By TOPE ADEBOBOYE
"When beggars die, there are no comets seen. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes," so says Calpurnia in William Shakespeare's classic play, Julius Caesar.
When Shakespeare penned those words in the 15th century, the iconic dramatist could just have been talking of another great wordsmith that would pass on 414 years later. On Thursday, March 21, when Chinua Achebe, the Ogidi, Anambra State-born, world-acclaimed Africa's literary Iroko breathed his last in Boston, United States, the entire world media rose up in salute to the man described by the New York Times as a "towering man of letters."
From New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from the Associated Press to The Guardian of UK to CNN to Skynews, the foreign media not only reported the passing of a literary icon, it was tribute upon tribute to one of the greatest weaver of words that the world would ever know.
Reporting the death under the headline, Chinua Achebe, African Literary Titan, Dies at 82, the New York Times described Chinua Achebe as "the Nigerian author and towering man of letters whose internationally acclaimed fiction helped to revive African literature and to rewrite the story of a continent that had long been told by Western voices."
In a report, anchored by Jonathan Kandell, the New York Times further said: "Chinua Achebe caught the world's attention with his first novel, "Things Fall Apart." Published in 1958, when he was 28, the book would become a classic of world literature and required reading for students, selling more than 10 million copies in 45 languages.
"The story, a brisk 215 pages, was inspired by the history of his own family, part of the Ibo nation of southeastern Nigeria, a people victimized by the racism of British colonial administrators and then by the brutality of military dictators from other Nigerian ethnic groups.
"Things Fall Apart gave expression to Mr. Achebe's first stirrings of anti-colonialism and a desire to use literature as a weapon against Western biases. As if to sharpen it with irony, he borrowed from the Western canon itself in using as its title a line from Yeats's apocalyptic poem, The Second Coming."
"Though Mr. Achebe spent his latter decades teaching at American universities, most recently at Brown, his writings-novels, stories, poems, essays and memoirs-were almost invariably rooted in the countryside and cities of his native Nigeria. His most memorable fictional characters were buffeted and bewildered by the competing pulls of traditional African culture and invasive Western values."
The newspaper averred that Achebe gave African literature its own voice, asserting that, "in his writing and teaching, Mr. Achebe sought to reclaim the continent from Western literature, which he felt had reduced it to an alien, barbaric and frightening land devoid of its own art and culture. He took particular exception to "Heart of Darkness," the novel by Joseph Conrad, whom he thought "a thoroughgoing racist."
The paper went ahead to review Achebe's works – from Things Fall Apart to There was a Country, his final offering.
For BBC news, it was the celebration of the uncommon artistic achievements of a fecund literary soul.
Describing Achebe as one of Africa's best known authors, the BBC, which Achebe worked for in the 1950s, and where he wrote his first and most popular work, said Achebe's 1958 debut novel, Things Fall Apart, which dealt with the impact of colonialism in Africa, has sold more than 10 million copies.
"The writer and academic wrote more than 20 works-some fiercely critical of politicians and a failure of leadership in Nigeria," the BBC noted.
It recalled that South African writer and Nobel laureate, Nadine Gordimer, referred to Achebe as "father of modern African literature" in 2007 when she was among the judges to award him the Man Booker International Prize in honour of his literary career.
Things Fall Apart, Achebe's first literary outing, the BBC recalled, has been translated into more than 50 languages and focuses on the traditions of Igbo society and the clash between Western and traditional values.
The organisation quoted a Nigerian author, Victor Ehikhamenor, as referring to Achebe as a global citizen.
"I met him on two occasions," Ehikhamenor had told BBC's Focus on Africa. "When you are with Achebe outside Nigeria, even when you are with him in Nigeria, you cannot claim him as a Nigerian because he's a world citizen," The BBC also quoted former South African president and anti-apartheid fighter, Nelson Mandela, as saying that "Prof. Achebe is a writer in whose company the prison walls fell down."
The American National Public Radio (NPR) was also effusive in its praises on Achebe. NPR, in a report anchored by Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, described Achebe as one of Africa's greatest contemporary writers.
The medium wrote on its website: "Chinua Achebe who taught at colleges in the United States made literary history with his 1958 best-seller Things Fall Apart, a sobering tale about Nigeria at the beginning of its colonization.
