"And gradually they're beginning to recognize the fact that there's nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it's sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.""And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.""Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.""But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.""But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms.""But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it's amazing.""Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.""I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.""I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.""I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We'd meet, they'd come and seek me out, we'd talk about the future. And I found that their depression and pessimism was every bit as acute as mine.""I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.""I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.""I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.""Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.""My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.""One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.""One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking.""Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.""See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.""The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.""The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.""There are different kinds of artists and very often, I'll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind.""There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged; then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience.""There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle.""Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you're deprived of it.""Well, first of all I'll say that I come alive best in theater.""Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom."
Early life
Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934, in the city of Abeokuta, Ogun State in Nigeria's Western Region (at that time a British dominion), as the second of six children of Samuel Ayodele Soyinka and Grace Eniola Soyinka. His father, whom he often refers to as S.A. or "Essay" in literalized form, was the headmaster of St. Peters School in Ab?okuta. Soyinka's mother, dubbed by him as "Wild Christian", owned a shop in the nearby market and was a political activist within the women's movement in the local community. His mother was Anglican, although much of the community followed indigenous Yorůbá religious tradition. Soyinka grew up in an atmosphere of religious syncretism, with influences from both Christianity and his culture's traditional beliefs. The home of the Soyinka family had electricity and radio (chiefly thanks to his father).
In 1940, after attending St. Peters Primary School, Soyinka went to Ab?okuta Grammar School, where he won several prizes for literary composition. In 1946 he was accepted by Government College in Ibadan, at that time one of Nigeria’s elite secondary schools. After the completion of his studies there, Soyinka moved to Lagos where he found employment as a clerk. During this time he wrote some radio plays and short stories that were broadcast on Nigerian radio stations. After finishing his course in 1952, he began studies at University College in Ibadan, connected with University of London. During this course he studied English literature, Greek, and Western history.
In the year 1953-1954, his second and last at University College, Ibadan, Soyinka commenced work on his first publication, a short radio broadcast for Nigerian Broadcasting Service National Programme called "Keffi's Birthday Threat," which was broadcast in July 1954 on Nigerian Radio Times. Whilst at university, Soyinka and six others founded the Pyrates Confraternity, the first confraternity in Nigeria.
Soyinka gives a detailed account of his early life in The Years of Childhood, which chronicles his experiences until about the age of ten.
Studies abroad and at home
Later in 1954 Soyinka relocated to England, where he continued his studies in English literature, under the supervision of his mentor Wilson Knight at the University of Leeds. He became acquainted then with a number of young, gifted British writers. Before defending his B.A., Soyinka successfully engaged in literary fiction, publishing several pieces of comedic nature. He also worked as an editor for The Eagle, an infrequent periodical of humorous character. In a page two column in The Eagle, he wrote commentaries on academic life, often stingingly criticizing his university peers. Well known for his sharp tongue, he is said to have courteously defended, affronted and insulted female colleagues.
After completing his degree, he remained in Leeds with the intention of earning an M.A. Influenced by his promoter, Soyinka decided to attempt to merge European theatrical traditions with those of his Yorůbá cultural heritage. In 1958 his first major play emerged, titled The Swamp Dwellers. One year later, he wrote The Lion and the Jewel, a comedy which received interest from several members of London's Royal Court Theatre. Encouraged, Soyinka left Leeds and moved to London, where he worked as a play reader for the Royal Court Theatre. During the same period, both of his plays were performed in Ibadan.
However, by 1960, Soyinka had received the Rockefeller Research Fellowship from his alma mater in Ibadan, and returned to Nigeria. In March he produced his new satire The Trials of Brother Jero. One of his most recognized plays, A Dance of The Forest, a biting criticism of Nigeria's political elites, won a contest as the official play for Nigerian Independence Day. On 1 October 1960, it premiered in Lagos as Nigeria celebrated its sovereignty. Also in 1960, Soyinka established an amateur ensemble acting company which would consume much of his time over the next few years: the Nineteen-Sixty Masks.
