By Anote Ajeluorou
The passing into ancestry of
Africa and world-renowned author and political activist has left the writerly
race still reeling from so tremendous a loss. What has emerged is the
unrestrained outpouring of emotions from all spectrums of the human divide.
From among Nigerian writers, Prof. Achebe is indeed another flight of the eagle
on the iroko into celestial abode, nay, into ancestral council where he will
still preside over the race of writers, his children whom he left behind to
continue in the creative path he charted for them to follow.
Among those who continued to pour their heartfelt,
celebratory emotions include erudite poet and Distinguished Professor of English
at New Orleans University, Niyi Osundare, poet and essayist, Remi Raji-Oyelade,
poet and activist, Ogaga Ifowodo, king and novelist, Chukuemeka Ike, essayist, Olúwáfirópò Ewénlá, novelist, publisher and book
convention organiser, Dilibe Onyeama and novelist and teacher, J.O.J. Nwachukwu-Agbada.
Prof. Niyi Osundare (poet, essayist and Distinguished Professor of
English, University of New Orleans, U.S.)
Chinua Achebe: Death,
where are thy claws?
Chinua Achebe is one of those
epically unique individuals whose lives have been so full, so purposive and so
impactful that we begin to pray that they will never die. But who doesn't
know that that is mere wishful thinking? To be sure, the Eagle on Iroko didn't
die young, but he left when we still need him urgently and acutely. He has
gone, but he left so much of, by, himself behind...
Achebe shook up the
literary world with Things Fall Apart
when he was barely in his late twenties. He told Africa's story and gave
humanity a song. Since that day in 1958 when that epochal novel intruded upon
the world to this very day, hardly any week has passed without the author's
name being mentioned somewhere in this world of books and ideas.
But if the sheer force
and range of Achebe's fiction gave Africa a voice, the fearless truth of his
critical interventions challenged so many myths and deliberate falsehoods
about the most misrepresented and recklessly abused continent in the
world. Achebe knew, and he tried to get us to know, that Africans
will remain mere objects of the stories told by others, until
they, Africans, have started to tell their own story their own
way - without shutting out the rest of the world. Achebe challenged the
20th century philosophy of fiction as a pretty object d'art, arriving with
works, which foregrounded the human condition and told the wondering world
that the clotheless Emperor was, indeed, naked! He entered a plea for the
urgent necessity of an entity called 'applied art' and emboldened us
to look triumphalist Formalism in the face and demand to see its
passport. Yes, Achebe told a world sold to the art-for-art's-sake mystique
that it is, indeed, possible to be an accomplished novelist who is also a
teacher.
Controversy hardly
ever parts company with a writer and thinker of his brand. He took
almost as much criticism as he gave; for he was a man who never ran from a
fight.
The world celebrates the LIFE of this distinguished
story-teller and thinker. (Yes, celebrate, for to mourn is to concede supremacy
to Death - and Oblivion, its Mephistophelean factotum).
Rest well, Chinualomogu. Rest well, Obierika, the man who
thought about things. Posterity will never let you die. We regret your passing.
We celebrate your Life.
Prof. Remi
Raji-Oyelade (Dean, Faculty of
Arts, University of Ibadan; President,
Association of Nigerian
Authors and poet)
Here in Germany, phone calls
and questions about the truth of the passing of the grand patron and first
President and Trustee of ANA jolted me into disbelief.
Chinua Achebe, foremost African thinker, hugely popular on
the strength of his revolutionary novel and the other seminal prose works he
produced over five decades, Chinua Achebe, the absolute and consummate prose
maestro is no more. His name, alongside others of his generation, was key to accessing
the world literary stage.
Here was a man who chose the profession of writing early and
above the more fashionable or prestigious calling of the medical profession. A
pioneer student of the Ibadan school of creative writing, a dogged and
unyielding fighter to the very end, and a true mentor to a generation of
writers across the world.
