Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo one of the age-old Nigerian poets, who aural his abbreviate lifetime, for he died angry for the ability of Biafra, accustomed himself as a axial amount in the development of avant-garde African poetry,has remained one of the a lot of important African poets to address in English. Generally accustomed as a adept artisan in animosity of a complication fatigued from abstruse allusions and symbolism, he has even been called Africa's finest artisan and one of the above modernist writers of the twentieth century. "For while added poets wrote acceptable poems," Chinua Achebe observed."Okigbo conjured up for us an amazing, addictive anapestic empyrean of a agrarian and agitated beauty.."
His bearing and aboriginal life
Okigbo was built-in on August 16, 1932, in the boondocks of Ojolo, about ten afar from the city-limits of Onitsha in Anambra State, to a ancestor who was a abecedary in Catholic missionary schools during the acme of British colonial aphorism in Nigeria, Okigbo spent his aboriginal years affective from base to base forth with his father. Despite the actuality that his ancestor was a adherent Christian, Okigbo acquainted a appropriate affection to his affectionate grandfather, Ijejiofor of the Oto family, who has consistently provided the priesthood to the altar of the celestial Idoto embodied in the river Idoto that flowed through his village. After in life, Okigbo came to accept that his grandfather's body was reincarnated in him.
His Educatiiobn at Umuahia and Ibadan
Okigbo accelerating from Government College Umuahia two years afterwards the acclaimed Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, accepting acceptable himself a acceptability as a avid clairvoyant and a able athlete. The afterward year, he entered the University of Ibadan to abstraction Medicine, but switching to Classics in his additional year.. He aswell acceptable himself a acceptability as a able pianist, accompanying Wole Soyinka in his aboriginal accessible actualization as a singer. It is believed that he wrote aboriginal music at that time, admitting none has survived.
His antecedent arcane plan and art
After admission in 1956, he captivated a assumption of jobs throughout the country. He formed at the Nigerian Tobacco Company, United Africa Company, the Fiditi Grammar School (where he able Latin), and was Assistant Librarian at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, area he helped begin the African Authors Association.
In 1958 his activity came to a axis point as he approved to apperceive himself better.He began publishing his works in assorted journals, conspicuously Atramentous Orpheus a arcane annual that was bringing calm the best works of African and African American writers. While his balladry was in allotment a able announcement of African nationalism, he was adamantly adjoin to Negritude, which he denounced as a adventurous afterward of the "mystique of blackness" for its own sake. He aswell alone the apperception of a commonality of acquaintance amid Africans and atramentous Americans, even admitting it contravened the exhausted activity of Atramentous Orpheus. For Okigbo, balladry was a awful claimed endeavor. Even admitting he accepted African ability he alone the arcane abstraction of Negritude, for he thinks he was just a poet." A artisan writes balladry and already a plan is appear it becomes accessible property. It's larboard to whoever reads it to adjudge whether it's African balladry or English." He accordingly said that there was not any such affair as a artisan aggravating to accurate African-ness as such a affair doesn't exist. A artisan just artlessly expresses himself. On absolutely these area he alone the aboriginal cost in African balladry awarded to him at the 1965 Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar.
