Giri Muduna Mage Niwahana (ගිරි මුදුන මගේ නිවහන)

 

ගිරි මුදුන මගේ නිවහන (Giri Muduna Mage Niwahana), a collection of poetry by Dr. Sunil Wijesiriwardhena, is a book that has captured my heart due to the gentleness in the way it handles its subject matter. It is a refreshing break from the propaganda poetry that has flooded the valleys and plains of poetry recently. As a whole, the collection presents the reader with penetrating observations which at times hide more than they reveal. One is required to engage in quite a lot of moving between poems and reading between lines in order to “understand” it.

In his introduction to the collection Dr. Wijesiriwardhena has given an invaluable summery of the history of poetry and its role in Russia. He also offers us a brief glimpse into his decade long forays into the rich cultural life in Russia. Through these two pieces of information Dr. Wijesiriwardhena tries to, it think, explain his involvement in revitalizing the cultural life in Sri Lanka after its conversion to Free Market Economic Policies. He identifies Dayasena Gunasingha, Rathna Sri Vijesingha and Dharmakeerthi Rajapaksha as path-breakers to a new poetic experience but at the same time voices his concern over the absence of discussion. Here, he traces his involvement in in the nascent stages of building a “critical” tradition all over the country. There, he offers the reader a rare insight into how limitations on creative spaces in newspapers – the only space a poet had at the time to display his/her works – had adversely affected not only the poet but also the critic. He ends this very valuable essay with a brief note on how the Youth Uprising in 89/90 had put a stop to his literary activities in Anuradhapura area and forced him to shift to the capital as a “political refugee”. The essay ends with a small note on Vibhavi Culture Centre in 1991 and its involvement with veteran poets and other literary figures such as Parakrama Koduthuwakku, Ariyasena Ranaweers, Nandasena Weerasingha and Lala Hegoda in order to read/discover the emerging trends in poetry and to launch a discussion on them.

The collection contains poems written between the end of 2014 to 2017. The book has 8 sections/chapters and the poet has noted in the prelude that some poems would have fitted more than one category:

1.      Kaawya (Poems) - (4 poems)

2.      Mage Kaalaya (My Time) - (9)

3.      Wasantha Samara (Celebrating Summer) - (4)

4.      Hada Vihanga (The Heart’s Songbird) – (9)

5.      Walaakulu Gena Kavi Maalayak – (A garland of poems on clouds) –(6)

6.      Thepethi – (Tri-petal) – (3)

7.      vijjulatha (Lightning Goddess) – (16)

8.      Adisi Maanaya (The Invisible Dimension) – (10) 

      Each section carries a painting and an introductory verse. In “Kaawya”, a bird is flying over a body of water with its much larger reflection on the water. Hidden behind clouds, an eye is observing the bird. Interestingly, the predominant colours used by the poet are grey, black and white. In my uneducated view, the paintings themselves deserve a close study in relation to the themes of the section they precede.

The first poem illustrates the innate generosity in the poetic persona that I myself had witnessed on the two occasions I had the good fortune to meet the poet. In “Kalin Magata Bata Mithuranta” (For those Friends Who Took to the Road Early) the poet celebrates the efforts of those poets who have cleared the wilderness that smothered the literary landscape and planted beautiful gardens and orchards for those like him to enjoy. Seeing no suitable place in those flower-bedecked gardens in the valleys already planted by gardeners far superior to him, the poet asks himself when and where he should plant his own plant which he had made up his mind to plant so late in life. The regret he feels over taking such a long time to take up the task is illustrated by the phrase “pamaavi, hungak pamaavi”.  In the end he decides that he was going to plant a hardy shrub he had found in his forays into the great wilderness in a carefully terraced plot up on a desolate mountain side untouched by anyone. When the harvest is in, he is inviting those friends who had enriched him to take part in the poor man’s feast as a small token of repayment of the great debt he felt that he owed to them. Throughout the collection the metaphor of a mountain crag as the ground where his poetry was planted emerges several times. What does the poet want the reader to understand by that repetition? The contemplative movement of the poems imitates the gait of an experienced mountain climber who stops to enjoy the breathtaking views, the circling birds of prey, the rolling clouds and the wind twisted trees.

In the poem titled “Mage Kav” (My Poetry) once again the poet refers to his work as an out of season fruits on a stunted twisted tree (whose seeds were from a fruit from a city garden) on a cold windswept mountain top. The four stanzas in the poem offer breathtaking visual images. 

