Man in Africa & His Literature The myths, legends, epics, tales, historical poems and countless
other traditional oral literary forms of African peoples have been woven out of the substance of human experience: struggles with the land and the elements, movements and migrations, wars between kingdoms, conflicts over pastures and waterholes, and wrestlings with the mysteries of existence, life and death. They are products of long reflections about the relations among humans, between man and woman, between human- kind and the animal world; responses to the
challenges of the unknown and to the universal need to create order and reason out of chaos and accident.
Man in Africa, as elsewhere, has sought to relate his past to his present, and to tentatively explore the future so that he might not stand isolated in the great sweep of time, or intimidated by the formidable earth and the vast stretch of surrounding seas. In his myths and legends he bridges back to the very dream morning of creation, while in his systems of divination he projects himself into time not yet come; in his epics he asserts the courage and worth of the human species; in his tales he ponders on what is just or unjust, upon what is feeble or courageous, what is sensible or ridiculous, on what moves the spirit to grief or to exultation; in his proverbs and sayings he capsulates the learnings of centuries about the human character and about the intricate balance between people and the world around them.
What we, standing on the periphery, see as lore and tradition is the accumulation of experi ence that has made mankind in Africa capable and confident in the endless effort not only to survive, but to survive with meaning. We have gone beyond that age in which, warmed by our own particular accomplishments, we readily divided the world into the "civilized" and the "primitive." We understand now what we were not ready to comprehend a century or/so ago-that the diverse social structures and processes of Africa, as elsewhere, are products of the civilizing move- ments of mankind, other faces of the human response to the challenges of living. When we say "Africans" it is merely a convenient manner of saying "mankind in Africa"-peoples, villages and tribes that through millennia of contest with one another, with the land and with ideas L ''-e provided particular answers to questions of organization, survival and -he meaning of life. Their religious attitudes, their social establishments, their standards of behavior and their symbols for abstract ideas are the alternatives they have chosen from among those that have been available to men everywhere.
Anthropological studies of African life have unwittingly, perhaps, tended to stress differences from our own ways, but those studies have little importance if they are not seen as an examination of ourselves and our own, sometimes irrational, choices. The oral
literature and traditions of African peoples communicate to us the scope and nature of our common identity. We discover there, if we have not already surmised it, how much we share-our views about good and evil; about what is pompous or vain and what is moderate or immodest; and our standards defining the mutual responsibilities of the. group and the individual. We discern common desires, aspirations, "* strengths and foibles, and a familiar vision of man as a special creation of deity or nature. With recognition comes the insight that non-Africans are no less exotic in their customs and beliefs than anyone else, and that, in the end, the similarities of outwardly contrasting societies are more impressive than the differences. Africa is an enormous continent, and such terms as "the African," "African society" and "the African experience" must be used with caution. The ways of life, the challenges and responses, and the institu tions that have been shaped often vary greatly from one region to another, often from one tribe to a neighboring tribe''The African" may be an urban Yoruba or a Bushman living in the desert; a Spartan-wayed Ituri Forest Pygmy, his life hanging on the perpetual pursuit of game; a grasslands Shilluk whose life centers on cattle, or a desert-roaming Danakil. Some African peoples have old traditions of woodcarving, brass casting, glassmaking or iron forging, while others have turned more to nonmaterial creations. There are many cultural developments and concepts that over centu ries and millennia have permeated most of the