Beautiful Lines From Aké

So on a tepid morning, I am rereading Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters, feeling dumb and stupid, again. A futile nerve to seep through those thunder-phrases. That such enrapturing volume could, in no time, take on a bellicose repute stuns the more. I'm saying to myself: oh the thrill is in the attempt.

Tomorrow, I am staring at his Years of Childhood. The book is full of attractive earlies, of the transparency. There is a simple patchiness in it, the one a child's chaste memory spawns. It is unsuspecting, luminous and promising. It allows anyone in. It allows me in.

Film adaptation set for release this year on the Laureate's birthday. Voice-over narration will be by Soyinka

Much of Aké is exotic — one cosmic fastness of idioms and songs and Egba food, customs and rituals — as is the discoveries that ensue, that enchant. Sometimes trivial, others yet rhetorical, that journey into the child adventures of the brilliant bearded Laureate gets exciting as you know that young Wole was infact an addict incurable of tin Lactogen milk, a severe daydreamer, walked miles alone to a next town following the festive voices of a marching band, and almost went eye-less when once he ran into the "upward stroke of a cutlass", the day "blotted out in a flush of redness."

You would later discover also the brave child when he takes part in a snake hunt. The untamed when he declares the intent to marry the "most beautiful goddess in the world" Mrs Odufuwa and become a pastor. The humane when he's most startlingly saddened by the death of little sibling Folasade. The wilful when he confronts an Isara chieftain and says: If I don't prostrate myself to God, why should I prostrate to you?

Much of Aké reads like poetry. Much of it is lyrical and much of it tells you nothing in particular and yet tells you everything! Below are some of its beautiful excerpts I have come to relive in my head from time to time.

 

"On a misty day, the steep rise towards Itoko would join the sky. If God did not actually live, there was little doubt that He descended first on its crest, then took His one gigantic stride over those babbling markets — which dared to sell on Sundays —into St Peter's Church, afterwards visiting the parsonage for tea with the Canon."

"Even the Baobab has shrunk with time, yet I had imagined that this bulwark would be eternal, beyond the growing perspectives of a vanished childhood."

"But the walls have retained their voices. Familiar voices break on air, voices from the other side of the rafters."

"This guava tree had an affinity with the rainy season, nothing really tangible, except that it did not seem to be itself in the rainy season. Under brooding clouds it performed the double feat of existing yet retreating into an inner world of benevolent foliage spirits, moistly filled with a crisp vitality, silent yet wisely communicative. It was also without time."

"A man cannot argue with his soul. Ibanuje, ko m'agba, ko m'omode."

"And then Sorowanke's stomach began to swell. It grew bigger and bigger and Sorowanke talked less and less, even at night, sitting on her haunches among the roots, drawing deeper and deeper into the shadows. No longer ranting to the universe as she was wont."

"Change was impossible to predict. A tempo, a mood would have settled over the house, over guests, relations, casual visitors, poor relations, 'cousins', strays — all recognised within a tangible pattern of feeling — and then it would happen!"

"Bukola knew how to be silent. Even when she spoke, she transmitted a world of silence into which I fitted. She picked up pebbles and weighed them in her hands, thoughtfully. She ate as if she ate with other people. I watched her intently, seeking something that would answer barely formed questions. She glided over the earth like a being who barely deigned to accommodate the presence of others. With her, I found some peace"

"The file of solemn weeping women and their stiff companions broke formation and spilled over the streets in ecstatic dance. . The women's lungs were the more powerful, pumping energy into the singing without diminishing the manipulations of their buttocks"

Aké is a memoir of an African childhood from Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian novelist, playwright, and poet Wole Soyinka. He turns 80 on the 13th of this month. To get a PDF, EPUB, EBOOK or AUDIOBOOK, visit this link