Romanticization of Boko Haram Terrorism: A Literary Appreciation. (An Irony)

Before I hastily undertake this non-fictional pilgrimage as my African pen will not concede to a traffic regulation or ‘’go slow’’, I will like to apprise my audience on this ‘’green- white- green’’ stage that it will be disingenuous of my literary characterization and ministry (LITERATI) not to un sheath my fleshy sword from its fragile skin and pierce its blade into the uterus of the situation in status quo as the goings- on in the Nigerian polity thus mandate.

Innocent A. Emechete in his book titled THE CONCEPT OF DEITY IN AFRICAN POETRY makes clear the person and character which sail into the characterization of a poet which I am proud to be one when he says:

                                    ‘’A poet is a Teacher, a Critic, a Storyteller, a Musician, a Philosopher, a                                                                                                                                                                     

                 Theologian and the moral conscience of society.’’                                                       

He goes further not relenting to abruptly add that:

                                    ‘’the moral depravity of the action and or the individual involved is thus                             exposed by the poet.’’

Also, in her Inaugural Lecture Series 2012 titled DESTINATION FREEDOM: VEHICLE, SYMBOLISM IN BLACK LITERATURE. Professor Karen King Aribisala opines that:                                                                                 

                ‘’the means by which the poet effects this transition is through the                                                     vehicle of words. Here, vehicle is seen as ‘’a medium of communication and expression.’’ (WIKIPEDIA FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA). A vehicle can be further defined as ‘’any means in or by which someone travels or something is carried or conveyed.’’ (WIKIPEDIA FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA).’’

In essence, Aribisala is of the opinion that in every activity, there is always a trigger, an impetus and a ‘’metallic monster’’ that carries and dislocates to one’s intended destination one’s ideologies, philosophies, ambitions, prospects etc.

It must not be blindly misconstrued or distorted that this dissertation is on a cowardly campaign or an Islamic exoneration of the frivolous nuclear dispensations of ‘’toy bombs’’ that have selfishly and un- dutifully claimed  the lives of innocent, unguarded and unescorted Nigerian civilians in their domestic homes, huts and sacred monasteries. But, I shall employ the instructive tool of the figurative paraphernalia titled ‘’satire’’ driven in the vehicle of ‘’sarcasm’’ by the driver (at least a car must be driven by someone or thing) ‘’lampoon’’ to give a Romanticization of Boko Haram Terrorism.

    

The ironical episode of these sects’ theatrical display which employs an Elizabethan stage in a Nigerian setting and ambience is the fact that the Hoi Polloi of the society which the romantics adore and deify are the same polity that these ‘’Puritanistic Farcical Characters’’ called Boko Haram war against but yet, the enemy is seldom known, whether this indecisive and depraved ‘’hardcore Northerners’’ as Soyinka calls them are actually vexed with the ‘’upper strata’’ or the ‘’lower strata’’ of the society or even both for as Professor Wole Soyinka exposes in his evergreen enlightening documentary of the Boko Haram genesis that ‘’The third phase of Boko Haram will be a selective assassination of leaders from here.’’ (THE NEXT PHASE OF BOKO HARAM TERRORISM)

Having all these above and employing the permutation devised by the latter in his article, mine as a me-too of his’ shall as well go thus.

Was Romanticism a movement for or against the society?

Having brandished Alfred Tennyson’s ‘’The Lady of Shallot’’, and having understood the essence of Victorian literary works as a work of literature that ‘’evaluate and observe the society’’, I will like to say and postulate (though a prima facie) that the romantics in their ingenuity saw the hazardous features of the technological evolution and proliferation and having foreseen the adverse effects of these technologies on man for whom it was made, they resolved in a common voice that ‘’technology is Haram’’ and should be escaped from, to places where the talons of technology can’t reach and aren’t  in existence. So, eventually, they chose the primitive, where perfection, peace, solitude are utopian, courtesies of its proximity i.e. the primitive, with unalloyed nature. They settled in this slum by segregating from the city. Let it be understood that if ‘’the lady of shallot’’ wasn’t mesmerized by the activities of the mirror which we must note ‘’is a product of technology’’, which was capturing the dealings in the world where she had been incarcerated i.e. the city and beholding finally the harbinger that caused her death which is ‘’Sir Lancelot’’. For at the sight of him, she left comfort for discomfort, life for death. 

