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| Friday, 14 January 2005 |
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New insights into criticism Nava vichara sankalpa The publication of Prof. Wimal Dissanayaka's new collection of essays titled Nava vichara sankalpa (new concepts in criticism) comes at a time when the Sinhala reader is faced with a quandary as to what is really meant by literary and art criticism. All manner of views are floated through the Sinhala press and periodicals in the name of postmodernistic idealogies and some of the terms like deconstructionism (visanyojanaya) and hegemony (hejomaniya) have come to stay as tongue twisting jargons on the part of the half baked individuals who so fight and wrangle in the name of post modernism. Furthermore names like Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Barthes are flung on incessantly without much significance exhibiting a pseudo-knowledge and a lunatic approach posing more irritation than sincerity. What the professor is trying to do is obvious and serious for he takes some of the terminology connected with the art and literary criticism and attempts to give fresh insights from various points of view. Perhaps as one may envisage that this is a tiresome task on the part of a compiler, as he has to be in some ways encyclopedic and sometimes be commentarial. At the outset he subdivides his field of analysis into five main groups inclusive of such broad aspects as language, literature, culture, society and art. The broad categories are classified for the sake of clarity in the final commentary, where he submits a whole range of short articles with references to primary and secondary sources. The present volume (running to 355 pages containing 75 essays) in many ways is a companion volume to his earlier publication on the introduction to postmodernism titled (paschatnavya vadaya), which eventually created a certain degree of interest among the Sinhala reader though some others misunderstood the mission for the compilation of those essays came to be as a series of short articles published in a Sunday newspaper. Although some of the essays in the present volume stem from newspaper publications the author compiler takes the reader into a depth with clearer insights citing sources mainly available in English. The compiler feels that the situations pertaining to literature, culture and other superficially branded categories change from time to time as a result of new explorations and new creative innovations. As such the literary critic cannot afford to be a stagnant force solely depending on his archaic knowledge narrowly gained viewpoints from his past learnings from a single seat of learning. This I feel is a truism in the present context of the evaluation of creative works in all fields like drama, short story, poetry, novel, paintings, music and sculpture. The very teaching methods and the evaluation process seem to be dated and a humdrum interpretation persists. Nuances In the section on language among many other nuances, two main areas can be highlighted. They are the approach to deconstructionism (visanyojanaya) and Reading (Patanaya). These terms are quite new and perhaps one could say that various better terms could have been used. But the points embedded in each section will help the reader to gain a knowledge on each of the literary concept as against the existing forms in practice. The critic cum interpreter Dissanayaka goes to the extent of tracing how the term came to be used on the part of linguists and philosophers of the calibre of Derrida, Babara Jonson and many others, the names of whom are cited lavishly with the references to their respective works in the bibliography. Followed by this introduction he attempts to apply the concepts on a poem culled from a translated version of Rubbaiyat (the Sinhala translation G.B. Senanayaka). Then he applies the concept of 'aporia' and shows how the language can bring about quite a number of thematic differences to a poetic experience. He also underlines the necessity to broaden the use of language which he denotes as a necessity, especially in creative writing. He shows how the writers of the calibre of Rushdie, Mulk Raj Anand and Arundathie Roy attempted to present their human experiences by broadening the horizons in the utilization of language. When he explains the term reading (patanaya) he uses the textual meaning taking the traditional usage 'patana' instead of the loose and vague term 'kiyavima' for the term patanaya gives way to a broader sense in the ultimate analysis and interpretation in the reading process. The term patana is applied to various manifold contextual denotations like the use of titles for books and expressions of experiences, for which he presents several examples from Sinhala literature. He uses the term 'sankathanaya' to denote discourse. The term so far used was katikava which to my mind fails to express the exact meaning of the process of discussion dialogue and interpretation considering from various points of view on a single work and in the end to culminate in a total assessment. I felt that the need to explain more about the concept is essential. Though quite a number of texts on literary criticism encompasses the explanation of the term tradition (sampradaya) it has