Dele Momodu Lends Voice
OpenLife Nigeria reports that for a long time, there have been contentious views and arguments in the literary world about who, among great writers, is Africa’s greatest.
To a large extent, the analyses have been narrowed down between Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka.
Technically, Wole Soyinka enjoys commendable reviews and appreciation partly on account of his Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Professor of Comparative Literature also speaks with such flair and elocution, and with such an affected accent far and above his co traveller on the literary lane, Achebe.
However and on the other hand, some analysts, who like reading and listening to Soyinka, they seem to have been constantly bogged down with questions and references about him and his work as being populated with magniloquence and abstractive esoteric difficulties.
They complain that his work and writing are self-gratuitous and impossible for the common persons to understand and comprehend.
For Achebe, many regard him as being a better writer than Soyinka. They see him more as a conceptual literary success than most other African writers.
Someone described Achebe as being more readable, more accessible with a well-defined autochthonous style that has deeper and sweeter meaningful cultural etymology.
On the strength of this argument in favour of Achebe, many have asked: why didn’t Achebe win the Nobel Prize?
In defence, the pro Achebe group contends that the awardees didn’t see any useful value in his style, and in the use of the language of idiomatic cultural ecology in his literary work.
In addition, they reckon that it is rumored that the West hated Achebe and despised his affront on the colonialists, and that his caustic positions both written and spoken on the evils of the whiteman on the world, made him a less likeable and less likely candidate for the givers of the Nobel titles.
According to information, Achebe is said to have looked them straight in their eyes, and told them to go to hell. For this, they swore never to recognize his towering talents and the top quality of his works.
Viewed differently, a renowned journalist and politician, Dele Momodu sees it from different perspective.
He argues that to use these qualifications as a measure or yardsticks of a writer’s value, seem misplaced.
In lending his voice, Momodu said:
“For me, it all depends on the genre of Literature. Chinua Achebe is certainly the greatest African Novelist of all time while Wole Soyinka is the greatest African playwright of all time…
To lump the two together would be a great disservice to the two literary geniuses who wrote with stupendous energies…
In the last 60 years, they have both dominated our literary firmament and were they businessmen, they would have been charged for unhealthy monopolies… Achebe’s novels Things Fall Apart, No Longer At Ease, A Man Of The People, Arrow Of God, remain unbeatable.
Soyinka’s plays Death And The King’s Horseman, Kongi’s Harvest, The Trials Of Brother Jero, Madmen And Specialists, Opera Wonyosi, A Dance Of The Forests, The Lion And The Jewel, all remain eternal masterpieces.
Though there’s no evidence of royalties that accrued, and still accruing, to both legends, I would assume that Achebe recorded more commercial success, especially with the almost supernatural popularity of Things Fall Apart and its countless translations.
But cumulatively, no African writer has produced voraciously like Wole Soyinka, an all rounder in drama, novel, poetry and essays.
None has also traveled globally as much as Soyinka who continues to teach even on the eve of his 90th birthday next month.”
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