La route: réalité et représentation dans l'œuvre de Wole Soyinka

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Rodopi, 1994 - 390 pages
L'image obsédante de la route parcourt toute l'oeuvre de l'écrivain nigérian Wole Soyinka, prix Nobel de littérature en 1986. Chemins, pistes et autoroutes, voies construites par des «bâtisseurs d'empires» restituent à un premier niveau de lecture des réalités géographiques, sociales, linguistiques, économiques et politiques. A partir de La Route (pièce charnière publiée en 1965), le présent ouvrage explore toute l'oeuvre de Soyinka (théâtre, poésie, roman, autobiographie, essais) dans sa mobile complexité et tisse des réseaux de correspondances liés à la figure centrale et ambivalente d'Ogun, dieu yoruba du fer, de la créativité et de la destruction, mais aussi dieur de la Route....
Puisant dans la richesse des cultures africaines, Soyinka réinterprète l'espace métaphysique et mythique yoruba et le transforme en mythologie personnelle; il s'approprie en même temps divers modes de pensée et de représentation (imagerie biblique, théâtre rituel, grec, shakespearien ou brechtien) pour nous faire accéder à des itinéraires inconnus. Il nous permet ainsi d'explorer les routes de la transition avec leurs «êtres du passage» et leurs «créatures crépusculaires, » mais aussi celles hantées par les chauffards de la religion, de la politique et de la critique littéraire qui participent à la «danse macabre» contemporaine que l'auteur met en scène.
La dynamique, l'ampleur et la complexité du thème de la route se retrouvent dans le mélange des genres et des formes constamment renouvelés de cette oeuvre mythopoétique et iconoclaste, tragique et satirique, comique et cosmique, parodique et truculente, restituant la complexité du monde dans sa transparence comme dans son opacité.

From inside the book

Contents

La construction des routes
13
LES ACCIDENTS DE LA ROUTE
105
33
111
Le dieu glouton et les sacrifices
116
13
139
La route dOgun
147
LES ROUTES DE LA TRANSITION
163
22
173
32
179
LA QUÊTE
233
Copyright

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Page 203 - No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?
Page 231 - I am fire, and air; my other elements I give to baser life. So; have you done? Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips. Farewell, kind Charmian; Iras, long farewell. [Kisses them. IRAS falls and dies. Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall? If thou and nature can so gently part, The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, Which hurts, and is desir'd.
Page 160 - Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.
Page 231 - Give me my robe, put on my crown ; I have Immortal longings in me : Now no more The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip: — Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. — Methinks, I hear Antony call; I see him rouse himself To praise my noble act; I hear him mock The luck of...
Page 180 - When a man has one leg in each world, his legs are never the same. The big toe of Murano's foot — the left one of course — rests on the slumbering chrysalis of the Word.
Page 14 - Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking.
Page 117 - It's his special meat. Just run over the damned dog and leave it there, I don't ask you to stop and scoop it up for your next dinner. Serve Ogun his tit-bit so the road won't look at us one day and say Ho ho you two boys you look juicy to me. But what's the use? The one who won't give Ogun willingly will yield heavier meat by Ogun's designing.
Page 141 - Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service; two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.
Page 136 - Be even like the road itself. Flatten your bellies with the hunger of an unpropitious day, power your hands with the knowledge of death. In the heat of the afternoon when the sheen raises false forests and a watered haven, let the event first unravel before your eyes. Or in the dust when ghost lorries pass you by and your shouts your tears fall on deaf panels and the dust swallows them. Dip in the same basin as the man that makes his...

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