{"id":119073,"date":"2014-01-28T00:26:02","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T18:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=119073"},"modified":"2014-02-03T21:55:04","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T16:25:04","slug":"sri-lanka-literary-essays-and-sketches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/sri-lanka-literary-essays-and-sketches\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka: Literary Essays And Sketches"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Elmo Jayawardena<\/span><\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Capt<\/a>

Capt Elmo Jayawardena<\/p><\/div>\n

Sri Lanka: Literary Essays and Sketches-\u00a0By Prof Charles Sarvan<\/span><\/a> –\u00a0A review\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sri Lankan-created literature in the English language is limited. Of course the medium is not our mother tongue and the post- colonial years have steadily reduced the usage and decreased the numbers who read which has directly resulted in the downturn of the books published in English.<\/p>\n

That is a clearly visible fact. It is also an accepted actuality that among the limited works that came through the publishers\u2019 purgatory, there certainly were \u2018good\u2019 to \u2018excellent\u2019 books. Some could have easily stood on the same pedestal of fame of the renowned had they too been lucky in the winners\u2019 lottery among the world\u2019s literati.<\/p>\n

But, it did not happen, sad and so true.<\/p>\n

The undeniable \u2018but\u2019 has always been there, the story of \u2018born to blush un-seen in the desert air\u2019 in Gray\u2019s words of mute inglorious local Miltons. Books by Sri Lankan authors published with the greatest difficulty with very limited access to international publishers and literary agents have died natural deaths and have been embalmed in some forgotten shelf at Odel\u2019s or Vijitha Yapa\u2019s. Net result; \u2018U\u2019 turning from Pygmy prominence to permanent obscurity in a very short period of time. That in a nutshell is a tragically factual history of Sri Lanka\u2019s English literature and its writers.<\/p>\n

\"CS\"<\/a>Sarvan has kindled a fire to bring back books that mattered. From Ediriwira Sarathchandra to Jean Arasanayagam, Shyam Selvadurai to Ernest Macintyre, Romesh Gunesekara to Carl Muller plus a host of others, sons and daughters of the land who wrote brilliantly and is now reviewed by Prof Sarvan.<\/p>\n

Then there are the essays and the sketches. I loved the one referring to the Indian plantation worker, a subject not so widely written about in Sri Lanka. Of course the 19th<\/sup> century Indian labour migrant went everywhere, to almost all the Asian Colonies of the Empire that shamelessly laid claims to own the world (sorry, my anger against colonialism gets the better of me.) Then they went to the darkest dungeons of the Dark Continent and even crossed the Atlantic to cut sugarcane in the vicinity of Port of Spain. The chapter on this semi-slave subject is well presented. Professor Sarvan\u2019s take on this<\/span><\/a> is valid and expressive in the best of written English where he details the insensitive human degration of the so derogatorily named estate \u2018coolie\u2019; callous exploitation, commercial at root, inhumane in its means and tragic in its consequences.\u2019 \u00a0Some alarming statistics on the subject are mentioned where Sarvan quotes Carl Muller (page 72). These are facts that are hardly known to the many who have scant knowledge of the squalid conditions these estate \u2018coolies\u2019 live in. Sarvan also adds in the same page a haunting verse from Velupillai lamenting the lot of the estate worker, his perpetual inheritance of misery from father to son to grandson which is constantly and continuously repeated, unfortunately unchanged.<\/p>\n

The \u201cOther Eden\u201d by Richard de Zoysa is a worthy chapter. Those of you who are familiar with the tragic death of Richard would find Sarvan\u2019s analysis of his poetry a transport to a time that we have almost forgotten. Reading Prof Sarvan\u2019s take on the Zoysa poetry would make you want to read if not read, or re-read if you had read. There is meaning and controversy and a whole lot more which makes the dividing lines too thin for me to separate. A posthumous publication has a sadness attached to it, especially when the death was under such sad circumstances.\u00a0 The chapter is more an appreciation than a review and I think the poet certainly deserves Sarvan\u2019s articulated analysis and the additional words written on the man himself and what he believed.<\/p>\n

