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Myth and Symbol in Kofi Awoonor’s Poetic Art.

An aspect of Kofi Awoonor’s verse that has not yet received critical attention, perhaps because it
has not been explored, is his extensive employment of myth and symbol to develop his themes of death,
religion, and the conflict of cultures.

Collectively, all of these constitute the subject matter which this essay seeks to address. Awoonor is a
formidable poet who, at each and every turn, develops his themes through the employment of
appropriate aesthetic devices. This essay discusses the way he employs myth and symbol to develop his
three major themes – that is, death, religion, and culture conflict – not only because they shed
significant light on his poetic discourse, but because they illuminate and elucidate his work. By myth, I
mean the employment of images and metaphors and traditional African beliefs which are not
immediately apparent or identifiable to the ordinary reader of a work of art. My discussion takes into
consideration what Claude Levi-Straus characterizes as “the myths within each culture as signifying
systems whose true meanings are unknown to their true proponents.”1 By symbol, I mean the
employment of images which by and large take on a larger poetic significance than in ordinarily
imagined or contemplated by the audience or the reader of the poetic artifact.

The theme of death features prominently in Awoonor’s “Songs of Sorrow” and “Song of War.” Of
course the word “Sorrow” emanates from any instance of death or from any human or natural
misfortune or disaster. Similarly the word “death” conjures images of sorrow. In the poem, “Songs of
Sorrow,” Awoonor discusses the phenomenon of death from diverse perspectives.
Firstly, he discusses death from a philosophical point of view: when the incidence of death occurs,
humans are, by nature, sad or sorrowful. Death, he says, “has led me among the sharps of the
forest/Returning is not possible/And going forward is not possible.”2 Still speaking in philosophical
terms, the poet goes on to describe the permanent and irreversible nature of death on the poem’s
persona and on humanity in general:

...................

The affairs of this world are like the chameleon’s faces Into which I have stepped

When I clean it cannot go

I am on the world’s extreme corner,

I am not sitting in the row with the eminent

But those who are lucky

Sit in the middle and forget

I am on the world’s extreme corner

I can only go beyond and forget.

(MPA, p. 98)
Secondly, death is also viewed in physical and concrete human terms. Apparently, the death of
some local chiefs is being mourned in the poem. According to D.I. Nwoga, the names of “Nyidevu,”
“Kpeti,” and “Kove,” mentioned in line 48 of the poem, represent the dead “ancestors of the clan;”
while “Kpeti,” who is cited in line 35 of the poem, is “the founder of the clan.”3 By mentioning these
dead ancestors in the poem, Awoonor not only seeks to give credence to his work, he also wants to
document the source of his unmitigating sorrow. Finally, Awoonor views
death from an imagined poetic construct, for example: the fear that death evokes grief on the
psychological human mind; the fact that death is a reality that cannot be circumvented or wished away
easily; the emotional and devasting effects it has on the loved ones who are being left behind; and the
challenges involved with death, such as the performance of rituals and burial ceremonies and their
associated costs. In this poem, Awoonor alludes to the myth which childlessness causes in the
indigenous African culture: for example, victims of childlessness may suffer the disgrace and ignominy
associated with such misfortune.

Something has happened to me The things so great that I cannot

weep;

I have no sons to fire the gun when I die And no daughters to wail when I close my
mouth

I have wandered on the wilderness. The great wilderness men call life

The rain has beaten me,

And the sharp stumps cut as keen as knives

I shall go beyond and rest.

I have not kin and no brother

Death has made war upon our house. (MPA, p. 99).

In the passage above, Awoonor employs powerful symbols germane in the African traditional culture in
order to drive home his message. They include “sons” and “daughters” “kin” and “brother;” these
symbols connote good family relationships, and anyone without them is viewed as unfortunate or
doomed or cursed by fate and the gods. Similarly, the images “stumps,” “knives,” the “great wilderness”
and “death” are powerful symbols which are here employed to characterize a life devoid of hope and
meaning. Towards the end of the poem, negative images which translate into powerful symbols (e.g.,
“snake,” the “crow,” the “vultures,” the “termites,” and the “broken fences”) are employed to
counterbalance positive symbols e.g., the “offspring,” the “trees,” and the “fence” – all of which
highlight the poet’s consummate aesthetic skill. Earlier on, in the first quoted passage above, Awoonor
employs the image, “chameleon faeces,” to symbolize the state of hopelessness which death wroughts
on its victims. Without the employment of the above symbols, Awoonor’s subject matter would have
lost much of vital rhetorical effect. If we look closely at the poem, “Song of War,” we also discover that
Awoonor treats the theme of death from diverse aesthetic perspectives. In the first place, death is
visualized in human terms, in terms of human loss and devastation. The death which is described in this
poem is the one precipitated by war, by the colonialists who, in their mad ambition to conquer and
exploit others, waged incessant wars upon unarmed local population, usually with sophisticated
weapons and their devastating effects:

