(Yoruba: oyinka, pronounced “Shoyinka”) (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian writer, notable especially as a playwright and poet; he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first person in Africa and the diaspora to be so honoured.
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria’s political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years.
Soyinka has strongly criticized by many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe Much of his writing has been concerned with “the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it”.” During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993-98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the “Nadeco Route” on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W, Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him “in absentia”. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale.
Wealth, Riches and Success — A Myths or Reality
From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University then called the University Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus, Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada. Las Vegas In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.
Life and work
A Remo family of Isara-Remo Soyinka was born the second of six children, in the city of Abeokuta, Ogun State in Nigeria at that time a British dominion. His father, Samuel Ayodele Soyinka (whom he called S.A. or “Essay”), was an Anglican minister and the headmaster of St. Peters School in Abeokuta. Soyinka’s mother, Grace Eniola Soyinka (whom he dubbed the “Wild Christian”), owned a shop in the nearby market. She was a political activist within the women’s movement in the local community. She was also Anglican As much of the community followed indigenous Yorubá religious tradition Soyinka grew up in an atmosphere of religious syncretism with influences from both cultures. While he was raised in a religious family, Soyinka himself was an atheist. His father’s position enabled him to get electricity and radio at home.
Mother was one of the most prominent members of the influential Ransome-Kuti family she was the daughter of Rev. Canon JJ Ransome-Kuti, and sister to Olusegun Azariah Ransome-Kuti and Qludotun Ransome-Kuti. Among Soyinka’s cousins were the musician Fela Kuti the human rights activist Beko Ransome-Kuti, politician Olikoya Ransome-Kuti and activist Yemisi Ransome-Kuti
In 1940, after attending St. Peters Primary School Abeokuta, Soyinka went to Abeokuta Grammar School where he won several prizes for literary composition. In 1946 he was accepted by Government College in Ibadan, at that time one of Nigeria’s elite Secondary Schools.
Who is a Wealthy Man?
After finishing his course at Government College in 1952, he began studies at University Ibadan (1952-54), affiliated with the University of London He studied English literature, Greek, and Western history In the year 195-54, his second and last at University College Ibadan, Soyinka began work on ‘Keffis Birthday Threat, a short radio play for Nigeria Broadcasting Services. It was broadcast in July 1954. While at university, Soyinka and six others founded the Pyrates Confraternity, an anti- corruption and justice-seeking student organisation, the first confraternity in Nigeria. Soyinka gives a detailed account of his early life in his memoir Aké: The Years of Childhood.
Later in 1954, Soyinka relocated to England, where he continued his studies in English literature, under the supervision of his mentor Wilson Knight at the University of Leeds (1954-57). He met numerous young, gifted British writers. Before defending his BA., Soyinka began publishing and worked as an editor for the satirical magazine The Eagle. He wrote a column on academic life, often criticising his university peers.
Early career
After graduating, he remained in Leeds with the intention of earning an MA. Soyinka intended to write new work combining European theatrical traditions with those of his Yoruba cultural heritage. His first major play, The Swamp Dweller (1958), was followed the year later by The Lion and the Jewel, a comedy that attracted interest from several members of London Royal Court Theatre Encouraged, Soyinka moved to London, where he worked as a play reader for the Royal Court Theatre. During the same period, both of
his Plays were performed in Ibadan. They dealt with the Uneasy relationship between progress and tradition in Nigeria.
In 1957 his play The Invention was the first of his works to be Produced at the Royal Court Theatre. At that time his only published works were poems such as “The Immigrant” and “My Next Door Neighbour’, which were published in the Nigerian magazine Black (Mphen This was founded in 1957 by the German scholar Ulli Beier, who had been teaching at the University of Ibadan since 1950.
Soyinka received a Rockefeller Research Fellowship from University College in Ibadan, his alma mater, for research on African theatre and he returned to Nigeria. He produced his new satire, The Trials of Brother Jero. His work A Dance of The Forest (1960), a biting criticism of Nigeria’s political elites, won a contest that year as the official play for Nigerian Independence Day. On 1 October 1960, it premiered in Lagos as Nigeria celebrated its sovereignty. The play satirizes the fledgling nation by showing that the present is no more a golden age than was the past. Also in 1960, Soyinka established the “Nineteen—Sixty Masks”, an amateur acting ensemble to which he devoted considerable time over the next few years.
