Abiola Irele: Adieu to a magnificent, lovely man

Femi Osofisan

It just doesn’t seem the right moment for him to go. But then when exactly is the right moment for death? When is the loss of a cherished one ever acceptable or less painful to those left behind? Abiola Irele was (was!) one of those who should never have left, but live on forever.

No, it is hard to concede to death the loss of such a magnificent, lovely man as Abiola Irele.

Several glowing accolades have been written since the news of his demise broke out last week, but I doubt if any of the words we write will ever successfully capture the comprehensive robustness of the man’s life or personality, or the profound grief that his abrupt exit has left in our hearts.

For me, the personal loss is immeasurable. He had been a teacher, then friend and mentor, patron and publisher, and many other pleasurable things. In our earlier days, many years ago, we had even become ardent drinking partners, adventurously traversing the thirsty roads between Ibadan and Cotonou, Lomé and Accra, Abidjan and Dakar, where some bars and bottles must still remember us.

It was his name I knew first before I met him.

He was already a towering figure in the French and francophone intellectual circles but based outside the country when I started my academic career. But then, to my great pleasure, he was announced one day as one of my co-supervisors by the University Senate at Ibadan.

Subsequently, shortly afterwards, he came visiting to Présence Africaine in Paris, France, and our first meeting occurred on a memorable day at the Latin Quarter.

He came looking like one of the habitués of the city’s once-celebrated salons: handsome, elegant, urbane, and endowed with an immediately noticeable degree of personal charm. He had a seductive presence that one associated with media showbiz, and not normally with the academic profession. From the very first minute, he put me completely at ease.

In the course of time, I would also come into the spell of his other irresistible assets, such as his infectious sense of humour and his open, conspicuous love, for wine and for song. So, teacher and student, master and apprentice with kindred spirits, we bonded strongly and it has been ever since for me an endlessly enriching relationship.

There could never be a dull moment in his company.

But Irele’s apparently flippant exterior, his buoyant cultivation of the manners of the bon vivant, was a deceptive guise. It masked a deep inner core of acute, insightful intelligence, which demanded no less perspicacity from his interlocutors and companions. Whenever he began to talk, not a few were discomfited, or mesmerised, by the extensive sweep of his knowledge and erudition, and the sheer beauty of his elocution. I learnt a lot at his feet.

Irele was suave and cultured, polyvalent and cosmopolitan; he was blessed with lithe and nimble feet for dancing, an ear for languages, and a voice for mellifluous songs. He was at home with the old masters in philosophy and literature just as much as he was abreast of the most recent schools and movements. He was also an eager patron of talent, always seeking out young seeds to help nurse into efflorescence. Very much a Renaissance man indeed, he shared, with the late  Stanley Macebuh, many of the qualities we associate with wisdom, polish and refinement.

For all of these, Irele was of course not perfect. No man ever is. He could be maddeningly petulant at times, just like a child. And on other occasions his brittle temper could flare into quite unnecessary conflagration. But I can testify that those occasions were never frequent nor prolonged, nor deliberately nasty, out of intention to harm. In any case, as we know now with great men, these are inevitable weaknesses we must all learn to endure in the end, in compensation for the ineffable beneficences of their genius.

Egbon, Olohun-iyo, are you still singing your songs?

Goodbye then. We will continue to struggle on, till we too are summoned. But the world has grown more lonely now in the silence of your voice. Goodbye. Dramatist and scholar.

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Abiola Irele: Adieu to a magnificent, lovely man

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