Two chains, one choice: Soyinka and the quest for freedom from the twin plagues of political and religious maladies in Samarkand and other markets I have known. (2024)

Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known, Wole Soyinka's fifthbook of poetry, henceforth abbreviated to Samarkand, engages the twindevils of political tyranny and religious extremism. Whereas the formeris a familiar demon with which the author has ever fought since hiscommencement of the art of creative writing, the latter is relativelynew. Religious fanaticism after the September 11, 2001 attacks on theUnited States of America (USA) by Al-Qaeda has become a monumentalglobal challenge that wreaks havoc on nations of the world and wasteshuman lives and property with utmost reckless abandon. To protestagainst theocratic misrule or be skeptical at all of politico-religiousideologies is adjudged a terrible heresy that deserves punishment bydeath at holy hands of God's self-appointed hatchet men and women.Denial of fundamental human right to life and to free expression ofopinion by both political despots and religious fanatics rankles thepoet and has him howl from the first poem in the collection to the last.

It is pertinent to state that most of the poems in the collectionwere written in exile while Soyinka lived a precarious life under thedeath sentence passed on him in absentia by General Sani Abacha the lateNigerian military dictator. Soyinka was ceaselessly pursued byAbacha's hired assassins who almost succeeded in bringing him downand pouring acid on his body in a hotel where he lodged in the USA butfor the vigilance of a security guard who checkmated the hoodlums. Thathe survived the ordeal and outlived Abacha to tell the story was amatter of good fortune. The tone of the poet is acerbic and threnodicand his mood is grave, because the circ*mstances and events that gavebirth to the poems were extremely painful and traumatic and theiratmosphere reeked too much of death.

Divided into five sections, namely, Outsiders, Of Exits, FugitivePhases, The Sign of the Zealot, and Elegies, Samarkand is a supremeexemplification of creative melding of the local and the global andabolition of dubious divisions, be they ethnic, ideological, political,or religious. As Soyinka argues in "Climates of Art" (1988:247-61), the conditions under which artists live and work in thecontemporary world are more or less the same as controllers of economic,political, and religious levers of every society unite against any formof art that opposes their system and insists on freedom of creativeexpressions.

It is undeniable that, with the rise of Political Islam andemergence of terrorist groups in several countries, the whole world iscurrently asphyxiated under a cloud of fear and violence, what withincessant bombings, kidnappings, and decapitations. Kurtz'sunforgettable cry "The Horror! The Horror!" (Conrad 1973:100), an echo of Gaia's psychic scream that expresses extremesuffering as human civilization accelerates the planet Earth towards anirredeemable ecological catastrophe, only partially depicts thecontemporary world experience of political-cum-religious extremism andrecalls Soyinka's conclusion that what is being witnessed is"the very collapse of humanity" (1988: 17).

"Ah, Demosthenes!" the first poem in Samarkand is atrenchant declaration of the poet's unambiguous position on thepower issue. He will use all resources at his disposal and endure allhardships to crush all impediments created by power perverters anddismantle their towers of lies, in order to set the world free fromtheir death clutch. It is a bold reiteration of all he has fought andstood for as a writer who is conscious of his moral and socialobligations. Ramming pebbles into his mouth, placing nettles on histongue, dropping some ratsbane on it, and thrusting all fingers down histhroat are expressive of his desire to contend with tyrants and resistoppressors and also of his keen awareness that the path of revolutionarystruggle for which he opts is perilous and might lead to loss of his ownlife. There is an element of sacrifice in revolutionary action thatmakes its hero appear as an Ogun or Christ figure, and its absence wouldrender a revolution mere propagation of opportunism and self-promotionat the expense of the collective good. Soyinka gives the theme of ritualsuicide in The Strong Breed and Death and the King's Horseman acerebral political interpretation that escapes many of his traducers.Ayi Kwei Armah provides a clarification on the symbolic significance ofritual sacrifice using the metaphor of petrol, something light and purethat burns itself up in order to push forward a society that is imagedas a heavy truck loaded with all kinds of people (1974: 27). The tragedyof Africa is that there are not many self-sacrificing revolutionaryheroes who, like Nelson Mandela, would give their lives to the strugglefor emancipation of their people.

In exercise of the will to live a full life, love, and work withoutfetters and abridgment of his intellectual energies and imagination bythe powers that be, Soyinka very much resembles Ogun, his Muse, who is"embodiment of Will," which is characterized as "theparadoxical truth of destructiveness and creativeness in actingman." (1978: 150). A violent revolution is both creative anddestructive. Understanding duality of power, for Soyinka, constitutesthe true test of who a genuine artist is: "he is a profound artistonly to the degree to which he comprehends and expresses this principleof destruction and re-creation" (1978: 150).

