Language is the greatest pitfall of the upcoming generation - Titi Adepitan

I begin by explaining the semanticisation of the coinage, "Soyinkanisation". I do not mean that Nigerian literature should entirely assume the shape of Wole Soyinka's writing. I do not mean that Soyinka is the best model for writers in Nigeria. Nor do I mean that he has the most ideal style of writing that every body should emulate. Indeed, the recent projection of Soyinka's success would draw sneer from several Chinweizus around, whose focal point of anti-Soyinka criticisms is the so-called modernist complexity. However, whichever way we like or hate Soyinka's writings, we must recognise that the man has craft. To ignore this fact or give it a backhanded dismissal is to expose our ignorance of what real craft is. Soyinka, even in his ordinary essays, exudes tautened literary craft and, in this gift from Muse, only few persons can be named to have descended from the same line: Niyi Osundare, Adebayo Williams, Ben Okri, Maik Nwosu and a few others. That craft which regrettably eludes several writers (both known and unknown) from the beginning of our literature till today, is the tropological ability the writer has to invent a personal idiom with literary language.

The recently held international colloquium in honour of Soyinka (its theme not withstanding) turned out to be a formidable junction at which Nigerian literature needed to be graded, with a look at the past, the present and the future. The speakers at the four-day event variously did such grading. The usual generational rhyme was repeated: writers of this generation gloat in mediocrity and have failed to measure up to the writers of the past generations. To a large extent, this has become axiomatic in the intergenerational discourse in our literature, in spite of Nduka Otiono's self- and friends-glorifying effort captured in a highly contestable misnomer: Camouflage: Best of Contemporary Writing from Nigeria. Nothing captures this phenomenon more than Biodun Jeyifo's choice of title, beginning with this paradox: "The Unfortunate Children of Fortunate Parents". I intend to project my long-held opinion that whatever is seen as the failure of our writers today is rooted in watery language, which is, to call a spade a spade, not peculiar to our generation. In fact, it began as the failure of the previous generation and leprously infected our generation, which, regrettably, is unable to wean itself from the tutelage of the previous generation. This failure of literary language has ever since been occasioned by the undue subordination of our literature to social commitment, meaning and audience.

Perhaps the basic inadequacy of our literature today may not be the purported haste or prolificity that characterises it, but the inability of the writers to match craft with social commitment. Most Nigerian writers take it as a gospel that the sources of what they write must be from their immediate societies and, more than that, must demonstrate their distaste and disapproval for the socio-political shortcomings of the land. Obviously, other writers from other lands have this attitude that, we may accept, is congenital to those with the calling of writing. As valid as this assertion seems, it has, to me, constituted a distraction from the business of good writing in Nigeria. Maybe because we are overdoing it. Every human being in the society is as politically conscious as the writer. In fact, those who are not writers may be more politically conscious, especially those who are closely affected by the inhuman gestures of political leaders. The writer, for instance, cannot claim to be more politically conscious than the student or the journalist. The difference between the writer and the journalist, however, is that, whatever the level of his consciousness, the writer must adopt a personal trope, an engaging craft, through which he can indirectly state his distaste towards the inhuman policies in the society. The craft is what the writer presents to his readers, first, for the purpose of pleasure and thereafter the readers can make any meaning for themselves of whatever social or ideological standing the writer belongs.

Literature fails when it attempts to speak directly. It also fails when, in the doctrine of the Luckasian socialist realism, it sets to depict the society vividly. I do rather agree with Theodor Ardono that art should be set apart from society, i.e. the contact between literature and reality should be indirect and it is this indirectness that confers significance and power on literature. The eagerness of our literature to speak directly to our society is what has given rise to the poverty of literary language.