Midweek Review

War as a way-of-Life

Published

3 years ago

2022/11/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

Helene Weigel Vera Tenschert

Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children:

by Laleen Jayamanne

“Like the war to nourish you?
Have to feed it something too.”
Mother Courage

Chaplin on Seeing Brecht’s Galileo

Charlie Chaplin had dinner with Brecht’s long-term musical collaborator Hans Eisler, after the premier of The Life of Galileo in 1947 in LA. The play was very well attended by leading artistes and intellectuals, some of whom worked for Hollywood at the time. It included German Jewish and gentile refugees from fascist Europe. Over dinner, Chaplin told Eisler that he would have liked a bit more ‘drama’ and that Brecht could have ‘mounted’ it differently. Eisler (who was familiar with Brecht’s radical work in Weimar Germany in the 20s), explained to him that Brecht never wanted to ‘mount’ things. American theatre critics from Variety and New York Times also complained that the production was ‘too flat and colourless.’ They thought the play was not theatrical enough, not ‘dramatic.’ In this piece, I will discuss the formal features of Brecht’s epic theatre (use of narration, scene construction, dialogue and acting), which Brecht thought was a form more suited to a scientific age of reason than the more emotional form of traditional dramatic theatre.

Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children; A Chronicle of the Thirty Year War, is a parable relevant to our moment of world history as well. It’s based on a character called ‘Courage, an Adventuress,’ in the 17th Century picaresque novel, Simplicissimus by Hans von Grimmelhausen. In Lanka it was first produced in English, in the 60s by Ernest MacIntyre, and, soon after in Sinhala as, Diriya Athi Mawa. Written in exile in 1939, the year Hitler invaded Poland, triggering the second World War, it was about another devastating war in Europe, the Thirty-Year Religious Wars (1618-1648), between the Catholics and the Protestants. Now we have yet another European war, between Ukraine and Russia, with no end in sight, which has already begun to affect global trade in essentials and much else. The flow of refugees and the scale of non-stop destruction of Ukraine by Russia is now broadcast daily on our TV screens creating a new ‘cold-war.’ The polarising American slogan for this war is ‘Democracy versus Autocracy.’ There is even talk of limited nuclear strikes but hardly any diplomatic solutions. Lanka also has had her own experience of a 30-year civil war whose wounds have not all healed because they remain unacknowledged.

Brecht’s 1949 production of the play in East Belin (with the nucleus which became the Berliner Ensemble in East Germany), within the Soviet Union, is celebrated in theatre history not only for the written play itself but also for the singular Epic staging and Epic acting of Helene Weigel as Mother Courage. She was an Austrian-Jewish actress and Brecht’s wife and also, according to him, a rare ‘epic actor.’ More of that later. The 1957 Berliner Ensemble production of it (after Brecht died in ‘56), again with Helene Weigel as Mother Courage, is on YouTube, now with English subtitles, an extraordinary chance for Lankan theatre folk to study her celebrated performance. It’s nearly four hours long and worth watching for people serious about studying, Epic Theatre, acting and staging.

The main set in the play is Mother Courage’s large wagon on wheels, ‘a cross between a military vehicle and a General Store’ servicing the different armies fighting in the Thirty-Year War, which decimated the population of Germany, destroying villages, towns and livestock. She follows the armies as they are her main source of income, she feeds on the war, so she needs it. It makes good business sense to her. Brecht hammers this point repeatedly. In the opening scene, the cart rolls on to the stage, drawn by her two sons, Eilif and Swiss-Cheese, because their horse has died. A revolving stage floor adds to the sense of dynamic curving movement of the large heavy wagon as it creeks and groans on to the stage with Mother Courage lounging on it, singing with her mute daughter seated beside her playing a Jewish harp. The rhythm of the song, the marching gait of the sons pulling the wagon, is robust, light-hearted even, despite the war. War for them is certainly a way of life, quite normalised.

Theatre for a New Scientific Age

In this piece, I want to build on the ideas developed in my three previous pieces on Brecht for The Island in two ways. First, by exploring Brecht’s idea of an ‘epic’ rather than a ‘dramatic’ structure, in his episodic scene construction and narration. Second, Brecht’s famously difficult idea of ‘epic acting’ will be explored by focusing on Helena Weigel’s celebrated performance as Mother Courage; she did not seek a response of empathy (identification and sympathy), from the audience. Instead, she performed in a manner that made her appear astonishing, strange though she was always believable as an efficient, robust petit-bourgeoise trader. Brecht’s carefully thought-out reasons for developing this mode of theatre will also be discussed.

