Art as the Mechanism of Cosmic Syncretism

Page numbers given without reference to a particular source are to the Norton Paperback 2002 edition of Death and the King's Horseman. AA=Ambiguous Adventure, Heinemann paperback edition. M&C=Madness and Civilization. Punctuation is placed outside of quotation marks, except when it is a part of the material quoted.

Over the last quarter, we have repeatedly examined the role of ritual, analyzed texts from the framework of cosmos/chaos, the archetype of the sacred monster, and Foucault's concepts of reason and unreason. These ideas come from different sources. Can they be unified? With the framework of “syncretism” can we form a coherent a syncretism of program materials? By relating these concepts with Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman, I have attempted to do just that.

In 1946, in the city of Oyo, the British District Officer interrupted the ritual suicide of the chief horseman of the king of Yoruba. This breach and the dramatic restorative response of the horseman's son represent key events in this history of the Yoruba people. These are the particularities on which the story of Death and the King's Horseman is based, but similar events have no doubt occurred in many societies subjugated to imperial rule. When such a disruption happens, an opportunity is presented for a sacred monster to arise and restore balance.

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Sacred monsters are the agents of constructive change in society. They are those who tap into chaos and use it to transfigure their cosmos. In Death and the King's Horseman, Olunde plays the role of a sacred monster. He travels outside of his cosmos, the world of Yoruba, and into Britain, the heart of the chaos that is imposing itself on his homeland. The actions of the British in Nigeria culminate in tragic results for the Yoruba people, and the only person capable of providing a remedy is Olunde.

As a young man, Olunde left his home for England, which implies that he saw greater value in spending his time abroad. It is apparent that he was encouraged to go by Pilkings, but Olunde's feelings are never directly revealed. Pilkings believes that Olunde left because he did not want to succeed his father as the king's horseman. But that role is among the most honored in the land. Elesin thinks that Olunde left “to seek to obtain the secrets of his enemies.” (p. 63). Pilkings claims that when Olunde left, he was “a most intelligent boy, really bright” (p. 28). Given his intelligence, it is possible that Olunde saw the threats facing his people and chose to go into exile to learn how best to deal with them. Whatever his original intention, it is clear that Olunde has experience with the British imperial mindset. “I discovered that you have no respect for what you do not understand.” (p. 50) He also had a renewed understanding of his own culture: “Jane: Simon and I agreed that we never really knew what you left with. / Olunde: Neither did I. But I found out over there.” (p. 54).

Elesin is the king's horseman, which is a very important role in Yoruba society. He is as close to the center of that cosmos as anyone. He is elevated by the Praise-Singer and the Women of the market. He boasts of his own greatness and of how he is ready to die “I am master of my Fate. When the hour comes / Watch me dance along the narrowing path / Glazed by the soles of my great precursors. / My soul is eager. I shall not turn aside.” (p. 14) He is approaching “that moment for which [his] whole life has been spent in blessings” (p. 62). He has the support of the entire community, “the honour and veneration of his own people” (p. 53). “He has protection. No one can undertake what he does tonight without the deepest protection the mind can conceive.” (p. 53). Elesin is “a man of enormous vitality, [he] speaks, dances and sings with that infectious enjoyment of life which accompanies all his actions” (p. 9). He has everything to live for. It is not surprising that ending his life is difficult, even with all the encouragement he has received. However, this is a tradition that goes back generations. Many horsemen of the kings of Yoruba have gone through this before. They must all have faced some difficulty, but finally they fulfilled their duties.

