Her Rural Women & Some Household Servants: Punyakante Wijenaike’s “A Way of Life” and “The Waiting Earth”.

[This piece was written for Sri Lankan English Writers Review and published on 02 June 2022, viewable here].

Punyakante Wijenaike

In 1987, Punyakante Wijenaike published A Way of Life, a memoir. In this, the writer’s retrospective impressions and recollections are united in introducing a host of “household persons” from grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, friends, and a bevy of family servants. In spirit, A Way of Life echoes Rajiva Wijesinha’s widely-read book, Servants (1995), which was published just seven years after. Servants, a Gratiaen Award-winning effort, might even have drawn inspiration from Wijenaike’s memoir in framing descriptions of servant-activity – both on and off call – in the back rooms of affluent Colombo households, as well as in the exposing of servants’ private lives (according to liberal doctrine, a dubious past-time for mistresses and masters to indulge in). This itself forms a very important assessment of A Way of Life since – as the title denotes the fact – the book is about a certain way of life: the way of life of a class built by/on colonial privilege, self-indulgent in the entitlement of belonging to society’s immediate pre-independence crème de la crème, on whom the rare and enviable privilege of being able to write books about their servants and – as in Wijesinha’s case – win prizes for them was historically bestowed.     

That said, A Way of Life presents the reader more than with a mere catalogue of reflections on a fast fading socio-economic familial Xanadu. Of an academic interest, sections of the book invite the audience to understand how Wijenaike’s creative mind was self-trained and how it worked, and the anxieties governing her childhood which – in turn – had shaped her imagination and artistic temper. Recurrent references made to a socially-inhibited and aloof way of life – where the preference to self-isolate in a fantasy world of make-belief dominates – characterize the author’s childhood and adolescent memory. These sections disclose the young Punyakante weaving situations, landscapes, and stories, while having for her companions, imaginary forms:

I am happiest when I am alone. I made this discovery at an early age. Alone I am in command, mistress of a world created by me. The large house lent itself to imagination willingly. The long winding verandahs turned into streams of water along which I could swim or paddle my own boat. The open balconies, three in number, turned into sea beds and I would lie there, believing myself a beautiful mermaid with a long tail and golden hair that flowed down my back. I would look up at the blue sky and the white clouds that sailed it and imagine it to be the surface of an ocean.” (19) 

Of academic value, still, is how she – in the writing of her “non-affluent” characters in books like The Waiting Earth (1966) and Amulet (2002) – depends on her childhood domestic staff for both descriptions as well as names. Punyakante’s grandmother’s personal servant, Isabella Hamy – a “tall and slim and fair” girl “with dark curling lashes, thick eye-brows and a dignified air” (26), in any case, a notable beauty – bear traces of the character by the same name in Wijenaike’s maiden novel, The Waiting Earth. The daughter of a gullible peasant farmer in a dry zone settlement, Isabella Hamy of The Waiting Earth is an adolescent girl who is groomed and exploited by the village school master; and who later takes her life by jumping in the well.

Despite its reasonable length, Wijenaike’s career as a fiction writer didn’t take off too well with her 1966-debut, The Waiting Earth, which – on top of its long-drawn and at times ailing plot and half-cooked characters – suffers on the whole for want of consistent writing. The novel bares a certain immaturity in portraying the rural agrarian world of dry zone tenant farmers which – with their focus with issues closer to her social milieu – is considerably less in efforts such as Giraya (1971) and Amulet (1994). Isabella Hamy, the leading youth figure in The Waiting Earth, is from the outset a girl marked for destruction and death. She is underlined at every turn as a headstrong and proud girl even in childhood, caught between traditionalisms and superstitions of her peasant-home (which Wijenaike overstates to cliche) and her urgent desire to enter an independent life built on education and modernity. From as early as her seventh year, Isabella Hamy is shown to attract the negative attention of male eyes. In fact, the novel consistently promotes a thread of fermenting sexual energy centred on adolescent Isabella Hamy. A general sensuousness as well as loaded references to her body predominate Wijenaike’s characterization of the girl. Aged 14, when Isabella Hamy ends her life, she is pregnant with the school teacher Podi Mahatmaya’s child. The teacher, Isabella Hamy’s lover and intended partner, is revealed to be a married man in his native village.

In A Way of Life, we briefly glimpse another Isabella Hamy – Wijenaike’s grandmother’s personal maid – who sports a general air and manner which strongly resonates with the Isabella Hamy of The Waiting Earth. Descriptions of Isabella Hamy the servant dominate the passages dealing with Wijenaike’s grandmother’s toilet and dressing room scenes (an aspect of the book one has to tolerate – which, being born on the wrong grass, one cannot complain about, really). Having bathed the elderly lady, Isabella Hamy is seen dabbing her with talcum powder “with a long handled brush”, ease her into a bodice, and “help her to a pair of bloomers” which is eventually “tied around the waist and is pinned in front” (27). Taking the better part of an hour, when the long dressing ritual is over, and grandmother had left the room, Isabella Hamy is reported to clear the dressing table and help herself to some of the mistress’ powder and lavender before regally descending “to her boyfriend waiting at the foot of the servants’ staircase” (29). 

Wijenaike’s mother’s personal servant is named Sellomahy, whose namesake is the leading female character of The Waiting Earth: often humiliated, neglected, and misunderstood, but is yet resilient and devoted to both her husband, the tenant farmer Podi Singho, and her children alike. In A Way of Life, Sellohamy, like in the case of Isabella Hamy, is featured in a lengthy description of her mistress taking her toilet (34-37).

In 1942, When the family temporarily relocated to Nuwaraeliya at the time Colombo was threatened by Japanese bombers, young Punyakante Wijenaike would have been nine years of age. Both Sellohamy and Isabella Hamy were retained by the family as a part of its moving retinue. “The Nuwaraeliya episode” of the book has an invigorating focus on servants and numerous servant-activity. Ardiris – the man who kept the Nuwaraeliya house in order – presents himself memorably with a resolute doggedness to carry out his own schemes, to answer back the superiors, in his own way to be stern and wily, and to take certain liberties with the women of the staff. Pretending to work on his vegetable patch conveniently placed behind the bathing shed, “digging into his beetroots” (72), Ardiris takes a voyeuristic pleasure watching the servant girls bathe. However, the voyeurism – right down to the finer aspects of the women’s bathing habit – is admittedly also shared by the pre-adolescent Wijenaike who reports the following:

Every morning I watch the women servants bathe in the open, with the sun beating down on them, in cold water gushing out of a tap into a large barrel. Sometimes they go laughing down the hill to the water sprout, soap boxes, scrubbing stone, and towel in hand… When it came to soaping, they never removed the cloth tied tight under the arm-pit, but soaped over it.” (72)

Among the bathing servants, Sellohamy and Isabella Hamy are marked out. Wijenaike concedes that “black nipples showed through the wet cloth and black hair between their thighs” while the duo bathed: a sight which Ardiris – as “his great eyes would roll in the direction of the women, half naked in the sun” (72) – would savour from among his vegetable cultivation .

Sketch from “A Way of Life”: Ardiris watching Isabella Hamy and Sellohamy bathe

Kaiya and Babiya – in all likelihood, names given to these women when they were inducted into servitude – were the personal servants of Wijenaike and her sister. Kaiya, the narrative informs us, made her pre-adolescent charge feel “small and insignificant” while working on the girl’s fears and dislikes to mentally “torture” her (20). “When servants resent you,” Wijenaike suggests, “they have their own methods of cutting you down to size” (20). The abusive and perverse servant has a memorable place in Wijenaike’s fiction among whom the most significant, perhaps, is Nonchi in Amulet. Nonchi demonstrates a destructive perversity and abusive sadism as she trains twin-children left in her care to engage in homosexual and incestuous acts from a tender age. Reminiscent of Nonchi’s viciousness, Kaiya is said to practice “different forms of torture” on the child left with her: “She laughs and makes jokes of my fears of lightning and loud noises, and fear of the dark,” Wijenaike remembers. “When dressing me she would snap the elastic of the hat tight under my chin causing pain or pull my hair when combing it” (20). Playing on the girl’s fear of water, Kaiya would fill the bath tub to the brim, “dump” her charge into the tub, and watch as the girl felt tormented (20). “When, finally, Kaiya pulls the rubber plug out,” Wijenaike confesses, “I feel I am being sucked down and out, along with the water out of the dark hole at the bottom of the bath… into hell” (20). Like with Amulet’s Nonchi, actions of servants like Kaiya – and, also, that of Ardiris – may, at one level, serve theorizations of a resurgent power against the master-class. In the same way Wijenaike manipulates men and women who are her class-inferiors within cultural discourses they feel alienated from (and would never partake in), the dark, destructive, and – where applicable – demonic appearance of those very subjects in the writer’s childhood world manifest a strange harmony. 

Works Cited

_{Wijenaike, Punyakante. A Way of Life. [Publisher Unspecified], 1987.}

_{— . The Waiting Earth. State Printing Corporation, 1997 (1966).}

_{— . Amulet. Godage International Publishers, 2002 (1994).}

_{Wijesinha, Rajiva. Servants. McCallum Books, 1995.}

The Sooty Beard Man in Gayathri Hewagama’s “Conquering Karma”.

In 2022, Gayathri Hewagama published her debut short story collection, Conquering Karma: A Collection of Island Tales. The book consists of seven short stories arranged in two sections and is dedicated “with love” to “the scrawnies of Tear Island”; Tear Island being a caricature of Sri Lanka, the erstwhile Paradise Isle. Hewagama’s stories represent a diverse range and are written to bisect or brush past one another in places. The book’s first half consists of four stories written in prose that is self-contained in its being unprovoked where stories such as “At Mara’s Playground”, “The Prince and the Pauper – Act I”, and “Conquering Karma” stand out. These stories demonstrate an almost meditative quality as they draw on themes of self-discovery, introvert self-questioning, and working-through angst. In contrast, the book’s second half turns on aggressive self-expression notably infused with a measured use of satire and derision which Hewagama employs quite Dryden-like; though, at times, this experiment collapses leaving the writer more adjacent to Shadwell.

Gayathri Hewagama

Take for instance the story “2024” with which the second half of the book opens. The story by itself presents a vocal critique of the mass political culture of the times which Hewagama articulates through an admixture of dystopian imagery pasted over the ignominy of widespread political illiteracy. The symbol of this culture running on mass dependency on political dynasties is the “eheyya”, a political breed quite like the masses in a novel like Orwell’s 1984. In fact, “2024” opens with a ritual atmosphere probably framed that way to echo exercises such as the “hate ritual” in Orwell’s book: state-imposed drills which keep the mass psyche under the sovereign’s thumb. In “2024” there is a parade of sorts in which the eheyyas take part as onlookers:

“On the thirteenth day, of the thirteenth month, when the island clocks strike thirteen, they may catch a glimpse of a scrawny populace in loin cloth, commonly known as eheyyas, gathered by the entrance to the Great House, waving flags with a lion at its centre, clutched in their frail hands. For it was on every thirteenth day, every thirteenth month, when the island clock struck the thirteenth hour that the motorcarde carrying the sovereign clan, six hundred and sixty-six in number, would reach the Great House gates”. (69)

The almost pagan effect Hewagama conjures from the use of repetitive numbers – an effect akin to the sinister arts and witchcraft – energizes the uncritical camp-follower in the eheyya, only to peter out being unable to sustain or develop into a more wholesome critique: “One distracted eheyya,” Hewagama continues that section, “put his palms together at the motorcade instead of waving the Lion flag”:

“The things was that, in the initial commotion generated by the arrival of the first gargantuan conveyer with deep-tinted shutters, [the eheyya] had had his Lion flag thrown from his hand… To avoid being electro-pricked by the taser points of the sentinels, the eheyya did what an eheyya could. He let go of his palm-pressed suppliant posture, plunged his hand below his waist line, pulled [out his penis], which he began to wag vigorously.” (70)

As mentioned earlier, Hewagama’s descend into the bawdy resonates with a neo-classical disciplining on the writer’s part, but with such over-reach what she had thus far developed with the utmost concentration and application is abruptly compromised from delivering a better fruit.

