Love Cycle by Chinua Achebe

Author Introduction

Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and essayist. He is best known for his novel Things Fall Apart (1958), which is considered one of the greatest novels ever written in English. Achebe's work explores the themes of colonialism, identity, and the African experience.

Summary

The poem "Love Cycle" by Chinua Achebe compares the relationship between the sun and the earth to a human love relationship. The poem begins with the sun withdrawing its "long misty arms of embrace" from the earth at dawn. The earth is left "perfumed in dewdrop fragrance" and "wakes to whispers of soft-eyed light." The sun's departure is compared to the aftermath of dispassionate sex between a couple.

The sun then "wears out his temper ploughing the vast acres of heaven" and takes it out on the earth in "burning darts of anger." The earth endures the sun's harshness, like a woman who is dissatisfied with her partner but remains in the relationship for reasons of her own.

Towards the end of the poem, the speaker speculates on why the earth continues to stay in a relationship with the sun. The speaker suggests that the earth may be drawn to the sun's "great power" and "magnificent beauty." The earth may also be hopeful that the sun will eventually change its ways and become a more loving and gentle partner.

Analysis

The poem "Love Cycle" is a metaphor for the complex and often contradictory nature of love. The sun represents the passionate and destructive aspects of love, while the earth represents the patient and enduring aspects of love. The poem suggests that love is a cycle that repeats itself, with periods of passion and anger alternating with periods of patience and endurance.

The poem also explores the theme of hope. The earth remains in a relationship with the sun even though it is often mistreated, because it is hopeful that the sun will eventually change its ways. This suggests that even in the most difficult relationships, there is always hope for a better future.

Themes

The poem "Love Cycle" explores the following themes:

The complex and contradictory nature of love

The power of hope

The importance of patience and endurance

Style

The poem is written in free verse, which means that it does not follow a strict rhyme scheme or meter. This allows the poet to express the natural and unpredictable rhythms of love. The poem is also full of vivid imagery, which helps to bring the reader into the world of the poem.

Conclusion

"Love Cycle" is a powerful and moving poem that explores the many aspects of love. The poem is a reminder that love is a complex and unpredictable emotion, but it is also an emotion that is worth fighting for.

Text

At dawn slowly

the sun withdraws his

long misty arms of

embrace. Happy lovers

whose exertions leave

no aftertaste nor slush

of love’s combustion; Earth

perfumed in dewdrop

fragrance wakes

to whispers of

soft-eyed light…

Later he

will wear out his temper

ploughing the vast acres

of heaven and take it

out of her in burning

darts of anger. Long

accustomed to such caprice

she waits patiently

for evening when thoughts

of another night will

restore his mellowness

and her power

over him.

From:  1971, Beware Soul Brother and Other Poems

Copyright ©:  Christmas in Biafra and other Poems

Home And Exile: Chinua Achebe

In 1958 Chinua Achebe published Things Fall Apart, the novel that helped usher in a new wave of African literature. Until that point literature concerning African had been written by European colonials, and was rife with derogatory depictions of African people and their varied cultures. With the contributions of Camara Laye, Amos Tutuola, and Chinua Achebe, amongst others, there came a rebellion of sorts - the African novel, going against “an age-old practice: the colonization of one people’s story by another.”

African literature is the subject of Home And Exile (2001),  a gathering of three lectures Achebe gave to an audience at Harvard University in 1998. Across these he uses his podium to to discuss the effect of colonialism on African letters and the need for balance. Of particular interest are the autobiographical elements peppered throughout, which give insights into Achebe’s early life in Nigeria and the beginnings of his adult life as a writer.

Achebe starts with his own people, the Igbo. He dismisses the notion that, in numbering over ten million, they can be a tribe by dictionary definition. He finds nation fits better, acknowledging that it’s not a perfect fit. In describing the Igbo culture, a culture of stories, he finds room to open up the differences wrought by colonialism, impressing upon the reader a little tale about a meeting of animals where the chicken, instead attending to a personal matter, is voted man’s primary sacrificial animal in his absence. It’s a fitting parallel with the native in colonial African literature whereby a portrait of the continent has been drawn up by outsiders, at least as far back as 1561, when John Lok, writing of his voyage to West Africa, describes Africans as:

…a people of beastly living, without a God, lawe, religion … whose women are common for they contract no matrimonie, neither have respect to chastitie … whose inhabitants dwell in caves and dennes: for these are their houses, and the flesh of serpents their meat as writeth Plinie and Diodorus Siculus. They have no speach, but rather a grinning and chattering. There are also people without heads, having their eyes and mouths in their breasts.

Compound that with centuries of unfair writing and you get to a moment in a Nigerian school when, having read Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson, about a young Nigerian, it strikes as being superficial:

It was a landmark rebellion. Here was a whole class of young Nigerian students, among the brightest of their generation, united in their view of a book of English fiction in complete opposition to their English teacher, who was moreover backed by the authority of metropolitan critical judgment.

In talking of colonial literature, Achebe understands the treatment of African people as a way of justifying colonialism and the slave trade it produced, citing works by the likes of the aforementioned Cary, Joseph Conrad, and, especially, Elspeth Huxley. V.S. Naipaul, for whom much was made of his nastiness in Patrick French’s authorised biography earlier in the year, is also lambasted for his ignorant portrayal of Africa in A Bend In The River.

Although she’s not named, Buchi Emecheta, also gets a notable mention: not for her portrayal of Africa, but for going in the opposite direction. Having moved to London to pursue her writing career, she is quoted on the subject of African fiction and the dilution of her Africanness. (”After reading the first page you tell yourself you are plodding. But when you are reading the same thing written by an English person who lives here you find you are enjoying it because the language is so academic, so perfect.”) This notion of going in the opposite directon echoes an account opening the book of Achebe’s first ride in a car, in which he was seated so as to watch the road behind. It’s something he returns to in the third lecture, given that he, like Emecheta, no longer lives in Nigeria:

People have sometimes asked me if I have thought of writing a novel about America since I have now been living here for some years. My answer has always been “No, I don’t think so.” Actually, living in America for some years is not the only reason for writing a novel on it. Kafka wrote such a novel without leaving Prague. No, my reason is that America has enough novelists writing about her, and Nigeria too few.

Achebe’s focus now, unlike the child looking back, is squarely on the road ahead for Africa and its literature, noting his anxiety over “what remains to be done, in Africa and in the world at large”. From his podium he calls for writers to remain at home and write about it, to post their manuscripts rather than go overseas and risk dilution. Only with the right people contributing their own stories can literature find the necessary balance be made that will lead to a universal civilisation.

On literature he calls for a fair appraisal of writers’ work, comparing Dylan Thomas’ review of Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard to Huxley’s, wherein Thomas praises it for its language, Huxley uses the opportunity to take a broad swipe at African art (”It is possessed by spirits and the spirits are malign.”) Regardless of unfair treatments, Achebe notes that to read them:

…is the strongest vote of confidence we can give our writers and their work - to put them on notice that we will go to their offering for wholesome pleasure and insight, and not a rehash of old stereotypes which gained currency long ago in the slave trade and poisoned, perhaps forever, the wellsprings of our common humanity.

That Achebe covers so much ground in just over a hundred pages shows a highly concentrated approach to African literature. Those seeking a true autobiography will not find it here, given that it only touches on his early years, but what it does provide is an interesting insight into Achebe’s mind, with him pointing out the little details that have made him the influential writer that he is today, home and away.