Olorunfemi Fagunwa (popularly known as D.O. Fagunwa), the Yoruba
language novelist, would certainly occupy his rightful place as one of
its pioneers. Although literate in the English language, Fagunwa chose
to put his indigenous language in the limelight by employing it in the
writing of his novels which not only enjoyed wide readership among the
Yoruba-reading population of the then Western Nigeria, but also
attracted critical response from both Yoruba and non-Yoruba scholars.
*D.O. Fagunwa
Given Fagunwa’s education and exposure, it may be unfair to draw the
conclusion that he was blissfully unaware of the limitations he was
imposing on himself in terms of readership and critical appreciation
when he chose to write in Yoruba. What seems more likely the case is
that he was willing to sacrifice on the altar of cultural and linguistic
nationalism the fame he would certainly have gained beyond his ethnic
block and the hefty financial reward that would have come rolling to his
doorstep had he chosen English as his medium of expression.
According to Professor Ayo Bamgbose, although _“Fagunwa…was quite
familiar with certain works in English literature, including
translations of stories from Greek mythology…two possibilities were
open to him. He could use his knowledge of English literature to produce
a European type of novel…or he could create something of his own,
drawing his inspiration from traditional material. It was the latter
course that Fagunwa chose. Fagunwa based his novels on the tradition of
the Yoruba folk-tale_ (Bamgbose, 1974).”
And his decision came at a cost. After all, barely educated Amos Tutuola
whose 1952 novel, _The Palmwine Drinkard_, which appeared sixteen years
after the Church Missionary Society (CMS) had published Fagunwa’s first
novel, _Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole,_ had achieved instant,
enthusiastic local and international readership and has since then
enjoyed serious study by literary scholars and students across the
globe. It remains in doubt if Tutuola could have readily found a
publisher (especially, one with considerable stature as Faber and Faber)
if he had written his book, say, in the 1970s or even late 1960s. But
today, no historical account of Nigerian literature in English is
complete without Tutuola receiving a prominent mention despite the
widespread strictures by critics of what many of them perceive as the
grievous harm he inflicted on the English language and his penchant for
almost confusing the reader with the several and mostly unrelated tales
he appeared to have untidily lumped together to realise his novels.
However, Chinua Achebe’s essay, “_Work and Play in_ _The Palmwine
Drinkard,” _published in _Critical Perspectives on Amos Tutuola_ (Bernth
Lindfors ed.) represents not only the most significant effort by a very
influential and convincing literary voice to lift Tutuola from the
critical dustbin where most critics had impatiently consigned him, but
it remains till date the most ambitious and persuasive endeavour to help
readers and scholars alike make some really interesting meaning out of
what many had long dismissed as Tutuola’s medley of rambling, depthless
tales starring mostly flat characters in largely unconvincing scenes.
Tutuola’s work, however, continues to enjoy some prominence in the
African literary landscape that Fagunwa’s can only dream of despite
the availability now of the latter’s books in the English language and
some extensive scholarly studies that have been undertaken on them.
Until very recently, Bamgbose’s 1974 book, _The Novels of D. O.
Fagunwa_, had remained the most comprehensive work on Fagunwa’s novels.
In addition to critical analysis of his novels, Bamgbose provides some
background details that enhance the reader’s appreciation of Fagunwa’s
life and work. For instance, it is from him that we learn that
_”Fagunwa’s first novel, Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole, was written for
a competition organised by Miss Plumber in 1936. The Church Missionary
Society bought the manuscript for 20 (twenty pounds sterling) and
published it in 1938. The book was an instant success, and was very
popular in the schools”_ (Bamgbose, 1974:3).
If Fagunwa’s target audience was the Yoruba, to achieve a wide
readership among his own people, probably, after convincing himself that
his story might be of little or no interest to the outside world, he was
then a great success. German/Jewish scholar, Professor Ulli Beier,
writing in _Black Orpheus_ in 1965 reports that Fagunwa’s _Igbo
Olodumare_ which he says is, in the consensus of many people, his most
popular novel “had sixteen prints since 1947”.
