Katheline goes for universality

Aravinda Hettiarachchi

Katheline Jayawardena earned notice as a controversial novelist with her bold look at society. She spoke to Artscope recently, revealing her personality and purpose in writing.

* How do you interpret literature?

I do whatever I sense as literature rather than writing according to other’s notions. There I won’t allow myself to describe a mere story. I try to surface the underneath structure of the human thought and its patterns.

I want to bring forth the hidden condition of our environment through this structure. For instance, I don’t rely on the orthodox interpretation of characters such as the step mother, vagabond, vandal, prisoner, prostitute and etc. Average people do not appreciate these characters. Yet I appreciate them a lot in my literature. Because they are the hidden segment who revealed the exact reality of the society.

Now, marriage is a social bond that leads you to be the owner of the other person. Both male and female partners in the world think this way. I don’t believe that love is spiritual. Love happens from the first sight. It is a selfish matter. Yet gradually sometimes we find that this woman or man is spiritual.

Then we veil ourselves from it and unconsciously misinterpret it as the reason for our bondage. Yet love is mostly body-centred and sex-centred matter. There may be rare cases. Yet I am talking about the majority. Now this idea would not mostly be accepted by the common society. Yet it is the reality hidden under.

If an older man touches a young girl’s hand in a bus, people would assault this person. Yet he might be a person who dedicate his whole life and labour for a certain woman and a family. The people who assault him won’t take this hidden structure seriously. People won’t tend to grasp his lack of mind in a human way.

* Literature belongs to the nation state or beyond?

I believe that a literature is beyond the nation state. The war and chaos take place because of the limitations created by the human. We always maintain an enmity due to our ego-centric mentality. Even I have an ego. I also believe some notions of the nation state. And, in practice, I think most of the time regard to the nation state’ limitations.

We still can’t love someone else’s mother as our own mother. We should gradually take our spirit up to a better understanding. We should blot out our egos.

Yet the egoless beings are very rare for the reason that nation state is still that strong. A Buddha appears into the world after millions of years. Until then ‘survival of the fittest’ take place.

Yet literal artists should need a doctrine beyond this.

* How do you view world literature?

World literary figures lived beyond 1000 years. We are still lagging behind with our literary text of the 60’s such as Gamperaliya and Viragaya. No one reads a book beyond this category.

And the local literary artistes won’t read. That is why the ‘translations’ are that popular in this country. There is a space and an enthusiasm of reading world literature in Sinhala. Yet you don’t have that much of a supply of translations. They are still not enough.

* Why do we like translations of world literature?

I think the world literary figures penetrate the readers’ life more than our local writers. Simon Navagaththegama was such an artiste who brought our literature into the arena of world literature. And some of the essays of K. Jayathilaka such as Kudugoth Rachana have reached this standard though they are not novels. And the academics of our country did not appreciate K. Jayathilaka’s essays.

The texts of both these literal artistes are translatable to any foreign language for the reason that they have the philosophy and literature unto the depth of universality.

*Do you really believe that you are a literary figure?

I don’t think that way. I have a good classical readership. I get a lot of letters from the readers of my novels. I am happy about them. I don’t believe that there should be a classical critic to talk on my novels.

Most of our critics don’t have an intellectual leisure to give a correct judgment on literal texts. Once a prisoner criticized my novel Sathyakama.

This was the best and most classical criticism I had about this novel until today.

And I don’t think I am not a novelist either. I was so afraid when I wrote my first book.

Yet the veteran novelist Karunasena Jayalath saw my novel. He gave me a recommendation: “she has a literal eye that could penetrate life.

I can affirm that her future is a stable one.” On the other hand, most of my books are finished in the market. Then I feel as ‘there is a novelist called Katheline Jayawardene’.

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