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t gives me immense
pleasure to be called upon to preside over this closing event in the
“Songs for Idoto”, a celebration of Christopher Okigbo. This joyous task
was thrust upon me just a couple of days ago, and I accepted it with
enthusiasm and warmth, believing fervently that it was the least I
could do in remembrance of the gift of life and poetry that Chris Okigbo
was and will always be.
Apart from
the close affinity between my family and the Okigbos which dates over
three decades, I am proud to witness an incarnation of hope and love
which time can neither arrest nor still. Chris was many things to many
people, this much have been said, but he occupies a special place in our
hearts as an example of the indestructibility of the human spirit. I
therefore consider this event more than a mere dedication to memory,
more than even a celebration of love and empathy.
Even though
I am not a student of the literary arts, I am fully convinced that
literature involves nothing more than man’s quest for the ultimate
meaning of existence. This quest, in its pure oedipal form, without the
adornment of tragic heroism, pushes man to the brink of knowing, a half
world of ecstasy and transcendental consciousness. Chris Okigbo is a
metaphor for this consecration of sublime values, the possibility that
shared experiences must be
eternally
communicated. At the risk of being heretical, I consider today’s event a
celebration of divinity, previously meant only for the Godhead, but now
a state of affirmation for a few chosen mortals. Without a doubt, Chris
is certainly one such elect.
I am
supremely convinced that the dividing line between death and immortality
is the intensity of life process itself, whereby a creative agent
moderates the reality he is witness to for the enhancement of the human
ideal. The poetry of life is, properly speaking, the poetry of
recreation and transformation of experiences, not particularly bound by
history, culture and tradition. The essence of this dialectic is the
universalisation of values commonly held by all races, but understood by
only a few. Chris had inspiration and epiphany in abundance with which
he activated the latent collective consciousness of his age, not only
for the remembrances of things past and forgotten, but most decisively
for the erection of enduring auras of awareness and icons of knowledge.
Having achieved this, he broke the chains of mortality and
transfigurated to the realm of existence obsessively sought for by many,
but reserved for only a handful.
Before he died about 35 years ago, Chris only published a slim
collection of poetry, Labyrinths. What it lacked in size it
surely made up in passion, intensity of feeling and cadences of erudite
thought. It is therefore not surprising that 29 years have rolled by
since Chris Okigbo’s translation, yet his poetic gifts, creative prowess
and profound imaginative insights have not yet been matched, not to talk
of being surpassed by any African poet. He is venerated today as he was
30 years ago, and in all instances of adulation, his worth has never
been exaggerated in deference to his memory. Chris richly deserves all
the attention he gets; the ululations that attend his name, and the
panegyrics which pours out of his kindred spirits and those of us who
are yet to be initiated carry with them an elemental truth about his
nature: he never desired more than was his due and, even in
self-effacement and self-possession, he wished for nothing more than
rendering to every man the genuine content and worth of his labour. Till
date, Chris remains Africa’s number 1 poet, a quintessential spirit
dearly loved by God, who snatched him in the prime of life for the
fulfilment of the divine plan of immortality.
I
have read Chris Okigbo’s Labyrinths several times, yet on each
particular occasion I always marvel at his prophetic gift and
penetrating insights into life and reality, no matter how defined. I
marvel at his ability to use words and rhythm to describe African
spiritual and cultural deracination. I marvel at his competence to use
the barest phrases to capture the intensity and poignancy of the
creative process. I marvel at his depiction of a sense of alienation,
exile, loneliness and isolation, as constant attribution of a state of
disconnected being. Yet most significantly, I applaud his ability and
readiness to reconnect his poetic vision and passion to the pervasive
needs of his time. He achieved his greatest fame as a poetic oracle, as
a spokesman not at the dark waters of the beginning; not even at
Heavensgate, but at that phase in our nation’s history when
beginning incarnates the end of a romantic ideal, and the end itself
presupposes the possibility of a traumatic re-start of our national
journey.
Few individuals have managed to
capture the necessities of their age, its hidden current and defining
idiom the way Chris did. He left for us a humanism of substance which
depreciates, in wholesome terms, the excesses of politicians and the
tragedy of military dictatorship. When he invited thunder to lick into
all the corners of the land, send parliament to hell and cabinet on
fire, he spoke of regeneration, rebirth and new life. But he also warned
about the bestiality of the new hooded gods who have since despoiled the
land and beggared us for decades to come. He loved freedom, unfettered
freedom, and the liberation of the human spirit which it heralds. He
abhorred all forms and manners of inconsistency, hate and shackled will.
He weighed his art in the scale of social involvement and discovered
that his true life and voice lay with the people whose celebration in
aesthetic terms was not enough for their historical affirmation. He saw
the clouds thicken, and the thunder gather; he saw the coming flood and
the implacable deluge, and with only a rattling shell, a tingle bell, a
flute and a drum, he became not just the town-crier in the village
square but a participant in the drama of life.
As we close
this exhibition in celebration of the life that Chris lived and will
continue to live, let us be reminded that the earth we thread still lies
prostrate at the feet of the despoilers. Let us remember that the humane
vision that he championed is till an ideal yet to be attained. Let us
know that the thunder of today, harbinged by bayonet wielders and
bazooka men, is not the thunder of liberation and freedom, but the
hurricane of destruction and death. Let us therefore not allow the
singer to die, by constantly challenging the evil in our midst, by
demanding for atonement and amelioration, and by passionately
recommitting ourselves to the struggle for democracy, humanization,
liberty and justice. To do this is to erect a sacred halo around all
Chris Okigbo statues; it is also to ensure the continuity of his
beliefs, values and persuasions, which were opposed to even the tiniest
grain of mundane life, and the complacency it begets.
Dr. Arthur A.
Nwankwo,
has been a
frontline authors, publisher, and political
philosopher. He
gave the above address at
the National
Museum, Enugu, on November 9,
1996, at the
closing of Songs for Idoto. |
