Midweek Review

Making Sense of ‘Literary Sensibility’

Published

5 years ago

2021/03/17

Sahan Weerasooriya

By Dr. Siri Galhenage

(Psychiatrist)

The exclusive role of literature is the transmission of complexities of human experience, calling into play our emotional and intellectual faculties. Literary analysts observe, that great works of art and literature have the capacity to ‘convey serious truths and significant ideals’, ‘broaden our understanding’, ‘kindle our imaginations’, ‘raise our spirits’ and ‘enhance our sensibility’. Seen from a psychological perspective, such therapeutic ingredients in Literature have the potential to assist us in elevating our lives to a higher plane of existence, bringing order and meaning to the seeming chaos of daily living.

At the heart of the above observation is the concept of literary ‘Sensibility’ – an idea that has shaped modern consciousness with regard to the evaluation and interpretation of literature. Variously interpreted, the concept has undergone transformation over time. The purpose of this essay is to explore the many nuances of its meaning and to underscore its worth.

Origin and Transformation

The term sensibility is an offshoot of the word ‘sense’ with its roots in Latin [‘sentire’: to feel]. Borrowed by neuroscience, ‘sense’ refers to the faculty of ‘perceiving’ by the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. The term is broadly synonymous with the higher cerebral functions of cognition, judgement, discernment and intuition [‘the sixth sense’] governed by the ‘sensorium’ – the component of the brain that deals with receiving and interpreting external stimuli.

The word ‘sense’ has made a vast contribution to the English vocabulary by generating a range of derivatives with shades of meaning. It has given birth to such kindred words as ‘sensitive’ [being sympathetic when dealing with the needs or feelings of others]; ‘sensible’ [having good sense or judgement]; ‘sensuous’ [coined by Milton to suggest the idea of being alive to sensations], transcending the baser term ‘sensual’ with connotations of sexual arousal; and SENSIBILITY, amongst many others.

Geoffrey Chaucer, the legendary English poet of the middle Ages, widely considered to be the father of English poetry, is credited for having conceived the notion of sensibility. The idea was fostered in the 18th Century by a group of philosophers and writers who formed the so called ‘literary cult of sensibility’. Initially used to refer to individual response to physical and emotional stimuli [exaggerated and self-indulgent, implying individual susceptibility], the meaning of the word transformed into understanding and experiencing the feelings of others, akin to empathy.

The above themes were soon picked up by novelists, such as Jane Austen, who created her masterpiece, ‘Sense and Sensibility’ as a parody of emotional response, featuring two sisters who both seek love, endure loss and find happiness in their own way – Marianne: passionate and impulsive; Elinor: dignified and thoughtful, in their responses.

Sensibility, from a modern perspective, appears to cover the whole spectrum of literary activity, suggesting a highly developed emotional and intellectual capacity for both literary creativity as well as literary analysis.

The Deeper Realm in Literature

Every reader could be considered a latent literary analyst. But those with literary sensibility are regarded as having developed a more refined ability to elicit, discern, comprehend and respond to the deeper layers of meaning of a text [the subterranean realm], signifying a heightened level of consciousness.

What is the source of this subterranean realm of knowledge [wisdom] in great art and literature which the discerning mind could draw from? The legendary poet Milton believed that it is God given. But there is evidence to suggest that great literary figures drew heavily from mythological tales and folklore which the celebrated Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung asserted embodied ancient wisdom – ‘the storehouse of universally shared experience’ which he called our ‘collective unconscious’ – lying deeper than the ‘individual unconscious’.

Ancient wisdom regarded the universe as alive, and all its objects – humans, plants, animals, celestial bodies – and natural phenomena, in continuous interaction within it, bringing about both favourable as well as adverse outcomes. The preliterate humans were yet unaware of the biological and physical forces that controlled the ecosystems around them. Confined to their natural habitat, they were, by necessity, constantly in tune with their environment, inventing narratives loaded with myths, creating images on rocks, performing spiritual ceremonies with totems and taboos necessary to bring order and meaning to their lives. The experience of their daily life merged imperceptibly into mythological tales and folklore which has now gained the tag of ‘art’.