I shall sleep in white calico; War has come upon the sons of men And I
shall sleep in calico Let the boys go forward, Kpli and
his people should go forward; Let the white man’s guns boom, We are
marching forward; We all shall sleep in calico

...................... .. Where has it been heard before That a

snake has bitten a child In front of its own mother; The war is
upon us It is within our very huts And the sons of men
shall fight it Let the white man’s guns boom And its smoke cover us
We are fighting them to die.

(MPA, p. 100)

War precipitates death, especially death that is imminent and where the invaders possess more
military weapons than the unarmed local population. Here, in this poem, Awoonor projects a
psychological state of death. Although there are no sounds and echoes of actual war being waged, the
audience can imagine that, other than the speaker in the poem, the local population is psychologically
dying from an imagined onslaught of the white man’s physical and psychological warfare.
True, war has its psychological effects, perhaps more devastating than death itself. Iniobong I. Uko,
commenting on the negative consequences if the Nigerian/Biafran War, writes:

It is around 40 years now since the civil war in Nigeria ended, yet its ugly scars on the Nigerian mind and
soul remains visible and glaring. The defective healing process of the wounds on the Nigerian psyche
from the war has resulted in an extensive gulf before the people of the defunct Biafra and Nigeria, the
two parties in the war that lasted from 1967 to 1970 and the implications of the war are manifested in
diverse ways and degrees in the contemporary Nigerian body politic.4

The images which translate into poetic symbols which Awoonor employs in “Song of War,” in order
to develop the poem’s subject matter, are the “white calico” and the “snake.” The “white calico” is a
coarse cotton cloth made by the indigenous African natives who often used it to wrap a dead corpse
before its burial. As a metaphor the expression, “white calico” symbolizes death, as is the word “snake.”
The constant repetition of the expression, “I shall sleep in which calico,” suggests the imminence of
death and the persona’s desire to be consumed by it.
Finally, mention must be made about the symbolism inherent in the word “Song,” which highlights
the lyrics, “Songs of Sorrow” and “Song of War.” For Awoonor, the word symbolizes death or other
“calamitous occurrence” in the Ewe traditional culture. He explains:

The song in the Ewe tradition is structurally the poem. Incantations, chants, salutations, and praise
names are part of the same poetic conception. Its essential features are revealed in the statement,
allusion, imagery, created through simile or metaphor, and repetition. The statement is generally about
an event, a death or any calamitous occurrence that strikes the poet as important to be worthy of song.
Allusion is employed… from which the poet draws his imagistic or symbolic reference5

II

If we turn now to Awoonor’s treatment of the theme of religion, we soon find the degree to which
he penetrates the indigenous African religion vis-à-vis Christianity. If we start with Christianity, Professor
R.N. Egudu’s description of the Christian missionaries’ motives would be a starting point. He explains:

. . . the early Christian missionaries came to Africa not to sow the mustard seed of the Kingdom of God in
the African cultural soil, but rather to sow the ‘fireseed’ which would burn up the ‘grasses’ of African
cultures. And in order to ensure that this unholy act against the cultures was accomplished, the agents
of Christianity, incarnated in birds of prey, the eagles, invaded the habitat of the ‘Sunbird’ and the
‘twingods’ who constitute the bedrock of these cultures.6

Awoonor’s religious poems include “The Cathedral,” “Easter Dawn” and “The Weaverbird.”
Awoonor and David Diop are perhaps the most satirical and scurrilous among the African poets who
employ the theme of religion to denounce and repudiate Western colonialism and culture. For example,
while Gabriel Okara employs mellow imagery like the “piano” to characterize Western civilization (e.g.,
in “Piano and Drums”) Awoonor employs scatological imagery like the “excrement” to describe it (e.g.,
in “The Weaver Bird”).