The whole community relies on the proper completion of Elesin's suicide. The women of the market previously worried that they had troubled him: “For a while we truly feared / Our hands had wrenched the world adrift / In emptiness.” (p. 17). No person from the Yoruba cosmos could stop the ritual. “No arrow flies back to the string” (p. 44). But Pilkings is from the outside; he is chaos. At the time of action, when Elesin intends to commit suicide, Pilkings appears. His presence has an overwhelmingly disruptive effect, and Elesin is unable to consummate the ritual before he is clapped in irons. As Elesin explains to Iyaloja, “when the alien hand pollutes the source of will, when a stranger force of violence shatters the mind's calm resolution, this is when a man is made to commit the awful treachery of relief, commit in his thought the unspeakable blasphemy of seeing the hand of the gods in this alien rupture of his world.” (p. 69). What is divine but that which is other? The divine may interact with our cosmos to guide the unfurlment of events, but it is never bound to the rule of the world. When Pilkings appeared as he did, as no Yoruba could have, it was like an eclipse or a thunderbolt. He had all the power of a divine intervention, if only temporarily. Elesin had reservations about death, and at the time of the interruption, he was in a trance, operating in a mode of spirit and symbol. Before he could assess the situation rationally, he was taken by the mythic impact of Pilkings appearance: “You saw me struggle to retrieve my will from the power of the stranger whose shadow fell across the doorway and left me floundering and blundering in a maze I had never before encountered. My sense were numbed when the touch of cold iron came upon my wrists. I could do nothing to save myself.” (p. 68).

Olunde has a unique position in the world of Yoruba. As the heir to Elesin, he is able to make reparations for the failure of his father. As a result of his studies abroad, Olunde's cosmos has come to include the world of the British as well as that of the Yoruba. Olunde's intelligence and deep understanding of Yoruba culture allow him to quickly realize what must be done, and to formulate a plan. His exposure to the British has inoculated him against the paralysis that struck his father. He is no longer moved by their alien behaviors: “I am not shocked Mrs Pilkings. You forget that I have now spent four years among your people.” (p. 50). His ongoing relationship with the British gained him the confidence of Jane and Pilkings, and allowed him to proceed unquestioned: “I'd trust Olunde. I don't think he'll deceive you” (p. 72).

Marianne Bailey defined ritual as “calling to the present the energy of when the world first became” (lecture, 9/29/05). Ritual is the apex of the cosmos, steeped in symbols, rife with meaning. The energy that it calls is chaos, but in the overwhelming significance of the ritual, chaos is controlled and at the conclusion of the ritual, the old world has not fundamentally changed. The reversals of carnival are a perfect example of this. During carnival, the powerless assume positions of power, but once carnival is over, the world returns to the way it was. In a special subtype of ritual known as art, chaos escapes into the world and permanently alters it. Art, according to Foucault, “opens a void, a moment of silence, a question without answer, provokes a breach without reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself”. It contains new forms, born of the chaos, which as of yet the world does not recognize. “Henceforth, and through the mediation of madness, it is the world that becomes culpable in relation to the work of art; it is now arraigned by the work of art, obliged to order itself by its language, compelled by it to a task of recognition, of reparation, to the task of restoring reason from that unreason and to that unreason.” (M&C, p. 288) Art is an event, not an artifact, which modifies the language by which chaos will hence be addressed. With art as its fulcrum, the world synthesizes the two sources, its old self and the intruding chaos, and forges a new syncretic cosmos encompassing both.

