Salam,
Well, two things might lead one to say Soyinka is not difficult, namely: having an excellent command of the English language as well as a critical mind; or just liking the man as well as his writings, its taste, simplicity or complexity, etc, notwithstanding. And I can aver you get both,
Fateez.
But let us see what others have to say about him.
The famous Niyi Osundare is considered, by many literary doyens, a disciple of Soyinka, but did not hesitate in saying what he understands of his teacher and states that the poem of his elders, like:
Soyinka, Okigbo, J.P Clark, [and] Kofi Awoonor, were extremely difficult, particularly Soyinka and Okigbo. Our enthusiasm soon fizzled out. When I started writing, this negative influence was in my mind and I felt it was a duty of the new generation of Nigerian poets to bring poetry back to the people. Contemporary Nigerian Poetry and Poetics of Orality (Ezenwa-Ohaeto, 1998, p16).
Isma’il Bala, a lecturer at the Department of English and French, Bayero University, Kano is also a skyrocketing poet who, at the same time, penned and edited a number of anthologies, and is considered one of the best poets of this generation from the Northern Nigeria; always mentions that although Soyinka is good, his writing is damned difficult to, especially, literary students. To quote him verbatim, he asserts: “Soyinka is unbelievably dense and difficult”.
Others who join the race of expressing the man’s being difficult include great poets and literary heavyweights like Tanure Ojaide (Nigerian poet now lives in the US), Prof. Abdu Saleh, etc.
And to your mentioning that Soyinka is not a novelist but a playwright; if you say he’s best known as a dramatist [and a poet], I can agree with you, but he also writes novels. I even have one, which am yet to read, entitled
Interpreters (1960s). This very novel is read and threw away by even many lecturers and PG students because of it’s being somewhat a syncretized one. Likewise Achebe too wrote poems; only his realization that he was not good at it as he is at novel writing made him quit. Hence your analogy of him and Achebe as apple and orange stands invalid, for it holds no water.
Concerning the issue of accolade; I do not say, anywhere in my reply, that Achebe didn’t collect any, rather I say he deserves the Nobel Prize more than Soyinka, for his writings are more literary, more widely regarded, praised and read; etc. Thereof one joke becomes very popularly in the late 1980s, after the coronation of Soyinka as Nobel Laureate:
Two men were discussing on the Nobel Prize just after the declaration of Soyinka as the winner. One asked the other, “who won the prize?” He answered, “Soyinka”. The other asked again, “With what book?” The other responded, saying “he won it with
Things Fall Apart.”
Understand the gist of the joke? Being
Things Fall Apart the most populous book then (and now), everyone thinks the book won the award, but it’s the other side.
