African Literature as Celebration: Reflections of a Novelist

Read Chinua Achebe’s 1992 “Reflections of a Novelist” in Dissent.

There is an artistic taboo among my people, the Igbo of Nigeria. It is a prohibition—on pain of being finished off rather quickly by the gods—against laying a proprietary hand on even the smallest item in that communal enterprise which they undertook from time, and to which they gave the name mbari. Mbari was a celebration through art of the world and of the life lived in it. It was performed by the community on command by its presiding deity, usually the earth goddess, Ana. Ana combined two formidable roles in the Igbo pantheon as fountain of creativity in the world and custodian of the moral order in human society. An abominable act is called nso-ana, taboo-to-Earth.

Once every so often, and in her absolute discretion, this goddess would instruct the community through divination to build a home of images in her honor. The diviner would travel through the village and knock on the doors of those chosen by Ana for her work. These chosen people were then blessed and separated from the larger community in a ritual with more than a passing resemblance to their own death and funeral. Thereafter, they moved into the forest and, behind a high fence and under the instruction and supervision of master artists and craftsmen, they constructed a temple of art.

Architecturally, it was a simple structure, a stage formed by three high walls supporting a peaked roof; but in place of a flat floor there was a deck of steps running from one side wall to the other and rising almost to the roof at the back wall. This auditorium was then filled to the brim with sculptures in molded earth and clay, and the walls with murals in white, black, yellow, and green. The sculptures were arranged carefully on the steps. At the center of the front row sat the earth goddess herself, a child on her left knee and a raised sword in her right hand. She is mother and judge.

To her right and left, other deities took their places. Human figures, animals (perhaps a leopard dragging along the carcass of a goat), figures from folklore, history, or pure imagination; forest scenes, scenes of village and domestic life; everyday events, abnormal scandals; set pieces from past displays of mbari, new images that had never been depicted before—everything jostled together for space in that extraordinary convocation of the entire kingdom of human experience and imagination.

When all was ready, after months or even years of preparation, the makers of mbari, who had been working in complete seclusion, sent word to the larger community. A day was chosen for the unveiling and celebration of the work with music and dancing and feasting in front of the house of mbari.

I used the words stage and auditorium to describe the mbari house; let me explain. Indeed, the two side walls and the back wall encompassed a stage of sorts, in which the community in the foreground is the audience looking into the enclosure with it...