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Sunday, 26 December 2010

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Taking stock of the literary affairs of 2010

As the New Year dawns, it is time to look back on passing scenes and events with a view to taking stock of the literary affairs of 2010. Although the Sri Lankan literary landscape has not seen a paradigm shift from the present status quo, it has seen some noted developments both in the fields of linguistics and literature.

The latest is the new movement of linguistic radicalism in the sphere of language studies about which I wrote in the previous week's column. I emphasised, "This brand of linguistic radicalism with apparently no broader and positive objectives, has been distilling into contemporary Sri Lankan literature both in Sinhalese and English. Poor and substandard literary productions both in Sinhalese and English have been conferred with literary awards extolling them as the best literary productions in both languages. Sadly, some of the award-wining authors seemed to have pulled strings to get crony amateur critics to review their substandard works in newspaper columns and organise so called 'seminar' series to eulogise their works often exploiting half-baked modern literary theories such as post-modernism."

I sincerely hope this situation would change in 2011.

Plight of literary awards

If the new brand of linguistic radicalism provides a theoretical backdrop for the emergence of substandard literary productions, literary awards symbolise social recognition and much-needed market value for such products. (It is highly questionable whether one could call them literary products at all!)

One of the most controversial literary awards in the sphere of Sinhalese literature is the so called 'Golden book' award or Swarna Pusthaka Sammanaya. This is an annual award bestowed on the best Sinhalese novel of the year. The 2010 'Golden book' award (based on the novels during 2009) was presented to Kandak Sema, a 'fiction' by Sumithra Rabubaddhe who also won the award for best novel of the year at the State Literary Award and also the award for the best novel at Godage National Literary Awards shared with two other novels; Dutimi Nethin Kasup Nirind by Rupa Sriyani Ekanayake and Wala Yatin Mihimandalata Ira Paya by Mahinda Rathnayake.

The triple-award winning novel Kandak Sema provides a specimen of the malice that affected the contemporary Sinhalese literature in general and contemporary Sinhalese novel in particular. Although the novelist may have myriads of objectives, it is a home truth that the primary objective of the novelist should be to generate zests and thereby enrich the contemporary idiom while enriching the lives of its readers. Since the language is the medium of literature, an award winning novel should be written in a refined language so as to contribute to the contemporary literature in a given literary milieu.

Though the writer, author or the novelist is at liberty to select a language of his or her choice which is suited to the task at hand, it is imperative that the chosen language should be accurate in terms of conventional grammar, syntax and should be within the prosody of a chosen language.

However, it should not be misconstrued as that the writer should adhere to classical language found in ancient literary texts. It is implied that the language should be lucid, grammatical and refined so as to raise and enrich the public tastes.

Use and abuse of spoken idiom

One of the major trends in the contemporary literary scene both in Sinhalese and English is the bastardisation of the language. The theoretical justification often trotted out is that the particular literary text is in the spoken idiom (Katavahara). Ironically, some of the literary production which are claimed to be written in spoken idiom, have apparently been presented as a mishmash of spoken and written idioms. In the worst case scenario, these literary productions are both grammatically and linguistically flawed.

The case in point is Kandak Sema which according to Prof. Sucharitha Gamlath, an authoritative critic on Sinhalese literature, is full of deficiencies in grammar. He has pointed out in no uncertain terms that the novel has been written in a crude language.

In describing the present crisis in contemporary Sinhalese literature, veteran writer Dr K. Jayatilake pointed out that it has been taken for granted by most of the writers that if vacuous passages are present in their work, they would receive literary awards.

He emphasised the fact that the literary production should not be made with the sole and exclusive objective of securing literary awards and that the writer should consider re-crafting such substandard literary productions even if they win literary awards. He stressed, that some of the personalities who occupied award selection panels are themselves failed writers, so that they do not like to see talented writers emerging in the Sinhalese literary scene. This view should merit further investigations.

In Sri Lankan literature in English, the situation is not much different. The dominant genre seems to be humour. Tragically, what happens often is that that humour is generated more by the writer than the literary productions. Some of these young poets write with no verse or blank verse! It seems that some of these literati promote the idea that once any chosen paragraph is broken and put into a structure similar to Haiku, it would automatically transform itself into a poem!

Intellectual bankruptcy

The modus operandi of some of the writers is nothing but to launch mudslinging campaigns and support character assassination campaigns against literary critics who had written about shortcomings and obvious deficiencies in so called 'best novels' of the year. A writer who has made an alternative platform to promote his work has been in the forefront of launching a vicious attack on authoritative and objective literary critics through a Sinhalese rag sheet. This indeed is an uncivilised behaviour. Such attacks are nothing but symptoms of intellectual bankruptcy or ignorant of good literary work on the part of that non-creative writer.

I hope Sri Lankan literary scene would bring positive change in the New Year with hope instead of despair.

 

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