Midweek Review

The life and works of Leo Tolstoy

Published

5 years ago

2021/07/14

By Dr. SIRI
GALHENAGE
Retired Psychiatrist

[The following is an abbreviated and a modified version of a presentation to the History, Philosophy and Ethics Section of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists – WA Branch, on 15 June 2021]

“Tolstoy serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature”

– Anton Chekov [1860 -1904]

The Russian literary artist, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy [1828–1910], better known in the world over as Leo Tolstoy, is generally regarded as one of the most potent creative forces of world literature. He was primarily a novelist and a short-story writer, and was considered to be the master of realism – having written ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Ana Karenina’, the high peaks of realist fiction occupying the foreground of his rich literary landscape. Tolstoy was also a philosopher, social reformer and a religious activist who blended his ideology into prose fiction.

Through this essay, I wish to track the journey of self discovery of the great novelist that shaped his personal philosophy and in turn his literary artistry.

JOURNEY of SELF DISCOVERY

The story of the great story teller is as enthralling as the stories he wrote. It was so dramatic that a Tolstoy biographer, referred to his life as ‘more war than peace!’ As the drama of his life unfolded, he wore, consecutively, the mask of aristocrat, land owner, soldier, social reformer, religious activist, moral crusader, pacifist and wandering ascetic, against a backdrop of Imperial [Tsarist] Russia in transition from a feudal to an industrial society. His life is intricately linked to the evolving socio-cultural and political developments of his era.

Tolstoy was born in 1828 to an aristocratic family of landowners in the ancestral property of Yasnaya Polyana, hundred kilometres south west of Moscow.

Death was a regular visitor throughout his formative years. He lost his mother at the age of two years, followed by his father and his grandmother when he was nine. He was then taken away [along with his sister and his three brothers] to Kazan, a regional city to live with his aunt, who too died when he was fourteen. The emotional impact of the series of losses on young Leo is not clearly known.

What is known is that, due to a lack of structure and guidance, Leo entered a life of youthful debauchery during his adolescence and early adulthood. He was attracted to the brothels and gypsy cabarets of Moscow, and ‘sowed his wild oats on peasant and gypsy women’. He abused alcohol, gambled and fell into debt, and was forced to sell off some of his inherited property to pay his gambling debts.

But Leo’s intellectual potential was never in doubt. He joined the University of Kazan to study Law and Languages. He read Oriental as well as Arabo-Turkic languages and was also conversant with French, German and English. Unfortunately, his restlessness made him leave the University, before graduating.

Tolstoy was strongly influenced by the philosophical concepts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-78], the French-Swiss thinker and social reformer. Rousseau believed in an inherent goodness in man which is corrupted as he gathers power and wealth in a so-called sophisticated society, leading to unhappiness. Man’s salvation is to be found in returning to a primary culture and leading a life of simplicity and selflessness. Rousseau’s thoughts on greater social equality, rejection of organised religions in favour personal conscience, promotion of child-based education etc. had a particular impact on moulding Tolstoy’s personal philosophy and in turn his literary offerings.

In an attempt at reforming himself Tolstoy had a shot at being a model farmer and a scholar, at the same time, but failed miserably in his endeavour.

Perhaps needing external control, he headed off to the Caucasus to join his brother who was posted as an officer with the Russian army in a Cossack village, bordering Chechnya, fighting the local rebels. After a period of idling, gambling and sexual misdemeanours, he joined the army as a cadet and started writing! It was during this period, recuperating from Venereal Disease, that he wrote his first literary piece, ‘Childhood, Boyhood and Youth‘– semiautobiographical – gaining a reputation as a writer of promise.

Tolstoy then joined the Russian forces in Crimea defending the strategic Black Sea port of Sevastopol against an invasion of allied forces of the British, French and the Ottomans [1854-55]. Here he adopted a dual role as combatant and war reporter. In his latter role, accompanying the reader to the theatre of war, he portrayed a plethora of emotions in the faces and in the hearts of civilians and combatants alike – sadness, cowardice, terror, hatred and even an admiration for the enemy. He gained acclaim as the first war correspondent and was credited for his descriptive precision. ‘At Sevastopol…. there was a camera with intelligence called Tolstoy’. His dispatches to the Journal, ‘The Contemporary’, which came to be known as the ‘Sevastopol Sketches’ became part of his literary canon. He wrote, “The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom I have tried to set forth in all his beauty, and who has been, is, and always will be most beautiful, is – The Truth”.

