The Idea of a Marxist Poem: A Nigerian Perspective JOHN HAYNES The paper examInes a sample Marxist poem about a guerrilla. The most Important dlstinctlOn It makes IS that between the relatively stable semantIc meamng of the text, and its polHical signifIcance. The significance of the poem IS a matter of its capacity to enhance genuIne revolutionary awareness and intention, and thIs capacity lies beyond the control of the individual poet who cannot control what the educatIOnal apparatus does with it. The radIcal poem is turned to reactIonary use In the educational system; in other words revolu- tionary meanings serve capItalist neocolonial ends by acting as exami- nation 'fodder' for the reproduction of a privileged class. To an extent the neutralization of signifIcance In the classroom may be counteracted by adopting a dIfferent kInd of study of I1terature, that of 'demonstrative (i.e. creative) criticism'. Alternatlvely the contradlctlOns that anse withIn the education system may be aVOIded by looking to an audience outside the unlversHy In the populist type ot conSClOusness raIsIng. However, such a strategy can only be effectIve if It IS coordInated as part of wider national Marxist movement, such as does not at present exist in Nigeria; but without It the MarXIst poem IS unlikely to obtain revolutionary significance. The relation between what the poet and his audience do verbally and theIr actual SOCIal praxIs (which IS how 'commitment' is defined) remams incongruent. WIll try to pin down these remarks by taking a particular Marxist . 'G rlla' by ldi Bukar, poem as my pOInt of reference. This IS uer I the Nlgenan poet. 77 GUERRILLA You learnt to spell political words the parts of weapons the colours of the leaves the angles of shadow Your engraved bayonet art "n a certain cave wall a helicopter an x-ray American rifle a perfect enemy in uniform You identifIed yourself You became invisible My main argument will be that a !though it is possible to talk of 'the Marxist poem' on the basis of the content of a text, for a peom to have a Marxist significance contextual factors are involved. Ultimately the Marxist poem can only achieve revoluionary significance in the context of an organlsed Marxist movement. I assume throughout the paper that such a movement places prime importance upon literacy, the written work being the basis of study, and much more widely dlsseminable, espeClally under clandestine conditions. beglO by attempting to clarify the distinction just made between what a poem means and its significance in social context of situation. I will look first at the meanings of 'Guerrilla' which are relatively stable whatever the situation or reading; U will then look at the most likely actual reading situation in Nigeria, the classroom; and after that discuss it in relation to conscientization. The poem 'addresses' an imaginary guerrilla, placing him in relation to the poet, as 'you'. It also places the guerrilla in time through the use of the past tense. But it does not place him 1n space, geographically - a point to which 1 will return. The poet also relates facts about the guerrilla, who could possibly be dead. These facts would, of course, be perfectly well known to the guerrilla; they are 78 not I nforma tion glv1ng except to the reader of the poem; they have the effect of eulogy. The last two lines are not factual; they move into a philosoph1cal p laClng and cha racterisa hon of the guerrilla's life, and th15 he may well not be (have been) aware of. Verse one refers to the literacy classes the guerrilla undergoes In the bush or forest. The educated reader (or the reader who has had simllar experience) wlll be reminded of the writings of Cabral or other Southern revolutionary writers. Freire-fashion, the primers select politically and emotionally important vocabulary in the student's life. his weapon, the cover gIven by foliage and shadow, things upon wh1ch his survival depends. The second verse turns to the gc:errl Ila 's expressIve nature, hIS draw1ng. Using what is to hand, the pOInt of hIS bayonet, he shapes Images of a helicoper, an american rifle in 'x-ray' style (showIng the internal parts), and of an enemy soldier. The modern bayonet contrasts with the ancient practice of cave-art. and The use of a weapon for creating art brings together a relatIOn between struggle and ciVIlIzed human relations which under- 11es the guerrilla's ded1cation. The drawings are marked on a cave wall where perhaps the guerrilla lodged; but the cave wall reminds us of the way ancient men represented their own enemIes In 'x-ray' and other styles in strikingly accurate representational art which may have been a means of contemplating the animals the hunter ho[wd to kill or needed to evade, and mentally prepared hims('1f for the dangers. The guernlla's positIOn is parallel. He hopes to capture the American nfle, and on favourable occaSIOns 'hunt' the enemy soldIer; and needs to evade the helicopter. The enemy in uniform Is 'perfect' In the sense that the draWing of him is perfect (a dIstinc- tIOn wInch begins to show us a difference between aesthetic and moral values). LIke the anClent hunter the guerrilla invests all his own powers In studYing what opposes him. his opposite. ParadOXIcally he identIfies hImself In the image of his enemy; hence hIS own IndiVidual personality becomes 'invisible'. A number of further inter- pretatIOn of the last two lines IS pOSSIble. The guernlla IdentIfies lea ving behind these traces of hIS himself In a second sense by use of camouflage, already presence. H" becomes inVisible by h1S mentioned In the first verse, and by his loss of self-Importance as an IndiVIdual. This IS a kind 0f I.denTl. fl.catlon through commJtment. 