A critical look at the cultural scene

Reviewed by Prof. Wimal Dissanayake

Indeewara Thilakarathne's The Cultural Scene Thus far is an attempt to survey with a critical eye, the contemporary cultural scene of Sri Lanka. It consists of a series of short essays that he initially wrote as columns for Montage. He has cast his net widely seeking to comment on fiction, poetry, drama, radio plays, cinema, new local trends, international developments, the work of distinguished writers and emergent ones and a critical look at current cultural practices and institutions in Sri Lanka.

Author : Indeewara Thilakarathne Publisher: Samaranayake Publishers

Being a wide-ranging collection of essays, not all are, understandably, equally compelling; but the majority deserves careful consideration. Even the ones that are not fully compelling, one discerns a profound interest in, and a commitment to, the chosen topic that the author has selected for analysis. Many of the essays dealing with current practices, institutions, trends have a way shocking the readers out of their complacent assumptions and anticipations. The author's intention has been to focus on Sri Lankan culture on the move at a specific moment in its history.

Visions

In his writings, Thilakarathne has displayed an interest in challenging conventional wisdoms and gesturing towards alternate visions and paths of development. He is also committed to promoting, through his short essays, a dialogue between the Western-educated and indigenous intelligentsia in the country. It is his conviction that such a dialogue will open the door to the evolution of a more robust and vivifying Sri Lankan expressive culture.

For that to happen, the author is persuaded, that he has to have a firm grasp of the nitty-gritty of local cultural life, and some of the essays gathered in the volume manifest this desire. In the more critical pieces he succeeds in pointing out the wide gap between expanding ambitions and limiting forces.

Indeewara Thilakarathne writes, without the fashionable turgidities and burdensome jargon, to reach a wide public and put into play a conversation about art and letters that in the long run will have a beneficent effect; in other words, he writes to converse with the world, fueled by an enthusiasm for wholesome cultural production.

Indeewara Thilakarathne has, in my judgment, sought to achieve six important goals in his book. First, to identify new trends both locally and internationally. Second, to take a second look at old writers and a first look at new writers. Third, to hold up to critical gaze inimical and unjustifiable practices and institutions associated with the contemporary cultural word.

Fourth, to forge alliances, creatively invigorating and critical productive, between Western-oriented and indigenous writers and intellectuals. Fifth, to demonstrate the need to uphold standards in the teeth of fierce opposition while rising above petty personal and parochial interests and filiations. Sixth, to focus on current controversies and points of contention among writers and critics.

Ambitions

It is my considered view that he has, for the most part, succeeded in achieving these ambitions. Consequently, he is able to make that significant connection between cultural criticism and the work of the public sphere – a connection that is vitally important. These essays, as I intimated earlier, were originally published in his column in Montage. Collected, they are even more challenging and provocative than when they were published singly.

An interesting feature about this book is the author’s desire scrupulously to avoid being identified with this or that group or camp. His primary obligation is to art and literature and not personalities. He is unafraid to state his views openly and honestly; in his more successful pieces a critical intelligence and sensitivity join with courage and commitment.

This is indeed a feature that should be highly commended. At a time when critical writing has been reduced to propaganda and personal adulation or personal vilification, we need more and more young critics who are capable of transcending petty loyalties. Thilakarathne has strong opinions and positions, but he is not shrilly opinionated. He has the ability to point out when, in his judgment, things take an erroneous turn or when projects are incompletely executed. His judgments have a way of drawing you into a conversation even when you disagree with his basic assessment.

This is partly due to his energetic curiosity when it comes to matters large and small. This energetic curiosity invests his writing with the ability to transform events and people he is dealing with into vivid presences. These vivid presences are allied to a forward-looking activism rather than passive contemplation.

Within the brief compass of his short essays the author has labored to provide interesting information as well as critical evaluations to the reader. His aim is clearly to widen the knowledge horizons if the readers as he leads them towards newer critical understandings. This is evidenced in passages such as the following which are fairly representative of the book. ‘

Some music has become an integral part of film experience; live performed music was added to silent films. Even the filmmakers of the silent period had discovered the musical potentials of the image. For instance, Sergei Eisenstein constructed an elaborate musical score for the film Alexander Nevsky to correlate the visual images with the musical score. The music for the film was made by the famous composer Prokofiev. In a film like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 a space odyssey, music often leads to the visual images.’

