Academics From Nigeria

"found a girl who will suit [him] admirably"

"For an African writing in English is not without its serious setbacks. He often finds himself describing situations or modes of thought which have no direct equivalent in the English way of life. Caught in that situation he can do one of two things. He can try and contain what he wants to say within the limits of conventional English or he can try to push back those limits to accommodate his ideas … I submit that those who can do the work of extending the frontiers of English so as to accommodate African thought-patterns must do it through their mastery of English and not out of innocence."

"The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place."

"My people have a saying which my father often used. A man whose horse is missing will look everywhere even in the roof."

"As the saying goes, the unexamined life is not worth-living."

"Don't disparage the day that still has an hour of light in its hand."

"The guilty suffers; the sufferer is guilty. As for the righteous, those whose arms are straight, they will always prosper!"

"[W]hatever you are is never enough; you must find a way to accept something, however small, from the other to make you whole and to save you from the mortal sin of righteousness and extremism. (p. 154)"

"A number of very young people in Kenya have adopted the Marxist analysis of society. And I cannot quarrel with that. But I can't help feeling at the same time... that my own aesthetic definition, which I gave earlier on, would be a little uneasy about the narrowing of things to a point where we no longer accept the truth of the Ibo proverb that "Where something stands, something else will stand beside it," and that we become like the people we are talking about the single-mindedness which leads to totalitarianism of all kinds, to fanaticism of all kinds. And I can't help the feeling that somehow at the base, art and fanaticism are not loggerheads. And so I don't dismiss the Marxist interpretation. I think it is valid in its way. But when somebody says "I am the way, the truth, and the light.... "Now my own religion, the religion of my people says something else. It says, "You may worship one god to perfection and another god will kill you." Wherever something is, something else also is. And I think it is important that whatever the regimes are saying that the artist keeps himself ready to enter the other plea. Perhaps it's not tidy perhaps we are contradicting ourselves. But one of your poets has said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well.""

"Well there is an assumption there that Conrad's...Heart of Darkness is great art and I don't accept that. Great art flourishes on problems or anguish or prejudice. But the role of the writer must be very clear. The writer must not be on the side of oppression. In other words there must be no confusion. I write about prejudice; I write about wickedness; I write about murder, I write about rape: but I must not be caught on the side of murder or rape. It is as simple as that."

"we are not gladiators. But there is something we are committed to of fundamental importance, something everybody should be committed to. We are committed to the process of changing our position in the world. This is what our literature is about. There is a certain position assigned to me in the world, assigned to him [Baldwin] in the world, and we are saying we are not satisfied with that position. This is important to me-to everybody. I think you see it is important to me. You may not see that it is important to you but it is. We want to create the new man. Mankind tries all kinds of ways, all kinds of solutions; some of them leading that far and no farther and it is wise that we try something else. We have followed your way and it seems there is a little problem at this point. And so we are offering a new aesthetic. There is nothing wrong with that...Picasso did that. In 1904 he saw that Western art had run out of breath so he went to the Congo-the dispised Congo-and brought out a new art. Don't mind what he was saying before he died: that much is entirely his business. But he borrowed something which saved his art. And we are telling you what we think will save your art. We think we are right, but even if we are wrong it doesn't matter. It couldn't be worse than it is now."

"What art tries to do is domesticate whatever is around and press it into the service of man. Morality is basic to the nature of art."

"The total life of man is reflected in his art. And so when people come to us and say, "Why are you... you artist so political?" I don't know what they are talking about. Because art is political. And further more I'd say this, that those who tell you "Do not put too much politics in your art," are not being honest. If you look very carefully you will see that they are the same people who are quite happy with the situation as it is. And what they are saying is not don't introduce politics. What they are saying is don't upset the system. They are just as political as any of us. It's only that they are on the other side. Now in my enthusiasm, art cannot be on the side of the oppressor."

"A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days."

"We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet."

"Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation but was strangely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth."

"The earth seemed unearthly."

"It always surprised him, he went on to say, because he never had thought of Africa as having that kind of stuff, you know."

"The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art."

"My Ruth, my Rachel, Esther, Bathsheba / Thou sum of fabled perfections / From Genesis to Revelations"

"(Lakunle, 9)"

"Bush-girl you are, bush girl you'll always be; / Uncivilized and primitive—bush-girl!"

"(Lakunle, 5)"

"What I boast is known in Lagos, that city / Of magic, in Badagry where Saro women bathe / In gold, even in smaller towns less than / Twelve miles from here..."