In 1963 he became West African Representative of Cambridge University Press at Ibadan, a position which enabled hiim to biking frequently to the United Kingdom, area he admiring added attention. At Ibadan, he became an alive affiliate of the Mbari arcane club.For he was a allotment of the abounding adolescent artists who were searching for a belvedere to barter their angle and allotment their assorted talents. He and Soyinka, were aswell musicians, assuming in applesauce clubs. Consequently in 1961 the Mbari Writers and Artists Club was built-in in Ibadan founded by the German biographer and analyzer Ulli Beier. who arrive Okigbo to be one of the aboriginal Mbari board associates calm with: Georgina Beier, Wole Soyinka, J. P.Clark, Chinua Achebe, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Amos Tutuola, D. O. Fagunwa, Dennis Williams, Demas Nwoko, Uche Okeke, Frances Ademola and Janheinz Jahn, the ethnologist. The Mbari Club incooperated assorted activities as beheld arts exhibitions, theatre, artful workshops and a publishing house.in which Okigbo eventually became an editor. It played a absolute role in the bearing of avant-garde African literature,. publishing not alone the writings of its associates and adherents but those of the South African writers Dennis Brutus and Alex La Guma. For the beheld arts, it presented the pioneers, such as the painters Uche Okeke and Yusuf Grillo, the sculptor and painter Demas Nwoko, and the silk-screen artist, Bruce Onobrakpeya. The Mbari Club answer the conception of a accurate movement of abreast African artists, who were assertive to accomplish a new artful ability reconciling the continent's cultural traditions and the abstruse accent imposition.
Okigbo appear his aboriginal balladry in the apprentice arcane annual Horn, edited by J.P. Clark. admitting his works aswell appeared in the added cogent arcane annual Atramentous Orpheus. In the aforementioned year he aswell appear as a pamphlet, Heavensgate, and a continued composition in the Ugandan cultural annual Transition, appear in Kampala.. Okigbo's aboriginal balladry reflected the disconnected cultural ancestry of his country, although it had influences from Virgil, Ovid, Eliot, and Pound which assume to be stronger than the articulate abstract of the Igbo.
He completed, and appear the works of his complete years, including Limits (1964), Silences (1962-65), Lament of the Masks (commemorating the centenary of the bearing of W. B. Yeats in the anatomy of a Yoruba acclaim poem, 1964), "Dance of the Painted Maidens" (commemorating the 1964 bearing of his daughter, Obiageli or Ibrahimat, whom he admired as a reincarnation of his mother) and his final awful prophetic sequence, "Path of Thunder" (1965-67), which was appear posthumously in 1971 with, Labyrinths, which incorporates the balladry from the beforehand collections.
The Biafran War
The 1960s was a aeon of abundant political upheavals in Nigeria with the country acceptable an absolute republic in 1963 and four years after the eastern Ibo affiliated arena attempting to secede.In 1966 the Nigerian crisis came to a arch afterward the annihilation of bags of Igbo in the North. Okigbo, active in Ibadan at the time, relocated to eastern Nigeria to anticipate the aftereffect of the about-face of contest which culminated in the alienation of the predominantly Igbo eastern arena which eventually declared itself as an absolute Biafra republic on May 30, 1967. .
Although Okigbo followed the amusing and political contest in his country keenly, his aboriginal balladry confused on a claimed and allegorical level. Path of Barrage (1968) showed a new administration - its advance on bloodthirsty politicians ("POLITICIANS are aback in behemothic hidden accomplish of howitzers, / of detonators") and neocolonial corruption ("THE ROBBERS alight on us to band us our laughter, of our / thunder") cogitating of the acceleration of abolitionist movements in the backward 1960s.
At the beginning of the war Okigbo was alive for an Italian business organization, Wartrade. Active in Enugu, he formed calm with Achebe to authorize a new but baby publishing house, Citadel Press. However, the contest in his country fabricated him change his plans, and carelessness his job. He anon abutting the new state's aggressive as a volunteer, a field-commissioned major. He became able as a soldier, but was dead in activity in September 1967 during a above advance adjoin Nsukka, the university boondocks area he begin his articulation as a poet, and which he had vowed to avert with his life.refusing safer positions abaft the frontline.. Posthumously, he was busy with the National Order of Merit of Biafra. Earlier, in July, his acropolis abode at Enugu, area several of his abstruse writings were was destroyed in a bombing. Aswell destroyed was Pointed Arches, a anapestic adventures which is as an annual of the adventures of activity and belletrist which conspired to acuminate his artful imagination.
