SOURCE: Ofuani, Ogo. “The Poet as Self-Critic: The Stylistic Repercussions of Textual Revisions in Okot p'Bitek's Song of Ocol.¹” Research in African Literatures 25, no. 4 (winter 1994): 159-76.

[In the following essay, Ofuani explores p'Bitek's revisions of his poetry to discover the overall direction of his poetry.]

Creative writers have often assumed the mantle of literary critics and, as self-critics, revised their own published texts in a bid to produce the ULTIMATE TEXT. This urge has fascinated other literary critics who have shown that the trend is neither genre-specific nor restricted to regional and linguistic provenance.

In English literature, Samuel Richardson revised his Pamela, or Virtue Revisited (1740); William Wordsworth, W. H. Auden, and William Butler Yeats have also revised their poems. E. A. Levenston, for instance, discusses the stylistic implications of Auden's drastic pruning of “September 1, 1939” between 1940 and 1945, while Thomas Parkinson distinguishes four categories of Yeats's revisions. In American Literature, Henry James revised The Bostonians while William Faulkner revised his Sartoris. T. S. Eliot also revised some of his poems.

J. J. Healy draws attention to the creative processes in the novels of the Caribbean novelist Wilson Harris through examining the scratch sheets for five of his novels: Ascent to Omai, Sleepers of Roraima, Age of the Rainmakers, Black Marsden, and Companions of Day and Night. In African literature, notable writers like Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, and Okot p'Bitek have revised some of their texts. Soyinka, for instance, has two versions of The Man Died. The revision of Achebe's Arrow of God (1964, 1974) has generated considerable critical tension. His justification of the removal of “structural weaknesses” for which he had taken “the opportunity of a new edition to remove” (1974 preface) started a controversy between Robert M. Wren, who thinks that the changes are minor, inconsequential, misleading and unjustified (58), and Peter Sabor, who offers to “demonstrate existence of several further types of change and to offer a new explanation for the structural alteration” (375). While not taking sides in the controversy, G. D. Killam, Molly Mahood, and Bruce King have equally discussed the significance of Achebe's revisions for the improved readability of Arrow of God.

George Heron extensively discusses the three versions of the original source text of Okot p'Bitek's Wer pa Lawino (1956, 1969) and their translations by p'Bitek into the target text Song of Lawino but does not indicate the existence of his other revised texts (32-45). David Cook and David Rubadiri did so when they advised that many of the poems in their anthology “now appear in revised versions which the authors (including p'Bitek) regarded as final” and stated specifically that p'Bitek's “They Sowed and Watered” had been transmuted into a section of Song of Ocol since they had chosen it. They exhorted that “readers will be interested to compare the two quite different arrangements” (xv), particularly as they have “been able to produce precisely the poet's final decision on wording and punctuation” (xvi).

This paper introduces such a comparison and so focuses on the stylistic repercussions of p'Bitek's revisions of Song of Ocol. It provides insights into the artistic mind of the poet as he struggled to achieve a more communicative poetic text. It seeks to show that, in spite of the apparent transmutations of these texts into larger texts, they were separate poems. This position is reinforced by the disparity in titles between the shorter anthologized versions and the longer textual versions. A text's title, as Levenston observes, is an integral part if it, “often supplying data essential for adequate contextualization” (457), and since p'Bitek used different titles in publishing them, he must have regarded them as separate poems. It rests on the assumption that each time a poet allows a lyric to be published, s/he has declared his/her satisfaction with it. It represents for him/her a specific utterance. Each time a poet revises a lyric and publishes the revision, s/he declares his/her satisfaction with the new form, which represents for the poet a different utterance and so becomes a different poem.

The texts are discussed in two parts, as follows:

1. “Song of the Woman,” which appeared later as part of section one of Song of Ocol, and
2. “Harvest,” which was first incorporated into Section Seven of Song of Ocol and appeared later as “They Sowed and Watered.”

Several issues are addressed in this paper. They include examining the direction in which Okot p'Bitek was working, specifically the direction in which the text of Song of Ocol was moving in each new version between 1969 and 1971. Is the movement reflective of a general trend in the development of his poetry? Did they move away from or closer to an implicit model in Acoli literature? Is there gain or loss in expressiveness as we move from one version to another? Are the versions towards a more correct, explicit version? And what effects did the revisions have on the text's metrical patterning?

The first set of revisions involve the divergences between “Song of the Woman” which appeared in East African Journal in February 1969 and its equivalent text from the fourth to the sixth stanzas of the first section of Song of Ocol. The first text appeared with the subtitle “part of a long poem in progress.” Its incomplete nature could have accounted for the addition of three other stanzas before it appeared as a segment of the first section of Song of Ocol. These stanzas, added in 1970, were obviously written after the publication of the 1969 text.

This is not the only difference between those versions. “Song of the Woman” has four stanzas of 34 lines, while Song of Ocol has only three stanzas of 34 lines. Thus, on the surface, they seem alike on the basis of number of lines. Both refer intertextually to Lawino's complaints about Ocol's behavior in Song of Lawino, Divergences, however, exist at other levels. Let us begin with the first stanzas:

1969
The Song of the Woman
Is the braaa-ing of a ram
After the razor-edge of the
butcher's knife
The wind-pipe,
Red paint
Sprayed on the grass.

