Hanna Mak

18 April 2016

Tragedy, Satire, and the Fourth World

          The similarities and differences between Greek and Yoruba tragedy must seem to shift constantly before the eyes of the attentive and judicious reader. At one glance, the similarities may appear to outweigh the differences, but with another look, the opposite may seem to be true; and yet, the comparison between the Greek tragedians and the dramatic works of Wole Soyinka is one that is routinely drawn by Western readers, gasping for some breath of familiarity when confronted with the vastness of a culture not their own. This impulse is not without its uses. For those in the West, it is arguably necessary, but ultimately not sustaining. While similarities between the two traditions are undoubtedly present and compelling, particularly in Soyinka’s more markedly genre-adherent tragic works, the question of cultural identity still looms overhead, demanding confrontation. The in-depth reader of Soyinka’s dramas must necessarily trace the playwright’s steps, both physically and philosophically. From an early point during his career as a writer, Soyinka sought a vital, modern form of African literature that also spoke to the sense of continuity put forward by ancient traditions, avoiding “mere pastiche” (July 488). Rather than reductively modeling his art on “an idea from the traditional culture,” he strove to capture his world in its “full complexity,” without “sentimentality” (Olorounto 297). Therefore, it is necessary to examine both generalized West African and specific Yoruba ideology and cosmology, in order to reveal the nature of traditions which are not the skin, but the deep marrow and working tendon of a culture. Much of the connective tissue that thematically links Soyinka’s tragic works to those of Greek tragedians could in many ways be considered as the same tissue which links his tragic works to his own satires—the uniquely saturating quality of the Yoruba cosmological ‘fourth world’ and its marked “fluidity of time” (Odom 206). While the worlds of the “ancestors, the unborn, and the living” each constitute one traditional world, Soyinka describes the fourth as a simultaneous “coexistence” of each; his dramas, too, are situated within this boundless world, inhabiting a space alongside, within, and beyond traditional genre distinctions put forward by the Western canon (Haney 35).

Even during the time that he was studying in England, Soyinka was already looking towards the future, actively working towards some practical, “unsentimental” definition of his own social and political role as an African writer; he believed that an in-depth understanding of traditional aesthetics was critical, and would allow him to avoid the production of simply a “frozen anthropological curiosity” for the amusement of foreigners (July 488). When Soyinka returned to Africa in 1960, he extensively studied numerous and diverse forms of traditional drama, such as Yoruba egungun dances, Kalabari burial rites, and folk operas in Yorubaland (July 488). While he noted that in many respects these dramas represented an incredibly wide “variety of form,” he also noticed an uncanny “similarity of expression” throughout many of the presumably ‘different’ regions, even further impressing upon him the inherently artificial nature of African national boundaries; it was also during this time that he was struck by the realization that theater must be his medium of choice, both for its potential vitality and for its consistently successful presentation of “human experience as something shared” (July 489). This simultaneous emphasis on the varied yet intensely communal dimension of traditional African drama is interesting for its seemingly paradoxical qualities of exclusivity and universality; while there are crucial elements within each form of traditional drama that are unique and distinctly regional, Soyinka saw something within them of a cultural unity. And yet, much like Nietzsche’s intense confrontation with the lived, deeply sensory essence that he recognized in Greek tragedy—with his grappling effort to accurately translate the experience into meaningful and resonant words—this particular cultural unity appeared to be similarly evasive of precise encapsulation beyond the moments in which they were produced. This defiance of description in the feeling of these traditional dramas, as well as their steady inclination towards the functions of the spiritual and communal, ultimately laid much of the groundwork for the philosophy Soyinka has employed as a playwright.