Given that the European war lasted 30 years, Brecht presents its long duration by focusing on specific years without following a chronological progression. He calls the play a ‘chronicle of the thirty year war,’ so it jumps from 1626 to ‘29 for example, and ends the play in the middle of the war more than 10 years before it actually ceased. In this way, he is able to create a large number of episodic scenes whose duration varies wildly. Some even where the curtain opens and closes within minutes! So, he frees himself from chronological, causal, historical narration, and is able to build a freer sense of the relationship between one scene and another. This way, he can abstract events and produce his own views of that war without being tied to chronological history. This juxtaposition of scenes is what Brecht calls montage, using a film editing terminology. This freedom derived from its episodic structure is vital for the spectator who is invited to make the connections by learning to think in the theatre and not only just to feel with the characters. Mother Courage herself does not invite identification. she is neither heroic nor pathetic. She is dogged, living at all cost, unwittingly even at the expense of her three children. She is called ‘courage’ not because she is heroic, but because once she followed the army into dangerous territory because she had to sell a large stock of bread before it turned mouldy. Her business is with the army, regardless of which side it is, as long as she can sell her goods. Profit is the motif.

Brecht’s theatrical theory is superbly edited in Brecht on Theatre by John Willet and is highly readable, enjoyable and useful for understanding 20th Century radical European political epic theatre. Brecht provided the following model, laying out the ‘changes of emphasis as between dramatic and epic theatre.’ They are not opposites but it’s a matter of what needs to be emphasised to create a rational spectator who can evaluate what’s being presented without being emotionally swayed. This does not mean there is no feeling in the play. But rather, that reason and understanding are emphasised, paramount. (See table)

Brecht thought very highly of Charles Laughton’s performance of Galileo Galilei. He has written admiringly of Laughton’s work ethic and the way he understood the aesthetic of the play and performed the role in an ‘epic’, rather than in a purely ‘dramatic,’ that is to say, emotional, empathetic manner. This new element is probably what Chaplin and the American theatre critics didn’t appreciate. Joseph Losey, who directed the play with close input from Brecht, had plans to make a film of it, but because of the communist scare Laughton had backed out. Losey did make the film much later, but with the dramatic actor Topol, who played the lead role in the musical Fidler on the Roof. For students of theatre, it would be very instructive to study his highly emotional film version of presenting Galileo (which is on YouTube), and then read Brecht’s ideas on a cooler, more ‘distanced’ mode of performance which he says Laughton provided, which he named ‘epic acting’.

Helena Weigel as Epic Actress

Similarly, here’s Brecht describing Weigel as a rare, exemplary epic actress in her role as Jocasta’s maid in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.

“… she announced the death of her mistress by calling out her ‘dead, dead, Jocasta has died,’ without any sorrow but so firmly and definitely that the bare facts of her mistress’s death carried more weight at that precise moment than could have been generated by any grief of her own. She did not abandon her voice to horror, but perhaps her face, for she used white make-up to show the impact which a death makes on all who are present at it.”

He says that Weigel as Jocasta’s maid didn’t mix up her own emotions and try to make the spectator ‘punch drunk with feeling.’ But rather, her cold delivery left room for the spectator to understand the magnitude of the action of suicide, as a moral decision. The suicide of the queen Mother (who had unwittingly committed incest with her own son, Oedipus, after she had unknowingly married him), was not made into an occasion for new sensations.

Brecht again on what epic acting should be:

“Witty. Ceremonious. Ritual. Spectator and actor ought not to approach one another but to move apart. Each ought to move away from himself. Otherwise, the element of terror necessary to all recognition is lacking.”

Mother Courage’s Silent Scream

In theatre studies, Helena Weigel’s ‘silent scream’ is legendary, a part of her epic performance. As she lives off of the war, she considers peace bad for her business. And in the play when someone exclaims, ‘peace has broken out!’ Mother Courage is upset because she had just stocked up on new supplies and says it will now go to waste. This is epic dialogue, it makes one pause.

When Mother Courage realises that her son’s death (off-stage), is imminent she stands up saying:” I think I bargained for too long,’ and slowly sits down on a stool. Her body is tense. And as she hears the volley of bullets executing her son, her body shudders, arching back as though she was shot, her mouth opening wide into a snarl, letting out a silent scream. The gesture is so fleeting that we can miss it. But this silent cry carries huge weight. We still hear its reverberations. But it doesn’t make us empathise with Mother Courage, rather, we see her in all her animal drive to survive at all cost. But at that very moment when like an animal she instinctively bares her teeth to scream, she stifles the cry as only a human animal could. The silent-scream is a complex epic gesture. It encodes her contradictory life of sustaining her family by living off of war.

Because of her wheeling and dealing and haggling after a good bargain, each of her children dies. Brecht shows clearly the link between her decision to carry out a business deal and the loss of each of her children. When she is shown Swiss Cheese’s corpse, she is not able to even acknowledge that it is her son, as doing so would compromise her and Katrina. So, his body is thrown into a mass grave and Mother Courage turns her face away from us as the curtain falls in silence.

