Against literary Paperisms: Prose and poetry as Dead Artisteries, by Anish O Cornel

Man is but tired of prose, since the lust to sit before his table with the illuminator to bifurcate such a highfalutin narrative of endless wonders exist no more. His eyes are weary of letters. Yet, the writer speaks prose in mechanical deluge; sets of binoculars, specs, to cloak the skeleton of every graph, wether with the beauty of it or for its beauty's sake. The appreciation of it does not scape its bounds. Plenteous jeremiads and ecclesiastes, satirical scorches and comic intellects all for the academia of man only but grow or die within one circumscription and walks no further. The writer pours out his inks upon papers of blood-with papers and inks- yet the whole kingdome which they are to hit do not dare to touch. Even those who 'dear' to touch it, only speak of it's beauty, beauteous madness, madness or constructive attempts at purifying the evils embedded in forms and souls and not it's kineasthetic through-put in the reality of resultative change, since no change-in soothe- is witnessed or caused (tho' attempted). Even this which I much prettified in order that it be emboldened before the world, doubt I if it would be bought, loaned, taken or even borrowed, for the sake of what it carries. But at this hour, Life is but pathetic. Too many faces there be for one heart to dear. Withering hands of the world are too cold to hand either the fire or the coal. Clouds gather with such thickness, weaving silks and drapes 'gainst Light. And as darkness draws nigh, we hardly see what differences persist beneath. How pathetic a world! Behold! A new Army has risen in curtains of man's interior walls, to woo him to a court of custom which he shares with his house-holds; the largest cycle, (almost fallen by this Army) into a pool of samness. And a sameness of tradition and taste appear before us. Poetry is the wickedest, wretchedest and 'more' ironic of the other. Perhaps, if I may ask, what evil reeks in poetry saying to a rebrobate lone-wolf, 'stealing is bad', by such lightness found in a light verse or verse of light? This manner of tongue, I believe is too simplistic enough for that one. Yet the poet with paromeia, and exaggerated paintings; rhymes, rythms, figures and runic comparisons, falsifies and puffs up undue emotions; emotions vile enough to drag the minded soul to say how beautiful or lovely it is and nothing mor. But the most instrumental, and productive of them, lies in my heart. This is nearest to man all day long. It catches man by his eyes and ears. With this one in the world, man can never dugde. I respect him because he does not recede in coffins and graves of mere scripts and crippled papers. It walks and talks. It speaks beyond the academia. It teaches the soul that is unlearned- even the very soul that can never be affected by simple or rigid prose and poetry, just because of the incapacity to know or read. It arises to become man in exactitude and transacts with him daily. That is why I say, reformation comes from the heart and then proceeds thro' the mouth. Little will your pen do. Words spoken and actions wrought would move the world to endless catharsis. But very little will your ink do. And from this point again, I begin anew as a writer and a dramaturge, yet-within few or most of the times- I shall never forsake my classical past, for 'Art's sake', because if I do not allow it walk and talk but make him lie in crippled papers, it may cripple the limited observer. Let prose or poetry be not hopeless, for in him they have perfection and complete fruition.

Dreams

University of Ado-Ekiti {UNAD} Department of English Language and                                                                                                 Literary Studies +2348168405559, +2348089888797, +2348181024149,prof.anish@gmail.com,

                                               

                                                            Dreams

------By Anish O Cornel------

For the world is twain wherein we live; everything, by physics termed, having a spirit which in metaphysics dwell (not one, but all that is nomenclatured of feeling, sight and touch), so that by night (the earliest hour of morn or the blackness of the earliest dawn) one's spirit visits the spirit of the Earth wherein is the body of his spirit, for the Earth's metaphysics is the Earth in its spirit form where everything in the physical world be the same as in the spirit form that are the spirit-versions of their physical forms.

And so it is called dream, which doth open by the extension of sleep (the mode of the body's spirit's resurgence; a means to the earth's twin (which be spirit) by which it be perceived.

