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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE
A. Review of Related Studies
Poetry and struggle for freedom. Liberation poetry is rich in just and profound human aspirations. Inside poetry, the poet abstract and subtracts himself from his own
interest to identify with those of his people. In this relationship of abstraction and identification, the poet finds his own self in the struggle through his direct daily
participation in the political and socio-economic transformation of human environment. As the researchers namely Irene Marques 2003, Chidi Amuta 1989
A.R Bras 1982, R. Victoria Arana 2008 have defined in their work, poetry has become an important part of poets in struggling against colonial hegemony in
oppressed nations. To use Fanon‟s words 1968:240, it is a “literature of combat.” African poetry has become a part of their struggle against colonialism.
Throughout the continent, poets expose oppression and cruelty associated with the colonial as well as its power. One of the poets is Angolan first president, Agustinho
Neto, whose poems expose Portuguese hegemony in Angola. Chris Brazier in The New Internationalist
1988: 28 describes him as “revolutionary, spinning his dreams and inspirational calls to arms from inside prison cells and giving the chance to turn
imagination into reality as the first President of independent Angola. ”
Marques 2003:6 in her article Postcolonial African Consciousness and the Poetry of Agustinho Neto
discusses Neto‟s Sacred Hope 1974 reveals that poetry is
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a powerful tool in struggling against oppression, but without the help of armed struggle as well as other complementary action, it will not succeed, as stated below:
Despite the fact that Neto uses his poetry to fight colonial cause and to sensitize his people need for revolution, he is not sufficiently naïve to think
that poetry alone is enough to change the state affairs. In his poem called “Haste” Neto speaks of the impatience he feels with the fact that things are
not changing at the rate he would like to see the change. He is very aware of the f
act that poetic words, reasonable talk, and biblical “offering of other cheek” – in other words, “civilized” diplomacy – will not be enough to
convince the colonialist to return Angolans and stop the utilitarian and self- serving for independence Marques, 2003:6.
Neto adds that the use of Portuguese colonial language proves to have
facilitated the spread of Neto‟s political plea worldwide, which might have contributed to international diplomatic pressure to end colonialism in Angola.
Amuta 1989: 189, in observing Neto‟s Collection Sacred Hope, states that
one of the most prominent freedom fighters of Angola is Agustinho Neto. He was not only the first President of Independent Angola but also a great poet who put his art at
the service of Angola, anti-colonial revolution and struggle for cultural and political independence of Africans. Neto‟s poetry in Sacred Hope 1974 is a vital element of
People‟s Movement for the Liberation of Angola MPLA. Poetry is used to reject colonial values and hence provides a voice to the dominated, marginalized and
divided Africans: The significance of Neto‟s poetry in the struggle for Angolan independence is
subsumed within the overall active involvement of literature and culture in the strategy of the MPLA. The poems collected in Sacred Hope span several
years in Neto‟s career as well as various stages in the struggle for national liberation. Consequently, the themes range from the need to use valuable
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