It is not that we don’t feel any emotion but rather we also feel the moment in all its inarticulate horror; we observe the phenomenon of this woman, her instinctual drive to survive at all cost. Once all her children are dead, she straps herself on to the wagon and slowly hunching down like a very old woman, drags it along alone, doggedly following the army as she has always done. She doesn’t learn anything, but it’s we who do. It’s not that we don’t feel, we do feel an immense sense of desolation for this myopic and hugely energetic woman who still lives off of the war, the end of which is a generation away. Meanwhile, Germany is laid waste. In 1939, Brecht looked back at history to understand the emerging catastrophe in Europe. He directed the play in East Berlin in ’49, where the rubble of WW2 was not all cleared. This play feels so current now for Europe deeply enmeshed in an unwinnable, seemingly endless war which has global repercussions.

Brecht was against tragedy which he called Aristotelian drama with its famous tragic heroes and their profound ethical epiphanies when facing cruel Destiny. Instead, he formulated his theory of modern epic theatre for a scientific age of reason, so that an audience would learn to observe characters as epic constructs and historical events in microcosm, and learn from them. He wanted the audience to understand the world through the way in which epic characters interacted in episodic scenes. He used either a chorus or projected intertitles to create an epic narration to narrate complex historical forces which simply couldn’t be dramatized by individual characters alone. Within such a rich epic structure the spectator learns in a relaxed way, how to balance emotions with understanding. The emotion that Brecht was especially suspicious of in theatre was empathy, which is an Aristotelian value. Brecht believed that by emotionally identifying with characters in an empathetic manner we lose our capacity to evaluate their behaviour. What he wanted was a process he called ‘distanciation,’ so that we don’t simply cry and say, ‘Aiyo, ane- Amme!’ and go home wiping a tear or two. He wanted a theatre fit for the modern scientific age, providing spectators with a greater understanding of political forces at play in normalising war within capitalism. Religion is the ritualised camouflage for gaining territorial political power, in the play.

So, soon after Mother Courage lets out her silent scream the stage is blacked-out for about eight seconds. When it opens for the next episode in full bright light, Mother Courage is still seated on the stool but there is no carry-over from the previous episode. As a cunning business woman, she is facing another moment of survival with quick-wittedness mixed with acute pain. Weigel’s Mother Courage is not played as a sentimental maternal figure or the ‘eternal sorrowful mother.’ She is not part of ‘the little people’ helplessly caught in the cross-fire, say like the poor peasants who appear in the play. But rather, she actively feeds off of the war as a petite bourgeois trader. This class-analysis is important for Brecht, who read Marx as a young student and continued his research into the history of capitalism and socialist politics as a playwright.

Joe Abyewickrama; A Lankan Epic Actor?

Prasanna Withanage in his Purhanda Kaluwara (Darkness at Fullmoon), brilliantly created the character of Wannihamy, as the blind father of a dead soldier. Joe Abyewickrama played this role in an epic mode. He didn’t cry out when his son’s sealed-coffin was brought home to his hut unlike his daughter. He was stoic like Mother Courage when her son’s body was brought in for her to identify. Wannihami, in his unique situation simply listened carefully to all the sounds and through his quality of attention, we too were given a glimpse of the terrible cost of the civil war on an impoverished Sinhala family and much more. Joe didn’t play for empathy, his restraint, enhanced by his blindness (a form of Brechtian distanciation), showed us and taught us in an unusual way about the terror of the civil war and of state terror, which Sinhala folk are belatedly experiencing now, not for the first time of course, in the South also. The sealed coffin, solemnly draped in the Lion flag, did not hold the corpse of the ‘Rana-viru’ or ‘tragic-hero’ son, but a banana trunk. The hero’s coffin, too big for the little hut, provides food for thought.

Similarly, Brecht’s play continues to nourish our thinking as we experience unending wars and State terror. Brecht and Weigel and Joe offer Lankan playwrights and filmmakers very rich resources to learn from, to make theatre and film that speaks to Lanka’s complex history and contemporary ongoing struggles, so that we might learn and understand in an enjoyable way. Brecht (always full of surprises) says theatre must be entertaining and should be performed in a relaxed manner. Go figure! Look at the many photographs and the ’57 production itself by the Berliner Ensemble now online.

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Midweek Review

A victory that can never be forgotten

Published

2 days ago

2026/05/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Matara victory parade, in 2014, held to mark the eradication of the LTTE.

The country is in deepening turmoil over the theft of USD 2.5 mn from the Treasury. The Treasury affair has placed the arrogant NPP in an embarrassing position. The controversial release of 323 red-flagged containers from the Colombo Port, in addition to two carrying narcotics and the coal scam that forced Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody to resign, has eroded public confidence though the NPP pretends otherwise.

Suspicious deaths of a Finance Ministry official, suspended over the Treasury heist of USD 2.5 million, and ex-SriLankan Airlines CEO Kapila Chandrasena shouldn’t distract the government and the Opposition from marking victory over terrorism.

But, the country, under any circumstances, shouldn’t forget to celebrate Sri Lanka’s greatest post-independence achievement. Dinesh Udugamsooriya, a keen follower of conflict and post-Aragalaya issues, insists that those who cherish the peace achieved should raise the national flag in honour of the armed forces.