(39)

1970
Song of the Woman
Is the confused noise
After the butcher's knife
Has sunk past
The wind pipe,
Red paint spraying
On the grasses.

(10)

Both texts are complex sentences with intensive (equative, definitional) structures.² Their subjects are complex noun phrases. But where in 1969 it has a definite article (“The Song of the Woman”), the 1970 text is hurried, the article is ellipted (removed) before the word “Song” (“Song of the Woman”). Both have a similarity in clause composition: two clauses linked by an asyndetic comma (which makes the use of “and” unnecessary) in line 6. The first clause (lines 1-6) has a Subject + Verb + Complement (SVC) structure, and the second clause could have been intensive with an SVC structure, but the subject and verb are ellipted:

First Clause

Subject: The Song of the Woman (1969)

: Song of the Woman (1970)

Verb: Is (equative copula)—1969, 1970

Complement: The braaa-ing of a ram / After the razor-edge of the / butcher's knife / Has sunk past / The wind-pipe (1969).

: The confused noise / Made by a ram / After the butcher's knife / Has sunk past / The wind pipe (1970)

Second Clause

(S) ellipted in both

(V) ellipted in both

Complement: Red paint / Sprayed on the grass (1969)

: Red paint / Spraying / On the grasses (1970)

The first clauses of the first stanzas of these texts are, therefore, parallel. Both refer to Lawino's complaints about her husband Ocol in Song of Lawino, and Ocol himself uses this opportunity to answer back in their connubial exchange. This accounts for their use of the definite article in the postmodifier: “of the woman.” A conspiratorial link exists between persona and reader, so we do not ask, “Which woman?,” because we already know. It presupposes that we have already read Lawino. The first text is more grammatical in the use of the definite article. Their verbs are in the simple present with its “all time” effect. Lawino's song will remain what Ocol says it is in the Complement. The Complements are structurally dissimilar, although they are both technically complex sentences. Where the first Complement is vague (“the braaa-ing of a ram”), the second is more descriptive, more specific and explicit (“the confused noise by a ram”). At the interpersonal level, the first text in using the coinage “braaa-ing” is not as insolent, abusive, and direct as the latter, which is in tune with Ocol's abrasive, abusive stance in Song of Ocol. Their Adverbial Subcomponents are clauses of time introduced by the preposition “After.” Again, various changes have been effected. The “razor-edge” of the first text is considered redundant with the effect of a shorter, more compressed form in the second text. This compression is in spite of the morphological difference in “wind-pipe” as a hyphenated compound in 1960 and “wind pipe” as an unhyphenated compound in 1970.

Their second clauses are asyndetically linked by a comma in the sixth line to the first clause, but their S and V components are ellipted. Thus both are verbally economical, reducing the tendency to repeat “The Song of the Woman is. …” Their Subject Complements are parallel too, as complex noun phrases where “paint” as Headword is postmodified by an -ed participle clause (“Sprayed on the grass”) in the first text, and an -ing participle clause (“Spraying / On the grasses”) in the second. Lexical differences exist in these clauses, too. In the first, the use of the-ed participle “Sprayed” shows the act of blood-letting as completed; in the second, “spraying” gives the act duration—the lifeblood of the ram is not yet completely drained. The second is more evocative as the reader “sees” for himself or herself the final death throes of the dying ram. Again, in the first text, “grass” implies restrictive spread, whereas “grasses” in the second is more pervasive; it covers an area, not just a blade. With its immediacy, it is more horrifying.

Significant differences exist between the second stanzas of these texts:

1969
A lonely Song
A broken solo,
There is no chorus
No accompaniment
The strange melody
Defies orchestration

(39)

1970
It is a song all alone
A solo fragment
With no chorus
No accompaniment
A strange melody
Impossible to orchestrate

(10)

The thematic substance of both is so close that we could overlook their differences because they contain Ocol's rejection of Lawino's lament as worthless, unsupported, and unworthy of sympathy. They are both six lines, with only four repeated verbatim. All other lines are different. The shorter noun phrase structure of line 1 of the first text (“A lonely Song”) is dropped for a longer, more descriptive sentence in the latter (“It is a song all alone”). It seems that “lonely” and “all alone” as synonyms do not convey the same degree of desolation. The second is more emphatic. The second line in both texts is an appositive noun phrase modifying the first line, but their phrasing is different (“A broken solo” versus “a solo fragment”). Again, the second is more apt. Where the third line of 1969 is an assertive statement (“There is no chorus”), it is condensed to a prepositional phrase in the second (“with no chorus”). Again, the last two lines are varied: “The strange melody / Defies orchestration” (S V O), versus “A strange melody impossible to orchestrate” (complex noun phrase). The total effect is that the verse of the second text seems more hurried. The difference in the use of the definite article in the first text (“The strange melody”) is also significant. The indefinite distances the narrative persona from the reader. No shared knowledge exists between them. Ocol uses a pretence strategy here to imply that the reader does not even know that Lawino had complained and so is supplying information about it for the first time. This contradicts his earlier more definite reference.