Even in my country now, the fact of his death is dissolving
into reality. Eagle on Iroko, the master-artist, the compelling stylist of the
English language has left the world of the flesh, he left in the middle of a
revived discourse of the fate of our Nigerian nation.
And it was a symbolic day. In the commemoration of the
UNESCO World Poetry Day, things fell apart in the firmament of Nigerian and
African Literature. A bleak day indeed, the devastating reality, the ending of
a huge chapter in the history of African Literature.
Adieu Chinua Achebe, adieu irreplaceable son of Africa!
Dr. Ogaga Ifowodo (Poet and Assistant Professor of English, Texas State
University, U.S.)
Achebe on his
Transfiguration into Ancestordom
The news of Achebe's
transfiguration into an ancestral spirit reached us in Charleston, North
Carolina, in the middle of this year's annual meeting of the African Literature
Association (ALA). As is to be expected, we -- writers, critics, publishers,
readers -- were thrown into deep mourning. But we mourned with one hand drying
tears and the other waving jubilantly to Achebe's spirit, looking even more
resplendent dressed for his triumphant entry into ancestordom, beaming
benevolently at us as he bid us farewell.
At 7 PM last night, all the participants gathered to pay
homage to a Titan of world -- note, I said world, not merely African --
literature.
I first read Achebe as a twelve-year-old at Federal
Government College, Warri. It was appropriate, I think, that my introduction to
the fabled Achebe-lore, was through Chike and the River, a story for children
replete with magic (for good measure, it has a character named Professor
Chandus), curiosity and dream, all borne of the self-enlarging wish not to
remain in one place; of the desire to avoid the mind-numbing that comes with an
inability to imagine other places and their ways of being in the world.
Because I read the imperishable Things Fall Apart two years later, as any of the works of the three
others of the Fabulous Four of Nigerian literature -- Christopher Okigbo, J.P.
Clark and Wole Soyinka -- it is clear to me that Achebe had the earliest
shaping influence on my desire to become a writer. The magic of story-telling,
of creating imaginary worlds and making them rival the real world in
plausibility, had cast its spell on me and even though I didn't know it at the
time, I would never want to be free of it!
Achebe's exit, like the fall of an iroko, denudes our
socio-cultural landscape: the grass is exposed and thinner, the leaves are less
green, but I take solace in the fact that further down in the forest are other
irokos; that Achebe, now an ancestor is an even more potent force for regeneration.
If I have any lament, an inconsolable grief, it is that Achebe died in exile.
And, worse, that The Trouble with Nigeria, the conditions that led to "one of the greatest sons of the
land" dying so far away from home twenty-two years after he was crippled
in a road accident and became bound to a wheelchair have not changed for the
better by a jot. Indeed, that they have grown even worse with no promise of a
halt to the slide into a state ruled by a buccaneer ruling class defined by two
words only: ineptitude and corruption.
Still, I rejoice in having a literary father such as Achebe,
sitting now on his hallowed stool among the ancestors. I trust Christopher
Okigbo is crying tears of the laughter of reunion at this moment!
Eze Prof. Chukuemeka Ike (renowned author and Ikelionwu XI, Eze
Ikelionwu, Anambra State)
Chinua was phenomenal. We met
are Government College, Umuahia and although he and Chike Momah were one year
ahead of me, we struckc up a friendship that was a lasting lifetime brotherhood
thereafter. Chinua inspired my desire to write and write well. He was always
honest and his integrity was reflected in all he did. Chinua is truly
brilliant, an international role model and icon. He was a lovely person, a
caring friend and mentor to many.
To his family, he was the ideal husband, father and
grandfather, as well as the good uncle, brother and son. We shall all miss this
great citizen of the world whom we are proud to have shared the same
nationality with. We will always celebrate Achebe the icon as his inimitable
works continue to enrich our world for centuries to come.