Ashan Weerasinghe

For an audience receptive of Gayathri Hewagama’s breeding ground as a scholar and creative practitioner – one familiar with her Peradeniya days, initially as a student (2004-2008) and then as an academic of the English Department there (2009-2015) – sections of the story “The Prince and the Pauper – Act 1” offer resonant reading matter. In key sections of this story a character bearing the united characteristics of two of Hewagama’s influential Peradeniya peers – that of poet, academic, and superannuated dramatist Dhanuka Bandara (now living in an undisclosed location in the United States) and poet Ashan Weerasinghe – makes the reader’s acquaintance. This unnamed character is commonly referred to as the “man with the sooty beard”; incidentally, an arsenal neither Bandara nor Weerasinghe were known to have, even though on occasion the latter was endowed with a sooty mustache.

The “weather-worn satchel” the sooty beard man carries, the obsession with Nietzsche he demonstrates, the love of Dostoevsky – “Dear Fyodor. J’adore!”, his inner voice speaks -, a general appraisal of Russian classics, and a preoccupation with Arthur Schopenhauer further stabilize the bearded character as an admixture from which tell tale signs of Bandara and Weerasinghe – and, of the duo, more Bandara – cry out. Ashan Weerasinghe – who, at Peradeniya acted in two of Dhanuka Bandara’s plays, majored in Sinhala, was fixated on the subaltern, and wrote the two poetry books ඊළමක් වූ ප්‍රේමය and ද්‍රෝහීන් ඕනෑ කර තිබේ – was often associated in those circles with Schopenhauer, and where the sooty beard man reaches out his free hand towards a Schopenhauer with “yellowed spine” and “pages uncrumpled” one cannot but help think of Weerasinghe. While Weerasinghe on occasion carried books with spines of memorable colour, a poem in his debut collection narrates falling asleep on a Schopenhauer book¹. On the other hand, Bandara’s fascination with Nietzsche, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky was often the stuff of conversation over tea. His poetry and theater have, in degrees, reflected their influence on the young artist. In talk these names often predominated. As much as Weerasinghe carried the heavy book and Bandara philosophized about it, in Hewagama the two come together, one as being symbolized by a “wrinkled” book, and the other, in a book with a “yellow spine, yet uncrumpled, unsoiled”:

“The man with the sooty beard sits while in meditation. Then, picking up the books, he stuffs them inside his satchel, the belt of which he flings over his head and across his chest. He stands up, the pile of old newspapers under one arm and starts walking towards his little hideout on the outskirts of the bustling town. Over the lake he goes, crossing the old stone bridge precariously poised above the water. A bustling town with a lake at its center. A bustling town with a name as sweet as Candy” (36).

If, in the above extract, one is to replace the lake with a river, there are many bridges leading away from Peradeniya.

Dhanuka Bandara with Sandamini Ranwalage in, “Like” of the “Aeta” / “Mall Star” / “Like” sequence under “Parallel Theater” which he wrote and produced at Peradeniya.

Intriguingly, except for this singularly palpable allusion to Weerasinghe-Bandara Conquering Karma is devoid of further cross-reference or insinuation of sorts to Peradeniya as a place and space, or to Hewagama’s circle there. For the work of a writer who seems to have transcended the Peradeniya romance – a syndrome that often burdens those who spend at least three years in the university – and to have abandoned other influences on her growth as a literary creator, Weerasinghe-Bandara (via the sooty bearded man) alone remains the karma which Hewagama has not entirely succeeded to conquer.

Notes

¹ Ashan Weerasinghe’s poem “Presentation”:

Presentation
"The World is a presentation to me" - Arthur Schopenhauer 

කුලී කාමරේ ගල්තලාව
නොහොත් ඇඳ කියන එක උඩ
ඔබ මා එක්ක
හීනෙන් දැක
අවදි වූ විට
ශෝෆන්අවර් කොට්ටය යට. (37)

Works Cited

_{Hewagama, Gayathri M. Conquering Karma: A Collection of Island Tales. Jam Fruit Tree Publications, 2022.}

_{වීරසිංහ, අශාන්. ඊලමක් වූ ප්‍රේමය. ස්වාධීන ප්‍රකාශනයකි. 2010.}

Menaca Calyaneratne’s “A Fistful of Stars”: A Simple Collection.

Menaca Calyaneratne’s A Fistful of Stars is a collection of 61 seemingly simple and innocuous poems. Written in uncomplicated Spartan lines of an easy metre, “yet grab you I will like its the end of the world”, a line from the poem “My Way”, is the collection’s longest single line. The arrangement is dominated by personal themes which set the general tone of the corpus. Poems, among several others, such as “Braille” (on a sudden realization / a non-religious epiphany), “Peace” (coming to terms), “Teacup” (resilience), “Incompatible” (of life’s ironies) and “Kind” (persistence) deal with abstract ideas and themes, and are poised between sequences of otherwise introspective and soul-searching musings.

_{Menaca Calyaneratne}

The vast majority of poems involve a You and an I (or, much less in appearance, an us). As many as 40 out of the 61 poems play out between the You and the I, peddling anxieties, advertising for acceptance, betraying possession; pleading, urging, demanding, taking, and giving. In those 40 or so poems – except for a few articles that interest an academic point or two – nothing new is presented which the reader hasn’t heard or seen in the last 600 years of English verse. To explain further, in terms of idiom, content, context, and the frills, the poems are somewhat pedestrian. In several poems, (towards the collection’s tailend), however, the You – or the immediate Second Person as addressee – is replaced with a Third Person singular She or – as it happens in the poems “Emergency” and “Water” – with its plural: a They. In the poem “Caring” where this substitution is introduced to the collection, the shift is both disarming and memorably sudden. The pattern set by the You and the I – by then, a familiar and expected sustainment page after page – gives way to the following sequence:

She held me 
Stroked my head
Rubbed my shoulders
Held my hand with both of hers
Asked if I am alright 
Called when she got home 
Cooked my favourite dish 
Watched Star Wars with me
Surprised me 
Left a thin feather on my pillow...

... (Updated my status)
Sang to me
She watched me sleep. (34) 

(Despite it not being for the lines’ poetic merit, this poem constitutes the key moment in A Fistful of Stars). In “The Fetcher” – a poem accompanied by an instructive quotation which claims women and children spend 140 million hours each day collecting water -, the referent She is present as a carrier:

She carries the water
Every drop counts
As tears escape 
She years for rest

To just immerse in water. (46)

The concluding poems also indicate a frustration of feeling built on an implied deterioration of the relationship between You and I. The purring softness of the initial verses where – having “come armed/with a smile” – I yearn to “take your heart hostage” in the “dead of the night” to “demand/a single kiss” (1) is replaced by heartbreak and fury:

Take a bow 
Raise yourself
You are nothing 
Without me

How you played 
That character
Othello never looked
So good

When the curtain falls
Look at me - your audience
You are nothing without me. (49)

The Desdemona-like hysteria in the reference to Othello has written in it a complexity which, at best, insinuates abandonment and male indifference; or, otherwise, a heart thoroughly wounded by its own over-expectations. The proactive intent and torrents of passion seen in poems like “My Way” (quoted below) further demonstrate the growing urgency and fermentation of a desire that cannot hold itself back for poetic refinement:

I don't know how to love
Like you do, my love
Yet grab you I will like it's the end of the world
Kiss your nose, with your eyes closed
When you and everyone else dare forbid
I will leave my print on your forehead
In my embrace you will know
You are everything that I wish to own
But I won't say a word to make a claim. (56)

The strength in A Fistful of Stars is in its emotional build up and introspective poise. The book reads best when considered as a teleological corpus. One might concede that Calyaneratne, through the collection, maps a personal catharsis of sorts. The poetry has its moments in presenting the reader stars by the fistful. But, the book’s success is mostly dependent on the size of the individual palm.

Works Cited

_{Calyaneratne, Menaca. A Fistful of Stars. [Publisher Not Declared], 2019.}

The Early Anandawansa: Reading “I Picture the Mosaic”.

“I am a flower bent over the railway.

How will you come to pluck me?

By foot or by train?”

_{– The Question.}

Krishanthi Anandawansa’s Simply Freckled (2014) followed her debut I Picture the Mosaic (2009); a collection that was dedicated to Achintya, the one “incomprehensible, beyond understanding”. Of this unselfconscious and forthright book, poems such as “My Diary”, “Checkpoint”, “Marketing”, “Suicide” and “Tsunami” stand out (a word-economist, Anandawansa thrives in poem titles that don’t test one’s patience). A defining feature of this collection is that Anandawansa doesn’t try to pretend or appear to be cool. Particularly in Sri Lanka, a writer who doesn’t wallow in self-importance is a refreshing find. I Picture the Mosaic presents such simplicity which speaks in the book’s layout and line up, and in its content, artwork and form.

Krishanthi Anandawansa

However, my first impressions of Anandawansa’s poetry go as back as English Literary Association readings at the University of Peradeniya in 2004 and 2005. A poem she presented at a writers’ conference at the Senate Room, University of Peradeniya, I remember, even moved the great stoic Nihal Fernando to nod in meditative agreement. I no longer remember the title of this piece. The poem, however, deliberated on how the world order was predestined and how the insect caught in a spider’s web was a part of that designation. The narrator, who curbs her natural instinct to break the web and save the dying bug, dares not to disturb the universe – Prufrock-like. The presentation of this somewhat complex idea, I remember, demonstrated alluring simplicity. Despite the house being teemed with esteemed Peradeniya and visiting dons who penetrated structure like one did the cheese, Anandawansa steered with clarity that evening in presenting what would have, perhaps, even gone down as a boring, deterministic idea. This was a good five years before the promise of I Picture the Mosaic.

Fast forward in time, Anandawansa’s long-awaited second collection, Simply Freckled (2014), failed to thrill or live up to the tone and temper of its predecessor. Simply Freckled was an ambitious project that collected 48 poems endorsed by a preface written by the late Ashley Halpe which promised the reader “a near-bewildering kaleidoscopic variety of experiences” and “a vibrantly feminine poetic voice” (Simply Freckled 7). However, despite the variation in experience and event – which, after all, is a commendable foresight to have when collecting two score poems – Anandawansa, in this book, often miscues the conversion of ideas into articulations and expressions with the same carrying power as some of her Mosaic poems. In instances, the ideas fail to convert at all, leaving much to be desired in their diminished and crumbled states, simply freckled.

A rereading of I Picture the Mosaic after Simply Freckled encouraged me to rejoice over the Early Anandawansa in poems such as, for instance, “Suicide” where she engages in the existentialist line which marked some of her university verses in the mid-2000s.

