Abstract

The central premise in this article is that Ben Okri's generational protest poem, “The Incandescence of the Wind”, first published in An African Elegy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992) and republished in Rise like Lions (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2018), seeks to make sense of a profoundly disturbing encounter with contemporary reality through a revisioning of nationhood and poetic responsibility in war-torn Nigeria in 1982. The argument draws on Wole Soyinka's The Open Sore of a Continent (New York: Oxford, 1996) and aligns its poetic aesthetic with Percy Bysshe Shelley's belief that literature can change the world (“A Defence of Poetry” [1821], in The Norton Anthology: Theory and Criticism, edited by V. Leitch, New York: W. W. Norton, 2001). The article explores the ways in which Okri intertwines the key threads of doomed nationhood and imaginative transmutation to suggest a road less travelled. As a native-born Nigerian poet, he believes he has a responsibility to remonstrate in order to heal. His is a concern for the political pressures that impinge on a nation at war with itself. His ameliorative guiding vision informs this interpretation of the poem, the characteristic theme of which is imaginative redemption of suffering by re-visioning the imagi/Nation.

摘要

本文的中心前提是本·奥克里（Ben Okri）的世代抗议诗《风的炽热》（The Incandescence of the Wind）首先发表在非洲挽歌（伦敦：乔纳森·卡普，1992 年），并重新发表于像狮子一样崛起（伦敦：霍德和斯托顿，2018 年） )，试图通过在 1982 年对饱受战争蹂躏的尼日利亚的民族身份和诗意责任的修正来理解与当代现实的深刻令人不安的相遇。该论点借鉴了 Wole Soyinka 的《大陆的开放性溃疡》（纽约：牛津，1996 年）并将其诗意美学与珀西·比希·雪莱的信念相一致，即文学可以改变世界（“诗歌辩护”[1821]，在诺顿选集：理论与批评，由 V. Leitch 编辑，纽约：WW Norton，2001）。这篇文章探讨了 Okri 如何将注定失败的民族和富有想象力的转变的关键线索交织在一起，以提出一条人迹罕至的道路。作为土生土长的尼日利亚诗人，他认为自己有责任抗议以治愈疾病。他关注的是影响一个与自己交战的国家的政治压力。他改进的指导性愿景为这首诗的解释提供了信息，其特色主题是通过重新审视想象/国家来想象救赎苦难。