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At the conclusion of his reflections on "The Origin of the Work of Art," Martin Heidegger says, "the reflections are concerned with the riddle of art, the riddle that art itself is. They are far from claiming to solve the riddle. The task is to see the riddle."⁶² I propose that we open ourselves to what Heidegger claims in preparation for what Chiwara presents to us, and in preparation for how we are presented by Chiwara. What is at stake here is the riddle of seeing—seeing that both speaks and listens. The seeing that is operative in the work of art is animated by the riddle. Let us not try to solve the riddle. The attempt can only lead to the withdrawal of Chiwara. I suspect that much of what Heidegger has in mind has something to do with the Greek sense of the oracle. This is not a farfetched suspicion. Those who are familiar with his thinking know that, for him, what truly matters has already been noted more fundamentally by the Greeks. A part of Heidegger's problem is that the Greeks he had in mind are his Greeks, not Greek Greeks, and clearly not African Greeks. Had he a correct view of the Greek Greeks, he would have known that the waters that wash the Greek shores or the Greek islands are the same waters that wash the African coasts. These waters do not wash German coasts. The Greek oracularity has much in common with African oracularity. Accordingly, let us take the African antelope speaking as an oracle—an oracle to be interpreted in a way that this speaking does not cease to be so. Chinua Achebe, a well-known African writer, reminds us that in Africa, proverbs are the palm wine with which words are eaten.⁶³ In Africa, what is proverbial is oracular in an African way, but a way that is inherently open to other ways.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-52560-0_7

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