Title: A N A A N' Y A A
Description: Anaan’yaa / ‘Civil Imagination’?

(POSTSCRIPT)

“What is Anaan’yaa all about?” a reader asked. Yes! What is Anaan’yaa all about? I rethought. To help my reader read my poems, should I say what Anaan’yaa is or tell what it means?  To say what a poem is is as much difficult as to say what it means, my reader. Better to tell what a poem does, I thought, than what it is/means. Here you are!

‘Ana’ in Afan Oromo means ‘I’, ‘anaan’ is ‘me’.  ‘Yaa’ shows interjection while referring to that someone demanding our sympathy, our care. The shift from the ‘I’ to ‘Me’ is not by simple transformation of the heroic, autonomous “I” to the accusative, receptive “ME”. It is a separation of the accusative, receptive self me from the heroic autonomous self I so that the latter overflows the terms of its own empathetic identifications with the beneficiary. 

In Anaan’yaa, I think, one finds important ethical considerations in regard to the moral problem of distance. It raises a core problem of temporal and/or spatial moral distance. It argues that the need to share pain or to save life, irrespective of special relationship (kinship, friendship) is a universal human character. Be it virtually by basic instinct, by an instinctive animal sympathy—note Rousseau’s “innate repugnance against seeing a fellow creature suffer”— by an elemental appeal of our animality or be it by conscious expectation of humane assistance, the action to rescue is so impartialist, universalaist duty of mankind. As a Bad Samaritan would think today, proximity and affiliation/relation (ethnic/love) is a necessary condition for the existence of a duty of beneficence. The further away one were from a human plight, far in time far in place, the less one would be obligated to help, a Bad Samaritan would think. 

Beyond the limits of linguistic and/or cultural differences it is all too human to secure those in need, say, someone slipping to fall, or someone in the house under fire. All reasoning that one doesn’t belong to one’s relation, to one’s cultural group may start to creep into our free mind after the spontaneous action to secure someone slipping to fall. That spur-of-the-moment action is accompanied by a word of concern anaan! meaning ‘sorry!’ stretching our hands to reach and to save. When everyone presses the button and cools down the break at once to save the flock of pigeons landed in the street from nowhere, is that not by the pity one can have in killings, in shedding blood, and by the instinct that turns in every one of us to save life, to save nature? It is not culture-bound for a mother to shout anaan!, seeing her child falling toddling. Every one of us, in our basic instinct, we have strong sense of concern towards others, as human, we are compassionate, kind, benevolent, and caring by nature—that is what we all need infantile, of course.   And this is beyond the location of culture whatever. 

At the heart of the problem of moral distance is that, Anaan’yaa argues, each generation is in a causally asymmetrical position with respect to its successors. Those asymmetrical intergenerational relations cause problem of unfairness and apathy when succeeding generations are temporally/spatially put at odds. Anaan’yaa argues that the problem is the main concern of distinctively intergenerational ethics. The relevance of this problem in the real world is not to be overshadowed by the presence of the future-oriented difficulties. In this respect, the proximity of two human beings—irrespective of their affiliations—is a better bet for a universalist/impartialist moral outlook that does not take as its starting point what we owe those we know and those with whom we already have a connection—a particularist intuition that does not appeal to a universalist foundation.

The unclothed child in the cover-page of Anaan’yaa wins our malevolent being. Children are innocent and beautiful, regardless of where they live. They are as pure and beautiful as nudity. It is easy to identify with their need. Nature is what it is in children. So Natural. But the problem of moral distance is itself problematic. In the bigger world the needy members of humanity live far away from the affluent and the powerful. Anaan’yaa has a resolution to this: we should begin our moral response to humanity at large with those needy children in our reach, so that we can reach mankind out of our reach. 

Anaan’yaa has three major parts: Introduction, Short poems (their mode of communication is monologue, except for one riddle-poem Hibboo), and Long dramatic poems, which are in a dialogic mode of communication. Anaan’yaa draws on Oromo Oral Literature for its aesthetic beauty as well as for the philosophical depth oral literature renders the content of written literature. 

In the book there are 27 pieces of poems in toto. Below are some sample poems presented.  

    Abjuun du’uun                                             ah me! my quiet violent dream:
    quufa jennaan                                               to die in dream is,
    garaa duwwaa                                  	            it is said, to eat to one’s fill;
    diinqa darbeen 			            see? one may sleep but empty belly;
    5 eda abjuu koon                                              and one is said to have eaten to one’s fill?
    Du’ee bule                                                      so did I retire last night
    atis naajjin duute laataa?                            to be found dead in the morrow.
    Sabbarimee.                                                   you too died in your dream?
    Biyyi ba’ee                                                     ah me! this dream sorrow:
               10 boo’aa bulee                                                  everyone went out to attend 
    boo’aa oolee                                                  one’s funeral!
               Ati hinduunee                                               forced into the greedy mouth this grave
                    sabbarimee                                                    deep me into, lower me down, force me in.
                    ofiis du’aa—                                                  ah me! it might as well be dream,
               15 n ofiif boo’aa                                                 what a quiet violent dream!
                    Hammaatullee,
                    baguma abjuu taheef malee!
Poem 4, p42