What courage and strength of mind in unison needed
to end all for a worthy cause? ...
... What exactly is left? 
The lesson and cause frozen 
with time, to be rubbed away gently from hearts and minds. (Mosaic 14)

Anandawansa’s deliberations in the poem “Marketing” might break the hearts of many university administrators of the 2020s who insist on “learning outcomes” and “course objectives” that guarantee in making the university graduate “employable”, and thus “marketable”. Despite some universities allocating actual cadre positions and curriculum space to ensure the development of Graduate Employability (sic), even as late as the mid-2000s when Anandawansa presumably wrote “Marketing”, it was normal for an undergraduate student to question the hard politics of soft skills. In the corporate world that speaks in such a register, marketing one’s assets is the glory road. Anandawansa’s self-deprecating response is perverse and cynical:

He said "You should learn to market your assets."
How?
I am neither interested in marketing nor getting big money.
It is hard to live with such a conscience, in such a damned market world.
They pass me off as a kid still trying to learn the ways of the world. 

I am a parched coin from ancient history; a golden egg from the white 
hen in the beanstalk castle. 

I only have a market in Fairy Land. (Mosaic 3)      

In “Checkpoint”, the poem’s narrator recounts an embarrassing encounter at a military checkpoint: a premise numerously exploited by creative writers for its violence on the female person. From the screening of personal details and personal belongings to one’s being suspended and made to feel vulnerable and exposed the checkpoint-space, over the past four decades, has cut deep into the imagination of the war-affected country. Her luggage “disorderedly scattered / upon a table in front of the barracks” – her “books, notes, food, clothes / all in one messy heap” – the poem’s narrator is made to “feel like a clown” when she had to ask for soldiers to return her identity card which they held on to:

But now I had to stand there
amidst the tall soldiers,
abhorred by the filthy jokes and comments
on my parents.

Felt like a clown...
The soldiers' laughs, winks, stares, glares, 
the bewildered looks of the commuters
comfortably seated back through the glass.

I was almost in tears.
Seeing this, they gave my most precious NIC
with fears,
and shoved me back into the bus. (Mosaic 25)   

The poem leaves the soldiers’ comments for the reader’s imagination, but little doubt is left as to the damningly personal and uncompromising nature of these comments. Anandawansa’s delivery pitches in the zone of many warzone narratives that reach catharsis in the vicinity of the checkpoint. The rape and murder of Chundikuli Girls’ College student Krishanti Kumaraswamy in 1996 – coincidentally Anandawansa’s namesake – is one such “checkpoint-tragedy” that has reached the public imagination in multiple creative forms. Anandawansa’s experience offers empathy while – especially from a southern interventionist point – extending the range within which gender and identity complexities of the “checkpoint” ought to be read.

Since Simply Freckled, which was published in 2014, there is no record of Anandawansa publishing poetry in the form of a collection. It is understood that she has resigned to a career teaching English in a university. Such assignments generally enrich the poet’s soul. Its harvest, perhaps, is worth our patience.

Works Cited

_{Anandawansa, Krishanthi. Simply Freckled. Sanghinda Printers and Publishers, 2014.}

_{Anandawansa, Krishanthi. I Picture the Mosaic: A Collection of Poetry. Organization for Literary Accomplishments, 2009.}

A Feast Of the Dead: Where Are Sri Lanka’s Living English Poets?

[This article was published in the Sunday Observer on 14 November 2021 as a correspondence by Vihanga Perera]

Let this fact stagger you a bit: Vivimarie Vanderpoorten exempted, the English language poets taught in our school rooms (and in most university courses), by now, are done with their fleeting existence on earth. If one considered what begins with Patrick Fernando and ends with Richard de Zoysa as the elite canon of Sri Lankan English poetry (except Yasmine Gooneratne who migrated in the 1970s), none of them are here with us anymore. Nor do many in English studies show too much interest in the contemporary status of Sri Lankan poetry; not at least the trouble that was taken over Anne Ranasinghe (1925-2016), Patrick Fernando (1931-1983), Jean Arasanayagam (1931-2019), Lakdas Wikkramasinha (1941-1978), Richard de Zoysa (1958-1990) and Yasmine Gooneratne (b. 1935).

Surely, no one writes academically of Malinda Seneviratne, or Vanderpoorten in the same way they do of the “canon”. But, when that canon was still in formation in the 1970s and 1980s, its very birthing was done through well-mediated critical and academic interventions. Back issues of journals such as New Ceylon Writing, Navasilu, Journal of Commonwealth Literature and so on testify to the critical culture that supported this new arrival.

Let us dismiss the idea that the “great Sri Lankan English poets” were born great. To the contrary, they were a carefully and painstakingly constructed set of brand ambassadors: children of an emerging post-independence culture of a new nation that needed to prove its ability to make on its own. The midwifery of the academy in shaping the cultural agenda of the new nation, at one level, reflected its own existence.

In the 1960s, having relocated to Ceylon after World War II, Anne Ranasinghe was trained as a journalist. It is said that her emergence as a poet in the big stage was encouraged by Yasmine Gooneratne. When, in 1990, the state paramilitary killed Richard de Zoysa, Rajiva Wijesinha collected de Zoysa’s poetry into a single anthology in 1998. Carl Muller – arguably the most articulate Sri Lankan fiction writer in English to date – acknowledged Ashley Halpé as a mentor who encouraged him to submit the manuscript of The Jam Fruit Tree for the inaugural Gratiaen Prize which it won. These indicative examples provide evidence for the personal interest the academy had in shaping and in sustaining an emerging literary space. However, it by no way denies the existence of academics who thoroughly discourage creative writers and convert them into bonsai trees.

(L-R): Jean Arasanayagam, Anne Ranasinghe, Yasmine Gooneratne, and Ramya Jirasinghe

However, from the 1990s, the interest to groom a home-literature and a critical enterprise to support it began to gradually diminish. While the critical interest in resident writing ebbed as a whole, in particular, poetry has suffered in being looked over as an academic discourse. Despite the presence of academics who also write poetry, the academy’s role in nurturing poetry and grounding it with critical purchase has abated.

It has caved in to a degree where what supports the academy in a feast of dead poets at present is the canon that dates from Fernando to de Zoysa. Does this imply that people who compose at present are of a poor quality? Does it suggest people have lost interest in composing poetry at all? What caused the search for and encouragement, grooming, and benchmarking of new poetry – the prerogative of the English academy through the 1970s and 1980s – to seemingly terminate that function 25 or 30 years ago?

Up to the 1990s, even though individual collections were not too many, poets published in journals and anthologies which – more often than not – were quality-controlled by men and women in the academy. However, English poetry (in the conventional sense) has gradually dried up in the past 30 years. The preferred genre of the epoch seems to be the novel. Even the short story (which was popular in the 1980s and 1990s) has, like the Majestic City, recast itself as an abandoned plot.

In the past 30 years, who are the poets in Sri Lanka with at least two or three collections for a reader to set a measurement? Other than Seneviratne and Vanderpoorten (mentioned earlier), a few names such as Chamali Kariyawasam, Ramya Jirasinghe, Krishanthi Anandawansa come to mind. But I am someone who has dedicated life to keep track of the work of these people. Does the non-specialised reader also remember their works?

More crucially, why haven’t those who periodically write to papers and journals or scribe on the walls of their backyards taken the next step to publish for an audience? This last question is a tormenting one. For, there is no textual evidence to suggest that the “canon” had any superior poetry powers when compared with its contemporary counterparts. To the contrary, unsighted and unacknowledged, there is at least the better part of a dozen poets in Sri Lanka right now who, short of being conventionally-published, demonstrate a brilliance that has the potential to redefine the field. In the 1970s and 1980s, in an age in search of an identity post-empire, the academy supported the quest for an independent new expression. Responses of one epoch cannot be replicated in another. But, that historical awareness, nonetheless, is important in addressing abandoned machinery and lands allowed to waste. In the 1990s, Sri Lankan English Literature was seduced by globalisation. Borders crossed, part of it was relocated by trans-national capital in the global literary industry that power-brokered in big publishing businesses. The age of Tisara Publication and KVG de Silva covers – dull covers – was over. The glitz age of glossy covers, subtle paginated scents, and Penguin stickers had coming in. The global literary enterprise was never that high on poetry. Where the Third World was concerned, the global publisher relied more on fiction. As if the narrators of English books dealing with the Third World up until then hadn’t been so, the narrator of new global literature (we were told) was “migrant”.

Global capital sucked in the promise of post-colonial criticism and turned it into cosmopolitan theory that validated everything about the migrant writer. To satisfy the demands of global capitalism that cradled the book industry (to which the academy was connected in providing endorsement and reaping rewards) the post-national, cosmopolitan migrant writer, like Hamlet, had to be made complicated. Therefore, the “locality of the gendered, travelling, transnational, postcolonial, migrant self” kept changing like an amoebic microorganism and, in turn, defining what the global academy theorised and dished out as good literature.

(L-R): Malinda Seneviratne, Kamala Wijeratne, Vivimarie Vanderpoorten, and Sumathy Sivamohan

For writers who wrote weird things about Sri Lanka – the kind of men and women who were once looked on with a certain doubt – were now called “dislocated transnational subjects” who were “spatially and temporally torn by the multiple forces of their ruptured status” as they, inhabiting a traumatic present (preferably in uptown New York, London or Toronto) tried to “reconcile with a past” that was no longer theirs. However, a necessary clarification: the global writer cannot and must not be blamed for making a life out of what s/he does for a living. The underlying fact is that as globalisation kicked in, our academy no longer had to preoccupy itself with what was homegrown. The global product as the better product was a tempting fetishism.

The theory that came with it helped to connect with the world and be a part of a bigger critical industry. Only that, the new order of things post-1990s backfired on what interest was left for the resident writers’ literature. Today, if you asked an average Sri Lankan reader to name some of the current poets in business, one wouldn’t be surprised if s/he struggled for five names that had sufficient critical reception. By sheer perseverance and charisma, Malinda Seneviratne has published and maintained a presence as a poet. From among his six collections to-date, four made the Gratiaen finals between 2008 and 2013 while winning the prize once. Perhaps, they exist somewhere in some form, but I am yet to come across serious academic reflections on Seneviratne’s work. Of course, in several essays and interviews, Vanderpoorten receives focus. But, Dushyanthi Mendis (who, in 2011, analysed the themes of love and death in Vanderpoorten’s poems) aside, whether anyone has produced an original thesis on Vanderpoorten’s writing is a reasonable question.

As mentioned before, short of being published, there are men and women who compose brilliant stuff in blogs, notebooks, online platforms, and social media spaces. What prevents them from moving to the next stage could be lack of finance, self-doubt (shockingly such a part of the present time), or – in an age of overwhelming mediocrity-made-brilliant – a distrust of being assessed the wrong way. The academy has to return in pioneering engagement with new and good writing and in creating a critical network for such writing to flourish. While older writers (“the ancients”) should be preserved through collaborations with good publishers, the academy must be selfless in its guidance and encouragement for new writers. Discounting a motely crew whose publications are done exclusively targeting the State Literary Award, there is tremendous potential in the English poetry scene under the uninterested radar.

Among the potential poets waiting to be born to the national stage in the ongoing decade are some who demonstrate a studied understanding of poetry as a craft, a sound reading of the English and local “tradition”, and – most crucially – an aversion to fake lit glitz. Among the few journals that periodically come and disappear, it is heartening to see New Ceylon Writing having digitised its archives and resuscitated itself for a new era. Except, unlike in the case of tea (which is inherently a colonial enterprise), the journal’s moniker stands to gain from a decolonising kiss. 

Gratiaen & Goonetileke Winners and the Way Forward for SL Writers

[This article was published in the Sunday Observer on 11 July 2021 as a correspondence by Vihanga Perera].

Announced over the weekend, the Gratiaen Prize for 2020 ended up being the night of Carmel Miranda and Malinda Seneviratne. Miranda’s Crossmatch, a thriller set in the dark corridors and nooks of Colombo’s medical world, was adjudged the best work by a residential Sri Lankan writer by a panel headed by Dr. Mahendran Thiruvarangan, the literary scholar from the University of Jaffna, of which Ashok Ferrey and Victoria Walker were members.

