Combining the traditional with the modern Plays John Pepper Clark

Clark in his life exemplifies this uneasy fusion of tradition and modernity. In introducing his volume of poems and a reed in The Tide is considered:

........ the phenomenon of cultural fashion they call 'mulatto' - not in the flesh, but in the mind! Coming to a store in the oldest area of ​​the Niger Delta of Nigeria, from which I never quite felt left, and passing through the mill used to grind with the regular education of the English school at its end, I sometimes wonder what in the my make-up is 'traditional' or 'native' and what 'drift' and 'modern'.

JP Clark in his work embodies a wide range of influences from Western sources, ancient and modern myths and legends of his Ijaw people. Although written in English, in order to reach the widest audience possible, images of Africa, themes, settings and patterns of speech are at the center of his work.

Born in 1935 in Nigeria, Wole Soyinka, Clark is one of Nigeria's most important playwrights and poets. His interest in poetry began while studying at University College, Ibadan. He co-edited the HORN, a student journals publishing poems, articles and reviews of young African writers. In 1964 he published his work on American society scurrilous AMERICA THEIR based on his experiences while a student at Princeton University. He worked briefly, the Daily Express and co-edited with Abiola Irele Black Orpheus. He has written several volumes of poems and plays and has produced two documentaries The OZIDI OF Alonzi and the ghost town. Since 1968 he teaches African literature and English at the University of Lagos and is the director of the Repertory Theatre there.

The traditional and modern come together almost always in the comedies of Clark themes, attitudes and techniques that are found in some of the first games of Soyinka. His first two plays Song of a goat [executed in 1961] and The Masquerade [executed in 1965] contain elements of greek classical drama and Shakespeare, the poetry of TS Elliot games and the popular literature of the Ijaw people says that Clark has much in common with the classical drama. SONG OF A GOAT In a barren woman consults with a masseur and conceives a child by her husband's brother. Unable to accept this situation, both the husband and his brother commit suicide. The child grew to manhood and unaware of the circumstances of his birth, is the tragic hero of the masquerade. Travel away from his homeland, and engages with a beautiful, strong-willed girl. When you reveal the background of the young girl's father forbids her to marry him but she refuses to respect his decision. In all of them die violent denouement. Both games are written in verse and share an aura of inexorable fate, with the operation of neighboring chorus commenting on the recent tragic events.

A SONG OF A GOAT clearly demonstrates how the two elements: modernity and tradition - merge or conflict. But all the social situation of the game is essentially traditional. . The attitude of the characters then keep strictly in line with the social ethics of the world created within the game. These are the ethos and traditions sanctioned by the gods. Themselves against those who were seen as a revolt against the customs sanctioned by society and the gods themselves. Therefore as a result of resisting such customs. Zifa has an unfortunate battle to reverse the curse imposed.

The game also shows the high premium society places on the reproductive act. And 'to them the most sacred duty of life. Those who are unable to fill his house with children is considered guilty of a very serious omission, which could portend danger as the massage therapist says here:

An empty house, my daughter, is a thing of danger. If men will not live in it Bats or grass will, and this is enough signal for worse things to come in.

So important is this act of fertility that everything else becomes secondary and functional to it. Indeed, as states Massager:

You buy your wife the truest Madras, she has fought for the best gold and everyone can see it is very well fed But we fatten our daughters to prepare for the enjoyment, not to hinder them.

Significantly, the suggestions masseur who is not able to help prevent. For the tradition that those who did not produce as good as dead. Then:

Custom said ... who dies without children, will be cast out of society of fruitful whose grace is special burial in the township.

Zifa that has been cursed with infertility because of the sins of the father, refuses to adhere to the traditional curstom to give the wife someone manly enough to make it bear fruit and thereby confirms its existence. It then contrasts a traditional strength against itself, that would be almost impossible to fight. The reckless nature of his lawsuit against the tradition embodied in the oracular massager - eruption is indicated in his statement: 'I am strong, / Alive and the courage to open your filthy mouth / to suggest that engaging my land?' His own words repudiate the old belief that to create is to live and exposes fatedness pain of his struggle. The imminent death is underlined by the response of massage:

They are eaten with anger, but even if I crush, a cripple, between the strong hands will not solve the problem.

