Tsegaye was proud of Ethiopia's long history of independence and of her unique cultural heritage. He insisted emphatically that his country needed heroes, and used the theatre deliberately to teach his compatriots to respect the Ethiopian heroes of their past. One of the most widely acclaimed of his plays, "Tewodros", commemorates the life of the Ethiopian emperor of that name. Considered a pioneer reformer and moderniser, the emperor committed suicide in 1868 rather than fall into the hands of a hostile British expeditionary force.
Another of Tsegaye's plays, "Petros at the Hour", tells the story of Abuna Petros, the religious figure who had accompanied the Ethiopian Arbegnoch in their struggle to resist the Italian fascist occupation. Captured by the enemy on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, the prelate was executed after a show trial. A third play, "The Oda Oak Oracle", a tragedy about Ethiopian country life, also enjoyed great popularity, both in Ethiopia and abroad.
Besides these compositions, Tsegaye translated Shakespeare (Hamlet and Othello being the most popular of these works), as well as Molière's "Tartuffe" and "Le Médecin malgré lui", as well as Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage".
His poems, both in Amharic and English, were also widely read. A score of them, including Prologue to African Conscience and Black Antigone, were published in the Ethiopia Observer in 1965. Another poem, in Amharic, castigated the European nomenclature for the waterfalls of Sudan and Egypt – which totally ignored those of Ethiopia, and caused Tsegaye proudly to refer to the Ethiopian Tissesat, or Blue Nile Falls as the "Zero Cataract".
ምንም አስተያየቶች የሉም:
አስተያየት ይለጥፉ