79 Finally, the guerrilla may be thought of as becomlng mVlslble through death or simply by being forgotten as an lOdlvidual (except In the poem) as he passes into the stream of history. An omisSIOn In this interpretation is the plaCIng of the guerrilla In a specific area. ThIs is left to the reader. He gains some help from other poems by the same poet, if he knows them. In these the situation IS often quite clearly Nigeria. In , First the Desert Came and Then the Torturer' there are poems about the recent military take-over, and about the Bukalon massacre. These poems, like 'Guerrilla', are In the past tense, recounting the hIstory of 'That Country' which bears a resemblance to Nlgena In many but not all the poems. 1f we understand the guerrilla to be somewhere in NIgeria In thIS fIctive hIstory, we may take hIm as a kind of forecast to us. The poet takes up a position In the future and 'recounts' what has actually happened to us and what IS about to. To hIm it is history, to us the more or less near future. So far 1 have paraphrased the meaning of the poem on one dImension, that of the phenomena represented, and then have edged towards a second dimension, the interpretive role of the reader where these meanings are less specific. We also need to bear in mind that poetry IS In part also emotlonal speech, and emotional meanings are far harder to express ln prose paraphrase than are facts and relations. Yet the emotional meanings in poetry are fundamental to it as a genre. But emotion also is heavily dependent on circumstances. It is one thing, for example, to perceive intellectually that the poet is expressl ng admiratlon for the guerrilla, but it is another to identify with the values being cited. Thus as we consider the of emotIOnal meanings poetry we are still further edged towards the roles of the poet and his audience 'outside' the text; and it's this that moves us into the centre of the problem of 'the Marxist poem'. When we begin to talk about Marxist poetics We have to distinguish between attempts to 'apply Marxist' to poetry as such and to incorpo- rate the great works of the past in a coherent framework, and attempts 80 to solve the problem, what is the Marxist poet to do? His aim is not to achieve some supra cultural prestige but to say something which is useful and telling in the particular circumstances he writes in. If he or she is studied by later generations one reason for that study will be this very relevance and adhesion to actual time, place, and event. (A problem with Marxist interpretations of non-Marxist texts is the lengths to which the analyst has to go to reveal this). ln trying to speak tell1ngly, however, the Marxist poet must be concerned not just with the truth of what he is expressing, essential though this is, but also with the position of the audience most likely to hear or read his work. He will aim to compose in a way which is both immediately memorable and also gives scope for deeper reflection and study. He will hope to express and to elicit a revolutionary commitment. The term 'commitment' is not, as is sometimes assumed, a matter of someone' s being passionately for this or that set of ideas or future circumstance. It is a term for the inter-action between the writer's text and his own and the reader's actually lived lives, their praxis in maintaining this or that social structure. Committed poetry conveys a sense that what is being said is also being lived, and this is not just a matter of the meanings of the poem on the page. It 1S how the poem relates to ordinary life 'outside' the poem. Thus Che Guevara's poem to Fidel Castro gains added significance because it is by Che, because it is to Fidel. The same point has been made sl1ghtly differently by Berger in his discussion of Van Gogh's last pa1nt1ng 2 Commitment is a matter of a congruency between l1fe and word for the poet and also for his audience. ln what follows 1 want to enlarge a little on this. 