And what it suggests, the masseur goes on, has been a long tradition, our father has not banned in day / one time. '

Zifa battle against tradition is mainly through questioning the legitimacy of the curse placed on him by the cosmic forces. Here he is in direct combat with the gods whom he regards as undermining its efforts to fulfill his conjugal responsibilities .. Even through his father who had angered the gods were dead and buried in the grove of evil, such as costumes, and he did his duties as a son to make sacrifices, the curse is still extended to him when he 'dared not spit his father when he was alive. 'In a fit of desperation, he asks:' And am I to blame / If everything was the fish that come to its network? But the masseuse quietly suggested that perhaps his fault he was bringing home to his people a bit 'too early for someone who died of the white spot. But Zifa should not be persuaded. He sees it as an unjust punishment which he describes how to collect his flesh 'to the bones like a dead fish floating'.

Ironically, Tonye, ​​brother and wife Zifa Zifa, the Ebiere, in their effort to realize the procreative act Zifa failed to perform even get in the way of tradition. They are therefore threatened with destruction. Their fate is to be their failure - does not seek the sanction of tradition, and then invite the cracks of the game highlights. It is significant that in the heat of the law - with Ebiere Tonyé and interlocked - the cock crows, sinister, and this immediately raises the all-seeing Orukorere. The unnaturalness of the law and their impatience with tradition is shown in his words:

I watched a show this sunset to make The eagle blind. I heard the cock crow as I woke from sleep. This was a sign of good luck rather little, but I knew It 'was this great betrayal of our race.

The futility of the struggle against tradition, and his self-destructive outcomes was mentioned from the beginning of the game. The first comes from the masseur who was a voice of prophetic insight into the game. He warns:

.... Did you see, even now as the chicken, but everything blew the house down with the beat of its wings. With the same cock, the walls can do and I'm too old to start gathering straw, green for my gray hair.

Although Orukorere, another prophet-like figure, was suggesting the game is dangerous from the outset, it is only towards the end that his message becomes clear. Then he pronounces

There will never be light again in this child, this is the night of our race, the downfall of everything that ever reared its head or the arms.

This fall looks like that of Adam and Eve to the cosmic dimension that affects the destiny of all men. He concludes: 'Recognition therefore has become a thing / to flies and bats, right? The destruction of Zifa, Tonye Ebiere and shows the fate that awaits those who rebel against tradition and defy the gods.

The curse placed on Tonye Ebiere and extends the product of their incestuous act, Tufa, The Masquerade in the next game. Tufa says himself:

I am the one unmentionable beast born of woman for whom his brother and his brother Drove brother to death terrible. But not all. My mother says that the seed produced, in returning it, withered on the fact, and was left without an old spirit to pick me up and hold in another country [three games P86]

Evidently then such a curse has condemned his love for Tiki in his life as he ... Here, Titi defies tradition to woo a man who is cursed. We challenge the proposal to dissolve the marriage of his father with 'a random choice' in favor of the choicest of man in all the creeks and trails on the virgin land and sea. He laughed that he would not 'be put / on a plate of Hawking'.

However, the conflict is not so simple, because the marriage had already been tied up and blessed by the father of Titi, Diribi. He thus becomes an accomplice in the act of sacrilege even if unintentionally. The dissolution of marriage can not simply be proclaimed by his father and mother only. For only then discovered they had passed bad man. And 'then a cluster of ironies that in their struggle against tradition, and Titi Tufa and resorts to tradition - the marriage has been blessed and linked to justify their position. The father, in turn, in an attempt to preserve the traditions and the fight against a curse that could be his family, fights against the tradition itself, and that puts a curse of wider ramifications. Ironically, it is the gift that Diribi Tuff presented the occasion of his marriage that has become the instrument of his downfall and death of his wife. As a result, all face ruin as Umoko some force that has lost his mind.

Of course, this approach leads to pervasive traditional modernist attitudes or forces that are contending with the forces of tradition in both games. A SONG of a goat and The Masquerade reveal freewheeling women in search of independence and female Ebierre Titi. In his battle of words with Tonye gives the appearance of one who would omit anything in his fight to prove that sex can not be a reason to be put in the wrong all the time. He says:

Of course, it is the woman who is always in the wrong that I have suffered neglect and Gathered mold as something to sacrifice to the left in the sun and rain at the crossroads I speak of my character short, what I have short temper, when it is pulled and pulled newspaper as a hook-line?

Titi, on the other hand is not only a woman, but a girl trying to say for older people their right to choose the man who wants to be married and not to be 'sold / as rejected by the fish or poultry meanest / home '.

