“To use poetry as a vehicle to convey thoughts and emotions of a modern urban society has been a main concern of our poets during the last century. Almost all of them have grappled with this problem . In terms of this pursuit they could be grouped into four categories. The first category of scholarly poets belonging to an older generation who attempted this task looked up to our classical literature which had ceased to evolve after the 17th century.”____________________________
by Gunadasa Amarasekera
(April 19, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The topic I have selected may seem rather paradoxical. How could folk poetry which expresses a traditional ‘peasant sensibility’ be used to express a modern sensibility; convey thoughts and emotions of a modern society which is far removed form the traditional peasant society. But if we examine the works of our modern poets in Sri Lanka, and their attempt to express a modern sensibility , this apparent paradoxical nature turns out to be rather baseless.
Such a narrow view I believe is a result of superficial observations made on this matter by those who are unaware of the role of the poet as the creator of our sensibility and the alchemy that goes into the production of poetry. It is only the poet, the supreme alchemist who can forge disparate elements, unrelated parts into a convincing whole and thereby create a new world and a sensibility to go along with it.
To use poetry as a vehicle to convey thoughts and emotions of a modern urban society has been a main concern of our poets during the last century. Almost all of them have grappled with this problem . In terms of this pursuit they could be grouped into four categories. The first category of scholarly poets belonging to an older generation who attempted this task looked up to our classical literature which had ceased to evolve after the 17th century. Our classical literature which had an unbroken record of evolution over centuries came to an abrupt end with our coming under foreign rule in the seventeenth century. Colonial rule and the cultural imperialism that came along with it made it impossible for that classical literature to survive any longer.
The indigenous literati disappeared and was replaced by an English educated literati who tended to look down upon the indigenous literature and culture . The first generation of poets who attempted to express a modern sensibility looked for a poetic tradition in that classical literature which had ceased to evolve after the 17th century. What they picked up for a tradition was a fossilized past, an archaic language and worn out poetic forms. Little did they realize that a literary tradition does not reside within the main stream once it gets stymied, and stagnant but seeks new paths , new tributaries for its continuance. One such path is the folk literature of the people. What happens in this instance could be looked upon as tradition going back to where it originated , from where the literati took it over to express their more complex more sophisticated thoughts and emotions. A poetic tradition is not a hot-housed product; it can neither be created by a small coterie of literati nor survive within such a coterie. It needs ‘mass participation’. This relationship between the literati and the folk is a feature we see through out our literature over the centuries. The first generation of our poets never realized this, and took over a fossilized poetic diction which was incapable of expressing a modern sensibility. It was the failure of this first generation of scholarly poets that brought about the emergence of a new group of younger poets called ‘Colombo Poets’ in the middle of the last century.
They were less informed and also less aware of the classical literature. They had a nodding acquaintance of the English poets, Tennyson, Shelly and Wordsworth whom they had read as school children. They attempted to express a modern sensibility through a poetic diction ‘invented’ by them. They never realized the necessity of a poetic tradition. The poetic diction they ‘invented’ was forged out of the new journalistic language of the newspapers, and new fictional works based on the Western novel. They invented new metaphors, images and symbols to which the Sinhala reader could not respond. With this newly invented language what they could do was to present an unrealistic, romantic picture of the modern world around them ,and not a poetic interpretation of that world. That romantic picture was often a sentimental one and at best reflected a yearning to escape form the realities of the modern world.
Being unaware of a poetic tradition it is not surprising that they could not grapple with a what they experienced and make poetry out of them. The novelty of their poetry did not last for more than two decade or so. These poets were replaced in the sixties by another group of young poets centered round the Peradeniya University. They were well versed in Western literature. They knew not only Shelly and Wordsworth but practitioners of the most recent forms of poetry as free verse - TS Eliot, Ezra Pound and Baudelaire were their gurus. They assumed that the failure of the Colombo poets was due to their sticking to a traditional poetic form and if that could be replaced by a kind of free verse then one would be able to express a modern sensibility. They were completely unaware of the need for a poetic tradition. The language they invented, the images and the metaphors they created were almost unintelligible to the average Sinhala reader , and to understand these, sometimes one had to go back to Eliot or Baudelaire. The result of this new free verse movement was to wean away the reader from the enjoyment of poetry. The attempt to present a modern sensibility through their poetry has in fact caused death of poetry and weaned the reader away from poetry. Their monolingual imitators in due course have quite justifiably made the poem into a song. The present generations idea of enjoying poetry is listening to ‘popular hits’.
The fourth category of poets who have attempted to present a modern sensibility through their work could be distinguished from the above three groups by their search for a poetic tradition. They have realized the importance of a poetic tradition. and the fact that any new sensibility had to have recourse to a tradition for its expression. They have gone to folk poetry for discovering this tradition. They believe that with the disappearance of our poetic tradition from the main stream of the classical literature of the seventeenth century, it has continued its survival through folk poetry.
They believe that by basing oneself on that tradition and by forging the folk with the classical one could create the much needed ‘sophisticated’ poetic diction needed to express a modern sensibility. Their work can be seen as the most successful attempt at expressing a modern sensibility. Munidasa Kumaratuga the most successful modern poet resorted to this alchemy.
In his poem ‘Piyasamara’ he used the ‘Elusilo’ poetic form which by then had become a folk poetic form and was able to forge the classical with the folk to usher in a modern sensibility. As a poet I myself have chosen this path and used elements in folk poetry to present a modern sensibility. What comes of this Sri Lankan experience is that the modern poet cannot interpret the world he lives in by going back to a fossilized past nor by losing oneself in an unknown present. He will have to go in search of a tradition that interprets the past in terms of the present and the present in terms of the past. The achievement of these poets who have sought inspiration from folk poetry in creating a modern sensibility may come as a surprise to you.
But I think if we understand our existential process as Asians living in this part of the world it should not surprise us. I believe we Asians live in two worlds- the modern and the traditional. The modern world we live in today is one imposed on us by the Western world .We have not grown with it like the Westerner. It never became a part of our intellectual , emotional growing process.
It has been imposed on us, and as such it is emotionally and spiritually an alien world for us Asians. Emotionally and spiritually we live in our traditional world, it is through reference to that traditional inner world that we make sense of the modern world around us and respond to it. (I certainly grant that a handful of deracinated ‘world citizens’ is capable of transcending such a fate !). In such a context is it not natural that a poet who wants to express a modern sensibility should attempt it on the basis of a folk foundation recreated to suit modern times? In a way what the poet does is to take us from the known to the unknown ; make modernity intelligible through our traditional world.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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