In addition to these activities, Soyinka published various works satirizing the "emergency" in the Western Region of Nigeria, as his Yorůbá homeland was increasingly occupied and controlled by the federal government. This had usurped the democratically-elected, Yorůbá-based Action Group (AG) political party by installing the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), an amalgamation of conservative Yoruba interests backed by the largely Northern-dominated federal government. The increasingly militarized occupation of the Western Region eventually led to a disequilibrium in power, placing the more left-leaning Action Group and the Igbo-centric National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) in tenuous positions, as national politics began catering exclusively to more conservative interests. This imbalance eventually led to a coup by military officers under Major Kaduna Nzeogwu.
With the money gained from the Rockefeller Foundation for research on African Theater, Soyinka bought a Land Rover and began traveling throughout the country as a researcher with the Department of English Language of the University College in Ibadan. In an essay published at this time, he criticized Leopold Senghor's Négritude as a nostalgic and indiscriminate glorification of the black African past that ignores the potential benefits of modernization. "A tiger does not shout its tigritude," he declared, "it acts."
In December 1962, his essay "Towards a True Theater" was published, and he began working for the Department of English Language at Obafemi Awolowo University in If?. Soyinka discussed current affairs with "negrophiles," and on several occasions openly opposed government censorship. At the end of 1963, his first feature-length movie emerged, Culture in Transition. In April 1964 The Interpreters, "a complex but also vividly documentary novel", was published in London. That December, together with other scientists and men of theater, he founded the Drama Association of Nigeria. This same year he resigned his university post, as a protest against imposed pro-government behavior by authorities. A few months later, he was arrested for the first time, accused of underlying tapes during reproduction of recorded speech of the winner of Nigerian elections, but he was released after a few months of confinement, as a result of protests by the international community of writers. This same year he also wrote two more dramatic pieces: Before the Blackout, the comedy Kongi’s Harvest, and a radio play for the BBC in London called The Detainee. At the end of the year he was promoted to headmaster and senior lecturer in the Department of English Language at Lagos University.
Soyinka's political speeches at that time criticized the cult of personality and government corruption in African dictatorships. April 1965 brought a revival of his play Kongi’s Harvest at the International Festival of Negro Art in Dakar, Senegal, where another of his plays, The Road, was awarded the Grand Prix. In June, Soyinka produced his play The Lion and The Jewel for Hampstead Theatre Club in London.
Civil war involvement and imprisonment
The coup led by Major Chukwuma K Nzeogwu in January 1966 was counteracted by another coup in July of the same year, this time led by a cabal of largely Northern officers, placing General Yakubu Gowan in the position of head of state. Immediately following the coup, sectarian violence erupted as many Igbo living outside of their homeland in the southeast were subjected to violent retaliatory action, which many considered to be of genocidal proportions. Droves of Igbos were forced to return home, where calls for secession from the Nigerian state increased under military governor Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu.
After becoming chief of Cathedral of Drama at University of Ibadan, Soyinka who had gained considerable respect within Nigeria would involve himself in the destabilizing political situation. In August 1967, he secretly and unofficially met Ojukwu in the Southeastern town of Enugu, with the aim of averting civil war. For his attempts at negotiating a peaceful solution to the conflict, Soyinka was forced to commence living underground.
However, his involvement in the developing national crisis did not end here. W?le returned to ?nugu to meet with Victor Banj?, a Yorůbá who had been swayed to the Biafran side. Banj? intimated to Soyinka a message of critical importance in regards to Biafra's goals, which he claimed were "national liberation" for the whole of Nigeria. For these efforts, Banj? sought the support of Western military leaders; in particular, he delivered Banjo's message directly to Lieutenant Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo, who had recently been appointed to commanding officer for the Western Region. Four evenings after Soyinka returned to the West, Biafran forces invaded the Midwest region, an area which previously maintained de facto neutrality; this altered the terms and conditions of the war drastically, as the Biafrans had turned into both secessionists and expansionists.
Following the occupation of the Midwest, Soyinka met Obasanjo face-to-face to relay the goals of the Biafrans to the man in control of the West. Unfortunately ?basanj?'s decision to side with the Nigerian federation had already been made. The invasion of the Midwest eventually sparked counter-attacks into the Midwest by federal government forces, signaling the commencement of civil war. ?basanj? disclosed his meeting with Soyinka to his superiors, who declared the writer a traitor and convened search parties to obtain Soyinka for arrest, which they eventually did. Soyinka was then incarcerated until the end of the unfolding civil war.
