Re-reading Oscar Wilde
Professor Sunanda Mahendra
LITERATURE: Over the years the reading of Oscar Wilde
[1854-1900] had been a resourceful exercise for readers all over the
world in both original and translation forms. A number of short stories,
poems, prose poems, ballads, sayings and playscripts have been
translated and adapted to suit the local environment.
Some of his children's stories are presumably adapted from his
well-known collection of stories titled as 'A House Of Promegranates'
and later came to be known as 'The Happy Prince and Other Tales' [1888],
which became more popular as fantasies or modern fairy tales. A number
of insights in the manner of Hans Christian Andersen, is observed giving
perennial delight to both children and adults.
Special interest
Ranjit Dharmakirthi (RD) has since recently taken a special interest
on translating Oscar Wilde, perhaps with seeing Wilde in a wider
perspective with the light of new literary changes. In this direction he
started the journey with the translation of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray
[Taruna ruva ha sittama] with an introduction.
And presently with a collection of Wilde's stories mostly culled from
the above source [the Sinhala collection of stories containing eight
stories (Pritimat Kumaraya Ha Taruna Rajatuma, Wisidunu 2005). Though
the two stories, The Happy Prince and The Young King, go to make the
title of RD's translated collection, the other six stories included are
also well-known to the reader.
The tale of the Nigtingale and the Rose (Ra keviliya ha rosa mala) is
one of the most vibrant love stories that had come to stay in the realms
of the world literature with its brilliant humane plot enveloping and
underlying the grave sense of sadness and philosophy of transience
enabling the reader to realise the desolate nature of it to be cheated
so harshly at the expense of life while struggling in search of the
supreme love, one yearns for being young. The story also has given vent
to many a cine and theatrical creation.
Finest legend
The finest legend of The Selfish Giant (Athmarthakami yodhaya)
heightens the conflict between the large heartedness and selfishness as
an eternal experience selecting the character of a giant, the owner of
the garden from which the children are kept away.
Later on, however, the giant realises the vanity of his activities
and simultaneously the happiness of the world depends on the existence
of little children sprouting forth more flowers and fruits to the world
when kind-heartedness is ruled as an eternal ideology.
The three other translations are the "Star child" (Taru daruva), "The
devoted friend" (Prana mitraya) and "The fisherman and his soul" (Masun
maranna ha ohuge athmaya). Though I do not have a certainty on the
original source of the last story titled Jesibal Deviya, I found the
translation quite appealing.
Although some of these stories have been translated earlier [for
instance, Mahinda Karunaratne, Hadavata Nati Miniha, Saman Publishers
1964; David Karunaratne translated stories; Sirisena Maitipe translated
stories], this collection makes the contemporary reader of translations
from other languages a better chance to place Wilde in the context of
modern developments and trends in literary creations enabling a new
journey into Wilde's world.
On reading the two stories Pritimat Kumaraya (The Happy Prince) and
Taruna Rajatuma (The Young King), I felt that the reader will have the
chance of obtaining a fresh insight into the creative thinking of Wilde
in modern perspectives of Orientalism as exemplified by modern scholars
in the calibre of Edward Said.
It is not just a fairy tale with a rounded narrative structure reader
feels in "The Happy Prince", but a sensitive creation for all times. The
pseudo socio-beneficial measures are over ridden by such factors as
poverty, hunger, suffering, exploitation and other social evils.
The necessity to eradicate social evils in order to develop a better
state of living is the deep layer of thinking that has gone as creative
flux in the Wildeian thinking process in all the stories of the
collection. let, the reader will undoubtedly find that the three dreams
of the king are the realistic social dreams that a great ruler ought to
visualise in order to create a better living condition in all places of
human existence bringing about a common harmony.
Rethinking process
The absence of the rethinking process on the part of the ruling class
regarding the well-being of the subordinates is undermined as a grave
disaster. The attitudes of the kings and his men ought to change
visualising the behaviour patterns of the downtrodden beings are yet
another theme, reminding of a thread crossing.
Perhaps Wilde wanted a steering the age-old parable type clean of the
stories. But the mission would have not remained for all times and thus
showing the power of the age-old parable as a genre of expression and
the use of myth if recreated in modern terms. In modern context of
literary creations the rediscovery of the myth and the legend is marked
as addressing the human conscience in a better manner.
As such Wilde becomes one of the pioneers of modern day parables and
he created a genre to himself, which could have been branded as modern
parables or modern fairy tales.
It is also observed how penetrating the effect of creative writing
could be when an age-old genre is selected as the mode of modern
creative communication.
