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Sinhala book on Aristophanes
 

Kamani Jayasekara, the award winning creative authoress of short stories, is the head of Western Classics Department, University of Kelaniya. To her credit she has written a number of books both in Sinhala and English. When it comes to her subject of classical culture she writes in Sinhala and when it comes to creative writing she writes in English.

She excels well in both fields and known to the readers in Sinhala as a scholar who contributes the knowledge of the aspects of Greek culture in the best possible manner.

Her latest contribution is a Sinhala text on the life and works of the Greek comic poet and dramatist Aristophanes [450-385BC] titled as Greeka Natyakaru Aristophanes [Godage 2004].

Running to seven short chapters with examples drawn from the life and plays of the dramatist an attempt is made to introduce the nature and the vision of Aristophanes as a creator of comedy of which most are translated into English. As a result the Sinhala scholar will have to depend on the English texts and interpretations.

The bibliography attached to the present text of Kamani Jayasekara visualizes the extent to which she had depended on the English texts as original material and starting point for this kind of research mostly dependant on the textual knowledge over the years.

At the outset the researcher writer Jayasekara outlines the background in which Aristophanes based his works and the context in which he visualized his creative activity with special reference to the socio-political nuances and the various schools of thought like the school of sophists.

Birth

Aristophanes was born during the great era of Athenian history that followed the defeat of the Persians at Marathon and Salamis and wrote most of his plays during the Peloponesian war [431-404BC] that brought this period to an end, and lived on into the post-war years when Athens was stripped of power and freedom by the victorious Spartans.

Aristophanes was one creator who opposed the Peloponesian war and the decadent Athenian democracy whose policies he considered largely responsible for it. It is mentioned that he was also opposed to the new ideas that sprung up in Athens in the field of religion, education and literature and to those who taught them.

This may have been the climate of his creative process which produced such wonderful plays as The Clouds [423 BC], The Frogs [405 BC] and The Birds [414 BC] to name a few out of a many numbering to about eleven plays.

One of the remarkable features about the plays of Aristophanes is that he visualizes the characters of such eminent personalities like Socrates [in The Clouds] and Euripides [in The Frogs]. He creatively abuses them for misusing their scholarship for the sake of a moral degradation which he thought was harmful.

This point is taken seriously by Jayasekara when she discusses the various points of view as found in the connection between Aristophanes and Socrates [In my play Socrates, I made use of the episode of Socrates and Aristophanes meeting each other].

Truth

In this context it would be apt to state that the play The clouds was once adapted and produced by the late professor of mathematics of the University of Colombo, Douglas Amarasekara titled as "Etta kumakda"[what is truth?]. This I think was the only occasion when a Greek comedy was brought on to the Sri Lankan stage, which to my mind not only introduced the Greek comedy but also paved the way to peep more into Greek theatre.

I am not too sure whether the text of this Greek comedy is published or not. But it is high time that the slumbering Sinhala Drama Panel members make note of this kind of historical significance and attempt to restore a new heritage in theatrical culture.

As is shown by Jayasekara the creative process and the spirit in which the experience is presented on the part of Aristophanes is fertile. One good example as she shows is Lysistrata [411BC], in which the women of Greece unite in the determination to abstain from sexual relations with their husbands until they bring the war to an end. What if a play of this sort is staged in our country? I once asked the researcher Jayasekara.

The response was a sort of laughter tinged with a degree of sarcasm "will they allow that kind of thing here?" In this text she has translated some of the passages as found in the original work into Sinhala[ pp137-146].

But reading through the lines as laid in the translation, I never found anything adverse or vulgar for that matter but, strangely enough, found it extremely an interesting creative study in the limits and strengths of love, lust and over pervading areas of obscenity unvisualized in popular cultural aspects in post modernism.

This point could have been further elaborated on the part of the authoress. If I remember correct, the French critic and philosopher Derrida once laid emphasis on this aspect in one of his books.

All in all a Sinhala reader may feel that this is not only a fact file on the dramatist Aristophanes but also an insight into the various theatrical developments that sprung up in Greece enabling the scholar to utilize material for a cross cultural study of theatre.

Contact: [email protected]


Can money be counted?

"Learn English Through Role Play", Author: Manel Weerasekera, Published by Lassana Publishers, Pages 102, Price Rs. 200

To be frank I wasn't all that thrilled when I was given this book for reviewing. Textbooks still remind me of school and exams. I would do anything I can to avoid them. But, hold it.

If you think you've got the right premonition as to what will follow, if you think having said the above I am going to write, "when I came across Manel Weerasekera's "Learn English through Role Play", all that changed and I found a textbook I enjoy reading" you are wrong. Manel's book has not changed the way I feel for textbooks.

But had I been an English teacher straddled with the task of teaching the government texts called the World Through English to secondary school children, I wouldn't mind having English through Role Play, in my handbag. The 19 plays in the book would help me ingrain into the minds of my class some of the basic rules of English grammar. Here's how Manel introduces the concept of countable and uncountable nouns.

Nina: "Uncle I have a problem. My English teacher says money cannot be counted. Isn't that silly?"

Uncle: "So, what did you say?"

Nina: "I said why not? My mother counts money very often..."

Uncle: "Do you know how to count?"

Nina: "Uncle don't insult me. I'm in Grade 6. Of course I know how to count."

Uncle: "Then, count this sugar..."

Through this dialogue between Nina and her Uncle who is an English teacher Manel explains how the uncountable nouns can be counted i.e., by measuring them or weighing them. A few pages forward and you find her introducing the present continuous tense in the Role Play titled The Scarecrow.

Mother: "Why are you crying my little one?"

Daughter: "There is a man standing in our paddy field. I am scared of him."

Mother: "A man is standing in our paddy field? Can't be. Come, let's go and check."

Daughter: "I can't. I can't I'm frightened."

Using her experience in teaching English and writing plays for radio, Manel has written the plays, keeping in mind the weaker students who are not well versed in the art of speaking effectively in English or reading aloud with expression and understanding.

She believes the role plays in the book can minimize these obstacles and that "the students will get a sense of achievement and self satisfaction because the inherent qualities in them will be made to surface when acting".

The activities in the book will undoubtedly make the task of the English teacher lighter, as well as helping young readers to register in their minds the vocabulary and sentence structures learnt in class.

An important book therefore, when it comes to learning English in schools, where the mastery of correct grammar is of paramount importance. And, perhaps in day-to-day life too, because after reading some of the role plays in Manel's book, I now know Captain Kirk should not have said "To boldly go..." at the beginning of each episode of Star Trek, because, as none of us can say what Humpty Dumpty so scornfully says in Lewis Carroll's "Through the looking Glass", "When I use a word, it means what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less" he ought to have said "To go boldly...".

Aditha Dissanayake

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