He endured imprisonment for 22 months as his country slid into civil war between the federal government and the Biafrans. Though he was refused basic materials, such as books, pens, and paper, for continuing his creative work during much of his imprisonment, he did manage to write a significant body of poems and notes criticizing the Nigerian government. Despite his imprisonment, in September 1967, his play The Lion and The Jewel was produced in Accra, and in November The Trials of Brother Jero and The Strong Breed were produced in the Greenwich Mews Theatre in New York. He also published a collection of his poetry entitled Idanre and Other Poems. Idanre was inspired by Soyinka’s visit to the sanctuary of the Yorůbá deity Ogun, whom Soyinka regards irreligiously as his companion deity, kindred spirit, and protector.
In 1968, also in New York, the group Negro Ensemble Company showed Kongi’s Harvest. While still imprisoned, Soyinka translated from Yoruba a fantastical novel by his compatriot D.O. Fagunwa, called The Forest of a Thousand Demons: A Hunter's Saga.
Release and literary productivity
In the late 1950s, Soyinka completed his first two important plays, "The Swamp Dwellers" and "The Lion and the Jewel," both tackling the uneasy relationship between progress and tradition in Africa. His play "The Invention" was staged in 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre. At that time his only published works were poems such as "The Immigrant" and "My Next Door Neighbour," which appeared in the magazine Black Orpheus. In October 1969, when the civil war came to an end, amnesty was proclaimed, and Soyinka was released from prison. For the first few months after his release, Soyinka stayed at a friend’s farm in southern France, where he sought solitude after the period of mental stagnation. From this experience emerged The Bacchae of Euripides, a reworking of the Pentheus myth. He soon published out of London a tome of his poetry based on his experience in prison, Poems from Prison. At the end of the year, he returned to his office of Headmaster of Cathedral of Drama in Ibadan, and cooperated in the founding of the literary periodical “Black Orpheus”.
In 1970 he produced the play Kongi’s Harvest, while simultaneously creating a film by the same title. In June 1970, he concluded another play, called Madman and Specialists. With the intention of gaining theatrical experience, along with the group of fifteen actors of Ibadan University Theatre Art Company, he went on a trip to the famous Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theatre Center in Waterford, Connecticut in the United States, where his latest play premiered. In 1971 his poetry collection A Shuttle in the Crypt was published. While Madmen and Specialists was exposed afresh in Ibadan, Soyinka took the lead role as the murdered first Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, Kinshasa, in the Paris production of Murderous Angels. His powerful autobiographical work The Man Died, a collection of notes from prison, was issued the same year. In April, concerned about the political situation in Nigeria, Soyinka resigned from his duties at the University in Ibadan, and began a few years of voluntary exile. In July, in Paris, fragments of his famous play “The Dance of The Forests” were performed.
In 1972 he was declared an Honoris Causa doctorate by the University of Leeds. Soon thereafter, another of his novels, Season of Anomy, came out, in addition to his Collected Plays, published by the Oxford University Press. In 1973 the National Theatre, London, which commissioned the play, premiered The Bacchae of Euripides in a "reputedly misconceived" production. In 1973 the plays Camwood on the Leaves, and Jero's Metamorphosis were first published. From 1973-1975, Soyinka devoted himself to scientific activity. He underwent one year probation at Churchill College of Cambridge University, and gave a series of lectures at a number of European universities.
In 1974 Collected Plays, Volume II was issued by Oxford University Press. In 1975 Soyinka was promoted to the position of editor for Transition, a magazine based in the Ghanaian capital, Accra (where he moved for some time). Soyinka utilized his columns in Transition to once again attack the “negrofiles” (in his essay “Neo-Tarsanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition”), and military regimes, protesting against the military junta of Idi Amin in Uganda. After the political turnover in Nigeria, and the subversion of Gowon's military regime in 1975 he returned to his homeland and re-assumed his position of the Cathedral of Comparative Literature at the University of Ife.
In 1976 the poetry collection Ogun Abibiman appeared, and a collection of essays entitled Myth, Literature and the African World, in which Soyinka explores the genesis of mysticism in African theatre and, using examples from the literatures of both continents, compares and contrasts European and African cultures. At the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Legon, he delivered a series of guest lectures and became a professor at the University of Ife. In October, the French version of The Dance of The Forests was performed in Dakar, while in Ife Death and The King’s Horseman premiered.
