Genius of the unconventional and the patterning of dualities: Wole Soyinka’s early childhood Part 1 – Guardian (blog)

Wole Soyinkas propensity for the enactment of the extraordinary probably commenced on that day in early 1937 when, at barely three, he sensationally imposed himself on a classroom at the St Peters School, Ake, Abeokuta. This singular demonstration of infantile audacity, no doubt, provided an early illumination of the constitutive character-fibres of one of 20th centurys most defining personalities, as much as it prospectively pointed to an explosive life of successful intellectual resilience. Wole had clearly not attained school age, but had certified himself ripe enough to explore the enchanting world of learning. So, armed with a selection of his fathers most precious books, he had sneaked unnoticed all the way to his elder sisters class, and staged a brilliant argument on why he deserved to be there before an astonished audience of teachers and pupils.

Have you come to keep your sister company? No. I have come to school. Then he looked down at the books I had plucked from fathers table. Arent these your fathers books? Yes. I want to learn them. But you are not old enough, Wole. I am three years old. Lawanle cut in, Three years old wo? Dont mind him sir, he wont be three until July. I am nearly three. Anyway, I have come to school. I have books.

The above drama, as captured in his first published autobiography, Ake: The Years of Childhood, finely situates the beginning of a life-long affinity with books. Before now, he had marvelled on end at his fathers devotion to the printed page, but could not conjure an apt link between books and the classroom: I had made some vague, intuitive connection between school and the piles of books with which father appeared to commune so religiously in the front room. The momentousness of this episode would be highlighted years later, following Woles emergence as a leading global man of letters.

An early, fulminating, almost desperate love for formal education was not the only prior signal of the making of the infectiously enigmatic Wole the world would come to know many decades after. Gerard Moore, providing an interesting accurate picture of the adult Wole, has written: Soyinka combines a talent for society, with an equally marked cultivation of solitude and silence. This characterization also matches his childhood ethos in near absolute terms in the first ten years of his life. Wole sufficiently demonstrated, and in equal measures, that he could be both explosively worldly and deeply introverted. The texture of this paradoxical endowment could only grow with time. Woles incomparable capacity for friendship which is perhaps qualified by a rare brand of large-heartedness is one major pointer to his gregarious tendency. His adult life brims with this rich dose of human companionship. Femi Johnson, the Nigerian business man with whom he enjoyed an enduring alliance would describe him in the following poetically glowing terms: If theres anybody to whom you can give out your heart for safe keeping (if that is possible), go to Hong Kong, come back, and still find the heart pulsating, its Wole. Johnson would further describe Woles predisposition to friendship: He is a very compelling person, someone that you not only wine and dine with; he imparts a lot without being didactic about it. Its amazing what influence he has on people. He has got that compelling, charismatic influence. One episode that Johnson must have known, in corroborating the above submission, is that in which a grown-up Wole leads an entire village men, women and children to hunt down a mysterious wild boar which had tormented them endlessly. Wole, who had personally shot the awe-striking creature, dramatically felt entitled to and eventually took one tigh, leaving the rest of the spoils to the elated villagers. Another long-time friend, the poet and political scientist, Odia Ofeimun, attributes Woles attitude to friendship to his selfless personality, and his almost maniacal generosity. To Ofeimun, Wole is one friend who could give his last, who dwells in the spirit of generosity that he has created around himself.

This same image dominates an assessment of Woles childhood. He had hardly begun schooling when he made himself a couple of friends. Apart from Osiki, his school mate, whose love for pounded yam drew to Wole, there was Mr Olagbaju, his teacher at school, with whom he spent stretches of exciting periods over food and the game of ayo. Soon, Woles mother saw enough in his infant sons inclination and remarked: This one is going to be like his father. He brings home friends at meal-times without any notice. Woles reflective retort to this light-hearted charge captures a frame of mind that would govern his entire life: I saw nothing to remark in it at all; it was the most natural thing in the world to bring a friend home at his favourite meal time. As Woles mother, Eniola, the inimitable Wild Christian would tell Dapo Adelugba, the young enigmas proclivity to companionship played out once more in characteristic drama when on one of his early birthdays in the primary school, Wole assembled a cast of friends for the celebrations without the knowledge of his parents. Wild Christian returned to find their home in an explosive birthday fever, with a gaily Wole announcing to her: Welcome back home, mama, today is my birthday, as you can see.

