge House, Ibadan, 1962–1966: Politics and Poetics in Okigbo’s
Last Years Research in African Literatures 41.2 (Summer 2010): Downloaded from Brill.com06/12/2023 10:27:53AM
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abba
Matatu 49 (2017) and consequently set apart from the mere suicidal gesture. In Okigbo’s case, there is no enthusiastic heedless leap to embrace death, only a chastened contemplation and acceptance of the statutes of manhood.44
It is equally a poem that calls for courageous, manly resolve. The poet’s apprehension of danger inherent in the vocation of town-crier leads to the prayer in Thunder Can Break Earth, bind me fast (63). It also elicits the admonition to caution in Hurrah for Thunder If I don’t learn to shut my mouth I’ll soon go to hell, / I, Okigbo, town-crier, together with my iron bell (67). But in his anguish at his country’s headlong dash towards destruction and his own tragic heroism, the poet resolves to commit the totality of his life to his mission despite the obvious danger. The caution that if he does not learn to shut his mouth, he will soon go to hell is an apprehension of the danger of arrest and incarceration for his outspokenness by the marauding military beasts.
If the poet in Elegy of the Wind desires union with cosmic mystery and prays for ultimate union with mother earth, in Elegy for Alto he reverses the prayer with the sudden realization of his capacity for regeneration. His choice of the ram rather than the lamb comes as a consequence of his belief in confronting the technicians of terror rather than exhibiting sheepish humility before them:
O mother mother Earth, unbind me let this be my last testament let this be
The ram’s hidden wish to the sword the sword’s
Secret prayer to the scabbard
“Elegy for Alto in Path of Thunder 71
Many who have interpreted these prayers as evidence of the poet’s death-wish seem to have ignored the fact that the ram’s secret submission to the sword is not death but freedom and the sword’s secret submission to the sheath is also freedom. The persona’s secret prayer is to be free from earthly attachments that prevent man from taking action in the face of forbidding destiny. The
“iron path careening along the same beaten track is Okigbo’s metaphor for the ineluctable movement of the country to destruction. Although he is aware of the merging of eagles and robbers and of politicians and soldiers (New stars of iron dawn) and poetically intuits defeat, he believes in the capacity of the titanically striving individual, struggling because he must even in the face
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Isidore Diala, “Okigbo’s Drum Elegies Downloaded from Brill.com06/12/2023 10:27:53AM
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Matatu 49 (2017) of defeat. He remains focused on nature’s abiding powers of self-regeneration despite the hopelessness that confronts the nation and its political leadership:
An old star departs, leaves us hereon the shore
Gazing heavenward fora new star approaching;
The new star appears, foreshadows its going
Before a going and coming that goes on forever
“Elegy for Alto in Path of Thunder 72
The poet’s sense of gloom at the impending national catastrophe, his will to tragic heroism, and the transformation of the military into a monster—all this leaves him in a state of disgust and destructive anger. For him, then, it is better to die fighting than to live in the awareness of national woes And the horn may now paw the air howling goodbye.”45

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