Conveying the "fullness of the world"

through poetry:

Reviewed by R.S. Karunaratne

Everyone is a poet inside even if they have never written a line of poetry in their lives. This is because poetry is primarily a matter of feeling. Most of us never put our feelings into words but we experience poetic emotions all the time.

So long as emotional expression remains an essential element of poetry, it will have some kind of rhythm in it. Similarly rhyme too has a direct connection with human beings. Lullabies, tongue twisters and nonsense verse all have a certain kind of rhyme.

Another element of poetry is the use of metaphors. Although they sound somewhat unnatural at times such figurative use of words has a strong connection with poetry. Most students, including undergraduates shun reading poetry. They think it is a waste of time. However, with a little change of attitude, they will enjoy reading poetry profitably.

For this we have to think of a poem as someone's effort to put into words his impressions, feelings and ideas. Every good poem is a result of an emotion felt by a poet.

If you are new to poetry, you might think that it is just a lot of funny words strung together methodically. This appears to be a false notion. If you want to write a poem, you do not have to look for fancy words in a thesaurus. Just use short and simple words. Do you find any fancy words in Tennyson's lines:

"Low on the sand and loud on the stone

The last wheel echoes away."

Meanwhile, there is a sharp distinction between poetry and prose. If you want to write prose, you have to write sentences and paragraphs. For poetry you have to write lines, thought phrases and stanzas. Rhythm is common to both prose and poetry, but poetry needs a stricter rhythm running on a definite pattern or on an irregular pattern.

The other point to remember is that poetry appeals to emotions while prose appeals to intellect.

In order to make their poems appealing to readers, poets use vivid figures of speech. What is more, poetry suggests while prose tends to explain. As a result, readers find that poetry is more compact than prose. Another difference is that poets use words with emotive meaning. Meanwhile poets write poems more for the ear than prose writers.

A good poet uses words that are musical. Although such differences appear between poetry and prose, both appeal to our five senses.

If you look at the history of literature, poetry has existed from time immemorial, possibly from the time the human race emerged from its shadowy pre-history.

Therefore the notion that poetry is something contrived does not hold water. The only trouble is that most poetry seems unnatural and irrelevant. However, good readable poetry springs from deep human feelings and is quite natural.

I enjoyed reading Anjalie Chandima Silva's "Letters from the soul" because she writes about the "lived fullness of the world." In other words her poetry extends our own limited experience by means of imagination. For instance the opening poem entitled "Reality" evokes the reader's emotions with the following lines:"

"Again, I heard the cry

Raindrops kissed the earth

The Bo tree stood still

With a deep silence

There is rhythm in her poem entitled "solitude":

"I close my eyes

For a moment

Recall the pleasant memories

Then I feel

You are with me"

Similarly, in "Vision" the words "I see" have been repeated to heighten the effect of rhythm and there is a visible beauty in the brevity or words and expressions.

Except in England where poetry is an exportable commodity, publishers in Sri Lanka are reluctant to publish books of poetry. They are of the view that there is no demand for poetry. If there is no demand we must create a demand because poetry is essential to lead a meaningful life. It is heartening to see at least a few poets have come forward in recent times to publish their books of poetry as author publications.

With the rapid growth of English education there will be a demand for poetry in the near future.

Even today some English newspapers devote a lot of space to publish poetry. Books such as "Letters from the soul" will help to usher in a new era of poetry readers.

"You taught us English"

Imperial Entanglements and Literature in English:

Try as I did, I could not quite get out of my mind the words of Aristotle as I sat listening to Professor Fakrul Alam's monologue on Imperial Entanglements and Literature in English, Friday before last, at the King's Court of the Transasia Hotel.

"From the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule". The words seem so true as I listened to the Professor describe the contents of his book published last June focusing on subjects ranging from Daniel Defoe to R.K Narayan, dressed as he was in full western attire, speaking in the language of the colonisers.

Except for the ladies in saris, everything around us that morning, from the huge silk bows tied to the back of the chairs, to the huge chandeliers, to the name of the venue itself, had some connection with our invaders.

As the audience listened, dozed, day-dreamed while Professor Alam read from his paper, Aristotle's words sounded more true than ever. "From the hour of their birth some are marked out for subjection".

More than fifty years after independence we are still shackled to the Empire. Why else would we still try to analyze its impact on us and on how and what we write, using their language?

Is it not high time that we accepted (to misquote Caliban) "You taught us English" and moved on from this point hopefully on to higher pastures? Should we keep on analyzing Bacon's influence on English colonization and the impact of his thoughts on English imperialism, now that we are well into the first half of the 21st Century? Does it really matter that Defoe was ambivalent towards the empire while Swift used bitter satire to mock at outlandish expeditions?

Whether we should or not harp back to the days of imperial rule, this is what we continue to do. We still continue to see Robinson Crusoe as a successful coloniser. "An exemplary planter settler; the owner of a flourishing plantation community when it would be far more interesting to analyze his relationship with Friday in a homosexual context.