Beyond exposing despots, the poet-persona intends to rid them ofpower, turn the tables against them, and give them an ample dose of themistreatment they have meted out to their victims:

 I'll seal their fate in tunnels dark and dank As habitations of their hostages Denied of air, denied of that same light (4)

The lines recall "Live Burial" in the Prisonnettessection of A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972: 60-61), a book of poetry thatdelineates Soyinka's experience in solitary confinement for almosttwo years on a trumped-up charge of helping the breakaway Republic ofBiafra to buy an aircraft during the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970).

The "agnostic sage" in the last stanza of the poem isSocrates who was forced to take the hemlock because he not only stoodfor unwanted truth but also taught it to Athenian youth, something thatthe political authorities of his time counted as corrupting minds ofneophytes. Socrates made the supreme sacrifice in defense of truth anddid not stutter. Stuttering is used in the poem as a metaphor forcowardice, making compromises in order to be close to power and enjoyits privileges, prevaricating, and spreading untruth. Whoever chooses touphold truth in a world of endless compromises and hypocrisy must bewilling to suffer for it. That, in sum, is what the phrase having heatedpebbles or werepe (nettles) on a tongue connotes.

An exquisite piece of gut writing, the poem reveals Soyinka theenemy of falsehood and tyranny who is filled with so much anger anddisgust at the sordid condition of the world and manipulation of themasses by the ruling class that he desires to throw up all the biliousstuff in his corporeal system for health. The lyric takes a swipe atpolitical demagogues, rabble-rousers, who incense the ordinary folkagainst their oppressors with revolutionary rhetoric but would not wantto suffer in defense of truth. Their inaction is the butt of thesatirical attack. Hemlock could pass not between their lips but downthroats of others. In other words, they are not true leaders but fraudsand fake revolutionaries who create a make-believe world in which theyappear as super heroes.

"Pen for Hire" continues the exploration of the theme oftreacherous manipulation of masses of people and truth in the service ofthe power elite. The tribe of writers is composed of both genuine andfake members. Similarly, writing is bifurcated into benevolent andmalevolent types. The use-abuse dichotomy that characterizes culturealso defines the universe of imaginative writing. Some writers use theirworks to raise the political consciousness of the hoi polloi towardsliberating them from all forms of exploitation, while others use theirsin praise of the powers that be in order to be on the make andperpetuate the status quo:

 The pen may beat a path to ploughshares Pen beat ploughshares into swords In words from ploughshare and the sword. And pen enshrine, and pen unmask the lies Of vain mythologies, pen enthrone The mouldy claims of Power, urge Contested spaces as divinely given. (5)

Some writers spread contagion in their works and thereby causedivision, hatred, hom*ophobia, and endless strife, while others usetheirs to build bridges across all cultural, ethnic, gender, linguistic,political, racial, and religious divides. The only division that ispartially acceptable to the latter group is between moral good and evil.Whatever promotes creativity, culture and peace, whatever expandsfreedom and aids scientific and technological advancement, and whateverenhances unity and the quality of life is good. On the contrary,whatever negates culture, banishes knowledge, denies freedom andhappiness, robs people of their rights to life, education and work, orto associate with other human beings, move freely, speak in a forthrightmanner on any issue, or hold a contrary or unpopular opinion is bad. Ahigher morality is Friedrich Nietzsche's that transcends thedivision into good and evil (1967).

Scriptural texts that were considered sacred in the dim past aredeconstructed and portrayed in the postmodern world as pure humaninventions without any divine origin that surpasses what creativewriters regard as inspiration. That is to say just as some pensconstruct empty mythologies, others adopt a historical and scientificperspective and unmask the lies so erected. Joseph Atwill revealssources of the Synoptic Gospels in Caesar's Messiah: The RomanConspiracy to Invent Jesus (2011) over two thousand years afterChristians and some followers of other faiths have held them asincontrovertible truth and as the word of God. Atwill exposes theRomans' devious strategy to use Christianity to pacify the Jews.His pen demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that religion serves theruling class as an instrument for making the masses compliant and easilygovernable. Jesus teaches people to love their enemies and turn theother cheek perpetually. Soyinka deconstructs Marx's idea ofreligion as an opiate: "Religion is not so much the opium of thepeople as it is the Homeopathy of the human condition" (2012: 124).

Hired writers who pour paint on atrocities of government and makethem appear humane have their sensitive feelers blunted for love ofmoney. Reduced to zombies, they no longer smell "the stench andguilt of power" (2002: 6). It is such writers who justify fascismand blame it on the divine order: "But God decreed the end shallmultiply the means" (2002: 6). They neither believe in change northe human capacity to ameliorate the appalling condition of the poor andtransform the order of things for the benefit of all members of society.