'Guerrilla' is written and it is in English, and so is most likely to be read in the context of schooling at some level. For the poet's work to reach students it is usually printed 3 and the publisher will take the risk of publishing it with an eye on the educational market. The text is thus passed through a middleman, the publisher, then to a second middleman, the teacher or lecturer; and both of these may be affected by a third middleman, the lirerary critic, who inter- . fl e ces both sales and the prets and evaluates the poem, an d so 1n u n kinds of remarks about it teachers will make. The sale of a poetry book under marketable conditions strongly favours the publisher, the 81 poet hardly expectIng to make a living out of writing poetry alone, although he may benefit materially from gaining a reputation in critical books and periodicals; but this should not hide the fact that the relation between the poet and his various mediators is exploItative, And the poet may feel that what he originally 'said' has got lost In the sigmficance it has been allotted in the educational system. He writes to bring home something, let us say, about the lOgIC of the present crisis in the Nigenan economy and quality of life; but he cannot publish and teach and cnticise his work himself, not on any scale, at least. He must go through the publisher and the educational system. And these Institutions. despite individual dissidents, are neocolonial state apparatuses. The un 1versi ty functions to pass people into the priviledged class. So the poet's work, intended to question the role of that class, finds itself utilised as a part of its reproduction, as 'radical' academic fodder. The actual nexus of the educator/student in the classroom neutralises the content of the poem. The principle of freedom of expression of different ideas reduces all ideas to more 'points of view'; all ideas are thus trivialised. Of course it happens that some individual teachers try to take the poem in its full significance, and try to show their students this. During the class the students may think of themselves as radical in their approach; but they can hardly sustain this belief if they focus their attention on the way the university as a whole functions. We may have radical content perhaps, but reactionary function. This is a characteristic contradiction in the study of literature in neocolonies, where content is very often anticolonialist, but the tendency of the university and the study aims of its students are congruent with the dominant neocolonial ideology of the state. The dissenting teacher or department may to some extent counteract the dominant ideology by changing the basis of the type of communica- tion involved, so that this dilemma itself is more highlighted. This may be done by abandoning the Western-borrowed notion of literary criticism as a prose genre (which, as we have seen does not cope with the emotional dimension of poetic meaning) in favour of what 1 call 'demonstrative criticism', in which the response to poems takes the form of replies in kind, imitations, rewritings, and so on. This 82 is not only more imagina ti ve; ita Iso has an African precedent. lyasere draws attention to it. '1£ a critic found flaws in the chief performer's rendition, in either the factual content or the technique of composition, he would not only point them out, but also retell the story from his own point of view, giving it hiS personal stamp. His recreation of the same story would then form the basis for his criticism'. (lyasere, 180: 17l) And a page la ter he says, 'The Edos, as in several traditional African communities, regarded criticism as a creative performance'. The role of the Western and the neocolonial literary critic is that of an informed observer. But surely a critic can help a poet in hIS work only if he too knows the problems from inside, and can demonstrate hIS points by producing alternative versions as improve- ments or to pOint up a contrast, and so on. While the critic remaws a kind of literary anthropologist his judgments must remain suspect, though perhaps profitable to him. 4 This is not the place to describe demonstrative criticism in any detail but some comments are needed to show how it relates to Marxism. The basIc idea is that the study of a verbal art such as poetry must be done practically through composition (which obviously involves cn t ica I reading) , a nd through following a production process, i'lvolvwg the following components (not necessarily to be conceived in linear sequence: (a) Interpretation of social situation (subject matter) (bl CompositlOn (technique) (c) interpretive performance (recital) (d) Editmg/recording (book or tape) 83 A shift to demonstratIve criticism gIven the big 'if' that it can be implemented - is hardly revolutionary in itself, but it may begin to approach radical questions as it transfers classroom initiative more to the students, and in confronting the bourgeois objection that 'not everybody IS creative'. Everybody needs to be, which is not to say that every student of poetry IS going to be a fulltime poet, any more than that every student of fine art is going to be a fulltime painter. The radical edge of demonstrative criticism sharpens when we look into the first stage of the production process from a materialist view- point. Then the student (now as both reader and poet) must focus specifically on the congruence between what the poem IS saying and how he/she is actually