This is where all spirits arise to adventure basically at night and scarcely in the afternoon. Only the Dark (i.e., humans in principalities and powers) become conscious of their beginning moves, right from the very moment of their spirit's protuberance from the body, as translated into some passages leading to this world (i.e., the Earth's spirit). But the Ordinary is unaware of his preliminary moves to this world wards, for as his spirit protuberates, he (his spirit) is extemporaneously encircled by some forces, energies or impacts, so that he becomes unconscious of his preliminary moves. And getting therein, with his consciousness unveiled, he uncovers himself only to see himself to have arrived-JUST LIKE THAT- not even knowing how, like one narrating would say, 'When I arose at that hour, a mighty strong wind came and threw me thro' the ceiling/walls into flight and as I flew, I saw some others, together with whom we both entered the spiral bounds and dissolved into the Nine rings'. This-assuming the descriptions were real-would be inspired to be the chronicle of one, who has been conscious of his nocturnal-protuberantism (which one may term to be similar to astral-projection).

In this place (i.e., the Earth’s spirit), so many things happen that man’s psycho-genic-calculi can hardly or never comprehend, especially when such a one falls out of the rank of Powers. For example, one wonders how the Ordinary sometimes get guillotined or merely attacked without any physical concerns, especially at this (unreasoned) hour of the night. This, however, occurs, when the Dark one (human/or principality) leaves his body, at the most careful watch of that watch, and moves there to, that be the Earth's spirit, to find the Ordinary; and as his subterfuge and slates be evil, the ordinary-unequipped or unrobed of guard-is quickly attacked or destroyed, the effect of which is impacted immediately on the body in the physical Earth or concealed within the body so that others (as ordinary as he is) cannot comprehend what has happened to him (whether his body be found dead or paralysed or affected in some way that he cannot relate), for it becomes a riddle meant only to guess out.

So at his attack-assuming he is killed- he (i.e., his spirit) goes to the borders, that bifurcate, and that (thus) cone off the Earth's spirit from the new World (beyond) which is of/by spirit made. In this place, there lies a gate opened for the dead to amble thro'. Often times, the newly dead roam about this gate or tarry there   till it is opened. It is, however, at this delay that some of them be manipulated. For instance, being a part of the ordinary, one might have just met somebody at the Earth's spirit, and may not occur to one that, that person has just been newly dead. And so when one comes back to the physical Earth and hears that the same person seen thereof is dead, it becomes starkly impossible for one to go back, to call or drag such a person to the physical Earth. One could only have done otherwise, given that, when one saw the person-assuming he/she was being attacked- one was swift to help such a person from the attack. It is when this occurs that it becomes easy for such a person to ride back to the physical Earth safely, in which case, he/she would not have died, nor would one have come back to hear that the person has died. Unless this be, the former is not possible, tho’ it is true the dead can be manipulated.  

In so many countries of the world, especially in Africa, the spirit of the dead can be summoned, by some powerful enchantments that tend to stir the chronometry of the Earth’s spirit. Scarcely at times, it might include appealing to some strong forces, energies or impacts to help bring the spirit of the dead back to the physical Earth, in which case, forces guarding the gate are interacted with. When this happens, one (of these forces) is assigned to take the spirit to the conjurers, for their exercises, after which such a one takes the spirit back. The force is not seen, yet the spirit is seen. Samuel himself, a servant of God in the bible, too was summoned from his infinite sleep (i.e., death) by a sorceress bided by King Saul (1samel 28 VS 7-21). These conjurers themselves-of whatever cult or tribe- cannot go to drag the person there from, as the time allotted to this gate is unpredictable and unknown; and the gate could open anytime as long as it wants in order to consume whatever treads its path. In some cases, when the spirit of the dead is conjured, it is a demon, disguised in the figure of the dead that appear to the conjurers. All these happen in and thro’ the umpteenth acts surrounding what you call 'dream'.