"Hours Lost, Hours Stolen" laments losses (human lives,animals, plants, mineral resources, time, and opportunities fordevelopment) suffered by underdeveloped countries on account of badgovernance and overbearing attitude of centers of power in the world. Itfocuses on culture of waste that alienates workers of the world fromtheir labor and depletes resources of the Earth. Wasters break bondsthat bind members of the human community and connect people to earththat supplies the material for culture. The destroyers are imaged ashollow and devoid of thought of sustainable development, conservation,and re-greening of the earth. They do not let up, and are neverremorseful for their horrendous deeds that ruin Nature. The threnodyreaches a climactic point:

 But now, they kill us slowly, from shrine to township. They kill us slowly on farmstead, in ivory towers And factories. They kill our children in their cribs. (8)

There is no hope that the future will be any different from thepresent, for their "mangy whelps/Will follow soon, and learn thesterile strut" (8). The reign of fear, slaughter and tyranny is allpervasive and leaves no relief and the dead land is covered withcorpses, while those who are still alive are so filled with dread thatthey cannot dare come out to protest the usurpation of their collectivewill, or else they will be mowed down by agents of destruction: "Apall of stench descends upon the land, a stillness/Of the fear ofmillions crouched behind their doors" (8).

An aberration of the highest order, military rule is portrayed asutterly corrupt, predatory, and treacherous. The line "They kill usslowly with force-feeding--a diet of force" (9) conjures up thespecter of military rule, which is roundly excoriated. However, the poemalso recalls the history of European colonial brigandage, decimation ofAfrican populations, the Trans-Saharan and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,and White racism. The line "Our space is sucked into the void oftheir existence" (9) could be an allusion to amalgamation of theNorthern Protectorate and the Southern Protectorate by Lord FrederickLugard to form one colony in 1914 that is now called Nigeria as well asthe incorporation of Africa into the world capitalist system. The poemworks on the national and the international level.

In the last stanza, Soyinka is at his best as an excellent ironistwho laughs at the ludicrous ways of humanity:

 Go now, school in the wiles of the thief, appropriate The apothecary of poisoners. Learn fawning, Master the backward bow and crawl, but--preach charity That feeds the hand it'll bite--serve obsequiousness As their last supper and their obsequies. (9; his emphasis)

The stanza punches holes in the idea of civilizing savages whichwas used by Europeans to justify their balkanization and colonization ofAfrican people and the argument advanced by the Nigerian armed forcesthat they seized power in order to protect peace and forestall thebreakdown of law and order. Far from altruism, the main motive ofEuropean imperialists and colonialists is revealed as economicexploitation of human and material resources of Africa, and militaryintervention in Nigerian politics has proven to be forself-aggrandizement. Having learnt all the bad rules of the game ofgovernance from their wily colonial masters, African nationalists afterattainment of political independence put them into practice, and addtheir own ingenious ploys, so that the continent is perpetually raped,and victims are ever busy with the work of mourning and never experiencerelief from pain. For illustration, political power is perceived byMaitama Sule, a former Nigerian ambassador to the United Nations, as theexclusive preserve of a section of his country. He declares:

God in his infinite wisdom has provided different peoples withdifferent talents. The Igbo ... have been provided the gift ofentrepreneurship. The Yoruba make first-class administrators andeducationists.... The North is however singularly endowed with the giftof leadership. (qtd. in Soyinka, 2012: 43)

His racial stereotyping that justifies exclusion of others fromgovernance sheds light on the virulence of ethnic politics in Nigeria.

Of Exits, the second section of Samarkand, records deaths ofcompatriots who were murdered in cold blood by General SaniAbacha's goons because they dared to raise a voice against hisdictatorship and asked questions that bordered on the necessity fordemocratic governance and respect for fundamental human rights inNigeria.

They include: Kudirat, the wife of M.K.O. Abiola whose politicalmandate was stolen by the military under the despotic rule of GeneralIbrahim Babangida and who not only lost his mandate to the arbitrarycancellation of the results of the June 12, 1993 presidentialelection--the fairest so far in the polity--but also his life whilestill in government detention; Alfred Rewane, an octogenarianbusinessman; Kenule Saro-Wiwa; and eight other Ogoni environmentalactivists who drew attention of the world to the agony of their peoplebrought on by industrial exploration and exploitation of crude bytransnational companies operating in their community, which violatedbrazenly international best practices with impunity and were protectedfrom sanction by government.

Soyinka indicts the international community for theirconspiratorial silence over the death of Kudirat Abiola who wascourageous enough to seek the release of her husband from detention. Hetraces the silence to protection of economic interests of theinternational community, the challenge of satisfying the more pressingdemand for crude to solve its energy problem: "oil/Must flow,though hearts atrophy" (19). Kudirat's death is compared toPrincess Diana's that was made a global phenomenon by thepaparazzi. Although Kudirat, unlike Diana, had no royal pedigree and wasnot the toast of the world media, she nevertheless died a politicalmartyr and thus was classified along with female heroines who suffered,died, or are still persecuted for pursuing worthy causes such as defenseof democracy and truth and freedom from oppression.