The weaver bird built in our house

And laid its eggs on our only tree We did not want to send it away We watched
the building of the nest And supervised the egg-laying. And the weaver
returned in the guise of the owner Preaching salvation to us that owned the house They say it came
from the west Where the storms at sea had felled the gulls And the fishes dried their nets
by latern lights Its sermon is the divination of ourselves And our new horizons limit at its
nest But we cannot join the prayers and answers of the communicants. We
look for new homes every day, For new altars we strive to rebuild The old shrines
defiled by the weaver’s excrement.

(MPA, p. 102)

The religious images in the quoted poem above include “Preaching salvation,” “prayers,”
“divination” and “communicants.” These images are frequently employed by Christian priests and their
followers. In this poem, Awoonor discusses the act of ingratitude displayed before our very eyes by the
colonialists who, after being offered a temporary place to stay as tenants, now begin to claim ownership
of the entire household. The European colonialists came to Africa as explorers and visitors. However,
with the passage of time, they began to display their true nature, denouncing and disparaging the native
people’s religion and culture. They established schools and preached Christianity. Furthermore, they
started to exploit the natural resources of the people. While the poet employs the images of the “tree”
and the “old shrines” to characterize the indigenous African religious culture, he uses the images of the
“weaver bird,” “preaching salvation,” the “prayers,” the “divination,” the “sermon,” the altars,” and the
“communicants” as symbols for the colonialists and the Christianity which they brought along with
them. As a poetic symbol, the “weaver bird” connotes plunder and dirtiness and every other thing that is
evil in the extreme. Furthermore, the employment of the scatological imagery – “excrement” – suggests
Awoonor’s profound disdain and dislike of the Western colonialists and the Christianity which they
bequeathed to the indigenous population. It will be recalled that the poet changed his name from
George Awoonor-Williams to Kofi Awoonor, apparently to demonstrate his repudiation of Christianity
and Western civilization.

There is a sense of the employment of myth as suggested by the weaver bird’s behavior. In the
traditional African context, there is the myth that the human mind is so deep and mysterious – so much
so that we cannot predict its ultimate behavior because it is subject to change at any instance. The
behavior of the weaver bird, and consequently the colonialists’ attitude, is Awoonor’s reminder of this
African mythos. Awoonor’s “The Weaver Bird” demonstrates the poet’s serious indictment of
the Western civilization. The lyric, “The Cathedral,” equally shows the poet’s reprobation of the Western
civilization and culture:

On this dirty patch

A tree once stood shedding incense on the infant corn: its boughs
stretched across a heaven brightened by the last fires of a tribe. They sent surveyors
and builders who cut that tree planting in its place

A huge senseless cathedral of doom.

(SAP, p. 209)

In this poem, Christianity is symbolized by the phrase a “huge senseless cathedral of doom.” The “tree,”
with its “incense on the infant corn” and the “fires of a tribe” are employed as symbols of the virile
African religious culture. The “surveyors and builders,” agents of Western colonialism, symbolize
everything that is ugly, destructive and ungodly. The contrast which Awoonor employs in this poem, as
in “The Weaver Bird,” not only suggests his cynicism and disappointment about Western civilization but
demonstrates his effective handling of poetic style. The “dirty patch,” to which Awoonor
alludes in the first line of the poem, is important: it symbolizes the legacy of the colonialists, indeed the
entire corpus of the Western religious evangelism. The employment of the phrase within the first line of
the lyric is deliberate, and suggests Awoonor’s desire to direct its audience’s attention to it and its
consequent nothingness. The images, “excrement” and “dirty patch,” which the poet employs
respectively in “The Weaver Bird” and “The Cathedral,” may not only be seen as companion piece in
their ugliness, but they confer verbal seriousness and virtuoso on Awoonor’s lyricism.
In “Easter Dawn,” Awoonor employs the myth inherent in the word “Easter,” that is, the yearly
celebration of Christ’s death, to dramatize the way the colonialists and their followers lured away the
indigenous Africans from their traditional religions into Christianity:

That man died in Jerusalem And his death demands dawn marchers From year
to year to the sound of bells. The hymns flow through the mornings Heard on Calvary
this dawn.

The gods are crying, my father’s gods are crying for a burial – for a final ritual --

But they that should build the fallen shrines

Have joined the dawn marchers

Singing their way towards Gethsemane

Where the tear drops of agony still freshen, the cactus.

(MAP, p. 103).