Says Beier further:
_“when Chief Fagunwa died suddenly and tragically in an accident in
December 1963, few non-Yoruba speakers may have realized that with him
Nigeria lost its most popular writer”_ (Beier 1965:51).
Prof Beier was a great admirer of Fagunwa. He had collaborated with
Bakare Gbadamosi to translate the first chapter of Fagunwa’s _Igbo
Olodumare_, which was published in _Odu: Journal of Yoruba, Edo and
Related Studies_ in 1963. One can therefore understand why he could
describe Fagunwa, a writer whose readership was restricted to the
Yoruba-speaking people of Western Nigeria as the country’s “most
popular writer” in 1963! And yet he added that only a “_few non-Yoruba
speakers_” were aware of Fagunwa’s popularity, if not existence. He
clearly overstated his point, obviously goaded by his overflowing
admiration for Fagunwa and his work. By 1963, Nigerian writers like Amos
Tutuola, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Cyprian Ekwensi, Christopher
Okigbo, T.M. Aluko and some others were already well known all over
Nigeria, across Africa and beyond and being widely studied in European
and American universities where, maybe, only an insignificant few might
have some vague familiarity with Fagunwa’s name and work; so he could
not have been “Nigeria’s most popular writer” in 1963.
Early critical works on Fagunwa were restricted to Yoruba scholars and
some others who were, probably, on some kind of “literary
adventure,” or “exploration,” especially, from Western countries,
with some eager mission to “discover” new “curiosities” in the
emerging literature from Africa. These had to collaborate with Yoruba
scholars to gain access into Fagunwa’s work. It was, therefore, the
earnest hope of scholars outside the Yoruba enclave (whose appetite had
been whetted by the little they had read about Fagunwa) that Yoruba
scholars should rise to the challenge of making Fagunwa’s five major
novels available to the outside world by preparing their translations
in major languages like English or French. Interestingly, however, when
this expectation began to be gratified, it created new problems for the
author.
For instance, by 1968, when Wole Soyinka’s translation of Fagunwa’s
first novel, _Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole_ (as _The Forest Of Thousand
Daemons_) was issued by Nelson Publishers in London, Soyinka had already
attained considerable international status as a writer, a fact, it would
seem, Nelson had hastened to exploit. Unlike what is the standard
practice in many translated books, Soyinka’s name got undue prominence
on the cover of the book, and given that he was already a known name
among readers of African literature in English, it tended, in the
opinion of some readers, to diminish that of the original writer. Of
course, that would be to the rich benefit of the publishers even though,
it grossly put the creator of the work at a great disadvantage. One
edition whose cover I am looking at as I write now tried to achieve some
form of balance. It announces “Wole Soyinka and D.O. Fagunwa” as
joint authors of the book in that order.
Now, many of us have read quite a number of Greek, German, French and
Russian works made available to us by some diligent English translators.
In most cases, the name of the translators appear inside the books or
even when they appear on the covers, they are rendered in very small
types that one would not readily notice them.
It is possible that many Nigerians may not even be aware that majority
of the novels, poems and plays they read in high school and college were
first written and published in French by French-speaking African
writers, like, Sembene Ousmane, Camara Laye, Aminata Sow Fall, Mariama
Ba, Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono, David Diop, Leopold Senghor, etc.? How
many people can readily remember the name of the translator of any of
these books? And that is because their names were not placed in such a
way as to compete for prominence with or even dwarf out that of the
author.
Other translations of Fagunwa’s books I have encountered have allowed
the Nelson Publishers’ model to dictate their preference. Gabriel
Ajadi’s translation of _Igbo Olodumare _(as _The Forest Of God_)
published in 1995 by Agbo Areo Publishers in Ibadan went further than
Nelson. Dr. Ajadi’s name stood out in a far heavier type than
Fagunwa’s. In fact, he is presented as the author of the book. The
reader is only informed through an explanatory note on the cover that
the book “by Ajadi” is an annotated translation of Fagunwa’s work.
Only recently, I saw the cover of another of Fagunwa’s novels
translated by Professor Olu Obafemi and it followed almost the same
pattern set by Nelson and Ajadi’s publishers.
