When Chinua Achebe read the passage he had selected for his 78th-birthday celebration at the Library, at the end of a long day of scholarly dissection of his work and life, it was as if the voice of the wise old man in the book were his own.
“’…I want all of you to note what I am going to say. I am an old man and you are all children. I know more about the world than any of you. If there is any one among you who thinks he knows more let him speak up. He paused, but no one spoke.’”
Achebe, sitting erect behind a low table, wearing a dark gray tunic and a bright red hat, paused in his reading and glanced at the people gathered around him in the packed Montpelier Room. Silent, attentive, almost reverent in their respect for this elder from whom they had learned something of mother Africa while reading or teaching his works in high schools and colleges, they listened to his, the first literary voice of Africa.
Achebe had just read the words of Uchendu, who has gathered his family to witness his attempt to comfort his nephew, Okonkwo, whom Achebe described as the flawed hero of his celebrated first novel, “Things Fall Apart.” Ruled by one passion, to become lord of his clan, Okonkwo had been a powerful man in his own village, one who disdained weakness. But he accidentally killed a member of his clan and was cast out, “like a fish onto a dry, sandy beach, panting.” Banished to his mother’s clan for seven years, Okonkwo took no interest in planting, in his own or his mother’s family. His uncle Uchendu was worried.
Achebe continued in the voice of Uchendu: “A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland,’” Uchendu counseled. “’Your mother is there to protect you. She is buried there. …Is it right that you, Okonkwo, should bring to your mother a heavy face and refuse to be comforted?…
“’You think you are the greatest sufferer in the world? Do you know that men are sometimes banished for life? Do you know that men sometimes lose all their yams and even their children? … I have nothing more to say to you.’”
“This passage is one of my favorite passages in the book,” Achebe said. Even though the novel “had been around for awhile”—50 years since it was published in 1958—he experienced “one of the surprises of literature, of art,” while looking through it in preparation for the Library event: “I suddenly realized this passage has a meaning I had not thought about before.”
Achebe did not explain. Like many artists, he left interpretation to his audience.
He then read a poem in English and in Igbo. “This is a dirge. I wrote this for a very close friend of mine, a fine poet, who was killed in a war.” When someone dies, Achebe explained, his friends go around town, singing, dancing and calling for him, seeking confirmation of the rumor: “Witness the dance, the brave one is nowhere in sight … the dance ends abruptly, the flute breaks, the music shatters. …”
Afterwards Library staffer Walusako Mwalilino opened the event to a few questions, beginning with his own: “I have always wanted to ask: did you share your drafts with your teachers or anyone?”
“No, I did not share my drafts,” Achebe replied. “My teachers did not believe there was any chance of an African young man to aspire to be a writer.”
When the publisher of “Things Fall Apart” gave the news to his British college professors, “they just laughed,” Achebe said.
One time he submitted a short story upon an English department invitation to the students. It was returned with these comments: “Not too bad.” “Lacked form.”
“What is this form thing? Can you tell me what to do?” he asked a teacher. She promised to read his paper, but the term passed before she finally said: “I looked at your story again. There is nothing wrong with it.”
“It was very clear to me nobody here was going to tell me how to write a story. So I worked in secret until the very end. I knew I was my own judge until it leaves the house. To this day I show my drafts to no one.”
“What is the most profound effect your writing had on your life?” one person asked.
“The process of writing … changed my life. I had
to invent the language for writing the story,” he
replied. “When I wrote the second novel, I had a style
of writing that was created by the novel itself, an imaginary conversation between two powerful languages, English and Igbo. That was the greatest change in my whole career.”
In response to another question, he said, “If you write in two languages, you must never think of one as primitive. … My strict position on the matter of dialogue between equals [is that] you may be better than me, but not so much better that you can afford to have less than the perfect language.”