Since its launch a few months ago – and since being longlisted for the Gratiaen Prize in March 2021 – Crossmatch has courted increasing reader interest. The book has now joined an Elite bandwagon of celebrated books of which Carl Muller’s The Jam Fruit Tree and Lalitha Withanachchi’s The Wind Blows over the Hills were the original laureates and, over the past three decades, includes the work of many game-changers in Sri Lankan writing.

Malinda Seneviratne’s translation of Mahinda Prasad Masimbula’s Senkottan as The Indelible, which was awarded the HAI Goonetileke award for the best translated work, did not receive the same media attention the works shortlisted for the Gratiaen prize did, until the last leg of the extravaganza.

Malinda Seneviratne and Carmel Miranda

While the Gratiaen Prize proper evolved over four months and – like a butterfly – came through three phases that included a longlist of seven, a shortlist of five, and a finale, the “translation prize” came to public notice more as an abrupt late arrival to the party. However, having taken up the translation of Senkottan – a powerful novel if not for its rather hurried ending – Seneviratne has offered literary enthusiasts with a delectable promise.

Like most good literary translators around, Malinda Seneviratne has remained an under-rated presence in the literary metropolis. The reason for this under-recognition cannot solely be his not being a sworn translator. The volume of Seneviratne’s original composition and his translated work – in both their intensity and the newness – is staggering, to say the least. At a time, I readily used excerpts of Seneviratne’s translations of Mahagama Sekara to teach the difference between sworn translators translating literary work and translation as the transfer of culture and idiom. Not soon after his days translating Sekara’s Prabuddha, Seneviratne won the HAI Goonetileke prize in 2012 for a translation of Simon Nawagattegama’s Sansaranyaye Dadayakkaraya (as The Hunter in the Wilderness of Sansara). The following year, having previously been featured in four finals, he won the Gratiaen Prize with the collection Edges. If history, at all, teaches us a lesson, all eyes should be on next year’s Gratiaen Prize and how Malinda Seneviratne features in it. If at all, it will be a shame if Seneviratne is invited next year to judge the prize.

The Gratiaen Prize is now almost 30 years old. As the prize has grown in stature, reach and its dominance over the prize tables in Sri Lankan creative writing, it has also firmly held on to the motto “One Shot”. This single shot has been rigorously implemented as a comprehensive in-house policy in the selection of judging panels. In 29 years, any given appointed judge (1993-2021) has not presided over the prize to exceed a covetous single occasion. The contribution of the prize to Sri Lanka’s creative world in mind, I feel that it is high time that this policy is revised. To clarify further, I find it an irreparable loss that some brilliant minds and leaders of Sri Lanka’s English literary world – men and women who have already judged the prize in the 1990s and 2000s as first choice selections – are not made use of in an age where the prize is more established, recognised, and – in certain years – have had as adjudicators foreigners whose literary brilliance doesn’t exactly match up to whom we have lost to the “One Shot” rule.

As the Gratiaen Prize evolves into its fourth decade, an intriguing outcome to look forward is as to who would succeed in scoring a second Gratiaen plum. This year’s final featured Lal Medawattegedara (shortlisted for Restless Rust) who, in 2012, had won the prize for his bestseller Playing Pillow Politics in MGK. Recent finals have featured Shehan Karunatilaka (the winner of 2008, among the finalists of 2015, 2016 and 2018) and Vivimarie Vander Poorten (winner of 2007 in 2016). Along with the writer of this article, Neil Fernandopulle and Sumathy Sivamohan are the others in this category of returnees demanding a second shot. Shehan Karunatilaka (arguably the most prolific writer of the past decade) making three finals in four years between 2015 and 2018 and yet falling short of the historical target serves as a measurement as to how uphill a task a second Gratiaen win appears.

This should only make writers rise to the challenge. Among other things, JM Coetzee is not a bad role model to have. In fact, Malinda Seneviratne’s triumph with The Indelible is probably the first instance where the same writer (in Seneviratne’s case, in 2012 and 2021) has scored twice in one of the two categories the Gratiaen Prize offers.

(L-R): JM Coetzee, Carmel Miranda’s Crossmatch, and Shehan Karunatilaka

Having met her at the New Ink Literary Forum in June, I had the opportunity to interact with Carmel Miranda. With the unaffected air of a Shakespearean character with whom she shares a name, she shared opinion on the writing game: frank opinions about literature in Colombo in an air which, in its not buying into false idols, serves writers good. Miranda read and spoke at a New Ink panel she shared with Yasmin Azad and Neshantha Harischandra and commented on the dearth of good detective fiction and mystery thrillers in Sri Lanka and how Cross-match was born out of her desire to address this vacuum.

As Sri Lankan English writing becomes increasingly globalised by the day, the role the Gratiaen Trust as an institute and writers who contribute to its platforms (such as the Gratiaen Prize) will be assigned by the coming decade will have a far-reaching impact on how resident Sri Lankan writing is measured, valued, and set in circulation. As I have commented elsewhere, globalisation through the 1990s and 2000s has transferred the visibility of being a Sri Lankan writer as the work-right of our expatriate cousins. My energies are invested in reversing this process. The Malindas and the Mirandas as well as those who were shortlisted or were exempted from lists – as well as lit-friendly organisations including the Gratiaen Trust – have a common stake in this overarching programme.

Survivor Narratives: The Missing (L)ink In Our Classroom Literature

[This article was earlier published in the Daily Mirror on 28 September 2020 as a part of Vihanga Perera’s column ‘Marginal Notes’]

A few months ago, I saw an advertisement in a local newspaper regarding a motor championship which fascinated me: Eliyakandha Hill Climb. Eliyakandha – for the latecomer – is the local name for Brown’s Hill, a steep climb not far from the sea in Matara. Long before this motor race, Eliyakandha’s call to fame was owed to a notorious military-run torture camp complex situated there during the state’s crackdown of the 1987-90 rebellion. The camp itself was run in an old manor-type house to which an elite family in the area had claimed. In its hay day, the persons brought to Eliyakandha were mostly destined to die. So, the torture camp was also called K-Point, or Killing Point.

The advertisement about motor cars racing up and down Eliyakandha hill reminded of two books written about the camp by two men who were tortured there but survived the ordeal: who, among hundreds of others, had endured the shattering experience of torture, reduction, and humiliation, to come out alive and take courage in writing down their tales. One is Rohitha Munasinghe – a pioneer of sorts in survivor literature emerging from the 1987-90 violence. His Eliyakandha Wadha Kandhawura (2000) is a harrowing story of unimaginable torture being carried out in the guise of counter-insurgency. I do not wish to go into details. It is sufficient to note that after reading some of its passages you can watch (without flinching) any horror movie.

A particular reference Munasinghe evokes has stayed etched in my mind: that of military vehicles (trucks and jeeps) moving up the steep Eliyakandha hill in “first gear”. It is a sharp climb for the heavy vehicles and – on different occasions – we encounter these jeeps coming and leaving the torture premises as they bring to the house of organized death high officials, newly abducted prisoners and food cauldrons.

The coming of these vehicles usher an ominous suspense. When they leave, they take away prisoners to be killed, or the crudely packed bodies of already killed men. In a different era, it was a different hill climb.

(L-R): Primo Levi’s If This is a Man, Levi & Ajith Perakum Jayasinghe

A second Eliyakandha survivor narrative was published in 2018 by Ajith Perakum Jayasinghe, a reputed blogger and social commentator. Written as an autobiographical novel, Jayasinghe’s K-Point, in many instances, confirms the depravity and bestiality unfolding in Munasinghe’s recollections. But, Jayasinghe’s goes beyond than being a mere retrospection to show a mature mind at work, as he reconstructs a past horror with reasonableness and revision. The preface to K-Point suggests that Jayasinghe has reconciled with the injurious past. His, in fact, is one of the most profound reassessments I have read by a violated person in characterizing his persecutor. Dismissing the conventional binary reading of victims and victimizers, Jayasinghe proposes that, in the torture camp of 1987-90, there were only victims: victims defined by the political crisis of the time.

Both Munasinghe and Jayasinghe write in Sinhala (a translation of Eliyakandha Wadha Kandhawura exists, but it is too weak a work to take us far). They are merely two icons of an emerging floor of survivor narratives from Sri Lanka’s proud histories of civil conflict: from 1971 to times post-2009. But, how rarely – if at all – are these survivor narratives meaningfully incorporated with our curriculum? We are living in an age where our award-winning poets themselves tire us with long essays admonishing the need for responsibility and justice. It is more fascinating than the hill climb advertisement that a post-conflict society (which parrots for the right season the right buzz words in reconciliation) takes no serious interest in survivors and their stories. These are the narratives that humanize the atrocity of conflict, drawing our imaginations and emotions to reassess the misplaced glory in the systematic taking of human lives.

Rohitha Munasinghe (centre) and leading survivor narratives, K-Point and Eliyakandha Wadha kandhawura.

Reconciliation, in part, entails overreaching private feelings and your reading of conflict from within your limited situation. It stems from a nurtured capability and a desire to reach beyond personal loss to understand an event with empathy. This is why survivor narratives are important for a post-conflict society: they propose necessary energy that can heal, and transform our collective vision to imagine, in humanistic terms, beyond the petty.

Holocaust survivor Primo Levi writes about what he calls “warning monuments”: leftovers relics of a conflict that reminds society of atrocity and violence. In 1944 and 1945, Levi was a prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau. His torture camp story is told in If This Is a Man (1958). Levi’s suggestion to preserve the memory of violence is a noble thought that, at present, is very far from Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, we are indifferent to the violated and have no remorse over such violence. Sites of demonic conduct are easily forgotten once their walls are re-painted, and are easily converted into the finishing line of a motor race. Enforced death has been such a banal occurrence – and indeed an integral part of political strategy – that our response to survival is skewed.

But, literature begins with ideals, morals, and human foibles. In other words, the true literature is in these narratives that we shut out of our classrooms. True reconciliation cannot be had in denial or with matters under the carpet. Perhaps, it is time to re-work what our children should (also) read as they grow to be responsible and empathetic women and men.    

Sri Lankan English Writing After Globalization

[This article was earlier published in the Daily Mirror on 2 November 2020 as a part of Vihanga Perera’s column ‘Marginal Notes’]

In the second half of the 1990s, Sri Lankan English writing began to witness globalization: a new phase where the arena came to be taken over by writers who, in the past, use Sri Lanka as a winter retreat. These writers published with big, multinational labels, were marketed as if they were titans, and hobnobbed among first world literary lobbies. From  Shyam Selvadurai and Romesh Gunasekara in the early to mid-1990s, this brigade of writers grew through the 2000s and 2010s to included notable émigrés like Michael Ondaatje,A. Sivanandan, Karen Roberts, Michelle de Kretser and Roma Tearne. Yet others, like Chandani Lokuge, Manuka Wijesinghe, Nayomi Munaweera and Channa Wickramasekara – in spite of their expatriate status – published with local presses like Perera-Hussein who, in the past decade and a half, accommodated a fair number of expatriate authors. 

