by Izeth Hussain
(March 13, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) A quotation in a recent review of Jirasingh's book of poems - There's an Island in the Bone caught my eye. I went in search of it to a deluxe "boutique" which looked much more deluxe than it did on my last visit to it a couple of years ago, in keeping with the giant strides we are making towards an earthly paradise for the common man, and the book itself had a touch of the deluxe about it. I was about to drop it as something that should interest the glitterati, not the literati, when the title of a poem The Call to Prayer, rousing the Islam in me, made me desist. I read of the "dawn crackling over the city" and of "the mellow wail of Arabic words." I was clearly in the presence of an authentic poet. I bought the book straightway.
English-language poets
To say that she is in the front rank of Commonwealth poets may not amount to saying much really. It is a curious fact that good Commonwealth poets - I am here referring only to English-language poets - are very few compared to the fiction writers. Among the latter one can count Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Ahmed Ali, G.V. Desani, Naipaul, Salman Rushdi, Chinua Achebe, Soyinka (for his drama), George Lamming, Nick Joaquin, F. Sionil Jose, Ondaatje, Michelle de Kretser and several others, a few of whom are among the major figures in the English literature of the last century. Among the poets there are only Derek Walcott and Vikram Seth (for the Golden Gate, and not for his lyrics) who have major stature, though several others have written interesting poems. I would put Jirasinghe together with Walcott and Seth.
Her slim volume brings alive for me what it means to be a Sri Lankan today as none other does, and it is striking for its extraordinary sensuous richness which for me is an essential part of being Sri Lankan. As this is not meant to be a full-length review, I will conclude by noting a quality that puts her poems apart from most of the rest of Sri Lankan poetry: it's bounding rhythmical vitality, while most SL poetry is written in chopped prose. The following are two lines from one of her best poems, The Gardener:
It will grow precariously, high above the ground.
The reference is to a small bamboo plant made to grow on a balcony. The comma after "precariously" brings out the sense of precariousness, and by enforcing a heavy caesura the comma contributes to a vivid impression of height through the single word "high" placed at the end of the line. Usually Jirasinghe felicitously brings off heavy emphases on her verbs, but not in this case because she wants to bring alive not the process of growth but the sense of height.
The following is the opening of what is perhaps her best poem, The Moon at Seenukgala:
We followed a footpath fading like old ink on an ancient map through a crowded forest of trees straining up, sun-searching; branches, boughs, pushing leaves lightwards.
I won't go into all the felicities in those few lines. Instead I will point only to the light caesura after "trees" bringing out the physical sense of "straining" and the brilliantly effective placing of the word "up." Reading Jirasinghe helps make mellow the wail of existence in our deluxe paradise isle.
Subjugation by the male
International Women's Day - It fell on March 8, and it is worth celebrating as it is an important part of the revolutionary process that is going on across the globe. The feminist movement means the liberation of half of humanity, the female half, which has been kept in subjugation by the male half down the millennia. It has to be taken together with developments such as the human rights movement that has been gr12-4owing ever more redoubtable since around 1975, and the wider ecumenism that holds out the promise of bringing humanity together by ending the bigotry and intolerance associated with religion down the centuries. All these are parts of a revolution without a revolution, meaning a mass revolution of which there are very few in history. But revolutionary changes take place nevertheless. There has been no mass revolution in Sri Lanka, but the changes I have seen since my boyhood in 1940 can justly be described as revolutionary.
What really is the position of Sinhalese females at present? It has been generally supposed that the Sinhalese are far more egalitarian towards their females than are the Tamils and the Muslims. That notion was called into question in my mind by a conversation that I had with an Egyptian female member of our Cairo Embassy staff sometime in the latter half of the 'sixties. I asked her what she really thought of SL females. After some hesitation she made two observations. One was that they were devoid of a dress sense because even dark-complexioned females wore dark clothes.
The other was that they usually looked as if they had come from a famine. The important point was that she was not saying that the men also looked as if they had come from a famine; only the females. Since then I have had the impression that Sinhalese females of the poorer classes do tend to look more ill-nourished than the males, leading to a sexual difference in size that I have not noticed elsewhere.
The explanation was given by a recent newspaper article by a Sinhalese female sociologist, which I have unfortunately misplaced. According to her Sinhalese females traditionally had their meals after the males had finished, sometimes having to make do with the leavings. Around that time other newspaper material was appearing showing that our females are more underprivileged in the sphere of politics than their counterparts in some other Asian countries, which seems inexplicable as we produced the first female Prime Minister in the world. The explanation is that societies are highly complex phenomena, not smooth monoliths but entities with cracks, divisions, contradictions, which it is the purpose of ideology to conceal in order to keep going the prevalent social formation. That formation in Sri Lanka is still male chauvinist.
In Britain and the US the ideological change wrought by feminism is reflected in linguistic change. The term "Mr" does not indicate civil status, that is whether a male is married or single, but the terms "Mrs" and "Miss" do so in the case of females. The correct usage for females now is "Ms" which gives no indication of civil status. It reminds me of a poem by the American poetess Muriel Rukeyser about Oedipus, the figure in Greek mythology who committed parricide without knowing it, and thereafter incest with his mother also without knowing it, and in consequence blinded himself in horror. All that had been preceded by Oedipus' meeting with the Sphinx who had posed him a riddle. In advanced old age he was tottering about in the desert when a stench assailed his nostrils indicating that he was in close proximity to the Sphinx. He tottered towards her and asked what went wrong and why he was punished so terribly after he had given the correct answer to her riddle, "What goes first on four legs, then on two legs, and finally on three legs?" Oedipus claimed that he had given the correct answer: Man. The Sphinx, "But you said nothing about Woman." Oedipus "Oh, but when I say Man, Woman is included." The Sphinx: "That's what you think."
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