Andre Gide initially theorised this when the two writers met in
Paris. Gide's admiration towards Wilde is seen in their encounter
recorded in former's "Pretexts". Gide had a great sense of admiration
for Wilde and his way of creative thinking when the former said, "We had
reached his door and we left. He asked me to see him again that year and
the year following. I saw him often everywhere." All these go to say how
important creator Wilde is for all times.
Classical grace
RD in the capacity of the translator, uses a classical grace in most
of his expression in conveying the original word patterns of Wilde. The
finest examples come from the two title stories, where the traditional
classical verbal patterns as used in Jataka tales are utilised rather
than the use of the common and perhaps inept verbal expressions in
day-to-day usage.
The translator's tone is more akin to the poetic classical usages, as
against the common banal parlance enabling to elevate the Wildeian
creations to a higher plane of Sinhala writing without debasing the
sensitivity embedded in human experiences. Undoubtedly this makes the
Sinhala reader rediscover eight creations of Oscar Wilde in the light of
his own experiences and knowledge.
A journey in search of Oscar Wilde's creative world may help build a
better climate of opinion on the modern day creative flux and how it
could be utilised for the enrichment of a rediscovery of our own
creative communication forms. Wilde's fervent faith was said to have
been in the sovereign power of his art.
"I need not remind you," he wrote, "that mere _expression to an
artist is the supreme and only mode of life. It is by utterance that we
live."
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Transition? Make sure it's not a covert neo-colonial game
Asian Irrigation in transition - Response to challenges, Edited by
researchers at the International Water Management Institute,
Battaramulla, Sri Lanka and Asian Institute of Technology Bangkok,
Thailand. Copyright IWMI and AIT
Review: U. Karunatilake
IRRIGATION: What is implied or sometimes expressly stated in
this wide ranging collection of Asian experience, research and
functioning of contemporary decision-making mechanisms in irrigation and
water management is the imperative to examine motives in the dynamics of
failing socio-economic transition.
Though one cannot look back with complacence at the sustain ability
of the old rural irrigation systems of Asia, they have through centuries
of stable productivity and social organization, through deliberate
destruction in marauding invasions, through environmental change and
disaster, through colonial exploitation and disruption of traditional
system of water use and management by plantation agriculture, these
transitions have been transparent and accountable, with governance
issued even being raised in the parliaments of the colonial powers.
From the middle of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st
however covert factors have crept into transition and these defy
exposure. The author's perspectives include the contemporary social
landscape of the matters dealt with. Thus the studies are valuable and
revealing.
The situations are not merely those where new dams and canal systems
are superimposed on the traditional irrigation networks of rural Asia
but where urban and industrial development, drastic environmental
changes, and exploitation of resources are making claims on water
supplies which were originally meant for agriculture and life
sustenance.
These new developments have to be sorted out in terms of what
intrimiscally serves regional populations and what really exploits them.
As Asians at the receiving end of these projects and philosophies we
cannot help asking why the same quack remedies that have marginalised
Africa in this fondly 'integrating' world are now being prescribed for
Asia. Fallacies have become philosophies and the projects a haze of
wishful thinking like,
I. The economies of all Asian countries are globalising.
II. Farmers in Asia will compete with farmers in Africa, in Europe,
and the Western Hemisphere.
III. Agriculture in Asia will be less devoted to cereal crops.
IV. More farmers will rely on ground water until water tables drop
too far.
V. Rural areas will no longer be populated by those investing in
rural life and its improvement.
VI. Large multinational corporations are entering productive
agriculture for corporate farming.
VII. It is not national governments that are crucial to building
'efficient, responsive, equitable and resilient societies.
VIII. Governance without a monopoly of political power will respond
to specific hydrological and environmental problems generating more
accurate and timely information.
IX. Governments role in the management of irrigation systems will be
taken over by private sector organisations.
X. Irrigation system governance must be separate from technical
services that will be contracted for by the private sector.
A glance at these motley prescriptions will show that they are
spawned by the restructuring pontifications of the World Bank and IMF
which have brought famine and disaster to Africa and sent the large mass
of Asian populations who in the mid 20th century enjoyed a reasonable
quality of life into an area of stark poverty, malnutrition and disease,
without adequate food, housing, medical aid, and education.
The dismantling of planned agriculture and irrigation is at the root
of these problems.
The covert infrastructure for all this LPG activity (liberalisation,
privatisation and globalisation) is of course provided by a native
servicing sector from consumerist, professional class that has become
powerful in Asia by betraying it own people. It is said that in certain
parts of Asia this class is called the Gulag Q. |