In opposition to the rise of this expatriate department, the 2000s and 2010s experienced a steady decline of Sri Lanka’s resident/local writer. In spite of their publications being spaced out, up until the first half of the 1990s, Sri Lankan English writing was understood and bench-marked through the work of writers who lived and tread on local soil. In this assessment writers like James Goonewardena, Punyakanthi Wijenaike, and Raja Proctor were the leading novelists between the 1960s and the tail end of the 1980s. In DCRA Goonetilleke’s estimate, Ediriweera Sarachchandra – who made a late arrival in the English scene – was the best of local novelists of that generation. The most notable expatriate novelists of the 1980s were possibly Colin de Silva – who wrote a series of historical novels glorifying medieval kings – and Michael Ondaatje who, having left Sri Lanka as a teenager, was a naturalized Canadian citizen.  

(L-R): Ameena Hussein, Vivimarie Vanderpoorten & Carl Muller

The setback of the resident writer was brought about by a combination of factors. At one level, the infancy of Sri Lanka’s English publication industry was no match to the globalized first world publication scene that, in the last thirty years or so, hosted our expatriate talent. From the writing of drafts to the nuance of the editorial desk, and from the quality of the final print to the budgets involved in marketing, the expatriate had a head start over her resident cousin. Then came the distribution channels, the accessibility of literary spaces, the breadth of the market, and media visibility. For socio-historical reasons, Sri Lanka’s English audience is a thin sliver. Unlike the reach of Sinhalese literature, it is in no way a mass audience. Within this small enclave – with small reader circles, myopic publishers (who, than building a business, seemed to do the writer a favour by publishing), lack of forums, and the dearth of critical appreciation, the resident writer gradually fell back in the race.

In the submergence of the local writer, the academy, too, had a part to play. Till the 1990s, a notable body of English creative writing had some connection with the English department, if not with the university. Most writers of the first four decades post-independence, had they not been academics of some degree, had had a university education. From Patrick and Vijitha to Chitra Fernando and from Ashley Halpe and Yasmine Gooneratne to Lakdas Wikkramasinha and Rajiva Wijesinha they were men and women who had linkages with the academy. Even the minor writers of that generation were university-produced. Its gate-keeping aside, the university took a deep interest in the continuation of literary production through journals such as “Ceylon New Writing” and “Navasilu”. This interest is further exemplified by the scholarly work produced by academics on aspects of Sri Lankan writing. Considered an authority of the subject, DCRA Goonetilleke alone has produced an expansive body of critical literature from surveys to appreciations of individual writers. However, post-1990, this situation begins to change in degrees. In the last 20 years, and in preference for alien corn, the academy has palpably turned away from home produce. As places of publication, the distance between Middlesex and Maradana has grown, as has the obliviousness to resident authors rotting in local bookstores.  

(L-R: Elmo Jayawardena, Nihal De Silva, Shehan Karunatilaka, Charulatha Thewarathanthri, Visakesa Chandrasekara, Jean Arasanayagam, Ayathurai Santhan & Malinda Seneviratne)

The last decade or so has also demonstrated an erosion of critical spaces – from reviews and commentaries in newspapers to features that demonstrate depth. This is clearly visible in the approach to literature and art by newspapers. The inability in an emerging generation of newspaper writers to critique a literary work is alarming. Then, again, the emergence of new media and the takeover of media spaces by audio-visual forms have further diminished the critical engagement with literature and art. A few dinosaurs from a different age continue to write. But, the flourishing features sections that were thorough and well-written merely a decade ago have become things of nostalgia.  

These are the circumstances of production, reception, and circulation against which a generation of resident writers – among them, Ameena Hussein, Madhubhashini Ratnayake, Lal Medawattegedara, Elmo Jayewardena, Ashok Ferrey, Ayathurai Santhan, Charulatha Thewarathanthri, and Vihanga Perera – have continued to persevere. The vanguard of this line is made by writers like Shehan Karunatilaka, Vivimarie Vanderpoorten, Visakesa Chandrasekaram, and Malinda Seneviratne. They represent a literary practice that stands to benefit from a resuscitation of the local literary landscape: an atmosphere that encourages local writers overseen by innovative publication – like what Perera-Hussein heralded with their arrival in 2004. This space also needs the academy to play a powerful role, for hard-hitting, nerve-wracking criticism, and people-friendly fora and platforms.  

රාවණා ඉන්දුනීසියාවේ ද ජීවත් විය: වීර කාව්‍ය සම්ප්‍රදාය සම්බන්ධ තුලනාත්මක ආරම්භක සටහනක්.

මහා කාව්‍ය පරිකල්පනය සහ අපි

වීර කාව්‍යයක් ඔස්සේ තමන්ගේ පරිකල්පිත අතීතය සොයන්නට යාම අලුත් දෙයක් නොවනවා සේම පරිකල්පිත අතීතය වීර කාව්‍ය ඇතුලේ හමුවීමේ තත්වයට ද සම්භාව්‍ය උපහැරණ ඇත. මීට හොඳම නිදසුන සපයන්නේ රෝම අධිරාජ්‍යයේ මහා කවියා වූ වර්ජිල්ගේ “ඉනීඩ්” ( ක්‍රිපූ 29-19) කෘතියයි. රෝම අධිරාජ්‍යයේ තුන් කාලීන ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨත්වය, ඔගස්ටස් අධිරාජ්‍යයාගේ හා ඒ පරපුරේ මහේශාක්‍ය බව ආදී වර්ජිල්ගේ සමකාලීන රෝමය තුල දේශපාලන වශයෙන් වැදගත් විය හැකි කරුණුද සම්භාව්‍ය වීර කාව්‍ය සම්ප්‍රදායේ හමුවන අනාගත වැකියක මුවාවෙන් ආඛ්‍යානගත කරන වර්ජිල්ගේ කෘතිය ඉතා තදින් රාජපාක්ෂිකවූත්, අධිරාජ්‍යගැති වූත් ලියවිල්ලකි.

රාවණ චරිතය ආශ්‍රිත පරිකල්පනය ලංකාවේ බිම් මට්ටමේ දේශපාලනය තුලට පිවිසෙන්නේ පශ්චාත්-යුධ යථාර්තයක් ලෙසිනි. රාවණ යන නම යෙදූ බලකායන්, ඒවා හා අනන්‍ය වන දේශපාලන පැවිද්දන්, එම බලමුලු වලින් සවිබලගැන්වෙන ග්‍රාමීය හා අර්ධ නාගරික ජන සමූහයන්ද, ඒවාට ආවරණය සපයන ජාතික මට්ටමේ දේශපාලන පක්ෂ මෙන්ම ජන මාධ්‍යද පසුගිය වසර අටක පමණ කාලය තුල අපි අත්දැක ඇත්තෙමු. මේ බලකාවල බැනර්වල සදහන් රාවණ ඇත්තටම වාල්මිකී නම් භාරත පඬිවරයා වෙත කතෘත්වය පැවරෙන “රාමායණයේ” රාවණට වඩා දේශපාලන ව්‍යාපාරයක් විසින් ලංකාවේ ජනවහරින් උකහාගත් ඇතැම් දෙයකට නව මතවාදයක් කවා පෝෂණය කර මතුකරගන්නට තැත්කරන රාවණ කෙනෙකුගෙන් ජීවය ලත් බව සිතේ.

මහාභාරතයේ පෙන්ග්වීන් ප්‍රකාශනය

කොටස් නොහොත් ඛණ්ඩ පහකින් (ඇතැම් අය මෙය හයක්ය, හතක්ය යැයි පවසයි) යුතු වාල්මිකී ගේ “රාමායණය” තුල රාවණ චරිතය ප්‍රධාන තැනක් ගන්නේ ආරණ්‍ය ඛණ්ඩයේ සහ ලංකා ඛණ්ඩයේය. සීතා පැහැරගෙන ලංකා රාජ්‍යයට (මෙය ශ්‍රී ලංකාවමදැයි යන්නත් විද්වතුන් අතර විවාදිත කරුණකි) ගෙන එන්නේ සහ ඇයව බේරාගෙන රාවණ මරා දැමෙන්නේ පිලිවෙලින් මෙම ඛණ්ඩ දෙකෙහිදිය. රාවණ මරා දමන රාම, ලංකා රාජ්‍යය තුල විභීෂණ නම් තම සොයුරා සිහසුනට පත්කරයි. “රාමායණය” ඉතාම සංකීර්ණ සංස්කෘතික ප්‍රපංචයකි. සම්භාව්‍ය බටහිර සාහිත්‍යයේ එන ග්‍රීක මහා කවි ද්විත්වය වන හෝමර්ගේ “ඉලියඩ්” හා “ඔඩිසි” තරම්ම මෙය සංකීර්ණ වන හේතු කිහිපයකි. එහි පලමුවැන්න වන්නේ මේ මහා කාව්‍ය රචනයට මූලික වන පරිකල්පනය, ඒ ඒ සමාජයන්ගේ දේශපාලන හා සංස්කෘතික මතවාදයන් අපගේ තත්කාලීන නිර්වචන හා මතවාදීමය රාමූන් හා ගලපාගැනීමේ තිබෙන දුෂ්කරතාවයයි. එයට හොඳම උදාහරණය සපයන්නේ පුරාතන භාරතය යන භූමියේ දිග පළල පවා නිශ්චය කරගැනීමට හා එය එදා තිබෙන්නට ඇති ආකාරය ගැන චිත්‍රණය කරගැනීමට අපට ඇති අපොහොසත් බාවයයි. පකිස්ථානය, ඉන්දියාව, නේපාලය, ශ්‍රී ලංකාව (ශ්‍රී ලංකාව භාරතයේ කොටසක්ද? නොවේද?) වැනි ජාතික රාජ්‍ය සංකල්පයෙන් අධිනිශ්චය වුනු සංස්කෘතික සාක්ෂරතාවයකින් මේ වෙනත් ඥාන පදනමක පිහිටන මහා කවියක එන සංකේතාත්මක චරිත ඔස්සේ තම භූ-දේශපාලන ඒකකයේ ආරම්භය සෙවීම කල නොහැක්කකි.

“මහා භාරතය” හෝ “රාමායණය” රචනය වන පරිකල්පනය අපෙන් දුරස්ථවන ආකාරයටම මේ කාව්‍යයන් රචනය වන අරමුණු ද අපෙන් ඈත්ව පිහිටි ඒවා වේ. අප අතට මේවා අද පත්වී ඇත්තේ ප්‍රධාන වශයෙන් පොසිල බවට පත්වුනු සංස්කෘතික මෙවලම් ලෙස විනා පවතින හා හුස්ම ගන්නා සාහිත්‍යයක් ලෙස නොවේ. නමුත් මෙම මහා කාව්‍ය රචනය වූයේත් හා ඒවායේ විකාශනය සිදුවූයේත් එදාට වලංගු වුනු තත්කාලීන දේශපාලන, සමාජ හා සංස්කෘතික ධාරාවන් හරහායි. වර්ජිල්ගේ මා මුලින් සඳහන් කල තත්වය ඊට උදාහරණ සපයයි. වර්ජිල්ගෙන් වෙනස් වන හෝමර්, වාල්මිකී හා ව්‍යාස (මහාභාරතයේ සම්ප්‍රදායක කතෘ) ලෙස අප හඳුන්වන අයගේ කෘතිවල ඇති විශේෂ ලක්ෂණයක් වන්නේ මේවා ප්‍රාදේශීයමූලීකව හා ජනමූලීකව දියුණුවුනු අලිඛිත සම්ප්‍රදායක් ද, එකිනෙකින් වෙනස්වන ද්විතියික සාහිත්‍යයකටද ජීවය සපයා ඇති වීමයි. “රාමායණය” පමණක් ඉන්දියානු භාෂා රැසකින් ලියවී ඇති අතර, එය අග්නිදිග ආසියාතික කලාපයේ රටවලටද පැතිරී එම ප්‍රදේශවල ජන සාහිත්‍යය පෝෂණය කරමින්ද, ඒ ඒ සංස්කෘතිකාංග උකහා ගනිමින් එම සංස්කෘතීන්වල පරිකල්පනයට එක්කරමින්ද වර්ධනය වූවකි. අනෙක් අතට මේ ඇතැම් කාව්‍යවල ඇතැම් ඛණ්ඩ පසුකාලීන එකතූන් වන අතර කතෘත්වය පවා සාමූහික හා සමාජයීය බලපෑමකින් සිදුවුනු බවට මත පවතී. උදාහරණ ලෙස “මහාභාරතය” ක්‍රි.පූ 7 වන සියවස සිට ක්‍රි.ව 4 වන සියවස වැනි වසර 1100ක් පමණ පුරාවට පරිනාමය වෙමින් ආ බවට මත පවතී.