"Achebe, 82, played a critical role in establishing post-colonial African literature and is known to students all over the continent for his seminal novel, Things Fall Apart. Achebe's masterpiece has graced countless school and college syllabuses and is translated into fifty languages worldwide. It is often cited as the most read book in modern African literature and has sold more than 12 million copies.
"Achebe also was an essayist and an outspoken critic of successive Nigerian governments, poor leadership and institutionalised corruption. He passed up national honours in protest. Achebe taught Africana Studies at Brown University and before that at Bard College in New York. Many of his fans feel that the award-winning writer was passed over for and should have won a Nobel prize."
The Guardian of UK described Achebe as the "Nigerian author recognised for key role in developing African literature," and "the Nigerian novelist seen by millions as the father of African literature."
The respected newspaper quoted Simon Winder, publishing director at Penguin, as saying that "Chinua Achebe is the greatest of African writers and we are all desolate to hear of his death."
Like most other foreign media, The Guardian did some review of Achebe's works, especially Things Fall Apart, which it noted had sold more than 10 million copies around the world and has been published in 50 languages.
"The poet, Jackie Kay, hailed Achebe as "the grandfather of African fiction who lit up a path for many others," wrote the newspaper.
Listing some of the laurels earned by the writer, The Guardian wrote that, "Achebe won the Commonwealth poetry prize for his collection-Christmas in Biafra, was a finalist for the 1987 Booker prize for his novel Anthills of the Savannah, and in 2007 won the Man Booker international prize. Chair of the judges on that occasion, Elaine Showalter, said he had 'inaugurated the modern African novel', while her fellow judge, the South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, said his fiction was 'an original synthesis of the psychological novel, the Joycean stream of consciousness, the postmodern breaking of sequence. Achebe is a joy and an illumination to read.'"
The newspaper also informed that Achebe had twice rejected the Nigerian government's attempt to name him a Commander of the Federal Republic.
CBS News, on its part, said Chinua Achebe gave literary birth to modern Africa with Things Fall Apart.
"For decades, Achebe penned novels, stories and essays to rewrite and reclaim the history of his native country.
"His eminence worldwide was rivalled only by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison and a handful of others. Achebe was a moral and literary model for countless Africans and a profound influence on such American writers as Morrison, Ha Jin and Junot Diaz," the CBS said on its website. It stated also that the writer helped define revolutionary change in his motherland.
"As a Nigerian, Achebe lived through and helped define revolutionary change in his country, from independence to dictatorship to the disastrous war between Nigeria and the breakaway country of Biafra in the late 1960s. He knew both the prestige of serving on government commissions and the fear of being declared an enemy of the state. He spent much of his adult life in the United States, but never stopped calling for democracy in Nigeria or resisting literary honours from a government he refused to accept."
The CBS News also did a review of Achebe's works, from Things Fall Apart to There was a Country.
"Achebe never did win the Nobel Prize, which many believed he deserved," it wrote, "but in 2007 he did receive the Man Booker International Prize, a $120,000 honour for lifetime achievement."
Achebe, the CBC news noted, served for years as editor of Heinemann's "African Writer Series," and also edited numerous anthologies of African stories, poems and essays. In There Was a Country, he considered the role of the modern African writer.
"What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal," the CBS News quoted Achebe as saying.
The Wall Street Journal also celebrated the literary and other lifetime accomplishments of the great author, in a report anchored by Drew Hinshaw.
The newspaper reported: "The first book of Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was nearly lost to history when a London typing service dismissed the handwritten manuscript sent from Africa as a joke.
"The joke was on them. Finally published in 1958, Things Fall Apart became an improbable success, announcing the Nigerian author, and Africa, on the world's literary stage. It went on to sell more than 10 million copies in 50 languages."
Simon Gikandi, the Kenyan author of Reading Chinua Achebe, told the Wall Street Journal that Things Fall Apart "literally invented African literature."
"He started writing at a moment of great expectations, but his works contained this important cautionary note, that things could go wrong," Gikandi told the newspaper.
The newspaper informed that "in 1975, he accomplished a feat rare even for authors: He knocked a classic, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, from the literary canon. The 1903 novel had been Europe's most commonly read account of Africa, and bristled with depictions of Africans as half-human cannibals. In an influential series of lectures and essays, Mr. Achebe called the author "a thoroughgoing racist." The charge stuck. Steadily, Mr. Conrad's share of university reading lists fell as Mr. Achebe's rose."