Francisco de Goya, The Incantation

The creative ritual of the sacred monster is present in Goya's Incantation. The man in the white represents the cosmos, or tradition. He is clothed in white and brightly illuminated, suggesting the light of reason and the purity of internally consistent morality. His face reveals fear at the prospect of the ritual (change). The figures in black represent various faces of chaos. On the far left is the old hag, symbolizing the truth of old age and death. “What overhangs human existence is this conclusion and this order from which nothing escapes.” (M&C, p. 15). To her right is a man wearing a fool's hat and holding a small animal. The fool represents madness and bestiality. His gaping eye sockets suggests that “The head that will become a skull is already empty.” (M&C, p. 16). Next is a woman in a white head wrap. She represents the virgin, the divine aspect of chaos, mysticism. She holds a book, representing the Word, and a torch representing the divine flame which illuminates herself, the book, the demon above her, and the wings of the owl to her right. The final figure is a man with an owl perched on his head, holding a basket of babies. His head appears shaven, an indication of monastic devotion. The jumble of babies he holds is the haphazard jumble of human life. The children, representing potential, are to be sacrificed for the realization of an important particularity (as with Olunde). The owls wings, illuminated by the virgin's flame, suggest the wings of an angel, and the inversion of good/evil in the monk character. Owls represent the wisdom of the night. In the center is the artist, or the sacred monster, who is invoking all these powers of chaos, and bringing them, with much gravity and care to the cosmos who is huddled in the corner. The artist appears similar to the cosmos, but he is colored by the experience of chaos. The cosmos character is colored by the background, by the light of the world. He has his hands clasped in prayer, but as with Elesin, what he is appealing to is only an aspect of himself; it has no power over that which is alien (“My charms, my spells, even my voice lacked strength”, p. 68). The action of this painting is surrounded by darkness. Nearly half of the canvas is solid black. The darkness, the chaos, is much greater than the illuminated focus. Cosmos is about to come into contact with all the forces of night and be transfigured by them.

The interruption of Yoruba death rituals by British authorities is chaos forced into cosmos, but it is not art. Art still possesses the cosmic background, the systems of symbols by which the world may mend a chaotic breach. The action of art is like the action of muscle. Though it may leave the cosmos sore for a few days, the outcome is vitality and strength. When Pilkings interrupts Elesin, that is the action of chaos. The effect is disruption, just as it is when the chaos is the effect of art, but it is without reparation. “You did not save my life District Officer. You destroyed it... and not merely my life but the lives of many.” (p. 62). Only a work of art, that is, a ritual with the power of cosmic transformation, could mend this damage.

Olunde is a sacred monster, fully contained in neither the Yoruba nor the British world but inclusive of both. His actions are thus entirely new, anticipated by neither Pilkings nor Elesin. Olunde's suicide is a work of art, drawing its power from “the madness which interrupts it” (M&C p. 288)--the chaos he possesses in his liminal position. It is through this work that Olunde is able to disrupt both worlds and inaugurate the new channel of their exchange. “The stillness seizes and paralyses everyone, including Pilkings who has turned to look.” (p. 75). Pilkings attempts to blame Iyaloja, but his denouncements are weak. “Pilkings (in a tired voice): Was this what you wanted?” (p. 76). Iyaloja's response is vibrant and full of meaning: “No child, it is what you brought to be, you who play with strangers' lives, who even usurp the vestments of our dead, yet believe that the stain of death will not cling to you. The gods demanded only the old expired plantain but you cut down the sap-laden shoot to feed your pride.” (p. 76). Some balance between the power of the Yoruba and the British has been restored though Olunde's actions. What is to happen next for the Yoruba cannot be predicted. The break with tradition marks an event horizon beyond which the future cannot be known: “What the end will be we are not gods to tell. But this young shoot has poured its sap into the parent stalk, and we know this is not the way of life. Our world is tumbling in the void of strangers” (p. 75). Olunde may have restored meaning to the lives of the Yoruba, but they are still locked in exchange with the British. As the knight says in Ambiguous Adventure “We have not had the same past, you and ourselves, but we will have, strictly, the same future. The era of separate destinies has run its course. In that sense, the end of the world has indeed come for every one of us, because no one can any longer live by the simple carrying out of what he himself is.” (AA79). Individual cosmos are ending as they collide with each other, but new syncretic cosmos are being formed, like Venn diagrams with greater and greater overlapping areas.

A cosmos that is completely stable is devoid of life. Life is energy, which is the action of chaos. Ritual is the means by which cosmos accesses chaos and thus ensure its continued health. Most rituals follow established traditions and do not fundamentally change the cosmos in which they occur. Periodically, though, rituals are performed which have a profound effect on the cosmos, effectively ending it as it previously existed and beginning again with that which is the syncretism of cosmos and chaos. These rituals we call “art”. They are frightening, but critical to progress. Those who perform art are called “artists”, or, in more evocative language, “Sacred Monsters”.