Opinion

The Word's Voice - Flame of National Identity

The word is sound and feeling, it is tear and smile, it is night and day. The word can be a sweet cashew to taste as well as a micaia thorn which hurts and causes bleeding. The word hides and reveals truths. The word is a plough which prepares the land-soul for sowing seeds of hope, but is also a gun which defends and attacks the fortress of values with which we fight. The word is voice-of-flame which burns but also refreshes, the word is the music of birds in the song of Humanity beating to the rhythm of the secret of things of the land and the world.

Hence, what was the word made written-art in the poetic Karingana of José Craveirinha? What precursor did this word make in a country handcuffed to the liberated nation but still writhing in anguish? What was his song which covered the world and made the heart of every Mozambican a drum ressonating with identical vibrations of our culture and a call to the hostiles for a struggle for national independence?

Poets work the word. The word-sound-and-feeling, the word-phrase, the word-metaphor, all the words-figures-of-speech siblings in an apparently strange but harmonious combination.

From Xigubo to Cela 1, from Karingana wa Karingana to Babalaze de Hienas what words are these of Craveirinha in the poetry breathed in this land of ours of cutlho and mavungua, of canho and mampsincha?

Let's begin then with words-sound and feeling. Shortly after his first work, Xigubo, which came to light through the Casa dos Estudantes do Império (House of Students of the Empire) way back in the year 1963 and which contained poems written in the 50s and early 60s, we come across a singular poetic discourse, strong, masculine, marked by sound and feeling which shocked the readers of that time.

Using the Portuguese language as his privileged instrument of communication, the poet came, on the one hand, to subvert its gramatical structure and, on the other hand, enrich it with luso-mozambican neologisms, more specifically, luso-ronga.

However, more than this, ideologically and intentionally, he introduced and filled his poetical writings with bantu lexemes, our names, our words, signifiers of Mozambique. Thus, among the various emblematic poems of Xigubo such as "Africa", "Manifesto", "Grito negro" (Black Cry), the poem "Hino à minha terra" (Anthem to my land) is paradigmatic of what we have come to assert and we do not hesitate to transcribe a few verses of this poem which gives body and voice to the names of our land:

    ".../Inhamússua, Mutamba, Massangulo!!!
    And I shout again Inhamússua, Mutamba, Massangulo!!!
    And other names of my land
    flowing sweetly and majestic in filial memory
    and in the exact pronunciation they bare their beauty.
    Chulamáti! Manhoca! Chinhambanine!
    Murrumbala, Namaponda e Namarroi
    and the wind shouts sensually in the leaves of the canhoeira trees
    and I shout Angoche, Marrupa, Michafutene e Zóbuè/..."

We have here, therefore, a singular and exemplary case of the phonic-rhythmic use of bantu lexemes and which refer to the names of the country, of localities, but also in the rest of the poem historical figures and those from the anti-colonial struggle and many other bantu words, totalling, exactly 93 bantu lexemes and a luso-ronga neologism in a poem of 74 verses, which gives an average of almost one bantu lexeme per verse.

It is evident that the exclamation mark aims to give greater quality to the reading and in such a way that its use and the respective rhythm linked to the very sound of the word is very different to the Portuguese names which, at that time, had been imposed to replace the genuine Mozambican names, besides which, stylistically, they represent a strong voice of representation, also functioning as a shout in acknowledgement of their name.

The poetics of Craveirinha stands out, therefore, from the start in terms of sound and feeling as a ressonating drum so that all can hear its words, understand them and retain them, a drum simultaneously communicating and calling everyone to join in the struggle for identity, for recognition and for liberty.

The very title of his first book is extremely significant, as much as is stated in the previous paragraph. Xigubo is a war dance, and, should we wish to better situate it, a dance which is an inspiration and call to prepare for a war or for resistance, or for the conquest of liberty in an occupied homeland.

And it is not by accident that students of José Craveirinha, among whom and with no false modesty I also include myself, affirm that the first poetical works of this Mozambican doyen function as an epic poem in which the hero is the people, the suffering and exploited people, who in their multi-diverse culture alongside their various ethnicities, develop relations and solidarity to arise with a voice laden with identity of a Mozambican nationality.