"Exit Left, Monster, Victim in Pursuit" has a subtitle"Death of a Tyrant," which is an unambiguous allusion to thedeath of General Sani Abacha. Poetic justice is the service rendered therandy tyrant who dies of eating a poisoned fruit in the lyric, the moralof which is the transient nature of power. Abacha is portrayed in thepiece as a mean dictator who attacks the most vulnerable class ofpeople--women, the old and faithful servitors who fall out of favor. Inthe last stanza of the poem, the political history of Nigeria iscompared in its darkest days to that of the Borgias, a greatSpanish-Italian family that was notorious for its criminality, crueltyand treachery in the late fourteenth century through the early sixteenthcentury. A man killing his own brother was a common phenomenon among theBorgias.

"Where the News Came to Me of the Death of a Tyrant"foregrounds the problem of racial and religious division that besmirchesthe reputation of the Holy Land of Jerusalem. The Jews and thePalestinians are "bound/At navel, yet strangers sworn tosword" (23). It is a land in which, according to the poet,"piety preys and wounds" (23). Peace, symbolized by olives, ofwhich there is abundance in the region, has been elusive because ofcontestation over ownership of land. The conspiracy of commerce,politics, and religion makes it difficult to resolve the conflict. Thepoet laments: "Hope is split on the axe of history, zeal andpolitics" (24). Yet the two races in combat claim Abraham as theirgrand patriarch, which further renders their politico-religious warutterly ludicrous. Oneness of humanity is metaphorically represented asthe "one road" that "leads to Jerusalem, only one"(24).

"Calling Joseph Brodsky for Ken Saro-Wiwa" examines thefate of writers under brutal dictatorships such as were witnessed inNigeria under General Sani Abacha and in the former Union of SovietSocialist Republics (USSR) under Joseph Stalin. Writers who refuse tocirc*mscribe their imagination and to write according to rules andregulations rolled out by a totalitarian regime have only one choice,that of suffering either at home or in exile. Joseph Brodsky fled theUSSR and sought refuge from socialist terror in the capitalist West onlyto live the life of a fugitive. Kenule Saro-Wiwa did not have thefortune of escaping the noose of the tyrant's hangman. Before hehad the opportunity to escape, however, Brodsky was condemned to hardlabor in cold Siberia where his hands trained to hold a pen and scribblenon-verifiable truth "shoveled sh*t,/Carved and stitchedcadavers" (26), as announced in his obituary that inspired Soyinkato compose the elegy. The Soviet State judged him a "socialparasite" (26), which the poet considers a minor allegation incomparison with the charge of treason that, because he refused to writehis fictions according to the dictates of the Communist Party, he wasagainst socialist revolution and therefore an enemy of the people.

Highly satirical, the poem likens the Bolsheviks to the Houyhnhnms,all-wise horses, in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels:

 Even in the land of all-wise Houyhnhnms. Horses sh*t in social realism, dialectical To the last neighing Nay, the whinnying Aye-aye Comrade sir. (26)

It is an effective lampoon against the literary ideology ofsocialist realism. As used in the poem, the scatological image"sh*t" is both affirmative and pejorative. To sh*t is human,an act that is emblematic of the paradox of human nature, as manifestedin ingestion and excretion, and calls into question perfectibility ofbeauty. Soyinka considers any economic and political system thatinfringes on basic human rights as oppressive and would want itsoperators to recognize and accept their limitations as human beings andnot pretend to dubious perfection. He subscribes to a "socialvision", but "not a literary ideology," essentiallybecause the latter asphyxiates the creative process, consecrates workswritten from a favored ideological perspective and excommunicates thoseexecuted from a contrary ideological viewpoint. As he puts it pointedlyin "Ideology and the Social Vision (1): The Religious Factor,""the practical effects" of a literary ideology "on thecreative process lead to predictability, imaginative constraint andthematic excisions" (1978: 61, 65).

A contrast is drawn between Moscow, which is cold, and Ogoni, thetropical heat of which is intensified by gas flaring that pollutes theenvironment and evidences sheer prodigality of managers ofNigeria's resources. Although the two geopolitical spaces arethousands of kilometers apart, the former ruled by civilians and thelatter by a military dictatorship, they are nevertheless unified by acruel denial of freedom.

Both Brodsky and Saro-Wiwa experience a gross travesty of justiceand, like Joseph in the Bible, suffer enormously for their dreams.Equated obliquely with prophets, poets are warned to be wary of crazyand stupid wielders of political power and admonished to eschew theliteral and concentrate instead on the symbolic.