The romantics sought their Destination Freedom via the vehicle ‘’imagination’’ into a particular part of the world which they considered the best, their Eldorado i.e. the slums, villages and the primitive setting.

What is a romantic man’s disposition towards the harshness and eccentric destructiveness of nature?

Since as earlier said that the romantics see nature as their dues ex machina, it can’t be disputed as false that we have and there exists natural disasters that as we know have brought some nations to their dark ages. But let me quickly say, ‘’if not for the scientific explorations of man on nature and man’s technological exploitation of nature, would she rage and be violent?’’  The romantics, especially Byronic Romantics see these natural anomalies as a means by which ‘’mother earth’’ sheds her tears and expresses her annoyance as natural humans will do when upset. These literary blocs also see beauty at the moment when these natural unoccurrences occur. This is not ordinary if agreed with me; rather, this is mystic and scholars have given this mysticism the term ‘’TRANSVALUATION.’’

Who is Boko Haram and what does it stand for?

I will not want to give an animate nominal design ant to the non polar question about Boko Haram because to me, whatever it stands for or whatever grievances it aims to project, whatever its composition is and is its ‘’Lord Voldemort’’, I won’t want to believe its assembly, congregation or audience to be made up of rational human beings but rather, a colony of destructive ants and a gathering of blood thirsty vampires with un-deserved ‘’black skins’’ and betrayers of the sanctity of the ‘’Nigerian Lingua Franca.’’

Well, with all sentiments tamed, I think in his article stated above, Soyinka, I opine, has given a satisfactory analysis of ‘’the Whos and What’’ of these fundamentalists. These are things that have decided to publicly rape Islamic religion of her dignity and fuelling its hideous shenanigans and pollutions in the filling station of ‘’diluted religious principles’’ under the ‘’phariseeship’’ of accursed and excommunicated ‘’mullahs’’ and political Nebuchadnezzars.

Soyinka in his wit says;

                                           ‘’ all they need to be told is that this is an enemy of religion and            

                                               they are ready to kill. No matter the motivations, no matter the

                                                extra-motivations of those who send them, they need only one

                                                motivation: that they are fighting the cause of that religion.’’

Does Boko Haram have a destination freedom and what is the conveying vehicle?

Boko Haram in its shallow mind might be thinking or might have thought it has a destination in an enslaved doctrine and rite, riding in foolishry and in the delusive vehicle of mediocre bombs and dud galloping guns. The Latin dictum that prophesizes ‘’vox populli: supreme alex’’ will bring hungry Boko Haram to a barren wilderness where it will ‘’weep and gnash its teeth.’’

Does Boko Haram have ‘’akin’’ relativism with the romantics?

Maybe a morphological dissection of the entirety of the compounding communion of the word Boko Haram should be explained. BOKO means western education, HARAM means forbidden. Having this at the back of our minds that they say ‘’western education is forbidden’’, it should also be emphasized that romanticism after which romantic writers are named is a ‘’highly intellectual’’ literary movement that has its full expressions in EDUCATION. So, to say Boko Haram is akin relatively with romanticism is a logical contradiction and an irreconcilable fallacy. In fact, it is an exaggerated oxymoron driven in the vehicle ‘’ignoramus’’ to an enslaved destination. Romantics are diplomatic people rooted in sensibility. Believe you me, if William Wordsworth were to be alive and were to be apprised of the delinquencies of this sect, he would have entreated Lord Byron to plead and evoke ‘’mother nature’’ to cause an earthquake in the hidden graves of this sect. Though, romantics are against rationalized knowledge that books and civilization brought and celebrated natural ingenuity and knowledge of the commoners, though romantics disliked technology and the rationalization of nature by science, Boko Haram is just a feeble and malodorous usurper of these principles at the surface level.

Below is a simple dramatic similarity and dichotomy

Similarity

Both Romantics and Boko Haram preach the theme of austerity and primitiveness in entirety.