In Oromo tradition, the death of someone in dream is interpreted as eating/drinking to one’s fill. This implies that the dreamer is thought to be filled with bless, inspiration of great social interest, optimism, and consoling message of promises. In the poem (lines 1 to 6) one can judge that the dreamer has great hope to achieve his or her predestined aspiration, though efforts to achieve his/her wish are distracted by envy, greed and ill wishes.  

sareen baasa baaftee                                                the dog said thus:
mammaaksa mammaakte:                                      we eat with dirt 
osuma beeknuuyyii                                      what Others give us.
huubaa ‘jjin soorannaa                               though we know it is filthy,
                             5 sifaa’eef sifaa’ee                                           with dirt we eat it.
dhiifnaan baafnee gannaa                           if settles in our belly,
jette jedhan warraan                                   good; if not
huubaa wajjin soorraan.                             in their face we spit it. 

Poem 18, f57

It is said that Anaan’yaa draws on Oromo oral literature for some artistic effects and for the intensity of its poetic contents. This poem is based on the Oromo proverb that When we still know it is impure, but (to survive), we eat it filthy said the dog. Proverbs are used to instruct, to guide behaviours, to comment on social evils. 

In the poem above, unequal relationship is depicted by a hungry dog and its hosts who give the beneficiary soiled food. The poem shows some social evils the society is well aware of, and yet preferred to observe attentively and warily. It also sounds like William Blake’s “A Poison Tree” in which the narrator says he lives with his foe awaiting the time for judgment, for the Truth to rule over all Falsity. It points to the apathetic nature of humanity by referring to the wicked act of people to their beneficiaries. See the humble but sheer grievance uttered by the poor animal! (lines 5-8)

In the poem to follow one can share the strong nationalist / patriotic zeal the narrator poses in the reader. 

midhaan miti                                  what makes a Nation
bishaan miti                                    Nation (-State),
kan Biyya                                        is not just 
Biyya godhuu                                  what it has,
                             5 Lafa ‘saa-                                         but what its citizen does 
fi Nama ‘saa-                                   what s/he is.
ti. 
Poem 9, f48

Fraternity, solidarity and equal opportunity for citizens can arouse strong sense of belongingness and patriotic ardor only where there is love and concern among the citizens. Where there is no love, care, recognition and sense of commonality taken as a duty in the Nation, abundance, excess and overindulgence cannot guarantee peace and solidarity in the State.

In Anaan’yaa Oromo time concept is also presented. To present the cyclical, not circular nor linear, Oromo time concept is a subject of Edas-edanas, the first anthology of my poems, 1997). Here it reads:

kaleessarra bor wayya                               Tomorrow will be alright                    
hadharra ‘mmoo kaleessa,                        yes, Yesterday we said.
bor kunoo hadha ta’ee                               here we are Today 
hadhi kaleessa ta’ee                                   (sat on the same cross-road)
meerreree irbuun Gameessaa?                 Today—a cinder of Yesterday.
                                                                     Veteran, where are your Promises gone? 
Poem 16, p55


This poem is modeled on one geerarsa folk song1 (see below) about the two-way-traffic connecting ‘youth’ and ‘power’ and ‘age’ and ‘experience’. 

If youth knew, if age could!2 Yesterday when you were young, you had the power to do almost everything. But you didn’t know what to do. Today that you have got old, you have almost every experience. You are a veteran, astute. But you don’t have the power to make it or break it. Only observations tell you answer to the puzzle you pose. You sit tired, frustrated and blankly immersed in an enigmatic contemplation of the Past. Almost you have forgotten that you made dozens of promises when you had power—promises that were not kept. Now you don’t care for anything as long as you are safe. 

In the poem, time was, time is, time would never be again! And life is such a fleeting bad dream. 

The poem to follow is also about time and human infirmity to act in time. 

yeroo coqorsi yaa’u                               when the grass is still green 
yeroo kaloon lalisaa,                             and the pasture is sprout, 
                                bonni indhufaa hinbeekani                  and the river is overflow,
                                yeroo galaanni ciisaa.                           who cares about the dry season 
                                                                                                approaching empty wells, 
                                                                hollow river beds? who cares? 

Poem 20, p59

_______________________________
 1.            boqqolloon Birraa dhufa                           corn does come in the autumn
aananni Arfaasaa dhufa                            when milk comes in the spring.
humni ganama dhufa                                (will-)power comes when one is youth
qalbiin galgala dhufa                                experience is when one is old
eessa abbaa kootiin fida                           the route betwixt youth and age
lameen wal bira lufa!                               is two-way. The two don’t comply!

(also in Edas-edanas, 1997)

2. Draws on William Faulkner’s speech to one graduating class on May 28, 1951. 


     All the poems in this article are in my book,  Anaan’yaa (1998, 208 pages). 




Asafa Tafara Dibaba
Finfinne (Addis Ababa) University, 
October 2006



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Asafa Tafara Dibaba
Finfinne (Addis Ababa) University, 
October 2006



____________________________________________________________________________
Asafa Tefera Dibaba
e-mail: ebba-ko2006@hotmail.com

Finfinne, Oromia