Having been hounded into exile and pursued day and night by hiredkillers and having been kept incommunicado in solitary confinement inprison for almost two years, Soyinka has gained insight into the sadexperience of the two writers and hazards of imaginative writinggenerally. "But we had become immune to dread," he avers (29).It is instructive that in solitary confinement he felt "fear ofmadness" (Adekoya 2006: 245), for which reason he destroyed hisjottings in The Man Died (Soyinka 1975: 273-74). His confession: "Ithink of yours because I own that closer death/Too close to dirge, toobitter to lament" (2002: 29) is certainly an allusion to theattempt on his life by Abacha's hit men. In a truly threnodic toneSoyinka beseeches Joseph Brodsky, who has gone before Ken Saro-Wiwa, toreceive the latter scribe, calm his restless soul in the land of thedead, and show him the way: "Take his hand,/Lead him, and be led byhim" (29), an affirmation of brotherhood of the pen and chiralityof textuality.

The Sign of the Zealot, the fourth section of the book, is composedof just two poems, namely, "Twelve Canticles for the Zealot"and the eponymous "Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known."An agnostic to the core, Soyinka appears in all verses of the formerpoem as mordantly critical of all revealed religions preached byoverzealous believers. He identifies "Political Islam and itshegemonic aggression" as "the latest among the destabilisingfactors that continue to confront the African continent" (2012:86). However, he does not doubt the social and spiritual value ofreligion as an institution that offers adherents an anchor and a senseof balance in a chaotic and impenetrably dark world. He confesses:

 I acknowledge that the world would be a much poorer place without the phenomenon of religion, and I do not refer merely to their architectural and artistic legacies but even to the inspirational value of their scriptures, the lyricism in which they are frequently couched, and the intellectual challenges of their exegeses. (1991: 18)

Nevertheless, he is highly skeptical that religious tenets,particularly those that relate to creation and afterlife, could be takenas literal truth. Two twinned things that he finds most abhorrent inChristianity are "the attenuation of terrestrialism" and"cosmic Manichaeism" (1978: 24, 4). They explain why "anew god [Jesus Christ] walks on water without getting his feet wet"(1978: 4). In Christianity, the corporeal is contemned and crucified inorder to fully realize the spiritual. In contrast, the Ifa (Yorubadivination) corpus "exhibits a sense of the impish or humorous,sometimes scatological, recognizing that deflation of afflatus is anecessary part of social and spiritual balance and generalwell-being" (Soyinka 2012: 91-92).

His skepticism of the veracity of claims of all revealed religionsis registered right in the first verse of "Twelve Canticles for theZealot ..."

 He wakes from a prolonged delirium, swears He has seen the face of God. God help all those whose fever never raged Or has subsided. (43)

A literalist might be taken in by the poet's tongue-in-cheekprayer, but the bard is only subtly suggesting that religion is a formof neurosis that is paradoxically psychotherapeutic. He remindsreligious extremists in the poem of pagan roots of their faiths thatthey erroneously believe place them above animists and natureworshippers. Take away pagan concepts and practices, such as anointingwith oil, liturgical chants, baptism, possession dance, fasting, healingwith the power of the word (incantation) or prayer, invocation,initiation ceremonies and rites of passage (birth, naming, puberty,marriage, and burial), processional hymns, human and animal sacrifice,rites of purification, sacred symbols and totems, the Trinity, andcasting out demons, especially throwing stones at Satan, and allrevealed religions would be enfeebled and rendered hollow. It is thusignorance that leads religious fundamentalists to condemn doubters oftheir faiths to eternal damnation. Their unchanging coda is: "Comewith me or--/Go to--hell!" (Soyinka 2002: 43; his emphasis).Soyinka insists that it is a little bit more complicated than thatsimple binary division. In any case, as W. B. Yeats reveals in A Vision,"Each age unwinds the thread another age had wound ... all thingsdying each other's life, living each other's death"(1966: 270-71). Absolutism and separatism, as practiced by religiouspurists, are the source of the plague tagged culture war that iscurrently ravaging the world.

Soyinka does not blame children who are recruited by adultjihadists and made to swallow the fiction of scriptures as literal truthand serve as suicide bombers in the war but their teachers who abusetheir unfledged minds and cause their mental disorientation. Sheik Gumidid not promote peace but hatred and religious warfare when he utteredhis memorable words "christianity is nothing" (qtd. inSoyinka, 1991: 5). The directive contained in a document taken from theheadquarters of one Sheik Musa Hilal: "Change the demography ofDarfur. Empty it of all African tribes" gave vent to the crime ofmass murder committed in that region of the Sudan (qtd. in Soyinka,2010: 177). One scriptural text, the poet argues, cannot substitute"A hundred thousand/Vacuities of mind" (43). In other words,children who graduate from koranic schools where instruction takes themode of indoctrination have not received a proper education but haveonly been bamboozled and fed on fluff that they subsequently recite asmantras ad nauseam. Soyinka considers taking advantage of innocents asanother terrible crime against humanity.

