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A
Short Walk Through His Literary Park
By
Professor Negussay Ayele
poet_l3.jpg
(1190 bytes) Belatengeta —Poet Laureate—Tsegaye
Gabre-Medhin, tsegea1.jpg (10206 bytes) is
Ethiopia’s premier versatile and prolific man of
letters. For half a century now he has been continuously
productive as poet, playwright, essayist, social critic,
philologist, historiographer, dramatist, synthesist, peace
activist, artistic director...on matters national, continental
and global. Even if he has yet to be awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature, he has often been more appreciated
and duly honored abroad than in his own land. Perhaps
this is in keeping with that old Ethiopian saying to the
effect that ‘a prophet is often not esteemed in his
own country.’ In this day and age, when most of us
have been preoccupied and indeed consumed by wars and
rumors of wars in Ethiopia-Eritrea and elsewhere in the
Horn of Africa, it seems as though there is nothing else
of positive value or of grave concern that deserves or
commands the attention of Ethiopians. Today we shall take
time out from violence and war and reflect on the life
and works of Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin who is
a living legend, a literary hero, and as one observer
described him recently, Ethiopia’s “biblical
sage”.
A
Glimpse At Poet Laureate Tsegaye’s Literary Journey
Poet Laureate Tsegaye is of the generation—numbering
a dozen or so who are extant—of Ethiopian men of
letters who were born during the crucible of the Fascist
invasion of Ethiopia in the 1930’s. As such his early
childhood gestation period was molded by the trauma of
that war of aggression against which his patriot father
fought. Born in the vicinity of Ambo and the environs
of the source of Awash River in Shewa region, the young
Tsegaye was also influenced and shaped by the subcultures,
languages and the blending of his Oromo and Amhara heritages.
Indeed, as he was to relate later on, he considers himself
as one who represented an Ethiopian amalgam or bridge
between the two cultures. And it did not take long for
this child prodigy not only to absorb Oromifa and traditional
Zema and Qine in Ethiopic (Ge’ez) as well as Amharic
in the traditional neighborhood church school but also
to rapidly learn English in the contemporary modern school
or Asquala. Indeed, the young genius, Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin,
was barely a teen when in 1942 (Eth.Cal.), he wrote his
first play, The Story of King Dionysus and of the Two
Brothers, and saw it staged in Ambo Elementary School.
It was watched by, among others, Emperor Haile Sellassie
himself.
Young Tsegaye’s educational itinerary then takes
him to formal higher schooling at home (Wingate and Commercial
School) and abroad (Blackstone School of Law) in Chicago
where he took his Bar Exam. But his precocious self-reading
of his inner needs, moods and proclivities pointed towards
pastures for artistic and literary expression. And so
he pursued opportunities to visit and apprentice at experimental
theater and drama establishments in Britain, France and
Italy in the late 1950’s. In addition to writing
and producing Amharic plays including Yedem Azmera, (Blood
Harvest), Yeshoh Aklil, (Crown of Thorns) and Joro Degef
(Mumps) during this period, playwright Tsegaye also wrote
scores of short poems in English some of which are reproduced
in Ethiopia Observer, (1965). And he wrote a prize winning
essay for Fullbright Fellowship competition on What Does
World Brotherhood Mean To Me, in 1959.
The
1960’s were among the most productive years for Poet,
Playwright, Essayist, Art Director’ Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin.
During this decade playwright Tsegaye adapted some of
Shakespeare’s plays including King Lear (which was
banned), Othello and Macbeth as well as Moliere’s
Tartouffe and Doctor In Spite of Himself. All told, five
of his Amharic plays were banned in the 1960’s. He
also made presentations of his research on such topics
as “Art in the Life of the Ethiopian People”
at the First World Black Arts Festival Colloquium organized
by UNESCO in Dakar, Senegal, and on “Kamit of Black
Egyptian Theatre” for the Pan African Cultural Festival
organized by the OAU in Algiers. Poet Laureate Tsegaye
was also at his most peripatetic mode during this decade
as he criss-crossed countries and continents interpreting
Ethiopia and Africa to the world and back again to relating
the art and literature of the world to his own people
in the continent and in his motherland. And so, poet Tsegaye
sojourned in more than thirty countries—often repeatedly—
in Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. For example,
one of his plays, Oda Oak Oracle, was staged not only
in Addis Ababa but also in Britain, Denmark, Italy, Rumania,
Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and the United States in 1964.
He often led national delegations to international literary,
cultural and peace gatherings and was invited to be resident
writer, researcher, lecturer or external examiner at many
institutions of higher learning as well as writer’s
unions the world over. This was also the decade when Poet
Laureate Tsegaye nursed and nurtured a nascent Ethiopian
National Theatre from 1961 to 1971. In 1966 Poet Tsegaye
became the youngest (age twenty-nine) recipient of the
Haile Sellassie I Prize for Amharic Literature. Poet Tsegaye
also writes in Oromifa and is conversant in French as
well. And in 1969 he won a Gold Merit Award as Outstanding
Alumnus from his Alma Mater, the Commercial School, now
College.