The Cultural Scene Thus Far contains essays on established writers, film directors and playwrights such as Martin Wickremasinghe, Ediriweera Sarchchandra, Gunadasa Amarasekera, Lester James Peries and Henry Jayasena, as well as up and coming writers. He has interesting pieces on internationally acclaimed writers such as Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pasternak and Naipaul who loom large in our reverence. His observations on Indian writers such as Raja Rao and Aravind Adiga are insightful. The author, at times can be quite critical of some of our current cultural practices. He is unafraid to hold up to public indictment certain widespread cultural practices.

‘The sheer irony of the entire felicitation ceremony from the telephoning of invitees to the putting of finishing touches to the decorations in the hall, is done by either the writer himself/herself or the writer’s next of kin under his supervision.

Zenith

On most of the occasions, the writer himself or herself telephones the prospective invitees and sends invitation cards. The zenith of such felicitation ceremonies is the speeches delivered by opinion leaders who would praise the writer to the moon. On some occasions, the speakers would describe the writers as great intellectuals unparalleled in their literary abilities.

The pertinent question here is not the manner in which such felicitation ceremonies are organized or the persons behind the scene; on most occasions they are either the writer himself or herself or the writer’s family and members but whether the writer could really appreciate such a ceremony. Is it a self-deceiving exercise/ how hard a writer’s family and friends work to make the ceremony a success? Are these ceremonies merely ego-boosting exercises on the part of the writers or merely an eye- wash.’

On the evidence of the essays collected in The Cultural Scene thus Far, one can say that Indeewara Thilakarathne is a cultural critic who is seeking to find his distinctive voice. Although the topics and themes that he has selected for highlighting are wide and disparate, they are united by a passionate conviction to improve the local cultural scene. His effort, of course, raises a number larger questions related to cultural journalism.

What is the function of cultural journalism? Is it ephemeral or does it have a more enduring value? Does it live beyond its immediate moment of genesis? Could it call attention to the peaks and valleys in the cultural landscape that academics can subsequently pick out for detailed scholarly treatment? These are all important questions that need to be addressed. Here the examples of leading and influential cultural critics on the international scene can be highly instructive.

If we take a writer like Edmund Wilson, who can described as a supremely influential cultural critic, this consequential role of cultural criticism becomes evident.. The kind of cultural criticisms he wrote are still read avidly by discerning readers throughout the world. An acute-eyed cultural critic like the Indian writer Pankaj Mishra was inspired by Edmund Wilson’s corpus of writing to emerge as a powerful critical voice.

Moment

Wilson was able to seize a given moment and explore it in a way that would yield significances that far transcends its immediate context. Similarly, the cultural criticism practiced by writers such as John Updike and George Steiner in the pages of the New Yorker are exemplary. Updike was able to bring the resources of a master prose stylist to his observations while Steiner was succeeded in infusing his writing with a brilliance and breadth of reading that were truly amazing. Let us consider a representative passage from John Updike. Here he is commenting on the writing of the eminent Indian novelist R.K. Narayan; it illustrates Updike’s stubborn quest for cultural truths and cultural intentions. ‘R.K. Narayan, born in 1906, lives on into his nineties, as if preserved in the tranquil, perennial essence of Malgudi, the imaginary town where almost all of his fiction takes place. The lightness of his touch, the smallness of his chosen field of observation, and the profound equanimity of his Hindu vision have been criticized as inadequate to the problem-ridden, poverty-stricken, immensity of India.

But who takes a sub-continent for a subject, when humanity is close at hand? And observed detail has a resonance – a branching truth – that no generalization can match. V.S. Naipaul, who as a boy in Trinidad and a young man in England had read and admired Narayan, was dismayed, in first travelling to India, to find it ‘cruel and overwhelming’ compared with the cozy and comic world of Narayan’s novels.

He considered that ‘his comedy and irony were not quite what thy had appeared to be, were part of a Hindu response to the world.’ As Hindu, Narayan believes in reincarnation – a universe of infinite rebirths – and a genial eternity keeps company with his social realism. In the Guide (1958) a con man becomes a saint, in The Painter of signs (1986), the heroine of a domestic romance is momentarily ‘perhaps a goddess to be worshipped.’

Western liberal opinion demands that Indian writers confront suffering. Narayan confronts it somewhat as Fielding and O.Henry do, with the recognition that suffering is never all there is to the picture; human buoyance and hopefulness are also a part of it.

‘India will go on’, Narayan told the young Naipaul, and if this affirmation falls short of a political program it does proclaim a lifelong opportunity to observe, to invent, to express surprise at the permutations to human behavior, to smile.’