Jung hypothesised that the collective unconscious was a reservoir of ‘predispositions and potentialities’ to act or react in certain ways which have universal meaning. He called them ‘archetypes’. These predispositions which are inherited collectively compel us to experience life in a manner conditioned by the past history of mankind. By endless repetition such experiences have become engraved in our psychic constitution but with some modifications during psychological evolution. The archetypes generate an abundance of metaphors which make up the arts and are the building blocks of creative thought.

Thus, the arts appear to have originated in antiquity, in the real world; it’s defining quality being the expression of human experience. The works of art that endure embody universal traits that are deeply humanistic and are faithful to nature. They are judged by their precision and their adherence to human nature. Over centuries such universal themes have strengthened the creative powers of the human mind and expressed in ‘original’ works of art.

Shakespeare and the Archetypal Legends

Shakespeare, unarguably the greatest dramatist and poet of all time in the English language, and perhaps in any language, drew heavily from archetypal legends and folklore. For example, Hamlet, widely regarded as his magnum opus, has its roots in the archetypal legend of Amleth, first recorded in the Gesta Danorum written by the 12th century Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus – a legend with parallel plots in the folklore of other cultures, embedded in the ‘psychological heritage of humanity’. Hamlet portrays a wide array of patterns of emotion, behaviour and relationships drawn from our deeply embedded storehouse of universally shared experience.

Shakespeare, by using this knowledge, exercised his creative genius to give dramatic expression not only to the concerns of his contemporary audiences of the Elizabethan era but also spoke to us in the modern world. Many literary analysts and others in recent history have exercised their sensibility in exploring the moral, socio-political and psychological depths in Hamlet while romancing his written word – Carl Marx and Sigmund Freud amongst them.

Possibly drawn in by Hamlet’s invitation to ‘pluck out the heart of my mystery’, Freud made psychoanalytic explorations into the psyche of the young prince and his relationship with his mother who in ‘indecent haste’ married the usurper who killed his father.

Many a psychiatrist would be in awe of Shakespeare’s descriptions of ‘Melancholia’ and ‘Mania’ in Hamlet and Ophelia, respectively, long before theoretical frameworks were developed in the diagnosis of such mental disorders. Modern day neurochemistry has established a biological predisposition to the above conditions bringing about a consilience of literary sensibility and science. Sensibility, thus, has the potential to act as a driving force in expanding knowledge.

In his monograph ‘What Is Art’, the celebrated Russian author Leo Tolstoy, renowned for his deep social conscience, asserted that a moral message should transcend aesthetic beauty in a piece of Art, including literary Art. His work is abounding in psychological insights too. All such ingredients are amply depicted in his literary artistry. If the young reader is unable to afford the much needed sustained attention in reading Tolstoy’s novels, ‘War and Peace’, ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘resurrection’, I suggest reading his popular novellas, ‘Cossacks’, ‘Death of Ivan Ilych’, ’Kreutzer Sonata’, Hadji Murad’ and ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need’, which provide a window to his literary landscape.

A good piece of literature provides a basis for the cultivation of social conscience, fostering of moral wisdom, development of psychological insights and the appreciation of beauty [aesthetics] in varying degree, elevating human existence to a higher plane. In my view, the word sensibility in modern terminology encompasses the ability to explore the above matters of considerable human interest, entombed in the deeper vaults of literary treasures.

Early Reading and Sensibility

There is a close association between brain development, reading ability and literary sensibility. We are not born with reading aptitude; the ability does not develop automatically. Reading has to be learned. Helping children learn to read early in their lives facilitates neuronal development by the integration of several systems of the brain enhancing its cognitive capacity – an important dynamic in developing literary sensibility in later life. Reading a story regularly to a child and engaging him or her in meaningful conversation that flows on from the stories, helping them to look beyond the narrative, is considered to be the best predictor of later reading interest and the accomplishment of literary sensibility.