The experience of living through the horrors of the hostilities in Crimea made him change his attitude towards war, as reflected in his writing – from a patriotic fervour to futility, leading to a lifelong doctrine of ‘pacifism’.

On returning home from Crimea, Tolstoy identified himself with the peasants, developed an affinity for the rural landscape and felt deeply about the social inequity that existed between aristocracy and peasantry – attitudes strongly reflected in his later writing. He wore peasant clothes, grew a beard and ‘gave up the pen for the plough’. He fell in love with a peasant woman, Axinya, who bore him a son, Timofei, in 1858 – a matter that haunted him for the rest of his life.

At this stage there was increasing pressure from the family for him to get married and settle down. In 1862, having reached the age of 34, he married Sofia Behrs – half his age – the daughter of a respected doctor. Few days before the wedding, in an act which could be described as brutal, Tolstoy forced his fiancé, young and tender, to read his diaries with sordid details about his past – his drunken episodes, sexual encounters, gambling sessions, venereal disease and his relationship with the peasant woman who bore him a son. In return, he demanded the truth about her past. Nevertheless, the marriage went ahead with a grand ceremony at the Kremlin as he was seen as a promising young man – a wealthy, land-owning aristocrat with literary potential. A suitable boy!

There was relative harmony during the first decade of marriage. It was during this period that Tolstoy wrote his masterpiece ‘War and Peace”. But there was not much intimacy between husband and wife: they communicated their feelings through each other’s diaries! He believed that sexual intercourse was purely for procreation. Sofia bore 13 children in all; four of them died during childhood. He did not believe in the emancipation of women. This was in marked contrast to the sensitivity he has shown towards the female sex in his literary expression, exemplified in the characterisation of Marsha in the novella, ‘Family Happiness’ [in which he occupies the role of Marsha, the protagonist, and narrates the story in the first person] and in other great works such as ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘Kreutzer Sonata’.

Despite the tenuous relationship, Sofia remained loyal to her husband. She was unable to pursue her own intellectual development she longed for. Instead she performed the thankless task of copying and recopying voluminous manuscripts in preparation for publication, in addition to attending to her husband’s needs, looking after the children, running the estate and keeping accounts.

But with the escalation of domestic unhappiness, Sofia became preoccupied with physical ailments and death, entertained thoughts of suicide, with a wish to join her dead children. She started abusing opium, at times was incoherent in her speech, became suspicious of her husband and harboured thoughts of killing Axinya, the peasant woman who bore him the illegitimate child. But she persevered!

There was a fundamental change in the life of Tolstoy in the final quarter of the 19th century with a spiritual awakening. He challenged what he thought was the hypocrisy of the Russian Orthodox Church for moving away from the central tenets of Christianity, aligning itself with the authoritative administrative machine. His religious activism resulted in his excommunication from the church. He was influenced by the eastern religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism, and advocated a synthesis of all faiths, highlighting man’s desire for love as reflected in all religions.

Embarking on a spiritual quest, he campaigned for universal love and pacifism, gave up hunting and alcohol and stopped eating meat. He advocated celibacy, stating that he had no pity for the extinction of the human race. He depicted celibacy as the central theme in his novella, ‘Father Sergius’.

Tolstoy protested against the continuing gulf between the land-owning aristocracy and the peasantry, acting as a catalyst for the revolutionary change taking place – harbingers of the Russian Revolution [1917 – 23]. The Tsar imposed a ban on his writings. The Bolsheviks saw him as a guide.

