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A challenge to Sinhala literary culture

by Liyanage Amarakeerthi

By writing this I run the risk of being named a "critic-jester" by our great Gunadasa Amarasekeara. He is the author of the book that prompts me to write this essay. The book is a narrative poem "Asak da Kava."

Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekara: Sinhala poetry is virtually dead

Inspired by a few lines remaining from a work of Anuradhapura period, Amarasekara writes a poem with a great deal of beauty and elegance or 'Chamatkara'. The poet himself mentions in his preface that there is no critic in today's Sinhala literary scene to understand the significance of his book.

When the poet himself makes that claim it is rather intimidating to say anything at all on the book. But who cares to be called names by one of the greatest living writers in South Asia's vernacular literary cultures. Moreover, Amarasekera's new poem and accompanying articles are too good to ignore.

The central theme of the poem is, among other secondary suggestions, that the importance of re-discovering what the poet calls "knowledge of the heart" as opposed to the knowledge of the mind.

By unlearning bookish knowledge forms such as theoretical, analytical and rational and by regaining insights, feeling and what his heart says the young hero of the poem obtains a beautiful woman and happiness. Metaphorically, the youths of the Sinhala nation too have to unlearn their bookish knowledge and listen to what their hearts say.

Those readers who are familiar with Amarasekara's writing and his political affiliations will quickly interpret these youths as the JVP and the bookish knowledge as Marxism. Regardless in which way the poet wants us to read it, such narrow and one dimensional reading is an injustice to this poem, to the Jataka story on which the poem is based and to Amarasekara himself.

Apart from what exists within the poem, the book has extra-textual significance too. Perhaps, those are more important than the poem itself. One of those secondary goals of writing this poem has been to stress the importance of rediscovering 'the language of the heart."

Another is to point out aesthetical, philosophical and political shallowness that have made Sinhala poetry dull, barren and dead. I like to take up some of those extra textual meanings of Asak Da Kava.

Gradual death

Amarasekara has been saying for years that Sinhala poetry is virtually dead. It suffered a gradual death attacked by an epidemic called, "Geeta Sahitya" or "Song Literature" or the literature of lyrics to give it a fancy name.

Amarasekera's observation seems more than correct when one looks at the sheer number of shallow songs that are heard on so-called FM radios. A few years ago I counted words "Kandulu" (tears) and "Mala" (flower) occurred in a collection of lyrics. They each appeared more a dozen of times.

A comment made by one of my friends seems more than accurate: "Kehel mala arunama anik hema malak genama den sindu tiyenava" (There are songs about every flower except for the banana flower). Of course no one can ban certain objects of becoming subjects of works of art.

Yet, I could not agree more with Amarasekara when he observes that the rubbish written in the name of Sinhala poetry is full of "Samanala" words or "Cheesy Words" as they say it in English.

Prof. Sucarita Gamalat promotes Sindu Sahitya

But yet I do not know any other literary mode that receives better treatment by the media. Seeing this farce, it is quite understandable why seriously engaged writer like Amarasekara get little bit agitated.

To make things worse, our senior scholars like Prof. Sucarita Gamlat seems to think that sons literature can bring about revolution?

When Gunadasa Amarasekara dislikes the song literature Prof. Gamlat takes them very seriously and writes reviews in quite beautiful and accurate Sinhala characterised by uncommon Sanskrit loan words.

I largely agree with Amarasekara that Sindu Sahitya has done a considerable damage to Sinhala literature, particularly to poetry. At the same time I think that Prof. Gamlat is right to engage with the so-called Sindu Sahitya. Yet, either of these seniors does not appear to approach Sindu literature in a rewarding way.

Amarasekara is unable to do so since he believes that there is an essential Sinhalaness that we have lost sometime in history. For him, a single and unchanging trajectory of tradition of Sinhala poetry has come evolving all the way up to the colonial encounter.

This tradition is essentially and recognisably Sinhala. Amarasekara believes that there is a particular langauge to write Sinhala poetry. He calls it 'Language of the Heart'. That language is the poetic language of the Sinhala nation. This argument is full of philosophical and historical holes.

History shows that Sinhala people have been multilingual from the time of Maha Mahinda. Dr. Adikaram's Early history of Buddhism in Ceylon reveals that, along with Buddhism, Mahinda brought another important cultural gift to Lanka: that was bilingualism.

Then, all the way throughout Lankan history, Sinhalese and the other inhabitants of major Lankan cities have been remarkably multilingual. All the capital cities of Lanka from Anuradhapura to Colombo have been truly cosmopolitan in culture.

Wake-up call

This tradition resulted in, as scholars like D.V. Hettiarachchi, A.V. Suravira, Kotahene Pannakitt, Vimala Viajayasuriya have pointed out, producing several Sinhala prose styles by the 12th century. Commentarial literature of 12th century is a storehouse multiple Sinhala prose styles.

Gurulugomi alone could write in at least three different styles. Therefore, I think that it is good to accept this numerous manifestations of Sinhala language rather than to look for its Most Sinhala form. Real Sinhala is multifaceted. So is the "Sinhala language of the heart."

Much of middle class Sinhalese from Amarasekara's own social location will tell us that their language of the heart is Hollywood English! I, a son of a carpenter whose formal education was only up to grade three, known that my heart is multi-lingual.

I take delight in Arisen Ahubudu's pure Sinhala and of prof. Gamlat's mixed Sinhala. They both are beautiful; they could be used for very important and divergent literary purposes even within the same text. Take the English styles of Raja Rao, Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh.

