On top of that, there was a certain massacre, which made me so bitter about the conduct of that government during the civil war and which I blamed on Gowon.
The massacre took place in what is now the state of Benin, in which innocents were lined up. Men, women, children were gunned down in cold blood. I learned about that. I wrote about it. And Gowon, I discovered, did not know anything about it. And when he learned about it later, he actually paid a visit to that place to apologize to the people of Benin. He met the Asagba of Asaba, the traditional ruler, who met him in council, and he was received by the citizens and so on, because by then, the very fact that he came there to apologize made a great impression on them.
So there was never known, up to a certain point, anything, any personal thing — my holding him personally responsible ceased not long after I came out of prison, when I began my inquiries into the conduct of the civil war.
Many things which I placed on his head — and he apologized to me personally. Wole Soyinka: He even came to my birthday! I invited him. It was a banquet which was thrown by the governor of my state, and also another governor, on my 70th birthday. He was in the first rank of the guests whom I said must be invited. I wanted to capture a particular period that was disappearing, a period which was very important to my childhood. And the character I was going to use for that unique period was my uncle, Oladotun Ransome-Kuti.
He was quite fond of me and he loved arguing, so he loved me, a kindred spirit. And then, suddenly, he died on me. I was going to try to see things through his eyes, what that period meant for him, and also aspects of me there. So I abandoned that project, and then one day, in prison, again, this need to recollect and to set down came back to me. And I began sketching out the first few chapters on toilet paper, and between the lines of some books.
Somehow they disappeared for some time. So getting them back together took a while, and I could not find the documents. In other words, the project had always been there. An interesting footnote about the powers of memory. I mean, virtually line by line. Of course, some changes here and there. Where were you born? What were the people like in your community? When I was born, it was still under colonial rule — the whole of Nigeria, of course.
But at the same time, the Christianized aspect of existence, they had the church. I grew up with knowing the pastor, the catechist, and at the same time being very conscious of the traditional religious people, their processions through town.
I grew up in an atmosphere of political contestation because Nigeria, like most colonial places, was busy trying to decolonize, to free itself from British rule. So there was the polemics of nationalism, and at the same time the regular rhythm of existence was captured in the cultures, and so on. Wole Soyinka: Oh. That is easily answered. Home life was a very disciplined one. And at the same time, it was an atmosphere of great exploration. My father was a school teacher, in fact was a headmaster in the primary school.
Believed passionately in education. My mother was a sort of petty trader, you know, small items, cloths, bit of jewelry, some foodstuffs, some locally manufactured material. She traveled quite a bit. She was also — I used to call her a lieutenant — a political lieutenant of a very feisty, politically astute auntie of mine, called Mrs.
And so that led to some fracas. So I grew up in this really, really exciting atmosphere of politics, real political activism, on the one hand, and then the more, shall we say, staid political discussions which went on around my father. He was sort of the center of the small, lower middle-class intellectuals who would debate everything from the world war, you know, going on at the time, to the price of newly introduced motorcycles in the area.
Wole Soyinka: No. One thing we were taught as children was the ethos of absolute equality, especially among children. My parents, as I used to say, used to collect waifs and strays, so we had a large family. I mean, some of them were our relations, poorer than we were. And the people, the parents would come and literally donate the child. Can he or she undergo some discipline here?
Maybe they worked with the railway, because if you were in the civil service, certain departments of the civil service, you were likely to be transferred anywhere, anytime. If you were a teacher, also, with some missionary schools, you could be transferred. There was sort of physical, geographical mobility among many employees of the time. Traders also, people working for private commercial companies. You could get sent, for instance, if you worked for a cocoa exporting firm, you could be sent to the interior for some time.
And some of these parents would bring their children to us. So the population of our household was constantly shifting, and they came from different strata of society.
And so we were taught, not so much directly, but through the attitude of our parents to all the children, that there was no privilege. Everybody was a child, and if you misbehaved you got just as much punishment as the other children. So if anything, in fact, we were treated even more harshly than the other children because we were supposed to know better and to show an example.