In his subsequent work since his early research into regional West African traditions, Soyinka drew significantly from this vein of experienced, communal unity, yet still strove further to emphasize its metaphysical capacity in his dramas. In the case of his own modern yet traditionally-rooted Yoruba theater, the playwright considered the audience themselves to be intrinsically necessary and active participants in the dramatic conflict of the play, destined for total absorption in a “cathartic transformation parallel to that of the hero” (Haney 33). In his view, each spectator witnesses the drama as an individual fragment at its beginning, markedly separate from such an elevated sense of “divine unity,” but the ritual action of the dramatic production is ideally designed to lessen that metaphysical dividing gulf, via its communally-driven push towards the “dissolution of the self” (Haney 33). For Soyinka, these dramas are ritual, sacrifice, and ceremony, and each play strives to assume the traditional function of Yoruba myth by diminishing the modern fragmentation of society and promoting a metaphysical unity within the community of actors and spectators (Haney 34). Such social, learning elements—such as that of catharsis, for example—are traditionally associated with tragic works in the West, but this guiding, collectively-oriented end-goal of West African ritual drama has ultimately been adapted by Soyinka throughout his major works; this balance has been achieved in large part through his tendency to simultaneously integrate and rewrite aspects of Yoruba cosmology by “amplifying and erasing certain elements of traditional belief” (Odon 206). Through the gradual act of adapting and rewriting elements of traditional ritual throughout his entire body of work, Soyinka has lent his ritual action a demonstrable vitality and continuity—a sensitive political and social consciousness that is built upon the backdrop of an ancestral cosmology (Odon 206). Rather than contributing towards the mummification of these traditions by strictly preserving them as-is, they are put to socially relevant, active use in Soyinka’s dramas, naturally etching out a sense of collective identity rather than accepting one imposed from without.

Much of the experiential effect of this unifying ritual action is exemplified in Soyinka’s frequent and meaningful integration of both drums and dance into the majority of his plots. Their combined usage is one significant aspect of the Yoruba narrative traditions which are said by spectators and critics to “radiate from [the actors] on the stage” throughout each of his dramas, contributing towards a transcendence of the limits imposed by an individualized sense of linear time (Olorounto 301). Overall, the incorporation of these basic ritual elements into the drama often lend the performance either a more emotionally evocative or an absorptive communal aspect to the various thematic elements of history, politics, and modernization; while these are all topics that could be addressed simply through the traditional means of lucid, Apolline dialogue, such a substitution could also potentially occur at the expense of Soyinka’s goal—the spectator’s sense of participatory unity—and therefore violate the drama’s sense of elevated ritual action. Due to Soyinka’s belief that the audience must metaphysically journey and transform alongside the play’s heroes and heroines, such shared, intimately-felt ritual elements are of the utmost importance within his works. For a specific example of this, the reader may turn his or her attention to one pivotal dance-and-drum scene within Soyinka’s bawdy comedic work, The Lion and the Jewel.

In the first half of the play is a sweeping, intricately described drum-and-dance scene which adapts elements of the communal ritual dance into a satirical portrayal of a modernized or westernized man—a humorous yet critical depiction of the village’s encounter with a drunken stranger from the West. On the one hand, the dance almost seems to spontaneously materialize from nowhere; it is suggested on-the-spot by Sidi, the village beauty, and accepted with good-natured alacrity by the other village women: “I know. Let us dance the dance of the lost Traveller” …”Yes, let’s” (Soyinka 13). And yet, despite its seeming tone of light-hearted spontaneity, the dance simultaneously feels almost ordained in terms of its elaborate rhythm and seamless, multi-layered choreography—with minimal instruction, the village women still dance with highly-choreographed detail and precision in their collective representation of the recent incident. The stranger’s automobile, the swaying background trees, and other highly specific elements of the scene, both physical and temporal, are all incorporated into the dance scene, with minimal communication between the women. In fact, it is a choreography so precise, that the scene’s descriptive language gradually shifts from its description of a somatic dance happening in the present to that of the literal scene in the past that the dance was intended to depict; in turn, this unravelling scene of the recent past also blurs with numerous background elements once more in the present, such as external, un-choreographed sounds of the environment: “The ‘trees’ perform a subdued and unobtrusive dance… Lakunle’s head when he leans against a tree for rest. …Suddenly, from somewhere in the bush comes the sound of a girl singing. The Traveller shakes his head but the sound persists” (Soyinka 15). Although the dancers’ names are used at first, they soon almost literally become or fuse with what they are meant to represent; through the medium of the dance, the present schoolteacher Lakunle becomes the past foreign Traveller, which in turn, situates the past Traveller as blurring together with Lakunle in the physical present. This ritualized, satirizing dance itself becomes a palpable model of the fourth world, as the present and past overlap and various identities merge beyond distinction. The absorptive, blurring spirit of this intricate dance lessens the metaphysical gulf between individuals, too, for the spectator is vitally drawn into the action as a witness, judge and mediator, critically engaged with the dance’s ritually-enacted fluidity of time, and its multi-layered complexities of sound and movement.