Another aspect of Woles social-spiritedness has to do with his keen sensitivity to the socio-cultural atmospheres of his time. This temperament may have eventually turned out very critical to his development as one of the most celebrated theatre figures in the world, but the sheer intensity of his curiosity in the Yoruba socio-artistic conversations as a mere child was nothing short of magically prodigious. In spite of the restrictions imposed on his sensibilities by his strong Anglican background, in terms of prescribing a large chunk of the indigenous artistic culture as abominably pagan, they always swayed to these rhapsodic forms of expression of nativity. At the age of four, Wole had to scale a fence to follow an Egungun masquerade procession. He says of those effervescent moments: It was quite usual for me to be returning from church and suddenly find an Egungun masquerade, thats an ancestral masquerade cult, parading with lively music, drums, etcetera, along the street to the discomfiture of the Christian worshippers. Woles insatiable, questioning mind would always break through the barriers of Anglican protection, to yearn for answers: I asked for their significance, what was their meaning? What did they do? His attachment to the community that the masquerades represent, elicits a personal/radical verdict about their importance: I dont know what was so describing about it. I thought it was a glorious spectacle. These views did not change, even when, according to Wole himself, for following them around once or twice I received the requisite number of lashes or slaps.

Woles propensity to withdraw into his deep thinking, meditative, sombre introversion has also been heavily highlighted in the integrated narrative of his life. He sometimes sickening individuality, his unshakable personal conviction on issues, his unwavering confidence in his own judgement and volatile and expansive intellectualism have all been notably linked to his bouts of introspection.

Even individuals with whom Wole has shared the most boisterous of social relationships have had to deal with this sporadic removal from the public space. Femi Johnson, one of Woles closest allies ever, certainly made a preoccupation of handling this situation. According to Johnson, I call him AMP Absent-Minded Professor, because you feel he is always absent-minded. I think his mind is ahead of his entire body. He grunts, and waffles away but he hasnt said anything. Wole cherishes solitude, and the outrageous predilections towards lonely detachment, and this is understandable, particularly because it tends to stimulate his stupendous forge of creativity.

But it is debatable if his intellect would have been as sharp, and as overawing if he had not somehow cultivated a sense of retreat into himself from the earliest stages of his life. Biodun Jeyifo, all of a former student, a personal friend and a leading critic of Woles art, identifies a curious tendency towards inwardness and radical individual autonomy as a major pattern of Woles childhood.

Similarly, Laura Pilar Gelfman, a reviewer of Ake, detects and fleshes out the contours of necessary isolation which Wole imposes on himself: From the beginning of his life, Wole Soyinka finds peace in solitude. He discovers outlets to his family life in nature and he claims these sites as his own. This solemn, introspective behaviour is incongruous with his mischievous nature. The peace Wole finds under the guava tree or on the Jonah rocks helps him to understand himself. He holds great respect for the power of the guava tree. Thus, Wole would always be sufficiently equipped for the intellectual challenges that his life has thrown up in abundance.

Anybody who knows Woles family will be quick to identify his most defining attributes as clear parental bequests. Several commentators have dissected Woles personality along the lines of the copious duality of what mannerism comes from which parent. Dapo Adelugba, reviewing Gerard Moores characterization of Wole as combining a talent for society, with an equally marked cultivation of solitude and silence, points to the well-remarked contrast between his father and mother, who Biodun Jeyifo qualifies as surely one of the most well-matched monogamous marital couples in modern African literature. Jeyifo is, in the above statement, definitely referring to the surprisingly effective complimentarity of the many divergences of the couples life, and of course how they cumulatively converge to very special effect in Wole, the man, and also Wole, the artist.

Woles Father, Samuel Ayodele Soyinka, headmaster at St Peters School, Ake, Abeokuta, was as a convert of the Empire, an embodiment of missionary discipline and decorum, a man very much in love with impeccable intellectual order and an uncompromising believer in the transformational possibilities of colonial education and personal empowerment through learning and character. As a devout Christian, he sought to build his home and raise his children in strict accordance to the teachings of Christ and would deal decisively with any manifestation of juvenile deviance. A very meticulously organised fellow with prominent streaks of bookish withdrawal and deep-thinking composure, Samuel cut the perfect picture of colonial breeding. One of his sons, Femi, describes him, not only as a disciplinarian, a very strict person, religious, very honest person, but also as a gentleman to the core who paid great attention to such matters as mannerisms and appearance. For Femi, who grew up to become a respected medical doctor, He was always well dressed His shoes were always well polished, his suit well kept, and if it was agbada, it will be ironed.Highly intellectually stimulated, he did not just make sacrosanct companions out of books, but revelled in the charged atmospheres of arguments with his friends, one of the very few social indulgences on his very highly regimented schedule.

Woles mother, Grace Eniola Soyinka was the explosive opposite of her husband, Samuel. Boisterous, energetic and full of activity, she is driven by a wild passion in everything she does, from evangelical Christianity, to domestic responsibility, and to civil rights activism. Nowhere near Samuel, Essay, whom Biodun Jeyifo describes as the essence of order, in compact organization, Wole himself gives her the nickname Wild Christian, mainly because of her detonative obsession to get things done almost always with chaotic efficiency. For Jeyifo, Woles appellation also suggests the riot of disorder in her bedroom and the profligate jumble of commodities and objects in her market stalls [which] embodies flamboyant disorganization and barely-contained chaos.