living, between verbalisation and praxIs. The students' position within the university state apparatus cannot then be ignored. Demonstrative criticism focuses on compositlon, but part of learning compOSItion is reading and 'prose' interpretation. Here we have to be clear about the relation between this reading and the text of the poem. Poetry is a condensed form of expression and a conversation about a poem should be directed either towards the study of its subject matter through the particular kind of linguistic 'lens' a poem provides, or else discuSSion of ways in which the technique of the poem might be improved the better to realise that aim. Poetry being a condensed 'portable; kind of communication, a conversation about It is primarily an exchange of ideas over the 'terra in' of the text, drawing out the implications into the explicit, following out the allusions, reinterpretating the paradoxes. Part of this drawing out should be the explication of the actual relation of the reader to what is being depicted and said in the poem. The university students come to an actual classroom in which books are put down, chairs scraped, seating arrangements suggest authority, expensive clothes are displayed, and so on. This atmosphere affects particularly the emotional impact of the poem. For the classroom students it may be merely cathartic, and end with the end of lecture of the recital. The aim of demonstrative criticism is to combat this response. The emotional meanings and 'depth' of a poem are enhanced in situations 84 of personal risk or cris]s when the limits of individual existence are more thoroughly sensed. Th is a llows the poem fu ller scope. The guerrilla who reads the poem as part of his study in the bush has obviously a much readier openness to this type of meaning. HIS reasons for reading the poem differ sharply from those of the typ]cal m]ddle class student, and the guerrilla IS in a much better pOSJtlOn to cntlcise the content of such a poem. However, at present, the NIgerian guernlla ]S a fiction, so the poem in a sense 'belongs' in the educatlonal system, The contradlctlOns we have seen In the classroom study of the poem anse because the poet does not control the means of producing the poem. ThIs is worth emphaslsing as there is a tendency for MarxIst poets and critICS to neglect this relation between the verbal and the practical. Sometimes we can see the discrepancy in the poet's technIque. in the way he positIOns his audience and hImself. Thus, 'We need no mourners in our stride no remorse, no tea rs, only this: Resolve that the locust shall never again ViSlt our farmsteads' (Of elm un , 1980:42) Who is this 'we'? All Africans in general? The proletariat? [t IS a rhetorical rather than a political 'we'. There is nothing cOncrete, elther, in what is being said, no traces of the praxls of a former private secretary to a 'Nigerian presidentia I cand idate' , whom the blurb a vOlds namlng. The grammar of the poem may be simple compared to Soyinka's but the last two lines are still consciously 1i tera ry; instead of dealing specific a lly wi th concrete conditions, Ofeimun retreats into Africanistic imagery with what might be taken an alluSIOn to Kofi Awoonor's 'Songs of Sorrow'. From as the VJew of actual radlcal politics the poet's contentment point of Unconsciously In its evasIon of wIth 'resolve' alone J S suspect. specIfics, assumes, relies on, classroom neutralisation. the poem Use', where the prospect How different in tone is Jacinto's 'It's no 'you' relates dlrectly of politlcal Involvement is taken senously, and 85 to the reader's situation, to the locus of commitment, the relation between books and praxis. IT'S NO USE It's no use Your hiding deep in the dark well of your house Hiding your words Burning your books It's no use. They'll corne to find you In lorries, piled high with leaflets, With letters no one ever wrote you They'll fill your passport with stamps From countries where you've never been. They'll drag you away Like some dead dog And that night you'll find out all about torture In the dark room Where all the foul odours of the world are bred It's no use Your hinding From the fight, my friend. In a sense the example introduces an unfair comparison because jacinto's poem comes out of a far more advanced stage of revolutionary struggle than does Ofiemun' s, or indeed Bukar' s. Even so we have to remember that although the poet has done what can be done to make his audience alive to their actual situation, the determined bourgeois student can still aestheticise it into a cathartic classroom 'experience', and a text to pass the exam with. Conversely an actual situation of struggle does not necessarily produce committed art. Okafor, looking at the South African situation from the perspective of Nigeria, fails to see this in his response to 86 Mtshal1's work. Wh,Ch In content is not at all revolutionary. Okafor says. 'Oswald Mtshal1' s revolutionary poems ..•. could be attributed some responslbil1ty for the events In Soweto, as eVinced in Steve Blko's black consciousness movement'. (Okafor. 