You call it dream or dreaming, but I call it transposition, a move, a journey, by a stirred protuberance in which the protuberant (i.e., the spirit of the person) leaves his body and adventures, into a world that is exactly the one he leaves (or where his body lies). This is a world that his spirit can contain. That is why the world itself is a spirit, being the spirit (a deific macrocosm: an imperceptible copy) of one (which is the physical macrocosm/ the Earth). This, by transpositionism, is possible, not dream. For to me, it is not just a dream which one deems 'roused by some mental manipulations or by whatever, aside what I have here writ. It is but transpositionism processed in protuberantism. This is no myth, dear reader, since the descriptions I have been making are truly experienced almost by all, including me. In fact, some of the exempla shared here, especially of the one that tells of a protuberant’s encounter with a newly dead person in this world, whom he later discovers to be dead in the physical Earth, are excogitated from the transpositonal experiences of people.

The Time Phrasing of the Earth’s Spirit

As for time and season, both the physical Earth as well as the Earth’s spirit maintains some dissimilarity, for since the Earth's spirit is influenced much by diverse spirits, it defiles the rules and logic of time. It is-let me say- the perfect place for time travel, in that, many a time, one travels only to find one's self ahead of the time one left the physical Earth. For example, one leaves in the night and, having arrived, finds that it is morning or afternoon or evening there. Even some of the activities that occur there tend to influence-on rare occasions-one's time in the physical Earth. For example, one might experience being beaten (or ravished, cheated, jilted, wounded if not helped, defended, pampered, comforted, fed, saved, courted, wedded etc.) by a friend there. This experience is transferred into the physical Earth, maybe aft’ a day, two or more of the experience, whereby the experience is re-experienced as it was. This, I call proto-experientialism or proximate receptivism, in which an experience in the Earth's spirit is duplicated; one primarily serving as the source experience, the second of which is now transferred-by the influence of time and purpose-on the physical Earth and then on the person. In some situations, the experience may not occur (or be transferred) on the Physical Earth as it was exactly experienced at the Earth’s spirit; instead, the experience occurs in another form as distinct from the original. This, I call disguised receptivism. In whichever form (whether disguised or not), the Physical Earth receives the experience from the source experience and then impacts it on the person who has experienced it. This process becomes simple, since the spirit of the person together with the spirit of the Earth are both relating their actions on the spirit's body, thro' the Earth's body, with both tugged in themselves.

And so, it is a world where powers and principalities visit; where the longings of the heart are met (for with the super-nature of such a world) anything is possible. Here, the spirit of a person is easily flexed and persuaded by its super-nature, such that, such a spirit finds itself doing some extra-ordinary things, like flying, shooting fire-balls, walking on the air. Hence, it is incalculable, logically unreliable and intractable, capricious, unfixed, unpredictable and untameable. Sometimes, one might have an experience here which may not tend to occur in the physical world, instead such events-having occurred and gotten one's reason flummoxed-are then related to some specific persons, at the Physical Earth, unto whom this event appears as a symbol, a phenomenon, a parable, a proverb or a sign that is provided with meanings. Hence it is a mysterious phantasmagoria (of/by spirit made). It changes its form to whatever it feels just, the way its body does. But as the change of the Earth’s body is sometimes predictable- for example one can tell when it would rain or not-that of the Earth’s spirit is not predictable. And so, it sometimes creates confusions and even disappoints one's expectation. For instance, you may plan to visit your friend there and say something to him/her so that you might ask him/her by the time you are back to the Physical Earth, if he/she saw you and should also tell you what you told him/her. By this, you may be/will be disappointed. So times out of mind, your imaginations (I mean, the expressions of your mind which are mostly your wishes) may be manipulated, fulfilled and sometimes discarded.

How does this become possible?

Your mind is a factor of your spirit and as long as it is a spirit thing, which is more or less your brain's spirit, serving as the brain of your body, its functioning is easily emboldened (or say, embossed); because spirit-forms are translucent and/or transparent such that spirit influences spirit, just like one's body influences another. Hence, the Earth's spirit is very broad like a canopy, such that it easily partakes in every spiritual contact.

This is the Earth's spirit, which is multiply indescribable. It is where you see familiar and strange people either in their real forms or disguised. It is a place where evil spirits sometimes reveal their real selves or just get them disguised so as to scare you or even battle you. More so, it is a place very close to Eternity: the name for another planet entirely.