Dichotomies

Romantics we employ the wit of poesy and rhetoric to preach our ideologies.

Boko Haram: look at this fools and neophytes, the only drilling and effective mechanism is to act on the outside and not the inside, so bombs, guns, matchets and violence are my diplomatic permutations.

Romantics: that is too animalistic pal, psychological and physical escapism from the urban to the rural would have been better instead…….

Boko Haram: shi shi shi… look at these ‘’fiful’’, don’t you know that the illegitimate ‘’farafernalia’’ is struggling where you have been declared ‘’fersona non grata’’ and make yourself legitimate?  

Romantics: well, since I’m a Luddite and a lover and pioneer of natural things and her offspring, I can’t afford to self- contradict myself.

Boko Haram: My own is even if your mother nature stands my way, I go Haram am. If you are not for me, you are against me.

Are you saying that Romantics didn’t fight or kick against education and books?

In William Wordsworth’s THE TABLES TURNED, he mildly and diplomatically through the educational vehicle of poetry, speaks about the stress and burden of books compared with the relief, enjoyment and relaxation that natural knowledge, education and entertainment which nature brings. If William Wordsworth didn’t have and taste education, would he have known the weariness of education and its stress?

At least it’s said ‘’No pain, no gain.’’ I wouldn’t have read his poems if I had not reached this echelon of education. The essence and ideal end product of education according to Auguste Compte is for ‘’the betterment of the society.’’ Even if Boko had any educated ant in its colony, it wouldn’t have been the kind of educational advantage Auguste spoke of for the society.

Your word to Boko Haram

If any of them relishes intellectually and not in an Islamic or political semantics this dissertation, then, ‘’it’’ must be a chronic betrayal of the education that groomed ‘’it.’’

 My literary epilogue to Boko Haram is that as the romantics escaped from the urban to the rural through imagination, and also physically exiled into the rural places, let Boko also take such noiseless and impalpable salient move to places where ‘’its’’ doctrines will be held sacred and this pettifogging hullabaloo would easily be avoided. For the audience are tired of ‘’its’’ theatre and all the ideals of neoclassicism are apparently as proposed by Aristotle and Horace in their treatises are oblivious in ‘’its’’ drama on stage, for dialogue hasn’t been employed. All we have seen is soliloquy that is nebulous and unrealistic into the intangible wind which has made the air poisonous to the breathing masses.

                                                                                              BABAJIDE LITERATI                                             

    

                                     

THE ESSENCE OF PHILOSOPHY: A RESPONSE TO KARL MARX

It is even hair-splitting that the field of human consciousness can even die, but a field can be in dominion of another field just as it is evident in the contemporary world of science that is failing us now.  What we have, in partial fulfilment of Marx’s vision, is the hibernation of philosophy, not its demise. Acting from the sound clandestine cum empirical foresight of a prophetic philosopher, Marx had with prescient eye presaged the dissipation of philosophy in the brimming world of science and technology whose dynasty is in fast rate encroaching and encompassing the dream of the universe, but the world is sick now by the malaise of technology and science in need of a pathologist which is philosophy.

First, the platform of Marxist ‘philosophy’ is scientific and material and the quintessence of Marx’s ideology is sending philosophy to the Coventry, but the weapon with which philosophy received its demise are fashioned for science approaching its own demise.

Premise 1: ‘philosophers have interpreted the world in several ways the point, however, is to change it’.( Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach)

The job was well done by Marx at the eleventh thesis of the Eleven Theses on Feuerbach where he argues for the irrelevance of philosophy in the world of scientific vagaries.  Hegel and Feuerbach had received the sledge of such premise and the succeeding Marxists were or are held spellbound by such enthralling wit of their raconteur but the premise is not far from being false.

The two substantial words in the premise are ‘interpret’ and ‘change’ which Marx has significantly used for philosophy and science.  While Marx attributes ‘interpret’ to philosophy or philosophers who are busy raging in the unending interpretation of the world’s mysteries, he carefully chooses ‘change’ in the position of science and the scientists who, according to him, have altered the surface of the world by edifices, automobiles, and machines. But Marx did not realise that both philosophers and the technologists have been interpreting the world and none has changed it.  The contrast surfaces where the philosophers are interpreting the world in the abstract sense and the scientists and the technologists are interpreting the world in the concrete sense.