Legacy
Several of his abstruse papers, however, survived the war. His daughter, Obiageli, d his arcane heir, accustomed the Christopher Okigbo Foundation in 2005 to bolster his legacy. The affidavit were catalogued in January 2006 by Chukwuma Azuonye, Professor of African Abstract at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who assisted the foundation in nominating them for the UNESCO Memory of the Apple Register. Azuonye's basic studies of the affidavit announce that, afar from new balladry in English, including drafts of an Anthem for Biafra, Okigbo's abstruse affidavit cover balladry accounting in Igbo. The closing are alluring in aperture up new vistas in the abstraction of Okigbo's poetry, countering the angle of, abnormally Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie and Ihechukwu Madubuike , that he sacrificed his aboriginal African affection in afterward of an abstruse euro-modernism.
"Elegy for Alto", the final composition in Path of Thunder, is today broadly apprehend as the poet's "last testament" embodying a apocalypse of his own afterlife as a sacrificial lamb for animal freedom'
Earth, absolve me; let me be the prodigal; let this be
the ram's ultimate adoration to the tether...
AN OLD STAR departs, leaves us actuality on the shore
Gazing heavenward for a new brilliant approaching;
The new brilliant appears, foreshadows its going
Before a traveling and advancing that goes on forever....
The two collections of ballad that appeared during Okigbo's lifetime accustomed him as an avant-garde and arguable poet.
Features of Okigbo's poetry
His difficult but evocative and prophetic balladry actualization the access of modernist European and American poetry, African affiliated mythology, and Nigerian music and rhythms. "Prophetic, menacing, terrorist, violent, agitation - his balladry was all of these," S.O. Anozie wrote in Christopher Okigbo: Artful Rhetoric (1972).
In "Distances" (1964) he celebrates his final artful and analytic acknowledgment to his aboriginal religious roots:
I am the sole attestant to my homecoming.
Okigbo's balladry makes connected and again references to mother Idoto. the "water goddess" abnormally so in Heavensgate (1962) aperture with the acute lines:
Before you, mother Idoto,
naked I stand,
Such a advertence seems axial to the acceptation of the poem. "Idoto" is in absoluteness a river goddess, an aspect in African cosmology which Okigbo in actuality uses as a claimed symbol, adorning it to a saviour appropriately arising as a force apery the aegis of aboriginal cultures and religions from westernization. Heavensgate appropriately apparent his acknowledgment to the African allotment of his ancestry and self-renewal through the goddess of the earth:
Before you, Mother Idoto, naked I angle afore your adulterated attendance a prodigal
leaning on an oilbean absent in your legend...
An abracadabra to the Idoto spirit aspect opens the august arrangement of the composition to which is added the oilbean, the tortoise, the python and the rainbow..This endure one could accomplish prophetic role as Sunday Anozie suggests. It could aswell be apparent as a snake able of both arch and blaze the poet.
Other god-heads or prophetic essences could be apparent in Okigbo's poetry. In Limits viii the prophetic role is invested on an important attribute - the sunbird apery the aching censor of the artisan as the adamant spirit of the humans is eventually besmirched by the imperialists. Actuality too totems of the august adoration 'A agile of eagles,/over the oilbeam shadows/ ' 'holding the aboveboard beneath anathema of their breath',' a dark dog accepted for ability of prophecy, howling',' the tortoise and the python who are classed as the twin-gods of the forest,' 'shrinehouse bamboo towers', 'egg-shells, tiger affectation and nude spear.,'dumb-bells' and 'oblong -headed lioness' abound.
The two collections-Heavensgate (1962) and Limits (1964)-reveal a personal, attentive balladry abreast by a acquaintance with Western belief abounding with rich, amazing images. Labeled abstruse by some critics, his balladry is ambitious and allusive cartoon as advisedly from avant-garde poets, such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, as it does from the Roman Catholic adoration of his ancestors in Ojoto. Okigbo maintained that his balladry should be beheld as an amoebic accomplished as it bidding his advancing of age as a poet.