තුන්වනුව මතුවන සංකීර්ණතාවය වන්නේ මෙවැනි පරිකල්පිත සාහිත්‍යය දේශපාලනීකරණය වී අප දන්නා සමාජයේ දේශපාලන, ආර්ථික හා සංස්කෘතික සබඳතා සරල කොට බැහැර කිරීමයි. එමෙන්ම ඕනෑම පුරාවෘත්තයක මතුපිටින් සබඳතා ගොඩනංවා පෙන්විය හැකි සුළු යමක් තිබිය හැකි වුවත් ඒ තුල විද්‍යාත්මකව සනාථ කිරීමට අපහසු, විශ්වාසයක් හෝ ඇදහිල්ලකට එහා නොයන මහා රික්තකයක් ඇත. පුරාවෘත්ත දේශපාලනීකරණය විමේදී මේ රික්තක කලාපයට ඒ දේශපාලන මතවාදය ආනයනය කිරීම කල හැකි අතර, එයින් පසුව එම වෘත්තාන්තය දේශපාලන ව්‍යාපාරයක ගබඩා කාමරයේ ඉදිරි දොර ලෙස භාවිතයට ගනී.

පෙර-අපර දෙදිග වීර කතා සාහිත්‍යය තුලනාත්මකව

ලෝක ඉතිහාසයේ විවිධ සාහිත්‍යයන් හා සංස්කෘතීන් හැඩගැසීමේදී පෙර-අපර දෙදිග වීර කාව්‍ය (වීර කතා) සම්ප්‍රදායන්ගෙන් ලබා ඇති පන්නරය සලකා බැලිය යුත්තකි. විශේෂයෙන්ම තුලනාත්මක හැදෑරීමක් තුලදී යුරෝපා සාහිත්‍යයේ හැඩගැසීම තුල සම්භාව්‍ය ග්‍රීක හා රෝමානු සාහිත්‍යයේ බලපෑම නැවත නැවතත් මතුවන්නකි. උදාහරණයක් ලෙස නූතන ඉංග්‍රීසි සාහිත්‍යය ගතහොත් එහි සෑම කඩඉම් යුගයකම පාහේ බටහිර සම්භාව්‍ය සාහිත්‍යය සමඟ පොදුවේත්, එහි වීර කාව්‍ය සම්ප්‍රදාය සමඟින් විශේෂයෙනුත් අන්තර්-පඨිතතා (නැතිනම්, එකිනෙක හරහා යෑම්) හමුවේ. 17 වන සියවස මුල් කාර්තුවේ නාට්‍ය නිෂ්පාදනය කල විලියම් ෂේක්ස්පියර්ගේ ඇතැම් නිර්මාණ ගත්තත්, 17 සියවස අග සිට 18 සියවස මුල් භාගය හරහා පරිනතභාවයට පත්වන ඔගස්ටන් සම්ප්‍රදායේ සාහිත්‍යය සැලකුවත්, 19 සියවස මුල් කාර්තුවේ කාව්‍යකරණයේ යෙදුනු ජෝන් කීට්ස්ගේ ඇතැම් කවි සලකා බැලුවත්, ඊට සියවසකට පමණ පසුව බිහිවුනු යුරෝපා නව්‍යවාදී සාහිත්‍යය ගවේෂණයේදීත් මේ කාරණය නැවත නැවත ඉස්මතු වනු පෙනේ.

හෝමර්ගේ “ඉලියඩ්” කෘතිය සහ ඒ ආශ්‍රයෙන් ගොඩනැගුනු “ට්‍රෝයි” චිත්‍රපටය

සම්භාව්‍ය සාහිත්‍ය අධ්‍යයනය තුල ග්‍රීක සම්ප්‍රදායේ මහා වීර කාව්‍ය දෙකක් ගැන හදාරනු ලබයි. “හෝමර්” යන සම්ප්‍රදායික නමින් අප සාමාන්‍යයෙන් හඳුන්වන අයෙකු විසින් නිර්මාණය කරන ලද බවට පිලිගැනෙන මේ කාව්‍ය ද්විත්වය නමින් “ඉලියඩ්” හා “ඔඩිසි” නම් වේ. මේවා ක්‍රි.පූ 8 වන සියවසේ ප්‍රබන්ධ කරන්නට ඇති බව සම්ප්‍රදායක පිලිගැනීම වුවත්, මේවා කාලයත් සමඟ පරිනාමය වෙමින් පැමිණි බවට සාධාරණ මතයක් ඇත. “ඉලියඩ්” හා ”ඔඩිසි” මුල්ම අවස්ථාවේදී වාචිකව පවත්වාගෙන ආ සාහිත්‍ය සම්ප්‍රදායකට අයත්ය. ඒවා ලේඛණගත කෙරෙන්නට ඇත්තේ පසුකලෙක බව පිලිගැනීමයි. මේ අලිඛිත ඉතිහාසය හා පරිනාම ප්‍රවණතාවය නිසා මෙම වීර කාව්‍යවල අන්තර්ගතය, ඒවාට අදාල කතා වස්තූන්, මෙන්ම ආඛ්‍යාන රීති ආදියද සාමූහික ජන විඥානයක් තුල පහසුවෙන් ප්‍රචාරණය හා ප්‍රසාරණය වෙමින් කලක් මුලුල්ලේ පවතින්නට ඇත. එමෙන්ම, වෙලඳ කණ්ඩායම් හා දේශගවේෂක සංචාරකයින් අතින් දේශ හා සංස්කෘතික සීමා අතික්‍රමණය කරමින් මේ කතා වස්තූන් ප්‍රදේශ ගණනාවක් හරහා විසරණය වන්නට ඇත. මේ හේතුව නිසාම මෙම මහා කාව්‍යවල ප්‍රාදේශීය සංස්කරණයන් මෙන්ම විවිධ සංස්කෘතීන්ට අනුකූල වුනු රචනයන්ද පවතී. මෙම නව සංස්කෘතීන් අතරට කාන්දු වීමත්, වෙනත් එවැනි සංස්කෘතීන්ගෙන් අවශෝෂණය කරගැනීමත් වඩාත් හොඳින් ඉස්මතුවන අවස්ථාවක් වන්නේ වාල්මිකීගේ රාමායණය තුල වන අතර එය ගැන පසුවට සඳහන් කරන්නෙමු.

ග්‍රීක සම්ප්‍රදායේ හමුවන තවත් වඩා පසු කාලිනව රචනය වුනු මහා කාව්‍යයක් වන්නේ ක්‍රි.පූ 3වන සියවසේ ලියන්නට ඇතැයි සැලකෙන රෝඩ්ස් හි ඇපොලෝනියස් ප්‍රබන්ධ කල “ආර්ගොනොටිකා” (හෙවත්, “වොයේජ් ඔෆ් ද ආර්ගෝ”) කෘතියය. “ඉලියඩ්” හා “ඔඩිසි” මෙන් නොවන එහි මුල් ප්‍රකාශනයම ලිඛිත එකකි. “ඉලියඩ්” කාව්‍යයට වස්තු විෂය වන්නේ ග්‍රීක පුරවෘත්ත හා ජනශ්‍රැති සාහිත්‍යයේ කේන්ද්‍රීය ස්ථානයක් හිමිකරගෙන ඇති ට්‍රෝජන් යුද්ධයයි. “රාමායණයේ” ලංකා සටන හා “මහාභාරතයේ” කුරුක්ෂේත්‍ර සටන වැනිම වූ ප්‍රාග්-ඓතිහාසික සමයක පිහිටන මෙහිදී ග්‍රීක රාජ්‍යයන්ගේ එක්සත් හමුදාවක් විසින් බටහිර (සුළු) ආසියාවේ පිහිටි බවට පුරාවෘත්තවල සඳහන් ට්‍රෝයි දේශය වටලා එයට පහර දීමක් සිදුකරයි. මෙම ආක්‍රමණයට හේතුව ලෙස පුරාවෘත්තවල සඳහන් වන්නේ – “රාමායණයේ” ආකාරයටම – ප්‍රාග්-ඓතිහාසික ග්‍රීසියේ ස්පාර්ටාවේ මෙනොලෝස් රජගේ මෙහෙසිය වූ හෙලන් කුමරියව ට්‍රෝයි නුවරින් එහි පැමිණි පැරිස් කුමාරයා විසින් “පැහැරගෙන” යාමයි (මෙය පැහැරගෙන යාමක්ද, කැමැත්තෙන් යාමක් ද කියා අදටත් විද්වත් විවාද පවතින අතර, පුරාවෘත්තයේ විවිධ වෙළුම් අතරද පරස්පරතා පවතී). මෙම “පලායාම” මෙනොලොස්ට තම කීර්තිනාමය හා සම්බන්ධ ගැටළුවක් වන අතර ග්‍රීසියේ වඩාත් රණකාමී රජතුමා ලෙසට පුරාවෘත්තයේ එන ඇගමෙම්නොන්ට මෙය ට්‍රෝයි නුවරට පහරදී අල්ලා ගැනීමට හොඳ නිමිත්තක් සැපයූ සිද්ධියකි.

විවිධ ග්‍රීක රාජ්‍ය රැසක සහය ඇතිව දියත් වන නැව් සේනාංකය ට්‍රෝයි නුවර වටලයි. ශක්තිමත් කොටු බැම්මකින් වටකර ඇති ට්‍රෝයි නුවර ප්‍රසිද්ධියට පත්වී තිබුනේ “යටත්කරගත නොහැකි” නගරයක් ලෙසයි. ග්‍රීක හමුදාව වසර දහයක් කඳවුරු බැඳ සිටියි. “ඉලියඩ්” කාව්‍යය ආරම්භවන්නේ මේ දසවැනි වර්ෂයේදී, සටන් විරාමයක් අතරතුරදීයි. ට්‍රෝයි නුවර වෙරළ තිරයේ පවතින නිද්‍රාශීලී තත්වය දෙස ඔලිම්පස් කඳු මුදුනේ සිට බලා සිටින දෙවිවරුන් තීරණය කරන්නේ මේ අලස, අතීරණාත්මක තත්වය පැවතුනා කල් වැඩි බවයි. “දේව-මැදිහත්වීමකින්” එක් පිලකින් අනෙක් පිලට නිකුත්වන ඊතලයකින් සටන තීරණාත්මක ලෙස යලි ඇවිලේ.

