Life and works of Eva Ranaweera

This week's edition of 'Montage' is dedicated to Eva Ranaweera who was a Sri Lankan literary giant and bilingual par excellence of our times. Eva's funeral took place at the dusk of Thursday (February 11) at the general cemetery, Borella.

When she passed away this veteran author and senior journalist was 85. She was a past pupil of the Holy Cross College, Gampaha and a university graduate. She started her career at the Official Languages Department. She was the founder editor of 'Vanitha Viththi' a, women's weekly she served in that capacity for ten years.

She has also worked overseas on many assignments to work and represent Sri Lanka at international forums. She has authored several books including 'Sedona', 'Morakelle', 'Aththaka Mal Parava Giya,' 'Ping Gona', 'Lovi Gahe Pilila', 'Ihata Vahala Nil Ahasa', 'Samanala Uyana' and 'Maha Andakareya'. Her books 'When we returned with you' and 'With Maya' received the Awards for best anthologies in English poetry in 1993 and in 1998 respectively.

In order to understand and evaluate her literary career it is pertinent, at least, in brief, first by looking into the socio-economic backdrop against which Eva Ranaweera emerged. Secondly, to understand the world of imagination she was able to create through words that made a lasting impact on her career as a journalist, writer and dramatist.

Eva Ranaweera was born into a rich high class and well connected family at the tail end of the British colonialism in Sri Lanka. Though subsequently she emerged as a prominent literati in Sinhala, her first language was English. The little Sinhala she used at home was limited only to address the domestic servants. Her parents and almost all the kith and kin spoke exclusively in English. Family was highly connected with the leading political figures of the day and among the regular visitors to the family were D.S. Senanayake, first Prime Minister of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and F.R. Senanayake who a politician and independence activist. To paraphrase Eva Ranaweera's privileged social status, it will suffice to state that the baton of Colonial administration was passed on to Eva's grandparents.

From 1949 to 1953 Eva Ranaweera had been a student of the University of Colombo reading English, Sinhala and History for her degree. However, the turning point in her literary life was her joining the Editor of 'Lankadeepa' following her meeting with then Editor-in-Chief of 'Lankadeepa', D.B. Dhanapala. Although she studied Sinhala at the University albeit in English medium, she did not possess, at least, a working knowledge of Sinhala at the time she joined 'Lankadeepa' editorial. However, Eva picked up her Sinhala by speaking with typists and her colleagues at the Lankadeepa Editorial.

Prolific literary career

Eva Ranaweera's trail brazing literary career was not commenced as a writer but as an English poet. It is significant that her first anthologies of poetry were in English. They include 'What will you do?', 'When we returned without you', 'With Maya', 'Blissfully', 'Ending with beginning'.

Her Sinhalese works include six dramas namely 'Attakamal Paravagiya', 'Pin Gona'(Three dramas), 'Lovi Gahe Pilila', 'Ehata Vahala Nil Ahasai', 'Samanala Uyana' and 'Maha Andakaraya' (five dramas).

Eva also published two anthologies of short stories; 'Mora Kele' and 'Atara Maga'. She wrote her maiden novel in 1967 titled 'Laisa'. The novel is woven around the village lass 'Laisa' who is a victim in a male dominated society. A significant characteristic of her literary production was that she had used colloquial Sinhalese spoken idiom which she leant from her colleagues at 'Lankadeepa' editorial. She also used the literary technique Stream of Consciousness in Sinhala fiction albeit it was introduced by Dr. Siri Gunasinghe in his novel 'Sevenella' (The Shadow). This can be attributed to the overarching influence of James Joyce's work on her literary career. She had acknowledged in an interview to a Sinhalese newspaper that no other author had influenced her than James Joyce.

Examining her large cannon of literary productions which spread over decades, Eva Ranaweera's most famous and sought after novel is ' Sedona' which, without doubt, is her magnum opus. Eva Ranaweera wrote 'Sedona' in 1973. The novel grotesquely depicts the life of 'Sedona', the main character of the novel from an impoverished village lass to an old woman who is subjects to exploitations in an agrarian rural hamlet in Sri Lanka.

Through the character of Sedona, the writer exposes the harsh reality in village and a the socio-economic set up exclusively based on agriculture which virtually consumes thousands of lives of impoverished segments of the population in the village. Although 'Sedona' seems to be a sympathetic narration of a hapless life of a village lass who was a victim of the circumstances, on a different plain, the author reads the life with deep insight into psyche of impoverished village folk. The novel, among other things, marked for its narrative style is imbibed in Sinhalese colloquial spoken idiom. Among other things, she has proved that it is possible for a writer to realistically depict a social stratum to which he or she does not belong. At the same time, Eva Ranaweera's literary productions stand tall as object lessons for Sri Lankan writers both in Sinhala and English in eliciting an insightful yet extremely idiomatic narrative structure from colloquial Sinhalese spoken idiom which has now been exploited to extol parlous literary creations bordering on obscenity and filth as masterpieces of literature.

Bilingual writer par excellence

One of the important facets of Eva Ranaweera is that she was a fully fledged bilingual writer who derived the best from both Sinhala and English literature traditions and corpus of literary productions. It should be mentioned here that she had never mish mashed idiom of both languages of Sinhalese and English. When she wrote in Sinhala, she wrote in a language bereft of borrowed phrases from English, a fact which is true to her English writing as well. It was because she had an excellent command of both Sinhala and English which is sadly lacking in most of so called and often eulogised translators who are semi-literate.

In order to conclude this brief piece on the work and life of Eva Ranaweera it may be pertinent to provide snippets from an interview she had given and how she used to edit her own stories and sometimes translated her own work into English, mainly when some translators have failed to read and understand her work.

She has mentioned this during an interview to Sinhalese literary Supplement in the 'Divaina', entitled Sarasavi Uyana on March 26, 2009. During the course of her interview she has mentioned an incident where a translator had failed to translate her short story into English, apparently due to the inability on the part of the translator to read and understand Sinhala.

"Question .... It is for that reason an Editor is needed ...?

Most of the editors say that they could not understand what I write. ...for instance, we did translate an anthology of selected short stories of Sinhalese writers into English. We intended to show the English readership that there are talented women writers in Sinhala. What I meant by 'We' is the women's organisation 'Voice of Women' where I work. Vijitha Fernando edited that book. But she could not translate the short story I wrote. She told that she could not understand it. Thereafter, I myself translated it. That's my short story 'Bo Achchi'. At the end when the book was introduced at the British Council, Professor Halpe said that 'Bo Achchi' was the best short story in the anthology. He stated there that English readership should know that there are such talented women writers in Sinhala. Then, I translated it. I did it because I could not find a translator or an Editor who could do that."