A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Saturday, August 27, 2016
Book Review: Sri Lanka - Lost Evenings, Lost Lives: Tamil Poems of the Sri Lankan Civil War
(Edited, translated and introduced by Lakshmi Holmstrom & Sascha Ebeling, UK, 2016.)
By Prof. Charles Sarvan-Dated 22-Aug-2016
If of the three traditional genres of Literature (Poetry, Drama,
Fiction), Poetry is the most literary, it is also the most difficult to
translate. Apart from other qualities, poetry being associated with
song, is mnemonic: we remember lines from poetry and song but rarely
from prose. In translation (particularly when, as with the present
collection, it is into another language that is completely different)
inevitably much is lost. And it is not only musicality but cultural
connotation. Literature emerges from, and in turn reflects, a specific
way of life, a culture; when translated (trans-ported) into a foreign
language and culture, rich nuances of significance can be lost.
While a poem must stand on its own, background information can throw a
different light, enhance appreciation. For example, in Nuhman’s ironic
poem, ‘Buddha murdered’ (p. 25), the Buddha and his teaching have to be
obliterated in order to burn down the Jaffna Library. On 1 June 1981, in
an act of barbarism, the Library which housed well over 90,000 works,
one of the biggest in Asia, was destroyed including irreplaceable
ancient manuscripts and scrolls. Similarly, Rashmy’s ‘The inscription of
defeat’ (pp. 129-131) requires some knowledge of the history of the
ethnic conflict, and of the LTTE leader.
However, Lost Evenings, dealing primarily with violence and its impact - death and destruction; sorrow, pain of body and soul – attempts to transcend specificity and be universally comprehensible. It must be admitted that, as George Orwell wrote in his essay ‘Writers and Leviathan’ (1948), though we have “an awareness of the enormous injustice and misery of the world”, our response to literature can be coloured by “loyalties” which are non-literary.
However, Lost Evenings, dealing primarily with violence and its impact - death and destruction; sorrow, pain of body and soul – attempts to transcend specificity and be universally comprehensible. It must be admitted that, as George Orwell wrote in his essay ‘Writers and Leviathan’ (1948), though we have “an awareness of the enormous injustice and misery of the world”, our response to literature can be coloured by “loyalties” which are non-literary.
The translators give a brief outline of events during the course of
nearly thirty years of war: the savage 1983 pogrom, “the brutal
intervention of the Indian Peace Keeping Force”, the increasing violence
of the Tamil Tigers, and so to “the last terrible months of war” (p.
9). The poems are given in chronological order of publication and so
parallel; arise from, and reflect, this history.
The irruption of brutality destroys what was once normality in Nuhman’s
poem, ‘Last evening, this morning’ (pp. 17-19). Last evening, we popped
into a bookshop, idly watched the crowds at the bus terminal, took in a
film and then cycled home. This morning, bullets pierce bodies, the
terminal is deserted, the market shattered.
And this was how we lost our evenings
we lost this life.
It’s when we fall ill that we realize how wonderful it is to be free
from pain and disability – a normality otherwise taken for granted. And
so it is that when violence irrupts into an otherwise placid pattern of
life. (I recall several years ago being asked in Jaffna by a man in
genuine puzzlement: “All we want is to be allowed to lead our lives as
we want. Sir, why don’t they leave us alone?” He thought it was a simple
wish and, therefore, a fair question.) Jesurasa’s poem, ‘Under New
Shoes’ is a ‘meditation’ based on Jaffna’s old Dutch fort. Three hundred
years have passed since the imperialist, occupying, Dutch left; colour
(now not white) and language (now Sinhala) have changed but for Tamils “the same rule of oppression” (p. 21) continues.
The compulsion to communicate with a loved one makes the persona of
Urvasi’s poem, ‘Do you understand?’ (pp. 29-31) write a letter though
there’s no address to send it to. (A poignant work, it recalled Ezra
Pound’s beautiful rendering of the Chinese poem, ‘The River-Merchant’s
Wife: A Letter’, available on Google.) Urvasi’s persona includes in her
letter what one could call home details: the jasmine is in bloom; the
small puppy runs in circles, its tail raised; I dust your books. But a
different reality (menace) throbs beneath the lines: they haven’t come
to interrogate me – as yet!
‘I Could Forget All This’ by Cheran (pp. 33-4), a post-1983 poem,
remembers ghastly sights such as a thigh-bone protruding from an
upturned, burnt-out car; a socket empty of its eye, and a pregnant
Sinhalese woman carrying off a cradle from a burning Tamil house. (One
thinks of what has been described as the shortest story ever written in
English. It consists of six words: “For sale, baby shoes. Never worn.”)