He was a passionate gardener. His crotons, his roses, his wildflowers, all neatly arranged in pots and in the ground itself. He practiced things like grafting. For instance, he would graft some kind of rose bush onto another. I developed my early love of nature both from his cultivation and from the fact that we lived in the midst of nature, natural surroundings. There were bushes, sort of semi-forest not far from us. We used to go to farms. Wole Soyinka: Ah, yes!
The first thing to state is that I was, from childhood, a voracious reader. In hindsight I think really I was a precocious reader. I had a sister who was only a year and two months — a year and three months older than I was.
You have to stay behind. And so one day — and then of course we lived in the parsonage, which meant that there were some schools, missionary schools, sort of, whose playgrounds abutted the lawn in front of our house. So I would watch these school kids also coming out during their break to play, and then I could see also through the school room windows, not far from us, these pupils bent over their books and their papers.
I mean, it was like a conspiracy. For me it was the most natural thing. If you were going to school you had to have books. And even she was still too young to go to school by herself, so one of the older child relations used to take her to school. What do you want? Go back!
Today school day. Olagbaju, came out to see what the fracas was about. But no. So I actually began school at two-and-a-half years of age. It sounds like your teacher, Mr. Olagbaju, was a big influence in your early life. Who else inspired you as a young person? Wole Soyinka: The early influence in my life I think was my father.
He and his circle of friends. Usually, in our society, children are supposed to be neither seen nor heard. But I was curious. I just loved their debates. They used to get excited over issues, and so somehow I was allowed to eavesdrop, unlike the other children.
And I picked up some of the ideas that they had, and I would ask questions. I was known as the questioner. Afterwards, I would ask questions, and my father would indulge me by trying to explain things to me.
And also, he had a small library, and I used to go into his library and try and read the books which I found there.
Later on, as my circle of adult acquaintances increased, I think the next influence on me was my uncle, the Reverend I. Ransome-Kuti, who was another very erudite person, a great educationist. I used to visit them in Igbein, where he lived with his wife and they ran a school.
So on weekends sometimes I would go there. And of course it was the usual story. I wanted to listen to them discussing and so on. I was also very playful. I loved disappearing by myself, climbing trees, all that I did. But additionally, I was just fascinated by the whole discourse. Exchange of ideas between adults just used to fascinate me for some reason. I was never tired of listening to them. So my uncle was my next great influence. Wole Soyinka: Oh, I just picked out books.
Anything at all. I read catalogues. I read the newspaper, The Egbaland Echo. Among the books, I remember reading the bowdlerized versions of Charles Dickens. They were two of my favorites.
They were not the full editions. These were bowdlerized versions. And also some plays. I remember I came early in contact with Euripides, and I remember exactly, it was the Medea. It was very fascinating. Wole Soyinka: Yes. Of course the Bible was always there. I found the Bible a wonderful piece of literature. I was never a very religious person in childhood, but I read that as well. Did that influence you in any way? Wole Soyinka: Only in a rebellious way.
First, we had to go to church every Sunday morning — morning and evening on Sundays. Then there was Sunday school. The various seasons were observed. You know, Easter, Christmas. I enjoyed those seasons, anything to do with festivals was okay by me. And that included the Muslim festivals. Because even though we lived in a Christian missionary compound — a parsonage, as it was called — St. And the interaction between the two faiths was quite a normal accommodative communal kind of existence.
Not the kind of murderous nonsense you have these days, religious extremists and so on. We celebrated, with the Muslims, their festivals — the Eid, the Ramadan, et cetera, sometimes even observed part of their fast days. And then there were the traditional religionists, as I said. A bit more relaxed, more humanist in my view. I was a member of the church choir quite early, because I liked music, and in any case, as a son of the headmaster who was also a deacon.
And of course my mother was a very passionate Christian, used to go out evangelizing. So I was expected to also be religious. Well, I had no problem with the choir. I loved singing, loved music, loved the sound of the organ and even enjoyed the processions during the seasonal days. But I never really took to religion, as such. I think both my parents tried too hard, so I rebelled quite early and found myself more attuned to a comparative approach to religions, comparative. She was also wild as a disciplinarian, so somehow, in my head, I used to refer to her mentally as a Wild Christian.