Where the first poem has two more stanzas, in the second, all the lines are graphologically lumped into a long verse paragraph.

          1969
          It is the echo
          Of the woman wailing
          At yesterday's funeral,
          The Song of the dead
          5 In an old tomb,
          The muted cracking
          Of dry bones
          The crushing of skulls
          Under the weight
10 Of the earth.
          The song of the woman
          Is the dull thud
          Of a wooden arrow
          Striking a concrete wall
15 And falling on the earth
          Lifeless
          Like a small bird
          Hit by a stone
20 From a boy's catapult.
1970
As if in echo
Of women's wailing
At yesterday's funeral,
Song of the dead
Out of an old tomb,
Stealthy cracking
Of dry bones
Under the weight
Of earth;
It's the dull thud
Of the wooden arrow
As it strikes the concrete
Of a wall
And falls to earth,
Extinguished
Without life
Like a bird
Hit by stone
From a boy's catapult

Apart from the difference in number of lines in the two texts, many other changes have been made. Where the first is in two stanzas, there is no stanza break in the second. Where the tone of the first had been more certain (“It is the echo”), the second is indirect, circumspect (“As if in echo”). Their second lines are of-genitive forms, but the second is shortened through the use of double genitives. Their third lines are the same. The line-initial definite article “the” is deleted in 1970. Where the song was “in an old tomb” before, now it is overheard (“out of an old tomb”). The “muted cracking” becomes “stealthy.” The seventh line is identical. “The crushing of skulls / Under the weight / Of the earth” (lines 8-10) becomes the “Falling in of skulls / Under the weight / Of earth” as the dead are covered. The latter is more formal. Lines 11-15 of the first text are outrightly rephrased, with the rephrasing shorter (22 words in five lines versus 20 words in four lines). Lexical permutation (“Lifeless” becomes “Extinguished / Without life”), omissions (of “small” as modifier of “bird” in line 18 and of “a” as modifier of “stone” in line 19), outright lineation changes (“Like a small bird / Hit by a stone / From a boy's / Catapult”—four lines in 1969 replaced by “Like a bird / Hit by stone / From a boy's catapult,” three lines in 1970), and the introduction of new grammatical infelicities in the bid to compress the second text (“falling on the earth” versus “falls to earth; “hit by a stone” versus “hit by stone”—marked by the omission of the determiner) characterize the difference between two texts. There is no doubt that the 1969 text is considerably different from the 1970 text. While retaining the same ideational content, the textual indicators and forms are significantly different. The text we read in 1969 has been significantly revised in 1970. The picture that thus emerges of each persona is not exactly the same.

The three texts in the second set of revisions are: “Harvest,” which first appeared in East African Journal (January 1969); stanza three of Section Seven of Song of Ocol (65-70); and “They Sowed and Watered” in Cook and Rubadiri (130-31). Specifically, they all have about the same ideational content. Their personae ironically jubilate at the ineptitude and insensitivity of the educated elite in maintaining the ideals of the Independence struggle in East Africa. The 1969 and 1970 texts are compared first, and both are later compared with the 1971 text.

The 1969 and 1970 texts differ in total number of stanzas and length of text. Where 1969 has 10 stanzas and 81 lines, 1970 has nine stanzas and 84 lines. The 1970 text is longer, but has more condensed lineation. They both begin with an exophoric “we; throughout the texts, there is no attempt to identify who “we” are. But it is clear that their personae belong in a larger group—so the “we” is inclusive.³ They both catalogue the negative achievements of that group.

The first stanzas are almost identical:

1969
We sowed, watered
Acres of Cynicisms
Planted forests of laughters
Bitter Laughters
Corrosive venom
Men shed tears
As they rocked
Held their sides
Laughed and laughed
Floods of Tears
Turned red
1970
We sowed,
We watered
Acres of cynicism
Planted forests of Laughter
Bitter Laughter
Corrosive venom
Men shed tears
As they rocked
Held their sides
Laughed, laughed
Floods of tears
Turned red

If the 1969 text is regarded as a part of the 1970 text, then sufficient justification seems to exist. First, the “we” of both texts is consonant with Ocol's use of “we” with all its power semantic. There is no solidarity between this “we” and other people like the “herdsboy” and the hunter” who seem to directly bear the brunt of their insensitivity. The lowly class is excluded. It suggests superiority for this group of “we”; it distances the others. He stresses power as the weapon of the oppressors: to spread frustration, anger, cynicism, and yet treat the others with the scorn of their laughter.

The basic difference between the two stanzas above is in lineation. The 1969 text has 11 lines; the 1970 has 12 lines. In 1969 we have an asyndetic construction involving the ellipsis of “we” in the obvious parallel structures of line 1 (“we sowed, watered”). This is split into two lines with the recoverability of the ellipted subject in 1970 (“we sowed / we watered”). The lines in the second text are more condensed, but more repetitive. “We” is repeated for emphasis so that where the precision of the earlier text is lost, there is no doubt as to the persona's insistence in the second text. Other less striking differences include the correction of the grammatical infelicities of the first text where abstract nouns are not only treated as proper nouns through capitalization but also are treated as common nouns and pluralized (“Cynicism” and “Laughters”). Proper forms are adopted in 1970. Line 9 of the first text (“laughed and laughed”) is condensed to “We laughed, laughed” in the second by ellipsis of the coordinator and the use of an asyndetic comma. More punctuation marks are used in 1970, thus increasing its readability and providing a slower, more dignified, unhurried rhythm. But for these, the two stanzas are alike.