The danger then is that Fagunwa’s name, despite what is perceived as his
literary success within the Yoruba-speaking nation, may continue to
sound unfamiliar to many people, even those who had read his translated
works. His dilemma is compounded by the fact that his stories which drew
heavily from diverse traditional folk tales in form and content and
which he appeared to have lumped together in such a disjointed manner to
realize his novels may have considerably reduced his appeal to
contemporary audiences whose literary taste have already benefited from
immense enhancement from a variety of well plotted works from many
African writers they have been exposed to. He had a choice to extend the
reach of the traditional paradigm he drew heavily from to lend his
stories more depth and help his characters develop further and become
more rounded, but he, probably, did not consider that necessary.
Now, of all the novels written by Fagunwa, it is only Gabriel Ajadi’s
translation of _Igbo Olodumare_ as _The Forest of God _that I have
read. In an introductory note, Dr. Ajadi submits that _”Fagunwa’s world
is dichotomized: there is a world in which we live and move, and there
is a world which we cannot see. The former world is the world of man,
and the latter is the world of spirits, gnomes, trolls, fairies, ghosts,
ghommids, and kobolds. These beings are perceived as being in
competition with men; they claim to be superior to man, and man in turn
tries to claim his primary place in the universe…”(_Ajadi, 1995: 8)
The main issue with this Fagunwa novel is not that it looks more like a
cluster of fairy tales, as some critics have argued, which are made to
relate in some way to the protagonist who is a great hunter, and who had
gone into a strange, dreaded forest armed with weapons and charms for
outlandish encounters with strange spirits, even though such a tale,
coupled with its peculiar style of rendition, cannot be relied upon to
demonstrate an ability to greatly appeal to many readers since it would
most likely prove incapable of fitting into their long-settled
perception of reality.
But even if this was the only issue, it would not even have mattered
sufficiently. Magical realism, after all, has over the years shed the
shocks it used to elicit and now enjoys widespread acceptance as a valid
genre in literature. That Fagunwa, therefore, so casually, collapses the
“wall” demarcating the world of spirits and man and causes them to
interact freely is certainly not enough to earn him isolation from
contemporary readers. After all, there are literary masterpieces that
feed readers with strange tales about ghosts and diverse spirits having
both healthy and adversarial interactions with humans. Apart from the
obvious examples in William Shakespeare’s _Julius Caesar_, _Macbeth_,
_Hamlet_, etc., Ben Okri’s well received masterpiece, _The Famished
Road,_ for instance, also has such scenes of human interactions with the
other world. But what makes the difference at all times is the craft,
the artistic quality that tickles and thrills the imagination of the
reader and easily draws him out of the world his natural senses have
become too familiar with and compels him to easily identify with and
even (imaginatively) inhabit the outlandish world the writer has
created. Unfortunately, Fagunwa’s novel could only demonstrate
inability to lure the reader into this otherwise very rewarding
experience.
Ajadi claims that in his translation, he endeavoured to retain
Fagunwa’s peculiar style and allowed him to speak for himself instead
of trying to impose his own interpretations on his sentences. A note
explaining what he referred to as the philosophy of his translation is
served the reader before he is allowed to delve into the novel. Ajadi
writes:
“The main purpose of this work is to provide an annotated translation
of Fagunwa’s _Igbo Olodumare_, a translation which respects the style
of the original and the intention of the author, thereby affording a
critical access to the novel by literary scholars and students of
letters as well as general English readers…My task as a translator is
not to rewrite Fagunwa’s _Igbo Olodumare _in English in my stylistic
idiosyncrasy but to unveil his meaning through his own words and style
in the translated edition (p. 21)”.
