Impressionistic Approach: ''Live Burial''

 

"Live burial"

                                 Wole Soyinka

 

                 Introduction

Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first sub-Saharan African to be honored in that category. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta.

Wole Soyinka is a dramatist and a poet, novelist, and critic. His poetry has appeared in several collections, including Idanre and Other Poems (1967), Poems from Prison (1969), A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972), and Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems (1988). The long poem Ogun Abibiman ,.

"Live burial" Sixteen paces By twenty-three. They hold Siege against humanity And Truth Employing time to drill through to his sanity Schismatic Lover of Antigone! You will? You will unearth Corpses of yester- Year? Expose manure of present birth?   Seal him live In that same necropolis. May his ghost mistress Point the classic Route to Outsiders' Stygian Mysteries.   Bulletin: He sleeps well, eats Well. His doctors note No damage Our plastic surgeons tend his public image. ConfessionFiction? Is truth not the essence Of Art, and fiction Art? Lest it rust We kindly borrowed his poetic license. Galileo We hoped he'd prove - age Or genius may recant - our butchers Tired of waiting Ordered; take the scapegoat, drop the sage. Guara'l The lizard: Every minute scrapes A concrete mixer throat. The cola slime Flies to blotch the walls in patterned grime   The ghoul: Flushed from hanging, sniffles Snuff, to clear his head of Sins -- the law Declared -- that morning's gallows load was dead of. The voyeur: Times his sly patrol For the hour upon the throne I think he thrills To hear the Muse's constipated Groan  Impressionistic approach: Live Burial  So, we can go with the impressionistic approach after reading the poem. So we have an idea that this poem is related to some kind of post-colonial argument of the poet because when we analyze this poem we can get the idea that he was in prison at the time he wrote this poem. He faced much mental torture. When he was going to the toilet, he was writing the poem. When he was in jail there is 16 sixteen feet of land and wheals. 23 months he was staying there. Now coming back to the point, what impression falls into my mind is that the poet has done his own experience and did the analysis of western civilization. What is the impact that it changes the perspective of the African people? so, I saw that still, people are living in the poor thoughts of the western people that white is always superior and black is always inferior so it means to say that now we are in the modern time but still we have a tradition of the white is always a good choice and black is always bad choice so it means to say that even we can take the one of example that the system of Indian marriage seeing the white dominance. So as we know that we are civilized or depend on western people so another example is that when someone is coming from any outsides country, who has white skin so must some people will be gathered to make a selfie with the foreigner or whenever that person will have black skin so no one can be coming for any selfie. So as an argument or taking the perspective of the poet is right that still most of the communists have this kind of mindset.  Conclusion Wole Soyinka’s poetry reflects the contradictions in his heritage. His religious beliefs are tribal, specifically, the Yoruba pantheon of gods, and Christian, and his cultural upbringing draws from African traditions, opposed to modernization, and Western traditions. Although he celebrates the complexities that are Africa, he does not romanticize his native. So, The whole poem criticizes western thoughts and criticizes the mindset of the African people and dependent on another country, who are under colonialism. Thanks😊