Galaxy of famous literary stars

Who's Who in Literature

Author: R. S. Karunaratne

Prabha Publishers, Veyangoda

Available at Sarasavi Bookshop, Nugegoda

Price Rs. 250

AS poetry is most endearing to me, my reflections on Who's who in Literature will start right with the poets. Karunaratne duly gives the first place of honour and importance to Dante in his selection of authors.

Dante's "De Monarchia" is said to be the last of his more important minor works where the full statement of his theories appears.

This is also treated as "the best organized and most complete of his treatises, deliberately written in the medium of Latin. And it is also learnt that the Papacy searched for copies of it for burning after the author's death.

Dante felt that the "political chaos of his day was a prime menace to man's pursuit of happiness" and used the "Divine Comedy" to erase that evil. His "Comedy" is made up of three main parts each of which is the expression of one Person of the Trinity.

"Inferno", the Power of the Father, "Purgatory," the Wisdom of the Son, "Paradise", the Love of the Holy Spirit. Dante invented the rhyme scheme the "terza rima" or "Third rhyme" for the purpose of this Trinity. These three divisions, Inferno or Hell, Purgatory and Paradise stand for "The Recognition of Sin," "The Renunciation of Sin" and "Divine Love" respectively.

The next senior author in the collection, Geoffrey Chaucer, the Father of English Poetry, was born in Thames Street, in the city of London, where his father, John Chaucer, was a prosperous wine merchant.

His father, in addition to his business as a vintner, held an appointment in connection with the Court of Edward III, and as a result of this, Geoffrey at the age of 17 was appointed as Page to the wife of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, one of the King's sons.

In Evelyne White's words, "Chaucer was no doubt very popular at Court, for he had a keen sense of humour which enabled him always to see the amusing side of life.

He also found much pleasure in books and could divert his companions by recounting many a tale of love and adventure which he had read: a useful asset in the days when indoor entertainment depended to some extent on the singer-poets."

Prof Neville Coghill treats Chaucer's poem, "Troilus and Criseyde" as the most poignant love - story in English narrative poetry: "Its psychological understanding is so subtle and its narrative line so skilfully ordered that it has been called our first novel."

In spite of all his biographical details, we would fail to reckon the personality of the man unless we examine his writings. The mellowed and matured man Chaucer becomes the pre-eminent figure of his time with the creation of his masterpiece, "The Canterbury Tales".

Chaucer was a great painter of words. His portraits of the Pilgrims to Thomas a. Beckett are a great pageant most probably inspiring John Keats to produce the procession in his ode," On a Grecian Urn".

As for Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he is never forgotten by the reader whose memory is ever refreshed of the Wedding Guest in "The Ancient Mariner".

"A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the marrow morn,"

Just as Virgil takes Dante round Hell, Purgatory and leaves him at the entrance to Paradise, Karunaratne leads the reader to a galaxy of literary stars like Thomas Hardy, Lord Tennyson, John Milton, Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth (still) "hearing oftentimes the still sad music of humanity."

While travelling with the Bards in Karu's caravan, I spied the austere Edmund Spenser gleefully waving to us from London showing no worry at having been left out from the poetic pilgrimage as he had reached his dizzy heights long before.

"At length they all to merry

London came,

To merry London, my most kindly nurse ....

That to me gave this life's first native source,

Though from another place I take my name,

An house of ancient fame."

Next I was pleased as ever to see the Elizabethan doyen of drama, William Shakespeare seated in dignity and high esteem in the front row carrying his creations of plays for all times supplemented with his sonnets.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, one of the most perfect plays ever written, one can perceive his perfection in the following lines:

Lysander: How now, my love! Why is your cheek so pale?

How chance the roses there do fade so fast?

Hermia: Belike for want of rain, which I could well

Between them from the tempest of my eyes."

In Romeo and Juliet, the scene between the lovers with Juliet on the balcony gives a sure sign of genius of Shakespeare:

Juliet: Romeo!

Romeo: My dear?

Juliet: At what O' clock tomorrow

Shall I send to thee?

Romeo: At the hour of nine

Juliet: I will not fail 'tis twenty years till then.

Shakespeare gives a vivid and wide array of power greedy politicians revelling in carnage of one another. He seems to have mastered the psychology of man.

In Julius Ceasar, it is made clear that the onus of responsibility for a decision rests on a man himself as expressed by Cassius when he says:

"Men at some time are masters of their fates:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

The play, Macbeth, is a fine example of a man overwhelmed with a sense of remorse and repentance over his bloody and brutal act of killing his guest king with the same intensity of regret as ferreted out in Tyodor Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment."

Among the novelists of note included in "Who's who in Literature", my favourite, as with many others may be, is Charles Dickens.

He has been described by various biographers as a satirist, a woman hater, a neurotic and highly disagreeable sentimentalist, a social reformer with a tendency towards Marxian views while the common folk, he painted the cosy fireside, the joys of home, glowing hearts, and Christmas largess.

Dickens was a veteran in exposing English character to Victorian England. In Bagehot's words, "Dickens was a remarkable genius among all classes at home.

