D. O. Fagunwa And His Overbearing ‘Helpers’: A Novelist’s Predicament 

 UGOCHUKWU E J INKEONYE 

Whenever the full history of Nigerian literature is written, Daniel Olorunfemi Fagunwa (popularly known as D.O. Fagunwa), the Yoruba language novelist, will certainly occupy his rightful place as one of its pioneers. Although literate in the English language, Fagunwa chose to put his indigenous language in the limelight by employing it in the writing of his novels which not only enjoyed wide readership among the Yoruba-reading population of the then Western Nigeria but also attracted critical response from both Yoruba and non-Yoruba scholars. 

Given Fagunwa’s education and exposure, it may be unfair to draw the conclusion that he was blissfully unaware of the limitations he was imposing on himself in terms of readership and critical appreciation when he chose to write in Yoruba. What seems more likely the case is that he was willing to sacrifice on the altar of cultural and linguistic nationalism the fame he would certainly have gained beyond his ethnic block and the hefty financial reward that would have come rolling to his doorstep had he chosen English as his medium of expression. 

According to Professor Ayo Bamgbose, although “Fagunwa…was quite familiar with certain works in English literature, including translations of stories from Greek mythology…two possibilities were open to him. He could use his knowledge of English literature to produce a European type of novel…or he could create something of his own, drawing his inspiration from traditional material. It was the latter course that Fagunwa chose. Fagunwa based his novels on the tradition of the Yoruba folk tale (Bamgbose, 1974).” 

And his decision came at a cost. After all, barely educated Amos Tutuola whose 1952 novel, The Palmwine Drinkard, which appeared sixteen years after the Church Missionary Society (CMS) had published Fagunwa’s first novel, Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole, had achieved instant, enthusiastic local and international readership and has since then enjoyed serious study by literary scholars and students across the globe. It remains in doubt if Tutuola could have readily found a publisher (especially, one with considerable stature as Faber and Faber) if he had written his book, say, in the 1970s or even late 1960s. But today, no historical account of Nigerian literature in English is complete without Tutuola receiving a prominent mention despite the widespread strictures by critics of what many of them perceive as the grievous harm he inflicted on the English language and his penchant for almost confusing the reader with the several and mostly unrelated tales he appeared to have untidily lumped together to realise his novels. 

However, Chinua Achebe’s essay, ‘Work and Play in The Palmwine Drinkard,’ published in Critical Perspectives on Amos Tutuola (Bernth Lindfors ed.) represents not only the most significant effort by a very influential and convincing literary voice to lift Tutuola from the critical dustbin where most critics had impatiently consigned him, but it remains till date the most ambitious and persuasive endeavour to help readers and scholars alike make some really interesting meaning out of what many had long dismissed as Tutuola’s medley of rambling, depthless tales starring mostly flat characters in largely unconvincing scenes. Tutuola’s work, however, continues to enjoy some prominence in the African literary landscape that Fagunwa’s can only dream of despite the availability now of the latter’s books in the English language and some extensive scholarly studies that have been undertaken on them. 

Until very recently, Bamgbose’s 1974 book, The Novels of D. O. Fagunwa, had remained the most comprehensive work on Fagunwa’s novels. In addition to critical analysis of his novels, Bamgbose provides some background details that enhance the reader’s appreciation of Fagunwa’s life and work. For instance, it is from him that we learn that 

“Fagunwa’s first novel, Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole, was written for a competition organised by Miss Plumber in 1936. The Church Missionary Society bought the manuscript for 20 (twenty pounds sterling) and published it in 1938. The book was an instant success, and was very popular in the schools” (Bamgbose, 1974:3). 

If Fagunwa’s target audience was the Yoruba, to achieve a wide readership among his own people, probably, after convincing himself that his story might be of little or no interest to the outside world, he was then a great success. German/Jewish scholar, Professor Ulli Beier, writing in Black Orpheus in 1965 reports that Fagunwa’s Igbo Olodumare which he says is, in the consensus of many people, his most popular novel “had sixteen prints since 1947.” 

Says Beier further: “when Chief Fagunwa died suddenly and tragically in an accident in December 1963, few non-Yoruba speakers may have realised that with him Nigeria lost its most popular writer” (Beier 1965:51). 

Prof Beier was a great admirer of Fagunwa. He had collaborated with Bakare Gbadamosi to translate the first chapter of Fagunwa’s Igbo Olodumare, which was published in Odu: Journal of Yoruba, Edo and Related Studies in 1963. One can therefore understand why he could describe Fagunwa, a writer whose readership was restricted to the Yoruba-speaking people of Western Nigeria as the country’s “most popular writer” in 1963! And yet he added that only a “few non-Yoruba speakers” were aware of Fagunwa’s popularity, if not existence. He clearly overstated his point, obviously goaded by his overflowing admiration for Fagunwa and his work. By 1963, Nigerian writers like Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Cyprian Ekwensi, Christopher Okigbo, T.M. Aluko and some others were already well known all over Nigeria, across Africa and beyond and being widely studied in European and American universities where, maybe, only an insignificant few might have some vague familiarity with Fagunwa’s name and work; so he could not have been “Nigeria’s most popular writer” in 1963. 