The
prodigious Poet Laureate continued his productivity unabated
in the turbulent revolutionary cum military rule period
of the 1970’s. He spent 1971-72 in Senegal as a Fellow
of what is now named Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar.
to do research on African Culture, Literature, and Black
Egyptian Studies. Poet Laureate Tsegaye was awarded the
Commander of the National Order of the Republic of Senegal
at that time by President Leopold Sedar-Senghor. At numerous
points in his career Poet Tsegaye has also been Fullbright
Fellow and lectured in several U.S. institutions. In the
mid-seventies, he was briefly appointed Vice Minister
of the Ethiopian Ministry of Culture and Sports and in
1977-78 he was Assistant Professor and founder/director
of the Department of Theater Arts at Addis Ababa University.
With all this activity (and being thrown in jail in 1975
added to the mix), Poet Tsegaye persevered in his labor
of love and continued to churn out plays that depicted
and critiqued the onset of the 1974 Ethiopian Revolution.
Of the five Amharic plays produced by Poet Laureate Tsegaye
between 1974 and 1979, three of them —Ha Hu Besedst
Wer (ABC in Six Months), Inat Alem Tenu (adapted from
Bertold Brecht’s Mother Courage) and Melekte Wez
Ader (Message of the Worker) were banned. He published
Collision of Altars-a play on religious feuds and intolerance—in
1977. He also presented numerous research papers including
”Africa as the Origin of the Early Greek Theatre
Culture” and “Ikher of Nagada: The First Actor
in the First City of Humankind” at international
Africanist and Black Arts Congresses. A selection of his
Amharic poems were published in 1973 under the title:
Issat wey Abeba (Fire or Flower). He has also served as
Secretary General (1978-79) of Ethiopian Peace, Solidarity
and Friendship House.
Poet
Laureate Tsegaye’s literary fecundity continued blossoming
in the 1980’s. He produced historical plays based
on the lives of Menelik (Banned), Tewodros (Banned), and
on Zeray Deres as well as Gammo, a play on the Ethiopian
Revolution which was also banned. He adapted Shakespeare’s
Hamlet for the stage (banned) and subsequently staged
some of these plays and published them abroad.
In
1984 Poet Laureate Tsegaye wrote a powerful long essay,
Footprint of Time, delineating Ethiopia’s place in
world culture and history especially in light of paleoanthropological
“Lucy” finds (1974) that marks Hadar area in
Afarland of Ethiopia to be the nascence of humankind.
During this period also Poet Laureate Tsegaye received
Gold Mercury International Ad Persona Award for Ethiopian
Literature (1982); he was Fullbright Senior Resident Fellow
at Columbia University (1985); he was Co-winner (for the
lyrics) of OAU African Unity Anthem Prize (1986) and winner
of Ethiopia’s Golden Red Star Award (1987).
Even
if advancing age, health problems and the toll of the
decades past were weighing on him, Poet Laureate continued
to write, research, travel, lecture and produce dramas
for the stage in the 1990’s. In 1993, Poet Laureate
Tsegaye’s Play with an accent on peace titled Ha
Hu Weyem Pe Pu (ABCor XYZ)—to create life or to snuff
out life—was banned. In 1994, a reproduction of one
of his earlier plays, Petros, depicting the Ethiopian
Patriarch butchered by the Italian Fascists, was banned.
In the past few years Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin
has been gracing the pages of the Ethiopian monthly, Tobia
and other publications at home and abroad with a series
of powerful poetic essays entitled wpe45.jpg (1350 bytes)
("Addressed To Us") and on Adwa as well as others
in English.
Since
1993 he has been concentrating on his on-going research
project—Kabara Afraka—a study of Pre-Classical
African Culture and African Origins of Religion. One can
get glimpses of this study in progress in some of his
recent poetic renditions in “Addressed To Us.”
In 1991, Poet Laureate Tsegaye also served as Ethiopia’s
Red Cross and Red Crescent Goodwill Ambassador. His outstanding
literary contributions as well as his advocacy of peace
and human rights causes have been recognized and honored
by peer groups and Human Rights bodies. Accordingly, in
1994 the New York based Human Rights Watch Organization
awarded Poet Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin its prestigious Free
Expression Award.
Poet
Laureate Tsegaye also published two of his poems in English
entitled ESOP and NILE in Ethiopian Register in 1997.
The Congress of World Poets and United Poets Laureate
International, meeting in Buckinghamshire, England in
1997, honored him with the prestigious Gold Laurel Award
with the title of Honorable Poet Laureate. And he is a
member of the United Poets Laureate International.
The
foregoing summary presentation of Poet Laureate Tsegaye
Gabre-Medhin’s major literary works and related activities
should give one an appreciation of the scope and versatility
of his works. And this does not include untold numbers
of his poems, plays and papers that have been drafted/assembled
but not yet published or staged. It should also be noted
that Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin has been a member
of OAU’s Forum 2000 Think Tank, Ethiopian Writers
Association, African Writers Union and Afro-Asian Writers
Union.
He
is listed in International Who’s Who editions and
also specifically on Poetry and on Dramatists as well
as in Who’s Who in Africa, in the Middle East and
in the World’s Who is Who of Authors reference volumes.
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