LANGUAGE, ART AND IDENTITY

By Kunda Chali.

Mmegi, a Botswana publication, on Friday, 21st May 2010 published Ndaba Nkomo’s interest-stimulating article about language, writing and identity titled ‘Decolonising the Mind’ which subsequently generated an eloquent reply from Enole Ditsheko titled ‘Why I write in English: Rejoinder to Decolonising the Mind’. While agreeing with most of the arguments advanced by Mr Ditsheko, I entirely disagree with his take on the relationship between language and culture and the importance of a native language in a writers’ workshop. In this article, I advance that a language embodies culture and as such is the most central element in culture and that a writer of fiction-an original one-must draw his craft, inspiration and thrust from his language, his mother tongue. Firstly, allow me to treat the subject of language as an embodiment of culture. A language carries with it the traditions of people, its history, its folklore and poetry. It reflects the collective attitudes of a people to social, economic and political issues, it captures the aspirations of people. It is a custodian, a curator of people’s collective wisdom through folklore, proverbs and oral poetry. Thus, my first point of departure with Mr Ditsheko’s viewpoint is his statement that “language itself, is not the culture, neither can it be the sole epitome nor the single embodiment of a society, but it only remains a component like the rest, which when put together, a society - a unique people can be identified”. Language is truly the most important cultural aspect of a people as it is the very vehicle through which most of the other aspects of a language can be expressed. In the simplest way one may define culture as “the way of life of a particular people, their traditions, their belief systems, their values and their social-political-economic orientation”. The importance of language in the concept of culture is that it is the single most significant element that has the ability to record, store and transmits all the other cultural aspects people. Some have defined it aptly as the “repository of culture”. From this perspective, one needs to acknowledge that language indeed is the very epitome of culture. Secondly, i want to proceed to address the more substantive issues of literary craftsmanship and language which both articles delved into in detail. A writer’s workshop essentially consists of a single tool-words, a writer works with words, he shapes them, manipulates them to effect, until they carry a particular tone, a ‘flavour’ he wishes to communicate. Thus, his choice of the language in which to write becomes extremely important. In making the decision, he must look at the ideological, aesthetical and perhaps (in today’s capitalist driven world) the commercial considerations. When celebrated African novelist Ngugi wa Thiongo announced 1985 in his seminal work ‘Decolonising the Mind; The Politics of Language in African Literature’ that he was bidding farewell to writing in English, he made it clear that he was going to write in Kikuyu because his audience was the Kenyan people, specifically the Kikuyu speaking people and he no longer wanted to alienate his audience by writing in a foreign language, a language of the colonisers. A perusal of Ngugi’s book reveals that his decision to write in Kikuyu is an ideological one premised on the idea that African writers should not use the language of the former colonial powers as it represents what he terms as “cultural imperialism”. Ngugi has since then held steadfastly to writing his fiction in kikuyu, his most recent offering, ‘Wizards of a Crow’, an English translation was published in 2009. Ngugi may have been initially driven by ideological reasons, most of his works have a Marxist overtone but he also understood that to be truly a great African writer, one must draw upoun local idioms, the nuances of the vernacular languages, he must tap the rhythms of the African songs, proverbs, local gossip, folklore and the dialogues of people- this is the material for great writing. This the reason why I disagree with Mr Ditsheko when he remarks that “As for me, fast approaching age 40, I don't need Setswana to identify myself as a Motswana or African - I am one with or without it”. As a writer of fiction in English, he ought first of all to be an African and specifically a Motswana, he must tap the creative repertoire of Setswana, he must harness its creative powers, tap on its rich oral narratives, eagerly listen to the folksongs and listen to the dialogues of people at parties, in the malls, on Combis and at Kgotla meetings and other such places - he must embrace the creative elements of Setswana, his mother tongue to fashion a great novel. The most widely acclaimed and successful African writers dating from the immediate- post independence period to date are those that either chose to write in vernaculars or those that wrote in English but deliberately decided to tap the creative repertoires of the vernaculars. A few examples will buttress the point. Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986 not so much for his splendidly difficult syntax and word manipulation but because he brought to the world the Yoruba cosmology through such works as ‘Indhare and other poems’, ‘A dance of the Forest’, ‘The Road’, ‘Season of Anomy’ and ‘Kongi’s harvest’ which are a celebration of Yoruba culture, its mythology. Aware that his Nobel Prize was in most part because of his exploration of Yoruba myths, during his acceptance speech in Stockholm he quipped to the amusement of the audience that Ogun, the Yoruba god of creativity and lightening should be credited with the origin of dynamite and not the Swede, Afred Nobel, “It was inevitable that the Nordic world and the African, especially that part of it which constitutes the Yoruba world - should meet at the crossroads of Sweden. That I am the agent of such a symbolic encounter is due very simply to that my creative Muse is Ogun, the god of creativity and destruction, of the lyric and metallurgy. This deity anticipated your scientist Alfred Nobel at the very beginning of time by clearing a path through primordial chaos, dynamiting his way through the core of earth to open a route for his fellow deities who sought to be reunited with us, mortals.... if you happened to take a casual walk through the streets, or peer into the hotel lobbies of Stockholm, you might get the impression that my nation, Nigeria, has tried to solve some of its many problems by shifting half its population surreptitiously to Sweden. I assure you, however, that they have merely come to satisfy a natural curiosity about the true nationality of this inventor. For they cannot understand why their Ogun should have transferred such a potent secret to a Swede rather than to his Yoruba descendants” Wole’s countryman Chinua Achebe remains an indelible figure in African Literature mostly because of one novel, a world-wide sensation, ‘Things fall Apart’ which is a beautifully told story replete with Yoruba folklore and proverbs. He had to delve into the traditions, myths, songs, and dialogues of his mother tongue to create that enduring, stunning novel. He mastered the English language and used it, merely, as a medium to express the creative capacity of his culture because English could afford him a wider audience. In style and themes, he fashioned a beautiful story that pulsates with the cadences of an African vernacular. Convinced of the richness of the African languages in storytelling, Okot p’ Bitek, seized upon Acholi folklore (Luo), his mother tongue to create one of Africa’s greatest poetical masterpieces, ‘Song of Lawino’ and its sequel “Song of Ocol’. Originally written in Luo, a vernacular of Uganda, Bitek created a story that continues to reverberate today in schools and universities not only in Africa but world over. Literary critic and academic, Gerald More in 1977, noticing the wide acclaim that the poems generated stated that “"It may seem ironical that the first important poem in English to emerge in Eastern Africa should be a translation from the vernacular original". Closer to home, here, Botswana’s Bessie Head was an instant hit when she decided to exploit local themes in her debut and most influential novel, ‘Maru’. Literary critics went to work immediately (and are still on it) trying to decipher the novel, some liked it for its ‘feminist tone’ others picked out ‘marginalisation’ as its main theme. Suffice to say that an African writer must pay consideration to aesthetical considerations whether he chooses to write in the vernacular or in English, he must tap the creative elements of African vernaculars, exploit local themes and yet tell a ‘universal’ story so that he has a wider audience. Any literary craftsmanship by an African that sidelines the richness of the vernacular moves closer to pub fiction and not towards true, artist writing. To achieve great writing, one has to aim for originality and to achieve originality, one must return to ‘their roots’, their culture expressed through their mother tongue and write novels and poems (whether in English or vernacular) that tell stories of African people in the 21st century. Anything short of that will entrench the sloppy literary craftsmanship, pub fiction -styled works that is now emanating from African writers. In ending, I would like to quote Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Jewish writer who won the 1978 Nobel Prize for Literature and in his acceptance speech chose to explain why he wrote in Yiddish, a Jewish vernacular widely considered a dying language, and by extension underscored the importance of using vernaculars in fiction. He made his case for vernaculars in this way “People ask me often, 'Why do you write in a dying language?' And I want to explain it in a few words. Firstly, I like to write ghost stories and nothing fits a ghost better than a dying language. The deader the language the more alive is the ghost. Ghosts love Yiddish and as far as I know, they all speak it. Secondly, not only do I believe in ghosts, but also in resurrection. I am sure that millions of Yiddish speaking corpses will rise from their graves one day and their first question will be: "Is there any new Yiddish book to read?" For them Yiddish will not be dead. Thirdly, for 2000 years Hebrew was considered a dead language. Suddenly it became strangely alive. What happened to Hebrew may also happen to Yiddish one day, (although I haven't the slightest idea how this miracle can take place.)There is still a fourth minor reason for not forsaking Yiddish and this is: Yiddish may be a dying language but it is the only language I know well. Yiddish is my mother language and a mother is never really dead”.