Edward Said and his comments about Mansfield Park is amplified out of proportion while every attempt is being made to dig out the marginal visible presence of the empire in literature written by writers who seem to be hardly aware of the empire.

To quote my father, Daya Dissanayake, a bilingual writer, "just because we had to learn and use English as the International language, in our country, need we still let ourselves be down trodden by the colonisers.

Should we forget that throughout history, the invaders or colonisers have always been less civilized than the people they colonised? In our writings should we imitate them, or try to please them, sometimes even intentionally distorting the life and culture of our people?"

"Pure human folly" as Tissa Jayatilaka summed up the age of the colonisers. Folly which should now be forgotten. Let's stop barking up a tree that has already been cut down. - Aditha

Yarlini and Kalachchara Vilangugal

Two publications, a novel titled "Yarlini" and a collection of short stories titled "Kalachchara Vilangugal" were released recently by Somasunderam Rameswaran.

"Yarlini" is a story of a young soldier of Hambantota who serves in the north where he meets a Tamil girl who has been deceived by a Tamil youth.

The girl falls in love with him. Although the soldier Gemunu likes the girl he does not like to marry her. Why? The story is narrated in a simple language with a political background. Twelve short stories are included in the short story collection; all of them deal with contemporary issues.

Rameswaran has to his credit forty one publications in Tamil, Sinhala and English languages. His first novel in Tamil was published in 1992 and up to now he has published 36 Tamil novels, collection of short stories, collection of children's stories and drama.

He has also published 6 books in Sinhala (two novels, three collections of short stories and a collection of children's stories). And he has also published a collection of short stories in English titled "Air of Freedom".

He has won more than ten prizes in short story and novel competitions held by various organizations in Sri Lanka, Canada, UK and Australia. Rameswaran was awarded the Sahithiya Award in 2005 for his collection of short stories in Tamil titled "Muhavariyai Thedukirarkal".

And a publication on drama titled "Kanal Neer Gangaiyakirathu" was awarded the National Award for 2007. Further in 1998 and 2005, the North East Provincial Council awarded the first prize for his collection of children's stories.

Rameswaran's short story in English "Water" has been included in "Nothing Grows Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories" a Daily News anthology of short stories.

From clay tablet to computer

Printing has been the principal vehicle for conveying ideas during the past 500 years. The history of printing is an important part of the general history of civilisation.

Undoubtedly to fully understand political, constitutional, ecclesiastical and economic events, and sociological, philosophical and literary movements one must take into account the influence which the printing press has exerted on them.

Now, Nihal P. Abeysinghe in his book "Mudritha Sannivedanaye Sanwardanaya" focuses on he art of printing which is virtually unique in the human experience in that it emerged fully formed.

Printing was such an immense improvement over the hand copying of books that it caught on immediately and within two generations the art of the illuminated manuscript had become all but extinct. The earliest printers, however, continued many of the traditions of the scribes, making use of textual contractions and elisions to reduce the volume of matter to be printed.

Writing about the period called the age of the incunabula (1450-1500) Abeysinghe says though this is considered as the first phase of the printing press by Western writers this is not true, and that according to historians of east, printing first started way before the 15th century.

In addition many incunabula were designed to be rubricated by hand, that is, to be decorated with flourishing initial letters and other embellishments, done by the now underemployed and presumably discontented scribes.

Book illustrations in the Incunabula period were prepared from woodcuts, that is, printed from blocks of wood hand engraved with their subjects by skilled artists and artisans. This form of illustration allows great artistic expression, and the results of this technology are eagerly collected today, and appreciated for what they are, the first commercial art to be available to all people.

From the beginning of printing to the internet through the eight chapters Abeysinghe traces how knowledge, the key to power, became available at a tiny fraction of the cost of a handwritten book.

This development proved an enormous impetus to literacy, and banished forever the dark days when only a selected few held the key to deciphering the magic letters of the old parchments.

The printed book arrived just as an emerging middle class of tradesman and artisans were rising in social, political, and economic power, further challenging the institutions that had held the masses in their absolute control for a thousand years.

Begun in Mainz, Germany, by Gutenberg, in the 1450's after the city was sacked in 1459, many of Gutenberg's followers removed to Cologne. From there printing spread across Europe with remarkable speed.

In 1470 there were fourteen printing houses on the continent; in 1480 there were more than a hundred. From the German states printing moved almost immediately into France and the Italian Kingdoms, then arrived in Holland in 1472, Belgium in 1473, Spain in 1474, finally reaching England in 1477.

This explosion of knowledge, coupled with the new humanist world view of the Renaissance, swept away the lingering intellectual darkness of Medievalism, and ushered in the centuries of social and technological progress that have made possible the unprecedented prosperity of the modern world.