Language of the heart

Sachitra MAHENDRA

Although her medium is English, Professor Chandani Lokuge claims she is largely inspired by Sinhala and oriental sources of literature. Lokuge’s novels, ‘If the Moon Smiled’, ‘Turtle Nest’ and the latest ‘Softly as I Leave You’ dominate the ‘poetry in prose’ mode.

Q: Your language is lyrical, which is lacking in most Sri Lankan English works. Which books have influenced your style?

Professor Chandani Lokuge

A: Strongly influenced by India, Sri Lanka has a very strong tradition of lyricism, and this has been one of my strongest inspirations. The Sandesa poetry, films by Lester James and Sumitra Peries, the lyrics of Amaradeva and Sunil Ariyaratne and the music of Pradeep Ratnayake are all part of this tradition.

In addition, I am also indebted to the Indian tradition of aesthetics, such as the Rasa theory, the Bhagavad-Gita and Ravi Shankar. There is also, of course, the western literary tradition that inspires and directs: the novels by Margaret Duras and Virginia Woolf. The first pages of ‘Mrs Dalloway’… The list can go on…

But I do admit to spending a good half of my writing life immersed in the aesthetics of writing. Images that beget images… perfecting a paragraph or sustained metaphor, seeking for the most telling image, the sentence, the phrase, the word… It makes writing, for me, a pleasurable experience. The aesthetic is a persuasive devise for engaging the emotions of the reader.

Q: According to a recent Internet survey, readers prefer plain story structures to lyrical, or complicated, structures.

A: Generally, diasporic fiction is heavily politicised in academic research, particularly if that fiction also falls within the postcolonial framework. My fiction has been researched for themes of migration, nation and nationhood, cross-cultural interaction. All these are significant themes in the novel.

However, often the ‘lyrical structure’ is an equally important feature of my novels.

It is not an end in itself but a means that may lead to insights on the character’s conscious or unconscious selves, the culture that he or she has been shaped by. Fiction is not only about the political; it is about setting, plot, style, etc against which character is explored. Often, these essential elements of imaginative writing are by-passed in the political rhetoric to which the books are subjected.

Q: Only a few local English writers had the chance of getting their works published by Penguin. You are one of them.

I think it is about being in the right place at the right time, and a lot of luck. Publishers publish a novel if it fits in with their publishing profile and reputation, marketing strategies and commercial viability

A: I think it is about being in the right place at the right time, and a lot of luck. Publishers publish a novel if it fits in with their publishing profile and reputation, marketing strategies and commercial viability. Ultimately, the book gains its own momentum because of its literary value.

Q: You have mentioned Professor Sunil Ariyaratne as your inspiration. Professor Ariyaratne’s medium is Sinhala whereas yours is English. Where does the inspiration rest?

A: There is nothing to say that writing in English bars anyone from Sinhala or any other linguistic medium. My first language is Sinhala. I was educated right up to the University level in the Sinhala medium. I am also the daughter of a proudly Kandyan, Sinhala Buddhist who even employed a private tutor to indoctrinate me in Sinhala Literature right through my secondary education! I could not be more grounded in all that culture.

Sunil Ariyaratne’s lyrics offer a nuanced and humanist perception on issues that matter to us, and seem to capture the essence of our culture. To listen to his lyrics (from Australia), and in Sinhala, the ‘language of the heart’, is to rush back with unassuageable longing into my Sri Lanka, to live again the memory of a song that tastes like milk on the breath of a child, a father’s shawl that wraps around her the joys of his love, and his sad touch on the flowers that blossom on her grave.

Q: English writers settled in Sri Lanka do not get a wide market as against their migrant counterparts. Why?

A: There could be many reasons for this. I will touch on a couple. It could be that migrant writing appeals to a world readership because it includes themes to which that readership can easily relate and identify with. Travel, the search for home between worlds, and the shifting treacherous space of (dis)belonging that a migrant occupies at the best of times, are experiences that an international readership shares. Another reason could be that books written in English by writers settled in Sri Lanka do not always reach an international readership. This obviously limits the readership to Sri Lanka.

