J. P. Clark by Robert M. Wren Review by: Thomas R. Knipp Research in African Literatures, Vol. 17, No.

2, Special Issue on Drama (Summer, 1986), pp. 278-281 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4618132 . Accessed: 09/05/2012 05:48
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Book Reviews

complete control of his material," we begin to wonder if he has grasped the psychological principle of creativity.That he has certainly not understood the spirit of The Strong Breed is clear when he says: "I think Soyinka is more concerned with the dangerous self-righteousnessin self-appointed religious martyrsthan in exchanging one form of religion for another. Christianityis not better, necessarily, than traditional African religion" (75). J. P. Clark'splays fare better at the hands of the critic. A point-to-point similarity is drawn between Greek tragedy, especiallyAgamemnon and Song of a Goat. The title, the presence of the chorus, the adherence to the conventions, the Cassandra-like role of Orukorereare all brought out. This is illuminating for those who are not familiar with Greek tragedy. He tries to maintain that the three plays form a trilogy, but he cannot always keep this position. He establishes an organic link between the first two plays, but The Raft certainlyhas no links with the other two except in its tragic perception of life. There is a certain degree of inconsistencyin the mode of evaluation of these plays. Song of a Goat is praised for its language. "I would rather say that the most successfulelement in Song of a Goat is its language" (89). He praises the use here of language "embellished with several kinds of artisticornaments," whereas in The Masquerade, language thus embellished is severely censured as "stifling." What is the basis of this distinction? How do we evaluate the adequacy or otherwise of language in coping with the experience that a play depicts? This is not made clear. And the question brings us to the greatest deficiency of the book. The seven plays are treated strictly as embodying myths and rituals of West Africa, the avowed aim being to show that "no longer does he (the modern playwright)despise the religion and culture of his people" (1). The plays are not evaluated as dramas, even though all of them belong to the category described as literarydramas. What criticalcriteria, we are apt to ask, does the book prescribe for the evaluation of these plays? What attempts have been made to bring out the successor failure of these dramatistsin using the theater for projecting their vision of life, of human experience?It is difficult to give a positive answer to these questions, and therein lies the weaknessof the book. Whatever merits the book has in its explication of West African cultural content in the given plays are undermined by the number of mistakes that appear on every page of the book. The splitting of the notes to chapter 3 should also have been avoided. The mistakes on the whole speak of a hurried or carelessproduction of the book and discourageone from recommending it to students for whom its usefulness could have been considerable. Mary T. David

Robert M. Wren. J. P. Clark. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984. 181 pages. Robert Wren'sJ. P. Clark, a criticalstudy of one of Nigeria's major writers, is part of the World Author series, and it is a model of what all American, British, and World Author series books should be: factual, well organized, analytical, and

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graced by perceptive criticaljudgment. It is suggestive as well as illuminating, indicating, at least by implication, the areastowardwhich other criticsand scholars might direct their attention. After an introductorychapter on the society and culture of Clark'speople, the Ijo of the Niger delta, Wren discussesClark'swork chronologicallyin four chapters. And while a strong case can be made for studying Clarkgenerically, the chronologicalapproachserves well Wren's intention of placing this work in the context of both the nation's history and the author's life. Like the text, the notes are informative though occasionallylaconic-always a shrewd strategy in dealing with Clark. The bibliographyskimps a little in its attention to book-length studies- no mention is made of Dathorne, Tucker, and others; but it is the best place for any scholar to begin a serious study of the critical response to Clark'swork from the juvenilia of the late 1950s through the Ozidi Saga published in 1977. Wren's controlling criticalassertion-the one that determines the criticalperspective and design of the book-is stated in the preface where he claims that Clark'sprimarychallenge and achievement have been "the expressionof African tradition through the medium of the English language" (Preface, n.p.). He also demonstratesthroughout the book that Clarkhas a dark and ironic-and therefore modern-view of the human condition. These are the premises of Wren's excellent readings of the early verse--"To Granny," "Night Rain," and especially "Ivbie." I think he ignores the symbolic or at least allegoricalpossibilities of "Night Rain," and I disagree with his devaluation of "Agbor Dancer," but I am completely persuaded by his argument that the early poetry is linked by three common characteristics: structurebased upon occasion, images drawn from the river, and heightened dissatisfactionwhich he calls "the disquiet that pervades Clark's poetry, an anxiety that energizes the commonplace" (23). Wren is an even better interpreterof Clark'sdrama than he is of the poetry. His discussion of the three early plays, Song of a Goat, The Masquerade,and The Raft, is the best criticalcommentaryyet written. He provides factual background and, in the case of the first two plays, the religious and metaphysicalbackground that enables the non-African--perhaps even the non-Ijo--to see the strength and integrity of the characters'motivation. This is important because, as he points out, "Clark's motive in writing his first two plays was in great part to celebrate traditionallife, its emotions, its dignity, its suffering" (76). Wren makes clear that in portrayingthis sufferingwithin the IjQfaith system and in portrayingnaturalistically the inescapabledoom of the fishermenin The Raft, Clarkis able to depict the of general in the particular.That is, he is able to depict within the particulars Ijq life his own grim, deterministicview of the nature and fate of man. The fourth chapter ofJ. P. Clarkis devoted to Clark'sdecade-long labor with the Ozidi narrative.Wren gives us a careful account of Clark'stwo main sources and a careful comparisonof the three main results: the translatedsaga, the film (made in cooperation with FrankSpeed), and the play. If anything, Wren spends too much time tracing the evolution of the project and comparing the various versions and too little time in literaryanalysisand evaluation. The reason, I think, is that Wren, Clark'sfriend and advocate, is a little reluctant to evaluate the project unequivocallyand too good a scholar not to. The whole project has not

