Lawinos song

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Lawinos Lied , English Song of Lawino , original title on Acholi Wer pa Lawino , is a verse epic by the Ugandan poet, ethnologist , teacher, lawyer and essayist Okot p'Bitek (pronounced: "Bitek"; 1931–1982). It was first published on Acholi in 1956 and in a revised version in 1965.

History of origin

Okot p'Bitek, an Acholi , developed his epic over several years. It was first published in 1966, followed shortly after by the supplementary “Song of Ocol”. According to a list suggested by Ali Mazrui at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, it is one of the 100 most important books in Africa. The epic is described by the critics as a "linguistic work of art" and one of the most important works of Anglophone African literature and the most beautiful piece of East African poetry. It counts as an African contribution to world literature .

Publication history

The works have had a complicated history of publication in Kenya and Europe.

In 1956 the first version of “Lawino” in Okot's Acholi language came out under the title Wer pa Lawino . It was published as a 30-page manuscript of 21 sections of various lengths. The second version in Acholi was revised in 1965 in preparation for the Gulu Festival in discussions with Acholi listeners and redesigned in 14 equally long sections on approx. 140 manuscript pages. This version is still in a European loose rhyme scheme [abab] drafted.

An English version in 13 chapters was published in 1966 under the title Song of Lawino in the East African Printing House , Nairobi, ( EAPH ), the 14th chapter of the previous version was deleted by Okot. The author translated the piece himself and gave up the rhyme scheme. The work had a great public success at a writers' congress in Nairobi. So Okot decided to publish it in English, although the translation "... the eagle's wings were trimmed a little", as he later said. The "Song of Ocol" came out in 1967 in the same publishing house. "Ocol" was written in English by Okot. The second Acholi version in 14 chapters was published in 1965 under the title Wer pa Lawino by the same publisher. A second combined English version was also published by EAPH in 1972. Today the British Heinemann-Verlag publishes this issue in the "African writer series".

A French translation with the title La chanson de Lawino by Frank and Henriette Gauduchon was published in 1983 by Paris / Dakar, "Présence africaine / UNESCO" in 1983 and 1992 as a new edition by Présence africaine.

A new translation of Song of Lawino in Uganda by Okot's friend and colleague Taban lo Liyong is titled The Defense of Lawino: A New Translation of Wer pa Lawino Kampala and was published by Fountain Publishers in 2001 . The aim of this controversial new translation was to come closer to the original version of the text.

Publications in Germany

The two epics also have an eventful publication history in Germany. The first German version of Lawino from 1972 was published by Tübingen Erdmann-Verlag in a translation by Marianne Welter and with an afterword by Inge Uffelmann.

A first German complete version of both works had been available since 1977 under the title Lawinos Lied / Ocols Lied - An African Controversial Song by the East Berlin publishing house Rütten & Loening . "Ocol" was translated by Frank Auerbach. Marianne Welter's translation was used for “Lawino”. A four-page excerpt from the translation of Song of Ocol was published a year earlier in “Modern Narrators of the World. East Africa. ”From 1976. A second version of Lawino in German was published as a paperback by Ullstein under the title Lawino in the series Die Frau in der Literatur . However, it remains unclear why “Ocol” was not published at the time. In 1998 the Peter Hammer Verlag published a combined edition in a new translation by Raimund Pousset.

Musical editing

The musical implementation of the epic is also part of the history of publications. In 1970 the Goethe-Institut in Nairobi organized a bicultural music festival under the leadership of Franz Nagel in the Kenya National Theater under the title "Music from Europe and Africa". In this context, under the direction of Franzpeter Goebels , the first performance of the song Song of Lawino with music by Angfried Trautger took place . The piece was realized by an African drum group, including the Nigerian musician Akin Euba , a European soloist group (harpsichord, clarinet, cello) and an African soloist group (xylophone, flutes, drums). The text “spoke, sang, declaimed and shouted effectively Cathryn Mbathi from Mombasa. The largely African audience in the sold-out Kenya National Theater was thrilled. "

In September 1974, Franz Nagel commented on this performance in a lecture at the Berlin Academy of the Arts: “The music was conceived as a directed improvisation on a twelve-tone row , whereby the African instruments were treated traditionally. The audience should join the chorus from time to time. Breathtaking high point: the duet improvisation between Goebels, harpsichord and Akin Euba, African drums, symbol of the conflict between African and European civilization according to the Lawino text. The popular "Song of Lawino" and the curiosity about what we would make of it attracted many Africans. Well over 50% was what we had never experienced in Nairobi. The success was overwhelming at the moment - and lasting! "

interpretation

Both chants - “Lawino” and “Ocol” - have to be seen as complementary parts. For Al Imfeld, “Lawino” marks “the beginning of a new cultural age”. The Negritude will be replaced on an attitude of self-conscious tradition was. No longer the comparison with Europe is in the foreground, but immersion in one's own culture. Okot was not able to express everything he had to say in the rather emotional “Lawino”. He needed the more intellectual “Ocol” to speak truths that Lawino couldn't see. Only Ocol was able to introduce sympathetic features from the West.

With the combined edition, the zeitgeist-related classification of “Lawino” in the “women's text” drawer is overcome, because this misunderstanding was only possible without “Ocol”. “Lawino” is the voice of the consistent African traditionalists. Okot only gave these value conservatives a female voice. "Okot calls back the spirit of the mothers!" (Al Imfeld). Like Lawino, Okot's mother was the girls' leader, a well-known beauty who danced, wrote, and sang excellently. Lawino's opponent, her conformist husband Ocol, may also find a certain role model in Okot's life. His father, Opii Jebedyo, was a baptized Protestant, a missionary student, and a teacher.