Cheran concludes with a powerful use of symbolism. But
How shall I forget the broken shards
and the scattered rice
lying parched upon the earth?
A related poem is ‘Oppressed by Nights of War’ by Sivaramani (pp. 45-6)
showing what happens to children in a time of protracted and “total”
war: children their childhood destroyed. Biographical information
heightens our response to Captain Vanathi’s ‘My Unwritten Poem’, a work
that repeatedly urges the addressee to complete what she couldn’t
accomplish. Vanathi was killed in action shortly afterwards, and this is
her last poem. The year is 1991, and there is still the belief that all
their suffering and sacrifice will not be in vain: As you walk freely
in an independentTamileelam, I and the thousands of other
martyrs will smile with joy (p. 57): her poem will then have been
written. Metaphorically, freedom is the poem that must be ‘written’
(achieved). It is indeed strange, very strange, to read these lines in
the present context.
The editorial note to Aazhiyaal’s poem, ‘Mannamperis’, explains that
Tamil Koneswari Selvakumar was gang-raped by Sinhalese soldiers who then
killed her by exploding a grenade in her vagina (p. 75). But the poem,
broadening outward, encompasses other instances of “man’s inhumanity to
man”. During what in Sri Lanka is known as the Insurgency (the violent
uprising of Left-leaning young men and women against the government)
Padmini Mannamperi, a Sinhalese beauty-queen, was raped and killed by
members of the Sri Lankan army (April 1971). The editorial note does not
elaborate that, in an avowedly Buddhist and conservative country,
Padmini was stripped naked and forced to walk down the street; that she
was buried even before she was dead. One thinks, for example, of William
McGowan’s Only Man Is Vile: The Tragedy of Sri Lanka (New
York, 1992). It may be added that, whatever the sins and crimes of the
Tamil Tigers (and they were several and grievous; destructive and, as
History shows, finally fatal) there is no record of them ever indulging
in rape or in the sexual humiliation of women. On the contrary, women
enjoyed an unprecedented degree of emancipation; of equality. See for
example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
feature=player_embedded&v=nSSv9Kk3tkI
feature=player_embedded&v=nSSv9Kk3tkI
The theme of exile finds expression in poems such as ‘The Lizard’s
Lament’ by Solaikkili (pp. 67-69); ‘Identity’ by Aazhiyal (p. 99);
‘Goodbye Mother’ by Jayapalan (pp. 105-107) and in ‘Photographs of
Children, Women, Men’ by Cheran (pp. 149-151). In the last mentioned
poem, documentation is demanded of the refugees but all they carry are
“burning tears”, and memories of murder and ethnic cleansing.
Estrangement, to a greater or lesser degree, awaits the first-generation
refugee. As Doris Lessing wrote, once you leave your first home, you
have left all homes forever.
But to leave behind the one room
where you have lived all your life…
that is tragedy.
(Solaikkilli, ‘The Lizard’s Lament’, p. 69)
2009 marks the year when the Tigers were totally annihilated, and the
poems following reflect this reality. Indian poet Ravikumar in ‘There
Was a Time Like That’ (pp. 119-121), using the refrain “There was once a
time”, reflects on a time when things were very different, both in Sri
Lanka and in Tamil Nadu. Latha in ‘Empty Days’ (p. 147) writes that “the
last little fragment of land that was ours” is lost; our people and
their dreams destroyed. There is not a sign that they ever existed. The
persona in Sharmila Seyyid’s ‘Keys to an Empty House’ (pp. 143-5) has
only her memories and the keys to her father’s house: the little house
itself has been totally destroyed. But though the triumphant enemy
celebrate; dance and mock “our overflowing tears” (Cheran, ‘Forest
Healing’, p. 133), the father in Jesurasa’s poem, ‘The Time Remaining’
(p. 123), comforts his son: Life has destroyed our dreams; your path
forward may now seem blocked but your time will come.
To go on would strain the Editor’s allowance of space, and I leave it to
readers to come to terms, each in her own way, with these poems. To
learn the ‘facts’ of the 30-year conflict, one turns to history books
and articles, biased or objective. But if one wants to gain something of
an insight into that experience, one turns to Literature.
If I may conclude on a personal note, I never met Lakshmi Holmstrom but
we corresponded; I considered her a friend, and write this introduction
with deep regret at her passing. Finally, I thank Aruni, my niece, for
presenting me with a copy of Lost Evenings, Lost Lives.