In addition, research shows that early literacy in children plays a key role in academic achievement in later life by facilitating their cognitive skills such as attention, concentration, working memory and flexibility in thinking. It also places them on a trajectory of personality development helping them in enhancing their self-esteem, interpersonal skill, organisational skill and emotional stability, assisting them to comprehend and cope with the crises that we confront in daily living – thus strengthening the structure of individual personality and by extension the nature of society and civilisation.

Losing Our Romance with the Written Word

There is a growing perception that we are losing our romance with the printed word. We live in a hurried world, and most people, especially the young, are showing a decline in the amount of time spent on reading. Intellectual and emotional engagement with a text demands time, motivation and focussed concentration. The digital age we live in fosters ‘light reading’: entranced before the computer or phone screen we cruise websites for a quick pick up of information and entertainment, and to remain connected. The Net has come to stay and it plays a vital role in our modern day living. But it does not provide a platform for ‘deep reading’ [a notion advocated by Sven Berkerts] that fosters sensibility a good text of literature can offer.

We have an ancient literary tradition, the custodian of our values – the very foundation of our civilisation. People of my generation will well remember the following verse from Vadan Kavi Potha: ‘Allata singawath rasa nethi kevili kaka/ Walkola bima athuta nidhi noleba duk thaka/ Kalgiya redhi verali henda deli kunen waka/ Elmen akuru uganivu idiri weda thaka’ – a crude translation being, ‘Learn your letters with love, for future benefit, despite having to face hardship and impoverishment’. The word ‘akuru’, here, connotes a broader education.

The decline of the printed word, and hence the decline of sensibility, and the rise of much less civilising forms of communication and entertainment, has led to the poverty and emptiness of our popular culture. The decline in morality, intimately linked to the decline of sensibility, is more degrading than the economic woes that we are afflicted with today. At the root of so much social disorder we witness around us, such as the wanton destruction of nature, our lack of understanding of our common humanity, our greed and self-indulgence and the heinous crimes that we often hear of, are but the outward manifestations of a collective soul deprived of sensibility.

[sirigalhenage@gmail.com]

References

David Mikics: [2013] Slow Reading in a Hurried Age. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

Edward O. Wilson [1998] Consilience – The Unity of Knowledge Vintage Books, A Division of Random House. Inc.

J.A.C. Brown: [1961, 1964] Freud and the Post-Freudians, Penguin Books.

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Midweek Review

Squeaky clean image of JVP in tatters

Published

6 days ago

2026/04/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

During the recent debate on the No-Confidence Motion (NCM) against Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody, Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) Batticaloa District lawmaker, Shanakiyan Rajaputhiran Rasamanickam, warned that the next NCM would be moved against Fisheries Minister Ramalingham Chandrasekaran. Rasamanickam accused the National List member of corruption, a charge vehemently denied by the NPPer. The NPP/JVP needs to initiate an internal inquiry before corruption allegations overwhelm the party that received the full advantage of Aragalaya to transform the outfit from just a three-member parliamentary group, in 2024, to a staggering 159, a year later. The UNP and SLFP led alliances were dealt harshly by the electorates for want of action to curb corruption. Today, the UNP and SLFP are not represented in Parliament, while the SLPP, that secured 145 seats at the 2020 general election, was reduced to just three with its parliamentary group leader Namal Rajapaksa entering Parliament through the National List. Rajapaksa junior obviously feared to face the Hambantota electorate at the last general election. That is the undeniable truth.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

The ongoing controversy over Agriculture, Lands, Irrigation and Livestock Minister K.D. Lal Kantha’s three-storeyed luxury house has intensified pressure on the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s Power (NPP) government struggling to cope-up with the devastating coal scam, blamed on Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody forcing him to resign.

Jayakody, one of those who financed the NPP/JVP campaign in the run-up to the 2024 national polls ,resigned on 17 April, along with Prof. Udayanga Hemapala, Secretary to the Energy Ministry. Their resignations happened eight months after the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), a breakaway faction of the JVP, revealed the alleged coal scam. The Lal Kantha affair received significant public attention though the primary issue at hand is the massive coal scam that ripped through the government.