Tolstoy brought about a synthesis of thoughts on spirituality, morality, social justice and art, a form of Christian Socialism, in an attempt at establishing a new social order. His doctrine came to be known as Tolstoysm. He was held in high regard as a sage and a prophet, and his cult attracted a large following. His pacifist ideology influenced the thinking of Mahatma Gandhi [1869 – 1948] and Martin Luther King Jr. [1929-68]. Gandhi came across a letter written by Tolstoy to Taraknath Das, a Bengali scholar and anti-colonial activist, based in Vancouver, supporting his struggle for independence. The letter which was called ‘A Letter to a Hindu’ made a deep impression on Gandhi who considered Tolstoy as a mentor, and adopted his principle of non-violent resistance in the struggle for independence from British colonial rule. Gandhi communicated with Tolstoy until the latter’s death and set up an institution called the Tolstoy Farm [in South Africa where Gandhi was living at the time] to propagate the doctrine of the Russian philosopher.

At home, Sofia resented what she thought was the hypocrisy of her husband’s transformation – preaching universal brotherhood while showing no empathy towards her! In the meantime, Vladimir Chertkov, Tolstoy’s main proponent, confidant and secretary, in a sinister move, planned to alter Tolstoy’s will in his favour with the intention of gaining copyright of his literary wealth. He encouraged Tolstoy to leave Sofia at a time when his leader was considering moving on and letting go of his material and literary wealth and his family.

In an autobiographical essay, titled, ‘A Confession’, Tolstoy revealed his vulnerability – that he had undergone a ‘spiritual crisis’ and that he had entertained thoughts of suicide ‘by means of a noose or a bullet’. Rational thinking, he wrote, made him realise that life had no meaning, and that he had wanted to do away with his self, but faith provided the meaning of life and the possibility of living – in psycho-social terminology he was facing an ‘Existential Crisis’.

In 1910, aged 82, Tolstoy left home accompanied by his youngest daughter, Sasha, and his doctor, intending never to return. He was forced to break journey at a remote station – Astopovo – with a severe bout of pneumonia, and took refuge at the station master’s lodge. He died, few days later, on 7th November 1910, surrounded by some of his followers, few family members, government officials and the world’s press. Sofia rushed to her husband’s death bed but was prevented from seeing him by Chertkov, until the legendary author lapsed into a coma. This final episode has been brilliantly presented in the movie, ‘The Last Station’, featuring Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren.

LITERARY ARTISTRY

There are several distinctive features of Tolstoy’s literary artistry that have contributed to its potency.

Tolstoy, as stated above, was a master of Realism with an exceptional ability to incorporate real life into his imaginative construct. He presented reality in a lyrical art form. He incorporated real life figures of his era and representations of individuals in his community, and projected his own biographical experiences in his art of characterisation. He was skilful in depicting the evolving inner life of a character in its depth and paradox. Tolstoy’s powers of creativity were borne out of his intuitive grasp of human nature with a remarkable ability to investigate conscious and unconscious states and their behavioural correlates, ‘by creeping into the deep crevices of the human psyche’, unearthing psychological insights. To echo the words of the French novelist, Gustave Flaubert [1821-1880] about Tolstoy: “What an Artist and what a Psychologist!”

Tolstoy is renowned for his descriptive precision based on his deep penetrating powers of observation. He created ‘word pictures’ of characters, situations such as war, landscape and nature with clarity and exactitude, not to diminish his skill in aesthetics.

The aesthetic features of his work are not limited to a mere exposition of beauty but to the deployment of a wide array of literary devices that evoke a range of emotional and critical responses – imagery, irony, symbolism, metaphor, simile, satire, to mention a few.

Tolstoy was an inspiring moral thinker. In a monograph titled, ‘What is Art?’ [1898], he asserted that Art, including literary art, should carry a moral message, transcending any aesthetic value, for it to be of benefit to mankind. His moral wisdom was based on his deep social conscience and his spiritual awakening developed throughout the latter part of his life.

Tolstoy’s writing carries a historical critique of his era by targeting several aspects of society such as social inequity [between the aristocracy and the peasantry], depravity and falsity of the aristocracy and the ruling elite, the church’s complicity with the state and the ineptitude and corruption of the administrative machine.

Above all, as reflected in his clever manipulation of plot and the vitality of his narratives, Tolstoy was a gifted story-teller with extraordinary narrative skill.

His power of creativity, built out of the above ingredients along with his intuitive grasp of human nature, has appealed directly to the sensibilities of the reader, resulting in works of enduring value.