As part of the Ordinary, I know I travel (not dream) because I really do travel, scarcely in the afternoon, and mostly at Night, to this place, whose position and location I don't know. And whenever I travel, I'm usually guarded by Jesus Christ or by any of God's angel that I may not be attacked. Sometimes, in the Earth’s spirit, whenever I am being chased, I am thrust up high by Him or any of Him, so that I see myself flying without wings towards the rims of Eternity. But once they are repressed that chased, I am sent back to the Physical Earth, for I shall not enter Eternity at that time. So call it not 'dream', the spelling and pronunciation of which I can only permit if it be allowed an exact synonymy of transpositionism be.

WHAT ABOUT THE SOUL?

The soul is a property of the spirit. It is a form of spirit or, say, it is also spirit in itself. As the body moves, with the soul and spirit concealed inside of it, so does the spirit travel, with or without the soul. However, in the case of the body, the body can't do anything active (I mean life-centred) with the soul and spirit excluded or removed, for once both are excluded, the body be dead. This is not slightly so for the spirit, for the spirit acts in both forms, that is, with and without the soul. But once the spirit moves with the soul, the body is dead. Hence, in transposition, the spirit leaves the soul behind, so that, as spirit influences spirit, the soul maintains life by being resourced from the spirit in the Earth's spirit.  For example, whenever the body is called or interacted (by whatever means), the soul-being inside the body tho' unseen- influences the spirit. When this happens, the spirit of the person rushes, at full tilt, (possibly more than speed), back to the body, given that the person's spirit is in the Earth's spirit and that all the process had been triggered by an 'extension of sleep', in which case, protuberantism has taken place.

It must be an extension of sleep: because a set of eyes shut with the soul and spirit minding the body and their surrounding is not yet sleep, talk not of an extension of sleep. So with the-spirit- influences-spirit principle, it is quite much consequential to note that, whatever message is received by the body (whether orally, manually, or by whatever means), the soul picks it and, at instant, the spirit knows about it. Scarcely at times, the Earth’s spirit is also influenced by the soul’s message. And so, when this happens it may do some manipulations by creating the messages via some animated representations. For example, assuming your mother calls on you to awake, what you may/will see, at the moment, may/will be a figure like a lady, not necessarily her spirit-tho' her spirit is still networked. In some other cases, you may here the call JUST LIKE that, or thro' the mouth of a stranger, a non-living object or a substance.  Also, because of the spirit-influences-spirit principle, the Earth’s Spirit might also decide to represent the spirit-form of somebody who has not been transposed or even gone to bed (probably he/she is working in the field or engaged in some things), yet one who has been transposed-probably in an afternoon sleep-claims to have seen the spirit of this un-transposed person there.  It is not, in the real sense the person’s spirit that is seen, but a mere imitation effected thro’ a xerox. In other words, this process of representation, by means of the spirit-influences-spirit principle, should be called auto-xeroxism or mimetic transfiguratism.

Conclusion

We cannot do without spirit-things, because they are the essence of our being. Today, a great deal of enigmas swarm around us simply because our world is very much controlled by them. Inexplicable attacks, temptations, situational conundrums, quagmires, para-psychological pressures, theological paradoxes etc. are brooks of spiritual wonders that attend to our spirit-forms every so often. And because one is much abstracted from one’s spirit-form, pursuant to the physical elements that surround one, it is much easier for such spiritual things (both being and non-being) to attend to one’s spirit-forms. For example, one can be influenced of a demon either by possession or by a subtle canvass. Hence, our spirit is as naked as our body is and can be easily approached to be wooed just as the body can approach another to woo it. This is the mystery of the life-forms around us, which, as delivered unto me, shall be a portal to so many other mysteries.

WARNING: Readers are warned to acknowledge whatever is taken from this disquisition, for any attempt to make this work one’s personal possession will result into the illegal act of plagiarism. Hence, to avoid any jurisprudent contacts, please, acknowledge whatever is extracted from here. Thanks!

