Oneybuchi James Ile (Ph.D)
Department of English Language and Literature,
Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka
Email: oj.ile@unizik.edu.ng/ileonyebuchijames@gmail.com
&
Solomon Osekene, Ph.D
Department of English Language and Literature,
Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka
Email: sosekene@gmail.com
Title of the Book: The Heresiad
Author: lkeogu Oke
Reviewer: Onyebuchi James Ile & Solomon Osekene
Publishers: Kraftgriots (Bookcraft Limited)
Year: 2017
Pages: 116
Genre: Operatic Poetry in Epic form
ISBN: 978-9789184149
Abstract
The intellectual in every society is a man or woman that carries the burden of society. He or she works as society’s watch dog and works to beat society into the line of the ideal. For this he or she gets into trouble sometimes. His or her commitment to the cause in times of trouble makes him or her conscience of society. The aim of this paper was to examine Ikeogu’s Heresiad to see if it is possible to understand the essential quality of reason or the intellect as well as the essential quality of faith or religion. The review further aimed at examining the burden of commitment by the intellectual, who acts as watch dog of society. Keywords: Allegory, Commitment, Intellectual, Burden, Society
Introduction
Heresiad is, in our opinion, the best poetic piece out of Africa. It is an epic poem, allegorical in nature, that tells the story of a Monarch, Faith, who is angered by some of the contents of a book written by a man of intellect and writer, Zumba. From his subterranean kingdom he dispatches his subjects, Doom, Avenger, Sword, Machete and Axe to hunt down Zumba who goes into hiding. And from his hiding place he sends pleas to Faith, the Monarch to be lenient with him. He also implores Reason to intercede on his behalf. Eventually Faith, the Monarch, decides to temper justice with mercy and forgive Zumba, who is already compromising his position, for he cries to the Monarch:
The contour of his worries thus surveyed,
Our author, Zumba, bent his knees and prayed:
‘Gracious monarch, please don’t take my life.
Spare a thought for Mercy –that’s my wife –
And our children who, without a crime,
May lose their father long before their prime.
I mean to right my wrong from word to word
And keep your favour as my king and lord. (21)
The Poet uses allegory to tell the story of the dangers of religious fundamentalism. He makes us see how religious extremism rules the world through the allegorical character, Faith, who abhors the works of intellect, which allows for reason or commonsense. The intellect questions and throws light into things religious beliefs may want to explain away in faith. In other words, it subverts religion. Faith, the monarch, which symbolizes religion, sends his subjects to hunt down Zuma, an author accused of heresy. His subjects are Doom, Avenger, Machete, Axe and Sword. These subjects characterize the nature of religion: it is usually propagated through fear and sometimes intimidation. People are told the stories of hell fire; sometimes converts are won through bloodshed. Most often blind faith is encouraged.
The poem follows the ancient tradition of epic poetry such as Illiad and Aeneid by Homer but tells a uniquely different tale which resonates with peoples of all cultures. The fact that in the end reason prevailed goes to show the importance of that special faculty in the human being. The Poet uses certain qualities of character to determine the essential nature of Reason which Immanuel Kant himself has tried to understand in his Critique of Pure Reason. For Kant, as Kaufmann and Baird put it, the mind has categories “such as causality and substance that unify our perceptions. These categories are not found in sense experiences; they are innate structures of the mind and necessary conditions for having any knowledge at all” (762). Furthermore, they argue that the knowledge Kant means is the knowledge of things as we experience them in the material world of events –what Kant terms “the phenomenal world.” However, the way things really are, independent of our experience of them –that is, the “noumenal world” of “things-in-themselves is not available to us through pure reason (762).
Discourse
The Monarch, Faith, as we see it in Heresiad symbolizes religion. Essentially, reason is not an essential quality of religion. It thrives on fear, hope and faith. It was the Renaissance and Reformation that activated reason, an essential human quality. However, rationalism, knowledge and culture have always existed during the Greek classical period until it was lost “in the barbarous centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, usually dated from the fifth century AD” (Johnson, 4). With rebirth, Europe showed keen interest in the glories of the past. Johnson, however, argues that “cultural rebirths, major and minor, are a common occurrence in history. Most generations, of all human societies, have a propensity to look back on golden ages and seek to restore them” (4). In the Heresiad, we are told by one of Faiths subjects that,
“The man,” they say, “has once again blasphemed.”