Woolf\u2019s characters parade the pages, Silindu and his twin daughters Punchi Menika and Hinnihamy come to sing their song of the \u2018Village in the Jungle\u2019 and Sarvan makes attempts to ask why the book did not reach the heights that it should have. He parallels Achebe\u2019s \u2018Things Fall Apart\u2019 \u00a0and Arundhati Roy\u2019s \u2018God of Small Things\u2019\u00a0 and compares it with the local \u2018Baddegama\u2019 and reaches a logical inference which makes it interesting reading for anyone who is familiar with contemporary literature. Shyam Selvadurai\u2019s \u2018Funny Boy\u2019 brings in the racial twist to the reviews and it certainly is impartial literary commenting sans prejudice. Due credit is given to Minoli Salgado\u2019s work and I too truly believe in the \u2018sane and humanistic transcending that is needed to move beyond and come to terms with the ethnic differences.\u2019 Reef of Romesh Gunasekara most certainly merits the praise and prominence Sarvan gives and the book richly deserves such. I am sure those who read Sarvan\u2019s review of the Booker-shortlisted novel will undoubtedly go looking for \u2018Reef\u2019. They certainly should as it is such a wonderful read.<\/p>\n

The article Buddhism, Hinduism and the Conradian Darkness clean-bowled me. I remember reading Joseph Conrad and his excellent novel of the Congo River where he himself was a Ship\u2019s Captain. To appreciate what Sarvan has written one must have read Conrad and that too perhaps last week so that one could remember and recall to compare and understand what the good professor is trying to say. The book is out of circulation unless you are rich enough to reach for Amazon. We readers in Lanka barely make the \u2018barefoot\u201d and I do not think any book store in Sri Lanka carries \u2018Heart of Darkness\u2019 or for that matter anything to do with King Leopold\u2019s unparalled and inhuman exploitation of the Congo. Mr Sarvan, thank you but no! That article was nice, but I read without knowing what you were trying to say as I simply do not have Conrad and Marlow at my finger tips.<\/p>\n

Pradeep Jeganathan\u2019s \u2018The Front Row\u2019 is the opposite. Krishna represents someone we know, the young caught in the web of racial disharmony. It is something we can relate to and understand and I certainly will find the book and read. Thanks Charles. Carl Muller\u2019s \u2018All God\u2019s Children\u2019 gets a review it richly deserves and the beautiful poetry on page 133 is Carl at his inimitable best. \u00a0I read and re-read, just to digest and ponder.<\/p>\n

Where do I go from here? Reading Charles Ponnuthurai Sarvan\u2019s Literary Essays and Sketches\u2019 made me re-live some books I have read and incited a need to look for the ones I haven\u2019t seen. His reviews certainly had that ability to ignite a curiosity. What I need to express here is that the book is more suitable for people who study the language and read English-related degrees in universities who are more familiar with the vast number of names and quotes that Sarvan expresses throughout his writing.<\/p>\n

What is at his fingertips in the literary world, names, poems and books are mostly a Google for me, and my admittance is instant that the inadequacy is mine resulting from my callow exposure to the better halls of English. \u00a0However, most of the readers who read for the pleasure of reading are my team-mates and they may find some parts of \u2018Literary Essays and Sketches\u2019 a peg higher to comprehend. Perhaps Prof Sarvan should consider a concession to us of the lower rung and shuffle a bit and deal us hands that are easy for us to comprehend. Yet, it is his choice and perhaps it may be hard for him to do so. Years of hobnobbing with the widely read and well informed scholars of English may not leave Prof Sarvan much room to manoeuvre in the narrow lanes of the ordinary. But manoeuvre he must if he needs to reach us and share his wealth and exposure of the literary world with people who are ardent appreciators of the English language and in no way educated experts of the subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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