Satara Doratuwa:

Attempt to introduce advanced literary theory in Sinhala

Reviewed by Indeewara Thilakarathne

Satara Doratuwa, a book by Prof. Kulatilaka Kumarasinghe and Prof. Wimal Dissanayake is an important contribution to Sinhalese literary studies. The book attempts at introducing the latest developments in the sphere of literary theory to Sinhala readers in lucid and simple Sinhalese.

The primary objective of the book is to focus on four important concepts in literary creations. The four concepts are the writer, the text, the reader and the context. Satara Doratuwa or four doorways refer to these four aspects. The book in the form of an interview by Prof. Kulatilake Kumarasinghe of Prof. Wimal Dissanayake is basically attempting to introduce some of the most advanced literary theory around the four concepts.

The book traverses the evolution of literary theory from early days of liberally humanistic literary criticism to the post modern literary criticism. Dominant literary theories such as Marxist literary theory, application of psychology in literary criticism and the school of feminist literary criticism have been described in simple terms.

Though it is not possible to discuss the advanced literary theories that the book attempts to introduce, it is pertinent to some of the most advanced literary theories that Satara Doratuwa discusses in order to bridge the knowledge gap in Sinhalese readership.

In discussing the gradual decline of the author's power, the authors have cited major thesis in the area such as those of Ronald Barthes. However, the authors point out that what Bathes pointed out was that the author has not died as some would understand but author's power has dramatically reduced over the years.

Structuralism is another important literary theory that the book touches on. It is a mode of analysis which profoundly influenced literary criticism in the 20th century. Structuralism is effectively applied in the field of "Narratology" . Narratologists analyse the systematic features and functions of narratives, attempting to isolate a finite set of rules to account for the infinite set of real and possible narratives using structuralist methods and principles. Structuralism also deals with a part of theoretical baggage of Marx and Freud.

Phenomenology is another important area that the book introduces to Sinhalese readership, perhaps, for the first time, in a substantial manner. It basically studies the structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.

The innermost structure of an experience is its intentionality which is being directed towards something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed towards an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

Another important concept is the reader. The book codifies in an interesting manner How the reader became important in literary studies with the evolution of phenomenology and the Reader Reaction theories. The thesis basically states that the reader should not be considered as a passive participant but as active partner in rendering meaning to the text.

Although the role of the reader has recently been recognised in Western literary criticism, it has been well recognised as a central concept in Sanskrit literary theory the book stressed.

The book sheds light on the latest developments of the concept of Context against the evolution of Post Structuralism and Post Modernism as major literary theories.

The authors should be commended for the attempt to introduce the essence of the most advanced literary theories in Sinhala. The book is a must read for scholars as well as the general public. The book is published by S.Godage Publishers.

Mathaka Piliraw (Echoes of Memory):

Unique contribution to modern Sinhala poetry

Reviewed by Kalakeerthi Edwin Ariyadasa

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind, and still retain the ability to function."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Please allow me to take you on a conducted tour, to the inner and private world of poet Sunil Govinnage's lyrical musings, to enable you to confront creatively, a strange landscape of aesthetic thrills and challenges.

If you carefully train your ear, to capture the poet's voice, that remains muted to an undertone, just below the surface of the printed words of the poetry anthologized in the present volume, you begin to discover a multiplicity of layers of implication.

It is generally assumed that, poems are the verbal icons, of contending emotions, that intensely stir the depths of a sensitive person's psyche. One would have thought, that, in such a whirlpool of eddying feelings, there is hardly any room for logic and analysis, which characterize hard prose. But, surprisingly enough, here, the poet compellingly synthesizes logic and emotion, to produce a strand of poetry enriched, at once, with analysis and passion. This rates to be described as Sunil Govinnage's own brand of Metaphysical Poetry. He employs logic in the division of chapters in his publication. The Anthology is in five segments: The Old World, the New World, Poems Penned on a Visit to the Memory Isle, Day-to-day, and Future Poetry.

Origin

The entry into Sunil Govinnage's world of poetry is through the portal-piece titled "Poet" (Kaviya). The writer records the date (1976) and place (Colombo) of origin of this poem, enabling us to utilize this composition as a point of reference to trace his poetic progress over the years.

This poem is a monument to the liberal romanticism that usually overwhelms the sensitive young mind, prodded by a soul-consuming urge to build the world anew to reflect his youthful dreams.

Even in this chronologically and physically distant poetic effort, the incipient traces of the diction that was to mature into a distinctly personal voice and the formative stages of the verbal usages that were later to assume an impressive complex texture, were tellingly present. The poems accommodated in the segment designated as "The Old World" posses an aura of fresh perception. Thematically, the poems in this section are wide-ranging and rivetingly innovative. Perhaps, Poet Sunil Govinnage is the pioneering Sri Lankan creative writer, to movingly elicit the pathos contained in the privation of helpless children, waiting in a punishing queue to obtain a morsel of children's food, to sustain the whole family. He exhibits an admirable dexterity to wring poetry out of current news.

