ALMOST one month after Nigeria bade farewell to literary icon, Prof.
Chinua Achebe, issues associated with the colourful rites of passage are
yet to be exhausted.
Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Wednesday came down hard on those he says are still ‘caviling’ at his absence from the funeral of Achebe that climaxed on May 23, 2013 at his home-town, Ogidi, Anambra State.
In a statement issued Wednesday, titled “The Village Mourners Association”, the literary giant said he “is a solid believer in the collective rites of Farewell. I believe in Ritual. Humanity is often assisted to reconcile with loss in a collective, and even spectacular mode.”
And the choice to participate or not, he insisted, “belongs to each individual, including even those who arrogate to themselves the mission of imposing on others their own preferred mode of bidding farewell.”
To Soyinka, “these self-righteous clerics are dangerous beings, especially where they flaunt the credentials of secular learning and gather in caucuses of presumed Humanities.”
Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Wednesday came down hard on those he says are still ‘caviling’ at his absence from the funeral of Achebe that climaxed on May 23, 2013 at his home-town, Ogidi, Anambra State.
In a statement issued Wednesday, titled “The Village Mourners Association”, the literary giant said he “is a solid believer in the collective rites of Farewell. I believe in Ritual. Humanity is often assisted to reconcile with loss in a collective, and even spectacular mode.”
And the choice to participate or not, he insisted, “belongs to each individual, including even those who arrogate to themselves the mission of imposing on others their own preferred mode of bidding farewell.”
To Soyinka, “these self-righteous clerics are dangerous beings, especially where they flaunt the credentials of secular learning and gather in caucuses of presumed Humanities.”
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