Okigbo's influences are not apprenticed to Africa.going to Gerard Manley Hopkins as able-bodied as a mix of European, Asian, and African influences. He borrows from assorted sources like African adoration as able-bodied as western religion. Romantic, pastoral and classical Greek and Latin influences like Vigil and Theocritus are abundant in affirmation forth with allusions to the Bible in Okigbo's poetry.
His borrowings, as Dan Izevbaye notes, usually assume apprenticed to the adorableness and account of the byword itself.with the 'meaning' or 'experience' of the composition generally controlled by its actual context. If such borrowings or images are advance into new collocations or associations, his balladry becomes amazing and fresh. This ability be accepted to the adaptation, summarization and about-face they abide afore getting absorbed.
The capital antecedent of obscurity in Okigbo's balladry is that references fatigued from a clandestine apple through clandestine symbols mainly through allusions to characters who were allotment of his adolescence -oblongs such as Kepkanly, Enki, Flannagan, Haragin, Jadun, Upandru, Anna of the Panel and Eunice and abstruse places like Rickland and rockpoint cable. Such references recur all too often. They ability no agnosticism accept actual claimed acceptation for the artisan to accept kept apropos to them. But such acceptation is absent on the clairvoyant who is absolutely apprenticed of their background.
A agnate accident is suffered if the clairvoyant has no claimed acquaintance of such altar referred to as: 'advent', 'dumb-bells','rockpoint of cable', 'Rockland', 'fucking angels','oblong-headed lioness' and 'a dark dog' which all add up to the obscurity.
Since Okigbo is autograph of circuitous and difficult subjects,his announcement ability of call be aberrant and harder to understand. This adversity is circuitous by his either advisedly or accidentally creating a accent of ritual to which the clairvoyant has to be initiated, appropriately applicable altogether into the august capacity of his work. This aftereffect is able by assorted aspects of his techniques across-the-board of his use of language. Firstly there is the torn syntax and the use of assorted abstruse words and abnormal collocations such as 'orangery solitude', 'broken monody'and 'square yields the moron'. The anatomy of the plan itself adds to this aftereffect by way of a affectionate of syncretic agreeable arrangement formed appear through administration of locations to acceptable Ibo agreeable instruments. The incantatory and invocational qualities apparent through the rhythmn of the curve is another, a acceptable archetype of which is in "Elegy for slit-drum."
In Okigbo's apple the avant-garde and the acceptable are advance into a close action with the affluence of images and symbols affiliated to western adoration and acculturation abounding with 'John the Baptist','preaching the gambit','crucifix','pilgrims apprenticed for shibboleth' and 'the censer.' In some balladry Christian rites are so absolutely developed that they become as ascendant rites affiliated to acceptable African religion. The omni-presence and annihilative potentials of the western attendance is apparent through images like: 'Thunder of tanks of behemothic ironsteps of detonation,''the abroad seven cannons', 'cables of the accessible air'. And 'magic birds with the phenomenon of lightning beam on their feathers'.
This action soars up to an atomic point as apparent in the accession and alliteration of the barrage motif. The consistent bits is captured thus: 'parliament has gone on leave', 'the chiffonier has gone to hell', 'the voters are lying in wait', and 'the bellow of sirened afternoons'. The abashing of ethics and anarchic accompaniment could be captured in no bigger way.
Thundering drums and cannons in approach grove: the spirit is in ascent. (from 'Sacrifice')
Often alternating images in Okigbo's balladry are ball ("dance of death", "iron ball of mortars"), barrage ("thunder of tanks", "the barrage a allotment of the clouds"), and complete of drums ("the drums of curfew", "lament of the drums"). Gradually Okigbo started to see himself as a singer-musician, who speaks with the ancient, pre-literate accent of drums: "I accept fed out of the boom / I accept bashed out of the cymbal..." In 'Overture' (1961) Okigbo was a "watchman for the watchword / at heavensgate" and in 'Hurrah for Thunder' a "town-crier, calm with my adamant bell"
Okigbo aggregate with T.S.Eliot a eyes of a airy quest, demography the artisan to the branch of age-old belief and to his airy self: "Before you, mother Idoto, naked I stand..." generally application repetition, with the accent of the balladry acceptable songlike, and the words abounding melodiously, as if the artisan were alert and interpreting abroad sounds. From the four elements Okigbo chooses water, the abode abode of Idoto: "Under my anxiety float the waters: / course assault them under.".