Both works have been largely accepted and their evaluation is especially favorable rates for their art mostly before and refinement. For Anthon Astrachan, 'At his weakest, is more competent than many playwrights widely known outside of Africa, at its strongest, he is magnificent. His three works can compete as equals on the stage of world literature without losing a quality value of their African cowries. 'He goes on to compare the two games of this first-rate playwright Sophocles' Oedipus plays, as does another critic, John Fergusson. 'The language and the feeling of both are so full of action that the reader is forced to stage in the theater of his inner vision, and not seen to become less of a handicap.' The analysis of the language of the Song of a GOAT says so:

The language evokes pity and terror, which are the main objectives of the tragedy, and dramatic construction has an aura of doom ..... Orukorere evokes the terror of the offense, which is yet to come. In his semi-crazy nightmare:

I have to find it, the leopard will eat my goat, I find it.

John Ferguson described it as a powerful player also joins Astrakhan in recognizing how Clark is greatly indebted to the greek drama without being imitative or derivative. It recalls the curse of Atreus and Laius and Oedipus and Agamemnon in their work. The massager is the equivalence of the divine figure who usually starts or ends greek theater. The neighbors formed the choir, but Clark does not connect her movements with song and dance sequences. The movements are tense, and the characters in number and economic conception. As the Greek tragedy play is religious in tone. Some of the devices and approaches of the greek tragedy. They are used with great skill. The concept of the speech of the Messenger is wonderfully suited to describe Zifa self-immolation in the sea. The most moving passages in the Aristotelian tragedy - peripeteia and anagnorisis - are all evident in this game.

Astrakhan also notes that many lines as the last mentioned are rich in myth. This last speech reveals a tragedy of revelation which is the dominant note and the vehicle for action in Oedipus Tyrannus. But no such development or suspense SONG could be tested in a goat. No change, growth or degeneration occurs and Tonye Ebriere that lead them to sin. The base of the tragedy is not clearly established. Zifa tragedy is, therefore, without cause.

African-American poet, Amiri Baraka's appreciation of the lyricism of the only African language Clark is also worthy of note. He first describes him as 'a work so beautiful'. He expresses his difficulty in placing the language of Clark, that he is English, but it is not. The tone and the references are from the African experience clearly. 'English is pushed beyond the boredom of immaculate Victorian to recent non-European quality of experience, even if it is the European language that seems to shape it, externally. But Clark seems to him after a specific emotional texture is strange that European literature and life:

Masseur

your womb

It is open and warm as a room

Should accommodate many

Ebiere

Well, it seems like to be empty

Masseur

An empty house, my daughter is one thing

Of danger, the men will not turn it

Bats or grass will, and that's enough

Signal of worse things to come

The writing of this comedy about a family divided and destroyed by traditional Nigerian adultery, moves easily through the heart of legendary African life, building a sort of ritual drama in which a lot depends on the writer for his accuracy and strength, as does the narrator of formal rituals. The language is lyrical and sweet most of the time, but Clark's images and metaphors are strikingly vivid and India as evident here:

1 Neighbour

It should be easy to see a leopard

If he were here. His eyes should be

Blazing Back in the dark.

3 Neighbour

So I felt I heard them compared

To the lighthouse out on the bar

Neighbour 2

And his bike is quiet as the big house

We must be careful

These lines of Africans in tone and reference, securing for us readers a sense of place.

Although great similarity has been established between this game and Greek tragedy, is not Greek tragedy. You can stand on its own two feet as a tragedy Ijaw. Fergusson's associates, then, as 'in many ways the most remarkable game to emerge from Nigeria.'

The MASQERADE is not just a sequel to SONG OF A GOAT, but a tragedy without arrogance. John Ferguson, if called as' not an unworthy companion of SONG OF A GOAT says it has a much less powerful. Here, towards the writing is more certain, but less memorable. There is less climax and anticlimax less. The finest writing is in the speech of the first act of love between the tuff and is highly Titi, mellifluous passages. Its lightness contrasts well with the dark somber gravity and the destruction of the final scene. The management of plot is untidier, less tense and less controlled. Even if the development was more dramatic and suspenseful detected, the revelation comes first - the characters react more strongly when it does come.

REFERENCES

Astrarchan, Anthony., 'How goats to slaughter three works by John Pepper Clark' in Black Orpheus, N. 18 October 1964, pp. 21-4

Clark, J. P. REED IN A TIDE

Clark, JP three games: Song of a Goat, The Masquerade and the raft...