Literature promotes reading

by Vijaya Jayasuriya

W.A.de Silva	Martin Wickremasinghe	Piyadasa Sirisena

Having read Lionel Wijesiri's article on reading in the Sunday Observer of October 14, I considered it remiss of me not to contribute my mite to the discussion. He had expatiated upon a highly topical issue that tends to heavily tell upon the literacy levels of our future generation.

'Reading maketh a full man' is an age-old adage and equally true is its diametrically opposite. 'Lack of reading makes one a dull boy'! This indeed is, whether we like it or not, already happening around us, the evidence of which galore if you just take a casual look at how our youth conduct themselves, most of all, performing in numerous quiz programs shown on TV.

When asked about a book written by an English writer they trot out the name of a Russian author and vice versa. The saddest part of it is that when queried 'Who wrote Deiyanne Rate' (by W.A. Silva) they gave the absurd answer 'Martin Wickremasinghe'

Sad commentary

Not having a knowledge of or even having an acquaintance with literary works by renowned writers in one's mother tongue is indeed a sad commentary on a country's younger generation, ostensibly claiming high rates of literacy!

Advantages of reading are multifarious. It makes one a knowledgeable person who can also express eloquently one's ideas and opinions in any situation particularly in writing. Instead of being narrow-minded, people who are widely read naturally become 'opinion leaders' in a society who turn out to be a blessing to their fellow beings.

What made our present generation weak in reading is clearly the mammoth folly perpetrated by our educationists during the 1970s when extensive changes in the school curricula were made.

The worst of the phenomenal blunders is the removal from the school curriculum the subject of Sinhala Literature and making it just an insignificant part of the subject 'Sinhala Language' represented by a passage or a poem from some book by a Sinhala writer, or a Tamil one in the case of Tamil children.

Great delight

It is with great delight and gratitude that we septuagenarians still remember how much we enjoyed and learnt from the excellent literature books that were our class texts during our early secondary level and even in prior classes. I still remember how we were taught Rohini by our Sinhala master when we were in the 5th standard.

He was such an aficionado of literature that he in each of the Sinhala periods with us read out a section of the historical novel by the doyen of Sinhala Literature, Martin Wickremasinghe, and even went on to act it out using his whole physique while holding the book in his left hand.

The clever teacher, a great cognoscenti of literature happened to be the source of our deep interest in reading literature avidly looking for the Nava Nalu Rasa (Nine types of feeling gained from reading such texts), such as joy, sorrow, heroism and dejection.

Thus, during the ages, 10 to 15 just before the O/Levels we had the good fortune of reading the wide range of novels and short story books written by leading writers such as Wickremasinghe (Gamperaliya) W.A. de Silva (Hingana Kolla) Piyadasa Sirisena (Jayatissa saha Roslin), T.B. Ilangaratne (Ambayahaluwo) and many others.

Library

Our library was a glass-paned single almirah kept in the verandah of our village temple where the Loku Hamuduruvo being a good Samaritan had stocked hundreds of books on each of the shelves.

Each Sunday afternoon soon after the meeting of the Buddhist Youth Society we visited the library where we were lent two books for the whole week with a nominal charge of 10 cents a month.

At school we had Sinhala Literature as a subject on the time table, four periods each week, while we were taught two prescribed books in fiction and poetry. Geethanjali was a collection of poems by a wide group of poets ranging from Totagamuwe Sri Rahula Thera through 'Weththewe Thera' to Gajaman Nona.

At senior secondary levels we had to make an in-depth study of poems by modern writers such as P.B. Alwis Perera, Meemana Premathilake, Sagara Palansuriya, Wimalaratne Kumaragama, Ven. S. Mahinda and Munidasa Kumaratunga compiled in a range of books called Naveena Padya edited by Reipiel Thennakoon, another renowned poet.

The most important aspect of the study was that we could learn various trends and traditions of poetry and fiction while making an analysis of their literary techniques.

It is in this way that we were able to sit the O/Level examination in two separate subjects i e- Sinhala Language and Sinhala Literature and pass in both with flying colours.

Literary traditions

The greatest advantage of learning Sinhala (indigenous) literature was to master the various literary traditions and theories such as theme, characterisation, symbolism and organisation in fiction and figures of speech (similes and metaphors), allegory, rhythm and rhyme in poetry.

The mastery of fundamentals in Literature provided us with a spring-board to make an easy transfer of that knowledge for the study of literature of other (alien) languages such as English and French even at university level.

The study of the literature of one's own language thus naturally proves to be a blessing for students in their higher studies, for, it bestows on them through consistent practice of reading a good mastery of writing skills as well which is indispensable for examination purposes.

Improving the reading habit in our younger generation should thus start at almost primary levels in school, introducing little chunks of text which then should systematically expand into the subject of literature quite apart from the subject of language.

Creating an interest in reading literature will be the sole aim of this program which thereby will gradually extend to other forms of text as the fluency in reading improves automatically.

While schools should have their 'paper stands' in a tolerably quiet place so that students in their free periods can resort to some random reading. Newspapers could run items for light reading if possible on a daily basis, rather than weekly supplements as happens nowadays.

The book publishers have to be encouraged to provide to the reading public the now defunct works by our past writers which will enjoy a considerable demand as school texts as well. It is indeed a sad state of affairs that these books have been relegated to the limbo of oblivion whereas they hold a great potential of helping our students improve their reading skills.

However, it should be stressed that the ball is currently in the education authorities' court to decide what is needful - the introduction of Sinhala Literature as a subject in the school curriculum and equally important, ensuring that there are teachers for this purpose qualified and experienced to carry out their duty conscientiously.