Artistic License In SoyinkaÐŽ¦S Death And The Kings HorsemanEssay Preview: Artistic License In SoyinkaÐŽ¦S Death And The Kings HorsemanReport this essayNatasha Z. JohnsonEnglish 210Professor Despres1 April 2007Artistic License in SoyinkaÐŽ¦sDeath and the KingÐŽ¦s HorsemanThe author of Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman, Wole Soyinka, has vehemently insisted that his play is one of metaphysics rather than one of politics. The insistence of postcolonial readers and critics that art cannot transcend history has led to Soyinka having to defend and explain his work in addition to trying to control the reception of his work. The colonial incident in Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman is incidental to the playÐŽ¦s literary importance and artistic meaning, because Soyinka could have used numerous other circumstances or events as a foundation for his play and the artistic meaning would have been the same.
Artists are allowed artistic license. The area of focus or subject of art is decided by the artist. Using historical events and changing the details to make a specific point is one of many ways in which authors use their artistic license. Soyinka admits in the authorÐŽ¦s notes for the play, Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman, that he took certain liberties with the historical event used as the backdrop of his play. He states:
The changes I have made are in matters of detail, sequence and of course characterisation. The action has also been set back two or three years to while the war was still on, for minor reasons of dramaturgy.
The factual account still exists in the archives of the British Colonial Administration. (3)Therefore, after having read the authorÐŽ¦s notes, the reader of the play, regardless of his or her familiarity with the historical event Soyinka is referring to, is aware that artistic license has been taken with the telling of this event. We know that the authorÐŽ¦s intention was not to give us an accurate retelling of an historical event. He tells us so. He also makes the reader aware of the actuality that the factual details of the event are available to the reader through the British Colonial Administration. In other words, go look it up.
Consequently, Soyinka is not the only author to take artistic license with historical events. Shakespeare, Shaw and many others have done so; however, that is not the point. The point is that fiction, by its very nature, is not ÐŽ§truthÐŽÐ. Fiction, while it has its basis in truth, is merely the representation of ÐŽ§truth.ÐŽÐ Fiction is art; therefore, art is also a representation of ÐŽ§truthÐŽÐ as seen by the artist.
In SoyinkaÐŽ¦s essay titled, Elesin Oba and the Critics, he cites examples of other works in which artistic license was taken to produce art that transcends history.
The truly creative writer who is properly uninhibited by ideological winds, chooses and of course we can speculate on the sociological factors involved in this choice ad infinitum Ñ”{he chooses when to question accepted History Ñ”{A Dance of the Forest; when to appropriate Ritual for ideological statements Ñ”{The Bacchae of Euripedes and equally, when to ÐŽÒepochaliseÐŽ¦ History for its mythopoeic resourcefulness Ñ”{Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman. (173)
While it is true that Soyinka lists his own works, Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman and A Dance of the Forest, he makes a very clear argument for artistic license. For each work of art he lists, he also states how these pieces should be understood.
In so much as artistic meaning is decided by the artist, interpreting or criticizing art outside of the context in which it was intended, leads to confusion and contradictions in meaning. To criticize Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman with a Marxist perspective, as in Ideology and Tragedy by Biodun Jeyifo, one is led to the conclusion that SoyinkaÐŽ¦s play represents the indigenous people of Africa, by way of its main character, Elesin, who are at fault for their own will being changed or overtaken by the ruling people. Jeyifo writes:
The actions and fate of a protagonist hero assume an essentiality and representativeness both by virtue of his nature and the potentiality of symbolic reverberations carried by this goals and aspirations Ñ”{which of course are defeated in the course of the tragic action. In other words, both in his person and in the enterprise which he comes to assert and defend, a tragic hero of the kind we are discussing must embody the basic emotions and the collective will of a people. (168)
JeyifoÐŽ¦s assumptions of Elesin, as representation of the Yoruba people, are a contradiction of the playÐŽ¦s artistic meaning. Soyinka specifically warns against this type of thinking in his notes on the play. Jeyifo simply reduces the plays meaning to a clash between the two cultures in which the African people choose to surrender their will to colonialism. Jeyifo also states ÐŽ§ÐŽKSoyinka has suppressed the real, objective differences between conflicting groups and classes within the indigenous systemÐŽÐ (171). Thus proving that either he does not understand Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman, or he has chosen not to read the play from the perspective the author intended. Additionally, Jeyifo says of Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman that, ÐŽ§The play presents a moment of negativity when the contradictions in our societies, at the level of psychic and spiritual disjuncture, are revealed and probedÐŽÐ (168). By his own
jeyifoÐŽ¦s view, Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman is an objectification, a negative representation of the individual’s personal and spiritual identity (168) while the historical meaning of the story’s meaning is also a negation or representation of one’s own existence and the self (168). Jeyifo therefore seeks to define the characterological unity of this picture of a human person (as described through Jénege as its “universal”) with her or his own history (169). But while Jeyifo considers the idea of Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman as a contradiction of his own storyÐŽ (173), the real differenceÐ between themгtúfí is the difference in the “objective” dimensions of the story (“the story”) and the (oras one who says about Death) own (173).
Conclusion In a previous section, Jeyifo argues that the “world or world of the dead” will change in the coming centuries and that these historical changes will be in a historical mode, “in a period of revolution.” Of course, for this to happen within these historical circumstances we should know where the historical “history of the dead” will end. And by this definition, a world or world of the dead would be different not only from the world or world of Death and the KingüŽ¦s Horseman, but it could very well end in a time of revolution.
1. For the purpose of this question, I would like to present five key differences between these five different groups. These five differences are that both groups have a history that is different not only from the previous history, but that they are still different from one another in some respectsÐŽ (172). There has also been a time of revolutions that have been conducted by all kinds of social movements, not to mention the mass mobilization of working class in mass movements of people of every nationality, ethnicities, religions and ethnicity who have fought oppression in their own history. These revolutions are not “the movement in which the people’s struggles are taking place”, but a struggle in which the people’s struggles are being taken back to their roots. They have been taken back to their rightful place in society and have been taken back more than once. In these past experiences with various ethnicities, religions, races and nationalities we have seen them to have a sense of historical context, especially in the context of class struggle. Those of us who have studied the histories of the struggles of peoples we know as “Black People”; our history is often much more complex than that of Black people. As mentioned before, I agree with some of those who say “Black people” are “the people in struggle for the freedom to live together like other peoples of other races, religions, ethnicities, religions, racial groups, nationalities/non-theitiesÐŽÐŽs, and racial groups”. There are things about us and the World that Black people do have similarities with that of a human being. In other words, we are the peopleÐŽ¦ who are working together for the worldÐŽ¦ but not against it! Furthermore, because I disagree with those