Much of his balladry is of sound, meant to be apprehend aloud (or even sung) -- culminating in the Lament of the Drums, and again the Path of Barrage (which begins: "Fanfare of drums, board bells"). Again, the mix is both of African and alfresco influences. If he was alive on Heavensgate, Okigbo himself states he was alive beneath the spell of the actor composers Debussy, Caesar Franck, Ravel ...
The complete and exhausted consistently convince; admitting the acceptation can sometimes be obscure. Okigbo's balladry is abounding of ellipses, with almost a composition not apparent by sentences larboard to bead off in the three dots:
And there are here
the errors of the apprehension ...
The pieces of the balladry are striking, generally jarring. "Gods abound out / Abandoned" in Fragments out of the Deluge, a arrangement that ends: "& the cancelling out is complete."
The balladry -- cut up, divided, abrupt in their sections -- affect from band to line. Curve are again and assorted throughout several of the poem-sequences. In Lament of the Silent Sisters, for example, the catechism of: "How does one say NO in thunder" is axial -- and the barrage reappears abroad too. (The "NO in thunder" is a "dominant motif" in Lament of the Silent Sisters. Actuality Okigbo aswell suggests:
Silences are melodies
Heard in retrospect
The final sequence, Paths of Thunder, is a alternation of Balladry prophesying War. and absolution the action amid art and life, and the answerable political altitude of the day, balloon over. This ability be caricatural predictions of Okigbo's after abandoning art to serve the Biafran cause, dying in battle. It wasn't his words that got him into trouble, but even in Paths of Barrage he makes a attenuate claimed appearance, admonishing himself:
If I don't apprentice to shut my aperture I'll anon go to hell,
I, Okigbo, town-crier, calm with my adamant bell.
Okigbo's balladry assume to bound out even from the page.for his balladry did not acquiesce antithesis and he did not alone stick to one acknowledged anatomy and style. Admitting Okigbo sometimes overreaches himself or misses the mark even in those balladry whose acceptation ability baffle the clairvoyant he still maintains interest. Admitting with deceptively few words Okigbo offers sometimes alarming complexity, his balladry is absolutely account reading.In animosity of his assorted influences, he is able with a characteristic and absorbing voice
Further Reading:
o Sunday Anozie, Christopher Okigbo: Artful Rhetoric. London: Evan Brothers Ltd., and New York: Holmes and Meier, Inc.,1972.
o Uzoma Esonwanne, ed. 2000. Critical Essays on Christopher Okigbo. New York: G. K. Hall & Co.
o Donatus Ibe Nwoga, Critical Perspectives on Christopher Okigbo, Three Continents Press, 1984.
oo Donatus Ibe Nwoga, Critical Perspectives on Christopher Okigbo, Three Continents Press, 1984.
o Dubem Okafor, Ball of Death: Nigerian History and Christopher Okigbo's Poetry. Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Eritrea: African Apple Press, 1998.
o Udoeyop, Nyong J., Three Nigerian Poets: A Critical Abstraction of the Balladry of Soyinka, Clark, and Okigbo. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1973.
o James Wieland, The Ensphering Mind: History, Myth and Fictions in the Balladry of Allen Curnow, Nissim Ezekiel. A. D. Hope, A. M. Klein, Christopher Okigbo and Derek Walcott. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1988.
Izevbaye Dan S. "The Accompaniment of Criticism in African Literature". African Abstract Today. Ed. Eldred Durosimi Jones. Vol. 7. London: Heinemann, 1979. 1-19.