Marxism in 'Amos Tutola the Palm Wine Drinkard'

A Discovery Page on ELS 124: Amos Tutuola’s ‘The Palm-Drinkard’
                For my fellow grammarians and literati studying this course

                                                Anish O Cornel

The novel, 'the palm wine drinkard and his dead palm wine tapster in dead’s town' is a textual compass by which one of the oraloric genetics of culture-as found within the shores of African artistic aesthetics-is dissected. In this view, African culture is seen as a creative mechanism found/birthed through the explorative adventurisms of presocratic sages, saws who-at the beginning of the ages- were moulded from the dark fires of the black hills. Gods became men. Men became gods. There were legends, whose minds-crafted from fresh steels of wisdom-would hanker, soft and hard, to read the paradigmatic recipes which form the incredible realities of the Nature that we see. The powers in men's tongue were wielded, for death and life. They sang, shouted, wailed and praised. They discovered propriety, beauty and life in what they spoke. They learnt the mysteries of the gods locked within their hands and legs. And at last, the songs they sang could be tendered by their hand, either in accompaniment/in interpretations. These were the things that their god-like nature produced. Legends became kings, chiefs and warriors. And with such powers as discovered, a society wreathed with an incomparable je ne sais quoi of art and craft is borne. When these great men died, they left for the mountains. Though they were not seen, they never were too far away. Never were they too deeply out, from beyond the firmaments. But they lurked in some places where only men powerful as they could foot. Some so much loved their homes that they still preferred to hide/live in trees, clouds, seas, rocks, stones, animals, wind, air etc. But as for the ways of ordinary men, they led to a dome meant for the ordinary 'The land of the dead', while, the path of the gods was to the depthless and bottomless.

As the times went by, the cunning ones among the gods- the merciful and fiendish inclusive- would play on forms meant only for the recent men, in order to mock humankind's vices-a catalogue of vendetta unshackled! From this point, however, it should be established that, 'the palm-wine drinkard and his dead Palm wine-tapster in Dead’s town’ is 'that' master-piece which carries much of the supernatural in and out of it. Its fantastic-cum-horrendous weight has been a daring attempt to exhume, the actual picture of the mythic, and the incredible. In fact, the very acreage that bears the construction of whatever literature you may think of, to be rootly African (extravagantly from the core) is just this exemplum 'the palm wine drinkard' (though there are several others which fall into its aetiological phylum and which can be given the same paean which it presently receives). Hence, if we attest to the fact that African literature primarily sets on the oral tradition, which is the first, finest, purest, ancestral, and supreme, then 'palm-wine drinkard…', having identified with these groups of 'oral traditions' (albeit written)', is incontrovertibly a Cadillac of sheer Africanness (a conscious erectus of a wee Yorubaic Nigerianism). I have so much consummated in me to introduce the work with this exordium-because it is with this that the work confines itself in originality and verisimilitude-before moving further into uncovering the discoveries

            In my recent study, I discovered that, some theoretical forms extrinsic to the oraloric chrome of the text could be used to decode it.

1. The sociological factor: This deals with theories of criticisms by which social realisms-reformist, revolutionist, reactionary, blanquist- can be analysed. These theories include Marxism, feminism etc. Hence, for ‘the palm-wine drinkard…’ we are going to apply Marxism:

Key-points:

 1. The relationship between the palm-wine drinkard and his tapster is like one between a capitalist and his worker. In this sense, the tapster is slaved to work indefatigably. This pleases the capitalist-drinkard who only sits somewhere to eat from the enormous efforts of his tapster, without even commending his effort by any tangible or sensible means. In order words, the tapster is explored and oppressed.

2. The society pictured here is anti-Maxian/dystopian: 'Dystopia', in this sense, exhibits all forms of inequalities and social-cum-economic imbalance. This sort of imbalance or disequilibrium is defined in the sense of class-stratification. In a class-conscious society, there is a wide gap between the exploitative rich as well as the slaving poor: the bourgeoisie and the proletariats. This is a society wherein the individualism, ego-centrism of the exploiters is characterized by utter embezzlement, malfeasance, maladministration, avarice and less regards for the welfare of the lower-class (the exploited). Hence, the society pictured in the beginning of the novel is anti-Maxian. The palm-wine drinkard and his friends are such errant caucuses of exploiters, while the tapster is a generic symbolism of the exploited poor.

