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FITTING SUNDIATA INTO IH 51Neil BigIH 51 Faculty Seminar Monday, November 1, 1993 1. ORAL TRADITION, KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, AND THE GRIOT'S MESSAGE In Sundiata, the griot, represented in the legend or present as our narrator, is more than a storyteller. He's privy to secret, revealed knowledge passed orally from one generation to another. He understands the future with the clairvoyance of seers, philosophers and prophets. We can compare the griot to other revealers of truth in IH 51: the Sophoclean chorus, Tiresias, Plato and Socrates, the narrator and prophets of the Hebrew Bible, and Jesus through his teachings. Comparing the griot to them invites students to specify similarities and differences about the kind of wisdom expressed each time: their sources, scope or jurisdiction, implications for structuring human morality, and mental process of discovery involved (tradition handed down, personal experience of social customs, divine revelation, or disciplined logical thinking). All involve appreciating human limits to knowledge and action. All imply a divine moral universe that humans must respect to live correctly in society and to die honorably. As do other IH 51 revealers of truth, the griot offers a check and balance against political and kingly excesses. Like them, the griot pleads for moderation, respect for tradition and law, and wisdom strategic and ethical. We can extend this notion to identify a more general course theme, lacing together many texts, of two counterbalancing traditions of power: (1) a prophetic tradition based on divine power, which reveals wisdom about human moral limits, and (2) a kingly tradition of secular political power, national leadership, and human strategic thinking and ambition. If you use this theme, you might also compare the griot, who tempers moral revelation and religious understanding with seasoned political judgment, paradoxically or oppositionally to Machiavelli, that ultimate "political prophet" and counselor, who secularizes morality, divorcing it from divine influence and subsuming to individual political ambition. 2. DESTINY AND FREE WILL As in Oedipus the King, the Hebrew Bible, and the Koran, Sundiata offers a paradigm about human free will and destiny. Here, successful characters submit without question to announced, prophetic destinies. Sundiata's father accepts Sogolon as his wife, despite her eccentric, disgraceful appearance, because she will be mother to the future king. Sundiata accepts the burdens of transforming himself into the destined hero and leader, using animistic magical powers and following Allah's will of Allah to honor natural law and justice. Those who contest or try to change destiny to fit their own ambition, for example Sassouma Berete, fail miserably, defeated by the forces supporting Sundiata. In Sundiata, one's character and identity emerge as one fulfills destiny, favorable or unfavorable. One's individual life has a larger moral meaning, defined generally in Islamic terms and contextualized by local tradition and animism. The Islamic overlay for destiny allows us to compare Sundiata's practice of free will to Koranic righteous practice and to the Hebrew sense of history and covenants with God. The success of those who forsake individual fears, ego and ambitions for destiny and the failure of those who don't allow us to compare Sundiata with Sophoclean tragedy. Oedipus in Oedipus the King, Creon in Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus, and Polynices in Oedipus at Colonus try to circumvent destiny and moral revelation to assuage fears and ambitions, living and dying pathetically and tragically; Tiresias, Antigone, old Oedipus and Theseus accept destiny, with its correlates of humility and piety, becoming worthy of emulation. Both texts uphold the same portrayal of destiny and free will, illustrated by losers who rebel against destiny and winners who don't. 3. SUNDIATA, A POLITICAL LEADER AND HEROIC CHARACTER In fulfilling destiny, Sundiata reveals personal qualities resembling other charismatic political leaders: Pericles, King, Oedipus, Antigone, Theseus, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and, perhaps perversely, Machiavelli's prince. All see their integrity and character expressed through public political gestures to better the community. All show qualities marking them for leadership: unique talents, force of personality, determination, courage, and intelligence. All confound their fate with that of their community in crisis, ready to sacrifice their lives for the collectivity, consoling their pain and loss by understanding their place in the greater spiritual scheme of human and divine history. If you wish, you could articulate this resemblance between Sundiata and other charismatic leaders as another general theme to lace together texts: the archetype or pattern of the cultural hero, using ideas from Robert Graves or other myth oriented critics, as have Emerson Tjart and Janice Sapp, or the charismatic political hero, using ideas from political science about statesmanship and from the sociology of political movements. 4. THE POLITICS OF NATION-BUILDING Like Pericles, Creon, Theseus, Moses, and Machiavelli's armed prophet, Sundiata's destiny is engaged in nation-building. All undertake military ventures to defeat enemies, quell rebellion and dissent, and impose their political will of unification. All affirm the authority of the state in accordance with clear principles of law, equity, and centralized governments, which they control and embody. All accept the burden of articulating ethical and political principles to constitute the nation legally. All define the new constitution and legal codes in detail. All distribute political rights and duties to allies; and all federate participating political and kin groups into a larger governmental and institutional framework. All participate also in a series of connected epic events that change the group's collective consciousness and historical portrayal of itself. These events become "future memories," episodes of historical myths-in-becoming. In Exodus, the epic sequence included the Passover, departure from Egypt and the theophany and covenant at Mount Sinai. In Matthew, the sequence included miracles, actions, teachings and sufferings in Jesus' ministry. For Islam, Muhammad's successful twenty-year struggle to promulgate the Koran constituted the process of building Islamic and Arab national identity. Machiavelli, despite his political cynicism and pragmatism, favored leaders with prophetic visions who succeeded in realizing such epic historical processes of national salvation, such as Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, or a future Italian prince "in whom some spark seemed to show that he was ordained by God to redeem the country" (Machiavelli, The Prince, pp. 50, 134). 