Soyinka published works satirising the “Emergency” in the Western Region of Nigeria, as his Yorubá homeland was increasingly occupied and controlled by the federal government. The political tensions arising from recent post colonial independence eventually led to a military coup and civil war (l967-70).
With the Rockefeller grant. Soyinka bought a Land Rover. He began travelling throughout the country as a researcher with the Department of English Language of the University College in Ibadan. In a essay of the tune, he criticised Leopold Senghor’s Negritude movement as a nostalgic and indiscriminate glorification of the black African past that ignores the potential benefits of modernisation “A tiger does not shout its tigritude,” he declared, “it acts.” In Death and the King Horsemen he states: “The elephant trails no tethering-rope; that king is not yet crowned who will peg an elephant.”
In December 1962, his essay Towards a True Theater” was published He began teaching with the Department of English Language at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ife. Soyinka discussed current affairs with “negrophiles,” and on several occasions openly condemned government censorship. At the end of 1963, his first feature-length movie, Culture in Transition, was released. In April 1964 The Interpreters, “a complex but also vividly documentary novel”, was published in London
That December, together with scientists and men of theatre, Soyinka founded the Drama Association of Nigeria. In 1964 he also resigned his university post, as a protest against imposed pro behaviour by authorities. A few months later, he was arrested for the first time, accused of underlying tapes during reproduction of recorded speech of the winner of Nigerian elections. He was released after a few months of confinement, as a result of protests by the international community of writers. This same year he wrote two more dramatic pieces: Before the Blackout and the comedy Kongi’s Harvest. He also wrote The Detainee, a radio play for the BBC in London. At the end of the year, he was
promoted to headmaster and senior lecturer in the Department of English Language at University of Lagos.
Soyinka’s political speeches at that time criticised the cult of personality and government corruption in African dictatorships. In April 1965, his play Kong’s
Harvest was produced in revival at the International Festival of Negro Art in Dakar, Senegal. His play The Road was awarded the Grand Prix. In June 1965, Soyinka produced his play The Lion and The Jewel for Hampstead Theatre Club in London.
Civil War And Imprisonment
After becoming chief of the Cathedral of Drama at the University of Ibadan, Soyinka became more politically active. Following the military coup of January 1966, he secretly and unofficially met with the military governor Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu in the Southeastern town of Enugu (August 1967), to try to avert civil war. As a result, he had to go into hiding.
He was imprisoned for 22 months as civil war ensued between the federal government and the Biafrans. Though refused materials such us books, pens, and paper, he still wrote a significant body of poems and notes criticising the Nigerian government.
Despite his imprisonment in September 1967, his play The Lion and The Jewel was produce in Accra. In November The Trials of Brother Jero and The Strong Breed Were produced in the Greenwich Mews Theatre in New York. He also published collection of his poetry, !don, anti Idanre and other Poems. It was inspired by Soyinka’s visit to the sanctuary of the Yoruba deity Ogun, whom he regards as his “companion” deity, kindred spirit, and protector
In 1968, the Negro Ensemble Company in New York produced Kongi’s Harvest. While still imprisoned Soyinka translated from Yoruba a fantastical novel by his compatriot D.O. Fagunwa, called The Forest of a Thousand Demons: 4 Hunter’s Saga.
Release and literary production
In October 1969, when the civil war came to an end, amnesty was proclaimed, and Soyinka and other Political prisoners were freed. For the first few months after his release, Soyinka stayed at a friend’s farm in southern France, where he sought solitude. He wrote The Bacchae (1969), a rework of the Pentheus myth. He Soon published in London a book of poetry, Poems from Prison. At the end of year, he returned to his office as Headmaster of Cathedral of Drama in Ibadan, and cooperated in the founding of the
literary periodical Black Orpheus (likely named after the 1959 film directed by Marcel Camus and set in the favela of Riode Janeiro.
In 1970 he produced the play Kongi’s Harvest, while simultaneously adapting it as ‘a film by tile same title. In June 1970, he finished another play, called Madman and Specialists. Together with the group of fifteen actors of Ibadan University Theatre Art Company, he went on a trip to the United States, to the Eugene O’Neill Memorial Center in Waterford Connecticut, where his latest play premiered. It gave them all experience with theatrical production in another English-speaking country.