There is no contemporary English writer whose works are read so generally through the whole house, who can give pleasure to the servant as well as to the mistress, to the children as well as to the master...'

Dickens was a purely instinctive writer and the creator of the 'democratic novel'. He was the first to give the common people of Europe the sentiment of a contagious democratic fraternity."

Wishing to lead a perfectly adult life, Charles Dickens married Miss Catharine Hogarth or 'Kate', daughter of George Hogarth, an Edinburgh man, writer to the "Signet", who had fourteen children. Catharine had been described by a woman friend as "pretty, plump and fresh-coloured with "the large heavy-lidded blue eyes so much admired by men."

A slightly retrousse nose, good forehead, red rosebud mouth and receding chin completed a physiognomy which was animated from time to time by a sweet smile."

It is said that "All Dickens' novels came out serially in 20 parts and were with three exceptions, roughly the same length, averaging 350,000 words apiece. If he had but one book on the stocks, his method of working was to write hard for a fortnight, then knock off and do something different.

In this way he prevented himself from becoming stale and was always eager to get down to the story again. When he was writing two serials at the same time he played one off against the other and had no leisure at all!

On Dickens' popularity, L. D. Mendis remarks as follows: "And he never loses the sense of average conditions which all useful activities must fulfil an ardent believer in progress, moderate in views and of an optimistic turn of mind, he lives and thinks in complete accord with the middle-class opinions of his day."

Being a London resident, Dickens was ever close to industrialism. His experiences as a child and a youth made him critical of some aspects of society.

Oliver Twist, for example, throws light on the harsh working of the Poor Law, "Nicholas Nicklby" was an eye-opener to the wily running of private schools of the day; some other books exposed the misery meted out by imprisonment for debt and "blood-sucking" manoeuvres of the legal system.

Apart from being a social commentator, Dickens convincingly lays bare the inhuman nature of industrial practices and commercial ethos of those utilitarian days.

His mature novels like "Dombey and Sons" and "Hard Times" show some of the utilitarian views in action and their impact on human relations.

Dickens was a multi-faceted personality - a comic writer, an advocate of "Cheery Christmassy Christianity", a journalist, a social reformer and in Denys Thompson's words: "the clear-sighted "Shakespeare of the novel".

Thus one can see that the status of Dickens will neither go higher nor come lower and his great popularity will remain forever.

Among the poets appearing in Karunaratne's anthology, it is heartening to find the celebrated American poet, Edgar Allan Poe. One can see his brilliance by reading his two poems, "Israfel" and "Annabal Lee".

They are as melodious as Bryant's (the first American lyric poet of distinction) but more dramatic in their effects. "Israfel" is Poe's poetic apology for himself, while "Annabel Lee" mourns the death of a beautiful girl, a recurring subject in Poe's writing.

A remarkable feature of the above-mentioned poems is their melody. They are singable, not like a popular or concert song but with a wild sort of word music.

Poe made good use of a number of poetic devices to create a mood appropriate to the theme of his poems. The result is often a poem of almost haunting melody done with extreme artistry.

- Somapala Arandara

A closer look at the Jewel in South Asia's Crown

REVIEWED BY LYNN Ockersz

Bengali Yeheliya - a collection of travel stories in Sinhala

by Neil Wijeratne

A Suriya Prakashakayo Publication

THE wonder which is India is immortalised in this collection of memorable travel stories by well-known sports writer and Lankan Man of Letters, Neil Wijeratne.

Not only are New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Madurai, Trivandrum and many more of India's teeming and entrancingly colourful cities made to pulsate before our eyes by Wijeratne, but their poignantly beautiful people rendered larger than life in our mind's eye with all their idiosyncratic variety and vividness.

It is Wijeratne's skill as a story teller and his expert handling of the Sinhala language which contribute mainly towards the literary success of this collection of timeless memoirs, based entirely on his engaging explorations of India and her people.

Wijeratne leaves no facet of Indian life unexamined and not lovingly looked at: kings and commoners, industrialists and impresarios, cricketing geniuses, crab and catfish catchers, flower sellers and flourishing 'Thosai' vendors, the crafty and conniving restaurant keepers, combine with the all-time greats of the arts and sciences of that great subcontinent in 'Bengali Yeheliya' to keep the reader engaged and enthralled.

Wijeratne surveys all with amused contemplation and a keenly observant eye. Next to his deft handling of Sinhala, this is the next marked characteristic of 'Bengali Yeheliya'.

The crafty fishermonger with a penchant for the quick buck in the tsunami-hit South Indian coast, the rest house keeper of New Delhi who seems to be "okay" with guests entertaining "glamour girls" in their rooms as long as his palm is greased, Archana, the vivacious housewife from Bengal with a soft corner for Left politics, Bombay's sex industry, wittily described by its practitioners as "Bombay's Janatha and congress parties" - all this and more forms the delectable content of 'Bengali Yeheliya', spelt out for us unjudgementally.

Here, indeed is India's "Own Plenty", served liberally by Neil Wijeratne for the expansion of our knowledge horizons and for our keener appreciation of the multifaceted Jewel in South Asia's crown which is India.