Sinhala Literature:

Need for establishment of standards

by Ranga CHANDRARATNE

Prof. Wimal Dissanayake is one of the brilliant academics Sri Lanka has ever produced. He is the author of a vast number of books and academic papers on cultural studies, literary studies and cinema. Currently Prof. Dissanayake teaches at the Academy of Creative Media of the University of Hawaii and is also the Director of the Cultural Studies Program at the East-West Centre, Hawaii.

He is considered as the foremost authority on Asia Cinema and Asian Communication Theory. A bilingual par excellence, Prof. Dissanayake had the unique privilege of serving as a Professor of Sinhala and Professor of English at the same time. His recent publications include “Sinhala Novel and Public Sphere” and “Popular Culture in a Globalised India” published in the UK by Routledge publishers.

Q: You again Sri Lanka; your home, and visiting on a visit to friends and relatives on your annual pilgrimage. In my view, the time is crucial as Sri Lankan literature and cinema is at a cross road today trying to reach a new path in a globalised world.

What are your views on contemporary Sri Lankan literature and its place in a globalised context?

A: Indeed, we are living in a world that is being rapidly globalised. The process of globalisation has an impact on all aspects of creative work including the processes involved in production of literature. What we see today among Sinhala writers and the Sri Lankan writers who write in English, is to engage their role in a globalised world and ask the question: What is need for a writer in Sri Lanka . The important point to bear in mind is not only the need to understand the deeper nuances of globalisation but also to grasp the importance of the culture-specific nature of our social existence and literary production. In other words, this whole interplay between globalisation and localisation or the global and local interaction is extremely important.

What we see today is a tendency to be carried away by the powers and attractions of globalisation. As a result you lose the point of cultural anchorage. It seems to me that if you lose that point of cultural anchorage or roots, you become a kind of free floating cosmopolitan resulting those literary productions becoming not very productive. In other words, while we are all subject to globalisation, it is also important to find a point of cultural anchorage.

Q: An emerging trend is the world contemporary literature, particularly the contemporary novel is a dominant trend by those who were born in Asia. The prestigious Booker Prize is regularly won by those with Asian names.

Now we have a few Sri Lankan born writers with international repute such as Michael Ondaatje, Romesh Gunasekara and Shayam Selvadurai. The 2008 Booker Prize was awarded to Aravind Adiga for his maiden novel White Tiger.

I understand that this 1974 born journalist and writer holds both Indian and Australian citizenship. How do you perceive this new trend in world literature?

A: You are absolutely right. There is a great interest in literary work produced by writers born in Asia and South East Asia in particular. We also have a number of writers like Michael Ondaatje, Romesh Gunasekara and Shayam Selvadurai who have made a mark in the international world of letters that we should be proud of. But that does not necessarily mean that they are writers who capture important facets of our experience. Michael is a first grade writer.

Diasporic writers

He uses the English language with remarkable skill. Romesh and Shayam also display a very commendable control of the English Language. However, my problem is that they do not quite understand the deeper structures of Sri Lankan society. They do not engage with the historical forces in a way that some of Sinhala writers are able to. So my own feeling is that the fact that metropolitan literary critics; fascination of these writers does not necessarily mean they are the writers who best represent our own experience and Sri Lankan sensibility.

Q: We also have witnessed another trend that Sri Lankan born professionals, living in all parts of the globe. Some of those who are domiciled in Australia have become bilingual-writers writing both in Sinhala and English. For example, if you look at the Australian literature, there is an English writing tradition which was pioneered by Yasmine Gooneratne and followed by writers such as Chandani Lokuge and Sunil Govinnage.

There are other bilingual diasporic writers like Palitha Ganewatte who have published both in Sinhala and English. You also write both in Sinhala and English from Hawaii. Siri Gunasinghe continues to contribute to Sinhala literature from Canada. There are new young poets who work around the globe send their Sinhala poems for local news papers on a regular basis. This trend was not visible when you began writing in the 1960s. How would you look at this emerging trend in Sinhala literature and what are your views?

A: As you rightly pointed out when I started writing in the 60s, we did not have this phenomenon of Sinhala writers writing from multiple geographical locations; say in Australia, United Kingdom and Canada, writing not only in English but also in Sinhalese. So quite obviously, this is a new phenomenon and I certainly welcome it because if Sinhala literature to flourish, it is important that its draws sustenance from different locations. So that is actually happening today. So it also widens the areas of literary exploration. So to that extent it is a positive development.

But at the same, it is important that these writers be subjected to productive and constructive criticism. In other words, we need to engage their writing and see what are the constructive and destructive aspects of their works. So my attitude is that it is a welcome development.

at the same time, we should subject them to very deep analysis, so that we create a kind of space in which they can even perform better.

