Achebe: Exit of a literary giant, The Arts In this short conversation, Artistic Director of the National Troupe
of Nigeria, Martin Adaji takes a look at the dramatic
and theatrical potentials of Achebe's works and
concludes that the master story teller's deft and
creative use of language accounts for the successful
adaptations of his two of seminal works: Things Fall
Apart and Arrow of God.
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He spoke to McPhilips Nwachukwu.
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Can you talk about Achebe and the dramatic and
theatrical resources for which his imaginative writing provided for the stage, theatre and the movie?
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As a young boy growing up in the village, my first
encounter with literature began with the works of
Chinua Achebe, especially Things Fall Apart. My Dad, who passed on in January this year, was an ardent lover of Achebe's books and talked about Things Fall Apart so passionately that even at that young age in primary school I had to read the book. And unknown to me, reading the book then looked to me as though he was speaking my language.
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Achebe had this craft of manipulating the word. If he
was speaking English using the English language you would think he was speaking Igbo to you. You would begin to think about what he said in your own language. He spoke English with the fluidity of the Igbo language.
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Take for instance when he makes a statement like : "
proverb is oil with which words are eaten." It doesn't
register in the English sense because words are not
eaten in the English sense. But if you translate that
expression from the colloquial sense in which it
made, it brings out the aesthetic nuances of the
personality of Achebe.
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It is therefore that kind of craftiness, and that pitch of translation that makes Achebe and his books profound and has equally made it possible for him to be translated to over fifty languages.
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Things Fall Apart is one of the most translated works
in recent memory. And because of the relevance of
early missionary activities with the African continent, not just in Igbo land, the narrative therefore becomes a symbol of what everybody experienced.
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And if you are living a lived experience with those
similar to other people's experiences, it captures all
the experiences that you have gone through yourself in your own environment and community.
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So, when you look at the works of Achebe,
specifically, with reference to Things Fall Apart, the
effect of colonialism in West Africa, the translator of
Ichoku, a television character drawn from that
narrative become all translations that come out from the book.
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Achebe was profound as an artist and the fact that he cuts across made him become more popular that many of his peers.
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He spoke a language that many people understood.
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He was not speaking to select audience. Unlike his
counter part, Wole Soyinka, who wrote in the form of
verse, poetry and grandly rooted in the traditional
backing. Soyinka spoke the language of ifa and all
the Yoruba gods. And you can't even blame him for
that because the language of the gods is not plain
languages.