“Kaviyo” is a celebration of poet-hood. The poet sees each generation of poets giving new life to existing language, imagery, etc. and bringing forth new poetry in the same way God in creation myths said to have collected the existing material on the Earth and produced new life. He sees poets as “bodhisathwa” – a holy personage seeking enlightenment – who is performing his duties in order for him to realize Enlightenment. They leave before their time as a result of risking their lives. As I was reading it I wondered whether this revelation has anything to do with the untimely death of poet’s friend Nandsene Marasinghe.

The next poem is dedicated to the veteran poet Lal Hegoda. In it the poet engages in an interesting discussion on Bharatha Muni’s views on poetic appreciation and acknowledges the possibility that one being able to enjoy poetry without havening heard of the august critic’s name even in dreams. The poet shows enjoying poetry as a lifelong dynamic process that involves all our faculties. In the 5^th stanza, he suggests that a poem is a result of its circumstances and should be valued for what it is. The poem is a denunciation of the schools of critics  who analyze poems armed with a list of techniques and theories without enjoying them for what they are by embracing them with our entire being and making them a part of our soul so that in that oneness our understanding of them grows as we gain experience and expand our horizons revealing to us the many facets that have been previously hidden to us.  In the penultimate stanza of the poem, the poet illustrates the purpose of poetry as he sees it.

Chapter II

In the second chapter of the collection titled “Mage Kaalaya”, two dark silhouettes of heads placed side by side are circled by a cloud of words and images. The rabbit on the moon is drawn using the two Sinhala letters that stand for the sounds /r/ and /t/ which is a common method used by very small children to draw a rabbit. The term “rata” here is read as time and space, I think. The words nature/culture, some birds in flight, eye balls and ears as well as a suggestion of the Buddhist Flag are scattered around the heads in the painting suggestively. The spatial setting of the painting is the same as the previous one.

In the poem “Adhirajayage Wissopaya”, the poet offers fear as the underlying reason for tyranny. The poem is in the form a monologue delivered by a tyrannical ruler reasoning out his mode of government: the use of violence and ideology.

In “(Dhaneshwara) Sanwardhanaya”, the poet adds an ironic twist to the title by placing the premodifier within parentheses. In doing so he invites the reader to think about other forms of development before presenting them with the horrifying extended metaphor he uses to represent capitalist form of development. The poem is read as a single stanza at a breathtaking speed signaling the speed at which capitalism can take over every aspect of a country’s existence once it is let in. At the beginning, capitalism looks appealing, innocent and efficient (compared to the socialistic policies practiced by the previous government? But I would like to see this as a universal phenomenon) but it grows up to become an ugly all-devouring monster that is governed almost solely by its stomach. The poetic persona wonders if the absence of heart and lungs and the slowness of the growth of its brain were due to the thickness of its skin. Such a monstrosity cannot sustain its grossness for long and eventually it gives into the inevitable and begins to rot from within and die.

In “Nawa (Liberal) Gladiator Samaya”, the poet sees what is happening today as a continuation or even a reenactment of history. People are made to cultivate animosity towards their fellow human beings by making them believe that it was the only way to eke out another day here on earth. When the poetic persona asks “Who can say it won’t be him who would fall victim to that deadly thrust of the stiletto?” he is actually sending out a wakeup call. The poet brings in the historical allusion of the blood sports promoted by the ruling class of the Imperial Rome as a diversion as well as an emotional safety valve for the masses in order to maintain their power to illustrate his disgust at the present day centers of power that uses the same deplorable propaganda to gain and maintain power. He sees blood sports as a sign of a diseased deformed society that has hit the rock bottom. In the next rhetorical question the poet asks whether the entire world has embraced that “Roman sport”.

In the last nine lines, the poet presents the readers with three dichotomic possibilities of existance: rule or be ruled; win or lose; and live or die. The shortness of those lines makes them all the more powerful in delivering their punch. The question that remains with the reader is: ‘Is that all we have in the way of choices?’…

In “Amuthu Kaalaya” the poet reiterates his call that it is time that ordinary people woke up and take up their due place in the Chain of Beings.

