institution? To skim through like a race! For what purpose! The purpose of education was to help everyone find one’s identity and talent. Who am I?” (Girma 2007, 7, italics added). As Abera has told us, “this thing” is a manifestation of his generation’s state of being and mind. He is “a worthless decayed thing” (8), “a putrid cabbage” (84), and “a chicken seated on a rotten egg … what is surprising is that he doesn’t even sense this bad odor” (126).
In Adefris, the young Adefris and the senior priest, Aba Yohannes, are parallel. Adefris has gone to the place for national literacy service, while the priest traveled for religious service. During Sunday service, the priest sits not in a church but under a Warka tree (a type of sycamore tree, indigenous to Ethiopia). While preaching about liberty, equality, unity, and sovereignty, the priest asks for donations to build a modern school where Ethiopian students can be educated without regard to differences based on gender, ethnicity, or religious affiliation. The Warka tree that Aba chose is over eighty years old, “respected and feared.” It is a place where society performs indigenous religious practices without any discrimination as to religion, age, or class. The priest makes his national ethos – “let’s unite and make our country great!” – concrete by proclaiming it under this tree, which is a national character found in most Ethiopian cultures and signifies diversity in unity. The tree is the society’s shared identity, where the unique values take refuge without force. By contrast, the third‐year student Adefris has become an agent of disintegration. He takes up any opportunity for parroting his “university education” authoritatively “to solve the society’s problem from the root” while ridiculing the values and beliefs that form the foundations of the society. Adefris disconnects one from one’s soul and destroys family, society, and even the “nation‐state.” He caused rivalry between Tsione and Roman (the historical and modern Ethiopia), who used to live in harmony before Adefris showed up. Following his death, Tsione becomes a nun while Roman’s fate takes her to a brothel. In this context, it would be difficult to imagine an entity’s fate becoming both monasticism and prostitution simultaneously. But Adefris makes it possible for us to see.
In Ke’admas, Abera’s house, which signifies the nation, is covered with death. The coffin, which was symbolized by a huge soundless radiogram, is used to signify the death of Abera’s mother, brother, and friend. In Letum, we find the young people trapped in a Wube‐Berha (brothel). This place under any context is a symbol of societal downfall. Wube‐Berha is a place where self‐mutilation takes place. The destruction of national ethos, characters, and images would finally lead the nation and generation to perish. Looking back now, we could say this dire prediction in the literary sphere reared its head in the political sphere when the 1974 revolution took place four years after the publication of these novels.
The Quest for Hibretesebawinet, 1974–1991
The military regime (1974–1991) that allegedly “hijacked” the popular revolution massacred former imperial officials whom they had arrested and detained. Because of this heinous act, the nation was disturbed, distracted, and troubled. This act was a starting point for the violent crusades such as the “Red Terror” that were later inflicted upon the revolutionary students, whom the regime considered as its adversary. It was also a signal of the nation’s downfall as it was swamped in a widespread famine, higher risk of destitution, mass migration, ethnic fragmentation, and protracted civil war. These were the authors’ nightmare and eventually became real.
From the very beginning the military junta dictated hibretesebawinet, a superficial adoption of Marxism‐Leninism, in order to consolidate its power and restore Ethiopia’s unity. The post‐revolution Amharic literature was forced to concretize this hybrid ideology and indoctrinate society with it. Consequently, many authors were forced to reinterpret the national history and to reconstruct the nation and national identity in line with hibretesebawinet. Some of the popular novelists such as Girma and Zerihun had to rewrite their own pre‐revolution novels. This rewriting process involved revisiting the titles, narrative forms, and characterization and making changes in conformity with the era’s politico‐aesthetic preference. Zerihun’s Yetewodros Inba (1966) was changed to YeTangut Mistir (Tangut’s [a name of a marginalized character] Secret, 1987). Girma’s Yehillina Dewel (The Bell of Conscience, 1972) was also changed to Haddis (1983, after the eponymous revolutionary hero of the novel). While the state prescribed socialist realism as the official standard for art, the “progressive” theorists such as Debebe Seifu, a celebrated poet and literary scholar, made literature partisan and explicitly dictated it to serve the class struggle (Seifu 1988). Ayalneh Mulatu, a poet, playwright, and advocate of socialist realism, stated in his Amharic book, YeAlem Sinetshuf Qignt (Survey of World Literature, 1985), that “Our revolution’s continued strength and the establishment of the Workers’ Party of Ethiopia helped us to have a much better understanding of Marxist‐Leninist literature.” Mulatu continues in prescriptive tone on how the literature functions: “Marxist‐Leninist literature is an essential part of the Party. Hence, this will develop Marxism‐Leninism’s philosophy. It warrants truth in the literary world” (1985, 27–28).
The state that was using Marxism‐Leninism as a guiding aesthetic principle and legitimate hermeneutics had a censorship secretariat that closely monitored literary production. Even if Ethiopian literature had for long been subject to censorship, this period was different because it was highly intensified. The censorship’s main responsibility was to ensure the production met the ideological aesthetic and protected the party. Publishing any literary work without going through the formal procedure was strictly punished. Thus, many authors were imprisoned, their books were collected and burned, and some even lost their lives. For instance, Be’alu Girma (1938–1984), whom we discussed earlier, was killed because of his novel Oromai (1983). Hence, it is not difficult to imagine how the post‐revolution literature emerged out of this devastating situation where everything smelled of death and ruin and the creative enterprise was in an abyss of fear. After the collapse of the government, interviews with people who used to do censoring were proof of how the system “forced authors to flee their country, send them to prison, and death” and emaciated and ruined the art (Kebede 2014, 73). However, they also argued that censorship had a positive impact. One of the merits they discussed is how censorship could have “saved the author’s life.” They argued that “had Oromai gone through the proper channel, we could have prevented its publication and saved the author’s life and his memory from disappearing like Moses’ burial place” (Kebede 2014, 73). Though the logic of this sympathy may seem absurd, I think it clearly shows the existential dilemma of the period’s literature.
Of course, in this period there were few accomplished literary arts that were produced in line with literary nationalism. In this regard, Debebe Seifu’s powerful poem, “KaKsum Chaf Aqumada” (literally “putting a leather sack on top of the Aksum obelisk,” 2016 [1975]), can be a good example. Seifu’s “Aksum” is one of the obelisks that were created by the powerful Aksumite Empire and are now considered as “unique masterpieces of human creative genius” according to UNESCO.2 It is a stela that has been standing for thousands of years without falling. Aqumada in the context of this poem is a leather grain bag that is traditionally used to beg for grain. The gigantic obelisk that is more than 23 meters tall signifies ancient Ethiopian civilization. The leather sack with poverty and beggary entrenched inside is the emblem of national shame. So, the question is what does putting the aqumada up like a flag on the obelisk that captured the world’s attention and bolsters national pride signify, when clearly the two objects are diametrically opposed in terms of what they symbolize – one implying dignity while the other suggests poverty and degradation?
In the poem, the aqumada travels to the fourteen provinces including Eritrea, which was then part of Ethiopia. The aqumada’s starting point was the northern province of Tigray – the home of the obelisk. Tigray asks its neighbor Wollo to lend it 10 kilos of grain. Though Wollo did not have the