The armed forces paid a huge price to preserve the country’s unitary status. Those who represent Parliament and outside waiting for an opportunity to return to Parliament must keep in their minds, unitary status is non-negotiable, under any circumstances, and such efforts would be in vain.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Sri Lanka celebrates, next week, the eradication of the bloodthirsty separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a conventional threat to the survival of this nation, at least in our hearts, even if the authorities dampen any celebrations. The armed forces brought the war to a successful conclusion on 18 May, 2009. The body of undisputed leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was found on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon, on the morning of 19 May, less than 24 hours after the ground forces declared the end of operations in the Vanni theatre.

The LTTE’s annihilation is Sri Lanka’s greatest post-independence achievement. Whatever various interested parties, pursuing different agendas say, the vast majority of people accept the eradication of the LTTE’s conventional military capacity as the armed forces’ highest achievement.

Sri Lanka’s triumph cannot be discussed without taking into consideration how the Indian-trained LTTE, who also went on to fight the New Delhi’s Army deployed here, in terms of the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord, signed in July, 1987, giving it an unforgettable hiding. The Indian misadventure here cost them the lives of nearly 1,500 officers and men. Just over a year after the Indian pullout, in March, 1990, the LTTE assassinated Rajiv Gandhi who, in his capacity as the Prime Minister, deployed the Indian Army here. But India launched the Sri Lanka destabilisation project during Indira Gandhi’s premiership.

Western powers, the now decimated United National Party (UNP), Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), and an influential section of the media, propagated the lie that the LTTE couldn’t be defeated. But, the United People’s Freedom Party (UPFA), under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s resolute leadership, sustained a nearly three-year long genuine sustained offensive that brought the entire Northern and Eastern regions back under government control.

The UNP relentlessly hindered the war against the LTTE. UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, hell-bent on undermining the military campaign, had no qualms in questioning the military strategy. The former Prime Minister went to the extent of sarcastically questioning the culmination of the military campaign in the East with the capture of Thoppigala (Baron’s cap) in the second week of July, 2007, calling it just a rock outcrop with no significance. Believing the military lacked the strength to continue with the campaign, Wickremesinghe publicly ridiculed the Thoppigala success. The then Brigadier Chagie Gallage, the pint-sized human dynamo, provided critical leadership to the highly successful Eastern campaign that deprived the LTTE the opportunity to compel the armed forces to commit far larger strength to the region. We clearly recall how he went to announce the prized capture from his forward base, that afternoon, driving his own jeep, dressed as a soldier wearing a cap, with his second in command seated by his side, obviously not to fall victim to any sniper hiding in the surrounding jungles.

The likes of Ravi Karunanayaka, Lakshman Kiriella, Dr. Rajitha Senaratna and the late Mangala Samaraweera demeaned such successes by contributing to a vicious political campaign that dented public confidence in the armed forces. Then Lt. General Sarath Fonseka’s Army needed a massive boost, not only to sustain the relentless advance into the enemy territory, but to hold onto and stabilise areas brought under government control. But the viciousness of these critics were such that Samaraweera had the gall to say that Fonseka was not even fit to lead the Salvation Army.

The Opposition campaign was meant to deter the stepped up recruitment campaign that enabled the Army to increase its strength from 116,000 to over 205,000 at the end of the campaign. In spite of disgraceful Opposition attempts to cause doubts, regarding the military campaign among the public, with backing from Western vultures, who were all for LTTE success, the Rajapaksa government maintained the momentum.

President Rajapaksa had a superb team that ensured the government confidently met the daunting challenge. That team included Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Vice Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda, Lt. General Sarath Fonseka, Air Marshal Roshan Goonetileke and the then Chief of National Intelligence (CNI) Maj. General Kapila Hendawitharana. There were also the likes of Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera, who returned from retirement to transform the once ragtag Home Guards into a worthy back-up to the military, as the Civil Defence Force, at critical places/junctures.

The then Governor of the Central Bank, Ajith Nivard Cabraal, played a significant role in overall government response to the challenge. The then presidential advisor MP Basil Rajapaksa’s role, too, should be appreciated and Prof. Rajiva Wijesinghe as well as Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe contributed to counter the false propaganda campaigns directed at the country. Whatever the shortcomings of the Mahinda Rajapaksa-led UPFA may have had, the armed forces couldn’t have succeeded if the resolute political leadership he provided, with his team of brothers, failed both in and outside Parliament. That is the undeniable truth.

During the 2006-2009 campaign, the UNP twice tried to defeat the UPFA Budget, thereby hoping to bring the war to an abrupt end. Th utterly contemptible move to defeat the UPFA Budget ultimately caused a split in the JVP with a section of the party switching its allegiance to President Rajapaksa to save the day.

Amidst political turmoil and both overt and covert Western interventions, the armed forces pressed ahead with the offensive. It would be pertinent to mention that the Vanni campaign began in March, 2007, a couple of months before the armed forces brought the eastern campaign to an end.

