Martin Wickramasinghe (1890-1976): The journalist

(Excerpted from Selected Journalism by HAJ Hulugalle)

Although Martin Wickramasinghe is perhaps the best-known and certainly the most prolific among our authors, he spent a greater part of his working life and earned an enviable reputation, as a journalist. At different times he was the editor of the Dinamina, Silumina, Lakmina and other Sinhalese newspapers. Several volumes of essays he has published both in Sinhalese and English may also be classified as literary journalism of a high order.

It was my good fortune for many years to work in the same establishment as he did, often in a neighbouring room. While I was mainly concerned with English language newspapers, there was much common ground between us in sharing news and features and mutual dialogue and debate as well as the proprietor’s rewards and rebukes. The proprietor was of course D. R. Wijewardene, the greatest newspaper man Sri Lanka has produced.

Wickramasinghe’s friends and colleagues could not but be aware that he was already steadily building a reputation as an imaginative writer. His first novel “Lila” had been published before he was 22 years of age. His present score must be over 40 books.

It is for his books and not for his editorials or other newspaper work that he has been awarded doctorates by four universities, but it is not always easy to draw a dividing line between authorship and journalism. The stuff of which journalism is made can contribute to the making of books even among the best of writers. Keen observation, power of accurate description, humour and a style whose grace comes from effects produced without apparent effort were always characteristic of Wickramasinghe’s work. It was Michelangelo, one of the greatest artists of all time, who said: “Take infinite pains to make something that looks effortless”. Martin Wickramasinghe’s took infinite pains.

His output both as a journalist and author owes not a little to his great knowledge of eastern and western literature, philosophy and art, reflecting the wide spectrum of his interests. I notice from my collection of books published by him such titles as: “Aspects of Sinhalese Culture”, “Buddhism and Art”, “The Jataka Stories and the Russian Novel”, “Evolution and Revolution” and the “Mysticism of D. H. Lawrence”. For one who has published over a dozen novels and is regarded by good judges as the foremost short-story writer in the Sinhalese language, the scope of his work is, to say the least, amazing.

Wickramasinghe’s was of course not the first or last among Sinhalese writers to graduate through journalism to literature. Some of the earliest Sinhala newspapers fostered, and satisfied in some part, the taste of fiction. The Lak Mini Pahang, founded in 1862, for example, published a short story as one of its regular features.

The Sihala Samaya, which came out early in the century, carried the work of M.C.F. Perera, poet and novelist. One of the best-known Sinhalese journalists of his time, Piyadasa Sirisena, editor of the Sinhala Jatiya wrote a number of novels which enjoyed wide popularity. His first novel, published in 1906, ran into five editions and sold as many as 25,000 copies. Hemapala Munidasa, editor respectively of the Swadesa Mitraya and the Sinhala Baudhaya, was one of the best writers of short stories.

No one is ever born a writer; he makes himself one. But those who succeed get a head start when they are plagued with a gnawing desire to put pen to paper. Martin Wickramasinghe would have had from his early teens a desire to write. Even in his middle eighties this does not seem to have left him. His imagination, his knowledge, and his style are what he has given to Sinhalese literature. The style was refined in the furnace of journalism. Its clarity, balance and economy are apparent to the reader. There is nothing pretentious or phoney about it.

Much of his best work deals with the Ceylon village but he has introduced political themes and the class struggle into his novels. It has been said that Gam Peraliya is the best novel in Sinhalese with a village background. Yugantaya, published in 1948, is a portrayal of political events during the war years. Wickramasinghe’s journalistic experience would have proved useful in the composition of this work.

It is remarkable that he has found the time and energy for his vast output. Just as remarkable is the ground he has covered. The Sinhalese language has been enriched by his work. He has hopes that, if it continues to change at the present pace, it will become in a few years an instrument of greater precision and efficiency than any which can be wrought by revolutionary change. At the same time he has never been a bigot. He knows, none better, the advantages of a knowledge of English to a Sinhalese writer.

He says: “Bilingualism and the assimilation of the two cultures would equip us with gift of the mind and heart to equal the West, at least in artistic and intellectual attainments”. He is the Sinhalese literateur par excellence. And the friend and guide of the Sinhalese reader for well over half a century.

(From essays on the life and work of Martin Wickramasinghe first published in 1975)