Jayakody will continue as a National List member of the ruling party. The NPP/JVP won an unprecedented 159 seats, including 18 National List slots at the November 2024 parliamentary elections.

The Opposition dismissed government claims that the resignations were meant to facilitate the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the procurement of coal, since the commissioning of the country’s only coal-fired power plant during the onset of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second term. In the wake of the much delayed resignations, NPP/JVP heavyweight Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath, addressing the media at the Information Department, pathetically vouched for Jayakody’s integrity.

Let us discuss the accusations directed at Lal Kantha who had served the SLFP-led Cabinet for a short period, years ago, in terms of an agreement between the SLFP and the JVP. Lal Kantha had never been accused of corruption and was, in fact, one of those lawmakers who raised the issue both in and outside Parliament. Political parties may have forgotten that the UNP got rid of Lacille de Silva, Director General of Administration, Parliament, during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s premiership, in the 2001-2003 period, alleging he passed on information to Lal Kantha to attack the government.

The NPP Executive Committee member, as well as JVP politburo and Central Committee heavyweight, has publicly defended his right to own a luxury house amidst a section of the social media pushing for police investigation into the lawmaker’s wealth.

Unlike the owner/owners of the mysterious Malwana mansion, built on a 16-acre land overlooking the Kelani river, Lal Kantha didn’t try to disclaim the house ownership at Jusse Road, Welivita, in the Kaduwela area. The Malwana house was built towards the end of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second term as the President. The hullabaloo over the ownership of the Malwana mansion, and construction costs, dominated the 2015 presidential election campaign. On the basis of the Malwana mansion, the UNP and the JVP built a strong case against the Rajapaksas, accusing the family of corruption.

It would be of pivotal importance that the JVP backed Maithripala Sirisena’s 2015 presidential polls candidature. The campaign was built on an anti-corruption platform that earned the appreciation of the public who disregarded the unprecedented development work successfully carried out by the Rajapaksas, while also fighting a war to defeat the most ruthless terrorist organisation that was out to break up the country.

During a US-India backed violent protest campaign, in March-July 2022, an organised gang set the stately Malwana mansion ablaze. The general consensus was that the Malwana mansion belonged to Basil Rajapakasa, though he vehemently denied having anything to do with it.

Yahapalana Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, is on record as having declared that the Malwana mansion would be renovated and used to accommodate a state institution. Lal Kantha’s newly acquired wealth has to be examined and discussed, taking into consideration his long standing claim that as a fulltime member of the JVP he entirely depended on his wife’s monthly salary and help provided by friends and associates. If that was the case, Lal Kantha couldn’t have ended up among the richest group of politicians, within less than two years after the last presidential election, held in September 2024.

Lal Kantha couldn’t have been unaware of the possibility of the Opposition, particularly the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), attacking him and the NPP/JVP over his Kaduwela house. Responding to critics, the Anuradhapura District lawmaker has claimed, on YouTube, that he sold a property he owned in Anuradhapura and used that money to acquire the Jusse Road land.

The outspoken Minister is also on record as having said that the existence of his new house, to which he moved in late 2024, was disclosed by him. However, incisive Youtuber Dharma Sri Kariyawasam has claimed that he made the revelation on 01 October, 2025, while another You-Tuber, Abeetha Edirisinghe, rammed up pressure on the NPP by lodging a complaint with the police, via the special number 1818. Edirisinghe’s SL Leaders YouTube posted a video of him lodging the complaint.