Q: There is a group of Sri Lankan professionals living in Sri Lanka and other parts of the world who have begun to write and publish their work including poetry using the World Wide Web and their audience and readership is not limited to Sri Lanka. For example, there is a group called `Boondi’ and this group’s work can be accessed at www.boondi.lk. They also recently published an anthology titled Akshara Senaga, an anthology of poetry and prose. This clearly shows that Sri Lankan literature has reached a global scale. Are there any advantages, threats or benefits to Sri Lankan literature from these trends? Do we need to examine the work of these new groups and new writers and engage with them in a serious way?

A: Once again, this is a new development that we find not only with regard to Sinhala literature but with regard to English writing in general. That is the literary creativity that we find in the Internet.

So this creates an entirely new situation. Because so far, what we found were books that were produced by standards publishing houses. But, now for the first time, we have writers who are producing their work online and also people in different parts of the world have the ability to access to these works instantly.

So this creates a new situation and the landscape obviously has changed. It seems to me that is a positive thing. Some of the constrains are inhibited publication of literary work which earlier had disappeared in a globalised world. But, at the same time, we must also pay due attention to the question of standards. What is very badly needed today in the field of Sinhala literature is the establishment of standards. So if there is a profusion of writing on the Internet, then we should also have certain standards by which we could judge these works with a view to observing which are the better work and who are the more talented writers. Unless we have a kind of critical project which encourages serious engagement of these writers and establish serious standards, this new trend will not produce anything of significance importance. But on the other hand, if we are able to come up with a set of standards and criteria and engage them at a very serious level, I think this is going to be a very productive trend.

Q: We also note a tendency particularly among Sinhala mono-lingual writers to embrace literary criticism by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida thinking that their frameworks are of vital importance to look at changing scope of Sri Lankan literature. What are your views on this trend?

A: It is very important to engage literary critics and theorists like Michael Foucault and Jacques Derrida you mentioned because they have made a worldwide impact not only on literature but also on various other disciplines as well. So it is a positive development. It’s good that you take them seriously and you feel compel to engage with their works. However, the important point is this that writers like Foucault and Jacques Derrida whom I have met personally are extremely difficult writers. I think it is very important to read their original work rather than try to understand or pass judgments on their works on the basis of some secondary writing. So it is important that we read Michael Foucault and Jacques Derrida in their original form and then understand what were they up to, what were their ambitions and how do their formulations relate to what we are trying to do in Sri Lanka. It seems to me when I look at Sinhala literary scene every now and then, you hear the names like Barthes, Derrida and So on.

However, I don’t get the feeling that these critics have engaged with these writers very seriously. In other words, they have not read the original texts and try to dissect them, so that some of their more complicated ideas are transferred into the local scene.

Answer to your question is if we engage Foucault, Derrida and Barthes at a very serious level by reading the original work, then I think it’s a good thing. On the other hand, if it becomes a just exercise in name dropping, then it becomes futile activity because just name dropping gets us nowhere. This is an issue, I think, that merits very close attention indeed.

Q: Coming back to your work, in your book Enabling Traditions you have discussed four Sinhala writers and intellectuals; Munidasa Cumaratunga, Martin Wickremesinghe, Ediriweera Sarachchandra and Gunadasa Amerasekara. Isn’t the time has come to look at the new and emerging writers?

In the fourth chapter, you have treated your former teacher, Professor Ediriweera Sarachchandra only as a dramatist.

Is it sufficient to cover vast contributions made by Prof. Sarachchanadra in the arena of Sinhala literature only by examining his plays? Don’t you think that by writing both in English and Sinhala he began to promote Sri Lankan literature to a global audience as far back in late 50s to 70s. Can we forget his contribution as a critic and a novelist?

A: In my early book Enabling Tradition, what I tried to do was to focus attention on Munidasa Cumaratunga, Martin Wickremesinghe, Ediriweera Sarachchandra and Gunadasa Amerasekara as four of our most important cultural intellectuals. What I meant by cultural intellectuals was that they were intellectuals who also displayed a high level of creativity. In other words, they made their mark both as intellectuals as well as creative writers. Cumaratunga was a poet, Martin Wickremesinghe was a novelist, Sarachchandra was a playwright and Gunadasa Amerasekara was a poet and writer of fiction. These were the four most important cultural critics in my judgment.