its modern denotations as well. Significance The critic Disanayaka briefly summarises the use of the term and its significance taking into account the past and the present critical approaches of the essayists of the calibre of Leavis (the great tradition) Raymond Williams (communication, and other writings) and T.S. Eliot (tradition and the individual talent) pinpointing the changes in the usage from the past to the present. In the section on literature two important and thought provoking essays are presented. They are titled Puranokti vicaraya (myth as criticism) and paschat yatat vijitavadi vicaraya (post colonial criticism). In the first essay he explains the significance of the age old myth and brings out literary meanings connected with it. The concept of the use of myth as a living creative tradition is underlined by citing examples like Joyce's Ullyses Camus's myth of Sisyphus, Eliot's the wasteland and our own local examples drawn from folklore and classical literature. This essay becomes more important when it comes to clarify in order to understand the basic structures of creative works in all fields of communication, familiar and common to ancient and modern literary creations. In the section on culture Dissanayaka attempts to present a more modern picture of what the term 'popular culture' (janapriya sanskritiya means. This too is a concept which had enormous differences as some understood it as a pseudo image as against the conventional moral image. Disanayaka clarifies about six main factors in the West that go into the origin and spread of the term via mass media, scholarly discourses, moral issues and political writings especially by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Perhaps another scholar may have the chance of elaborating these views briefly presented in the present volume. In the section on society the most significant essay to my mind is on Orientalism. Though according to Dissanayaka the term stems from the scholar Edward Said, I see that the concept of orientalism as applied to philosophy and creative works go as far back as Max Muller. Prof. Said's expositions came to be known through his work published in 1978, but the concept of missionaries who investigated the knowledge sources as found in the orient helped develop a better awareness of the content and the structures that had given vent to the creations of major works like Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavatgita. The religions like Buddhism and Hinduism and the doctrinal texts connected with them have also been sources of inspiration to writers of the calibre of Herman Hesse and Karl Gellerup, both from Germany. But there are writers who took oriental knowledge far more seriously in other parts of the world. But I suppose the main intention of Dissanayaka is to point out how the recently known concept of orientalism is applied to the modern day literary criticism. Quite a number of essays of this type enveloped in this volume should be reckoned as eye openers to the emerging literary enthusiast and the so-called professional critic. At this juncture I am reminded of what one of the pioneer literary critics Rene Wellek once said. He said literary criticism in the most widely accepted sense is judgment of books reviewing and finally the definition of taste of the tradition of what is a classic. But on looking back this form of evaluation is perhaps obsolete and perhaps tends to create problems as to the very sense of the term judgment, for who judges and how he does it may be a controversy. Wellek may not be wrong at a particular juncture but, today the creative flux had caused and posed number of other complex issues. The very advent of new subject areas like sociology, neo classicism, studies in comparative literature, post commonwealth literary studies and creative communication methods which is not introduced methodically in our literary circles underline the need for a fresh outlook. Through these 75 short essays the scholar cum researcher Dissanayaka takes the reader to a new world of critical concepts that one cannot afford to miss. Nava vichara Sankalpa is a Visidunu publication. - Prof. Sunanda Mahendra. Deities of Sri Lanka Author: Purandara Sri Bhadra Marapana Englishman Hugh Neville was a great personality who researched on Sri Lanka's Ethnology. He arrived in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) at the age of 17. After retiring from the Colonial Government service in 1886 he devoted his time and energy to collect data on more than 1,000 topics including the origin and evolution of village (rural) customs, folklore poems and the Buddha's spiritual values and stories relating to deities. This collection known as Sinhala Kavi (ethnology) was published in three volumes by the Colombo National Museum in 1995. After reading these stories Marapana was so impressed that he did a large number of paintings depicting the stories of deities and displayed them in his Ethnology and Folk Art Museum in Ratnapura in 1995. Worshipping of deities and the dead had been a custom among rural societies and during the time of great civilisations as well as in countries of the modern world. Deities of Sri Lanka is well presented with 33 colour plates and short stories. |
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