3.  The death of the tapster is a very powerful motif. In many African literatures, (mostly colonial, and post-colonial) death symbolizes 'freedom'. The freedom intended here is knitted together with its metaphysical correspondent. For example, in Apartheid south-Africa, the voice of 'death' as echoed by the hoi-polloi is a vatic fragment which some writers like Arthol Fugard, picture(s) in their works. A big reference is made in Fugard’s 'Sizwe Bansi is Dead', where he advocates that the black man can be free of his troubles only when he dies. Hence, the grave is seen, as a place where true liberty is absorbed. Though the blacks may be given freedom or independence-grant by the white, they are bound to fall into self-enslavement. Sometimes I imagine the African freedom fighters tell it to the white overlords that, 'we want to rule by our-'self''. ‘We want to run the affairs of our country by our-self. This country is 'ours''. Self-enslavement creeps in especially when the society still becomes anti-Marxian despite the independence-grant given. In other words, the death of the palm-wine tapster signifies freedom.

3. The palm-wine drinkard's vigorous attempt to find his palm-wine tapster can have several interpretations:

1). The palm-wine drinkard might have been purged of his over-exaggerated selfishness. For example, in the tapster's life time, the drinkard never cared about how he used the tapster. In fact, he saw the tapster as an immortal human-machine that keeps satiating his excitement and bacchic urges.
2). On the flip side, he might have been driven by his impulsive urges, ‘the death/life principle/Id’.  Though this sounds Freudian, we are compelled to judge his will of getting the tapster back to his quondam post of slave-working, as a damnable curse of cupidity and fear which drives him into a frantic fit. So this time he his only trying to get the tapster back so that he can further be ‘exploited’. Or simply put, he is going after the tapster because of his own selfish interests.

Also, I will like to draw our attention to something new and very important. This is actually the story of the beautiful ‘lady’ and the 'gentle man'. The 'gentle-man' symbolizes the horrors of modernism and acculturation. In the story, it is clear that the gentleman is alien to the market were the lady sees him. There is actually a big line of demarcation drawn between where the gentle man stands, and where the lady, the marketers stand. No transaction between the two. So from this point, her palfrey (feminine) identity is greatly a symbolic encapsulation of what Africa is. She is no doubt a symbolism of our ideological ‘Mother Africa’, who has now been drawn by this 'newness’. The newness in question is a broadcast of the gentle-man’s presence. More upon, from the story, we are able to note how she rejects those who are originally hers, to embrace that strange man. She is constantly enticed by his outward beauty and now she is being taken away. Very soon, she discovers what cruel strangeness lies in this man: Almost all the parts of his body are borrowed or formed by the amalgamation of several parts coming together from the different spheres of his world. England was not formed by one. Hence, I deeply believe that, this gentleman is an indirect allegory of England, by which a supernumerary part of Africa was alienated and acculturated, while the sphere from which all these parts are borrowed is simply Europe. More so, the consequent lost and captivity of the lady results into what I call a 'Tutuolanian Ecclesiastes', a code which implies that Africa will never be redeemed of the new culture that has so dominated her. In fact, every attempt made to bring her back to her original form will be proved futile.

The road to the market is the road back to our cultural realties (i.e., the market being the root of our cultural extent). It is hardly traceable. In fact since this generation is the offspring of the alienated lady, all it would have is a mere reading of the road’s geography. To walk this road may be impossible for some; difficult or easy for others, yet that market can never be found. In addition, the market is a reality of what we were before the white-men’s culture transformed us. So, unlike some Asian countries like, china, Japan, where their cultural ethos is more boldly daring, highly defiant, and repellent and where only 20% of Eurocentrism is apparent in their daily transactions, Africa is but condemned to a superfluity of Eurocentric cacoethes.

I think with some of the unprecedented facts laid in this little discovery, you would be creatively smart enough to spice up your examination questions- especially the one particular to ‘the Palm-Wine Drinkard…’ with the appropriate answers. It all deals with how highly imaginative you are in textual relativisms and concept-fixing. Good luck!!!