මෙසේ ආරම්භවන “ඉලියඩ්” මහා කාව්‍යයේ අප අද භාවිත කරන මුද්‍රණය පරිච්ඡේද (හෝ ඛණ්ඩ) 24 කින් යුතු කෘතියකි. එය අවසාන වන්නේ ට්‍රෝජන් හමුදාවේ මහා යුධවිරුවා වන හෙක්ටර් කුමාරයාගේ මරණයෙනි. ට්‍රොජන් යුද්ධයෙන් පසු අවස්ථාවක් පාදක කරගනිමින් රචනය වන “ඔඩිසි” මහා කාව්‍යය යුද්ධයට සහභාගී වී, එය ජයගැනීමට උරදුන් ග්‍රීසියේ ඉතාකා රාජ්‍යයේ ඔඩිසියස් (යුලිසිස්) ගේ සියරට බලායෑමේ වික්‍රමය විග්‍රහ කරයි. ට්‍රෝයි නුවර මහා කොටුබැම්ම පරයමින් නගරය තුලට ඇතුලු වී එය යටත් කරගෙන විනාශ කිරීමට යොදාගත් “ට්‍රෝජන් අශ්වයා”ගේ ප්‍රයෝගය ඔඩිසියස්ගේ උපක්‍රමයකි. තම පීතෘභූමිය බලා ගමන් ගන්නා ඔඩිසියස් විවිධ අනතුරු හා ආන්තරා වලට මුහුණ දෙයි. ඔහුට නැවත තම ගම්බිම් බලා ලගාවීමට වසර දහයක්ම ගතවේ. ඔහුගේ නැව කුනාටුවලට හසුවේ. විවිධ දූපත්වල වෙසෙන සුන්දර ගැහැණුන් නිසාද ගමන ප්‍රමාද වේ. නැවත තම රාජධානිය වෙත ලඟාවීමේදී තම සිහසුනත් ඔහුගේ රැජිණ පෙනෙ‍ලාපීවත් අත්පත්කරගැනීමට තරඟ කරන එකසිය නවදෙනෙකු පරාජයට පත්කිරීමටද ඔඩිසියස්ට සිදුවේ.

රෝඩ්ස් හි ඇපොලොනියස්ගේ “ආර්ගොනොටිකා” ද වික්‍රමාන්විත ගවේෂණයක් මත කේන්ද්‍රවන කාව්‍යයකි. තමාට පැවරෙන වීර අභියෝගයක් ජයගන්නට ජේසන් නැමැති එම කාව්‍යයේ මහා වීරයා තම පිරිසත් සමඟ යෙදෙන සමූද්‍ර තරණයක් හරහා කතාව ගොඩනැගේ. ත්‍රාසජනක අවස්ථා, මායාභූත හමුවීම්, අනාගත වාක්‍ය, දේව මැදිහත්වීම් ආදී “ඉලියඩ්” හා “ඔඩිසි” තුල විශේෂයෙනුත්, මහා කාව්‍ය සාහිත්‍යයේ පොදුවේත් ඇති ආඛ්‍යාන හා කතා රීති මෙහිදීද දක්නට ඇත. ජේසන්ට තම අභියෝගය ජයගන්නට උපකාර කරන්නේ ග්‍රීක ලෝකයෙන් බාහිර කොල්කිස් (වර්තමාන ජෝර්ජියාවේ බවට සැලකෙන) හි “මායාකාර” මිඩෙයාය. ග්‍රීක පුරාවෘත්තයට හා සාහිත්‍යයට අනුව මිඩෙයා ජේසන් සමඟ නැවත ග්‍රීක ලෝකය බලා පැමිණේ. මිඩෙයා වෘත්තාන්තය ද විවිධාකාරයෙන් ග්‍රීක සාහිත්‍ය තුල ස්ථානගත වන අතර ඉන් වඩා ප්‍රසිද්ධ අවස්ථාවක් වන්නේ යුරිපිඩිස්ගේ “මිඩෙයා” නාට්‍යයයි.

තම පියාගේ ආත්මය මුනගැසෙනු වස් මළවුන්ගේ ලෝකයට පිවිසෙන “ඉනීඩ්” හි ඉනියාස්.

එහි අනෙකුත් කලා, ගෘහ නිර්මාණ හා සංස්කෘතික දායාදයන් ප්‍රකට කරන අයුරින්ම රෝමයේ සාහිත්‍යය තුලත් ග්‍රීක සම්ප්‍රදායේ ලක්ෂණ තදින් පිහිටා තිබේ. රෝම සම්ප්‍රදායේ මහා කාව්‍ය අතර වර්ජිල්ගේ “ඉනීඩ්” (ක්‍රි.පූ 29-19) හා ඔවීඩ්ගේ “මෙටමෝර්ෆසීස්” තුලනාත්මක සම්භාව්‍ය සාහිත්‍ය අධ්‍යයනය තුල වැදගත් තැනක් හිමිකරගනී. මෙහිදී “ඉනීඩ්” තම ක්ෂේත්‍රය බවට පත්කරගන්නේ රෝමයේ පුරාවෘත්තමය ආදි මුතුන්මිත්තා වන (ඇතැම් අය ඇනියාස් කියා හඳුන්වන) ඉනියාස් ප්‍රමුඛ පිරිස “හිස්පෙරියා” නොහොත් “බටහිර භූමිය” සොයා යන ගමනයි. ඔවුන්ගේ ගමන ආරම්භවන්නේ ග්‍රීකයින් විසින් ගිනිතබා විනාශ කල ට්‍රෝයි නුවර සිටයි. ට්‍රෝජන් නුවරින් දිවි ගලවාගත් 700ක් දෙනා සමග රහසිගතව සඟවා තැබූ නැව් සේනාංකයක නැගී පිටත්වන ඉනියාස් බාධක රැසක් අභිබවමින් තම ගමනාන්තය සොයා ගමන් කරයි. “ඉලියඩ්” මෙන්ම මෙම කාව්‍යයද ආරම්භ වන්නේ වීර කාව්‍ය සම්ප්‍රදායට අනන්‍ය රීතියක් වන කතාවේ අවසානයට ආසන්න අවස්ථාවකිනි (“medias res”). මෙසේ අවසානයට ආසන්න තැනකින් ආරම්භවන කතාව බොහෝ විට ප්‍රතිආවර්ජනයක් වැනි ක්‍රමෝපායක් හරහා කතාවේ මුල් අවස්ථාවන් ග්‍රහණය කරගෙන නැවත ඉදිරියට විකාශය වේ. සාමාන්‍ය මතය වන්නේ “ඉනීඩ්” ප්‍රබන්ධ කර අවසන් කිරීමට පෙර වර්ජිල් මිය ගිය බවත්, ඔහුගේ අවසන් කැමැත්තට පිටින් යන රෝමයේ ඔගස්ටස් අධිරාජ්‍යයා මෙම කෘතිය ප්‍රකාශයට පත්කල බවත් ය.

“ඉලියඩ්” සිට “ඉනීඩ්” දක්වා වන අපරදිග වීර කාව්‍යාවලියට සමාන්තරව බිහිවුනු පෙරදිග වීර කාව්‍ය සම්ප්‍රදාය වාල්මිකීගේ “රාමායණය” සහ ව්‍යාසගේ “මහාභාරතය” යන කේන්ද්‍ර දෙකෙන් යුක්තය. ක්‍රි.පූ 7-4 සියවස් අතර ලියවුනු බවට (එහි අවසන් කොටස් ක්‍රි.ව 4 වන සියවසේදී පමණ ලියවෙන්නට ඇතැයි ද ඇතැම් අය සලකන) “රාමායණයේ” සම්ප්‍රදායානුකූල කතෘත්වය පැවරෙන්නේ වාල්මිකී නම් පඬිවරයාටය. පද්‍ය 24,000 කින් පමණ යුතු “රාමායණය” හා සමපාතවන පද්‍ය 200,000කින් පමණ යුක්ත “මහාභාරතය” ක්‍රි.පූ 3 හා ක්‍රි.ව 3 සියවස් අතර ලියවෙන්නට ඇතැයි අනුමාන කෙරෙයි.

අපරදිග ලෝකයේ “ඉලියඩ්” හා “ඔඩිසි” කාව්‍යයන් ජන ජීවිතයට, සංස්කෘතියට, සාහිත්‍යයට බලපෑ ආකාරයටමත්, ඒවා වෙලඳාම, යුද්ධය, සංක්‍රමණය හා දේශගවේෂණය අතින් ප්‍රාදේශීය වශයෙන් හා කලාපීය වශයෙන් සංසරණය වුනු ආකාරයටමත් “මහාභාරතය” හා “රාමායණයද” දකුණු, නැගෙනහිර හා අග්නිදිග ආසියා කලාප තුල විසරණය විය. ප්‍රාදේශීය වශයෙන් මේවාහි ප්‍රභේද ඇතිවුනු අතර හින්දු හා බෞද්ධ සංස්කෘතික බලපෑමද මෙයට හේතුවන්නට ඇත. උදාහරණයක් ලෙසට 12 වන සියවසේ පමණ රචනා වන්නට ඇතැයි සිතන “රාමාවතාරම්” හෙවත් “කම්බා රාමායනය” වාල්මිකීගේ රාමායණය දෙමළ භාෂාවට නැගීමට ගත් උත්සාහයකි. ඇතැම් අග්නිදිග ආසියාතික කලාපීය රටවල රාම බෝධිසත්ව ස්වරූපයෙන් සැලකීම නිසා “රාමායණය” ඒ පරිකල්පනයට පහසුවෙන් ඇතුලු වන්නට ඇත.

“මහාභාරතය” හා “රාමායණය” යන කාව්‍ය ද්විත්වයම පෞරාණික හින්දු ඉගැන්වීම් ව්‍යංගයෙන් සමාජගත කරන්නටත් ඒවා පවත්වාගෙන යාමටත් පබැදුනු බව එක් මට්ටමකදී පැහැදිලි වේ. මෙම මහා කාව්‍ය ද්වන්ධය පොදු වශයෙන් පීතෘ භූමිකාව, සහෝදර සබඳතා, විවාහය හා ගෘහස්ථ ජීවිතය, දේශපාලනය, පාලිතභාවය, රාජත්වය, දෙවියන් ‍කෙරෙහි වන භක්තිය ආදී සංස්කෘතික අංශ පිලිබඳව පරමාදර්ශ සපයන අඛ්‍යානයන් ලෙස සැලකිය හැක. “රාමායණයේ” එන රාම, සීතා, භරත, ලක්ෂ්මණ, රාවණ හා හනුමන් ඒ ආකාරයෙන් ඉන්දීය උප මහද්වීපයේත් අග්නිදිග ආසියා කලාපයේ වියට්නාමයේ සිට තායිලන්තය හා ඉන්දුනීසියාව දක්වාත් ඒ ශිෂ්ටාචාරවල ජනවිඥානයට ඇතුලු වී ඒවා තුල වෙනම අනන්‍යතා ගොඩනගාගත්හ.

පොදු තේමා හා ලක්ෂණ

වෙනත් ලක්ෂණද ඇතුලත්ව පහතින් සඳහන් කර ඇති විශේෂ සාධක බටහිර හා පෙරදිග වීර කාව්‍යයන් තුල පොදු රීතීන් ලෙස භාවිත වේ.