Some eminent critics of African literature have tried to insist that
Fagunwa is indeed a writer of note despite some reservations the people
they describe as “Euro-centric” critics have expressed about his
work. Chiwenizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie and Ihechukwu Madubuike, in their
book, _Toward The Decolonization Of African Literature _(1980:272)
praised Fagunwa’s depiction of characters _“by use of symbols, by
use of appropriate names that sum up a character or give a clue to his
behavior, and by use of historical sketches that give either the
genealogy of the character or an account of his past deeds, or of
significant incidents in his life”._
__
On his part, Abiola Irele argues in his book, _The African Experience In
Literature And Ideology_ (1981:77), that because Fagunwa _“was the
first to make a new and significant literature of the (Yoruba) language,
to have given the oral tradition an extended literary form, he was a
pioneer”._
According to Prof Irele, Fagunwa _“did more than give new life and
effect to the oral tradition which he inherited from his culture; he
also created out of the communal material it offered him a distinct
personal statement in artistic terms upon the issues of human life”._
Irele insists that “it would be a grave error to dismiss his works as
simple fantasies, or more seriously, as naïve childish productions”
since in Fagunwa’s works one can easily see “maturity of expressions
and of visions…which is as fully adult as the most modern novel”.
Prof Beier (1965:52), on his part, is full of praises for Fagunwa’s
language. According to him:
“Fagunwa is fond of rhetoric. He likes words. He likes to pile them
up, say the same thing over and over again in infinite variation. He is
a master of rhetoric, who can make repetitions and variations swing in a
mounting rhythm, like Yoruba drums.”
Contemporary readers of Fagunwa will readily discern (although, in a
lesser degree) in _The Forest Of God_ the quest motif which they had
already seen in Amos Tutuola’s _The Palm-Wine Drunkard_. Tutuola’s
hero goes in search of his dead “tapster” who supplied him excellent
palm wine but who had died after falling from a palm tree, while in
Fagunwa’s narrative, Olowo-aiye sets out in search of adventure, to
hunt in the forest of the great spirit called _Igbo Olodumare_.
Due to these similarities in themes, background and even
characterization, some critics have come up with suggestions about
Tutuola’s indebtedness to Fagunwa. In an article for _The Journal Of
Commonwealth Literature_ (1970:58) for instance, Bernth Lindfors sums up
the view of these critics by stating that Tutuola
_“had stolen most of his material from Yoruba folk-tales and the
Yoruba novels of Chief Daniel Orowole Fagunwa. He was a plagiarist pure
and simple and not an untutored genius gleaning from his own teeming
brain”._
There is no intention here to wade into this needless controversy, but
it would appear that in his haste to “discover” the source of
Tutuola’s material, Professor Lindfors seems to have turned a blind
eye to a simple caution on source analyses supplied by R.D. Altick in
his book, _The Art of Literary Research _(1975:95). Says Altick:
_“One commonsense question should accompany all attempts to establish
the direct indebtedness of one author to another on the grounds of
verbal similarities; might not the resemblances be attributable to the
fact that both Author A and Author B were nourished by the same
culture?”_
_The Forest Of God_ has been described as a Yoruba national epic, that
is, if we understand an epic as a long narrative on the life and heroic
exploits of a great character. This novel serves the weird tale of a
hunter, Olowo-aiye, who sets out on a hunting expedition in the dreaded
forest, _Igbo Olodumare_, armed to the teeth with charms and weapons. He
says:
_“Today is the day that I go to the place where the powerful ones go,
to the abode of the strange beings, to the place that is very dark in my
eyes; I will leave peace behind; I shall go in to meet trouble; but
difficulty is the father of treasure; good name is better than a new
bride; if I endure the trials of today, I shall reap the treasure of
tomorrow; if I joyfully return from Igbo Olodumare, my name shall surely
endure in the world.”_
Olowo-aiye engages in several fights that are so fierce he thinks he
would give up. But like the epic hero he is, he emerges from all his
fights very victorious. His first fight with Esu-kekere-ode, the demon
that lives under the anthill, ends amicably when he reaches for his
flute and plays an enticing tune on the greatness and magnanimity of the
God, Almighty. This was at the Jungle of Silence.
His next encounter is with Ajediran, the exiled witch, with her elder
sister. He later marries Ajediran at the palace of the king of _Igbo
Olodumare_ after he defeated Ajonnu-Iberu the vicious gnome who keeps
the gate of _Igbo Olodumare_, in a very fierce battle that was watched
by animals, weird creatures and gnomes of _Igbo Olodumare_.
