Encounter: An Ethiopian Literary Wit and British Working Class Folk
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Encounter:An Ethiopian Literary Wit and British Working Class Folk
This "encounter" is an episode taken from the autobiography of Mengistu Lemma entitled Demamu Bi'iregna and translatable as The Genial Writer.
Mengistu Lemma (1924-1988), a Haile Selassie Prize Laureate for Literature, was an outstanding poet and playwright who wrote in Amharic, the most widely spoken and written language in Ethiopia. His anthology of poems was published in 1965. He also wrote a long poem about an Ethiopian gentleman, Basha Ashebir, visiting America. The latter sees his host country with wide gaping eyes as well as with a great sense of humor.
Besides his mother tongue, Amharic, Lemma had mastered Ge'ez, Ethiopia's classical language, and had been steeped in its rich tradition. That certainly added depth and versatility to his works. Nevertheless, he could also write in English, having attended the London School of Economics in the early 1950s. Thus, he himself translated to English two of his Amharic plays.
The theme of Marriage by Abduction (1961) is the rather nasty tradition, common in some parts of Ethiopia until recently, in which a young man kidnaps his future wife, forcibly consummates the marriage, and gets it sanctioned by her family and the society at large. The second play, Marriage of Unequals: A Comedy deals with marriage between a couple from different social classes. This latter play was performed at the Creative Arts Center of Addis Ababa University in the presence of Emperor Haile Selassie. It reflected his radical socialist sentiments dating back to his London days. It is no wonder then that the play was translated into Russian in 1966 by V. Ivanova.
Lemma's chef d'oeuvre is perhaps Metsehafa Tizita Ze' Aleqa Lemma [The Book of Reminiscences of Aleqa Lemma]. On his return from a diplomatic posting in India, Lemma decided to record on tape his ninety-five year old father. The result was a masterful narrative of the intellectual and social itinerary of an Ethiopian mandarin.
Lemma decided to write his autobiography in his late fifties. Unfortunately, all we have is an unfinished one that ends abruptly with his student days in London in the 1950s. Yet, the part that he has left us still stands out as a brilliant piece of literary work. The posthumous publication of his autobiography was given the Amharic title Demamu Bi'iregna by the editor. Its literal translation would be "The Ruddy-Cheeked Writer" in the sense of the affable, the amiable, and the genial. From this autobiography, I have selected one episode-his stay in an orthopedic hospital, the sole black person in a general ward of one hundred patients, all the others being British working class folk.
The encounter between Lemma and his British ward mates reflects the image the average European used to have of Africa and Africans in those days. It is also instructive of how [End Page 191] prejudice of "The Other" operates in real life. Apart from plain prejudice, there appears to be "mischievous mockery" on the part of some of the patients. Lemma, the intended object of mockery, however, turns the table around and mocks the mockers. [End Page 192]
Hailu Habtu, who received the PhD degree in African literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, has taught black studies courses at the University of California in Santa Barbara and history courses at City College of New York. He also studied philosophy at Indiana University. Currently, he is director of the Encyclopedia Ethiopiana (in Amharic) and Senior Research Scholar at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University.