"(Lakunle, 2)"

"How often must I tell you, Sidi, that / A grown-up girl must cover up her... / Her... shoulders? I can see quite... quite / A good portion of—that!"

"The greedy dog! Insatiate camel of a foolish, doting race."

"It is five full months since last / I took a wife"

"Sidi feels empowered by seeing her beauty for the first time in the magazine prints. She recognizes that her beauty is a commodity, allowing her agency to make a future for herself. This is a novel idea: choosing one's own future is reserved for men."

"the contemporary novel . . . I've read one or two: Rushdie, I've enjoyed, again, exceptionally, Marquez, I love his works: that's another exception. Bessie Head: I found her novels very, very gripping, fascinating, challenging, really intellectually intriguing. Then that black American woman writer, Toni Morrison, the author of Sula, Song of Solomon: she's a fascinating writer. Umberto Eco . . . But generally I don't read novels."

"The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism."

"England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there....We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space.....A virus has attacked the world of sense and sensibility, and it has spread to Nigeria....The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world-as if someone had given them a new stature...Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere."

""Come January 20, 2017; watch my WOLEXIT" [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/nobel-prize-winner-wole-soyinka-donald-trump-throws-away-green-card-a7450141.html"

"[T]he PDP, on whose platform he stands, represents the most harrowing of this nation’s nightmares over and beyond even the horrors of the Abacha regime. If he wishes to be considered on his own merit, now is time for him, as well as others similarly enmeshed, to exercise the moral courage that goes with his repudiation of that party, a dissociation from its past, and a pledge to reverse its menacing future. We shall find him an alternative platform on which to stand, and then have him present his credentials along those of other candidates engaged in forging a credible opposition alliance."

"There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?"

"I said: "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces". In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: "I am a tiger". When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there."

"The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny."

"I consider The Road a masterpiece."

"He is remembered in Nigeria with awe, both for a political boldness that landed him in prison and for a commanding intellect that is manifest in every genre he tackles."

"Chinua Achebe was a real education for me, a real education. And certainly the plays of Soyinka and The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born of Ayi Kwei Armah-those things were at that time real, and they're the kinds of books that one can re-read with enormous discoveries subsequently."

"Now, the most eloquent irreligious individual voice in Nigeria is our first Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. Soyinka is an eminent literary scholar. He has consistently argued for tolerance and respect for the humanity of all in the face of religious intolerance and extremism. Soyinka has not minced words in condemning the unconscionable religious gladiators in the region that have often turned the country into a theatre of absurdity and holy wars. He has been consistent in his condemnation of the jihadists and crusaders who often orchestrate religious bloodletting in their quest to implement Sharia law or to further some self-styled divine mandate. While I cannot say for sure how impactful his rational appeals are on policies and programs, Soyinka’s statements are sources of hope and light at times of darkness and despair. I can say for certain that on occasions when religious extremists push the nation to the brink. When religion blinds and people are unable to see or think clearly, when fear and fanaticism loom very large, Soyinka is a voice of rational sanity, thoughtful courage, and moderation."

"What I sensed in Soyinka is that, for the most part, as a middle-aged man he is able to look back on his childhood and still see his early life with that fresh eye."

"I like a writer like Ngugi, who lashes out, because he knows what is good and bad in writing. And I think this is true of Wole Soyinka, too... I admire Soyinka because I think he's continuous, much more continuous, as a writer…Wole Soyinka deserves the Nobel Prize."

"My themed reading for both flights was Wole Soyinka, anything I had not yet read by the Nigerian novelist, memoirist, poet, and playwright. Because New York City was our final destination, I lingered over a poem of his titled "New York, U.S.A," which had been published more than a decade earlier. "Control was wrested from your pilot's hands,/And yours, mid-Atlantic, hapless voyager./Deafened the engine's last descent/To all but disordered echoes of your feet.""

"Ours is a strong breed my son. It is only a strong breed that can take this boat to the river year after year and wax stronger on it. I have taken down each year’s evils for over twenty years. I hoped you would follow me."

"Surely it is too much to ask a man to give up his own soil."

"A village which cannot produce its own carrier contains no men."

"But then I am a woman. I have a woman’s longings and weaknesses."

"There is peace in being a stranger."

"The very least we can live with is an agreement that does not reduce us to slaves of imposition, but makes us partners of consent."