Stanza 2 of 1969 (eight lines) becomes two stanzas in 1970 with a graphological break after the fifth line:

1969
We manured the Land
Frustrations sprouted
Bursting the soil
Like young bananas
Fat frustrations
Flourished fast
Yielding fruits
Green as gall
1970
We manured the Land
Frustrations sprouted
Bursting the soil
Like young banana trees,
Fat frustrations
Flourished fast
Yielding fruits
Green as gall;

Where the 1969 text has no line-end punctuation, the second text has in line 4 of stanza 2 and the last line of stanza 3. In the 1970 text, abstractions like “Frustrations” are erroneously accorded proper noun status and then pluralized. But the significant difference is in the fourth line of both texts, “Like young bananas” versus “Like young banana trees.” Where the first text is imprecise, the second is specific: only the trees and not the fruits implied in the first text can shoot through the soil.

The third stanza of 1969 and fourth of 1970 are similar too with minor adjustments, some absolutely unnecessary.

1969
On the hill-sides
We planted Fears
And their blossoms
Crimson red
Covered the hills
Like February fires
Prickly leaves
Hard and yellow
Pricked men's skins
Wounds festered.
1970
On the hillsides
We planted Fears,
It's blood-red blossoms
Covered the hills
Like February fires
Prickly leaves
Hard and yellow
Pricked men's skins
Causing festering wounds;

The first text is longer (10 lines), the second is more condensed. “Hill-sides” (line 1) is not hyphenated. Where “Fears” were planted (line 2)—and so the plural possessive preform “theirs” used in line 3—“Fear” is singular in 1970. An attempt to use the singular pronoun to replace its 1970 singular antecedent is marred by poor spelling (“it's” instead of “its”). Lines 3 and 4 (“And their blossoms / Crimson red”) of the first text are condensed to “It's blood-red blossoms” in the second. In 1969, the cause of the wounds that “festered” is not immediately known; the use of the past tense emphasizes the completion (result) of the action. Though the first text is shorter, the second is more vivid: where the wounds could have healed in 1969, they are still suppurating in 1970. This produces a shock effect in the second text, achieved by the addition of the participle verb (“Causing”) as well as the participle adjective (“festering”).

In subsequent stanzas, a great deal of adjustment is done in the two texts.

1969
In the valley
A streamlet trickled
Its waters sluggish slimy
Beside the streamlet
A lamb
Uhuru
Dead as stone
1970
In the valley
A streamlet trickled,
Its water sluggish, slimy,
Beside the streamlet
The lamb
Uhuru
Dead as stone
The shimmering flies
Giving false life
To its open eyes!

Stanzas 4 and 5 of 1969 are merged in 1970, with the addition of three extra lines. The stanza break between the two stanzas of 1969 (which is really unnecessary if we consider the flow of narration) is corrected in 1970. More revisions are introduced. The 1970 text is better punctuated (lines 2 and 3), specifically in line 3 where the adjectives are independent, separated by commas. Where in 1969 the lamb is indefinite (“A lamb”), in 1970 the definite article gives the text a tone of self-knowledge and even certainty. Ocol knows what he is talking about. The additional information in the 1970 text leaves the reader in no doubt as to the damage done to Uhuru: “The shimmering flies / Giving false life / To its open eyes!” Ocol seems to be gloating. This additional information removes the suspense achieved by the 1969 text.

The sixth stanzas are identical in many ways in the two texts:

1969
A herdsboy
Sat on the bank above
Threw small stones
Hit the carcass
Flies rose
Like white ants
The young man sobbed
Eyes full of pepper
1970
A herdsboy
Sat on the bank above,
Threw small stones
Hit the carcass,
The flies rose
Like white ants,
The boy sobbed
Eyes smarting with pepper;

They both have eight lines. The ideational content and story line are the same. In his detachment, Ocol describes the sorrow and involvement of the “herdsboy.” Minor grammatical adjustments are made in line 5 (“Flies rose” versus “The flies rose”). The second text is more specific, particularly as the definite article refers anaphorically to “shimmering flies” in the preceding stanza. The same conspiratorial tone is adopted in the use of definite articles. An obvious incongruence between “A herdsboy” of line 1 and “The young man” of line 7 is corrected as “A herdsboy” becomes “The boy” in the second text. The imprecision of the first text (where we wonder whether two persons are involved—a boy and a young man) is resolved; we now know that only one participant is involved. In the last line, “Eyes full of pepper” explicitly becomes “Eyes smarting with pepper.” Whereas the first text does not explain the source of the pepper, the second with the introduction of “smarting” makes it obvious that the narrator is only being figurative; he is not to be taken literally as the first text indicates.