What made the complaint really interesting was Edirisinghe’s declaration based on ‘Dark Room’ YouTube allegations that wealthy businessman Nissanka Senadhipathi, who had been one of the closest associates of the Rajapaksas, provided the wherewithal required to acquire land, build and then furnish the Jusse Road mansion. Defending his position, Lal Kantha claimed that he acquired a piano for his daughter, about 15 years ago, while declaring he enjoyed the capacity to raise large sums of funds if necessary. A smiling Lal Kantha explained how he could effortlessly collect Rs 500,000 each from 100 associates/friends. Programmes posted by Dharma Sri Kariyawasam and Abeetha Edirisinghe are must-watch for those genuinely interested in knowing the explosive story, from different angles.

Close on the heels of debates on Lal Kantha’s mansion, the media reported the Minister’s last available asset declaration, sent to the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC), dealt with over Rs 80 mn worth of property, vehicles and gold, etc. The JVP heavyweight’s annual income has stunned even the staunchest supporters of the ruling party. Lal Kantha, through his lawyer, demanded Rs 10 bn in damages from ‘Hiru’ for wrongly estimating his properties, etc., at Rs 460 mn.

Both Dharma Sri Kariyawasam and Abeetha Edirisinghe propagated that police wanted the public to complain to special the number 1818, created to accept such complaints in case they felt suspicious about newly acquired property, regardless of who owned them.

Unexpected disclosure of Lal Kantha’s unprecedented wealth obviously stunned the public who genuinely believed in the unshakable NPP/JVP stand on corruption. Lal Kantha, who had joined the JVP in 1982, before becoming a full time member, in 1987, had no qualms in defending his new lifestyle, having repeatedly and bitterly complained about the difficulties experienced by him and his family.

In his defence, Lal Kantha emphasised that he hadn’t been accused of robbing the taxpayer or public sector corruption. However, the NPP/JVP all-out attack on all previous governments, over waste, corruption, irregularities and mismanagement, and branding all their MPs corrupt, cannot adopt such a stance. The Kaduwela mansion has sent shockwaves through the electorate. Dharma Sri Kariyawasam, in his response to Lal Kantha, repeatedly stressed that his wealth was being questioned by those who exercised their franchise in support of the NPP/JVP at the national elections and Local Government polls, in 2025.

Growing public resentment over what various interested parties, including the NPP/JVP called ill-gotten wealth of members and henchmen of previous governments fuelled Aragalaya (31 March-14 July 2022). Those who set houses and other property, belonging to various then government politicians and their associates ablaze, operated on the presumption that they were beneficiaries of ill-gotten wealth. The NPP/JVP powered the campaign, alongside the breakaway JVP faction, styled as Peratugami Pakshaya (Frontline Socialist Party) as well as the UNP.

Ranwala and others

Against the backdrop of Auditor General Samudrika Jayarathne’s devastating report on coal procurement for the 2025/2026 period and Lal Kantha’s declaration that he owned a three-storeyed house, the resignation of Asoka Ranwala, as the Speaker of Parliament, over his failure to prove his declared academic qualifications seemed uncalled for. Jayarathne signed that report on behalf of the National Audit Office (NAO).

The Gampaha District MP resigned on 13 December, 2024, just 22 days after being appointed the Speaker. The main Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) relentlessly attacked Ranwala over his fabricated or unverified educational qualifications, specifically a Ph.D. from a Japanese university and a degree from the University of Moratuwa.

The NPP/JVP tried to defend Ranwala but quickly succumbed to SJB pressure. We never managed to establish whether Ranwala resigned on his own accord or the NPP/JVP asked him to resign to save the party. Similarly, the resignations of Energy Minister Jayakody and Prof. Hemapala, who cut a sorry figure before the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) recently, must have been demanded by the ruling party. Had the NPP bosses acted prudently, much earlier, after he was indicted before the Colombo High Court on a previous corruption case, they could have easily asked Jayakody to resign his ministerial portfolio before the Parliament debated the no-confidence motion against him.