Similarly, the cultural criticism of the distinguished literary scholar Raymond Williams deserves careful consideration. He wrote a series of essays on television for the listener – a journal sponsored by the BBC. In these short essays Williams aimed to address a large audience of average readers, and he wrote in an easy, even chatty, style that allowed him to reach a wide readership. However, the content of his writing was full if interesting insights and new pathways of inquiry into the understanding of television – the medium of television, the nature of programming and aesthetics if television.

The columns that he wrote between 1968-1972 were collected in a book titled ‘Raymond Williams on Television.’ In these essays he discusses detective series, science programs, education gardening, sports, travel, programs. Basing his observations on a sociology of culture he educates the readers in newer ways of watching television. Interestingly, through these short essays he was able introduce the concept of ‘flow’ which has become an important idea in communication studies.

Commenting on this book, a knowledgeable critic makes the following observation. ‘the most innovative aspect of Williams’ column in the listener is their description of cultural forms of television. In his book on television Williams argues that what needs attention is not so much individual programs as the overall flow. of a day’s programming – an idea that has been highly influential in television studies.

Ephemeral

So what these seemingly ephemeral and fugitive pieces by Raymond Williams demonstrate is the fact they have an enduring value. His observations have penetrated deep into the fabric of modern communication thinking.

This is indeed the objective that any cultural critic worth his or her salt should have in front of him or her. I am citing these examples so that we can draw inspiration from the paths cleared by these luminaries.

Indeewara Thilakarathne’s Cultural Scene Thus Far contains useful discussions on the current cultural scene.

However, there are some deficiencies in the pages of this book as well. First, while the attempt to cast the net as wide as possible is a laudable effort, he should exercise a greater measure of discrimination in selecting topics for discussion.

The question of inclusion and exclusion is one that readily reflects a critic’s discriminating mind and scale of values. Secondly, at times, the syntax betrays a disconcerting hastiness. As these essays were originally intended as columns for Montage, one can well understand the pressure-cooker atmosphere of a newspaper office, the demands to meet deadlines and so on against which they had to be written.

(Having been a Sinhala journalist for a short time immediately after my undergraduate days, I am fully aware of unavoidable demands on a journalist and the urgencies of journalism).

Commitment

However, when the columns are made into a book, it is important that the writer step back a little, take a deep breath and tidy up the sentence-structures that originally may have come into being in haste.

All in all, this is book `displays Thilakarathne’s profound interest in, and commitment to, the local cultural scene.

His ability to steer clear of the power plays set in motion by competing camps and rival cliques is something that even those who do not necessarily agree with some of his judgments will applaud. His avoidance of self-stereotyping and unnuanced assessments strengthens his critiques.

That independence of mind is indeed in short supply in the local cultural scene..As Dostoevsky said, deepest truths are the explored truths, and this is most certainly the case in the domain of culture.

As cultural critics we recognize that our writings my not be totally adequate to the complexities of the cultural scene, but the objective is to make them as adequate as possible.

A psychological novel

Reviewed by Madeleine Whightman

Agni Chakra is an original Sinhala novel, recently translated into English and launched in Colombo on June 25. It is a moral tale that documents a slow spiritual progression through the protagonist's life. The narrator of the story is the main character, Prof. Saddhamangala Sirinivasa, who has changed his name to forget his difficult upbringing. He marries his wife, Shantha, primarily because she has a personal fortune significant enough to allow him to climb the social ladder and to realise all his life goals.

He manages to achieve what he set out to do, including developing in his field of work due to the free education he received and being able to send his son overseas to study. As readers we are restricted to Saddhamangala’s perspective on himself and others, since we only experience the story through his internal monologue. Initially the protagonist is highly annoying, being a thoroughly unpleasant character, self-seeking, deeply immature and with a churlish attitude towards his wife. It is little wonder that Saddhamangala does not enjoy a normal relationship with Shantha.

Translator: Ranga Chandrarathne Publisher: Samaranayake Publishers

His contempt means that he neither wishes to discuss things with her nor have a normal physical relationship with her. Instead he enjoys discussions with colleagues and physical liaisons with students. The depth of his immaturity is such that the reader can’t help but form the opinion that his wife deserves better and should probably snatch back her fortune and leave him. However, Agni Chakra was written during the 1970s in Sri Lanka and as such, would not have been a true reflection of society!

The reader first meets Saddhamangala in early adulthood, as a selfish, immature and grasping individual who has little understanding of himself or life. During the course of the narrative, he evolves an ability to evaluate himself and those around him more fairly. However, it is only after his death that he progresses to the where he realises that in order for what he has learnt to mean something, it needs to be backed up by words and actions. After he is diagnosed with cancer, he wonders if there is still time to do anything which might make a difference to his wife's life. However, he still fails to do anything practical or even to communicate effectively with her. It is only when it is too late to do anything that he strongly desires to reach out and touch her and for them to have a meaningful exchange.