According to the newspaper, "Things Fall Apart" ranked as one of America's most frequently taught high-school books.
"Yet its author played down praise. Twice, he rejected Nigeria's second-highest honour, accusing the leaders who award the prize of trying 'to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom.'
"When critics credited him with transforming American and European views of Africa, he abstained-he thought they hadn't changed all that much."
The CNN also added its voice to the plethora of praises on Chinua Achebe at his passing. In a report by Laura Smith-Spark and Faith Karimi, described Achebe as a literary icon.
"An author of more than 20 books, he was celebrated worldwide for telling African stories to a captivated world audience.
"He was also accorded his country's highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award.
"Achebe is a major part of African literature, and is popular all over the continent for his novels, especially "Anthills of the Savannah," which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987, and "Things Fall Apart."
The newspaper recalled that Achebe once wrote an essay criticizing Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness, as a racist for his depiction of Africans as savages. Conrad's popularity took a hit after the accusation-a testament to Achebe's credibility."
The Los Angeles Times said Things Fall Apart, presented European colonization from an African viewpoint and established Achebe as the patriarch of modern African literature.
The report by Robyn Dixon stated: "When Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe was in college, a European professor assigned "Mister Johnson," which portrayed Africa as a land of grinning, shrieking savages. TIME magazine called it "the best novel ever written about Africa."
"Achebe was outraged. He vowed that if someone as ignorant as Joyce Cary, the novel's Anglo-Irish author, could write such a book, "perhaps I ought to try my hand at it.'
"The result was a masterpiece. Things Fall Apart, his 1958 debut novel, changed the face of world literature by presenting the colonization of Africa from an African point of view. With more than 10 million copies sold in 50 languages, it established Achebe as the patriarch of modern African literature.
According to the LA Times, "Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian playwright, hailed Things Fall Apart as "the first novel in English which spoke from the interior of an African character rather than ... as the white man would see him."
The newspaper reported: "At 14, he was accepted into an elite boarding school in southeastern Nigeria, and as a young man he read so much that he was nicknamed "Dictionary." He later won a university scholarship to study medicine.
"After a year, he switched to his passion, writing, and studied English, history and theology. That decision was to change his life and the landscape of African literature.
"Growing up, he had absorbed Western prejudices so thoroughly that, he later wrote, "I did not see myself as an African to begin with." But in college, it dawned on him that he had given up too much of his identity and could not accept white authors' portrayals of Africans as culturally inferior and subhuman."
CBS News also heaped copious encomiums on the departed literary giant, calling him a celebrated writer that influenced a generation of writers from Africa to America.
It recalled that Achebe's Things Fall Apart had a first printing of 2,000 copies, noting that its initial review in The New York Times ran less than 500 words.
"But the novel soon became among the most important books of the 20th century, a universally acknowledged starting point for postcolonial, indigenous African fiction, the prophetic union of British letters and African oral culture.
CBS News quoted the African scholar, Kwame Anthony Appiah as saying of Achebe: "It would be impossible to say how Things Fall Apart influenced African writing. It would be like asking how Shakespeare influenced English writers or Pushkin influenced Russians. Achebe didn't only play the game, he invented it."
According to the CBS News, "wheelchair bound in his latter years, Achebe would cite his physical problems and displacement from home as stifling to his imaginative powers."
Also writing on Achebe's transition, Skynews noted that apart from criticising misrule in Nigeria, Achebe also strongly backed the secessionist State of Biafra, which declared independence from Nigeria in 1967, sparking a civil war that killed around one million people and only ended in 1970.
"The conflict was the subject of a long-awaited memoir he published last year, titled There Was A Country: A Personal History Of Biafra," the Skynews stated on its website.
It noted that in 2011, Achebe rejected a Nigerian government offer to honour him with one of the nation's highest awards, at least the second time he had done so.
"But while he was widely lauded worldwide, Achebe never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, unlike fellow Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, who became the first African Nobel literature laureate in 1986.
"In an interview with The Paris Review, Achebe said that as his reading evolved, he slowly became aware of how books had cast Africans as savages.
"There is that great proverb that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realised that, I had to be a writer."
Via: Sun News Online