Another case that really embarrassed the ruling party was accusations directed at Dr. Jagath Wickremeratne, who succeeded Ranwala as House Speaker. The Polonnaruwa District MP was the next to face fire, following a dispute with the Deputy Secretary General of Parliament Chaminda Kularatne who is also the Chief of Staff of the House. Kularatne hit back hard after Parliament sacked him over alleged irregularities. In a petition, dated 2 February, 2026, sent to CIABOC, Kularatne disclosed the circumstances the Speaker reacted angrily after he brought to the NPPer’s notice illegal actions and corruption, as well as his (Kularatne) recommendation in his capacity as the Right to Information (RTI) officer, to release certain information sought by civil society activists. Kularatne further claimed that the situation deteriorated further over an incident that happened on 18 June, 2025, or a date closer to that date, in the room where Speaker Wickremeratne had his lunch. Kularatne refrained from revealing the incident.

There hadn’t been a previous instance of a senior parliamentary official moving the CIABOC against the Speaker. The allegations directed at the Speaker, in respect of abuse of vehicles, taking two fuel allowances, misuse of equipment belonging to the Media Unit of Parliament, inadequate payment for lunch obtained for Chameera Gallage, Speaker’s private secretary, who had lunch with him, illegal payments made to retired Ministry Additional Secretary S.K. Liyanage, who was appointed to inquire into Kularatne’s conduct, suppression of release of information in terms of RTI, and uncalled for interventions in administration.

Kularatne’s complaint to the CIABOC failed to result in an expeditious inquiry, though a complaint lodged against a sacked parliamentary official appeared to have received much more attention. The NPP has responded cautiously to Kularatne vs Wickremeratne battle as pressure mounted on the ruling party over the coal scam that threatened to cause further increase in already unbearable electricity tariffs. The Auditor General’s report, in no uncertain terms, has implicated the Energy Ministry and Lanka Coal Company in the sordid operation that resulted in low-grade coal ending up at the Lakvijaya coal-fired power plant that earlier met about 30 to 40% percent of the country’s power requirements at essentially low cost, barring hydroelectricity.

The report declared that the term tender for the supply of coal was awarded to Trident Champhar, an Indian company that hadn’t been registered at the time it bid for Sri Lanka’s largest tender and procedures in respect of loading and unloading the cargo. To make matters worse, Minister Jayakody, who had been implicated in the coal scam, was recently indicted on corruption charges in the High Court of Colombo. There hadn’t been a previous instance of a sitting member of the Cabinet being indicted for corruption. Therefore, the NPP government cannot be happy over its steamroller majority in Parliament having defeated the no-confidence motion moved against Jayakody who remained confident in the parliamentary group’s support at the behest of the top party leadership.

The NPP/JVP finds itself in an extremely embarrassing and pitiful situation over the coal scam. The damning report issued by the Auditor General pertaining to the coal scam has to be examined taking into consideration the failure on the part of the government and the Constitutional Council to reach a consensus on filling the vacant Auditor General’s post in 2025. The post of Auditor General remained vacant from early April 2025 to early February 2026.

Role of NAO

The NAO functions as an independent body answerable to Parliament. The recent NAO report that dealt with coal procurement exposed the utterly corrupt system in place, regardless of assurances given by the government. The report proved that irregularities can be perpetrated and corrupt practices continued, regardless of assurances given by the current dispensation.

Over the past several years, tangible measures were taken to strengthen the NAO. Parliament certified the National Audit (Amendment) Act, No. 19 of 2025 on 22 September, 2025. That act introduced reforms meant to enhance public sector accountability, enforce audit findings, and streamline the surcharge process. The no nonsense report proved that in spite of interference and undue influence exerted on the NAO, those responsible did their job without fear or favour.

SJB lawmaker Mujibur Rahman, during the debate on the no-confidence motion against Minister Jayakody, alleged in Parliament that COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) Chairman Dr. Nishantha Samaraweera directly intervened when the NAO was in the process of finalising the report. The former UNPer called for an investigation to establish whether the Galle District NPP MP visited the NAO on several days to meet those handling the investigation.

We are not aware whether the COPE Chief, who called for the NAO to inquire into allegations in respect of coal procurement, visited the NAO.

However, the NAO report on the coal scam, now available online for all to study, underscores the pivotal importance of the anti-corruption fight.