You are absolutely right. In my book, I focus only on Sarachchandra’s works as a playwright. But it is very clear that it was he who first opened the critical space for the understanding of the Sinhala novel. He wrote the first book on modern Sinhala fiction and established the importance of writers like Martin Wickremesinghe. In doing so, he made use of the concepts of realism, psychological complexity and artistic consistency and coherence. These were adequate for his times. But now, we have entered an era in which writing as a cultural text needs to attract greater degree of interest. So the short answer is Yes. It is very important that we assess the contribution of Sarachchandra as a critic because it was he who paved the way for the emergence of Sinhala novel. Also going beyond Sinhala novel, we focus attention on areas like music and culture in general. As an intellectual, those writings also need to be analysed very carefully. Therefore, in my earlier book I focused only on one aspect of his achievement. The other aspects of his achievements need to be examined more carefully.

The second question is whether Sarachchandra was not responsible for creating a situation in which Sinhala writings were available for an international audience. Yes, because when he first wrote his book on modern Sinhala fiction, he wrote it in English. Then he also wrote a book on Sinhala Folk Play which was also in English. These books had an audience beyond our shores. To that extent, I think, he was one of the earlier writers who tried to address a global audience. So this I think is very important.

My own earlier book Enabling Traditions and new book which will be released shortly and titled Sinhala Novel and the Public Sphere I have tried to address an international audience and thereby point out that Sri Lanka should not be judged by the ethnic conflict or the greatness that we displayed in the field of cricket. Interesting as that is, there is also very important body of writing that being produced in the country. And that also should be a mark of our distinction.

In my new book Sinhala Novel and Public Sphere which was released last January and subtitle is `Three Illustrative Movements’, what I have done is to select three important movements in the relationship between the Sinhala novel and the public sphere.

The three important movements are novels of Piyadasa Sirisena, the trilogy of Martin Wickremesinghe and the seven novels by Gunadasa Amerasekara. So it’s a kind of a scholarly study of a relationship between Sinhala novel and the public sphere. That in some sense is a continuation of a line of inquiry I opened up in the earlier book. So that also addresses to the global audience.

Q: You are also well-known not only as a critic but also as an expert on Asian cinema. Looking at cinema, what can you say about cinematic adventures that have recently been made in Sri Lankan cinema?

A:There are number of talented Sri Lankan directors like Prasanna Vithanage and Ashoka Handagama who made a mark on the international field. I think their works merit a close attention. But there are number of facts that we need to keep in mind. Cinema at once, its art, technology, entertainment, industry and ideology. In cinema you have to pay attention to all these aspects because cinema is a multifaceted project.

So to produce a good film one which is not a total failure at the box office but also generates critical attention. The world cinema is developing very fast and at time one gets the feeling that technology has taken over in certain respect. The technology has out sphere human imagination in some sense because kind of experience that you find in American films is so much action based on technological resources rather than serious study of human interaction.

In my opinion, it is a kind of weakness. So what we can do as film-makers from Sri Lanka is that while drawing on technological resources, we still can maintain our deep-seated interest in examining and exploring complex human interaction. In other words, not to fall into the same trap that many Western film-makers have fallen of being totally captivated and overwhelmed by technology. But rather draw on technology but keep the focus on important human interaction which grows out of own cultural situation.

Q: Finally let me ask a question about Sinhalese literary giant Gunadasa Amerasekara. He believes and attributes the collapse of contemporary Sinhalese novel to writers’ embracing alien traditions deviating from the realistic tradition which earlier novelists such as Martin Wickremesinghe embraced and developed. Amereskara theorized his idea in a book titled `Nosevuna Kedapatha’. Do you subscribe to this school of thinking?

A: It seems to me that this is a very important work of criticism. The bravity of the work in fact, belies its profundity. Although it is about 120 pages long, what he says is of profound importance not only to us in Sri Lanka but also to those interested in literature. In this book, Amerasekara is making the case that if the Sinhala novel is to flourish it is very important that we re-posses the realism that we once valued so highly and which we now seem hold in some low esteem. He says in other words, that we must recapture the vitality of realism. This I think is very important point because realism is not only portraying an experience credibly but it is something much more complex. Critics like Jorge Luis Borges pointed out that realism is a way of the engaging deeper currents of history. Realism is a way of understanding history, coming to terms with a politics at a given period. He is also saying what has happened to the international novel is precisely that because they have forsaken deepest wellsprings of creativity and fallen victim to the latest fashion. So this is, really, an invitation for us to collectively reflect on the importance of realism in fiction and which I totally agree with.

My latest book titled Popular Culture in a Globalised India has just been released in London by Routledge Press. It is one of the most important scholarly presses in England and the book was edited by K. Moti Gokulsing and myself. Moti Gokulsing is a Professor.

He and I wrote a book together some years ago on Indian Popular Cinema which has now gone into second print. In this book on Popular Culture in a Globalised India, we have focused on film, television, soap opera, music, fashion, the folk theatre, comic, cartoons, photographs, advertising and tourism. There are 18 essays in all and this may become a kind of a standard text book for the study of popular culture in India.