As the novel progresses, the reader begins to get more insight into Professor Saddhamangala Sirinivasa’s tormented and impoverished childhood, which has undoubtedly warped and damaged him. Yet it is only towards the end of the novel that the reader develops sympathy for the character, when he is diagnosed with cancer and discovers humility via his fallibility. It is at this point that he realises that he does love Shantha, (albeit only in the limited way that his damaged character allows). He seeks to reach out to his wife for reconciliation and to show he has feelings for her, yet somehow can’t bring himself to do so. Eventually he realises that it is too late and morns this deeply on the spiritual plane after his death. He still wants to reach out to her but it is now absolutely impossible. He watches helplessly as she mourns him, impervious to his presence beside her.

A rather more subtle sub plot in the text is the inability of material or professional success to heal the individual or to bring about wholeness in his life. The Professor is ultimately trapped in his life situation and work. From a spiritual point of view, all this is meaningless. The text highlights that even those who have successfully become part of the developing capitalist society in are still suffering from traumatic childhoods. Also that even academics who have come to understand so much about many things and have thought thousands of students, don’t necessarily understand themselves. This ultimately results in failed relationships and unhappy home lives.

The novel raises a number of related issues. Is the protagonist failing personally because of his genetic predisposition towards depression? Or is it simply his traumatic and impoverished childhood? Is other words, is it ultimately nature or nurture that makes a person the way he is? How much ‘free will’ do we have to behave or not behave a certain way? Is it because of Shantha’s chastity and fidelity, or in spite of them, that Saddhamangala has at best an indifferent attitude towards her (and at worst contempt for her) ? Is she not exciting enough for him and is it the institution of marriage which has created the problems between them? Perhaps it is that Saddhamangala entered marriage purely as a business and yet wonders whether he should have originally married for love and what it would be like to be in this situation.

Agni Chakra is classed as a psychological novel and is set against the backdrop of a rapidly developing society. The psychological novel is not content to simply state what happens but goes on to explain the motivation of this action. In this type of writing character and characterization are more than usually important, and they often delve deeper into the mind of a character than novels of other genres.

In Agni Chakra the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of the characters are of equal or greater interest than is the external action of the narrative. The emotional reactions and internal states of the characters are influenced by and drive the story. The stream-of-consciousness technique of James Joyce and William Faulkner, and the continuous flow of experience of Virginia Woolf were each reached independently but belonged to the same era. Both significantly influenced new literature throughout the world during the 1970s and 1980s and Agni Chakra is an example of this.

Narrative technique in non-romantic fiction intended to render the flow of myriad impressions—visual, auditory, tactile, associative, and subliminal. All of these impinge on an individual consciousness. To represent the mind at work, a writer may incorporate snatches of thought and grammatical constructions that do not seem coherent because they are based on the free association of ideas and images. In classic stream-of-consciousness works, attention is drawn with the utmost acuteness to the subjective, (to the secret in the human psyche). The traditional narrative structure is violated, and the displacement of temporal levels becomes a formal experiment.

Agni Chakra is an excellent example of such a ‘stream-of-consciousness’ style narrative. The study of the protagonist’s inner life is combined with an erosion of the borders of the individual character, and psychological analysis often becomes a goal in itself. The novel explores these themes against the backdrop of the fast evolving post colonial society of the 1970s. It works on different levels in order to provoke a variety of different thought processes in the reader.

In many evolving post-colonial societies (an obvious example being Latin America), writers use their novels as a vehicle for social change. This is achieved precisely by narrative techniques such as the stream-of-consciousness style in order to challenge the reader's current beliefs. Sri Lanka during the 1970s in particular is certainly no exception and Agni Chakra challenges the reader's perspectives on a social, personal, religious and ethical level.

It subtly suggests that we all need to change, both personally and as a society. It also highlights and draws our attention to changes which have already taken place and questions, on a subliminal level, whether these changes are good.

Although the novel was written and set in 1977, it has a timeless quality to it. Many of the issues raised are still pertinent today and the novel challenges the modern reader to question himself, his morals, his conduct and the society that he lives in. Agni Chakra makes an excellent read both for the Sri Lankan and for those who know little about the culture.

The translation of this Sinhalese novel in English is an excellent read, not least for the great insight it gives into some Sinhalese thinking and experience.

The writer has a Master's Degree in Hispanic and European Studies from Aberdeen University, Scotland. She also writes for The Guardian (UK).