Birth, death, and re-birth: The trope of eternal rejuvenation in Isidore Diala’s The Lure of Ash

Abstract

Human dread of death is as old as humanity. Across cultures, this dread seems to be inaugurated by the belief that death constitutes the site of final becoming. Isidore Diala’s The Lure of Ash makes a fascinating incursion into the strange interrelationship of life, death, and rebirth, and reveals that, beyond its conception as the final destination of all flesh and the abyss to which all human strivings must return, death proves to be the only phenomenon that could truly satisfy the soul’s implacable yearning for eternal rejuvenation. The critics of Diala’s poetry seem not to have examined this cyclic kinesis, which is rooted in African cosmologies. This article, seeking to cover this gap, contends that despite the attention which The Lure of Ash draws to humanity’s eternal dread of death, there is a revelation that death is not a completely mournful experience robbed of the possibility of hope. Examining the notion of birth–death–rebirth cyclic movement in “The Hues of Ash”, which forms the first phase of the collection, the paper argues that Diala’s poetry seeks to represent death as both a terrible experience and a glorious becoming. Juxtaposing existentialist ideation with the belief in the afterlife and reincarnation in Igbo cosmology, the paper affirms that death is that point where life begins, and surmises that it is the nebulous interstices of life, death, and transcendence that hold Diala’s poetic project together.