By Jama Hersi
‘I do not speak of fools, I speak of wisest men; and it is among them that imagination has great gift of persuasion.’ Blaise Pascal.
The purpose of writing for me is the capacity of engaging one’s inner world that endows diagnostic, therapeutic and didactic feeling simultaneously; a capacity that intimately allures the challenges and entrancements of what is beyond human finiteness; a capacity of losing, gaining and beginning self to germinate bud of wisdom and cultivate path of illumination. In other words this vague and personal definition of purpose of writing has dual function, meditation, and self-reflexion and discovery. Let us say that we temporarily agree to inhabit this confined personal realm, and compare with what we are witnessing contemporaneously in WardheerNews commentary section concerning articles. What most of these commentaries lack is self-reflexion and assessment, and consist of a composite of utterances that traditionally Somalis called ‘Hadal aan lasuntan ama ubadan surmaseegto’.
I hope that august readers will forgive me regarding linguistic code-switching due to the linguistic imperfection; however our native tongue concretises the metaphysical ratiocination of my point. Albeit some commentaries have humorous pastiche, what they predominantly fail is the microscopic explication of articles – their aesthetic titillation, content analysis, discursive formation – critical reflexion that deconstructs the hidden and labyrinth of ideas that each article is proposing. Alas our quotidian practice of every article become the usual prejudged game of author hunting, which perhaps more rewarding than dry and painful exercise of critical reflexion. There are numerous ruinations in this culture of author hunting; firstly we will transpire as a society where critical faculty becomes rare commodity. Secondly there are numerous youthful composing minds that will entertain these querulous melodies and interpret as didactic odyssey. Thirdly we as current contributors will fail our responsibility of engendering a platform which charts new changes and challenges that young generations confront, and compel them to inherit this atavistic pharmakon. Therefore what we need as Somali speaking lineage is pilgrimage of intellectual purgation that incises the tribal lump in our throat and insodoing discover thought as clear thoughts find authentic words.
However despite the deplorable atavism of the commentaries, there is a dialectical signification of our interaction, certain enlargement of Somali spirit, grand principle of pleasure that possesses both the greatest condemnation and yet the greatest affection we have for each other as Somalis. Somalinimo is under erasure and yet inscribed in our nervous system – psychological phenomenon that equate our contemporary predicament.
Some of the commentaries that worth noting include perennial encounter between Barwaaqo and Willwaal, two proper nouns that have profound historical meditation as well as literary and folktale evocation. This encounter illustrates the most ancient and civilised mentalities of Somalis and inaugurate their encounter as dhalin soo cayaar guday, an encounter that has feeling, rhythm and invigorating imagination; sometimes sinking to our most primitive unconsciousness, but comes back with something real, authentic while finishing with linguistic verbal contraption. I am conscious enough to grasp that when we are engaging writing realm we are dealing with a world that is beyond our sense perception, beneath the service of our thoughts, above the horizon of the actual articulatory artefacts we employ.
Saahid Qamaan knew this conception of human finiteness very well, when he masterly articulated ‘Hadba waxa mudh soo odhan aduun hal ayne moogeyne.’ Indeed the beauty and perfection Qamaan’s metaphysical epistemology defies translation of the original language. Neverthless what is necessary in each encounter is to govern our tongue and discipline our inscriptional expression as the habit of expression mediates the whole conduct of one’s life.
Despite the rare commentaries of Barwaaqo and Wiilwaal’s encounter, the majority of irrational and sentimental contributions that inundate the platform do not entrance me, nor do I have any special affinity for WardheerNews, other than finding this platform a source of auditory and printing imagination, critiquing and facilitating Somali’s reflexion of Somaliness, a source that encourages battle of ideas to shape and reshape positive and backward achievements of Somali virtues and reminding them ‘it is diminishment of them and a derogation to ignore what they can do’, making knowledge come to us home; to make us think, quest and contemplate the pathos and pleasures of being Somali – ‘dialogue of self and soul.’ Self-reflexion that I am advocating and spilling on an immerse ink here was sublimely expressed by W, B. Yeats, ‘the intellect of man is forced to choose/perfection of the life or of the work.’
Let me underscore in this juncture that my thought process is neither influenced by an ideological conviviality nor liberal lamentation, nor am I moralising my fellow Somali speaking agnates, but what I am proposing for us as WardheerNews Partners is to be heterogeneous school of thought that share the true motivation of writing with its refreshing hope and hopelessness, and entertain its aesthetic enterprise – form feeling, sense/sound giving, exaction of rhythm – which is more rewarding and revolutionary than genealogical subjectivism that only exacerbate the strain of the present. School of thought that does not necessarily advocate an understanding of individual people, but view the same world from one another’s standpoint, that is to say agreeing to see the same in different ways. School of thought that transcends the sweetness of querulous melodies that we are accustomed in commentary section, as well as the time and the language of inner Somali mind; whilst creating a web of knowledge that purifies our senseless entrancement of author’s witch-hunt. T, S. Eliot, British poet, literary and social critic once stated:
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost and found and lost again and again; and under condition that seems unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Jama Hersi
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