Q: You have worked at universities both at home and abroad. What are the differences you view between local and Australian universities, regarding English Literature as a subject?

A: I have not been employed by Universities in Sri Lanka. I completed my MA in English Literature at Peradeniya University before moving to Australia to read for the PhD. Since then, I have been employed by Australian Universities.

From this learning and teaching experience, I could say that both local and Australian Universities provide an excellent in-depth study into Literatures in English. Lecturers who love literature, whether Sri Lankan or Australian, transform it into more than a subject – in their hands it becomes an enriching way of life.

The difference could lie in the teaching methods, however, because in Australia, we leave the student to pursue a topic with perhaps one introductory lecture. In my experience, in Sri Lanka, lecturers tend to spend more time leading students into closer textual analyses.

Q: You are an Editor for Oxford University Press. Do you think a creative writer can do a successful job of editing? Doesn’t editing affect writing style?

A: Of course a creative writer can do most other jobs without jeopardising creativity. I published six critical editions of Indian women’s autobiography and fiction written in English, as Editor for Oxford University Press’ Classics Reissues Series. The editorial material in each text consisted of scholarly introductions, notes on the texts, author biographies, explanatory notes and bibliographies.

As such, the editing process was scholarly and involved research and research-presentation. Often, when you undertake such an academic task, it feeds and enriches the creative. It is important however, not to let the academic research take over the creative process, so that you end up writing a novel that reads like an abstract socio-cultural or political manifesto.

Q: The protagonists in your novels, all being women, are victims of circumstances in different ways: two migrating to Australia, the other flying to Sri Lanka. It also throws a somewhat cynical view towards men. Your comment?

A: Generally, I believe that we are all victims of our circumstances (or fate) to an extent, but also contradictorily, we have some agency in directing our lives. Sometimes, life just happens. Often, certain of our characteristics contribute to our choices in life. It is difficult to separate these strands – they are inextricably twisted in a rope.

In my latest novel, ‘Softly, As I Leave You’, the protagonist Uma migrates to Australia for a number of complex reasons, none of which is very clear to her. Subconsciously, she is looking for independence from over-protective parents who demand that she continues with inflexible family traditions.

In Australia, she marries an Australian-Venetian. The imbalance of cultures between them, life in general in Australia, Uma’s past in Sri Lanka, and also very importantly, her own vulnerability and volatility create the tension that leads to tragic consequences for her, her husband Chris, and their son, Arjuna.

Could their lives have taken another direction had fate willed it otherwise? Could they have tackled the challenges that life threw at them, had their characters been different? Can life ever be anything more than coincidence? These are questions that an individual reader may respond to, according to personal convictions.

Regarding my ‘cynical’ view towards men. My stories revolve around women. The men are important, but mainly as respondents to the woman protagonist. They don’t live in the novel for themselves, as it were. Perhaps it is my view of women that is cynical! The men seem to have little chance to be anything more than the backdrops against which the women act.

I remember that one reviewer of ‘If the Moon Smiled’ suggested that the protagonist Manthri was not only self-destructive but also the agent of destruction of her family. I hadn’t consciously thought of it in that way, but it makes a lot of sense. It would be logical to follow on from that observation that my empathy lay with the husband in the novel, Mahendra.

This leads me to conclude that characters in a novel can be interpreted by the reader in any way they like – that’s one of the pleasures of the text, isn’t it? Not to be directed by the writer about how to read a character. I like that Barthian style.

Q: Where do you position English writers in Sri Lanka among international writers including Sri Lankan immigrants?

A: There is outstanding literature written in English by Sri Lankan writers. The Graetian Prize annually confirms this. I feel that this literature should receive more international attention. Perhaps local publishers could publish in tandem with international publishers and vice versa.

I don’t know whether Leonard Woolf’s ‘The Village in the Jungle’ that is so firmly rooted in Sri Lanka would have reached that iconic stature in world literature had it not been published abroad. Sri Lankan immigrant writing similarly circulates among a world readership and has developed as a strong branch of world literature written in English.