He grafts the Penthean and rigid spine,
Upon the Ogunian and leafy branch;
Where attic salt and Yoruba palm-wine,
Initiate a metaphysical avalanche.
In his "Bacchae," the slave-class finds a voice,
A liturgy of liberation's heat,
Wherein the dispossessed and poor rejoice,
To tread the hegemon beneath their feet.
He finds the numinous and shared pulse,
Between the Hellenic and the African rite,
To exorcise the demons that convulse,
The ontological and dark of night.
A syncretic bridge of blood and vine,
Where the sacrilegious becomes divine.
Sonnet XXIX: The Mandela Threnody
A Mandela in the Robben Island gloom,
Becomes the archetype of human will;
Defying the cenotaph and stone-cold tomb,
To keep the ethical and pulse quite still.
Soyinka wove the "Ogun Abibiman" thread,
A pan-Africanist and blood-deep bond,
Where the living commune with the "unborn" dead,
And look to the emancipated world beyond.
He mocks the "Constructive Engagement" lie,
The hypocrisy of the Western gate,
Beneath the indifferent and azure sky,
He challenges the apartheid state.
The shuttle flies across the racial rift,
Bearing the laureate's enduring gift.
Literary & Philosophical Context:
The Bacchae of Euripides: Soyinka's 1973 adaptation for the National Theatre, which highlights the revolutionary potential of the Dionysian cult as a struggle for communal liberation.
Climate of Fear: His 2004 BBC Reith Lectures, where he examines the global culture of suspicion and the threat of religious fanaticism.
Mandela's Earth and Other Poems (1988): A collection that celebrates Nelson Mandela's resilience while critiquing the geopolitical apathy of the era.
XXVIII:The Climate Of Fear
Through the "Climate of Fear" he stalks the stage,
An octogenarian with a searing lens;
To document the atavistic rage,
Of theocratic and of holy dens.
He decries the "Invisible" and hooded hand,
The indoctrination of the plastic mind,
That spreads a leprosy across the land,
Leaving the sovereignty of thought behind.
With "Reithian" gravitas and iron-wit,
He flays the intolerance of the "Book,"
Where the lamps of reason are unlit,
And the zealot casts a predatory look.
Against the monolithic "Holy" wall,
The laureate sounds the clarion call.
Obviously we should proceed to his scathing critique of the "Home-grown" dictators in The Open Sore of a Continent, or explore the mystical realism of his forest-based narratives.
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