Olúwáfirópò
Ewénlá (Poet, essayist
and Secretary, PEN Nigeria Centre)
Achebe
lives forever even in death
We at PEN
Nigeria Centre are shocked to hear the news of the death of Chinua Achebe who
even after this transition is very much an icon of the Nigerian literati. Sad
as we are at this rude news, we are comforted that he lived a life worthy of
emulation in the ideals he and his works stand for. Our body of poets,
playwrights, essayists, editors and novelists, all extended children of Chinua
Achebe, commiserate with his immediate family and the clan of writers all over
the world.
Achebe represents one of the brightest
sources of inspiration for young and old writers across the world of
literature. His ideals, the greatest assets he has bequeathed to us, will be
cherished forever. It is our plan to, in the nearest future, join other well
meaning Nigerians and international body of writers to immortalize him.
It is our prayer that the spirit of
life eternal will guide his departed soul.
Dilibe
Onyeama (author,
publisher and convener, Coal City Book Convention)
Chinua Achebe
was outstanding in more ways than one. Despite the agony of a near-fatal
accident that confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life off-shore,
he remained in high spirits and kept pushing that prolific pen with great
vigour and liveliness of mind, and the world bowed to his every literary
output. He was never a mere armchair critic of world events. When he was in
Nigeria and able to walk, he sought to demonstrate in practical terms his
disenchantment with his motherland by going out into the political campaign
trail, albeit not with the desired results. So with his literary tour de
force The Trouble with Nigeria, he did with the pen what he could not do on the campaign
trail.
Diplomacy,
though a globally-recognized essential for social interaction, was not Achebe's
watch-word. He believed in the power of truth and hurled it with as much
passion as his written words, and some, especially the Yoruba of Nigeria, were
not too comfortable about it, as they were often his target. He was not daunted
by the power of government, and rejected with contempt the two separate
attempts by the Federal Government of Nigeria to glorify him with a National
Honour for cogent reasons that he was not afraid to voice out.
Achebe was a highly principled man, and
the world loved him for it. He recorded a 'first' by being the pioneer author
of a subject that addressed the challenges of a traditional African society in
the painful throes of transition, and became Africa's biggest selling author as
a result. That, of course, was his first oeuvre Things Fall Apart. He has inspired many authors, and his
Igbo people have been blessed with many promising pen pushers who will follow
in the trail that he has blazed. He was the founding father of the Association
of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Nigeria's apex literary association. So many
Nigerian authors have a lot to be grateful to him for. Well-lived, great
storyteller!
Prof.
J.O.J.Nwachukwu-Agbada (Novelist and teacher at Abia State University, Uturu)
Professor
Chinua Achebe’s death is a hard pill to swallow. Not that I had thought he
would not die. What I had thought and wished him was a death into ripe old age
like a Winston Churchill, a CLR James, a Du Bois, a Ronald Reagan, an Azikiwe,
a Mandela or as I write, an M. H. Abrams who clocked a hundred years last
August, and is still counting. We have just been reading and re-reading his
last book, There was a Country, an artistic tour de force, when the sad news came. From
hindsight, it would seem that he had written the book as a valediction,
somewhat aware that it was going to be his last offering. The controversy the
book generated camouflaged its aesthetic delight as a creative statement,
notwithstanding that it is non-fiction.
Achebe operated at many levels in the
course of his life. He was a pioneer articulator of his people’s way of life,
artist par excellence, creator, critic, teacher, leader, organizer, politician and
activist, to mention these few preoccupations. His novels and writings sought
to restore not just the dignity of the African but also that of the denigrated
man-in-the-universe, wherever such a mythical beast resided. He was an active
Nigerian, keen to observe his country’s foibles, and being unsatisfied, vented
his spleen on her poor performance. He contributed immensely as an
educationist, he having created and taught African Literature at home and
abroad. Not only did he establish the Association of Nigerian Authors in 1981,
he equally operated at the clan level for many years as the President-General
of the Ogidi Town Union. A case of backward integration, one could say. He was
thoroughly a man of culture.