It is simply unfathomable that a religion that preaches compassion,love, mercy, peace, and oneness of humanity should cause egregiousbloodletting, inveterate hatred, and endless strife in the world. Theworld of revealed religions is so chaotic that members of the same foldsometimes turn their guns inward, as demonstrated in the sixth canticlethat alludes to the murder of Yitzhak Rabin Prime Minister of Israel andAnwar El Sadat President of Egypt by their own people for working with"enemies" of their countries in order to achieve peacefulcoexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.

In the seventh canticle, Soyinka engages the subject of contemptwith which the so-called possessors of the triumvirate Abrahamicreligions--Judaism, Christianity and Islam--treat African TraditionalReligion, the values of which in his estimation enhance community,harmony, and unity: "Ogun came riding through the streets/OfJerusalem. The Chosen barred his way/His bright metallic lore wasprofanation" (44-45). The poet meets the umbrage and rejectionbravely with the iconoclastic line: "A god is nowhere born, yeteverywhere" (45), which is a variant of the Yoruba epigram:"Bi o s'enia, imale o si (if humanity were not, the gods wouldnot be)" (Soyinka 1978: 10). Followers of Rama Krishna in UttarPradesh, India are indicted for not practicing the principle ofreligious tolerance, which led to their reducing a mosque to rubble.Similarly, the Talibans demolished the two Bamiyan Buddha statues carvedon a rock in Afghanistan in 2001. Religious fundamentalists reverencesymbols and totems of their own religion but execrate and destroy thoseof others, which are erroneously perceived as fetishes.

What the poet does in the ninth canticle is to generate mantrasfrom quotations drawn from texts of six major world religions tounderscore the significance of religious pluralism, which imposesobligations of moderation, restraint, and tolerance on all believers.His simple precept is: let believers seek peace in their dailyintercourse with fellow citizens, their neighbors and co-workers. Inother words, they should practice what they preach, and stop being blindhypocrites who in their actions substitute "Boom for oom and--swordfor Word--"(46; his emphasis). He wrote:

 Violence appears to be the one constant in the histories of all the major religions of the world ... despite the lip-service which their tenets pay to the need for tolerance, peace and understanding.... It is time that these religions took stock of themselves, reexamined their social tendencies in the light of a constantly evolving world and resolve to transcend their violent histories (1991: 14).

The tenth canticle begins with an Ifa song, the English translationof which is provided in a footnote:

 All earth is the home of deities All earth is the home of deities It was mortals who brought the gods to the world All earth is home of deities. (48)

Soyinka is affirmative that deities, from the highest to thelowest, including their scriptures, are all human inventions. Therefore,he tells all religious adherents: "Invent your god and forge hiswill/The home of piety is the soul" (46).

Contrary to Islam that imprisons a woman in purdah, compels her tocover every part of her body, save the eyes, and prohibits her fromworking outside the home, traditional Yoruba religion is gendersensitive and permits women to participate fully in the economic life ofsociety. Soyinka asserts:

 I come from Ogun's land where Women plant and teach and cure Mould and build and cultivate, Bestride the earth on sturdy thighs Wipe sweat off open faces. I come from Ogun's land where Women spurn the veil, and men And earth rejoice! (47)

The substitution of "earth" in the last line of thequotation implies that Yoruba drisa worship is a natural religion inwhich gender complementarities are crucial.

In the eleventh canticle, the poet censures the practice of stoninga Muslim woman to death as punishment for adultery or fornication inIslamic states where sharia justice system is in operation, while theman with whom she committed the sin invariably goes scot-free because ittakes the evidence of four eyewitnesses to convict him, whereaspregnancy is undeniable proof of a married or single woman's guilt.The clause "This murder/Is the rock of sin" (47) indictsadministrators of sharia who condemn a Muslim woman charged withadultery to death by stoning and portrays them as sanctimonious sinners.Certainly, women are denied the right of equality before the law and getthe short shrift in Islamic states. They are not even allowed to drivecars in Mecca. The world waits for Islam to reform its unjust laws justas the Mosaic Law that had sanctioned death by stoning was amended inChristianity.

Pejorative words such as "Pagan, heathen, infidel, unbeliever,kafiri, etc." (47) used by Christians and Muslims to describe anddenigrate adherents of African Traditional Religion, in Soyinka'sopinion, issue from abysmal ignorance and should be censored. The Muslimcleric who passed the fatwa (a death sentence) on Taslim Nazreem,because the female activist had the audacity to demand that God setfemales free by granting them the same rights enjoyed by their malecounterparts, is excoriated. As regards denigration of women, allreligions in varying degrees are culpable. In the twelfth canticle, thepoet hits the iron on the nail and, like Taslim Nazreem, calls forgender equality of rights under the law.