1) රජවරුන් හා මහා වීරයන් ආශ්‍රිතව කතා හා තේමා
2) මනුෂ්‍ය ලෝකය හා මැදිහත්වන දෙවිවරුන් (Divine intervention)
3) පරමාදර්ශී චරිත
4) මහා කාව්‍යවලට අනන්‍ය අතිශයෝක්තිය (Epic exaggeration)
5) වීරත්වය තීව්‍ර කරන උපමා රූපක
6) අනාගත වැකි / දේව වැකි
7) වෙනත් සමාන්තර ප්‍රබන්ධ හා ප්‍රවාද සමඟ ඇති සංකලනය

කුමන සම්ප්‍රදායට අයත් වුවත් වීර කාව්‍යවල ප්‍රධාන චරිත ලෙස මෙහෙයවෙන්නේ රජවරුන් හා ප්‍රභූ පැලැන්තියේ අයයි. දුප්පත් සිඟා ජීවත් වන පීඩිත මිනිසෙකු ගැන අද දක්වා වීර කාව්‍යයක් ලියවී නැත. රනින් සැරසූ මහා මන්දිර, සමෘද්ධිය හා සාරවත් බව, මහා සටන් හා මහා යුද්ධ, හැතැප්ම ගණන් ඈතට ඊතල විදින දුනු, කැපුම් පහර හා හී තුවාල දරාගෙන සටනේ යෙදෙන වීරයන්, විවිධ තරාතිරමේ දෙවිවරුන් හා කෙරෙන මුනගැසීම්, අනර්ඝතම මට්ටමේ භෝජන සංග්‍රහ ආදිය නැවත නැවත දැකිය හැකි සාමාන්‍ය අවස්ථාවන්ය.

ද්‍රෞපදීගේ වස්ත්‍රාහරණය අවස්ථාව – “දේව මැදිහත්වීමට” යෝග්‍ය උදාහරණයක් ලෙස.

හස්තිනාපුර උරුමය වෙනුවෙන් කෞරව හා පාණ්ඩව ඥාති සොයුරන් අතර ඇතිවුනු යුද්ධය හෙවත් කුරුක්ෂේත්‍ර යුද්ධය “මහාභාරතයේ” උච්චතම අවස්ථාවක් ලෙස සැලකිය හැක. “මහාභාරතය” ඇසුරින් නිමවුනු ටෙලි නාට්‍යයක් 90 දශකයේ මුල් කාලයේ ලංකාවේද විකාශනය වුනු නිසා මෙය ශ්‍රී ලාංකිකයන්ට සමීප කතා පුවතක් බව සිතේ. පාණ්ඩව කුමාරවරුන්ගේ දක්ෂතම දුනුවායා වුනු අර්ජුන් හා ඔහුගේ රථචාර්ය ක්‍රිෂ්ණ අතර ඇතිවුනු දෙබස ආශ්‍රිතව හින්දු සම්ප්‍රදායේ වැදගත්ම කෘතියක් වන “භගවත් ගීතාව” සම්පාදනය වී හින්දු සංස්කෘතියට එකතු විය. තම ලේ ඥාතීන් සමඟ සටන් කිරීමට සිදුවීමේ ආත්මීය උභතෝකෝටිකයට මුහුණ දෙන අර්ජුන්ට ක්‍රිෂ්ණ ලබාදෙන මාර්ගෝපදේශය ඇසුරින් මෙය රචනා වී ඇත. ඉහත පොදු ලක්ෂණ අතරින් අවසානයට සඳහන් කල සමාන්තර ආධ්‍යාත්මික හා සාහිත්‍ය ලෝකය සමඟ මහා කවි සංකලනය වුනු ආකාරය තේරුම් ගැනීමට “භගවත් ගීතාව” නිදර්ශනයක් සපයයි. මෙවැනිම වෙනත් අවස්ථා ජනශ්‍රැතිය මෙන්ම පුරාන කවි සම්ප්‍රදායේ සාහිත්‍ය තුලද දැකිය හැක.

මනුෂ්‍ය කටයුතුවලට දෙවියන් මැදිහත් වීම, මනුෂ්‍ය ක්‍රියාකාරකම් දේව භක්තිය හා කැමැත්තේ පිලිබිඹුවක් වීම, ඔලිම්පස් වැනි දේව සභාවක ගන්නා තීරණ අනුව මනුෂ්‍ය දෛවය හැසිරවීම ආදී භූතාත්මක තලයන් වීර කාව්‍යවල අනන්‍යතාවයේ කොටසකි. “ඉනීඩ්” කාව්‍යයේ ට්‍රෝයි නුවර යුද්ධයෙන් විනාශ වීම එම නුවරට අධිපති දෙවියා වුනු නෙප්චූන්ද ඇතුලු ප්‍රභූ තලයේ දෙවිවරුන් කිහිප දෙනෙකුගේම අනුමතය හා එකඟතාවය මත සිදුවුනු එකකි. ගිනිගෙන විනාශ වුනු ට්‍රෝයි නගරයෙන් පලායන සරණාගත කණ්ඩායමට නායකත්වය දෙන ඉනියාස්ගේ බිරිඳ වන ක්‍රෙවුසා පලායන කණ්ඩායමෙන් වෙන්කර ඇගේ මරණය වෙත යොමුකරවන්නේද දේව මැදිහත්වීමෙනි. (මීට හේතුව වන්නේ අනාගතයේ ලතින් දේශයේ බිහිකරන නව රාජ්‍යයක ඉනියාස් හා අතිනත ගැනීමට රැජිණක් දේව කැමැත්ත අනුව ඒ වනවිටත් තෝරා සිටින නිසාය).

“රාමායණය” ඉන්දුනීසියාවේ වේදිකාවට නැගූ අවස්ථාවක් 

දේව අතපෙවීම් සම්බන්ධ ස්මරණීය අවස්ථාවක් “මහාභාරතයේ” දාදුකෙලියේ යෙදෙන පාණ්ඩව කුමාරවරුන්ගේ දේපල හා වස්තුව කෞරවයන් හට පරාජය වන අවස්ථාවේදී සිදුවේ. අවසානයේදී තම රැජින වන ද්‍රෞපදීවද ඔට්ටු තබා අහිමිකරගන්නා පාණ්ඩවයන් ඉදිරිපිටදීම ද්‍රෞපදීගේ ඇඳි වස්ත්‍රය උනාදැමීමෙන් ඇයව නිර්වස්ත්‍ර කිරීමට කෞරවයන් සැරසේ. මේ අවස්ථාවේදී ද්‍රෞපදී තම දුක්ගැන්විල්ල ඉදිරිපත් කරමින් ක්‍රිෂ්ණට කන්නලව් කර සිටී. එම කන්නලව්වට කන් දෙන ක්‍රිෂ්ණ මැදිහත්වීම නිසා හාස්කමකින් ද්‍රෞපදීගේ වස්ත්‍රය ගලවන ප්‍රමාණයටම දිගුවී ඇගේ ශරීරය ආවරණය කරයි. අවසානයේදී එය ගලවන්නට අණ ලැබූ දුශාසන් කුමාරයා වෙහෙස වී ඇද වැටේ. මෙවැනි තීරණාත්මක අවස්ථා රැසකදී දේව මැදිහත්වීම දක්නට ලැබීම සාමාන්‍ය මහා කාව්‍ය ලක්ෂණයකි. “ඉලියඩ්” කෘතියේ යුධ පෙරමුණ දර්ශනයකදී (එම කාව්‍යයේ සුළු චරිතයක් වන) ඉනියාස් අමනෝඥ ලෙස ග්‍රීකයින්ගේ මහා වීරයා වන ඇකිලිස්ට අභියෝග කර සිටි මොහොතේ ඉනියාස් හා සටන් වැදී ඔහු පරාජය කර ඔහුව මරා දැමීමට ඇකිලිස් ලෑස්ති වෙයි. මෙවිට පොසයිඩන් (නෙප්වූන්) සුළං කුණාටුවක් මවා ඉනියාස්ව බේරාගනීයි. අනාගත රෝමයේ මුතුන්මිත්තා වන්නේ මේ ඉනියාස් ය.

වීර කාව්‍යවල වීරයන් පොදුවේ පරමාදර්ශී චරිත ලෙස ගොඩනංවා ඇත. දේව භක්තිය ඇතුළු මහා පුරුෂාර්ථ ඔවුන්ගේ ජීවිත හසුරුවයි. තමා ලතින් දේශය බලා යන ගමන අතරතුර උතුරු අප්‍රිකාවේ කාර්තේජයේ ඩයිඩෝ කුමරිය සමඟ ගෘහස්ථ සම්බන්ධයක් ඇතිකරගෙන සිටින ඉනියාස් ඇයව අතහැර නැවත නැව් නගින්නේ දේව පණ්වුඩයකට ගරු කරමිනි. නින්දේ දී සිහිනෙකින් ඔහු වෙත එන තම පියාගේ ආත්මයට වුනු පොරොන්දුවක් ඉටු කිරීමට ඉනියාස් ඉතා දුෂ්කර හා අභියෝගාත්මක ගමනක් වුනු මළවුන්ගේ ලෝකය බලාද පිටත්වෙයි.

මේ අතර දේව වාක්‍ය හා අනාගත වැකි ද ප්‍රධාන වීර කාව්‍ය තේමාවකි. සම්ප්‍රදායක වක්තෘ වරුන් මෙන්ම, වෙස්වලා පැමිණෙන දෙවිවරුන් හා සිහිනෙන් පෙනී සිටින මළගියවුන් මාර්ගයෙන් අනාගතයේ සිදුවීමට නියමිත දේ ගැන විවරණයන් මේ වීරවරයන් ලබාගනී. ඉතා වැදගත් අනාගත වැකි කිහිපයක්ම අඩංගු “ඉනීඩ්” කෘතියේ නිර්මාණ ගුණයෙන් ඉහලම අවස්ථාවක් වන්නේ ඉනියාස් වීරයා මළවුන්ගේ ලෝකයට පිවිස තම පියාගේ ආත්මය මුනගැසෙන අවස්ථාවයි. ලතින් දේශය සොයා යන ගමනේ බාධක හමුවේ හෙම්බත්වී සිටින ඉනියාස්ව යලි උපදින්නට වරම් හිමිකරගත් වුන් සිටින නිම්නයකට කැඳවා යන පිය ආත්මය එහි සිටින ඇතැම් ආත්ම පෙන්වා පවසා සිටින්නේ ඒ අනාගතයේ බිහිවන රෝමයේ උපදින්නට නියමිත අය බවයි. රෝම ඉතිහාසයේ ගාම්භීරබවද මතුකරමින් ලියවෙන “ඉනීඩ්” කෘතියේ ඉතා සාර්ථකම කාණ්ඩයක් ලෙස මම මෙම කොටස සලකන්නෙමි.

මෙවැනි අවස්ථා තීව්‍රව ඉදිරිපත් කිරීමට මහා කාව්‍ය රචකයා නිතරම අතිශයෝක්තිය, වීරත්වය ඔප මට්ටම් කරන උපමා රූපක, අලංකාරක, වර්ණනා ආදිය සම්ප්‍රදායිකව යොදාගනී. සාමාන්‍ය උපමා රූපක වලින් වෙනස් වන මේවා උපමාවක් ලෙස ගලපන අවස්ථාවක් දීර්ඝ ලෙස විස්තර කරමින් වෙනම කතා අවස්ථාවක් දක්වා ඒ හරහා ප්‍රවේශය ලබාගන්නා අවස්ථා මෙම සාහිත්‍යය තුල සුලභව දැකිය හැක. අතිශයෝක්ති වර්ණනා හා අලංකාරක පසුකලෙක වෙනත් සාහිත්‍ය ප්‍රභේද තුලටද අවශෝෂණය වී ඒවා පෝෂණය කර ඇතිබව තුලනාත්මක අධ්‍යයන හරහා හඳුනාගත හැක. පහසු උදාහරණයක් ලෙස සංස්කෘත සම්ප්‍රදායෙන් පෝෂණය වී ඇති සම්භාව්‍ය සිංහල සාහිත්‍යයේ කෝට්ටේ යුගය දක්වාම ඇතැම් නිර්මාණ තුල මෙම ලක්ෂණ හඳුනාගත හැක.