1983:108) This leaves out of consIderatIOn MtshalI's acceptance by the South African censors and educational system. and his assImllatlOn to It as a headmaster. It may appear that one way out of the contradictIOns produced by the unIverSIty and educational state apparatuses would be to look for a different audience outside these lnstitutions and wnte a radical popular poetry In the vernaculars. The Marxist poet hImself IS stIli overwhelmlngly lIkely to come from the university however, and espeCIally lf he retaIns hIS position ln the unlversIty, hiS attempts r at conscIOusness raiSIng are all too apt to be sporadic and local ) The unlverslty and pnnting complex provldes a socldl structure d Issemlnd lC'd. Ngugi's thrc'ugh whIch hiS lex ts can spectacular gesture tIw key problem WIth such work IS that thC' verbal artIst does not have the means to follow up hiS words With ilctlJill deeds to solve the InJustlces and depnvatlOns be has made hiS audience the more aware of. Valuable as It IS to understand the present CrISIS. It IS equally Important as an aspect of_~~~~-'2 ltself to have some prospect of rectlfymg actIOn. And thls support and follow-up can only be achieved If the Individual committed wnter acts as part of a wider revolutionary Marxist movement. Such an organIsatIon can coordInate work In dIfferent parts of the country. To do thIS It will have to rely on the wntten word (whIch IS sdent and may be clandestlne), and put out a Journal, a part of whIch Ioilll be devoted to lIteracy. poetry. and other aspects of polItically based educatlon outSIde the educatIOnal system and outSIde the news medIa of the state. WIth a MarXIst Opp05ltlOn movement the contract between the mc're popullst type of conSCIousness raISing and the more l1teracv based one 15 likely to dIsappear by the very fact of Increased 87 literacy which 1S fundamental to any Marxist programme, and Wh1Ch will in all probability 1n Nigeria be 1n a dIalect of Engl1sh or 1n Pidgin. Poetry is both aural and wntten and wJll form part of the process of Marxist oriented and onenting educat1on, working to raise. literacy, and to promote awareness of the answers to social problems, intellectual analysis, and shared premisses. A movement can provide a context for the communication of literature wIthout the contradictions involved in production through the capitalist publishers and educators. 'Guerrilla' in thls context would be much more readily comprehensible to a non intellectual audience since educatIOn programmes would obviously inform peoples about Cabral and Che, the foco theory, and so on; indeed it might be used in the process of developing this awareness. However, if the poem were recited or sung 1n a Hausa version in Samaru now it may well be incomprehensible simply because there are no Nigerian guerrillas, and because Samaru villages have no reason to be interested in them. Th is situation COll ld change, of course, but then the question of consciousness raising outside a Marxist movement will have been overtaken. Just as we have no guerrillas, so we have no Marxist movement in Nigeria. The history of such movements is not encouraging either from the point of view of organisation and unity among workers and farmers 6. But th. ere 1S no otller 1.- so 1ution t h an to continue to t ry to forge such a movement. The role of the Marxist poet now, his commitment, is therefore to act through his art and in his praxis to make the Party. Poetry has had a significant educative role in most cultures in the past, and it should have in a socialist society with its own conceptions of morality, love, heroism, and the beauty of nature. But only when there is a basis for communications of all kinds among people of the oppressed classes in Nigeria as a coherent group can the Marxist poet's work, whatever he may say have material significance. Notes 1. This poem is forthcoming in the second edition of Bukar's sequence. See Books Mentioned below. 2. Berger, 1973: 27-28 88 3. Bukar's poems are produced in fact in a non-commercial dlssident publication. 4. A more detalled account of how demonstrative cnticism works 1S the subject of another paper now in draft. 5. See Oga Abah's paper in 'Saiwa' cited below. 6. See Madunagu cited below. parllcularly Chapter 5. Books Mentioned ABAH Oga Steve "The Crises of Urban Street Theatre". Saiwa No.2 1984. pp. 16-25 Ways of Seeing (Viking. New York) 1973. BERGER John BUKAR Idi First the Desert Came and the the Torturer (RAG Press. ABU, Zaria). 19B4. GUEVARA Che Song to Fidel "African Oral Tradition - Criticism as Perfor- YASERE Solomon mance A Rltual, African Literature Today, No. II. 1980, pp. 169-174. no Use", Index on Censorship Vol. 8 JACINTO Vlctor "It's p. 31. Translation-by N1ck No.4. 1979. Castor. Problems of SOClal1sm: the N1genan Challenge MADliNAGli Eddle (Zed Press, London) 1982. The Poet lied (Longman. London) 1980. CifEIMUN Odw in Francophone CiKAFOR R.N.C. "PolIt1cs and Literature Expenence". Ciklke Africa the I vory Coast No. 23. 1983, pp. 105-121. 89