As the poet facetiously puts it, the thirteenth canticle is"for the merely superstitious" (48, his emphasis) in view ofthe fact that the number thirteen is perceived by those who believe inmagic as a sign of evil omen. However, the canticle is reallymalediction that exploits fear of the odd number thirteen which, forSoyinka, is just an ordinary number, like all others. Friday, for magicbuffs, is a day of evil and trouble. Hence, the poet conjoins Friday andthirteen and sends them as curses to infest dreams and intensify fearsof those who dread them. The grandest conceit of the poem, a wish, iscontained in the last sentence:

 Would I could boast A triple six, a Grand Slam by Satan's reckoning--I would have long submerged the world In cosmic laughter! (48).

Another thingamabob dreaded by Christians, the number 666,"the mark of the beast" (Bible (KJV), Rev. 19: 20), whichrefers to Satan, who is believed to deceive all the nations and peoplesof the world, is satirically portrayed as a hat trick in a tenniscontest. Religion is reduced by the iconoclastic poet to a cosmic joke.

Yet, Soyinka is not an enemy of religion but a cautious lyricist ofits social values who writes glowingly of church, mosque, and templearchitecture and is fond of adapting Christian rituals and motifs. Whathe finds odious in religion is extremists' proclivities formindless destruction of cultural monuments and human lives in the nameof God. The truth of any religion must be balanced against the force oflogic, reason and science. He recommends Omar Khayyam's immortalparadoxical aphorism "To be free from belief and unbelief is myreligion" (Soyinka 1991: 11) as a shotgun to fanatics and skepticsalike. Drawing attention to the resilience and vibrancy of AfricanTraditional Religions, he calls for an end to denigration of the Africanspiritual heritage.

The eponymous poem "Samarkand and Other Markets I HaveKnown" pushes a strong argument that the world, as conceived of bythe Yoruba, is a vast market with many departments, out of which thepresent essay elects to examine just two: the political and thereligious. The poem advocates a robust multiculturalism and religiouspluralism. In "Chimes of faith assail the market place" (49),the first line of the third stanza, the verb "assail" suggeststhat religion is violence. Although the Crusades, the Roman CatholicInquisition, and the Jihad were all instruments of death and suppressionof truth, they pale into insignificance beside the religious violencethat is witnessed in the contemporary world. Soyinka asseverates:"religion as a killing device, guarantor of impunity and homicidalinspiration, is a recent phenomenon" (2012: 120). It is, he adds,"an assiduous handmaiden to the territorial pursuit of power andthe enthronement of fascism" (121-22). Yet, as virulent as theforce of faith is, Soyinka contends: "our situation could be muchworse without religion" (2012: 122), for it exercises a restrainingand stabilizing influence on human behavior. Therefore, he pleads notfor proscription of any religion, however bad the behavior of itsfollowers may be, but freedom of worship: "Let all contend"(2002: 50), that is, search for converts without resource to violence.There is enough space and time for each of them to win souls "tillthe infant cry of Truth/Resound in the market of the heart" (2002:50). It could be argued that religious violence is on the rise as aresult of increasing erosion of faith by scientific truth and thatperpetrators only hide under the banner of holiness to prosecute theirwar for political and socioeconomic justice. The creation of the IslamicState of Iraq and Syria is apodictic proof.

Moreover, religion has become big business in the world and priestsand priestesses are not averse to profit-making: "Trade and holyplaces, saints and salesmen/Have ever lived as soul companions,caterers/For the needs of flesh and spirit--"(50). Soyinkarecommends orisa worship to the world because it is "the veryembodiment of Tolerance," the "spirit of accommodation"(2012: 130, 131), and uses Ifa to illustrate the point:

 Go to the orisa and be wise. Ifa Shuns the excluding tongue, unveils Uncharted routes to knowledge, truth And godhead (2002: 51, his emphasis)

It is instructive in this respect that the Ifa corpus is constantlyupdated with new knowledge derived from new discoveries made in thecourse of human interaction with nature and with one another.

Yoruba deities survive in the New World, Soyinka argues, becausetheir system has always been one of adaptation, "complementarities,of affinities, and expansion--but of the non-aggressive kind"(2012: 144). "The essence of Orisa," he avers, "is theantithesis of tyranny, bigotry and dictatorship" (2012: 139).Unlike Jesus Christ who claims to be the Truth and the only way tosalvation, Ifa recognizes the fact that every force, be it material orspiritual, has limits and limitations.