However, this evident fluidity of time and gradual convergence of identity is not all that establishes this satirizing dance’s ritual impact within the play. It is also significant that, despite the seemingly spontaneous and highly modernized tenor of the entire dance ‘ritual,’ all of the individual characters who are present when the dance is called for by Sidi are forcibly compelled by the collective to take part in its immediate enactment, and furthermore, all who participate seem to tacitly know their given role, as if carried along in the ritual through the means of some unseen, inexpressible force—a rapidly-accelerating tide of rhythm, song, and poignant movement. In one specific instance during the dance, Sidi drafts the buffoonish schoolteacher Lakunle to play the part of the stranger (on account of his own cartoonishly-exaggerated, misguidedly westernized ways), and although he initially refuses and even physically tries to escape the clutches of the village women multiple times, the women forcibly drag him into participation in the dance, goaded on by the rapidly increasing pace and intensity of the pounding ritual drums: “they drag him towards the platform…[the] chant is taken up by all and they begin to dance around Lakunle, speaking the words in a fast rhythm. The drummers join in after the first time, keeping up a steady beat as the others whirl around their victim” (Soyinka 14). Interestingly, although the westernized Lakunle originally refuses to participate even before the action of the scene is truly under way, once he finally gives in and is “formally initiated” into the thick of the dance with a “terrific shout and clap of drums,” he quickly “enters into the spirit of the dance with enthusiasm,” fully absorbed in his allotted role within the village’s spontaneous ritual (Soyinka 14). The ritual reenacts and satirizes an inexplicable scene of modernity which passed within the village, producing live, contemporary meaning from the well of traditional practices; in this manner, it provides a communal identity within the play, organizing strange experiences in a coherent, ritually transformative, and even potentially humorous way for its citizens. Furthermore, the apparent spontaneity of the ritual dance, in conjunction with its mysterious spirit of ordination, unity, and transcendence of linear time, combine to display a glimpse of the deeply unifying, ever-permeating ‘fourth world’ that Soyinka describes as an artistic inspiration; this is the case, even in a production which, on its face, is overwhelmingly light-hearted and bawdy, with its flippant, punning language that is demonstrably far removed from the traditional gravitas of complexly plot-driven, socially-engaged tragedy.

Additionally, while Lakunle is commonly read as a physically and socially weak trickster figure who is an allegory for “misguided modernity,” and he is set in competitive opposition to the powerful, traditionally conservative village leader, Baroka, Lakunle’s ultimately effortless participation in the dance ritual still indicates that he has an active connection to his culture and community, despite both his sustained resistance and his widely assumed social alienation (Olorounto 301). The event and conclusion of this dance serve as a key moment of foreshadowing for the conflict between the two men, as well as for the drama’s critique of both their respective allegories—a random, superficial modernity and its at least equally unappealing alternative of an embalmed and inflexible tradition. Although one is certainly encouraged to laugh at Lakunle’s simpering foppishness and craven tendencies, Olorounto suggests that by the end of the play, one is able to observe that “the brunt of the satire falls more heavily on polygamous Baroka than on alienated Lakunle” (301). Even though this dance is situated quite early in the play, much of its symbolic action certainly indicates towards the veracity of Olorounto’s reading; while the westernized Lakunle participates in the ritual action with a central role, however reluctantly, and however ugly the dance turns towards the end (when the dance culminates somewhat disturbingly with the villagers mobbing around him and dragging him away), it is the stern and patriarchal Baroka that abruptly ushers in the ritual’s disruptive lapse merely through the rigid yet powerful influence of his sudden appearance, causing all of the dancers to suddenly cease their frenzied, collaborative revels and “prostrate…kneeling with the greetings of ‘Kabiyesi’ ‘Baba’” (Soyinka 16).