Do you think the diversity of that community, and of all the visitors that came to your family home influenced your perception of culture? Wole Soyinka: Yes, this is true. If you take the sort of micro-community in my household when I was a child, for instance, we had people from all parts of the country.
We had somebody from the North at one period. So it was like the community was constantly expanding outwards. We discussed problems. Problems were brought within, and there was a continuing attention to mutual problems.
This created a kind of bond. We felt everybody who came into that micro-community was just part of a larger community. Even when there were disagreements, it was still part of the same community.
Looking out for members, looking out for one another, accepting the trials and celebrating the triumphs together. And at the same time, lamenting the setbacks and taking collective remedial action. Traditional society has both its virtues and its drawbacks, like all kinds of cultures.
There are sets of values in any community. 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. On the other hand, a child, as I said, was supposed to be seen, not heard. In fact, preferably neither seen nor heard. You took instructions and you made yourself available at all times for any kind of extra duties that might be imposed on you.
I had no problem carrying out duties. But somehow, as a child, I also insisted on my own space. And sometimes I would go far to find that space, which we were not supposed to do. You are overconfident. But it made no difference. I just was the way I was. So you had to manage to manipulate your way through that.
A child who appeared introspective was considered to be a possible danger to himself or herself. But with the balance in favor of the social child. The child is not supposed to desert the community, and if too much of that side is seen, then efforts are made to bring you out of it. They feel there is something wrong with you. Now, I had to fight that as a child. That led to accusations of over-self-confidence, that kind of thing. Do you think that you were always destined to be an achiever?
Do you think that you were different from other kids? I know that I tend to be more passionate about things than others, but beyond that, no. I never felt that I was set apart. No, not at all. After primary school, did you need to get a scholarship in order to attend grammar school? You got a scholarship only in secondary school.
You sat examinations. At the end of your primary school, you sat examinations to certain schools where scholarships were available. Otherwise, you had to go through the other schools where there were no scholarships.
And in this case I sat for Government College, Ibadan and got a scholarship. Wole Soyinka: Oh yes. My father always made it clear that I had to go to Government College. The Government College was the elite secondary school, if you like, and they had scholarships, and that was important for the family.
Wole Soyinka: The first thing is my parents realized quite early that I loved books. Therefore they encouraged me to read as much as I wanted to, my father in particular, and to ask questions about the books, which he answered very patiently, I thought. Then, 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. I think it was mainly that way. Was there a particular teacher who most inspired you or challenged you? Maybe it was Mr. Wole Soyinka: I would say it was that first teacher I had who admitted me into school, in quite an unorthodox manner, Mr.
Wole Soyinka was born in Nigeria and educated in England. In , the playwright and political activist became the first African to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
He dedicated his Nobel acceptance speech to Nelson Mandela. Soyinka has published hundreds of works, including drama, novels, essays and poetry, and colleges all over the world seek him out as a visiting professor.
His father, Samuel Ayodele Soyinka, was a prominent Anglican minister and headmaster. His mother, Grace Eniola Soyinka, who was called "Wild Christian," was a shopkeeper and local activist. As a child, he lived in an Anglican mission compound, learning the Christian teachings of his parents, as well as the Yoruba spiritualism and tribal customs of his grandfather. After finishing preparatory university studies in at Government College in Ibadan, Soyinka moved to England and continued his education at the University of Leeds, where he served as the editor of the school's magazine, The Eagle.
He graduated with a bachelor's degree in English literature in In the university awarded him an honorary doctorate. In the late s Soyinka wrote his first important play, A Dance of the Forests , which satirized the Nigerian political elite.
He wrote his first plays during his time in London, The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel a light comedy , which were performed at Ibadan in and and were published in Later, satirical comedies are The Trial of Brother Jero performed in , publ. Literary essays are collected in, among others, Myth, Literature and the African World The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page.
Nobel Prizes Thirteen laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in , for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. See them all presented here.
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