While many people in my class found this a boring read, something about it just enraptured me. The underlying theme of transitioning is interwoven nicely into the other themes of the play and the characters are painted intriguingly.

A beautiful play that explores liminality in both a social and metaphysical light. The narrative has a surprising amount of depth for such a short work (77 pages). It's political and cultural arguments come across strongly and are still very relevant for readers today. Though western readers may feel lost throughout the first act, google, and the blatant misappropriations of the Pilkings should clear things up by the second act.

First published at: http://www.meexia.com/bookie/2016/03/...

Death and the King's Horseman is a play by Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian and the first African to be honored the Nobel Prize in Literature. The play was published 1975, and Soyinka won the prize in 1986. I was reading this together with my GR book group. It also adds nicely to my Nobel project and my intention to read more plays.

The play is inspired by a real life incident that took place in Nigeria during the British occupation: the horseman of a king was prevented to do his last duty on earth, which is to commit a ritual suicide - to follow his king into the afterlife and help lead the way.

Everybody has a duty. The king's horseman Elesin has lived a lavished lifestyle, with the understanding of the duty his community expects him to perform one day. Failure to do this would throw everything out of balance. The British officer Simon Pilkings also has a duty, and that is to keep order in the Majesty's realm. A murder - that includes killing oneself, is a disorder and does not make sense to the British eyes. The stake is made higher as the Prince is visiting when this event takes place, so Pilkings is desperate to resolve (resorting to postpone) the problem without the Prince noticing.

The other important characters include Iyaloja, a matriarch of the market - so in effect, the community; and the horseman's son Olunde who has gone to study abroad in England and come back when he heard the news about the death of the king, knowing the implication for his father.

In one way it is very much about the issue of colonization, though Soyinka doesn't like it to be categorized that narrowly, as mentioned in the extra materials of my edition. It's about a clash of cultures, but it could be between any cultures or subcultures, and does not necessarily point its finger to the white colonists vs the natives.

Soyinka is of Yoruba tribe in Nigeria, so this story is about people of Yoruba. To contrast, Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie are both Igbo people. I haven't read enough Nigerian literature to know the subtle differences, but I found these interesting. It just happens that the colleague sitting next to me is a Yoruba Nigerian, and he said his mother knows Soyinka personally (which I guess isn't very surprising if they're from the same tribe). He mentioned that there are some conflicts in the past between the tribes (Yoruba and Igbo are 2 of the 3 biggest tribes in Nigeria) but things are well now, and in fact his wife is Igbo. And that's my little crash course on Nigerian tribes :)

I had the opportunity to go to Wole Soyinka's talk at the British Library a couple of weeks ago - which was a very nice conjunction with my book group discussion (it's online and nobody is in London - so I went by myself). It was a full house and more than half of the audience were Nigerian or African descent, so he seemed a very well respected man. I had my edition of Death and the King's Horseman signed, but the signing was very rushed so I'm a bit disappointed on that end.

Last interesting point is Soyinka writes in English, so his works are not translated. His choice of language to produce his art is somewhat a sore point among different groups of people, as English is obviously the colonist language. This was asked also at the talk, and his answer is somewhere along the line of wanting to have his work as far reaching as possible. He also writes in his native language, but mostly privately. Considering that he did his higher studies in England and therefore went through Western education, I can absolutely understand this reasoning.

Mee's rating: 4/5 - Great selection for book group as there are a lot of things to discuss. I can recommend my edition: Methuen Student Edition (pictured above) as it has plenty of extra materials to help you better understand the play and its place in the context of society and its time. Since reading this play I've been looking for more plays in Methuen Student Edition, which luckily my favorite secondhand bookshop in Charing Cross has many.

Probably one of my favorite plays. Sad, frustrating, but worth it. And a character with a cool name: Elesin.

Egungun (Yoruba masquerade)

One of the biggest reading highlights of 2016 for me was Nigerian literature. I've read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart years ago. But this year, I came across The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma and I'm currently doing a Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's book-marathon, which I'm enjoying immensely. I wasn't aware that Nigeria has a rich literary culture. So before the year ends, I wanted to read Wole Soyinka's play “Death and the King’s Horseman.”

[...]they acquire the facile tag of 'clash of cultures', a prejudicial label [...] I find it necessary to caution the would-be producer of this play against a sadly familiar reductionist tendency, and to direct his vision instead to the far more difficult and risky task of eliciting the play's threnodic essence. - Wole Soyinka's Author's Note

What does "threnodic" mean? The word is related to "threnody," meaning "an ode, song, or speech of lamentation, especially for the dead." Soyinka wants the reader to not focus too much on the culture clash that happens between the British colonists and the locals in this Yoruba village, but instead pay attention to the play's overall message of death.