The world had been equipped with what it entails, all we do is the interpretation of the components of its mysteries.  From the interpretation of the mule, a car is made and from the interpretation of the bird, a plane is imagined to fly.  From the interpretation of the waves came phone, and from the interpretation of the rock came the realisation of gold and diamond.  Water generates electricity and coals, petroleum, butane, and bitumen are mined from the ground.  No contradiction, however that these are the interpretations of the natural phenomena.   Philosophers likewise stem their interpretations from the rigorous abstractions and speculations of the world’s mysteries.  While nature feeds the duo, there is no innovation or invention in the world that had already manufactured itself.

To change the world is to tilt the world or make hyenas of human or seize the sun from shinning.  If a scientist can turn the night to morning or dawn to dusk or stop humans from loving or hating or smiling or killing, a scientist has changed the world but this can never be. While Marx glibly embarked on the communist ideology of wiping away what is capitalistic in man, he did not realise that humans are capitalists by nature and none can change the world.   Every age is modern in itself, the question of the primitive is a mirage.

Otherwise, the philosophers and the scientists are interpreting what the world is laid with ab initio.  The philosophers and the scientists have interpreted the world in several ways but none has changed it.

Premise 2: ‘ when reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of knowledge loses its medium of existence.’( the German Ideology).

Even after Marx’s death, some philosophers refuted this premise, loading its claim on the isolated fields such as psychology and sociology, not philosophy, but this is like escaping an arrow of an argument through an excuse.  In fact, Hegel and other idealists might have suffered from this ‘lethal’ blow.

Using the former linguistic approach, the two significant words in the premise are ‘reality’ and ‘philosophy’, where ‘reality’ is science and ‘philosophy’ is simply philosophy.  It could be deduced from Marx’s perspective that while science operates in the ‘reality’ that could be felt, touched, seen, ridden, talked on, toyed with, as evident in the hitherto world of technology, ‘philosophy’ operates as a mere circumlocution of words and gratuitous questioning of loafers whiling away their worries in the spasm of contemplation. 

If I may take Marx by his word ‘change’ in the Eleven Theses on Feuerbach , then ‘reality’ in The German Ideology is a misnomer because reality does not change.  The world of reality is the world of absolute stasis and immutability.  It is spurious to argue that the world that is capable of metamorphosis is a real world.  It is a mirage.  What is so real in the chameleon-like world where books are made from wood and jewellery are made from diamond and age succeeds age and seasons succeed seasons and all are manoeuvred by the bogus tricks of a magic wand?  The world so real is the world so fabricated and so distinct where there is no conversion made of another.  There is no ‘modern’ or ‘primitive’ or ‘old structure’ or ‘new structure’ or ‘obsolete’ or ‘fashionable’ in the world that is capable of reality.  The real world is the world of no invention or interpretation or discovery or advanced learning.  The world of reality is timelessly perfect and ideal.

   Ergo, if science’s vision is to this world, science is not real as the world unreal is.  While philosophy busies itself interpreting the labyrinth of the world, science and technology metamorphose with the world to die with it.  For if technology and science are set at perdition as evident in this world of apocalypse, annihilated by the incineration or washed away by the torrent of Armageddon, philosophy lives to tell the story of the flood and the conflagration that melted the world and its science into an extinction: the philosophy of judgement and the philosophy of Paradise which are ethereal.  Yet, philosophy occupies two posts, first, the corporeal, second, the spiritual, but science cannot operate beyond the corporeal. 

Premise 3: that philosophy is the symptom of the malaise of the society that is yet to realise itself until science places it on a firmer foundation.

The above premise is a paraphrase of some statements made by some Marxists.  It advocates the necessity of science and technology as the Messiah in the rescue of the sickening world besieged by the malaise of philosophy.  A significant word here is ‘malaise’ which is now the bone of contention.  However, philosophy ergo is the chiaroscuro of the hitherto beleaguered world of ‘demonology’.  How I wish Marx had been given a permit from where he is to witness his dream marred in the present world deluded by the malaise of science and technology.  It is however ironical that the erstwhile sick world sustained by science in the thought of Marx is being entrapped by more severe sickness incurred by its former Messiah.  And the Messiah of the hitherto sick world is philosophy, its former sickness.  Even the world was never sick as Marx claimed in his time but was beleaguered by the lost of philosophy thus wading in deserts of uncertainty.

