The Trickster
I have always been fascinated by the trickster in his many guises throughout history, religion, spirit, literature, and lore. No representation is more compelling than that of West African Esu.
‘The West African Esu-Elegbara, who Henry Louis Gates, Jr., says is “a figure of double duality, of unreconciled opposites, living in harmony. . . . the epitome of paradox??? with the “capacity to reproduce himself ad infinitum.??? But these two examples raise a point over which there is considerably less agreement. … Esu-Elegbara—and his variations throughout the African diaspora—is a divine figure: so, do tricksters belong to the world of men or gods, or neither, or both? In some respects they seem decidedly earth-bound—a strong scatalogical vein runs through many trickster tales, for instance—but at the same time they seem to have god-like transformative powers.’ Via Transformations of the Trickster by Helen Lock
More about Esu-Elegbara from my favorite book, The Signifying Monkey by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.:
‘Each version of Esu is the sole messenger of the gods (in Yoruba, irnase), he who interprets the will of the gods to man; he who carries the desires of man to the gods. Esu is the guardian of the crossroads, master of style and of stylus, the phallic god of generation and fecundity, master of that elusive, mystical barrier that separates the divine world from the profane. Frequently characterized as an inveterate copulator possessed by his enormous penis, linguistically Esu is the ultimate copula, connecting truth with understanding, the sacred with the profane, text with interpretation, the word (as a form of the verb to be) that links a subject with its predicate. He connects the grammar of divination with its rhetorical structures. In Yoruba mythology, Esu is said to limp as he walks precisely because of his mediating function: his legs are of different lengths because he keeps one anchored in the realm of the gods while the other rests in this, our human world.
Scholars have studied these figures of Esu, and each has found one or two characteristics of this mutable figure upon which to dwell, true to the nature of the trickster. A partial list of these qualities might include individuality, satire, parody, irony, magic, indeterminacy, open-endedness, ambiguity, sexuality, chance, uncertainty, disruption and reconciliation, betrayal and loyalty, closure and disclosure, encasement and rupture. But it is a mistake to focus on one of these qualities as predominant. Esu possesses all of these characteristics, plus a plethora of others which, taken together, only begin to present an idea of the complexity of this classic figure of mediation and of the unity of opposed forces.
[. . .] The Fon [of Benin, Dahomey] call Legba “the divine linguist,” he who speaks all languages, he who interprets the alphabet of Mawu [sky-god] to man and to the other gods. Yoruba sculptures of Esu almost always include a calabash that he holds in his hands. In this calabash he keeps ase [usually translated as divinely-generated power or energy], the very ase with which Olodumare, the supreme deity of the Yoruba, created the universe. We can translate ase in many ways, but the ase used to create the universe I translate as “logos,” the word as understanding, the word as the audible, and later the visible, sign of reason. Ase is more weighty, forceful, and action-packed than the ordinary word. It is the word with irrevocability, reinforced with double assuredness and undaunted authenticity. This probably explains why Esu’s mouth, from which the audible word proceeds, sometimes appears double: Esu’s discourse, metaphorically, is double-voiced. [. . .]
Esu’s most direct Western kinsman is Hermes. Just as Hermes’ role as a messenger and interpreter for the gods lent his name readily to hermeneutics, our word for the study of methodological principles of interpretation of a text, so too is it appropriate for the literary critic to name the methodological principles of the interpretation of black texts Esu-’tufunaalo, literally “one who unravels the knots of Esu” [this word is a Yoruba neologism coined by the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka]. Esu is the indigenous black metaphor for the literary critic, and Esu-’tufunaalo is the study of methodological principles of interpretation itself, or what the literary critic does. Esu-’tufunaalo is the secular analogue of Ifa divination, the richly lyrical and densely metaphorical system of sacred interpretation that the Yoruba in Nigeria have consulted for centuries, and which they continue to consult. Whereas the god Ifa is the text of divine will, Esu is the text’s interpreter (Onitumo), “the one who translates, who explains, or ‘who loosens knowledge.’” [. . .]‘
http://chrisabraham.com/2006/12/06/the-trickster-as-esu-elegbara/