Towards the end of the first phase, the poetry of Sunil Govinnage, had begun to acquire a keen capacity for verbal exploration of intimate personal experience. In a poem titled "The paradise That Appeared in the Office", dated 15 May 1985, the Poet creates highly memorable poetic phrases to conjugate loneliness:

"To erase loneliness, with loneliness,

The silent files become my retinue."

Sense of nostalgia

To my mind, it is perfectly correct to establish that, the poems in the category described as "the New World," stem from a deep sense of nostalgia. The Poet migrates to a vast continent leaving his tiny home Isle of Sri Lanka.

Even in the pre-migratory Sri Lankan phase the Poet's sentimental education was largely determined by an internal sense of nostalgia. In his formative years, his creative role-models were intellectual stalwarts, who had transformed a personal sense of nostalgia into a comprehensive national nostalgia. In that social context, in the first decades of the 20th century, the urban-rural dichotomy was vividly marked. Those sensitive persons who had to migrate to the city, left a rural life in which a highly satisfying sense of freedom prevailed. In the restricting and confining city, they experienced a sense of nostalgia, yearning for the village ways they missed. Such leading men of letters in the mid-twentieth century Sri Lanka, as Martin Wickremasinghe, recalled with articulated longing, their expansive lives of freedom, led in the childhood village. As he matured, he converted his personal nostalgia into a national longing for its past and helped the moderns to discover the treasures enshrined in such ancient classics as the Jataka Tales (Birth stories of the Aspirant Buddha). It is highly significant that, poet Sunil Govinnage, addresses a moving poem to Martin Wickramasinghe, registering a mingled sense of awe and admiration.

During this initial phase, poet Sunil Govinnage dramatized his nostalgic yearnings, in a series of questing poems, in which he dwelt lingeringly upon sights and sounds-men and women of his island home.

The Australian sojourn, provided the poet with a solid and highly fertile raison d'etre for sustained nostalgia.

Ultra-sensitive psyche

In the bewildering host country, the ultra-sensitive psyche of the poet, suffered a series of culture-shocks, making creative sparks fly in all directions. His initial response to this confusion and temporary sense of cultural disorientation, imparts a vivid creative life to his first poem in the new land. His poem, "Before Settling Down ," opens the segment titled "The New World." What dominates his mind is the impression of the awkward clock-work hurry of the unknown white-folk, who rush about as if they were automated pieces, driven by an unseen force. The poet has not yet gained adequate entry into their seemingly "alien" ethos, as he has not been able to wrench himself free from the comforting security of his island-home. The outcome of all these currants and cross currants is the emergence of the personality of the poet into a surprisingly unique creative entity. In the poem titled "Before Settling Down", the liens gush forth in sputtering, incantatony outbursts, evoking the rhythms of a mantram. In a potent image the poet transfers his inner intimidation to the sun as well.

"Like a frightened child,

The sun too scurries for shelter

Leaving the main roads and paths."

But, the poet has no time for feelings. He has to come to terms-though reluctantly - with reality. He has lost his vast world. He must kill his soul and must get to his workplace. To resuscitate his dying body, he must make his heart warm, with a medicine he is quite familiar with. He slinks into a tea-kiosk, and warms his lips and mouth with a sip of Sri Lankan tea. The heart-warming memories of the lost reality, sustain him - at least for the time being. As a striking poeticizing of the harrowing pangs of nostalgia, this effort could very will be rated a gem.

In his prefatory note to this anthology, the poet tends to characterize, most of the poems collected here, as reflecting "a sense of place".

When you imbibe and absorb the inner essence of most of these poems, the phrase "Sense of Place", seems to be disturbingly inadequate. A poem reflecting a "Sense of Place", is a composition that has moved to a slightly higher elevation than mere reportage. But, most of the poems, put together in this volume, are replete with instances of "Lost places" and "Lost ages".

Cumulatively, the poetic assertions enshrined in this volume, form a complex and composite world, that is the poet's own. In the conventional geographical sense, the poets put together here, are not at all "place-specific", though eh locates some of them in regions that are publicly known.

The poet has conjured up an inner landscape, synthesizing his variegated experience. He has imparted a permanent and lasting form to the ephemeral, fugitive and transient elements in these experiences, by making them inhabit his poetic landscape.

In consequence, the totality of his poetry is a metaphor of nostalgia, for the lost and the eluded moments. The poet's nostalgia assumes intricate guises. Initially the poetry emerges out of the memories of the childhood land. The major nostalgia wave begins to lap his psyche when he migrates, leaving behind the land of his birth.

These aspects of longing may appear simple and straight-forward enough. But, in the land of the whites, yet another facet to his nostalgia makes its presence vividly dealt, when he contrasts the childhood of his offspring, with his own early years spent in a Sri Lankan village. In the piece titled "The Generation Gap," the poet contemplates-with a tinge of yearning no doubt-how he was raised in the lap of unadorned nature.

The crow-pheasant seeking breakfast in their tiny front-yard was the nature's alarm-clock, that reminded him of school. He is nudged into full awakening by the cup of strong tea provided by the mother. Crossing stretches of paddy fields, walking on a log athwart a stream, you reach the school.