The play is very short (my edition had only 77 pages), but it was not a quick and easy read. Out of the five acts, I found Act One quite difficult to understand followed by Act Three when the protagonist gets into a transcendental state of mind. However, Act Two, Four and Five were easier to comprehend with a heavy dose of tragedy and at times even comedy.

To sum up, the play focuses on Elesin, the horseman of a Yoruba king who has just passed away. According to tradition Elesin has to commit suicide to accompany and ensure safe passage for the king to the other side. British officials are adamant to prevent this suicide from taking place, because the British prince is currently visiting the area and they don't want chaos. What happens in the end is very tragic.

I can understand why most readers would speak about the clash of cultures. A lot of it happens in this play and it drives the story forward. Ultimately, one asks the question, who has power over death? Death is a very personal thing and different people look at it in different ways. To the Yoruba people Elesin's death is very meaningful and in their view important for the cosmological order of life. Even though the British can't see the logic in a horseman killing himself for a dead king. Yet, the British at that time were engaged in World War 2, death was everywhere and that was something that Elesin's son found hard to understand. Why make a fuss about the death of one horseman, but have no problems with sending hordes of young men to their early deaths for a senseless war? In the words of Iyaloja (the mother of markets) "To prevent one death you will actually make other deaths? Ah, great is the wisdom of the white race." Soyinka crafted a wonderfully tragic play here that combines themes of life and death and the modern and the traditional. I would love to watch the play live!

The trance that Elesin was in as he prepared to die got me thinking. Do people high on crack feel like that all the time? Maybe those crackheads i pass on my way to school are living in the delusion of graceful death. Really makes you empathize with them. Maybe next time I pass a crackhead ill feed his delusion. Thanks Soyinka!

Just something I had to read for class.

Very intense and quick read. Perfect for a study in post-colonialism. This play expertly discusses the division between two cultures that don't understand each other and don't necessarily want to understand each other. Each character wonderfully represents an aspect of concepts such as la mestiza and colonialism.

There are elements of this play that really appeal to me, but overall I am not a huge fan of literature engagee. I prefer somewhat more subtle works. That being said, however, I do like the way that this play sets up the resistance to English colonialism as a cultural resistance centered in sites of cultural essentialism, and how the play seems to acknowledge the problematics of essentialism. There are, I feel, contradictory readings of this play, each of which has a degree of validity, which makes this play a somewhat difficult one to really analyze. The conscious political message is rather blatant, but there are undertones of doubt and complications within the surface message.
https://youtu.be/8T45X4JHs1I

The blurb compares this to plays such as Antigone, but I think it falls short of that in its imitations. At times I felt the lines were too disconnected, too alienating (both topic wise and lyrically) to the reader--although I totally think this may be a culture difference. As someone who just finished reading a collection of Sophocles and Euripides, I feel that this play is an imitation. It's too many jangles and not enough meaning--towards the end the idea of transitioning, of death, slowly starts to be realised but the mark is missed. Pilkins as an 'imperialist' character is far too one-dimensional, Jane not developed enough (though one of the more interesting characters). I really want to like this play, but I don't think it holds enough tragic power--something is not transmuted through into the translated words.

I didn't care for the beginning, which used poetic language.....I was somewhat lost through Act I. Thank goodness, this was the only place I struggled. All in all, it had a good message: don't judge that which you don't understand.

Does the deep voice of gbedu cover you then, like the passage of royal elephants? Those drums that brook no rivals, have they blocked the passage to your ears that my voice passes into wind, a mere leaf floating in the night? Is your flesh lightened Elesin, is that lump of earth I slid between your slippers to keep you longer slowly sifting from your feet? Are the drums on the other side now tuning skin to skin with ours in osugbo? Are there sounds there I cannot hear, do footsteps surround you which pound the earth like gbedu, roll like thunder round the dome of the world? Is the darkness gathering in
your head Elesin? Is there now a streak of light at the end of the passage, a light I dare not look upon? Does it reveal whose voices we often heard, whose touches we often felt, whose wisdoms come suddenly into the mind when the wisest have shaken their heads and murmured; It cannot be done? Elesin Alafin, don't think I do not know why your lips are heavy, why your limbs are drowsy as palm oil in the cold of harmattan. I would call you back but when the elephant heads for the jungle, the tail is too small a handhold for the hunter that would pull him back. The sun that heads for the sea no longer heeds the prayers of the farmer. When the river begins to taste the salt of the ocean, we no longer know what deity to call on, the river-god or Olokun. No arrow flies back to the string, the child does not return through the same passage that gave it birth. Elesin Oba, can you hear me at all?