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been completely successful. That is, it has not resulted in literaturein the English language (alwaysClark'sgoal accordingto Wren) of the same high quality as A Reed in the Tide and the early plays. The film has many technical flaws, and the drama has neither the tragic unity nor the production values (alwaysimportant for Wren) of the earlierplays. Nevertheless, the subsection of the chapter entitled "Ozidi Festival as Belles Lettres" is the best criticalessay to date on the complex, and Wren's generous criticalconclusion is just: "In the play, the film, and the saga an indigenous African epic is preservedand re-createdas no other has been. This re-creationis continually exciting, but, more important, it evokes an authentic African experience" (126). What Wren does not (quite) say is that the complex is more a scholarlythan a literaryachievement. In chapter 5 Wren does a brilliant job of narratingthe political and military events that tore Nigeria apart in 1966 and of relating these events to Clark'scontroversial poetry collection Casualties.Two things I especiallyappreciateare Wren's explication of the animal symbolism in Casualtiesand his explanation not only of the early role of Mjr. Emmanuel Ifeajuna on the stage soon to be dominated by Ironsi, Gowon, and Ojukwu, but especially the way in which Ifeajuna becomes the key link between the tragic history of the nation and the tormented history of the poet. Wren is successful, too, in presenting Clark'spoint of view concerning the tragedy and the torment without denying that Casualtiesis an apologia and that the special pleading-especially in the notes-is not always admirable. He begins his analysiswith a summary worth quoting at length: The twenty-eight numbered poems of Casualtiesare the lyric expressionof a partiallystated narrative.Clark's notes to the poems representa partial statement of the narrative.The full narrativeis two-fold: it contains the whole political history of Nigeria's early years as an independent nation, and it tells the personal history of Clarkhimself in relation to his friendsfriends whom, one way or another, he lost in the troubled years. (128) Wren fills in the details of these narratives,depicting the "harsh progressfrom hope to anguish" that results in the poet's "ironic and bitter" tone. He justifies the length and detail of his own narrativereconstructionby arguing, "Casualties, experiencedwith an understanding and acceptanceof its context, is remarkably evocative" (153). He is right on both counts-the justness of his reconstruction and the evocativenessof the poems. Wren'sJ. P. Clarkis a fine study of an important and controversialwriter, but the book is not without its limitations, some of which are minor, like the author's very limited attention to the scholarlyand criticalliteratureabout Clarkand to Clark'sown criticalessays in The Example of Shakespeare.I also think Wren spends too much time on Clark'syear in the United States and on America, Their America, the churlish and sophomoric memoir of that year. In contrasthe virtually ignores A Reed in the Tide even though he acknowledgesthat it is the first collection of an Anglophone West African to be published by an important Western publisher. He discussesmany of the major poems as they first appeared in the Mbaripublication of 1961, but he fails to give the same careful attention to

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the (autobiographical)structureor design of A Reed in the Tide that he gives to Casualties, thereby missing one of Clark'smost successful presentationsof "authentic African experience." My final complaint is that, in two ways, Wren's study is not "comparative" enough. First, while it does a thorough and convincing job of placing Clark's themes in the context of traditional Ijo life, it fails to consider in depth the ways in which his tone and prosody derive from the tradition of modernist British poetry, especially from Hopkins and Eliot. This is important because, like Okigbo, Clark at his best handles so well the integration of his indigenous and imported elements. Second, Wren makes only minimal effort to place Clarkin the context of contemporary Nigerian and West Africanliterature.He focuses more on Achebe's and Okigbo's connection to Clark'slife than to their common literaryconcerns, and he makes no mention of Okaraand only passing referenceto Soyinka. To discuss the play Ozidi with no referenceto A Dance of the Forestsis a questionable exercisein self-control. I think this failure to "contextualize" Clark'swork is the book's greatest single limitation. "Limitation" is a more accurateconcept than "failure." J. P. Clarkis a short book, and it has its limits. But within those limits it is excellently done. It provides essential factual material, especially the specifics of Clark'ssourcesfor the Ozidi complex and the details of his relation to the coups of 1966 and the civil war. It demonstratesClark'sself-appointed task of depicting authentic African experience in English, and it makes clear the connection between his ironic world view and "the tides and floods [which] govern life" in the delta. The book demonstratesconclusivelyand in detail the justice of Wren's general assessment:Clark's "drama and poetry are both celebrationaland pessimistic. His drama is paradoxical, whether heroic or tragic. The mood of Clark'swork, overall, is ironic, as if his themes, like the tides, were subject to change, to mood, and to paradox" (16). ThomasR. Knipp

Dennis Walder. Athol Fugard. Modern DramatistsSeries. London: Macmillan, 1984. 142 pages. This monograph on the plays and related worksof Athol Fugard is a useful short guide. More than that, it is reliably researched,and one may recommend it with confidence as an orthodox view of the canon. Walder is himself an old hand at Fugardstudies and was particularlybehind the adoption of Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island as set-worksat the Open Universityin England, producing the study aids and thus beginning the spiral of Fugard'srecent acceptanceas a dramatist in favor on the universitycircuitsof Western Europe and the United Statesthis, in turn, owing to the 1973-74 South African season of plays which, midway in his thirty-yearcareer, ensured international audiences for each of his plays. Walder's book, however, is the first overview to be published in a play-by-play format and gives reasonablespace to each of the works, from No-Good Friday