For Awoonor, this kind of behavior is senseless and hypocritical: it symbolizes doomsday for the African
society, just as the “cathedral” – the symbol of Christianity – is a serious mistake and a colossal disaster.
The mocking tone explicit in the image, “that man,” suggests Awoonor’s defiance, as well as his strong
inclination to distance or dissociate himself from the scene of the action both emotionally and
spiritually. Further, the constant references to several images and symbols, important in the Christian
orthodoxy – “Jerusalem,” “dawn marchers,” “Calvary,” “Gethsemane,” “Easter Service,” the
“resurrection,” the “hymns,” etc – not only endow Awoonor’s verse with a formidable symbolic
structure but suggest his acute knowledge of his subject matter.

III

The theme of the conflict of cultures is perhaps Awoonor’s dominant subject matter in terms of the
intensity and vehemence with which he approaches it. Furthermore, in treating the subject, Awoonor
demonstrates – unlike Leopold Sedar Senghor, for example – that there can be no room for
reconciliation between Western colonialism and African traditionalism.

Awoonor’s lyrics which treat the theme of culture conflict consist of “We Have Found a New Home,”
and “Harlem on a Winter Night.” All of these poems romanticize Africa and its cultural traditions while
protesting against Western colonialism and its pernicious effects. In the poem, “We Have Found a New
Home,” Awoonor documents, with remarkable sensitivity, the conflict between the indigenous African
tradition and the foreign cultural values symbolized by Western colonialism:
The smart professionals in three piece

Sweating away their humanity in driblets

And wiping the blood from their brow

We have found a new land

The side of eternity

Where our blackness does not matter

And our songs are dying on our lips

Standing at hell-gate you watch those who seek admission

Still the familiar faces that watched and gave you up

As the one who had let the side down,

“Come on, old boy, you cannot dress like that”

And tears well in my eyes for them

Those who want to be seen in the best company

Have abjured the magic of being themselves

And in the new land we have found

The water is drying from the towel

Our songs are dead and we sell them dead to the other side

Reaching for the stars we stop at the house of the Moon

And pause to relearn the wisdom of our fathers.

(SAP, pp. 211-212)

Two categories of people are discussed in this poem: the “smart professionals,” symbolized by the
“three piece” suit; and the indigenous African natives, symbolized by “our songs” and the “wisdom of
our fathers.” For the neo-African elites, who foolishly imitate or copy the Western cultural values, they
themselves find no joy, no rest, and no respite because the European values they imitate say so
(“Sweating away their humanity in driblets/And wiping the blood from their brow”). On the contrary,
the new status, which the African natives find themselves, offers them permanent joy and happiness
(“We have found a new land/This side of eternity/Where our blackness does not matter”).

Awoonor shows quite clearly how brutal and pernicious the European cultural values can be in the
life of the indigenous African people who want to fight in order to protect and preserve their culture
(“our songs are dying on our lips/…and we sell them dead to the other people”). And he demonstrates
how a people – that is, the Africans who seek to preserve their own cultural values with determination
and fortitude – can overcome every obstacle that may stand in their way (“We have found a new land/…
Reaching for the Stars we stop at the house of the Moon/And pause to relearn the wisdom of our
fathers”). The contrast which Awoonor creates in the poem enhances the poem’s dramatic structure.
The poem also gains architectonic effect through the use of repetition “We have found a new land,”
which is first employed in the poem’s title, and is repeated in the fourth line. Also contributing to the
poem’s effectiveness is the note of pathos which is truck by the lines, “Those who want to be seen in the
best company/Have abjured the magic of being themselves” – a satirical allusion to the hypocritical
behavior of the African elites who foolishly imitate the Western ways (as symbolized by their “three
piece” suit). The mythic dimension of the poem is highlighted in the sixth line where the poet alludes to
“our blackness,” which apparently – in the poet’s mind – accounts for the reason why the indigenous
African people are held in derision and subjected to exploitation and abuse by the “luckier races.”
Awoonor may here be alluding to the “myth of blackness,” as symbolic of the crudity and evil, which
lurks in the mind of every typical Western colonizer. For Awoonor, apparently, it is a misleading mythos
which cannot stand the test of time, for, as the poem’s persona defiantly points out, “our blackness does
not matter.” The theme of culture conflict is developed further in the poem, “Harlem on a “Winter
Night.” But it is culture conflict of a different kind. Huddled pavements, dark the lonely wail of a police-
siren moving stealthily across grew alleys of anonymity asking for food either as plasma in hospital jars,
escaping fires in tenement grown cold and bitter or seeking food in community carbage cans to escape
its eternal nightmare. Harlem, the dark dirge of America Heard at evening Mean alleyways of poverty,
Dispossession, early death In jammed doorways and creaking elevators Glaring defeat in the morning
Of this beautiful beautiful America.

