Love - Is it going through a bad patch?

Aravinda Hettiarachchi

Basically it is not a question of technique in translating a language to another; it is a matter of love between humans who live within different national or linguistic realities.

Rabindranath Tagore, a poet who translated his own poems into English called his poetry book ‘Geethanjali’ an ‘Offering of songs’ in English. Yet Rabindranath was not very pleased with his translation, because he had many doubts about it that any decent translator should have: “I have accomplished this precisely or not...” So he met C.F. Andrews a Sanskrit scholar, to make him proof the translation. Andrews responded, “Everything is alright, but four lines in the text are grammatically wrong!” Rabindranath took this for granted and corrected these faults according to Andrews’ understanding of English grammar.

Another Irish poet then made a pronouncement at a gathering of poets in London regarding “Offering of songs”. In this instance Rabindranath asked the Irishman, “What do you think of the translation?” He replied, “Everything is fine, but there are four lines that have been changed by a person who did not properly understand the poems. They may have been grammatically fine. Yet poetically.... ” Rabindranath asked and verified the lines and was most surprised, for they were the very same lines changed by C.F. Andrews. Consequently, Rabindranath changed them back to the earlier version.

Its plain to see poetry is a matter of love. It is a subtle working of nuances and suggestion.

Therefore you should not try correcting your heart with your mind, while poetry is of the heart. Heart can destroy all the national language barriers of the mind and could surface the exact feelings; it should be the foundation of any human art form. Thus people who reject their own hearts don’t have the ability to write literature. Hence is the multitude of radio and television programmers today in Sri Lanka not open to materializing the real dialect of human love.

Once Karl Marx and Jenny were both unwell, at a time there children were becoming adults. For reasons of convalescence they had to stay in separate rooms for a little while without seeing each other. Two or three months later, Marx managed to walk into Jenny’s room. As one of their daughters later revealed, they behaved like a young couple that had just fallen in love at that particular moment. Yet for us now, this is an experience from the past for archeology to unveil.

I therefore believe that love should go through politics while being aware of politics. Also politics should go through love while being aware of love.

Your face look the same this evening. The very same face I saw in the morning.

So I think it is real. Look, yesterday you were here. I assume your face was the same. Yet is it the same ‘you’ I saw in that place, that I see today here, in this place.? Look! When you were coming to see me this morning you kave already changed. Again you are leaving me.

The person that was ‘you’ that is leaving me is not the same person who came to me this morning.

Why? Because you have changed.

You’ve listen to me. You’ve looked at me and have spoken to me. These things have poured new life into you. Thus your body and soul have been changed. New little streams have slipped into your river. So how can you stay the same? You can never do it. At this particular moment as I write this sketch, a million of streams are pouring into your subconscious. When you walk on the road the flowers will smile, a cold wind of dew will arrive. This will change you. Again the sun will rise and that warmth will change you.

So how could you stop experiencing me. Everything changes and nothing lasts forever. Just as the love between Marx and Jenny is stored within the history as past experience.

Much of artistic literature revealed the aesthetic and anxieties of love in different ways, unlike Marx or Jenny who were conscious of the system. These characters in literature are akin to most Sri Lankans who are not totally conscious of the system that they have been brought up in.

The unconventional love affairs that operate at the level of subconscious are always an experience of a beautiful upsurge of feeling inside of the man or the woman. Yet most of the time they don’t even reveal their love to each other. Yet the accumulation of passion in them arouses nameless angst of love between them. So who is going to pay for their tears?

The plot in the story of ‘Hansa Vilak’ a film by Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, which opened a new horizon in the history of Sri Lankan cinema revealed a similar complexity of love life in our society. This film reveals the inability to maintain love within the structure of the family. The film shows two lovers who have escaped these constrains. This also emerges in their anxiety about leaving their lawful spouses.

This is a common human problem within a certain mode of economics, politics, law, culture and ethos involved.

Yet when it comes to language it locates within a certain astral sphere of arts as a secondary level of experience, not entirely relevant to the physical world of literature, cinema, painting, music, poetry etc; So the denotation of the physical world always make your experience real.

In reference to Engels, history has taken us through four types of family systems, and now capitalist society is experiencing the fifth system. Accordingly, in the future, a particular question will arise such as, “Is this family a permanent one?” Thus as the society develops and changes its limitations, the content and shape of love will also have to change. If this existing family has been unsuccessful in carrying out the requirements of present human society, the people in it will be transformed through improved family relationships. This will develop the next social structure of love relationships by turning the present family topsy-turvy.

Then this nuclear family will find its home in a cemetery.

According to Anton Chekhov, “This distant cemetery appears as a huge garden of pleasure, surrounded by a wall made of white stones, with the words “One Day you will enter....,” written on the cemetery gate appearing in moonlight. The branches of the sleepy trees were laid out on the white memorial grave stones.

The leaves of huge trees had struck into the tombstones, where you could easily read the epitaphs on them in the memory of the dead.

Then for the first time in life, you will witness a magnificent perspective with feelings of amazement.

You will imagine that you were dead and buried here, and will get the feeling of someone observing you from afar.

There is no tranquility or silence but only anxiety and nihilism.

Think of the many lovely women and girls intoxicated with love tonight who were now sleeping under the tombstones. Don’t be ashamed that you are walking silently in this cemetery. Scream out loud saying “I want to love!”