The next three stanzas of 1969 are discussed together to show that where some emendations to the 1970 text are significant, others are unnecessary, revealing either obvious indecision on the poet's part or editorial carelessness (printers' devil!):

1969
Ten men stood
On the other side
Roared like thunder
Peals of Laughters
Dipped in poison
Hit the boy
Like swords of steel
Blood gushed from his heart
Anointing the Land
We reaped Cynicism
Stored it
In concrete granary
Wider deeper
Than Mwitanzige
Distilled Angers
From the Laughters
Ten thousand tons
Of venom
Stored it in a tank
Underground
Dewy steams rose
Like lazy smoke
Grasses and trees died
.....A mound we made
Of Frustration and Fears
Higher than Kirinyaga
Its fiery lips
Licked the clouds
Heaven wept
.....1970
Two men stood
On the other side
Roared like thunder,
Peals of Laughter
Dipped in poison
Pierced the boy
Like daggers of steel,
Blood gushed from his heart
Anointing the Land!
We reaped Cynicism
.....Stored it
In a concrete granary
Wider, deeper
Than Mwitansige,
We distilled Anger
From the Laughter
Ten thousand tons
Of venom,
Stored it in a tank
Underground,
Acrid steam rose
Like lazy smoke,
Trees and grasses died;
A smoldering mound we made
Of Frustrations and Fear
Higher than Kirinyaga
Its fiery lips
Licked the clouds,
Heaven wept;

Ideationally, the two texts narrate the torment of a young shepherd boy who mourns Uhuru's death as the narrator mocks him and other unnamed persons. Some textual amendments seem unwarranted. The first text had three stanzas, the second has two. The stanza break of 1970 is not functional. It shows uncharacteristic carelessness in a p'Bitek text, or at least illustrates a good example of an editorial lapse—one that it might be interesting to check for in the 1971 revision. The reduction of “ten men” to “two men” does not detract from or enhance the shepherd boy's misery (line 1). The effect is the same as the elaborate similes portray. But where the effect “Hit the boy / Like swords of steel” in one text, it “Pierced the boy / Like daggers of steel” in the second. The second text describes a more damaging infliction: “Hit” does not suggest the cut inflicted by “Pierced,” though the change in instruments from “swords” to “daggers” is insignificant.

Again, the 1970 text is better punctuated with the addition of an emotive exclamation mark in line 9, commas in lines 3, 7, 13, 18, 20, and 22, and semi-colons in lines 23 and 29. Several other corrections make the 1970 text better. Where in 1969 “Cynicisms,” “Angers,” “Laughters,” and “Fears” are pluralized, they are singular in 1970. This eliminates the error of appropriate agreement between plural antecedents and the use of singular pronouns in the 1969 text (lines 10-11 and 15-19).

In both texts, “Ten thousand tons / Of venom” (17-18) is used appositively. Other corrections include the addition of the indefinite article in the prepositional phrase “In a concrete granary” (line 12). The addition of “we” (line 15) in the second text eliminates the vagueness of the first text turning the line into a transitive clause (“We distilled Anger”). The “dewy steams” becomes “Acrid steam” (line 21); the lexical replacement in 1970 is more descriptive. Instead of giving the visual effect of the first, it highlights the pungency of the poisonous distillation. The ecological result is the same: vegetation, plant life, is not spared. The transposition in line 23 (“Grasses and trees died” versus “Trees and grasses died”) does not produce any obvious differences; the focus seems the same. The last six lines of the two texts are identical but for the more specific modification of line 24 in the second text which becomes “A smoldering mound we made.” “Smoldering” anticipates the use of “fiery” in line 27, a connection which is missing in the 1969 text. In both texts, the misery of the shepherd boy affects even the heavens.

The last stanza of both texts involves the expiation of the sins of the killers of Uhuru through the wholesome purifying primordial act of another lowly-placed person.

1969
A herdsboy
Sat in the shade
Of a hut
Rubbed two sticks
A flash
Thunder
Flames roared
Purifying the Land
1970
A hunter
Sat in the shadow
Of a rock
Rubbed two sticks
A flash
Thunder roared,
Flames
Purified the Land!

Both stanzas have the same number of lines. The rustic setting is the same. But one gets the impression that the two texts were narrated by different personae, not written by the same literate poet. The differences in detail are reminiscent of the differences found in separate renditions of the same folktale. As the memory of the second narrator fails, he introduces embellishments in the core of the original story. Thus “herdsboy” becomes “hunter; “shade” is replaced by “shadow,” “hut” by “rock.” The magic vibrancy of the setting is almost the same, but the second text is more logical. The rubbing of sticks produced a flash accompanied by thunders; the resultant conflagration cleansed the land. Purification in the first text seems incomplete while the second projects a tone of exultatory celebration as the cleansing is total. The difference is conveyed morphologically: “purifying” versus “purified.”