In 1971, his poetry collection A Shuffle in the Crypt was published. Madman and Specialist was produced in Ibadan that year. Soyinka travelled to Paris to take the lead role as Patrice Lumumba the murdered first Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo in the production of his Murderous Angels. His powerful autobiographical work. The Man Died (1971), a collection of notes from prison, was also published. In April 1971, concerned about the political situation in Nigeria, Soyinka resigned from his duties at the University in Ibadan, and began years of voluntary exile, In July in Paris, excerpts from his well-known play The Dance of The Forests were performed.
In 1972, he was awarded an Honoris Causa doctorate by the University of Leeds. Soon thereafter, his novel Season of Anomy (1972) and his Collected Plays (1972) were both
published by Oxford University Press. In 1973 the National Theatre London, commissioned and premiered the play The Bacchae of Euripides. In 1973 his plays Camwood on the Leaves and Jero’s Metamorphosis were first published. From 1973 to 1975, Soyinka spent time on scientific studies. He underwent one year’s probation at Churchill College Cambridge University,’” “and gave a series of lectures at a number of European universities.
In 1974 his Collected Plays, Volume II was issued by Oxford University Press. In 1975 Soyinka was promoted to the position of editor for Transition, a magazine based in the
Ghanaian capital of Accra, where he moved for some Time. Soyinka used his columns in transition to criticise the “negrophiles” (for Instance, his article “Neo-Tarzanism; The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition) and military regimes. He protested against the military junta of Idi Amin in Uganda. After the political turnover in Nigeria and the subversion of
Gowon’s military regime in 1975, he returned to his homeland and resumed his position at the Cathedral of Comparative Literature at the University of Ife.
In 1976 he published his poetry collection Ogun Abibiman, as well as a collection of essays entitled Myth, Literature and the African World. In these, Soyinka explores the genesis of mysticism in African theatre and, using examples from both European and African literature, compares and contrasts the cultures. He delivered a series of guest lectures at the institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Legon. In October, the French version of The Dance of The Forests was performed in Dakar, while in Ife, his Death and The King Horseman premiered.
In 1977 Opera W?nv?si, his adaptation of BertoldBrechts The Threepenny Opera was staged in Ibadan. In 1979 he both directed and acted in Jon Blair and Norman Fenton’s drama, The Biko Inquest, a work based on the life of Steve Biko a South African student and human rights activist who was beaten to death by apartheid police forces. In 1981 Soyinka published his autobiographical work Ake: The Years of Childhood, which won a 1983 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
Soyinka founded another theatrical group called the Guerrilla Unit, Its goal was to work with Local communities in analyzing their problems and to express some of their grievances in dramatic sketches. In 1983 his play, Requiem for a Futurologist, had its first performance at the University of Ife. In July, one of Soyinka’s musical projects, the Unlimited Liability Company, issued a long-playing record entitled I Love My Country, in which several prominent Nigerian musicians played songs composed by Soyinka. In 1984, he directed the film Blues for a Prodigal; his new play A Play of Giant was produced the same year.
During the years from 1975-84, Soyinka was also more politically active At the University of Ife, his administrative duties included the security of public roads. He criticized the corruption in the government of the democratically elected President Shehu Shagari. When he was replaced by the general Muhammadu Buhari, Soyinka was often at odds with the military. In 1984, a Nigerian court banned his 1971 book The Man Died. In 1985, his play Requiem for a Futurologist was published in London.
Since 1986
Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, becoming the first African laureate. He was described as one “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence. Reed Way Dasenbrock writes that the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Soyinka is “likely to prove quite controversial and thoroughly deserved.” He also notes that “it is the first Nobel Prize awarded to an African writer or to any writer front the ‘new literatures’ in English that have emerged in the former colonies of the British Empire.’ His Nobel acceptance speech, ‘This Past Must
Address Its Present’, was devoted to South African freedom-fighter Nelson Mandela Soyinka’s speech was an outspoken criticism of apartheid and the politics of racial segregation imposed on the majority by the Nationalist South African government. In 1986, he received the Agip Prize for Literature.
