Wole Soyinka: Ideología y estética en el contexto africano

Abstract

Wole Soyinka is a writer deeply commited to Yoruba culture and very much aware of the cultural background provided by its ancestral myths. But his ideas about the aims of a native literature clash with those of L. S. Senghor and the movement of Negritude: he considered it an oversimplified approach since it sought to redefine the African in terms of Western and especially European culture. Soyinka had to face another polemical issue, this time in the Nigerian context. This was related to the accusation of critics who considered that African artists should write in an anti-intellectual way so that the native readers would be able to understand them. Soyinka's answer was that freedom in art is basic to the renewal of the original culture. He would never accept external pressures in his literary or intellectual work. As an example of the personal style of Soyinka and his involvement with Yoruba myths, I briefly and superficially analyse some of his poems of the first period, that is, those written before his imprisonment in 1967.