So, the differences between the 1969 and 1979 texts reveal that but for a few slips in the later text, it is more carefully written. Punctuation, grammatical, and other linguistic infelicities in the first are eliminated in the second. Thus we could say that by 1970, p'Bitek had achieved what he thought was his ultimate text. But as Cook and Rubadiri show us, p'Bitek still tinkered with his poem in 1971. Where he had incorporated “Harvest” into Song of Ocol, he culls it out again for anthologizing as “They Sowed and Watered” in 1971. The change in title has several thematic implications. The acts of sowing and watering are same as in 1969 and 1970, but the participants are different. This is marked significantly by pronoun change. The inclusive “we” gives way to a more distanced third person “they,” excluding the narrator who is merely a witness. The 1971 text is still close to the earlier texts, but it has only four stanzas which are in fact made up ideationally of the contents of stanzas one to seven in 1969 and 1970. There is, therefore, a reduction in scope.

The first stanza has the same content as the other two texts but instead of their eleven and twelve lines, respectively, it has only eight:

They sowed and watered
Acres of cynicisms
Planted forests of laughters
Bitter laughters that flowed in torrents
And men shed tears as they rocked
And held their chests
And laughed and laughed
The flood of tears turned red.

Aside from the third person plural, the two lines of the earlier texts are condensed into the first line in 1970 with the addition of the coordinator and. The same abstractions—cynicisms and laughters—are planted, but the arbitrary capitalization of the earlier texts is removed while the pluralization of the 1969 text is reintroduced. The “bitter laughters” are now qualified by the finite clause “that flowed in torrents,” giving way to the “corrosive venom” of 1969 and 1970. Lines 6 and 7 (“Men shed tears / As they rocked” of the older texts now become one line: “And men shed tears as they rocked.” There is now a more conscious striving for parallel patterns using and in line initial positions in lines 5-7 above. Where the earlier texts were shorter, dramatic, the latest version is more deliberate, revolving round the use of and as a coordinator of consequence: the crying, holding of chests, and laughter are consequent on the bitter tears, on the act of planting negativisms. The use of and also shows prolonged actions of which the subjects seemed to have no control. The last line is still another instance of combination of two lines into one (“Flood of tears / Turned red” in 1970, now “The floods of tears turned red”).

The second stanza in 1971 is closer to the 1969 text which had been split into two:

They manured the land
And frustrations sprouted
Bursting the soil
Like young bananas
Fat frustrations flourished fast
Yielding fruits green as gall

This 1971 text is shorter still. The persona still maintains pronominal distance. Where the older texts had suggested that “Frustrations” sprouted because of the manuring, “And” in the second line of this line stresses result. It is more specific. The elaborate simile in line 4 of 1969 and 1971 is not as expressive as in the 1970 text, a feature discussed above. “Banana trees” are more specific than the banana fruits of 1969 and in 1971. The last four lines of 1969 and 1970 are condensed into two lines in 1971, resulting in rhythmic differences. The later text is more prosaic.

In the third stanza, the reduction in number of lines started in 1969 (ten), through 1970 (nine), continues in 1971 (now eight):

On the hill sides
They planted angers
And their blossoms crimson red
Covered the hills like
February fires
Their prickly leaves hard and yellow.
Pricked men's skins
And wounds festered

The pronominal difference continues here too: “we” in 1969 and 1970, now “they.” Instead of planting “fear(s),” they planted “angers”—so there is a change in object of planting. More ands are used—again stressing consequence. Some of the changes in the newer text however seem unnecessary: compare “Covered the hills / Like February fires” (1969, 1970) to “Covered the hills like / February fires” (1971). The addition of “their” to “prickly leaves” in 1971 is more explicit as two earlier lines become one. The attempts at punctuation in 1970 are once again ignored as in 1969. It is as if the poet feels that in this poetry of direct utterance, artificial graphic marks are unnecessary. They could be signs of editorial lapses as in 1969! Again the “festering” wounds of 1970 become “festered” in 1971 just as in 1969.

The last stanza of 1971 is a further condensation of the longer texts of 1969 and 1970. Twenty-four lines (1969) and 27 lines (1970) now become 19 lines:

In the valley
A streamlet trickled
Its water sluggish thick
Beside the streamlet rotting smelly
A lamb named Freedom
Dead as stone
A small herds-boy sat on the bank
He threw small stones
Which hit the carcass
Flies rose like white ants
The boy sobbed eyes full of pepper
Ten men stood on the other side
They roared lion-like
And laughed with mirth
The peals of laughter
Poisoned arrows
Hit the boy like swords of steel
And blood from his heart
Anointing the land.

This stanza seems a hybrid between the two earlier texts, not being exactly like any of them. Its graphological layout is different but, like the 1969 text, all punctuation marks are discarded. The setting is identical—in the valley beside the trickling streamlet, which is now “sluggish thick” (not “slimy”). The carcass is now “rotting smelly,” a qualification absent in either of the earlier texts. As if he has a wider non-African reading audience as target, p'Bitek translated uhuru as “freedom.” It is still dead as stone, but the three-line qualification of 1970 is dropped as redundant. The herdsboy is now “small,” with the provision of specific pronominal reference in line 8 (“He threw small stones”). The relativization of line 9 (“which hit the carcass”) makes the new text more specific. The boy's eyes no longer smart—they are “full of pepper” as in 1969. Lines 7, 10, 11, 12, and 17, which were two lines of verse each in 1969 and 1970, are now elongated singles. As in 1969, “ten men” now mock the herdsboy instead of the “two” of 1970. Their laughter is now “lion-like,” the exaggerated nature of the earlier texts dropped (“like thunder”), but enjoyed for all its frightfulness: they laughed “with mirth,” a qualification not in the earlier texts. The descriptions are more specific as the peals of laughter become “poisoned arrows,” not just dipped in poison. He reverts to the “swords” of 1969 instead of the 1970 “daggers.” The boy's life-blood which figuratively “gushed” in the earlier texts is now subdued—“And blood from his heart / Anointing the land.” The persona is no longer intent on shocking; he is more interested in providing details.