Tellingly, Baroka interrupts the community’s ritual dance before it is entirely finished, disrupting the critical element of ritual timing and essentially imposing his unrelenting brand of tradition—singular patriarchal power—on the rest of the community, an assortment of largely nameless dancers primarily composed of women (Soyinka 16). The dance later continues, but only after Baroka has firmly asserted his authority; he disrupts and claims dominion over the dance, rather than allowing either the charismatic, priestess-like Sidi or the community to steer its course: “[Baroka’s] uplifted arm being proffered …the play is back in performance. The Villagers gather round threatening, clamouring… At a sudden signal from [Baroka], they throw [Lakunle] down prostrate on his face. Only then does the Chief begin to show him sympathy, appear to understand the Stranger’s plight” (Soyinka 17). While the dance is evidently not staunchly traditional in any of its minute details, or even within the larger terms of the modernity that it depicts and satirizes, in many respects it still fulfills a traditional ritualistic, unifying function within the community—and yet, its sense of unity is one that the staunchly conservative village patriarch disregards by disrupting and attempting to claim sovereignty over its course. He does not respect the function of the dance, first evidenced by his casual verbal denigration of both it and of Lakunle: “I knew the story and I came in/ Right on cue. /…now that you say I am welcome, shall we/ Resume your play?” (Soyinka 16-17). This dissipation of the ritual dance, therefore, is an early indicator within the play of the physically strong Baroka’s tendency to value his individual power over that of the collective. And yet, for all of the patriarch’s wanton disrespect of the dance’s communal function, in the passage quoted before the last, it can be seen that the character of Baroka still blurs with that of the past Chief, as Lakunle still blurs with that of the Traveller or Stranger—this demonstrates the near-fated primacy of the spiritual, time-fluid fourth world over any individual actors in this play, no matter how seemingly powerful or important. Furthermore, if Baroka and Lakunle are read in terms of their respective allegories—staunch tradition and hapless modernization—the drama’s implications of the fourth world’s ultimate transcendence over each is clear.

This scene’s decidedly mixed portrayal both of Baroka and Lakunle’s characters, as well as the implied benefits and problems inherent to their respective allegories, are largely indicative of a fateful tempering of each by the prevailing creative influence of the fourth world; this pronounced tempering indicates a tendency in Soyinka’s dramas to avoid straightforward answers, even when working with the presumably simplifying rhetorical tools of satire and allegory. This is significant, because while in the Western canon, satire is commonly viewed as possessing “exemplary vision and condemnation” of what in society is “repellent,” and is therefore thought to exemplify the overarching qualities of “clarity,” “stability,” and most importantly, an “apparent lack of ambiguity” from the author’s perspective, this particular satire of Soyinka’s does not satisfactorily fulfill these basic guiding characteristics (Bogel 3-4). The ribald, light-hearted tone of his satire is ultimately deceptive, for at its core, the drama seems to suggest that there is no clear-cut moral answer to the problems Soyinka poses; instead, the audience is presented with a mixed representation of contemporary Africa at a profoundly unsettling “ideological crossroads,” with each of the characters demonstrating their own share of positive attributes, as well as a significant level of personal fault and blame (Olorounto 301). Haney relates that Soyinka’s overarching purpose in drama is not to provide a distinct moral, but to “impart experience…to set a riddle” (35). At the close of “The Lion and the Jewel,” Sidi, the object of Baroka and Lakunle’s contest, ends up marrying Baroka, and she does so not because of his substantial physical and social stature, but largely because she was tricked by the old patriarch into sleeping with him—a satirical commentary on the nature of power, which calls into question its traditionally sanctioned forms. While Lakunle still makes the offer to marry her after learning about her loss of maidenhood, providing her with a possible alternative, she rejects him, and marries Baroka despite his trick; now that the dastardly snare set by Baroka has ensured that Sidi essentially must choose between one them, Baroka still emerges as the more prudent option. While the play ends with the festive, light-hearted music of marriage, its comic message is mixed, and actually quite unsettling. Sidi makes a choice, but the message of that choice is unsatisfying and inconclusive, which is another indicator of the drama’s operation outside of Western notions of satire.