(SAP, p. 219)

The culture conflict dramatized in this poem operates at four levels of meaning: from the point of view
of the African visitor, conflicted between his African background, which of course is nameless, and the
Harlem setting of America, populated mostly by blacks, where there are crimes, police sirens, and lowly
humans “seeking food in community garbage cans.” Despite all of this bizarre scenario, however, he is
thrilled by “this beautiful beautiful America.” From the second
level of meaning, we can visualize the grim psychological complex of the African American, conflicted by
his sense of humanity versus the physical reality of his existence, where evil permeates the human
society. For example, he lives in the greatest country of the world, but he must content himself (not by
choice but by the force of circumstance) with “grey alleys of anonymity/…mean alleys of
poverty/dispossession, early death”). The nightmare of his existence is both imaginable and existential.
The third level of meaning is the myth inherent in the vagaries of human existence, where, for example,
the African visitor to Harlem sees all beauty in America, whereas for the African American, “Harlem” is
the “dark dirge of America,” characterized by “Huddled pavements, dark,” “grey alleys of anonymity,”
and “mean alleys of poverty/dispossession, early death.” Furthermore, the symbolism of the word
“Harlem” enlarges the lyric’s mythic structure. First, Harlem is a district in New York; it is also a symbol, a
geographical setting for all those who are discriminated against on the basis of their skin color; and an
abode for the lowly and down-trodden of society who are subjected to abuse, denigration, injustice, and
other socio-cultural evils of this world.

Finally, ” the symbolism of “Huddled pavements” becomes all-encompassing.

What does the employment of myth and symbol contribute to Awoonor’s themes of death, religion,
and culture conflict? They expand the thematic and stylistic range of his poetic art. Further, they
demonstrate his ability to employ diverse poetic and rhetorical strategies both to elucidate and
illuminate the development as a poet. (For example, how his discovery of the pernicious effect of
European colonialism apparently contributes to his adoption of his African name of Kofi Awoonor, while
rejecting his original name, George Awoonor-Williams). Kofi Awoonor met his untimely death in Kenya
on September 21, 2013. May his great soul rest in peace (Amen).

European colonization in Africa affected the lives of several individuals such as losing their culture and
religion as well as general freedom. Although the Europeans believed that they were “saving” Africa, the
Africans had contrasting perspectives over the colonization over time and often expressed their opinions
through stories or poems. Both “Africa” by David Diop and “The Weaver Bird” written by Kofi Awoonor
are poems that portray the speaker’s’ point of view of European colonization. They expresses their
opinions through speaker tone, content and imagery, and finally the message. Even though these two
authors display their impressions towards colonialisms, they have contrasting ideas and similarities
which indicates that the colonialism…

The first speaker in Diop’s poem is an African who has never lived in Africa, but has only heard about
Africa through his grandmother’s folk songs: “Africa of whom my grandmother sings.(3)” He conveys his
feelings about the Europeans, using his knowledge and fundamentally helps describe his tone. The first
speaker utilizes a grateful tone as he says: “Africa of proud warriors in ancestral savannahs.(2)” In other
words, the speaker is expressing that he is proud to be an African and appreciating the African culture.
Throughout the poem, the first speaker’s retains a bitter tone as he displeased with how the Europeans
enslaved the Africans and questions the Africans submission to the Europeans. He is also saddened
about the idea of slavery and expresses to the audience that he cannot tolerate the sight of
backbreaking labour under the whip of slavery:Is this your back that is unbent / This back that never
breaks under the weight of humiliation…show more content…

“The Weaver Bird” contains a speaker who also explains his attitude towards the European colonization
with a few disparate views. As a matter of fact, his tone is bitter as he describes how the Europeans
destroyed their way of life and diminished their culture: “We watched the building of the nest (4)” . His
tone remains bitter throughout the poem, however, towards the end, the tone transitions to hope. The
speaker explains how the Africans were determined not to lose their culture, but they were unable to
prevent it: “We look for new homes every day / For new altars we strive to build (15-16)”. Adding more,
the speaker implies that even though the Africans were foreigners in their own country, they are
searching for new homes and seeking to rebuild their “Africa” and “The Weaver Bird” have numerous
contrasting features that make the poem different to each other. Another difference between these two
poems are who the speakers direct their opinions towards. In “Africa”, the first speaker is naïve and only
seems to be trying to grasp all the problems that are occurring in Africa. He expresses his understanding
towards the audience as well as his

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