Not even Orunmila (the father of oracular lore) is self-sufficient,which explains why he consults and requests other Ifa priests to divinefor him. A great deal of religious crises in the world could be reducedto manageable proportions if only the so-called purveyors of immutabletruth would eat humble pie, accept their limitations and recognizestrengths of other cultures, other faiths, and other perspectives. Whatlures youth to jihad, he discloses, is the dream of a life of unbrokenbliss in paradise in company of ravishing virgins, and declares:

 Who kills for love of god kills love, kills god, Who kills in name of god leaves god Without a name. (57)

Political extremism is what the poet finds objectionable inSamarkand, the city of Uzbek, in the former USSR, because it breedsrepression of the opposition and tyrannizes. Excessive regimentation oflife robs people of freedom, strangulates the market, and promotespeculation. Socialist precepts negate Soviet practices and thecontradiction produces shocks that jolt people out of their complacencyinto an acute consciousness of their parlous economic condition thatprovokes the poet to ask questions to which "responses by thetext" are provided (2002: 54).

Whereas the markets in Samarkand are lifeless and silent as thoughthey were graveyards peopled by ghosts, not just because of the economicdownturn, but also on account of excessive regimentation, those inAfrica brim with enthusiastic traders and riotous fare and reek of"the smell of life" (53). Thoroughly disappointed, the poetflees Samarkand and its dreary markets and takes a train to Moscow, aflight that is likened to jumping from a "frying-pan tofurnace" (54). Soyinka laments the absence of a free creativespirit in Samarkand and the laborious but futile attempt by bureaucratsand political demagogues to pull the wool over the eyes of the ordinaryfolk in the city and deceive the outside world that all is well withtheir system.

In Elegies, the fifth and final section of the collection, Soyinkafocuses his search light on three representative African countries,Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania, the narratives of which are illustrative ofthe tragic history of the entire continent, and probes their appallingrealities. He argues in "The Children of this Land" thatNigerian youths are amoral, disrespectful to constituted authority,unpatriotic, alienated from their country, and dream of escaping intoforeign "havens" in Europe, North America, Asia, Australia,and other centers of power in the world because they have beendispossessed through mismanagement of resources of their land bygovernment. Corruption melded with prodigality, the bane of governancein Nigeria, leaves its youth destitute, unemployed, and hopeless. Hence,they turn to crimes.

Written in commemoration of Chinua Achebe's seventiethbirthday anniversary, "Elegy for a Nation" posts the obituaryof Nigeria. Literalists who insist that Nigeria is not dead but onlygravely sick, the poet argues, perceive not the country itself but"maggots/Probing still her monstrous womb" (68).

The poem presents a brief history of the country from pre-colonialtimes to the season of anomie under Abacha's dictatorship.Considering Nigeria's "lost idylls" (71),politicians' hash tag "Renaissance" sounds ludicrous andrisible to the poet. He derides it: "Gang-raped, the continent/Turns pregnant with the word--it's sworn, we shall be/Born again,though we die in the attempt" (71).

Allusion is made in the poem to Amina Lawal, a Nigerian womansentenced to death by stoning for adultery and for conceiving a childout of wedlock by an Islamic Sharia court in Funtua on March 22, 2002.The father of the child was not prosecuted for lack of evidence, eventhough deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) tests were not conducted. Anotherallusion is to Muslim fundamentalists who razed the Moremi shrine atOffa in Nigeria. Attacks on African cultural practices and institutionsby born-again Christians and Muslims enrage the poet and, added to thepredatory nature of the African political leadership, drive him to agloomy conclusion: "Our caryatids/Are weary cycles of endlessdebts," an oblique commentary on the endemic syndrome of dependenceon other people's leftovers (77).

"Vain Ransom," the last poem in the collection, amemorial to "the dead and maimed of Kenya and Tanzania" (78),reads like a post-mortem. It dredges up milestones in the historicalevolution of the two East African countries, which is similar in manyrespects to the lachrymal historical account of Nigeria rendered in"Elegy for a Nation." As if the horrendous hecatomb of theirancestors was not enough, the poem commences, Kenyans and Tanzaniansmake additional lustration and sacrifice their future, which is alreadystillborn anyway, on the altar of "Blind and blindingrivalries" and ancient quarrels remembered (2002:79). Other Africancountries that enact the rage of blood and ethnic cleansing include:"--Liberia, Congo, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda andall--"(79). Soyinka calls it "recurrent pacts/Ofself-immolation" (2002: 79) that provide markets for industriallyadvanced countries to sell their war weapons and profit from theunspeakable misery of Africa. Acts of genocide are attributed to failureof corrupt and despotic leadership, which impoverishes and ruins Africa.Hypocrisy of pious killers is exposed and shredded and the sanctity ofhuman life is exalted.

To conclude, in Samarkand, Soyinka rejects all doctrines ofabsolutism and separatism and celebrates "the unity, indeed, theindivisibility of the human community" (2008: 32). He emphasizesthe imperishable value of balance, moderation and tolerance in bothpolitical and religious domains and chooses freedom from tyranny ofdespots and zealots who seek to possess the soul of humanity.

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by

Segun Adekoya

[emailprotected]

Professor, English Department

Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria