POETIC METAPHOR IN CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO’S LABYRINTHS

Abstract

This research studies the poetry of Christopher Okigbo as collected in the book Labyrinths. It aims at doing a text based explanation of the collection so that any understanding made of the poems in the collection point to the text and not outside of it. Paul Ricoeur’s theory of depth semantics is adopted in reading the poems as this is concerned with the study of literary works as objects in themselves projecting a world of their own, what Ricoeur calls ‘the world of the text.’

Chapter One

1.1 Background of Study

Although Christopher Okigbo’s Labyrinths has been widely acclaimed, it is still considered difficult. This is with good reason. Its being is language, a sort of language that is not the same as that the everyday language user has a mastery of, even though it takes off from the same; the language which we shall call with Michel Foucault ‘a particular language whose peculiar mode of being is literary’ (The Order of Things 326). This language is by nature symbolic, often requiring more than merely considering the literal meaning of words. Evidently, this task of reading beyond the literal meaning of words proves to be, for many readers of Labyrinths, a difficult if not impossible task. This perhaps accounts for the almost general fear of the text so that few students of literature want to undertake an examination of it. It is not overstating the fact to say that there is a legendary fear of Labyrinths and indeed poetry among students of literature. An enquiry into the nature of this language and how it sets Labyrinths apart as poetry is therefore not only appropriate but necessary.

Studies abound on Christopher Okigbo’s Labyrinths, as is expected of any book of such worth. Most of such studies however, have centred on function ―what Labyrinths is about, what it aims at achieving sociologically, what themes particular poems in the collection unravel, what messages they send across by means of those themes. Investigation into meaning in Labyrinths often tends to want to reach the mind of the poet and draw out what he means to say, or has carefully concealed in a figurative language. This in fact, seems to have been the general trend of criticism, especially in Africa. Hence, Udenta O. Udenta

writes: ‘one way of introducing our subject is to ask the all necessary (italics added)

question: what do modern African poets write about?’ His answer:

Modern African poets as the purveyors of this socio-aesthetic consciousness, thus write about those things which are meaningful to the African, both as a private individual and as a member of a social community: his passions and his desires, his great aspirations and social affirmations, the character and structure of the polity, freedom,  justice  and  social  change  (Art,  Ideology  and  Social  Commitment  in African Poetry (A Discourse, ix).

Obviously, this is poetry with a purpose, an aim, and a sociological one. Udenta’s words sum up much of what is available to us, by way of criticism, in the study of Labyrinths. Our study toes a different path. It aims at finding meaning in the poems under consideration of course, but this meaning, instead of representing what might be in the mind of the poet at the moment of writing or what the poet aims to send out as a message to an ailing society, is realized in what we shall call with Benveniste meaning at ‘the instance of discourse’ (qtd. in Ricoeur 71).   Paul Ricoeur has explained this to mean that it  is ‘always in a particular utterance…that the sedimented history of assembled meanings can be recovered in a new semantic aim,’ (The Rule of Metaphor 353) a ‘semantic aim’ here being the meaning that seeks to emerge from a given poetic utterance. In other words, meaning in the literary work is not ‘behind the text, as a hidden intention would be, but in front of it, as that which the work unfolds, discovers, reveals’ (Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences

143). According to Ricoeur, we understand ‘in front of the text’ when we ‘expose ourselves to the text  and receive  from it  an enlarged self’ (142). That  it,  when we,  instead of

‘imposing upon the text our finite capacity of understanding’ allow ourselves to be led by it into its world. Our object is the poem itself, and our investigation is strictly into its world.

1.2 Statement of Problem

As noted above, majority of the studies in Labyrinths see the text as representing or standing for something outside the text. The consequence is an almost if not total absence of a study of Labyrinths as poetry. This is the problem that this research confronts. It focuses on the text itself as a work of arts with a particular interest in poetic metaphor in the text.

1.3 Aims and Objectives

The aims and objectives of this study are as follows:

                                         To confront the poetry of Christopher Okigbo in the book

Labyrinths.

                                              To  apply  the  distinction  between  the  conventional  or common understanding of metaphor and poetic  metaphor to Labyrinths. This study presupposes that poetic metaphor is essential to poetry.

                                              To focus particularly on poetic metaphor in the collection under  study  with  the  goal  of  achieving  a  text  based  understanding  of  the collection.

                                              To avoid pointing the text back to a social world outside of it.

                                              To apprehend the world of the text by paying attention to the elements that make up the text.

                                              To carry out an extensive reading of works previously done on Labyrinths.

1.4 Significance

This study adds to the wealth of research that has already been carried out in the study of Christopher Okigbo’s Labyrinths. It is of particular significance because it toes the path of depth semantics in its analysis, which presupposes rigorous and close-reading of text in order to lay bare the movement of meaning in the text. This is not a common approach in the study of meaning in poetry. As Paul Ricoeur observes,

The general tendency of literary…criticism since the nineteenth century has been to link the content of literary works…to the social conditions of the communities in which these works were produced or to which they were directed. To explain a text was essentially to consider it as the expression of certain socio-cultural needs and as a response to certain perplexities localized in space and time’ (183-184).

This critical dimension continues to be main stream in the discourse of poetry particularly among African literary scholars. It is therefore important to undertake a description of a work  of  literature  as  primarily  a  literary object.  To  that  effect,  this  study  examines Labyrinths as primarily a work of literature and not a mirror into the life and experiences of the author or his society.

1.5 Scope of Study

The primary text in this study is Christopher Okigbo’s poetry collection Labyrinths. This is the focus of the analysis. Still, reference will be made to other texts where necessary.  As Macherey has said, ‘a book never arrives unaccompanied’ (qtd. in Akwanya 165). The implication is that a literary text often takes its root or model from works prior to it. The study therefore recognizes the belongingness of the text to a literary tradition and readily draws attention to such echoes. It pursues an explication of the collection chosen with the goal of unravelling the intricate weave of language to form sense in the text. We have noted that poetry is symbolic by virtue of its being rooted in a language that according to Paul Ricoeur is referential. This study considers how Labyrinths fairs really as poetry. It gives particular attention to its figurality and how this quality leads us into the ‘possible world’ which, according to Ricoeur, the text projects.

Paul Ricoeur’s concept of depth semantics is the framework for this inquiry. The concept of depth semantics operates at two important levels: explanation and interpretation. As Akwanya explains, explanation is ‘concerned with working out the “sense” of the text, namely, what the text says, “the immanent pattern of discourse” (Semantics and Discourse

254). This “sense” is not a construction already parcelled into the text for the reader to pick up; otherwise every text would have only one sense. It is instead, ‘what the reader makes it out to be. No one can know what it is in itself. For this reason, the meanings made of texts will differ’ (255).

Interpretation on the other hand is a guess, the guess we make of what a text purports to be. Another way to put this is to say that it is the meaning we perceive in a text. Since the language of the text  is  metaphorical or figurative, we are aware already of layers of meaning. And so we appropriate, we think that the text is about so and so. It is this guess

that we make that Paul Ricoeur calls ‘possible world.’ ‘Interpretation thus becomes the apprehension of the proposed worlds which are opened-up by the non-ostensive references of the text’ (Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences 177). It is important to note however, that this proposed world which is the sense of the text is not born from anywhere outside the text, or just whatever the reader thinks it is. We do not arrive at an interpretation on our own, in isolation. It is the elements in the text that point to the meaning by means of disclosure. The work ‘unfolds’ its world before the reader. Hence, ‘interpretation is a construction: a construct derived from the text, which is itself a construct’ (259). The task of this study will involve revealing, by way of close-reading of the poems, the ‘possible worlds’ projected in the text.

1.6 Limitations

A major challenge encountered in the course of this research is that of availability of research material. For instance, it took several months and several journeys to find a copy of our primary text Labyrinths as none of the bookshops in Enugu had even if an old copy of the text. Even the shops in the big cities where one often expected to find such important material did not have copies. Still, with patient perseverance fuelled by a strong desire to carry out this research, the text was located. Similarly, important and renowned critical works on Christopher Okigbo’s Labyrinths were difficult and in some cases impossible to find. The famous work Critical Perspectives on Christopher Okigbo edited by Donatus Nwoga for instance could not be used for this research despite all efforts made to get the text even if from an international bookshop. It was only with the help of a lecturer that the book  Christopher  Okigbo:  Creative  Rhetoric  written  by  Sunday  Anozie  was  made available for this research.

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