3.3 Eulogues in Modern Sesotho Poetry Texts
3.3.3 Traditional Imagery in MSP
142 | P a g e also to other individuals and institutions which are perceived to have played a role either in the social, educational or spiritual birth and nurturing of the concerned hero or heroine.
143 | P a g e and the reader to visualise and sense the signified in all different ways possible.
Before discussing the intertextual images in MSP, it must be pointed out that images are culturally based. It is for this reason that even for one to be able to understand and decipher what they communicate, one must have the cultural background or be well conversant with the culture from which such images have been taken.
Lithoko is one literary genre that is overflowing with imagery. About this, Damane et al (1974: 60) observe that praise has not had any negative effect on the clarity of facts as they are always hidden by imagery. Obscurity of facts due to the use of obscure allusions in lithoko is echoed in MSP, especially in the poetry by the earlier generation such as Khaketla’s contemporaries. Since MSP has and is still doing a lot of borrowing from lithoko, imagery also appears in MSP as one of the culturally bound and borrowed devices, especially its use that echoes the manner in which imagery is employed in lithoko. These words and utterances of lithoko are represented in MSP through levels five and six of what Bazerman (2005: 5) terms techniques of intertextual representation or levels of intertextuality. The following examples illustrate how MSP echoes lithoko in terms of the use of imagery.
In the poem entitled Booki ‘Nursing’, Khaketla (1963:17 – 20) describes the training of nurses and their work in health institutions. In order to portray the importance of the nurse trainers and doctor-patient confidentiality, the poem uses the initiation school image where the training is said to be conducted by ‘mosuoe’10 and
‘motanyane’’11 respectively. In the Sotho tradition, the initiation school where mosuoe and motanyane are instructors can be viewed as a traditional institution of higher learning because of its rigorous and high quality training and education. Therefore, the image of mosuoe and motanyane as instructors here captures well the connotation referred to with regard to the training of nurses.
10 A divertive noun from ‘ho suha’, meaning to train rigorously. Hence mosuoe is a teacher or instructor at the boys’ initiation school
11 A woman instructor and one who circumcises girls at the women initiation school.
144 | P a g e On the other hand, the image of koma 12 communicates the doctor-patient confidentiality principle by which nurses and doctors are bound by their professional ethics and code of conduct not to divulge what transpired between them and their patients. As a special song, koma contains and reflects the truths and other philosophical teachings and underpinnings of the initiation school. Even though it is a song, koma is never for public consumption especially maqai or mathisa
‘uncircumcised male and female respectively’, but is meant for the ears of those from the initiation school. As a result, it is not sung at home. In the above image, koma is a representation of the patients’ medical conditions, and like koma, they are not supposed to be made public or taken out of the hospital consultation rooms.
Another poem entitled Kahlamela-‘molai ‘One who befriends their enemies’ relates the promiscuous life of city women and warns the naïve and unsuspecting rural women against their man-snatching counterparts. The title of the poem itself is a metaphorical image formed by taking the last part of the proverb Nonyan’a kahlamela-‘molai ‘Little bird that opens its beak to the man who comes to kill it’, meaning a man who befriends his enemy (Mabille et al, 1979: 117). The image of the little bird here represents the unsuspecting young rural women who come to the city only to lose their men to the street-wise city girls who in this context are ‘molai ‘the man who comes to kill the little bird’.
Notwithstanding their knowledge of the immorality of their promiscuous acts, the city girls justify their man-snatching practice by using the image of a dog that snatches a bone from another’s mouth.
11. Ba re ntja ha e tella e ‘ngoe ea e amoha;
12. E e hlotha lesapo hoja e iketlile, (Mahase, 2005: 6) __________________________________
11. They say a dog snatches from another if it despises it;
12. It snatches the bone while relaxed and unsuspecting,
12 Special secretive song sung by boys and girls undergoing circumcision. It’s the truth. (Guma, 1993:
116, 117, Mabille et al, 1979: 155).
145 | P a g e In this text, the despised dog from which the bone is snatched represents the village girl from whom the husband represented in this image by the bone is snatched by the city girl who is the snatching dog in this scenario.
Plett (1991) and Porter (1986) argue that intertextual references can be either direct or indirect and in the above examples lithoko have been indirectly referred to. The examples of imagery are not direct lifts from lithoko but are textual proto-types manifesting another way in which MSP as a new text that is coming into being relates to the previous text, lithoko, and in turn assumes the position of the precursor of the subsequent texts (Heinrich, 1991: 17 quoting Grivel, 1978). For example, some of the imagery texts that imagery in MSP can be traced back to, are the following among so many others throughout lithoko:
292. Lejoe-pitikoe la mor’a Lerotholi,
‘Round stone of the son of Lerotholi,’
The image here comes through the metaphor “lejoe-pitikoe” ‘round stone’ that refers to chief Seeiso. Pitikoe is usually a big round stone and here it represents robustness, power and ability to destroy. Its being round is indicative of destructive mobility, especially when rolled down the slope or mountain. Commenting on this image, Damane et al (1974:256) suggest that the communiqué is that Seeiso was dangerous to his adversaries just as round stones were when Basotho rolled them down their mountain fortress to disperse their attackers. Therefore, the image suggests that Seeiso did not only have the weight in terms of being the right heir to the throne according to Sotho custom13, but would also prove dangerous to those who were opposed to him succeeding his father to the throne. As chief, he also had the might and authority to destroy them just as the round stone would destroy those attacking Basotho at their fortress.