The 20^TH and the 21^st centuries humans have been incarcerated by sports, entertainments, fashion: the symptoms of sickness incurred by the material science.  What seems the dryness of thought, philosophy and loftiness in the reasoning of the perilous humans of perilous time is the malaise of science and technology, the co-workers of material consciousness. Even the dwindling political might of the somnolent world is a symptom of the soporific and restive injections of sports, entertainment and fashion which can only be mitigated by philosophy.  Also, the seeming collapse of the world hangs on the gallows of the above routines on which the inert generation receives its serpentine deathblows.

That philosophy changes with the strides of time or that philosophy changes with the changes in the material consciousness of the people which could be argued that entertainment and fashion are the philosophy of the 20^th and 21^st centuries is false.  Such ‘philosophy’ changing with the course of time, casting ‘mythical’ the ideals of the past is not a philosophy but a mere belief capable of being eroded by the torrents of time.  Philosophy is eternal, so metaphysics, philosophy is philosophical, not profane.

The world that flouts philosophy tends towards barbarism, cannibalism and demonology; not barbarism in the primordial or cannibalism in the primitive or demonology in the coven, but barbarism in sophistication, cannibalism in massacre and deployment of incendiaries and demonology in politics.  Ergo, it is within the corpus of philosophy that the world spitting its source could be realised.

Olayiwola.O.Metamofosis       

LITERARY INSPIRATION: BY SPIRITUS MUNDI[1] OR BY MUSE[2]?

(In celebration of the literary imagination)

Kayode Taiwo Olla

The mystery of the power of creativity in literature (and even in art and music) will, I daresay, forever remain (at least, in part) an inscrutable marvelous aspect of the arts to the judgment of the rational mind. However, as John Keats (1795 – 1821), one of the greatest proponents of English Romanticism which privileges emotion and imagination over reason – as he wrote: ‘I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination’; I may therefore presume with a methodological skeptical position, that despite the inexplicable nature of the question of the creative impulse in literature, the mind of man may still grasp or at least appreciate the marvelous power of inspiration. I shall take an especial mention on the Romantic poets in this essay; or in other sense, look on this question using the Romantics as a case study, for in my own opinion, Romantic imagination presents the best example of imaginative creativity possible.

            Irish novelist and songwriter Samuel Lover (1797 – 1868) said in Andy Anny: ‘When once the itch of literature comes over man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen.’  Often times have creative writers been asked, ‘How did you write this?’ My sincerest answer to questions like these when I am asked as one (and, I could tell, are so many other literary writers’) is: ‘I don’t know! Dear, I don’t know!’ Someone else may say, ‘Teach me how to write?’ But how could I best teach him/her that it cannot ‘be taught’? Now if then this inspiration is in some way intrinsic, can man not comprehend how it came by? Inspiration in literature – is it a marvelous working of spiritus mundi (‘the human spirit’); or of a divine spirit, say a god or God?

            To aptly delineate the concept of inspiration in literature is too tedious a task and the topic too controversial, to have a definite result. In my own view, creative imagination naturally involves an awesome working interplay of man’s high faculties, taking in the miraculous workings of perception (the senses), reception (the spiritus), conception (the mind) and artistic ability – and the height of the literariness of the resultant work is left a function of the writer’s level of competence and mastery through experience. However, with some extremists inspiration sometimes transcends the workings of the body system into an unanalyzable psychological or mystical realm.