The dominant image of Grace (from Woles Ake and from other sources) is that of the spiritually, mentally and physically strong woman. Extremely courageous, he becomes an important member of a strong pressure group agitating against the colonial injustice of improper and unfair taxation.

A former primary school mate, Chief Simeon Adebo, a former Nigerian Ambassador to the United Nations, corroborates the sense of Graces physical strength in a tribute to her on her death in 1983: I was small at the time and it was she, the female, who protected me from the bullying of the bigger boys. Despite the vast personality difference between them, Woles parents shared certain important traits, and this would invariably play a huge role in the success of their marriage. Both were very hardworking, and of course very kind. Wole remembers their parsonage apartment at St Peters always filled with people, waifs and strays. According to Wole, Essay and Wild Christian collected strays. It seemed a permanent aspect of our life at Ake; with very few lapses, there was always an adult who appeared, without warning, seemingly from nowhere; became part of our lives and then disappeared with no explanation from anyone. These strays almost always received the same treatment as the children of the house, Wole and his siblings. Again, both Samuel and Grace believed strongly in justice as was evident in Graces vitriolic anti-colonial sentiments and Samuels endorsement of them.

As very committed parents, they were disciplinarians, who shared the vision of raising purpose-driven, religious children, who would make notable, if not excellent impact in their chosen life endeavours. Woles younger brother, Femi, reflects on their parents many sacrifices aimed at providing them with an education: Our parents were not rich but one remarkable thing about them was that they denied themselves a lot to educate us. So, I will say that they were parents with vision. They knew the value of education at that time. It was really tough, not that we were denied anything but while our playmates were already wearing shoes, we were going about barefooted. It is not therefore surprising that Wole and his siblings would receive the solid foundation to pursue the very best of education.

No doubt, Woles curious duality as a man of both the private and the public spaces derives from the rich texture of parental distinction provided by Samuel and Grace. That Wole could, in other words, vacillate between temperamental extremes, could be a man of the world as much as he would be a man of his own self, may be traced to strategic genes taken from both parents. The totality of parental influences available to the young Wole can be bifurcated into the direct and the indirect. The direct influences, in terms of consciously articulated and streamlined life patterns dutifully prescribed for the child, include an entrenchment of the foundational behavioural codes governing acceptable existence especially from a Yoruba African point of view/and an inculcation of a sense of life vision, discipline and social responsibility. Wole himself would say of his childhood: Theres a way in which a child is brought up in my society. The first thing is that a child is supposed to be a responsible member of the household. You had your duties, and you had better carry them out I had no problem carrying out duties.

The other critical manifestation of direct parental influence on Wole was in the area of mental, intellectual and artistic equipment. The academic ambience he was born into and his parents positive reinforcements were deeply fundamental. The Soyinkas rigid, religious allegiance to education was never in doubt, but Samuel and Grace made it clear that it was one path each of their children must take. Wole recollects about his parents: They had ways of making us understand that education was critical. Our primary responsibility was to go as far as we could in our own education. So it was letting us see that we had that responsibility to ourselves, to the family. His father, the school headmaster, had even more practical ways of impressing the imperative. He encouraged Wole to read as much as he could, ask questions and have those questions patiently answered.

Samuel Ayodele Soyinka had a keen eye for detection of talents. Soon enough, he found out the direction of Woles instincts and set about nurturing and honing them. Woles penetrating curiosity, of course, made an early, unusual voracious reader out of him and Samuel made appropriate provision for that. Samuel also discovered the artist in the young Wole, who was fascinated will colourfully illustrated catalogues and the brilliant artistic radiance of his first classroom. Femi Soyinka recalls how their father very competently tapped Woles fledging artistic resources: I remember that he had a flair for English and Literature right from childhood and this was helped by our parents, especially our father, who was a teacher then and whom I suspect found these qualities in him early because he encouraged him in this direction. For example, our father really liked a lot of writing and reading and plays and so on. So he used to organise drama and other forms of concert when we were in primary school. And he used to give Wole a prominent role to play. There was this play, I cant remember who wrote it, where Wole played a magician. It was a brilliant performance and there were also other plays that he took part in. Ezewa-Ohaeto was a professor of literature at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Onyerionwu is a doctoral candidate at the University of London, while Ngozi Ezenwa teaches literature at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.

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Genius of the unconventional and the patterning of dualities: Wole Soyinka's early childhood Part 1 - Guardian (blog)