In 1977 Opera W?ny?si, his adaptation of Bertold Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, was staged, and in 1979 he both directed and acted in Jon Blair and Norman Fenton's drama The Biko Inquest, a work based on the story of Steve Biko, a South African student and human rights activist beaten to death by Apartheid police forces. In 1981 W?le Soyinka’s first autobiographical novel Ake: The Years of Childhood was released.
Soyinka founded another theatrical group (after Nineteen-Sixty Masks), called Guerrilla Unit, its aim being to cooperate with local communities analyzing their actual problems and then responding to some of their grievances in dramatic sketches. In 1983 the play Requiem for a Futurologist had its initial performance at the University of Ife. In July one of Soyinka's musical projects, the Unlimited Liability Company, issued a long-play record titled I Love My Country, where a number of prominent Nigerian musicians play songs composed by and provided with lyrics by W?le Soyinka. In 1984, he directed the film Blues for a Prodigal, which premiered the same year as a new play, A Play of Giants.
The years 1975-1984 were for Soyinka a period of increased political activity. During that time he was among the authorities at the University of Ife; among other duties, he was responsible for the security of public roads. He continuously criticized the corruption in the government of democratically-elected President Shehu Shagari, and often found himself at odds with his military successor, Mohammadu Buhari. In 1984 a Nigerian court banned The Man Died and in 1985 the play Requiem for a Futurologist went into print in London.
Nobel Prize laureate
In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller bursary and returned to Nigeria to study African drama. Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, as one “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence” becoming the first African laureate. His Nobel acceptance speech was devoted to South African freedom-fighter Nelson Mandela. Soyinka's speech was an outspoken criticism of apartheid and the politics of racial segregation imposed on the majority by the Nationalist South African government. In 1986, he received the Agip Prize for Literature.
In 1988, his new collection of poems Mandela's Earth, and Other Poems was published, while in Nigeria another collection of essays entitled Art, Dialogue and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture appeared. In the same year, Soyinka accepted the position of professor of African studies and theatre at Cornell University. In 1990, the second portion of his memoir called Isara: A Voyage Around Essay appeared. In July 1991 the BBC African Service transmits his radio play A Scourge of Hyacinths, and the next year (in June 1992) in Siena (Italy), his play From Zia with Love has its premiere. Both works are very bitter political parodies, based on events which took place in Nigeria in the 1980s. In 1993 Soyinka was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Harvard University. The next year appears another part of his autobiography Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946-1965). The following year his play The Beatification of Area Boy was published. On 21 October 1994 Soyinka was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the Promotion of African culture, human rights, freedom of expression, media and communication. In November 1994 Soyinka fled from Nigeria through the border with Benin and then to the United States. In 1996 his book The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis was first published.
In 1997 Soyinka was charged with treason by the government of General Sani Abacha. In 1999 a new volume of poems entitled Outsiders was released. His play King Baabu, premiered in Lagos in 2001, is a political satire on the theme of African dictatorship and the "warped aspect of human nature that makes people think they have the right to dominate others and also inflict very agonising experiences on fellow humans". In 2002 a collection of his poems, Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known, was published by Methuen. In April 2006, his memoirs, titled You Must Set Forth at Dawn, were published by Random House. In 2006 he cancelled his keynote speech for the annual S.E.A. Write Awards Ceremony in Bangkok to protest the Thai military's successful coup against the government.
In April 2009 Soyinka called for the cancellation of the Nigerian presidential elections held two weeks earlier because of widespread fraud and violence.
Soyinka, along with theatre director Richard Schechner, actor Alan Cumming and filmmaker Brad Mays was interviewed about The Bacchae as part of an up-coming series An Invitation to World Literature, which will launch on Annenberg Media's educational website in September, 2010. The series is also intended to for airing on PBS through WGBH Boston sometime in 2010. Soyinka continues to serve as resource person globally while acting as inspiration and voice of conscience to leaders and recently in the wake of the Christmas Day (2009) attempted bombing cautioned that the United Kingdom's social logic which allows every religion to openly proselytize their faith is being abused by religious fundamentalists thereby turning England into a cesspit for the breeding of extremism. He affirmed that freedom of worship is logical and correct but warned against the consequence of the illogic of allowing religions to preach apocalyptic violence.
