Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta,
near Ibadan in western Nigeria. After
preparatory university studies
in 1954 at Government College in Ibadan, he
continued at the University of Leeds, where, later, in 1973,
he took his
doctorate. During the six years spent in
England, he was a dramaturgist
at the Royal Court Theatre in London
1958-1959. In 1960, he was
awarded a Rockefeller bursary and returned to
Nigeria to study African
drama. At the same time, he taught drama and
literature at various
universities in Ibadan, Lagos, and Ife, where,
since 1975, he has
been professor of comparative literature. In
1960, he founded the
theatre group, "The 1960 Masks" and in 1964,
the "Orisun Theatre
Company", in which he has produced his own
plays and taken part
as actor. He has periodically been visiting
professor at the universities
of Cambridge,
Sheffield,
and Yale.
During the civil war in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an
article
for cease-fire. For this he was arrested in 1967, accused of
conspiring with the Biafra rebels, and was held as a political
prisoner for 22 months untill 1969. Soyinka has published
about
20 works: drama, novels and poetry. He writes in English
and his
literary language is marked by great scope and richness of
words.
As dramatist, Soyinka has been influenced by, among
others, the
Irish writer, J.M. Synge, but links up with the traditional
popular African theatre with its combination of dance,
music, and
action. He bases his writing on the mythology of his own
tribe-the Yoruba-with Ogun, the god of iron and war, at the
centre. He wrote his first plays during his time in London,
The Swamp Dwellers and
The Lion and the Jewel (a
light comedy), which were performed at Ibadan in 1958 and 1959
and were published in 1963. Later, satirical comedies are
The
Trial of Brother Jero (performed in 1960, publ. 1963) with
its sequel,
Jero's Metamorphosis (performed 1974, publ.
1973),
A Dance of the Forests (performed 1960,
publ.1963),
Kongi's Harvest (performed 1965, publ. 1967) and
Madmen
and Specialists (performed 1970, publ. 1971). Among
Soyinka's
serious philosophic plays are (apart from "
The Swamp
Dwellers")
The Strong Breed (performed 1966, publ.
1963),
The Road ( 1965) and
Death and the King's
Horseman (performed 1976, publ. 1975). In
The
Bacchae of
Euripides (1973), he has rewritten the Bacchae for the
African stage and in
Opera Wonyosi (performed 1977,
publ.
1981), bases himself on John Gay's
Beggar's Opera and
Brecht's
The Threepenny Opera. Soyinka's latest
dramatic
works are
A Play of Giants (1984) and
Requiem for a
Futurologist (1985).
Soyinka has written two novels,
The Interpreters
(1965),
narratively, a complicated work which has been compared to
Joyce's and
Faulkner's,
in which
six Nigerian intellectuals discuss and interpret their African
experiences, and
Season of Anomy (1973) which is
based on
the writer's thoughts during his imprisonment and
confronts the
Orpheus and Euridice myth with the mythology of the Yoruba.
Purely autobiographical are
The Man Died: Prison Notes
(1972) and the account of his childhood,
AkΓ© ( 1981),
in which the parents' warmth and interest in their son are
prominent. Literary essays are collected in, among others,
Myth, Literature and the African World (1975).
Soyinka's poems, which show a close connection to his
plays, are
collected in
Idanre, and Other Poems (1967),
Poems from
Prison (1969),
A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972)
the long
poem
Ogun Abibiman (1976) and
Mandela's Earth
and Other
Poems (1988).
From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1986, Editor
Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1987
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