Caduta delle Stelle – Annus Horribilis dei grandi scrittori.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
W.B Yeats, ‘‘The Second Coming’’

That was how Chinua Achebe started his novel and this stanza from Yeats was where the title of his book came from: Things Fall Apart. Yes, things are falling apart recently, many stars are falling, many talents are disappearing and the centre can no longer hold. Mere anarchy has loosed and taken up the literary world of today. Too many in such a ‘‘short’’ time: Mr Achebe though a Nigerian born contemporary writer, passed away few months ago in his home in Boston, Massachusetts. And that was a great loss, it was a great loss because he was one of the fi rst writer of my childhood readings, the childhood readings that puts me against the choice of my father to study medicine. How can you study medicine after having read several African, African-American and Western writers’ prose, poems, narratives and short stories at a tender age. How can you not go against the wish of your father – even though he is your hero – if you have tasted and breath the air or literature and all the fantasies that come with reading. The dreams, the imagination of world beyond, the materialization of characters, the conjuring of faces, tastes of read meals, the perfume of described ambience and the odor, or rather the smell, of different characters in the books. The feel of the atmosphere and the ambience of both spoken and unspoken words that come through between the lines. You become a dreamer and your brain is mainly fi lled up with imaginative and creative activities and thus even if you are fairly good in Physics and Chemistry and love Biology you will be more attracted to hiding and digging your head like an ostrich in books that tell stories rather than wanting to be a medical practitioner. So, my hero – my father – had to give up about having another doctor in the family.

‘‘Things Fall Apart’’, ‘’ No Longer at Ease’’ and ‘’Arrow of God’’ Chinua Achebe’s trilogy had dug deep into my literary awareness and shaped my life making my job as a lecturer one of the best job anybody desire. Then there was Maya Angelou. Another star that fell less than a couple of months ago, not enough time to digest and still leaking the wound of the death of Chinua Achebe. Her fi rst novel ‘’I Know Why The Caged Bird Sing’’ is nothing but a loud screaming against racism, rape, men domination on women, identity and literacy. Thematic subjects that are so real and factual today that it seems as if she had only foreseen the future. Take for instance the Boko-Haram’s oppression on young women.

Young women that were abducted only because they were studying to become literate, sexually abused just because some ‘‘men’’ think that they are toys for them to play with all in the name of a religion that did not really preach such horrible behaviour.’ ’I have learnt that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’’ Maya Angelou Maya recited a Grammy Award poem at Bill Clinton’s inauguration as President of the United States of America. Maya then went on to say that ‘’We are growing up against the idiocies of racism and sexism’’ to express her enthusiasm when Barrack Obama was elected President of The USA. It is not a surprise to hear such affi rmation from a woman who had fought along with Martin Luther King and Malcom X. Maya Angelou had a relatively brief encounter with Africa, specifi cally Accra, Ghana where she ran The University of Accra. The multi-talented Maya was also an actress, a dancer and a musician. She was all into the arts. An eclectic personality.

And now the sorrow fl ashed it light on Nadine Gordimer whom, when I fi rst heard of, I read the fi rst novel of hers with a suspicious and biased mind. Why? Because she was white and I thought she couldn’t be fair in her judgment. Plus the fact that she was born and brought up in the then apartheid South Africa. Could you ever think that a white upper class woman who lived a comfortable and posh live in that horrible world of that period could ever take the side of the poor and oppressed blacks? Well, I was, and I am happily mistaken. The love I developed for her works and her persona grew to an exponential length and I totally fell for her style of writing and her brutal way of describing the horrible acts that happened in her stories about the Africaans (of which she was one) against the black South Africans. How could a woman brought up in a white and upper class family of the apartheid period decide to contradict her ‘‘people’’ for the cause of other races and social classes? The answer is blowing in the air today. She had seen further than any other African writer that the world would soon become a single place without boundaries and without colour. My tribute to these great inspirers. Hats off to them all. ‘‘There is no moral authority like that of sacrifi ce’’ Nadine Gordimer By the way, I would like to show my pride for two of my former students of the University of Basilicata, one that had left the university for more than 12years and the other that is yet to get her degree because they were the ones that alerted me about Nadine Gordimer’s death though they do not know themselves but they have both read her book during our lessons and with this, I hope I have contributed in whatever the small way to diffuse the work of this and other great writers of our time , if not of all times.

Enjoy!