Vanni campaign

The Army launched the Vanni campaign in March, 2007. The 57 Division that had been tasked with taking Madhu, and then proceeding to Kilinochchi, faced fierce resistance. The principal fighting Division suffered significant casualties and progress was slow. An irate Fonseka brought in Maj. Gen. Jagath Dias as General Officer Commanding (GoC) of the 57 Division to advance and consolidate areas brought under control.

The Army expanded the Vanni campaign in September, 2007. The Task Force 1 (later 58 Division) launched operations from the Mannar ‘rice bowl’. Fonseka placed Gallage in command of that fighting formation but was replaced by the then Brigadier Shavendra Silva, as a result of a medical emergency.

The Army gradually took the upper hand in the Vanni west while the LTTE faced a new threat in the Vanni east with the newly created 59 Division, under Brigadier Nandana Udawatta, launching offensive action in January, 2008. Having launched its first major action in the Weli Oya region, that Division fought its way towards Mullaitivu, an LTTE stronghold since 1996.

The 53 (Maj. Gen. Kamal Gunaratne) and 55 (Brig. Prasanna Silva) Divisions, deployed in the Jaffna peninsula, joined the Vanni offensive, in late 2008, as the TF 1 fought its way to Pooneryn, turned right towards Paranthan, captured that area and then hit Elephant Pass and rapidly advanced towards Kilinochchi. The TF 1 and 57 Division met in Kilinochchi and the rest is history.

Once the Army brought Kilinochchi under its control, in January, 2009, the LTTE lost the war. The raising of the Lion flag over Kilinochchi meant that the entire area, west of the Kandy-Jaffna A9 road, had been brought under government control. By then the LTTE had lost the sea supply route, between Tamil Nadu and Mannar region. The LTTE was surrounded by several fighting formations in the Vanni east while the Navy made an unprecedented achievement by cordoning off the Mullaitivu coast that effectively cut them off on all sides.

During the final phase of the naval action, they captured Sea Tiger leader Soosai’s wife, Sathyadevi, and her children Sivanesan Mani Arasu and Sivanesan Sindhu. Spearheaded by the elite Fourth Fast Attack Flotilla, the Navy conducted a sustained campaign, with spectacular success in the high seas, and, by late 2008, the Navy dominated the waters around the country.

The sinking of floating LTTE warehouses, with the intelligence provided by the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) and the US Pacific Command, after the Americans decided to speed up the inevitable, and a campaign, directed at operations across the Palk Strait, weakened the LTTE. By early January, 2009, the LTTE had lost its capacity to carry out mid-sea transfers, and the use of Tamil Nadu fishing trawlers to bring in supplies, and it was only a matter of time before the group surrendered or faced the consequences.

Although Tamil Diaspora still believed in the LTTE launching a massive counter attack on the Vanni east front and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), under the leadership of the late R. Sampanthan, worked hard to halt the offensive, President Rajapaksa declared that the offensive wouldn’t be called off. President Rajapaksa had the strength to resist the combined pressure brought on him by the West and the UN until the armed forces delivered the final blow.

The despicable efforts made by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to block IMF funding for Sri Lanka is in the public domain. Clinton was obviously trying to please the Tamil Diaspora. The US made that attempt as the ground offensive was on the last phase against the backdrop of the international community suspending relief supply ships to Puthumathalan.

The IMF provided the much required funding to Sri Lanka, regardless of Clinton’s intervention.

A targeted assassination

The Air Force conducted a strategic campaign against the LTTE while providing support to both the Army and the Navy. Despite limited resources, the Air Force pulverised the enemy and high profile target assassination of S.P. Thamilselvan, in his Kilinochchi hideout, in early November, 2007, shook the LTTE leadership. The deployment of a pair of jets (Kafir and MiG 27), on the basis of intelligence provided by the DMI and backed by UAV footage, to carry out a meticulous strike on Thamilselvan’s Kilinochchi hideout, caused unprecedented fear among the LTTE.

Current Defence Secretary, Sampath Thuyakontha, in his capacity as the Commanding Officer of No 09 Squadron, played a vital role in action against the LTTE. Thuyakontha earned the respect of all for landing behind enemy lines in support of LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol).

As the Army advanced on the Vanni east front, thousands of LTTE cadres gave up their weapons, threw away their trade mark cyanide capsules and surrendered. Their defences crumbled and even hardcore cadres surrendered, regardless of the warning issued by Prabhakaran. By the time the armed forces concluded clearing operations, over 12,000 LTTE cadres were in government custody. Although those who couldn’t stomach Sri Lanka’s victory over the LTTE propagated lies regarding the rehabilitation programme, the ordinary Tamil people appreciated the project.

C.V. Wigneswaran, in his capacity as the Chief Minister of the Northern Province, called for a US investigation into the death of ex-LTTE cadres in government custody. The retired Supreme Court judge sought to consolidate his political power by alleging the Army executed surrendered men by injecting them with poison. The then Yahapalana government failed to take action against Wigneswaran who claimed over 100 deaths among ex-combatants.

