Literary awards of disgrace

“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean”- Robert Louis Stevenson

“Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring

Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing. “- Omar Khayyam (The Rubaiyat)

“There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either. “ Robert Graves, 1962 interview on BBC-TV, based on a very similar statement he overheard around 1955.

I thought of commencing this week’s column with random quotations, two of them are quotations by Robert Louis Stevenson on literature and Robert Graves on poetry while the other is a poem by Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat.

The random quotations may shed light onto diverse aspects of the present crisis in the Sri Lankan literature in general, and literary awards in particular. Although the notion of literature may vary at different times, and in cultures , it can be surmised to anything written in letters, irrespective of the fact, whether those ‘writings’ would ever enrich contemporary literature and the contemporary idiom of a given language.

Sinhalese and Tamil literary cultures have a long history which goes back to pre-colonial era. However, Sri Lankan literature in English has relatively less long history than its Sinhalese and Tamil counterparts. In essence, English and Sri Lankan literature in English is a colonial legacy. However, the important fact which led to the birth of Sri Lankan literature in English is that the British made English as the official language. Eventually, English became the language of business and commerce and also the language of the elites!

When the British left our shores, Sri Lanka (Ceylon) had a highly developed system of education similar to the standards of Oxbridge type English education. English was taught from kindergarten to the university.

Despite the exemplary English education, Sri Lanka failed to develop a dynamic English language pool, primarily due to not having high quality English standards for reasons that took place after 1956. Today, still less than ten percent of the population use English in Sri Lanka, and of English users, only a minority could really claim to be fluent in English. The overarching influence of Sinhalese and Tamil, therefore, is present among English users in Sri Lanka.

One can observe the influence, particularly, of Sinhalese on the usages of English among Sri Lankans. For instance, the use of question-tag and some turn of expressions are directly influenced by Sinhalese such as “Together as one, bounded as friends, dead and gone, buy and give and questions such as ‘Are there seats in the bus?’ ”. The latest tendency among Sri Lankan uses of English is to use Sinhalese and Tamil worlds in English writings despite there are equivalent terms in English. Even the plain words such as father, mother, brother and sister have readily been replaced with their Sinhalese equivalents such as Thaththa, Amma, Sahodaraya, and Nangi.

What is pathetic is not only that abuse of English has been taking place in Sri Lanka, but the fact that unscrupulous elements in academia are actively encouraging such practices. The crux of the argument is that English should be de-hegemonized to make a sub-variety of the language in Sri Lanka, and it seems that such a sub –standard of English would liberally absorb as a large number of those who use Sinhalese and Tamil as their mother tongue. The result may be such that sub-standard language would cease to be English, and would not be comprehensible for native speakers of English. It is at this point that literary awards in English come to play a vital role in promoting such a low standard.

Gratiaen Prize

It seems that the Gratiaen Prize is in the forefront of this campaign. The undeclared objectives of the Gratiaen Prize seem to have expressed wittingly or unwittingly through the Chairman of the Panel of Judges, Feizal Samath. He states : “For the writer’s unembellished writing style and use of appropriate literary techniques and devices, for the writer’s creative use of Sri Lankan English and unique ability to use words from both Sinhala and Tamil. To create an atmosphere and lend authenticity to what is described, for the vivid portrayal of characters and their situations which impact strongly on the reader, for focusing attention on inhuman situations, for invoking ... a need to reassess our behaviour and realign our practices”.

Although there is no necessity at the moment to discuss the purported ‘appropriate literary techniques and devices,’ this year’s winner of the Gratiaen Prize would have been used in her collection of poetry. What is obvious is that the sentiments expressed by the Chairman of the panel of Judges seems to contradict the founding objectives of the Gratiaen Prize as stated in its official website:

“The Gratiaen Prize, which was instituted by Michael Ondaatje in 1992 with the money he received as joint-winner of the Booker Prize for his novel, The English Patient, is awarded annually to the best work of literary writing in English by a resident Sri Lankan.”

The fundamental requirement to be a winner of the Gratiaen Prize, according to the above citation, is that the selected creation or literary writing should be ‘the best work of literary writing in English by a resident Sri Lankan’ and not ‘unembellished writing style’ or ‘unique ability to use words from both Sinhala and Tamil’.

It is also questionable on what basis the panel of judges arrived at the conclusion that such ‘unembellished writing style’ could ever be considered as ‘the best work of literary writing in English’. Considering the Gratiaen Prize winning literary creations over the years, one can easily assume that what is best for the Gratiaen panel of judges may not necessarily be the best literary creation by a resident Sri Lankan writer.