Generally, therefore, the three texts refer to the same situation. The elite group is distanced from the masses who had been optimistic about the gains of uhuru. Their optimism is thwarted by this oppressive group which enjoys the sadistic torture it inflicts on the masses. To this extent, the three texts say the same thing. But the interpersonal relationship between the persona and the participants are different. Where in 1969 and 1970 the narrator belongs in the elite class (hence the inclusive “we”), in 1971 a third-person narrator becomes a distant witness. His distance seems responsible for the less hyperbolic tone of the later text. The 1971 text is more prosaic than the others; its persona seems more hurried, more interested in details than in poetic structure. This accounts for the longer, more descriptive lines. The very obvious grammatical slips of 1969, discarded in 1970, are also removed in 1971.

This paper has so far identified the nature of the revisions in texts associated with Song of Ocol. Familiarity with only the published text (1970) gives the misleading impression that it is in all particulars the same as its assumed anthological excerpts. We see that these shorter texts are not exactly excerpts in every detail; they are different texts. As self-critic, Okot p'Bitek tinkered with them as he probed for a more poetically communicative and artistically satisfying text, as he attempted to mould form to conception. The successes, however, are variable, but the insights provided about his obsessive concern for the ultimate text are immense.

The revisions include addition of new information through inserting new verses or structures. Some involved deletions of redundancies or repetitions, as in the three lines added to section seven of the 1970 text but excised in 1971. To achieve verbal economy and more condensed poetry, some compressions are made in the later texts. Thus, of the three texts discussed in the third section of this paper, the 1970 version is more compressed with shorter lines and a quicker cadence. Some revisions involved rephrasings and other modifications (e.g., “spraying” versus “sprayed,” “grass” versus “grasses,” etc.). To avoid unnecessary repetitions present in earlier texts, some noun phrases (“Song of the Woman”) are replaced with pronouns (“it”); simple words are altered to achieve greater descriptive aptness (“lifeless” becomes “Extinguished / Without life”); old grammatical infelicities are removed, and, in some cases, new ones introduced. To assist the readers' comprehension, translations are given (“Uhuru” of 1969, 1970, becomes “Freedom” in 1971).

So in what direction was p'Bitek moving from 1969 through 1970 to 1971 in Song of Ocol and beyond? Do these revisions reveal that p'Bitek did not seem to have considered Song of Ocol in 1970 as good as many critics thought? Did the text become progressively more “correct,” more expressive, with each revision? There are gains and losses; and the results are often contradictory and confusing. Ordinarily, we would have expected that the 1971 text would be more correct than the others. But that is not so. The 1970 text is more descriptive, specific and explicit than the other versions. Many of the redundancies in these texts do not exist in the 1970 text. It is thus more grammatically correct and precise. We are surprised, for instance, that errors in the 1969 text, corrected in 1970, are reintroduced in 1971.

As for linguistic appropriateness, suitability of diction to ideational content, the different versions seemed to have produced different effects. The persona of the 1969 text is less abusive and brash than Ocol in 1970. Where he is unsure and tentative, Ocol is insolent, and very direct at the interpersonal level. The language of the 1970 text is more in line with the explosive feelings of an abused husband on the warpath against Lawino. This is reflected in the staccato two-beat basic rhythm of Song of Ocol. On the other hand, the 1971 text is more prosaic than the others; its persona is more hurried, and this again is reflected in the absence of punctuation marks, as the free verse structure gets more enjambed. They could be editorial lapses or a reflection of the conception of the text as poetry of direct utterance free of artificial and unnecessary graphic signals.

Lineation patterns also differ significantly. Where the earlier texts are shorter and dramatic, the latest version is more deliberate, more interested in details and the use of longer more descriptive lines than in poetic structure. In its adoption of the three-or four-beat lines instead of the one-, two-, or three-beat patterns of 1969 and 1970, the 1971 text seems to point in the direction of future development in p'Bitek's poetry. The loquacious verse of Song of Lawino had given way to the abrupt, terse, short two-beat basic verse of Song of Ocol which peaked in Two Songs, particularly in Song of Malaya (1971). But the verse of “They Sowed and Watered,” although written in the same year as Song of Malaya, had moved towards the longer verse lines and verse paragraphs of p'Bitek's lesser known poems like “Return the Bridewealth” (1966), “Order of the Black Cross” (1971), and “What the Buffalo Desires” (1972). It suggests a movement away from the short two-beat line to the regular three- or four-beat rhythm of Song of Lawino, which is closely related “in content, tone, and style to Acoli songs” and is “as close as one could expect to get in English to the pattern of the Acoli line” (Goodwin 155).⁴