Instead of initiating legal action, the war-winning Rajapaksa government rehabilitated them. Even after the change of government, in 2015, the rehabilitation project continued. Almost all of them had been released and, since the end of war, the members of the defeated LTTE never tried to reorganise, though some Diaspora elements made an attempt.

The LTTE’s demise brought an end to the use of child soldiers. Those who demand justice for Tamils, killed during the war, conveniently forget that forcible recruitment of children, by the LTTE, also ended in May, 2009. Struggling to overcome severe manpower shortage, amidst mounting battlefield losses, the LTTE abducted Tamil children, from the early ’90s, to be press-ganged into their cadre.

Although the UN and ICRC sought a consensus with the LTTE, way back during Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s tenure as the President, to cease forced recruitment of children, they couldn’t achieve the desired results. The much publicised UN-ICRC projects failed. The LTTE continued with its despicable abduction of children. The LTTE never stopped child recruitment and, depending on the ground situation, it carried out forced recruitment drives. The signing of the Norwegian arranged Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), too, failed to halt forced child recruitment.

The Darusman report that accused the military of killing over 40,000 civilians during the last phase of the war revealed that the LTTE tried to recruit children as it was about to collapse.

The TNA, or any other like-minded group here or abroad, never urged the LTTE to give up civilian shields and stop recruiting children, though they realised Prabhakaran could no longer change the outcome of the war. Norway, and those who still believed in a negotiated ‘settlement’ in a bid to prevent the annihilation of the group, desperately tried to convince Prabhakaran to give up civilian shields.

A note, dated February 16, 2009, sent to Basil Rajapaksa, by Norwegian Ambassador Tore Hattrem, expressed concern over the fate of those who had been trapped in the Vanni east. Hattrem’s note to Basil Rajapaksa revealed Norway’s serious concern over the LTTE’s refusal to release the civilians.

The following is the Norwegian note, headlined ‘Offer/Proposal to the LTTE’, personally signed by Ambassador Hattrem: “I refer to our telephone conversation today. The proposal to the LTTE on how to release the civilian population, now trapped in the LTTE controlled area, has been transmitted to the LTTE through several channels. So far, there has been, regrettably, no response from the LTTE and it doesn’t seem to be likely that the LTTE will agree with this in the near future.”

In the aftermath of the Anandapuram debacle in the first week of April, 2009, the LTTE lost its fighting capacity to a large extent. The loss of over 600 cadres marked the collapse of the organisation’s conventional fighting capacity.

The LTTE sought an arrangement in which it could retain its remaining weapons and start rebuilding the group again. President Rajapaksa emphasised that only an unconditional surrender could save the group’s remaining cadre. The President refused to recognise an area under the LTTE’s control. The CFA, signed by Wickremesinghe and Prabhakaran, in February, 2002, recognised a vast area under the LTTE control. The CFA gave unparalleled recognition to the terrorist group and that was exploited by them to the hilt.

NPP’s dilemma

During his controversial May Day address this year, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake declared that only the armed forces and police could carry arms. Dissanayake warned that no one else could retain weapons.

President Dissanayake’s declaration is of pivotal importance as the armed forces and police twice crushed JVP-led insurgencies, in 1971 and 1987-1990. Dissanayake is the leader of the JVP and the NPP, two political parties recognised by the Election Commission.

Dissanayake, who is also the Minister of Defence and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, caused controversy last year when the government announced that the President wouldn’t attend the 16th annual war heroes’ commemoration ceremony at War Heroes’ Memorial, in Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte.

That announcement triggered massive backlash. The government rescinded its earlier decision. Having received an unprecedented endorsement from the northern and eastern electorates, both at presidential and parliamentary polls in September and November, 2024, respectively, President Dissanayake seemed to have been somewhat reluctant to join the national celebration.

Yahapalana leaders President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe succumbed to Tamil Diaspora and Western pressures to do away with the 2016 annual armed forces Victory Day parade. That treacherous move followed them betraying the war-winning armed forces at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in October, 2015.

They co-sponsored accountability resolution, introduced by the US in terms of an understanding with the LTTE’s sidekick. Sirisena and Wickremesinghe forgot that the TNA recognised the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamil speaking people, in 2001, thereby setting the stage for Eelam War IV. Sampanthan’s outfit, the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK)-led TNA, showed its true colours when it joined the UNP-JVP led initiative to defeat Mahinda Rajapaksa. Having accused the war-winning Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka, of unpardonable war crimes, the TNA, along with the UNP-JVP combine, backed Fonseka at the 2010 presidential election. The South rejected Fonseka and he lost the race by a staggering 1.8 mn votes which late JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe foolishly called a computer ‘jilmart’, a newly coined word of our fake Marxists. Fonseka’s indefensible declaration, in the run-up to the 2010 presidential election that the celebrated 58 Division executed surrendered LTTE cadres, didn’t do him any good. President Rajapaksa never explained why the US’ unofficial contradiction of Fonseka’s claim was never used cleverly to counter unsubstantiated war crimes allegations, along with Lord Naseby disclosures made in October, 2017.