Contrasting world

The stanzas in this section of the poem are in uncluttered Sinhala. But, the second phase of the poem transfers you with a jolt, to the contrasting world of his offspring's childhood.

The alarm-clock "rings" at seven and the world bereft of crow-pheasants is viewed through the TV eye. "Cereals" serve as "breakfast." "Take-away," substitutes the satisfying dinner cooked by mother.

The creative dynamism, that propels his poetry, suffusing it with verbal energy and piquant imagery, is determined largely by the strategems and mechanisms the poet is forced to device to orchestrate this tangled web of nostalgia. The essential spirit of the Poet's residual emotions could be effectively captured, I believe, with the phrase "monochrome nostalgia" since the opposing forces are predominately black-and-white.

The subtle inner urge of the poem titled "Aussie Folk Poem", is to impose an "ourness" on the alien Aussie ethos. The Poet says in effect, that, though the cultures may seem to present surface contrasts, underneath, they are all the products of one common "folk" element.

On a visit to the Island Home, Poet's sensibilities are rudely assaulted by Sri Lanka's urban chaos, which scandalizes the impression of orderliness of the cities he left behind in the host land.

Old age

His poem headed "The Demented City of Colombo and the Poets' Hermitage" harrowingly monuments the urban degradation. According to the poet, "Demented cars run around lurching drunkenly. Taken ill, buses shiver. Garbage walls have sprung up by the road-side, with bluebottles pirouetting on them".

In most of his latest poetry, the traces of a pre-mature pre-occupation with the on-rush of old age, can be detected. This, to my mind, is largely a studied posturing, that yields advanced poetry.

In a poem titled "Disappearing Trails," the poet movingly ponders upon his portending old age, producing some of the exquisite poetry in this anthology:

'The sun extinguishes slowly

Shadows are cast around.

Lumps of darkness flutter their wings

Life sobs.

Bird-warblings that wafted from morn are diminishing.

The last of the sun's rays

Sinks in the midst of darkness.

Memories of youth

Drown in the river of dark waves,

An affectionate poem

Floats along

The path that was trodden gets eroded

Even the memory is bent

Dark shadows spread

Impeding the path ahead.

Time is a mirage

On the path that was taken

The unfinished tasks

Are a curdling darkness.

In this rough-and-ready rendering the subtle nuances may not quite come through. But, the easily recognizable features of great poetry are amity present here.

Quintessential poet

The upshot of all this is Sunil Govinnage is the quintessential poet, who lives and breathes "Poetry." He gives poetic tongue to the travails of millions of migrant souls, who are compelled to suffer an alienated, nation-less and identity-less form of semi-existence, the soul-searing angst of which cannot be effectively articulated by most.

Sunil Govinnage succeeds pre-eminently in salvaging the fractured ego of the global stranger, who has everything but owns nothing, who lives everywhere but has no home anywhere.

In his poetic incarnations, he is the black-swan who would rather remain that way, without bartering it for white-swanhood, clutching his sustaining memories.

But, it is imperative that, we do not, in any way, overlook his unique contribution to the main-stream of modern Sinhala poetry. Eschewing the insular beaten-track of routine poetic creations, he has dared to make his vibrant Sinhala poetry an efficient vehicle, to convey universal urges, widening, in the process, the horizon of expressive potentialities of Sinhala Poetry and the Sinhala Language.

He has endowed upon Sinhala poetry, an anxiety-ridden diction, befitting his individual inner voice.

Currently too, poet Sunil Govinnage possesses, at least a peripheral global-presence as a poetic interpreter of the diaspora sensibility. All the essential ingredients are emphatically present in his creative personality, to elevate him to high-profile major poet-hood.

Book Skimmer 

Malagiya Atto Samaga Navakata Kalawa

The book is a critical essay by Prof. Sucharitha Gamlath on Prof. Ediriweera Sarachchandra’s novel Malagiya Atto which has been prescribed for Advanced Level Sinhala syllabus. Apart from the critical essay and study guide to Malagiya Atto, Prof. Sucharita offers readers, students and teachers a comprehensive essay on modern novel from its inception to the present.

Madara 3

Madara 3 is the third in the series of novels by popular author Soma Jayakody. The author has so far written over hundred fictions in Sinhala. Some of her novels had been turned into teledramas.

Watha Randi Nirupikawa

Watha Randi Nirupikawa is the Sinhalese translation of " The Naked Maja" by Senaratne Weerasinghe. Significantly it is the 50th translation by Senaratne Weerasinghe who is one of the best Sinhalese translators. The Naked Maja is the life story of the artist Fransisco Goya. It is a novel which shows how a biography can be successfully turned into a novel.

Book launch

Dhara

Dhara, the latest novel by veteran writer Kathleen Jayawardana will be launched on September 14 at 3.00 p.m. at the M.D Gunasena's Auditorium, 150 Mihindu Mawatha, Colombo 12. The head of the Department of Language and Culture at the University of Sri Jeyawardenepura Dr. Samanchandra Ranasinghe will introduce the book while the ceremony will be presided over by Prof. Sucharitha Gamlath.

The novel widely held as a turning point in contemporary Sinhalese novel deals with the multifaceted functions of the power at different levels in the complex milieu.