After being lost in the “forest of God” for three years, Olowo-aiye
commences his search for his home route and this brings him in contact
with his dead mother who gives him a bean cake that would never finish
no matter how much he ate from it. Later, he goes to the house of the
kind host and master story-teller, Baba-Onirungbon-Yeuke who takes him
on a visit to Death’s house.
He later sets out with some of his countrymen who join him at
Baba-Onirungbon-Yeuke’s house and had to be taken prisoner in the town
of the snakes by Ojola-Ibinu, the head of all the snakes in the world.
They had to device a way of killing this snake-king and passing the
valley of the vicious ladies before they could peacefully go home,
signaling the end of the very hazardous adventure.
In this novel, though the narrative remains in the first person point of
view, we have in fact three narrators. This is arranged in a linear
progressive form to commence with the unidentified narrator who then
encounters his old friend, Akara-ogun, the son of Olowo-aiye, born to
him in his absence, after he had left for the adventure in _Igbo
Olodumare_. It was he that now tells the story of his father’s
exploits until he feels it is time to let his father’s diary speak for
itself. And when this is done, he reemerges and then allows the first
narrator to indulge in his valedictory speech replete with diverse
instructions on how to lead a purposeful, exemplary and morally sound
life before the book finally ends.
_The Forest Of God_ is made up of 172 pages. It commences with a brief
introduction, a literature review that chronicles the most perceptive
comments made about Fagunwa’s works by scholars over the years. There
are also chapters devoted to some biographical information about
Fagunwa, his works, his use of the Yoruba language and his rhetoric.
The notes at the end of the novel (p. 148) offer insightful explanations
on some complicated idioms or other forms of language use and provide
quite a number of privileged information from the translator that aid
the reader’s appreciation of the work. Some terms describing Yoruba
food items, cultures and some other life preferences peculiar to them
are also made clear to the reader by the translator through the notes.
It would be futile denying the pride of place Fagunwa’s pioneering
effort has earned him in the African literary landscape. His work will
always be studied due largely to its very historical and even cultural
significance. But one may not always help nursing the feeling that his
work is akin to some dish which people are often compelled to take as
opposed to some really sumptuous delicacies which they go all out to
secure and savour. The book’s strength, however, lies in its ability
to raise the hope of the reader and encourage him to follow in the quest
with a promise that a great discovery will come as a reward for the
quite unentertaining journey. But at the end of the day, the reader is
left with this deflating feeling of having been duped – and by someone
who had no intention of doing so.
_*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, a literary scholar and journalist, is the author
of the book, “Nigeria: Why Looting May Not Stop [1]”
(scruples2006@yahoo.com [2]). _
References:
Achebe, Chinua, “_Work and Play in_ _The Palmwine Drinkard, Critical
Perspectives on Amos Tutuola_ (Bernth Lindfors ed.),Washington DC:
Three Continents, 1975
Ajadi, Gabriel A. (trans): D.O. Fagunwa, _The Forest Of God_, Ibadan:
Agbo Areo Pub., 1995.
Altick, Richard D., _The Art of Literary Research__,_ New York: Norton,
1975.
Bamgbose, Ayo, _The Novels of D.O. Fagunwa_, Benin City: Ethiope Pub.
Corp., 1974.
Beier, Ulli, _“Fagunwa: A Yoruba Novelist,”_ _Black Orpheus_ No. 17,
Ulli Beier and Abiola Irele (eds), 1965.
Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie and Ihechukwu Madubuike, _Toward The
Decolonization Of African Literature_, Enugu: Fourth Dimension, 1980.
Irele, Abiola, _The African Experience In Literature And Ideology_,
London: Heinemann, 1981.
Lindfors, Bernth, _“Amos Tutuola And D.O. Fagunwa”,_ The _Journal Of
Commonwealth Literature_, No. 9, Arthur Ravenscroft (ed), July 1970.
Links:
——
[1]
https://www.amazon.com/NIGERIA
[2] http://scruples2006@yahoo.com/