Structural patterns in the performance of a Xhosa izibongo

Comparative Literature, Spring 1996 by Opland, Jeff

RAISE POETRY, in the formulation of Ruth Finnegan, is "the type for court poetry and is one of the most developed and elaborate poetic genres in Africa" (111). It is a form of poetry encountered not only throughout Africa: praise poetry is a significant mode of poetic expression in the Middle East and in Polynesia, in early western Europe (clearly testified among the ancient Greeks, the Celts, and the Germanic peoples, for example) and in Asia.1 Praise poems are essentially exercises in individuation (the term is Kwesi Yankah's), encapsulating in a concatenation of discrete nominal references the distinctiveness of a person, comprising often elliptical allusions to lineage, physical and moral characteristics, and actions in the subject's public career. Although they traffic in historical allusions and references to ancestors, praise poems are rooted in the present, and readily respond to the context of performance, expressing exultation after battle, for example, gratitude at a gift, or grief for the dead at a funeral.2 Traditions of praise poetry seem readily to adapt to altered social circumstances: a tradition of poetry in praise of secular rulers may be exploited to refer to the newly-introduced Christian God or to ecclesiastical leaders; or, with the removal of royal patrons, poets may resort to the marketplace, producing praise and blame for mercantile profit.3Praise poems readily cross generic boundaries: they are cited in the course of narrative, incorporated into epic, and may indeed, in the opinion of some scholars, have given rise to epic.4

Although an earlier generation of scholars-perhaps with western narrative expectations-tended to express frustration at the apparent absence in praise poems of coherence or any discernible ordering principle, increasing attention has of late been devoted to the structure of the poems. This is especially so amongst students of southern African traditions in languages such as Shona, Southern Sotho, and Zulu.5 Some consensus about the basic structure of praise poems seems to be emerging-praise poems are seen to consist of praise names extended into praise verses or praise stanzas-but a precise understanding of what constitutes a line of verse remains elusive. The structural insights of scholars who have worked on Native American texts, paying careful attention to the interrelation of content and form and to the guide to form that repeated linguistic elements can provide, have yet to be injected into this debate, although I have suggested that they might prove useful, and have essayed one preliminary application of principles established by Dell Hymes to the analysis of a Xhosa praise poem.6

I propose here to undertake a more rigorous application of these principles of structural analysis to the same Xhosa poem. The apprehension of linguistic markers can aid in the search for line demarcations. But with this particular poem, recorded on videotape,7 we have access to textural features that permit a more multifaceted analysis of the performance than a concentration on the text alone affords-features such as intonation, pause, and gesture.8Of particular interest here is the circumstance of transcription of the text by the poet himself, and the structural information conveyed by his punctuation and line divisions. A consideration of features such as these permits the arrangement of the poem in verses and stanzas, and that format reveals the presence of clear number patterns. While it is too soon to talk of Xhosa cultural patternings, it does appear that in this poem the poet's verse and stanza patternings complement the textual and textural analysis and contribute significantly to the communication of his urgent message.

Many commentators have remarked on the centrality of names or nominal constructions to traditions of praise poetry. Kunene invokes Ulli Beier's article on Yoruba oriki, entitled "The poetry of names," in asserting the significance of names in Southern Sotho poetry (Kunene 14) . Yoruba ijala in honor of gods, according to S. A. Babalola, contain lineage poems that include "a multitude of alternative names for the progenitor being saluted" (24). Among the Bahima of Uganda, the "use of praise and proper names in each line, particularly at the beginning, is one of the outstanding characteristics of an ekyevugo" (H. F. Morris 24). Shona clan poems in Zimbabwe are "full of ancestral references. Names of forefathers of the clan, and of their sisters, abound in the praises, together with the names of the places where they lie buried" (Hodza and Fortune 29). Nouns predominate in the drottkvcett of the medieval Icelandic skalds, especially in the ubiquitous metaphorical kennings. In general, praise poems are a concatenation of nominal appelations, referring either to one person or to different people (in a lineage, for example, or a clan); often these names are extended by an allusive qualifying phrase.

In Xhosa poetry (izibongo), a noun referring to the subject of the poem may appear with its normal class prefix, and act therefore as a metaphor: inyoka, "a snake" (a class 5 noun); or it may appear with the class prefix distinctive of personal names: unyoka, "Snake" (class la). Either of these may take a copulative form with the prefixing of a consonant or consonantal cluster: yinyoka, "he or she is a snake," or ngunyoka, "he or she is Snake." A characteristic of Xhosa izibongo is that if the noun in this construction is extended, the syntax of the dependent phrase or clause may follow the natural prefixial concords of the noun: thus, Inyok' emnyam' ecand' iziziba, "A black snake that cleaves pools" (with the class 5 concords underlined) or Unyok' emnyam' ecand' iziziba, "He or she is Black Snake that cleaves pools" (with class 5 concords even though the noun has a class la prefix), rather than Unyok'omnyam'ocand' iziziba (with class la concords, as normal Xhosa syntax would demand). Names in Xhosa clan and personal izibongo may be derived from nouns or from verbs. This nominal may be extended by compounding (uMab' nkomo, "Stealer of cattle") or by further qualification (uMab' nkomo zabantu athi zezakhe, "Stealer of other people's cattle saying they're his"). Wandile Kuse, who has produced the only study of Xhosa clan praises (from which the preceding example is taken), adopts the terminology of Kunene's pioneering study of the structure of Southern Sotho praise poems, in which the neologism "eulogue" defines "the different kinds of praise reference" (Kunene xxii). In Kuse's formulation, "the more elaborate eulogues" in Xhosa praise poetry, whether of clans or people, "consist of a denominative or deverbative naming component accompanied by a descriptive and/or narrative phrase or phrases . . . The phrase or phrases complementing the naming component consist of more than one word and may run into two or three lines" (Kuse 32). For H.M. Ndawo, who edited the only collection of Xhosa clan praises yet published, "Ngamagama abantu iziduko ezi, naweendawo," These clan praises are the names of people, and of places (1) and, in the preface, "Umntu isiduko sakhe usihombisa ngokuthetha izibongo zaso," A person embellishes his or her clan name (isiduko) by reciting its praise poem (izibongo). In other words, Xhosa izibongo of individuals or clans consist of a series of names of the subject or of the clan ancestors, each usually extended into a phrase, a line, or a succession of lines.