They are equally English and equally Indian. All three styles are aesthetically appealing; all of them do the job required by the three books, The Serpent and the Rope, Midnight's Children and The Glass Palace respectively.

Politically speaking this 'mono-language of the heart' is quite dangerous; Sri Lanka could produce a cultural minister who organises an army and a police to protect this intangible language of the heart.

Sri Lanka has enough political monsters. Veterans like Amarasekera should not be creating more. However, Amarasekara's statement could be taken metaphorically as a wake up call for the young men and women whose cultural sophistication begins with songs about flowers and ends with songs about tears!

I wonder if one can reconcile the positions taken by these two men of letters. For Amarasekara, Sindu Sahitya is one of the key factors ruining modern Sinhala poetry. For Gamlat, in contrast, Sindu Sahitya is contemporary art form and it has to be taken seriously. Both of these positions are correct.

Songs have not been able to kill Sinhala poetry. Poetry is very much alive with Parakrama Kodituvakku, Monica Ruvanpathrana, Laal Hegoda, Eric Illayaparacchi, Buddhadasa Galappatti and Ariyawansa Ranaweera being considerably active poets.

It is true that everything written by these poets are not of equal value. I myself have issues on their poetics, aesthetics and ideologies. But they have shown their strong character and steadfastness by being very serious and proud pets when many of the easy-fame-seekers become the star lyricists. It is Amarasekra himself who has not been able to produce any quality poetry for about two decades until his Asaka Da Kava.

The poet is right if he argues that younger generation, many of whom come out exam-oriented school and private tuition class system, are not endowed with intellect and taste to engage with poetry in any meaningful way.

Should we worry about this situation? Didn't the author of Kavsilumina state that people who could enjoy poetry were extremely rare? Perhaps, Sri Lanka's social modernity has not been able to produce a middle class that pays an iota of attention to the content and the quality of their children's education.

How those poor children cultivate rational thinking, wide ranged-interests, well-balanced taste for art and the like to cite some aspects of a truly modern middle class?

Prof. Gamlat has been contributing to the sublimation of Sinhala songs for about two decades now. He was the most senior scholar to define songs as a literary form. Then, of course, there is Sunil Ariyarathna who is the leading authority of this new genre of literature.

I do not know any other contemporary literary culture where songs are taken out of their audio/visual forms and treated as literature. In North America, which has the largest song production industry, no book of lyrics is given Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award or any other major literary awards.

I love songs. Without some quality songs written by Sunil Ariyarathna, Ratnashri Wijesingha, Wasantha Kumara Kobavaka, Sunil R. Gamage, to name a few of my favourite lyricists, my life would have been much poorer.

In my view, the dominance of literariness and literary criticism weakens the art of songs from within. The most neglected aspect of Sinhala art song is the human voice. Without the voices of Amaradeva, Nanda Malini, H.R. Jotipala, Deepika Priadarshini, Karunaratha Divulgane, Rukanta Gunatilaka, Nirosha Virajini, Asanga Priyamanta Peris and many others Colombo's air will be left only with acidic dust and the lies of politicians.

For me, human voice is one of the most wonderful things in the world. The way it joins with music and words to produce songs is quite magical. Even in this age of technology voice is the most human aspect of songs. In Sri Lanka it is the least studied.

I think by writing a rather nonsensical song, "Noona nanna nan nanna noona" Prof. Sunil Ariyarathne highlights the element of human voice in songs. The 'songness' of Nanda Malini's voice itself is song enough in that song!

Sense of resonance

Since we do not have many intellectually oriented singers - someone like Boy Dylan the lyricists dominate the singers. Largely owing to this fact, one of the greatest voices of our time to be marginalized was the golden voice of Chandralekha Perera whose early songs contained a sense of resonance that sounded like three songs were sung at the same time each of them with crystal like clarity.

Deepika's and Nirosha's are two other resounding and richly layered voices we have. Protect them from lyricists! What happened to Rashmi Sangeetha anyway? Prof. Gamlat's mode of criticism is the other danger to the art of song.

Listen every Saturday to BBC Sandesaya you can hear the crudest marxist criticism in the world - a kind of Marxist criticism that did not exist even before the birth of Gramsic, Benjamin, Althusser and Habbermas. What is the use of putting songs into class analysis and gleaning feudal elements in love songs? If Prof.

Gamlat wants to take Sinhala song out of its contemporary fate he must go beyond his rude formula of classical Marxism and try to understand Sinhala song as a different art from neither literary nor musical.

It is an audio/visual cultural object that happens to have a text written in words. I think, Premasiri Kemadasa, Rukanta Gunatileka, Dulip Gabadamudalige are a few who come any closer to understand this form. Lucien Bulatsihala is a lyricist to do so.

Reasons for the overemphasis of this cultural object have to be looked for the outside of the songs themselves.

It requires sociological and anthropological critiques on the art. I feel that this mushrooming of songs in intrinsically connected with the way social modernity has been 'realized' in Sinhala civil society.

And it is also connected with intellectual malnutrition of Sinhala middle class. In understanding songs that way, Amarasekara is way more insightful than Prof. Gamlat is.

Quite frankly, I think that people like Gamlat should do truly scholarly research on Sinhala literature and engage with rich texts like Amarasekara's Sinhala Kavya Sampradaya and Asak Da Kava, two of the discourse-generating works.

A society like ours cannot afford to ignore great thinkers like Amarasekara for every long since the words of great men are double-edged. They are both good and evil at the same time!

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