Main conflicts

Lawino faces three major problem areas in which she is linked to her husband Ocol. One thing, the domestic conflict, she shares with many women in the countryside: the men move to the city to earn money. One or more women stay at home in the country, and the husband has his mistress in the city. The second problem is the cultural conflict: giving up tradition and unconditionally adapting her husband to modernity . The third problem is an economic-political conflict: the destruction of the home through the political fratricidal dispute and social injustice . Lawino is fighting on all fronts. She wants to save happiness for herself and her family by standing firmly by all traditions.

The domestic conflict

The domestic conflict over urban rival Clementine determines the first part of the song. Here she even gossips about Clementine, alleges an abortion, and makes fun of her make-up and wearing a wig. She attacks the absent Clementine not because she has a relationship with her husband, but because she is westernized and does not return to her own culture. Towards the end of the chant, Lawino only mentions Clementine briefly. Lawino Clementine can now imagine herself as her husband's concubine. She is used to that, it often emphasizes, "... the woman with whom I share my husband!"

The cultural conflict

This conflict is slowly coming to the fore alongside the domestic one. Lawino is now attacking her husband Ocol and all the adapters because by reading in the “dark forest of books” they would have given up their black identity (“their testicles are crushed”). In moving pictures, she depicts the corruption, mendacity and immorality of the missionaries to whom her compatriots defected. Lawino attacks the black copycat of the White Man from a position of self-assurance and pride. All Ocols are disgusting and effeminate to her, she would like to heal them physically in the Malakwang meal first with a herbal cure and then mentally and spiritually with a ritual. To do this, however, Ocol must first beg forgiveness from his mother and ancestors.

Despite all the criticism, Lawino does not directly attack the way of life of the whites, but rather the aping by the black man. It is tolerant enough to recognize the whites' way of life as good and right for the whites, despite the deep feelings of disgust towards bars, blues and latrines , but not for the Africans. That's why she has nothing to do with white technology, the deadly electric stove for example, and the behavior of whites, be it the blues in the dim night bars or the lying missionaries or teachers who stare at the young girls' breasts. She uses the beauty of the Acholi culture against western immorality, kissing and applying makeup, clinging to dancing, etc. She emphasizes the lively eroticism of her own culture, the beauty of the naked and the open sexuality among young people. In a grand vision of healing, she concludes with a dance in front of her husband, who has become a "real man" again, and shows him the beauty and wealth of his home.

The political conflict

She ties the political conflict, represented by right-left parties following the European pattern, to the conditions at home. It was probably this criticism of the ruling black elite, its corruption, the wars, tribalism and home-made exploitation that brought Okot's banishment from Uganda. It shows that, under the political conflict, everyone wanted to do their thing in their own pocket instead of seeing their task as building a socially just economy. Here Okot / Lawino leaves completely the topic of house and yard or colonialism , but formulates a task that black politicians and thinkers have to face: What can and must Africa do for itself without hoping for the white man?

Ocol

Ocol has an impetuous, brutal and devious character. Okot has drawn him in such a way that it is difficult to identify with him or to like him, someone who mercilessly puts his wife on the street. Ocol can be rude and very hurtful with his pointy tongue. He's arrogant and he's restless. Someone who has no time in Africa is considered a child and not respected. Ocol passes over it. For his career as a party politician, he does everything from self-praise to blackening and ingratiation. In doing so, he gives up the ability to enjoy. He despairs of his black skin and his Africanism, admires the colonial powers and no longer wants to do without the advantages that uhuru brought him . Many of his compatriots appear to him to be a disruptive factor. They are lazy and selfish, fearful and lacking in vision. But Ocol also names truths that Lawino does not want to see: the educational and health problem, the lack of women's rights , the circumcision of girls, poverty or the now deadly childish war "games" of the moran warriors that have become superfluous .

But otherwise Ocol wants to exterminate all traditions, all customs and religion, but also natural medicine , after everyone has wistfully thought of the past in a big celebration. But Ocol has a vision. He wants to build the new Africa in which class society rules. An Africa that no longer knows a song of praise for the defeated blacks. One that is as successful as Europe.

Literary classification

GA Heron justifies the higher literary quality of “Lawino” in his comparison of “Ocol” and “Lawino” as follows: “If Song of Ocol is an answer to Song of Lawino, then it's a bad one. (...) These two poems are not the thesis and the antithesis of the argument from which the reader can then derive his synthesis. (...) Song of Ocol is much weaker than Song of Lawino (... Here) Okot uses the dramatic expression of the marital dispute to shed light on the more important problems of Africa's future. But Ocol is only concerned with the domestic situation for one chapter. At the end of the first chapter, he throws Lawino out of the house and then forgets her ... “But Lawino, too, is not only interested in the domestic conflict and her husband. She addresses him in every chapter, but she also addresses her clan members and national comrades. And: she too “forgets” Clementine in the course of the song, although she mentions her rival again in the last chapter without naming her. But now Clementine is just a cipher for a sacrifice that Lawino is ready to make when Ocol returns to tradition. Lawino too broadens the view from domestic, through cultural to political conflict, only in her own way, emotionally and in her own cultural tradition. There does not seem to be any room for domestic conflict for either of them, as there is now a daunting task ahead, the future of Africa.

Lawino has an eye on the future fate of Africa, and so does Ocol, but the paths that should lead there are different. The author sees neither the insistence on the old traditions nor the uncritical adaptation of western values ​​and ways of life for an Africa of the future: Even if Lawino is also his sympathy, he is aware of the problems of her attitude towards life.

expenditure

New translation from English by Raimund Pousset; with glossary and afterword by Raimund Pousset and Philip Ijait Aluku; with bibliography and secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the article: Music from Africa and Europe. In: Afrika heute, Nov. 15, 1970, p. 342. Deutsche Afrika-Gesellschaft, Bonn.