From past to present and future: the regenerative spirit of the Abiku

Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Annual, 2004 by Mounira Soliman

Many critics, on the other hand, have sensed that Soyinka is adopting a non-conformist attitude, as he does in many of his literary works (see, for example, Quayson 124). This non-conformity is sometimes depicted in the poem in the mixture of the genre of the riddle, which is a very popular form in African oral tradition, and the subgenre of the dramatic monologue (Maduka 25). Stylistically also, the poem has been seen as departing from the Romantic convention of expressing one's experiences in one's own voice, as McCabe explains:

   Soyinka's "Abiku" marks a radical break from this convention--a
   break toward the cryptic, compact, intricately
   allusive, and anti-Romantic language that would mark
   much of his subsequent verse and drama. (58)

Indeed, compared to Clark-Bekederemo's poem. which is straightforward and easy to understand, Soyinka's poem is very symbolic and the meaning is sometimes hard to get. In the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas, for example, when the abiku invokes the mother, Soyinka expresses her suffering and pain in highly symbolical images, as in "the ground is wet with mourning," implying the shedding of tears at the abiku's death, and

   ... Mothers! I'll he the
   Suppliant snake coiled on the doorstep
   Yours the killing cry. (30)

It can be argued then that the use of such cryptic and symbolic language, as well as the combination of the oral riddle and the dramatic monologue, highlights the conflict between two traditions, African and Western. Furthermore, it highlights a conflict between two ideologies: Yoruba communal tradition and Western individualism. This becomes significantly clear if we consider the continual shift throughout the poem between the first and the third person, between the "I" and the "Abiku." The poem ends with both voices still struggling against each other. The conflict remains unresolved between the community that wants to hang on to its abiku and the ruthless spirit child who rejects their attempts to remain alive:

   The ripest fruit was saddest;
   Where I crept, the warmth was cloying.
   In silence of webs, Abiku, moans, shaping
   Mounds from the yolk. (30)

The Yoruba traditional theory of the ile and the egbe is, therefore, clearly manifested in Soyinka's poem, projecting a community that finds its strength in holding on to its past traditions and beliefs and the individual who rejects this historical past with all its implications, moving away and adopting a modern way of life instead. It is indeed symbolical of the unresolved conflict in which Nigeria still finds itself and which is ultimately the reason why it is unable to move forward.

Talking of national cultural identities in the postcolonial era, Stuart Hall explains that

   [s]ome identities gravitate towards ... 'Tradition,'
   attempting to restore their former purity and recover the
   unities and certainties which are felt as being lost. Others
   accept that identity is subject to the play of history, politics,
   representation and difference, so that they are unlikely
   ever again to be unitary or 'pure.' (Qtd. in Cooper 55)