Chinua Achebe will not be forgotten in
a hurry. Even if we want to do so as we normally do, his writings and his
numerous quotable quotes will not allow us. We will not forget him because he
returned our humanity to us taken away by the deliberate subjugation of our
‘civilizers’. I dare say that the emergence of the Obamas into world reckoning
had something to do with the assertive triumph of African literature, of which
Achebe’s authorship marched right in front. He didn’t work alone though; he
‘sired’ many writers who could either be identified as his ‘sons’ or his
‘daughters’ – to cite Nnolim. Even where some of them disagreed with him,
particularly his misunderstood portrayal of femininity, they turned out victims
of ‘anxiety of influence’, his influence. Achebe’s death marks the end of an
era, and the beginning of another. His place is well assured in African
literary history!
Committee
for Relevant Art
Achebe:
The African Perspective in the Global Conversation
The
Committee For Relevant Art (CORA) commiserates with the family of Professor
Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian arts community as well as the entire nation on the
occasion of the death of the man deservedly referred to as ‘the father of the
African Novel’ and founder of the Association Of Nigerian Authors (ANA).
Everything about Achebe’s career was geared towards contributing the African
perspective to the global conversation on humanity’s ways of being. First, his Things
Fall Apart (TFA),
published in 1958, when he was 28, was the first novel to engage with European
colonialism from an African perspective. The story spoke to an international
audience.
As he worked on his second novel, Achebe took some time to bringing, into the
literary pantheon, a vast number of other young, talented African writers
through the African Writers Series, which he edited for Heinemann of London. He
was always about us doing things in our own way.
Achebe led the way in the campaign for
robust, world class, indigenous publishing. With the phenomenal success of TFA which gave him enormous influence over
the British-owned Heinemann’s Africa Writers Series, and three other successful
novels, Achebe could, by 1971, demand that his books would henceforth be
published, first by a Nigerian publisher, from whom a reprint could be
requested by any British or American publisher. Granted, a tradition of request
for rights to books from Nigerian publishers, by overseas publishing houses,
had been established much earlier – the throbbing literary scene in Ibadan in
the 1960s provided the impetus for foreign publishers to have a look in and buy
rights to works of the emerging writers of that period, from the Mbari Club
(which doubled as a society and a publisher) – but Achebe returned from the
civil war certain that homegrown Nigerian publishing ‘will make its way in the
world’.
It is that same lifelong pursuit of ‘our own thing
for us’, that propelled his invitation of Nigerian writers to Nsukka, in 1981,
to reconvene the body of writers now known as ANA.
The almost unanimous expression of grief by the
entire nation at Achebe’s death, coming so soon after the frenetic debates over
certain facts and opinions contained in his last book, the memoir There Was
A Country, shows that,
while opinions might be divided on the literary icon’s recollection of Nigerian
history, his place in the pantheon of our men of ideas and ideals remain
undiminished in the estimation of an appreciative people.
The Committee understands the grief that the family, the community of artists
and the entire nation are going through. We share the feeling of loss and mourn
the passing away of this true icon of the contemporary arts of Nigeria. We know
that he is resting in peace.
Prof. Dan Izevbaye (teacher and foremost literary critic)
The
death of Achebe at 82 is certainly a painful event and a loss for everyone.
Every African - or rather everyone who was once politically or mentally
colonized - is indebted to Achebe for he, perhaps more than anyone else, has
contributed to the liberating content and style in the literary education of
the colonized - as well as the colonizer. Once upon a time, for example, did
everyone not agree with the critics that "Heart of Darkness" was the
greatest short story in the English language until Achebe said, ‘Not so’, and
showed why, in his novels?
The death of a great author at any age
is a great loss. What gives the news of Achebe's death its painful edge is his
heroic endurance of all those years in a wheelchair, and the needless
controversy that dogged the last work of a writer whose life and works had been
uncontroversial. All that is now behind him. He lives on in his works. The
pleasure they give and their liberating effect are his memorial.
