State Literary Festival 2006-postmortem:

End of the man of letters?

by Aditha Dissanayake

As the curtain fell for the last time on the State Literary Festival 2006, held at Anuradhapura Maha Vidyalaya, on September 18, 2006 it was hard not to ponder whether on this day, the last rites were at last given to the "Man of Letters".

Hailed by Carlyle in Hero Worship, as "Our most important modern person" placing him alongside the priest and the prophet, the festival emphasised that in spite of all adversity he will yet survive.

Though the mass media pundits and the cultural functionaries at the event, who pronounced Ibsen as Ibisen, did not know that some of the award winners were out of the country and continuously called Cyril C. Perera as Cyril A.Perera seem to do much to give the last rites to the writers of the country, the work they had created and was duly awarded proved this is yet to be.

The award winners, especially Professor D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke and Cyril C. Perera, who were present to receive the Sahithyarathna awards (K. Sachithananda was not present to receive his award) which showcased the continuing importance of intellectuals in contemporary society shattered many of the misconceptions and contradictory expectations about intellectuals as eccentric bookmen who are too specialized and out of touch with the main currents of modern life.

They surely fit all three distinct senses that are attributed to an intellectual; the subjective sense in which the term is used to identify persons with interest in books, ideas, and intellectual debate as well as to the sociological sense in which the intellectual is a member of an occupational grouping of professors, teachers, writers, journalists, government workers and the sense in which those who have developed intellectual authority on the basis of achievement of appointments to appeal to a broader public on subjects that are related to their speciality.

Regarding the winners of this year's awards it is evident that the writers have escaped the steadily encroaching reach of the mass media into the world of ideas and intellectual life, as well as the temptation to retreat into the specialized world of academe. They have upheld the precepts the intellectual vocation really entails. The best example is evident in Destry Muller's poems which won the award for Best Poetry (English) 2006.

Escaped monkish withdrawal

From Professor Sunanda Mahendra's Oga Tharanaya to David Blacker's A Cause Untrue, Enabling Traditions of Prof. Wimal Dissanayake, the translations of Vijita Fernando and Ranjini Obeysekera, the winners of the manuscript competition, Daya Dissanayake's Evesdropper and Faith Rathnayake's Different Accents and Mental Movies to Suwimalee Karunarathne's collection of short stories, to name only a few, the works which were awarded reveal that instead of living in monkish withdrawal the writers have engaged with the world, yet, at the same time escaped from being tarnished by the vulgarity around them.

They have achieved intellectual distinction without being narrow specialists. They have answered the wish of society to know "How we should live".

No, the man of letters is not dead. Yet.

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Everyone is reading - all is well with the world

With the advent of the International Bookfair on September 16, reading seem to have become an activity at once glamorous and gladdening. Judging by the mammoth sales in spite of the high prices at the exhibition, it is evident that this device called Basic Orderly Organized Knowledge, (BOOK) sans wires, electrical circuits and batteries will surely survive till the end of the world.

Why? Because you can carry them around you, flip the pages, smell them and own them in away you cannot own words on a screen or digital information processed into sound and images. Moreover, unlike with electronic devices you can also write in the margins.

Its specially enthralling when you buy a second hand book with someone else's comments written on the pages. Imagine buying Uncle Tom's Cabin at a second hand book stall at the exhibition with the name U. Silva February 6, 1962 written on it. I wonder if he or she knows that the book is with me now.