That p'Bitek was still experimenting with versification becomes obvious on a comparison of the lines of “They Sowed and Watered” with those of “What the Buffalo Desires.” Unlike most of p'Bitek's earlier texts, “What the Buffalo Desires” is textually experimental, precisely in its use of the third person, its lack of explicitness, and its intellectual strain. It is the shortest, more modernistic, and remarkably different from the others. It is obscure, lyrical, and has no story line like p'Bitek's dominant dramatic monologue forms. It suggests the poet's drift towards a modernistic poetics beyond 1972, but for its adoption of the three- or four-beat line of Song of Lawino, and but for the publication of “Song of Soldier” fourteen years later in the more traditional poetic mould of the earlier texts.

So the issues raised early in this paper seem cleared by this study. Between 1966 (the writing of Song of Lawino) and the revisions of the texts of Song of Ocol between 1969 and 1971, up to 1982 when he died, and the posthumous publication of “Song of Soldier” in 1986, Okot p'Bitek had struggled to find what could be termed his basic poetic format. The pull had tended towards the textual practice in Song of Lawino with its leaning on Acoli literary form. The revisions in Song of Ocol thus attest to this innermost struggle of the poet's. One thing, however, is certain from this study. It is the need to be aware of the existence of these separate texts and to highlight the nature of the revisions p'Bitek had undertaken in them. This paper stresses that these texts deserve closer studies. To marginalize them, to exclude them, is to harm the total picture that emerges of the poet's inner struggles as he contributed to the development of (East) African poetry. We have to integrate them into the creative universe of this eminent poet.

Notes

1. I thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers who offered valuable suggestions on earlier versions of this article. I also thank Dr. Chinyere Okafor for making me more conscious of gender in the general use of pronouns.

2. The grammatical model of description used here is that of Quirk et al., where a clause could have one or all of the following elements: Subjects (S), Verb (V), Object (O), Complement (C), and Adverbial (A). The terms intensive, copula, ellipsis, head, preHead, postmodifier, asyndeton, etc. are as used there.

3. An exophoric element is one which has no antecedent in preceding text; while an inclusive “we” is one which has the speaker and other persons as its referents.

4. Adrian Roscoe thinks that “at the technical level of linguistic manipulation, the poem succeeds, for it contains some of the poet's finest writing. … A second sign of development is Ocol's more compressed verse. In order to tighten his style and achieve maximum impact Okot [p'Bitek] takes Lawino's thin line and makes it thinner” (47).

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. Arrow of God. Revised edition. London: Heinemann, 1974.

p'Bitek, Okot. Song of Lawino: A Lament. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1966.

———. “Return the Bridewealth.” Transition 5.24 (1966): 52-53.

———. “Harvest.” East African Journal 6.1 (1969): 7.

———. “Song of the Woman.” East African Journal 6.2 (1969): 7.

———. Song of Ocol. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1970.

———. “They Sowed and Watered.” Poems from East Africa. Ed. David Cook and David Rubadiri. London: Heinemann, 1971. 130-31.

———. “Order of the Black Cross.” Journal of the New African Literature and the Arts 9/10 (1971): 1173-74.

———. Two Songs: Song of Prisoner, Song of Malaya. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1971.

———. “What the Buffalo Desires.” Ghala (East African Journal) 9.1 (1972): 24.

———. “Song of the Soldier.” Artist, the Ruler: Essays on Art, Culture and Values. Foreword by Lubwa p'Chong. Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya, 1986. 11-14.

Cook, David and David Rubadiri, eds. Poems from East Africa. London: Heinemann, 1971.

Goodwin, Ken. “Okot p'Bitek.” Understanding African Literature: A Study of Ten Poets. London: Heinemann, 1982. 154-72.

Healy, Jack J. “Wilson Harris at Work: The Texas Manuscripts with Special Reference to the Mayakovsky Resonance in ‘Ascent to Omai.’” A Review of International English Literature 15.4 (1984): 89-107.

Heron, G. A. The Poetry of Okot p'Bitek. London: Heinemann, 1976.

Killam, G. D. The Writings of Chinua Achebe: A Commentary. Revised Edition. London: Heinemann, 1977.

King, Bruce. “The Revised Arrow of God.” African Literature Today 13 (1983): 69-78.

Levenston, E. A. “Speech and/or Writing: Lyric Poetry and the Media of Language.” PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 4 (1980): 451-74.

Mahood, Molly. The Colonial Encounter: A Reading of Six Novel. London: Rex Collins, 1977.

Parkinson, Thomas. W. B. Yeats. Self-Critic—A Study of His Early Verse. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1951.

Quirk, Randolph et al. A Contemporary Grammar of English. Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1972.

Roscoe, Adrian. Uhuru's Fire: African Literature, East to South. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977.

Sabor, Peter. “‘Structural Weaknesses’ and Stylistic Revisions in Achebe's Arrow of God.” Research in African Literatures 10.3 (1979): 375-79.

Wren, Robert M. “Achebe's Revisions of Arrow of God.” Research in African Literatures 7.1 (1976): 53-58.