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Paul Chidyausiku’s poetry

23 mei 2007
Paul Chidyausiku is the well-known author of a considerable number of Shona novels and essays (some of which have won local awards). He was among the first five or so Shona writers to be published in Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) in the late fifties and early sixties. His writings reflect the preoccupations of his generation. Most of the early writers in Shona were schoolteachers and their writings (stories and parables) contain an implicit didacticism and straight advice on how to live, or how the traditional Shona people lived (and as individuals are expected to live). All this is to be expected among the then newly literate Shona (a people with a traditionally oral culture), anxious to preserve its mores and heritage, especially in the face of encroaching western civilisation with its Christian beliefs.
This was the milieu in which Chidyausiku practised his art. Beyond nationalist politics, there was little conflict between Christian beliefs and Shona folk tales, proverbs, riddles, etc. In traditional society, there were no schools as we know them today, but every occasion that brought people together (especially the old and the young) provided a time for learning in whatever form was deemed suitable: story, song/poem, proverb. The wisdom of the people contained within these genres would naturally be passed on from generation to generation. The method then was more or less implicit in the aphorism “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” though the Latin laborare est orare seems even more accurate. Combining the two is to say: “to play and work is to pray”. You could safely say that nothing was done (or was possible) without the blessing of God (through the ancestors), a mood and a message that provides Chidyausiku’s voice. His is not the poetry of a clever turn of phrase or brilliant metaphoric invention, but rather the meditative, slow-flowing of a deep river and, of course, there is often the element of surprise, something that the attentive reader has to find for him or herself after reading the poem. (Obviously, it may not work the same for other readers but it does, for this one!)

Above I mention the poet’s voice. In the poem ‘Giving the Bride Away’, the voice is typical of a concerned head in a Shona family. It is both a prayer and a piece of last ditch advice to a beloved daughter, who is going to start her own family among or with strangers. In the last three lines, the old man appeals to both the ancestors and the daughter:

If there should be no little ones of her own
Give her the wisdom
Not to try her luck with other men.


Chidyausiku reveals the deep concern at the heart of the Shona way of life for the welfare of the human being, especially the girl/ daughter/ woman.

‘All Lost’ graphically details the regrets of someone with “a mother’s heart inside me,/though it may have been a foolish lover’s heart,” as she watches the man (who made her leave everything she loved and follow him) crossing the river to his home village, leaving her on the other side. ‘The Heart and the Mind’ is almost a philosophical question-and-answer session within a young woman’s divided self. ‘Candlelight’ would fall within the same category as ‘Giving the Bride Away’ but in this case it contains general advice to every man:

If your life were a candle
How much light would it spread
How wide and how high
How much warmth would it give?


And there is the other voice, playful, satirical but, for all that, still poignant. ‘Detribalised’ speaks of the man who spends his money drinking with his friends, they even call him Mr Kwekwe, after the town they live in. But after he has died, his friends hurriedly bury him at his rural home, and quickly drive back to town, shaking their heads: “There was no drink at the funeral!”

In ‘That Lodger’, while the poet shows empathy for an unfortunate fellow being, he can’t help asking himself some dark and negative questions about the wisdom of helping a poor man. ‘Squatters’ would seem to be the least subtle of the collection, yet in its plain and direct language (a kind of cry from the heart) it unambiguously echoes the plight of the victims of injustice perpetrated by the government (and other powerful institutions): “But they keep on telling me to move on / Before they set fire to my few belongings.”

With ‘That He-goat’ and ‘Porcupines’, Chidyausiku brings out one of his strengths (one of the pre-requisites of any poet or writer): the uncanny ability to become one with his subject – to merge with the other. Treated with humour, one can easily identify with the inquisitive boy and his grandpa’s he-goat. And the way the poet gets under the skin (or spikes) of the porcupine and engenders it with the ability to look at its own shortcomings (but still stay on top of the situation, that it has the last laugh) is skilfully executed, and, quite encouraging!

‘Reduce and Go Upstairs’ is the poet laughing at himself (although it’s addressed to a ‘suspicious’ ‘You’). Again, it is the apparently innocent tone – a mixture of playfulness and – gravity that tickles this reader’s gills:

when shock absorbers in your spinal column are gone


and cannot jog to correct the situation
then it’s time to go slow on the fried eggs
the choice you must make is not easy
But reduce your weight or join them upstairs!


The almost drunken, philosophical, decadent relaxedness of ‘To My Bath Tub’, the sensuousness of the whole piece, reveals a quite different Chidyausiku – a kind of Roman God — taking a sauna without a care in the world, giving a grandfatherly, doctor-ly wink at the end:

It is a therapeutic treat
For the body and the mind
Would you like to give it a treat?
don’t get addicted to it as I am!
© Charles Mungoshi
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