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Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel Things Fall Apart takes its title from 'The Second Coming', a 1919 poem by W. B. Yeats: 'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.' Achebe used Yeats's image of a world coming apart to tell how British colonial rule arrived in an Igbo village in Nigeria.

Chinua Achebe / W. B. Yeats

Literature

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Yeats wrote the poem just after the First World War, as Ireland moved towards its own war of independence. It draws on his private theory that history turns in great cycles, which he called 'gyres'. Achebe kept the sense of collapse and gave it a new subject. His hero, Okonkwo, is a proud wrestler and farmer in the village of Umuofia, whose world is undone by the arrival of missionaries and British administrators. Achebe, who was 27 when the book appeared, said he wrote partly in response to novels such as Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson, which showed Nigerians only from the outside. It became one of the most widely read African novels and has been translated into more than fifty languages.

Türkçe oku
Chinua Achebe'nin 1958'de yayımlanan romanı Things Fall Apart, adını W. B. Yeats'in 1919 tarihli “The Second Coming” şiirinden alır: “Her şey dağılıyor; merkez tutamıyor.” Achebe, Yeats'in çözülen dünya imgesini, İngiliz sömürge yönetiminin Nijerya'daki bir İgbo köyüne gelişini anlatmak için kullandı.

Yeats şiiri Birinci Dünya Savaşı'nın hemen ardından, İrlanda kendi bağımsızlık savaşına doğru giderken yazdı. Şiir, tarihin büyük döngüler hâlinde döndüğüne dair kişisel kuramından beslenir; Yeats bu döngülere “gyre” diyordu. Achebe bu çöküş duygusunu alıp ona yeni bir konu verdi. Romanın kahramanı Okonkwo, Umuofia köyünde yaşayan, gururlu bir güreşçi ve çiftçidir; misyonerlerin ve İngiliz yöneticilerin gelişiyle bütün dünyası dağılır. Kitap yayımlandığında 27 yaşında olan Achebe, romanı kısmen Joyce Cary'nin Mister Johnson'ı gibi, Nijeryalıları yalnızca dışarıdan gösteren romanlara bir yanıt olarak yazdığını söylemiştir. Things Fall Apart, Afrika edebiyatının en çok okunan romanlarından biri oldu ve elliden fazla dile çevrildi.

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Background reading: Things Fall Apart
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