Sri Lanka’s failure to properly defend the armed forces is nothing but an insult to them. They saved the country from the JVP twice, and Indian trained over half a dozen terrorist groups, finally bringing the largest and the deadliest of them, the LTTE, down to its knees, on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon.

The armed forces shouldn’t hesitate to remember their glorious victory over terrorism. Since the change of government in September, 2024, the armed forces refrained from at least mentioning their battlefield achievements. At the last Independence Day, the armed forces shockingly mentioned their role in the Ditwah cyclone recovery efforts as their main achievement, to please the political masters, who themselves have been lackeys of the West, while outwardly professing to be Marxists, the latter line they have already conveniently dropped for all purposes. The armed forces shouldn’t play NPP politics but explain the situation to the current dispensation. The failure on the part of armed forces to erase their proud achievements against terrorism, out of their press releases/narratives, look rather stupid.

Midweek Review

A Novel, a Movie and a Play

Published

2 days ago

2026/05/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

Drawing a Thread through Loss and Creativity in Shakespeare’s Life

William Shakespeare [1556-1616] is generally regarded as the greatest playwright and poet in the English language. Notwithstanding the universal appeal and the timelessness of his work, very little is known about his inner-self. Despite his profound understanding of the human condition, evident in his remarkable works of drama and poetry, the origin of his psychological insights – formed long before formal theories of the mind emerged – remain unknown, often loosely ascribed to an innate gift. The thematic and philosophical dimensions of his work are often said to be influenced by the classics of the ‘ancient world’ such as Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

The bestselling novel, Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell is a confluence of fact and fiction. The award-winning movie, by the same name, is an adaptation of the novel, its screenplay co-written by Maggie O’Farrell and Chloe Zhao, the director. The central theme of the novel and the movie is the devastating impact of the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, in 1596, at an early age of eleven, and the sensitive portrayal of the grieving process of the family, inviting the audience to reflect on the proposition that Shakespeare channelled his personal grief into writing Hamlet, the play, four years later.

Mourning and melancholy take centre stage in Hamlet prompting a probable link between William Shakespeare’s own emotional world and his artistic imagination. Interestingly, the names Hamnet and Hamlet were used interchangeably during the Elizabethan era, adding weight to the speculation.

The movie matches the imaginative and descriptive brilliance of the novel. The narrative unfolds against the backdrop of Stratford-upon-Avon and its environs and its inhabitants of Elizabethan England, finally shifting to London and the Globe Theatre. The film won eight nominations at the 98^th Academy Awards, including best picture, best director for Zhao, and best actress for Jessie Buckley, who immortalises Anne Hathaway, [‘Agnes’] Shakespeare’s wife, through whom the real face of family grief is portrayed. Shakespeare [nameless] remains ‘silent’ and virtually ‘back-stage’ in London preoccupied with the playhouse, the players and the plays.

Many Shakespeare scholars have speculated about a probable link between the death of Hamnet Shakespeare and the writing of Hamlet, his Magnum Opus:

“No one can say for certain how the death of Shakespeare’s son affected him, but it is hard not to notice that in the years following Hamnet’s death Shakespeare wrote a play obsessed with fathers and sons, grief, and the persistence of the dead.” [James Shapiro]

“Hamnet’s death must have been a devastating blow…..and the shadow of that loss may well lie behind the profound meditations on mortality in Hamlet.” [Park Honan]

“The death of Hamnet is the most plausible personal event to have touched Shakespeare deeply in these years, and it is tempting to hear an echo of that loss in the grief that permeates Hamlet.” [Germaine Greer]

That echo is clearly heard in Act 4, scene 5 in Hamlet:

He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone;

At his head a grass-green turf,

At his heels a stone.

Yet, in the play, a son loses his father, and the circumstance of the loss is different. Hamlet mourns the sudden death of his father, king Hamlet, he idolised. The young prince is faced with a complex emotional challenge as the late king’s brother, Claudius, usurper to the throne, marries the widowed queen, denying the young prince of his lawful right to sovereignty. The process of mourning is weighed down by the profound significance of the personal loss to the prince and being bereft of any trusting relationships to share his grief – mourning turning to melancholy.

Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, Hamlet, has gained unremitting interest of audiences, universally over four hundred years, and has been open to divergent appraisal. Any commentary on the play without an exploration of the psyche of its protagonist, prince Hamlet, would be as the popular cliché goes, ‘like Hamlet without the prince of Denmark!’ Hamlet is the longest of all Shakespearean plays, with the least amount of action, but with the most amount of spoken word, mainly by prince Hamlet, which includes his soliloquies [solo locution: self-discourse] that opens the door to his inner self, inviting in by Hamlet himself: “pluck out the heart of my mystery”.