In “Sathutu Kumaaraya Saha Thawath Katha Hewath Thisa Wewe Iwraka” the poet uses intertextulity and allusions to convey his message. The theme of the poem is once again man’s cruelty towards each other and other living beings. He brings in the well-known Wilde-ian short story “The Happy Prince” in which the prince realizes the misery some of his future subjects were undergoing only after his death. In the poem the Happy Prince is a child located in an edanic setting. The silent beauty of that world is shattered by the sound of a gunshot. Juxtaposed with the idyllic description of the first three stanzas, the rest stands as a slice of Picasso’s Guernica. The hunter that had shot the carefree small water birds is called “dada vedda” and “walaha” signaling not only how the poetic persona but also the child had felt about the hunter. The child loses his edanic innocence and wakes up to the presence of evil/violence in this world in the 5^th stanza and his devastation is illustrated by the lines, “le galamin diyata wetunu/ sitha ahulai” – he picks up the bleeding heart that fell into water.

The last line of the 5^th stanza signals the passage of a period of “kapa” – the time is metaphorical as the victim would have felt each second to be an age due to the pain he was experiencing.

In the next stanza, the poet sets a pain-filled spatial setting with the first 2 lines. In the subsequent lines he presents one of the most unsettling pictures of a helpless victim of violence I had the misfortune to read. Towards the dusk, an injured bird that the hunter was unable to catch and has left behind manages to climb up to Maanagala. Its tiny drenched body is shivering in the evening cold. In its attempt to dry itself it tries to opens up its wings but “Diyabath wuna singithi sirura/ diga hariye eka thatuwaki!” – the tiny bird could open up only one wing. This was one of the birds that delighted the child by flying freely in the sky a few hours ago. If it does not die either of cold or from its injury, a bird that cannot fly is an easy victim to any passing predator.

The poet takes the reader to the next stage of the poem making use of a visual image: a flock of cranes take off like the dumb into the evening sky only to land on a forest bordering a ruined temple.

The poet generate a poignant sense of pathos by using words such as “kesanga siruru” (thin bodies) and “singithi siruru” (tiny immature bodies) in contrast to “dada vedda” (the hunter) and “walaha” (the bear).

In the next untitled poem, the poet alludes to a conversation that had taken part between Ananda Thero and Lord Buddha in illustrating the difference between appearance and reality. Where Ananda Thero sees peace and comfort, the Enlightened sees dissatisfaction in the form of burning minds. He compares the unsatisfied minds to a series of fires lit in a meadow where tall grass grows – the possibility of those small fires merging and forming a wild fire is hinted at here. In this poem the poet uses visual images as the main tool in conveying the idea that everyone is unhappy and the more powerful you are the greater your dissatisfaction would be. The sense of sadness the Thero feels at being enlightened to the reality of the situation is signaled by the use of “aho” at the beginning of the last three stanzas of the poem.

In “Praag Maathaawange Sandeshaya” is a horrifying picture of the poetic persona searching for something unknown. Hecabe, Media and Kuweni are three ‘mythical’ women who were connected to conflicts that ended in blood baths. The three seem to know more about the poetic persona’s quest that he does. They are waiting for him. Like many of the triumvirates found in Greek mythology, these three directs the Perseus-like poetic persona on a quest to find a door. In the process, the poetic persona gets an appalling view of the bloody history of human existence on earth. It shocks the poetic persona to his very core. The ultimate realization in the 9^th stanza is that there is no savior. At that point he sees a large door and as Hecabe had instructed him at the outset he knocks on the door.

The next poem is a short elegy celebrating the life and work of “Sunila”. Her daring flights up into the sky were seen by those who are hiding in the tunnels as being possessed by an unholy spirit “Raahu aweshaya”. With her death they lose light – just like in the case of  the moon being swallowed by “raahu”.

In “Bangaloraye Esathu Bo Rukakata” in the first stanza the poet offers the reader a view of a beautiful stately bo tree ensconced among other trees. In the next stanza, the poet gives reasons why he considered that bo tree was free – freer than some other bo trees, perhaps: there was not fence around it, no one was going to the courts to prove his ownership of the tree, and no armed guards are posted around it to protect it. In the third stanza, we get to hear further evidence to prove its freedom: no one was lighting lamps and camphor heating up the surrounding day and night making nonstop demands from it and there was not a single loudspeaker soliciting donations nearby either.

In the last stanza, the poet compares freedom enjoyed by the tree to the calls of the parrots and says that it is solemn as the silence in between. He says that it is as magical as the sacred bo tree against which the identity-less Siduhath sat. These reasons ultimately makes its shade sweet and pleasing even to a traveller like him.