Following this analysis of The Lion and the Jewel, Soyinka’s aforementioned overarching goals of the “dissolution of self” and the attainment of a “divine unity” in his audience should be more closely addressed, in order to establish a better sense of its current throughout his other works. While these transcendent qualities in his dramas were originally motivated by distinctly West African or Yoruba traditional impulses, it may be constructive to provide some other cultural vantage point, if only to demonstrate the marked contrast between these iterations of theatrical philosophy. In service to this objective, the reader may examine Nietzsche’s assertions in The Birth of Tragedy alongside the works of Soyinka, and note that in many respects, the former author’s effusions on the effects of Dionysiac forces in Greek tragedy bear a striking resemblance to the previously stated ritualistic goals of Soyinka’s dramas: “each man feels himself not only united, reconciled, and at one with his neighbor, but one with him, as if the veil of Maya had been rent and now hung in rags before the mysterious primal Oneness” (Nietzsche 17). And yet, in spite of the uncanny similarity in Nietzsche’s description of the Dionysiac to Soyinka’s own metaphysical aims, Nietzsche’s view is strictly limited: first to Greek tragedy, and second to Wagner’s operas. Furthermore, while the purported effects of these works may appear to be strikingly similar, the routes that they follow to accomplish these ends are radically different, demonstrating the incredible degree to which cultural relativity is inherent in each author’s assertions. For instance, Nietzsche describes a tragedy’s feeling of catharsis as stemming from moments in which “the Greek man of culture felt himself annulled in the face of the satyr chorus” and asserts that “the immediate effect of Dionysiac tragedy is that state and society, the gulfs separating man from man, make way for an overwhelming sense of unity that goes back to the very heart of nature” (39). Although this annulling description of catharsis is quite in line with Soyinka’s sense of drama and its goals, the “Greek man of culture,” the “Dionysiac,” and the “satyr chorus” are obviously terms that each come with their own set of cultural connotations—these particulars are exactly where the Western reader should tread with caution. While it is possible to root out approximately corresponding terms across cultures, what ultimately draws these works together is the transcendent endgame that they share, and only to a much lesser extent the individualized patterns of steps that they each follow to attain it.

As an equally crucial differentiating factor between Nietzsche and Soyinka, it should be noted that Nietzsche specifically limits his praise of tragedy—and presumably, the reach of these spiritually unifying Bacchic effects—to the tragic works of Sophocles and Aeschylus, dismissing Euripides’ integration of the comic and purported elevation of the spectator as the violent death of tragedy: “Through [Euripides], everyday man pushed his way through the auditorium on to the stage, and the mirror in which only great and bold features had hitherto found expression now showed the painful fidelity that also reflected the blemished lines of nature” (55). As previously mentioned, far from rejecting the role of the spectator, Soyinka heartily embraces the spectator’s participatory role, viewing the subsequent elevation of the community as instrumental; where Nietzsche denigrates the satire and establishes a partition between it and what he considers to be the elevated form of tragedy, Soyinka merges elements of each in his dramas. Even in the much-celebrated ‘tragic’ work, Death and the King’s Horseman, the character of Elesin is, in many respects, a comic trickster figure with his “Gargantuan hedonism,” who would not be out of place even in a more strictly satirical work (Olorounto 300). When Elesin sings his cheeky song of the Not-I bird, he “performs like a born raconteur, infecting his retinue with his humour and energy;” when praised for his honor, he responds, “Words are cheap…is this how a man of honor should be seen?” and the market women scramble to fetch him rich cloths for adornment (Soyinka 7, 11-12). Even where he errs, it is not the undoing of a strong or noble leader in the style of clever Oedipus or iron-fisted Creon—it is the weakness of hesitation that brings about his final fall.