In the first of his soliloquies, Hamlet reveals his affliction with melancholy. He describes the world as worthless, wishes he is dead, contemplates suicide but regrets that God does not sanction such self-destruction. “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt/ Thaw and resolve itself into dew/ O, that the Everlasting had not fixed/ His cannon ‘gainst self-slaughter. O, God, God/ Seem to me all the uses of this world!’

Hamlet’s anguish is expressed as: ‘This goodly frame, the earth’ is no more than a ‘Sterile promontory’; ‘this majestical roof fretted with golden fire’; the heavens, ‘a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours’; and man, ‘the paragon of animals’, a quintessence of dust’, his mind ‘an unweeded garden/ That grows to seed.’ – Hamlet’s melancholic thought with depressive and nihilistic content expressed in philosophical terms.

But his anguish is best depicted in his fourth soliloquy [Act 3, Scene1] arguably, the most quoted piece of verse in all Shakespeare: ‘To be, or not to be’ – about life and death. He questions, ‘whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/ Or take arms against a sea of troubles/ and by opposing, end them’. What happens after death? Is it a peaceful sleep or nightmare? Do we end our miseries by putting ourselves to the ‘quietus’ with a dagger, and enter that ‘undiscovered country’ from which ‘no traveller returns’, or put up with our problems? ‘Conscience makes cowards of us all’ and make us procrastinate.

In his soliloquies Hamlet reveals his affliction with melancholy. He wishes that his body would melt away, describes the world as worthless and contemplates suicide – negative cognitions about the self, the environment and the future, characteristic of severe mood disturbance – but regrets that God does not sanction such self-destruction.

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Grief is a universal human experience following loss, characterised by sadness, at times mixed with anger and guilt, and frequently transient in nature. Depending on the perceived significance [‘meaningfulness’] of the loss and the absence of a sharing or confiding relationship, grief may become prolonged, with a potential to become pathological.

In a seminal paper published in 1917, Sigmund Freud [1856 – 1939], argued that there are two different responses to loss – ‘Mourning and Melancholia’. His contribution remains the basis for understanding unconscious grief in psychoanalytic thought.

Freud describes mourning as a natural way to respond to losing something or someone significant. It is a transitory process, potentially transforming, albeit painful. In mourning the loss of a loved one, the bereaved gradually withdraws the emotional energy – ‘libido’ – from ‘the lost object’, and the emotional investment is redirected to an ‘alternate object’ or pursuit. Throughout this process the ‘self’ remains intact, allowing the person to heal by integrating the loss into life. In psychology, this process in which a person unconsciously redirects unacceptable or distressing impulses into socially acceptable or constructive activities is called sublimation – a concept introduced by Sigmund Freud and later developed further by his daughter Anna Freud. Instead of expressing the impulse directly, the energy behind it is transformed into something positive or productive – an ‘ego defence’.

On the other hand, Freud described melancholia as a persistent state that stays within the ‘unconscious’ – the repressed aspect of the mind, while the person feels trapped in unresolved emotions which jeopardises their mental and physical well-being.

Shakespeare lost a child, the only son, Hamnet, still in his formative years. The playwright had no option but to leave his family in his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon, and return to London after burying his son to continue his work at the playhouse. The significance of the loss to the father would, no doubt, have been profound, as the Greek historian Herodotus fittingly proclaimed, “No one that has lost a child knows what it is to lose a child”.

In the novel, and as depicted in the movie, Agnes [Anne Hathaway] travels to London to meet her husband. Unknown to him she stands with the audience at the Globe Theatre to watch Hamlet, the play, while Shakespeare remains backstage. As O’Farrell poignantly writes in her novel, “Hamlet, here on this stage, is two people, the young man alive, and the father dead. He is both alive and dead. Her husband [Shakespeare] has brought him back to life, in the only way he can”. “She stretches out a hand as if to acknowledge them, as if to feel the air between the three of them, as if to pierce the boundary between audience and players, between real life and play”.

Many literary scholars speculate that Shakespeare in mourning gave voice to his grief through Hamlet, the play’s introspective protagonist, who takes to the stage with melancholic expression. There are others who dispute this view, arguing that Hamlet is a product of his creative genius that transcends any autobiographical explanation. While Hamnet, the novel, and its film adaptation do not assert a direct historical link, they suggest an association between the playwright’s personal loss and his artistic creation. The notion that Shakespeare sublimated his grief into creating the iconic stage work remains suggestive, yet unprovable, but reveals an important ‘therapeutic strategy’ [sublimation] in dealing with loss. Nevertheless, through Hamlet, he gives enduring expression to a universal human condition – grief – that resonates across time.

Moreover, from an aesthetic point of view, a work of art can truly be called Art – whether encountered on the page, the screen, or the stage – when it invites reflection or evokes emotion. The thread that runs through the novel, the movie and the play tend to reinforce that notion.

By Dr. Siri Galhenage, Psychiatrist [Retd]
sirigalhenage@gmail.com