Zusammenfassung
The story of Odente, whose reintroduction in Date was intended by the pagan party to counteract the growing influence of Christianity, is an episode that took place from the end of 1885 to the beginning of 1887. (The story is told in the book Der Götze Odente [The Idol Odente] by the missionary Wilhelm Rottmann).
The manuscript is archived under the number Ghan-Essays 22 (1964), Notes for the essay on Dente, in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar. Some of the text is rather rough and almost in note form. Sub-headings were added by the editors. This manuscript was mainly edited by Dieter Reicher. – eds.
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Notes
- 1.
Missionar W. Rottmann, Der Götze Odente: Ein Bild aus dem westafrikanischen Heidentum (Basel: Verlag der Missionsbuchhandlung, 1894). [The word Götze is most often translated as ‘idol’, which seems appropriate here, though later on in the text Elias rendered it as ‘god’.—eds.].
- 2.
Larteh Akuapem is a town in the south of the Eastern Region of Ghana.—eds.
- 3.
Note that here Elias uses the expressions ‘configuration of human groups’ and ‘configuration’, not his later term ‘figuration’. He explained in conversation that con is Latin for ‘with’, but the term does not mean ‘with’ anything else, but rather something in itself, so he later shortened it.– eds.
- 4.
Elias is referring to a volume that he himself was planning, not the present volume.—eds.
- 5.
Rottmann, Der Götze Odente.
- 6.
Azu and Azu (1929), Klama Lalai Part II, Song 15.
- 7.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part II, Song 41, p. 276.
- 8.
Actually, Elias means the Guang people, an ethnic group living in Ghana. Their language is Guan which is a Kwa language like that of the Krobos. They were settling in villages of the Akuapem (Akwapim) state like Larteh or Akropong.—eds.
- 9.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part II, Song 4.
- 10.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part II, Song 50, p. 284.
- 11.
Azu and Azu (1929), Song 15, p. 124.
- 12.
If you want to understand ‘Liko yo’, which I have translated ‘hang’, see Andangbe History, chap. VII, wrote Enoch Azu.
- 13.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, Song 26, p. 109 ff.
- 14.
There is no citation in the original typoscript written by Elias.—eds.
- 15.
Enoch Azu, Adangbe History, p. 8.
- 16.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, Song 54, p. 90 (in English).
- 17.
Fufu is a food common in Ghana and in other West African countries, a dough-like mixture typically made of fresh or fermented cassava with plantain (cooking banana) flour and cocoyam kneaded with water.—eds.
- 18.
This is a paraphrase of Azu’s rendering which is: I shall go to Lene; My suffering is exceedingly great; I am going to Lene; My suffering is long since hidden in my fist; I am going to Lene; If I die, I shall never re-enter into a womb to return to the world (see: Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, Song 11, p. 118).
- 19.
The term ‘juju’ refers to priests whose destiny—in the eyes of village population—is connected magically to the good luck, the prosperity, and the fertility of the whole community and their harvest. – eds.
- 20.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, Song 4.
- 21.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, Song 19.
- 22.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, Song 23.
- 23.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007 [1899]).—eds.
- 24.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, Song 20.
- 25.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, Song 17.
- 26.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, Song 18.
- 27.
The last four sentences are in Elias’s very difficult handwriting. In this instance, square brackets indicate words that seem to make best sense, but of which we are not quite certain.—eds.
- 28.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, song 25.
- 29.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, song 15.
- 30.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, song 7.
- 31.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part IX, Song 5.
- 32.
See Elias’s later long essay ‘The loneliness of the dying in our time’, in The Loneliness of the Dying and Humana Conditio (Dublin: UCD Press, 2010 [Collected Works, 6]), pp. 3–52, originally published in German in 1979.—eds.
- 33.
See also another posthumously published essay by Elias, ‘Spontaneity and self-consciousness’, in Jan Haut Haut, Paddy Dolan, Dieter Reicher and Raúl Sánchez García, eds., Excitement Processes: Norbert Elias’s Unpublished Works on Sports, Leisure, Body, Culture (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2018), pp. 23–76.—eds.
- 34.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part I, Song 6, p. 24.
- 35.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part I, Song 15.
- 36.
Azu and Azu (1929), Part I, Song 21, p. 46.
- 37.
Gomoa is a state of the Fante (an Akan people) in Ghana (Gomoa district).—eds.
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Elias, N. (2022). Emotions, Violence and Rituals: On Traditional Klama Songs. In: Reicher, D., Jitschin, A., Post, A., Alikhani, B. (eds) Norbert Elias’s African Processes of Civilisation. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37849-3_9
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