Therefore, part of what distinguishes his behavior as satirical is perhaps its sense of “partial identification”—rather than displaying purely “great and bold” positive character attributes and their proportionally terrible flaws, as Nietzsche seems to value in Greek tragedy, Elesin’s hedonism and resultant hesitation in the face of sacrifice has a kernel within it that likely corresponds to many of the failings within the average spectator (Bogel 48). For Bogel, this “partial identification” is crucial to satire, for without it, there would be “no reason to insist on the otherness of the satiric object”—and this very insistence, this criticism of folly, is the genre’s object (48). If the genre of satire is viewed in this light, perhaps it is unsurprising that its value is a critical point of divergence between the philosophies of Nietzsche and Soyinka; where Nietzsche inclines towards the noble and elevated aspects of tragedy, and is intensely critical of the “natural and the real” in art (38), Soyinka, again, views the medium of drama as critically communicative of “the human experience as something shared” (July 489). Where Nietzsche asserts that Greek tragedy wholly excludes “political and social concerns” (and the absolute validity of this claim, it is important to acknowledge, is perhaps debatable), Soyinka’s list of works is brimming with exactly such explicit political and social matters (36). With such essential, deep-seated philosophical differences on the art, it is interesting that both men savor much the same transcendent effects, and one cannot help but contemplate how their winding paths managed to cross at all.  

In this light, where Nietzsche and Soyinka converge—aside from their metaphysical end-goals—perhaps there is something to be learned. While they critically differ on the appropriate role of genre, class, politics, and the spectator, and they each draw from markedly different cultural traditions, their views on morality in art, at least, are resonant with one another. Nietzsche writes: “Anyone who approaches these Olympians…[as the spiritual force behind these works], seeking elevated morals, will be quickly forced to turn his back upon them, discouraged and disappointed” (21-22).  Likewise, Soyinka views the “purpose of theater” as an imparting of “experience, not to provide a ‘meaning’ or a ‘moral’” (Haney 35). His statement on morality and experience, however, is also in line with his use of Yoruba cosmological time—the mechanism of the “fourth world” which “preserves a variety of paradoxes” wholly within it (Odom 206). This notion of a fluid, all-encompassing, world of paradoxes and experiential complexities is one that is inspired by African traditions, and that heritage in Soyinka’s works must be given its due, independent of incidental similarities to works in the West. And yet, while the origin and method of Soyinka’s works are unique and regional, their significance is worldly. The inherent complexity facilitated by these regional, cosmological beliefs still taps into innately human impulses—to connect with others, to experience and to learn.

Works Cited

Soyinka, Wole. Death and the King’s Horseman. New York: Norton & Company, 2003. Print.

Soyinka, Wole. The Lion and the Jewel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963. Print.

Bogel, Fredric V. The Difference Satire Makes. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001. Print.

July, Robert W. “The Artist’s Credo: The Political Philosophy of Wole Soyinka.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 19.3 (1981): 477-498. Web. 30 Mar 2016.

Haney, William S. II. “Soyinka’s Ritual Drama: Unity, Postmodernism, and the Mistake of the Intellect.” Research in African Literatures 21.4 (1990): 33-54. Web. 30 Mar 2016.

Odom, Glenn A. “‘The End of Nigerian History’: Wole Soyinka and Yoruba Historiography.” Comparative Drama 42.2 (Summer 2008): 205-229. Web. 30 Mar 2016.

Olorounto, Samuel B. “Modern Scheming Giants: Satire and The Trickster in Wole Soyinka’s Drama.” Callaloo 35 (Spring 1988): 297-308. Web. 30 Mar 2016.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1993. Print.