Early critical works on Fagunwa were restricted to Yoruba scholars and some others who were, probably, on some kind of “literary adventure,” or “exploration,” especially, from Western countries, with some eager mission to “discover” new “curiosities” in the emerging literature from Africa. These had to collaborate with Yoruba scholars to gain access into Fagunwa’s work. It was, therefore, the earnest hope of scholars outside the Yoruba enclave (whose appetite had been whetted by the little they had read about Fagunwa) that Yoruba scholars should rise to the challenge of making Fagunwa’s five major novels available to the outside world by preparing their translations in major languages like English or French. Interestingly, however, when this expectation began to be gratified, it created new problems for the author. 

For instance, by 1968, when Wole Soyinka’s translation of Fagunwa’s first novel, Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole (as The Forest Of Thousand Daemons) was issued by Nelson Publishers in London, Soyinka had already attained considerable international status as a writer, a fact, it would seem, Nelson had hastened to exploit. Unlike what is the standard practice in many translated books, Soyinka’s name got undue prominence on the cover of the book, and given that he was already a known name among readers of African literature in English, it tended, in the opinion of some readers, to diminish that of the original writer. Of course, that would be to the rich benefit of the publishers even though, it grossly put the creator of the work at a great disadvantage. One edition whose cover I am looking at as I write now tried to achieve some form of balance. It announces “Wole Soyinka and D.O. Fagunwa” as joint authors of the book in that order. 

Now, many of us have read quite a number of Greek, German, French and Russian works made available to us by some diligent English translators. In most cases, the name of the translators appear inside the books or even when they appear on the covers, they are rendered in very small types that one would not readily notice them. 

It is possible that many Nigerians may not even be aware that majority of the novels, poems and plays they read in high school and college were first written and published in French by French-speaking African writers, like, Sembene Ousmane, Camara Laye, Aminata Sow Fall, Mariama Ba, Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono, David Diop, Leopold Senghor, etc.? How many people can readily remember the name of the translator of any of these books? And that is because their names were not placed in such a way as to compete for prominence with or even dwarf out that of the author. 

Other translations of Fagunwa’s books I have encountered have allowed the Nelson Publishers’ model to dictate their preference. Gabriel Ajadi’s translation of Igbo Olodumare (as The Forest Of God) published in 1995 by Agbo Areo Publishers in Ibadan went further than Nelson. Dr. Ajadi’s name stood out in a far heavier type than Fagunwa’s. In fact, he is presented as the author of the book. The reader is only informed through an explanatory note on the cover that the book “by Ajadi” is an annotated translation of Fagunwa’s work. 

Only recently, I saw the cover of another of Fagunwa’s novels translated by Professor Olu Obafemi and it followed almost the same pattern set by Nelson and Ajadi’s publishers. 

The danger then is that Fagunwa’s name, despite what is perceived as his literary success within the Yoruba-speaking nation, may continue to sound unfamiliar to many people, even those who had read his translated works. His dilemma is compounded by the fact that his stories which drew heavily from diverse traditional folk tales in form and content and which he appeared to have lumped together in such a disjointed manner to realise his novels may have considerably reduced his appeal to contemporary audiences whose literary taste have already benefited from immense enhancement from a variety of well-plotted works from many African writers they have been exposed to. He had a choice to extend the reach of the traditional paradigm he drew heavily from to lend his stories more depth and help his characters develop further and become more rounded, but he, probably, did not consider that necessary. 

Now, of all the novels written by Fagunwa, it is only Gabriel Ajadi’s translation of Igbo Olodumare as The Forest of God that I have read. In an introductory note, Dr. Ajadi submits that “Fagunwa’s world is dichotomised: there is a world in which we live and move, and there is a world which we cannot see. The former world is the world of man, and the latter is the world of spirits, gnomes, trolls, fairies, ghosts, ghommids, and kobolds. These beings are perceived as being in competition with men; they claim to be superior to man, and man in turn tries to claim his primary place in the universe…”(Ajadi, 1995: 8) 

The main issue with this Fagunwa novel is not that it looks more like a cluster of fairy tales, as some critics have argued, which are made to relate in some way to the protagonist who is a great hunter, and who had gone into a strange, dreaded forest armed with weapons and charms for outlandish encounters with strange spirits, even though such a tale, coupled with its peculiar style of rendition, cannot be relied upon to demonstrate an ability to greatly appeal to many readers since it would most likely prove incapable of fitting into their long-settled perception of reality. 

But even if this was the only issue, it would not even have mattered sufficiently. Magical realism, after all, has 

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