In September 2025, the SJB asked the CIABOC to probe how some NPP/JVP Ministers amassed so much property. The SJB raised the issue with the focus on Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe (like Lal Kantha, he, too, represents the Anuradhapura District) amassed Rs 275 mn. The SJB’s complaint to CIABOC sought investigations on Ministers Sunil Handunetti, Bimal Rathnayake, Dr. Nalinda Jayathissa and Kumara Jayakody, and Deputy Minister Sunil Watagala.

Lal Kantha, who has now acknowledged having as much as Rs 80 mn worth property, was not among the lawmakers targeted by the SJB. Having falsely propagated an anti-corruption campaign to deceive the public, the NPP/JVP stand literally exposed before the public. The coal scam and Lal Kantha fiasco have caused irreparable damage to such an extent, their anti-corruption campaigns may not carry any weight with the public at future elections.

Midweek Review

Some languages confine you; some languages free you

Published

6 days ago

2026/04/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

‘… where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; ….

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward….into ever-widening thought and action…’

With wide apologies, I am going to put snatches of that poem into more dreary uses, though not quite desert sand.

What are those narrow domestic walls which break up the world into fragments? Languages.

Amiya reads the Gitanjali but does not read the Tirukkural. Hong Li reads Kong Fut Ze’s Analects but not Plato’s Republic. Paul reads Miton’s Paradise Lost but not Njal Saga. Sarath Kumara reads Wickremasinghe’s satva santatitya but not Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Ngidi does not read Thomas Picketty’s Capital in the 20th Century or Anthony Atkinson’s Inequality at all. Hirono uses Large Language Models to do homework but Rasolomanana has not seen a computer. And so on and so forth. The world is broken into fragments by languages, but not by languages alone. The daughter of a rich black man living in Howard County in Maryland goes to Stanford but a brown dweller in Dharavi cannot enter Jawaharlal Nehru University. The lesson is that it is not only languages or orthodoxies that break up the world into ‘fragments’ but also many other barriers, about one of which Tagore sang.

Language is a marvellous ‘invention’ of nature well cultivated by humans. No other species has the faculty to use language to know. Ludwig Wittgenstein expressed it epigrammatically, ‘whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ It is language that carries forth knowledge. It is not only language that carries forth knowledge: mathematics, in its own right, is a powerful carrier of knowledge. One can write something simple like if x-y=0, then x=y, as well as whole pages of complex and complicated arguments using mathematical notations. Mathematics may and often does write nature and about nature; it also writes about things that exist only in the mind. That is not different from languages: heaven and Vishnu exist in some minds but not in others or elsewhere. Galileo Galilei learnt ‘Nature is an open book but it is written in mathematics’. Much of nature is a closed book to those to whom mathematics is alien territory. But today, I am interested in how some languages ‘break the world into fragments by domestic walls’, while a few others fly about regardless. When a team from India played cricket with a team from Pakistan a few weeks back, the commentary was broadcast in India in 14 languages and in Nigeria national news is read in several languages. That same game of cricket also was broadcast to the rest of the world in one language: English.

When and how do some languages come to ‘lead the mind forward into ever widening thought and action’? The transformation occurs when users of one language become conquerors and rulers of peoples using other languages and when the users of a language become generators of new knowledge which are eagerly sought after by users of other languages. Greek, Latin and Arabic contributed mightily to the vocabulary of modern Western European languages. When new ideas in law, government, philosophy, medicine and science had to be expressed, they went to Greek, Latin or Arabic. Consequently, you will bump into Greek terms the moment you begin thinking about those disciplines. The serious study of Greek was introduced to England by Erasmus (of Rotterdam) about 1500 AC. The use of Latin began with the Roman Empire but took on new functions when Latin became the vehicle carrying Christianity east and north (of Europe) and elsewhere later. Until about the 18th century AC Latin was the language of learning in most of Europe. At its inception, Manchester Grammar School was a Latin school and the Boston Latin School which started in 1635 still thrives in that name. The two medieval universities in England were mostly seminaries teaching in Latin well into the 19th century. A wide swathe of languages is written with the Latin alphabet: European languages from the Black Sea to the Atlantic and from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, America from Canada to Chile, sub-Saharan Africa including Togo, and Indonesian, Malaysian and several others. The exodus of Jewish, Arabic and other scholars, after the fall of Constantinople (1453) to the Ottomans, brought Greek and Arabic to Western Europe including England. From about the 14 to the 18th century, European indigenous vernaculars grew to be carriers of new knowledge, especially in sciences. Luther’s reformation and the development of German had much in common. Gutenberg’s new printing press (1450 AC) helped the growth of European vernaculars and the spread of reformed Christianity.