5. THE GRIOT'S ROLE AS COMMUNITY ARCHIVIST AND HISTORIAN In Sundiata, griots are "vessels of speech," who "are repositories which harbor secrets many centuries old." Initiated into the "arts of eloquence," they are "the memory of mankind" using the "spoken word" to "bring to life the deed and exploits of kings for younger generations." In this worldview, their knowledge is sacred, distributed carefully on a need-to-know basis. Gatekeepers to the "twelve doors of Mali," griots teaches "to the vulgar" only as much as necessary. For griots, access to knowledge is not a democratic entitlement available to all, for the ignorant might debase history, but offered only to those able to follow and honor it. Griots seem to respect a hierarchy of wisdom that we could compare to Socrates' respect for experts, or the degrees of closeness to God in Exodus, where the Israelites stayed at the foot of Mount Sinai, the priests closer though hidden from God's face, and only Moses able to communicate directly with God to learn His will. Griots authoritatively define and deliver history for use in the present. They teach "kings the history of their ancestors so that the lives of the ancients might serve them as an example, for the world is old, but the future springs from the past." Held accountable by family honor, griots, who "are the depositaries of oaths which the ancestors swore," eschew lying to settle differences "when a quarrel breaks between tribes." They use stories to situate individual kings and persons in the historical continuity linking generations, as do the stories in the Hebrew Bible. And like the biblical narrators, they incorporate several layers of meanings into individual stories and episode: events include references to kinship practices, rituals, ceremonies, hospitality customs, moral interpretations of human nature, along with definitions of divine and supernatural power, statements of ethical principles, rules for daily living, and details contextualizing the episode historically, geographically and politically. (All quotes from Sundiata, p. 1). 6. MODELS OF HUMAN NATURE Following Ken Dossar, I apply the notions of ashe, iwa, and itutu, as described by James Ferris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit (1983 (19841, ch. 1, pp. 318) to characters in the epic. These concepts give students tools to analyze character, motivation and human nature, comparing them to Sophoclean, Platonic, biblical, Koranic, Machiavellian, and Shakespearean notions of human nature, and to the heroes in each text. I've also traced forms of power in Sundiata, focusing on Sundiata as an epic hero who increases his power by overcoming obstacles to fulfill his destiny, and on the women in Sundiata, exploring how each incarnates a type of power, pointing out how each male in Sundiata depends on women's power and identity. This exploration sets the stage for comparing the treatment of women in Sundiata and other texts. 7. WOMEN'S POWER IN SUNDIATA Except for Sappho's exuberant self-exploration of love and her pride of being, nowhere are women more powerful in IH 51 than in Sundiata. No man can achieve political or personal gain without women's advice and help. Women control a wide range of power, in the women's world of motherhood and co-wifeship, and the larger universe of supernatural powers. The witches control the powers of the night. Sogolon is a wraith and she and her daughter have magical clairvoyance. Sogolon is a skilled political strategist and diplomat, arranging for Sundiata's apprenticeship in exile and negotiating with foreign sovereigns on his behalf. Sassouma Berete, for all her destructive ambition, is regent with unquestioned authority to distribute public funds. Women express themselves in the full range of emotions, from frustration, hatred, and selfless devotion to political hard headedness, fierce ambition, pride, love and maternal devotion. Compared to Jocasta's confused loyalties and moral dilemmas, Ismene's fear of survival in a patriarchal state, Antigone doomed defense of principle and confused maternal feelings for a dead brother, and women's moral ambiguity and submissiveness the Bible and the Koran, the women of Sundiata are perhaps even more complex and powerful than the men they help. 8. EPIC AND TRAGIC VISIONS One can use Sundiata and "Oedipus the King" to compare epic and tragedy. One might ask students the following questions to highlight specific differences between the epic and tragic vision of history, free will and destiny: (1) How does each text deals with destiny, free will,
knowledge (sacred or intellectual)? A simple definition of the two genres might highlight the hero's relation to destiny. In tragedy, the hero individually confronts destiny and tries to circumvent it, isolating him/her from larger harmonies. These acts of defiance and impiety, even if unconscious, must be repaid through individual pain, loss, are suffering, until it is clear that divine forces are unchallenged. In the epic, the hero/heroine works with destiny, enlisting the powers of the universe. In the epic, the hero/heroine forsakes ambition and ego for collective destiny. He/she realizes an emerging personal identity in an open-ended series of battles and victories against chaotic, evil forces, ultimately achieving unity and a new historical reality. |