Furthermore, Karingana wa Karingana is testimony to this epic poetry in as much as it continues the pan-Africanist and negritude call of Xigubo, telling the story of suffering of the Mozambican people in the song-pain of individuals of the most diverse origins and professions, from the magaíza (migrant mineworker) to the driver, from the mavique to the musician,

Here, in this work, the "pure portuguese" are also rehabilitated in the eyes of the world, the non-bantus, who are in solidarity with the people, those who see themselves as rooted in the land, also inspiring Craveirinha in his poems of infallible prophesy. With everyone, united and in fraternity, independence was possible and the future assured, Sia-Vuma! (We are coming!)

In Karingana the poetic narrative also vibrates with the verses marked with the rhythm very close to that of a traditional poem-song, such as a xihitane interspersed with much music, in which the men made wild by other men, learn to lose their fear with pain, to create roots of unity, a sense of their human value, of their socio-cultural force.

From Metaphors to a Lexical Pedagogy

It is said that poetry is, above all, metaphor. It always represents much more than the word says and sings. As we have analysed in relation to Xigubo, this word signifies more than a dance, as can be realised from the very context of the title poem of this work. In Karingana wa Karingana the very expression also supercedes the simple sense of "once upon a time", yet it is a story (our story) which he wants to tell with all the cultural sensibilities which this history encompasses.

In fact the metaphors in the poetry of Craveirinha are even more multi-signifying as, and here another example follows, when in his poem "Chamamento" [Calling] he uses the ronga verb ku sekeleka (get up/arise) and, anaphorically, he says in an increasing intonation, well marked graphically, "sekeleka Irmão!" (get up, brother!) the poet wants to say more than the word "arise" represents and signifies in the cultural context of its original Portuguese. He wants to say not only "get up off the ground" on which he is compulsively seated, as much as "arise", to fight against something which remains seated, without movement. And the sound of the bantu verb sekeleka, apart from the hissing of its intonation, sounds almost like a harsh order and miltary in its authority.

Effectively, related to an ideological and political objective of "imposition" of our national reality, but in which he also has faith in the democracy of linguisitcs (the fraternity of words - an expression, which later, became the title to a great poem by José Craveirinha), all this finely structured combination of bantu lexemes and luso-ronga neologisms and, at times, anglo-ronga or boer-ronga neologisms as well, functions, equally, pedadgogically.

Despite the recent works of José Craveirinha making less use of bantu lexemes, giving preference rather to luso-ronga neologisms or those completely Portuguese, the force of this lexematic style of poetic creation with bantu words also reveals another facet, besides that of rhythmic-poetical enrichment.

Craveirinha, actually, educates us, with this way of creating poetry, to love that which is ours, to value our culture, to cement our unity, because his poems sing of all the situations of all the country from north to south. It is a linguistic-literary pedagogy but also political-ideological, it is a socio-cultural pedagogy, but also permanently on the alert for national unity, it is a pedagogy for teaching-learning in the school of life, of our life in Mozambique, in African and in the entire world.

Because of all this, the poetic figure of José Craveirinha, of which a much too brief sketch has been made here towards his word-voice-of-flame, grows and will continue to grow enormously even more as time passes and his poetic and prophetic words (poet of infallible prophesies) come to be ever more well known and studies and his work, still not all in print, also come to be more widely disseminated.

Mozambicans of the future will not be able to see him as a man who, for having fought against injustice, was a figure of vengenace and persecution of the former exploiters and his torturers, who for having loved his mother tongue was someone who had looked down upon the language of the former colonisers.

José Craveirinha, who died on the 6th of February 2003, will remain as a man who embraced justice and liberty, a rebel, yes, but a romantic and dreaming rebel , a democrat yes, but a democrat even in the very language he used to write his art. Giving testimony to what we have said, we end off transcribing the poem "A Fraternidade das Palavras" [Fraternity of Words] from our immortal poet:

    The sky
    is an m'benga
    where all the arms of the mamanas
    tread again on the pellets of stars.

    Friends:
    however strange the words
    if they contain real music
    only need someone to play them
    to those same rhythm to be
    united in sisterhood.

    And I believe that in a spasm
    of harmony with all things
    ronga and algarvian words gang together
    in this satanhoco paper
    and constitute the poem.

Here end these brief lines on a poet who, linking theory to practice, sang of the heroism of a people, leaving as his heritage an epic ouvre, but who, in his time, was chosen by those very people as their hero, hero of Mozambique.

(Maputo, 8th of February 2003)
(This essay was originally written in Portuguese. Translated by Richard Bartlett)