3 - ‘Shameless Thefts’ vs Local Literatures: Dusé Mohamed Ali's Comet

Summary

In December 1938, a reader in Jos using the pseudonym ‘Literature’ wrote to the editor of the Comet in Lagos to point out that a poem entitled ‘Thus Success Comes’ sent in by F. Uzoma Anyiam of Lagos and printed on 29 October, was ‘letter by letter, word by word, position by position, the same as a poem by Edwin Carlile Litsey’ (3 December 1938: 2). After citing Litsey's poem and showing that only two words had been changed in the local version, Literature added, carefully avoiding any defamation of Anyiam while exposing the duplication, ‘while I do not intend to imply plagiarism or literary piracy on the part of one or the other, I wish to register my wonderment at so striking a coincidence or carbon-copy likeness’ (Ibid.).

Rather than capping his pen in shame, Anyiam defended the poem as his own original work, explaining that the coincidence was entirely reasonable given that both verses contemplated the common human experience of success. In his reply to Literature, printed in the following week's Comet, Anyiam wrote:

It was an unfortunate coincidence that my poem tallied with that of Mr. Litsey which I did not read, and I can assure ‘Literature’ that I had never read any of Mr. Litsey's writings. I wrote mine to encourage myself and some other youngmen who have not been fortunate in life. Perhaps Mr. Liisey and I have suffered equally to have an identical view of ‘Success’.

(10 December 1938: 2)

Towards the end of Anyiam's reply, a truth comes out that is riveting for what it reveals about literary creativity among newspaper correspondents in 1930s Nigeria: ‘I gave the MSS to a sound poet in Lagos who edited it before I sent it to the “Comet”’, he confesses, ‘and if Mr. Literature is not satisfied I would mention the name to him’ (Ibid.). In defending what at first sight appears to be indefensible, Anyiam's letter reveals some of the behind-the-scenes collaborations that made creative self-expression possible for new writers seeking access to newsprint in Lagos. Even as responsibility for the problem is displaced sideways onto a third party, the collaborative quality of literary creativity among writers in Nigeria is revealed in Anyiam's reply, while still asserting authorship and claiming the poem as ‘my honest endeavour’, in spite of its ‘edits’ (Ibid.).

One regular contributor to the Comet was having none of it.