Four western European languages stood out as both conquerors and carriers of new knowledge: Portuguese, Spanish, French and English. Arabic performed the same function from about 800 AC to the 13 AC when that language carried a new religion and new knowledge in mathematics, astronomy and medicine. Arabic replaced the indigenous languages in the entire Maghreb. The language of governance and learning from Mexico south to Chile is Spanish with Brazil using Portuguese and are collectively called Latin America, because Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Romanian are Romance or Latin Languages. French is the language of governance and learning in several parts of West Africa. English was a phenomenon in itself. It destroyed the use of hundreds of languages in North America. It conquered almost half the world and English is the language of governance and higher education in a good part of the land it once ruled. As a language carrying new knowledge, English excels all others. As the collapse of four European empires, including the Ottoman, went on from about 1915 to about 1960, English, which produced new knowledge faster than any other, began to break ‘domestic walls’, the world over. China, which had little love for the English-speaking world, had millions of its citizens schooled in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia during the last 30 years and continues to do so, to date. In contrast, during that time how many rushed to Niger to learn Fulfulde or to Lanka to study Sinhala? The prominence of English was promoted by two other processes: one was translation into English of major works in other languages and the other the growth of a class of indigenous writers and readers in the conqueror’s language. One reads Oblomov, Gilgamesh and, indeed, Gitanjali translated into English. India now probably has more readers in English than any other single country. Persons in Western African countries have crafted in French and English, masterpieces in fiction, poetry and drama. Modern European languages have been both conquerors’ languages and carriers of new knowledge.

Several people recently have written in The Island and in Lankadeepa about the importance of using the ‘mother tongue’. They have stressed the importance of the ‘mother tongue’ in creative writing. As with observations regarding empirical phenomena, it is necessary to test those generalisations against reality. Samskrt is a language not entirely unfamiliar to many in this land. Samskrt was nobody’s mother tongue. (After all, it is deva bhaashitam.) There is not a shred of evidence that Kalidasa’s mother talked to him in Samskrt. But Kalidasa wrote rtusmahara and shakuntalam.. The vedas and upanishads were first spoken and later written in samskrt. Pali is nobody’s mother tongue but Theravada writings are almost entirely in that language. Isaac Newton wrote Principia Mathematica in Latin; we have no evidence that baby Isaac babbled in Latin. Paul Dirac wrote about particle physics in mathematics rather than in his father’s beloved French. Leopold Senghor’s mother tongue was not French nor Chinua Achebe’s English. More casually, check your own libraries. I had a collection of about 2,300 books until last year. There weren’t even 200 written in Sinhala and that 200 included editions of works from the 13th century. Check how many books written in Sinhala and English you bought in the last two years. There were far too many writers and scientists who brought forth highly acclaimed work in languages other than their mother tongue, contradicting the argument that the mother tongue was essential or even desirable for original work, in science or in literature.

Most languages ‘break the world into narrow fragments’. A few coagulate them into large masses: 900 million people speak Mandarin and 325 million, Bengali. A half dozen bind themselves together speaking a conqueror’s language. Four languages stand out as having ‘led the ‘mind forward into ever-widening thought and action’: Greek, Latin, Arabic and English. English, so far, is unrivalled.

by Usvatte-aratchi