And must we bear “our Holy Writ defamed”?
Who “profanes our faith” is bound to die;
And who can boast the guts to question why,
Or wag a cynic’s tongue to sow the seed,
The seed of doubt, in something long decreed (29)
This already indicates fundamentalism. Also in the novel, Born a Tuesday by the Nigerian writer, Elnathan John, we can see how religious fundamentalism plays out. For example, in the novel a certain Imam of the mosque tells his congregation that ‘this country is a slave to Jews and their usury … this is why the West pushes our leaders to make laws that force us to go to Western schools at an early age, so that they can teach our children that this system of the Jews is the best and by the time they learn otherwise it is too late’ (John, 30). This is how religion encourages fundamentalism. According to Pesso-Miquel and Stierstorfer (eds.), fundamentalism “refers to an attitude encouraging a return to the fundamental or founding texts of a religion, often read with a strict literalness that leaves no margin for interpretation and evolution” (vii).
Fundamentalists always have very rigid positions towards other kinds of religious beliefs and even exhibit hostility to progressive, secular and modern thoughts. According to Winter and Hasan extremism is “a rejection of ‘balance’, and an application of a single ideological perspective to all elements of an individual’s life with, importantly, a fervent disdain for alternative ideological perspectives” (669). In their view, fundamentalism “should be redefined simply in term of faith, as the reading of scripture without reference to normative religious and historical context” (674). In fact, it is the human intellect that paves the way for progressive, secular and modern thoughts: it prompts interpretation; and the aim of interpretation is to generate a multiplicity of perspectives to understanding things so that no one opinion legislates knowledge, which is what religion tries to achieve: to legislate understanding of spiritual matters; for as the character Axe in Heresiad says,
But let’s rely on what our cleric say,
And learn to keep our nagging doubts at bay.
“The man,” they say, “has once again blasphemed.”
And must we bear “our Holy Writ defamed”?
Who “profanes our faith” is bound to die; (29)
Therefore, the poet involves the intellect in the writer Zumba; and intellect is friends always with reason. As the poets says in Heresiad,
And Reason paused to rouse the five’s acclaim,
And, pointing down and earthward, ordered them:
‘Now, descend and thwart the rising five
Who go as one to take our friend alive,
And then invoke their worse-than-fatal curse
To crush his soul –whose sole resort is us. (37)
Conclusion
Reason, in deciding to intercede on behalf of Zumba, the writer, also dispatches his faithful subjects to persuade Faith and his faithful to listen to the voice of reason. Reason’s faithful subjects are Bluff, the gutsy, Stone, Panther, Smithy and Care. The poet, through this allegoric characterization, implies that Reason is so characterized. For example, the zealous Stone says so of himself: /‘Mine is not a heart to shrink from war/Or flinch before a running stream of gore/Nor do I house a squeamish heart in me/That’ll survey the clash ahead and flee./Mine’s a heart well-seasoned to succeed/ At the task our king has just decreed,/The task to go and battle with their side,/ Who seem to deem us asses for their ride.’ (38) From what Stone has said, we see that the intellect which always deploys reason is a demonstration of courage to dare, to question and to have a different opinion. That courage to interrogate things is seen in the nature of Bluff. For we are always ready to call the bluff of things when we dare to interrogate them; for as Bluff, the gutsy says, /“It’s the will –the winner in all things–/That makes us slaves of fate or makes us kings/It’s the weak that whimsy luck deters;/The Strong defy the verdict of the stars./The ablest sailor tames the wildest wave;/Fortune yields her bounties to the brave.…”/ (41)
Works Cited
Elnathan, John. Born on a Tuesday. Abuja: Cassava Republic Press, 2015
John, Paul. The Renaissance. London: Phoenix Press, 2000
Kaufmann, Walter and Baird, Forrest E. From Plato to Nietzsche. New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1994
Oke, Ikeogu. Heresiad. Ibadan: Kraft Books Limited, 2017
Pesso-Miquel, C and Stierstorfer, Klaus. Burning Books: Negotiations between
Fundamentalism and Literature. Brooklyn: AMS Press, Inc, 2012
Winter, C and Hasan U. The Balanced Nation: Islam and the Challenges of Extremism,
Fundamentalism, Islamism and Jihadism. Journal Commonwealth Literature
Vol. (44):667-688, (2016)