            The following statement was attributed to U.S. rock singer and songwriter Jim Morrison (1943 – 1971): ‘These first songs I wrote, I was just taking notes at a fantastic rock theatre that was going on inside my head.’ To analyze the processes of the inspiration, then, we must have to, perhaps, take an empirical test of the electronic activities going on in his head at the time! True, we can; possibly through such medical-scientific processes as neuroimaging. Then perhaps, we might only catch a glimpse into the inscrutable sublime of that ‘fantastic rock theatre… inside my head’! On the other hand, Charles Brown, a friend with whom John Keats was living when he composed his poem ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, [only] had this to say about Keats’ own composition of the ode:

In the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built her nest near my house. Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table to the grass-plot under a plum-tree, where he sat for two or three hours. When he came into the house, I perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand, and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic feeling on the song of our nightingale.

Thus, the nightingale was an inspiration for the poem, I can safely say, and by gazing at its nest Keats’ creative impulse flowed into writing; but then, the process that went on in his head penning that impulse into poetic lines, how can you comprehend? The natural environment thus worked with the genius of the poet to produce the great ‘Ode to a Nightingale’! At this point, I can safely designate his inspiration, based on this discourse, as sheer working of the spiritus mundi, as opposed to being aided in his fantasy by hemlock, alcohol or any stimulating liquor, as did many poets in the Romantic era; for he himself says – addressing the nightingale:

Away! Away! For I will fly to thee

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards

But on the viewless wings of poesy.

However, extremists do go beyond to compose under the influence of mind-bending substances such as drugs. P.B. Shelley (1792 – 1822), one of the leading poets of Romanticism, did compose, at least, some of his poems under the influence of such mind-bending substances as hemlock. The disadvantageous effect of this on him is not a point to analyze here, you know what drug addiction does! Now, in this case, I presume that a psycho-neurotic approach will delineate or analyze the inspiration of the psychedelic literature, art or music. The spiritus mundi here does not function in its normal state and the inspiration is not natural but hallucinatory.

Moreover, ancient Greek poets believed that they were inspired by Muse, a goddess of poetry. (Muses, nine, were the daughters of the god Zeus in Greek mythology, each         muse believed to preside over a particular art.) For instance, Homer’s great epic ILLIAD, that recounts the legend of the Trojan War, began thus:

‘Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles’ Peleus’ son, the ruinous war that brought on the Achaians woes innumerable….’

Now, how realistic the Muse’s inspiration power by which the classical poets claim to write was, might be argued by skeptics and even be discounted by scientists. However, in my opinion, the poets actually created under the powers of those spirits, whether termed mystical or real; for they did worship and conjured such black powers. On the other hand, Neoclassical poets who patterned their works after ancient Greek and Roman Classism, did not necessarily imitate the worship of the classical Muses, but did make reference to, pay homage to, or even conjured them. William Shakespeare (1654 – 1616), for instance, makes mention on many occasion as of being inspired by Muse in his love Sonnets. For instance, in ‘Sonnet LXXXV’:

My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,              

While comments of your praise richly compil’d,
Reserve their character with golden quill,
And precious phrase by all the Muses fil’d.

Whether he only wanted to pattern his work after the Classics or he is actually inspired by them, might be for some other critical analyst to search out and probe. But I daresay he was merely imitating the tradition of Classical literature, as did also many other Neoclassicists. William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850), one of the most influential proponents of English Romanticism and whose theories and style created the literary tradition, did not only get inspiration from nature but sees Nature as god, whereas Keats, his contemporary, did not subscribe to this doctrine.

            However, John Milton (1608 – 1674), a contemporary of Shakespeare, in his poem ‘On the Incarnation Morning’, celebrating the Virgin birth of Christ, prays to the Holy Spirit of God and asks this ‘Heavenly Muse’ to give him lines for this Holy God born on this Christmas morning. He chose to call, or have, the Holy Spirit as his ‘Muse’.

            Ergo, my summation is: every good literary writer in literature must have got at least some little measure of an intrinsic capability of literary imagination; two, each literary writer chooses what inspiration flows through him/her or what spirit he/she allows to rule his/her creative mind. And as literary writer myself, this is my submission: ‘There is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty gives [me] understanding’ (The Bible, Job 32: 8) – for I can only speak for myself!

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[1] SPIRITUS MUNDI – Human spirit

[2] MUSE – Not only used in its denotative sense of a Greek goddess of poetry, but also in its connotative, of a spirit/Spirit that inspires a writer.