Awards and Honors more less
1967: Head of the Department of Theater Arts, University of Ibadan; June: "The Writer in a Modern African State"; August to October 1969 imprisoned for writings sympathetic to secessionist Biafra; September: The Lion and the Jewel produced Accra; November: Trials of Brother Jero and The Strong Breed produced, Greenwich Mews Theatre, New York; Idanre and Other Poems.
April 1968: Kongi's Harvest, produced by Negro Ensemble Company, New York.
February 1969: The Road produced by Theatre Limited, Kampala, Uganda; Poems from Prison, London.
August 1970: Completes and directs Madmen and Specialists with Ibadan University Theare Arts Company in New Haven, Connecticut (at Yale?); play tours to Harlem; directs plays by Pirandello and others; Kongi's Harvest (film).
1971: A Shuttle in the Crypt (poems); March: revives Madmen and Specialists in Ibadan; acts Patrice Lumumba in John Littlewood's French production of Conor Cruise O'Brien's Murderous Angels, Paris; testifies before Kazeem Enquiry on violation of students' rights.
1972: Publishes his prison notes, The Man Died, London; July: produces extracts from A Dance of the Forests in Paris.
1973: Honorary Ph. D., University of Leeds; Season of Anomie (novel); Collected Plays I; August: National Theatre, London, produces Bacchae of Euripides, which it commissioned.
1973-74: Overseas Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge, and Visiting Professor of English, University of Sheffield; Collected Plays II.
1975: Edited Poems of Black Africa, London and New York; "Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Tradition" (essay); attacks Idi Amin in Transition.
1976: Ogun Abibiman (poems); Myth, Literature, and the African World; Visiting Professor, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon; Professor, University of Ife; September: Nairobi High School production of A Dance of the Forests; October: French production of A Dance of the Forests, Dakar, Gambia; December: produces Death and the King's Horseman, Ife.
1978: "Language as Boundary" (essay).
1981: Aké: The Years of Childhood (autobiography); Opera Wonyosi, an adaptation of Brecht's Three Penny Opera; "The Critic and Society: Barthes, Leftocracy, and Other Mythologies" (essay).
1982: Blues for the Prodigal (film) released; "Cross Currents: The 'New African' after Cultural Encounters" (essay).
1983: Elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
1983: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
December 1983: Die Still, Rev. Dr. Godspeak (radio play); Requiem for a Futurologist (play) produced at Ife university; Blues for a Prodigal (film); "Shakespeare and the Living Dramatist" (essay); (July) - Unlimited Liability Company (phonograph recording).
1984: A Play of Giants (play).
1985: Requiem for a Futorologist published; "Climates of Art" (Herbert Read Memorial Lecture), Institute of Contemporary Art, London.
1986: Nobel Prize for Literature. "The External Encounter: Ambivalence in African Arts and Literature" (essay), A Play of Giants (play), Fellow, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; Agip Prize for Literature; 1986 (October); Awarded Nigeria's second highest honour, Commander of the Federal Republic, CFR.
1987: Six Plays; Childe Internationale (play) republished.
1989: "The Search" (short story).
1990: Benson Medal from Royal Society of Literature
1991: Sisi Clara Workshop on Theatre (Lagos); A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play) BBC African Service; "The Credo of Being and Nothingness" (The First Rev. Olufosoye Annual Lecture in Religion, delivered at the University of Ibadan on 25 January 1991; published.
1992: From Zia With Love.
1993: honorary doctorate, Harvard University.
1994: Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946-1965) (autobiography); Memories of a Nigerian Childhood; flees Nigeria (November).
1995: The Beatification of Area Boy.
1996: The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis.
March 1997: Charged with treason by military dictatorship.Considered one of Africa's poets alongside Cesair, Senghor, Ohaeto, B'tek, Okigbo, Ohanyido, Okara, Clark and so forth.[1]
2004: Reith Lecturer for BBC Radio 4, discussing A Climate of Fear.
2005: Honorary doctorate degree, Princeton University. Together with Nigerian elder statesman Chief Anthony Enahoro, he convened an alternative national confab under the aegis of PRONACO (Pro -national conference group).On 26 November 2005, he was conferred with the chieftaincy title of Akinlatun of Egbaland by the Alake, Oba of the Egba clan of Yorubaland which he belongs to, thus making him a tribal aristocrat with the right to use the Yoruba title Oloye.
2008: Distinguished Scholar in Residence, Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University