“When you read Tolstoy, you read because you cannot stop”….”He was the greatest artist in Russian prose”

—Vladimir Nabokov [1899-1977, renowned Russian literary critic.

LITERARY ENDOWMENT

With his creative activity spanning over half his lifetime, Tolstoy endowed the world with an abundance of literary wealth. It includes 3 novels – War and Peace, Anna Karenina and Resurrection, the least known and the last to be written by Tolstoy; half a dozen ‘provests’ [Russian equivalents of novellas], for example, The Death of Ivan Ilych, The Cossacks, Kreutzer Sonata etc; and a multitude of short stories.

NOVELS

‘War and Peace’, the magnum opus of Leo Tolstoy, written over a period of seven years, runs into 587,000 words. It is a novel that many people aspire to read but only a few get round to reading it due to its enormity and complexity. It is more than a novel: an embodiment of a socio-political landscape, historical critique, philosophical reflections, moral teaching and psychological insights, with different readers viewing it from their own vantage points. It is a powerful and complex narrative set against the broad canvas of the French Invasion of Russia at the dawn of the 19th century, depicting its impact on contemporary Russian life, with myriads of characters – real and fictional – entering and leaving the pages.

From my perspective, Tolstoy, by a clever manipulation of plot, takes five prominent families of the Moscow aristocracy through the ravages of war. He recounts the challenges they face, the coping strategies they adopt, resolve their crises and consolidate their psychological and spiritual gains – individually and collectively – in building inner peace. Those who survive the crises are brought together, symbolically, in a country residence, getting them to reflect on issues such as developing a moral relationship with their peasants, family unity, a simple way of life, generosity and love. Pardon me for my impertinence in offering a simple formulation to an extremely complex narrative!

‘Anna Karenina’, considered by many to be one of the best novels ever written, is an epitome of realistic fiction. Skilfully crafted with two parallel plots with pleating strands of narrative, it is set against a background of Tsarist Russia, tying up at the end with a moral message. It provides a contrast between aristocracy and peasantry, city and country life, and between happy and unhappy families with a memorable stating line, ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’.

The main plot represents decadence, decline and death, while the parallel plot illustrates stability, harmony and progress. The main plot depicts the inner struggle of a woman who takes up a challenge at her own peril against the prevailing social norms and succumbs to the forces within and outside her soul. Tolstoy demonstrates his deep understanding of the female psyche through the character of Anna Karenina. The parallel plot that grows out as an offshoot of the main narrative is the shoot that bears the blossoms of love, humanity and spirituality. Tolstoy’s philosophy of life is represented through the characters of Levin and Kitty in this plot.

NOVELLAS

I have chosen three of Tolstoy’s popular novellas for a brief overview.

‘The Death of Ivan Ilych’ depicts the ascent, descent and death of a fiercely ambitious lawyer preoccupied with climbing the social ladder. In a masterly display of character construction Tolstoy takes his protagonist to the top of the social ladder, and makes him fall off it, both literally and metaphorically. The crisis that leads to a terminal illness makes him re-evaluate his life: that he has lived a life of falsity [‘a huge deception that had hidden both life and death’]; that life is a series of escalating suffering with no escape. Realisation of that truth about life brings Ivan the freedom to face death. [‘In place of death there was light’].

In this popular novella, apart from its spiritual theme, Tolstoy raises interesting issues regarding ‘the doctor-patient relationship’ and the ‘illness behaviour’ of patients, which may be of interest to the medical profession.

The theme of ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ resonates with what the German Psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer [1888-1964] postulated regarding the aetiology of paranoia: the cumulative influence of a noxious social environment, sensitivity of personality and an experience meaningful to the individual. The novella tracks the motivational path and the psychological processes leading to paranoia [morbid jealousy] with a disastrous consequence, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Othello.

“Trukhachevski’s talent for music; the nearness that came of playing together; the impressionable nature of music, especially of the violin and his apparent lustful gaze towards his wife; tormented Pozdnychev and heightened his suspicion and jealousy. He began to suspect that the sound of the piano was purposely made to drown their voices and probably their kisses, as they practiced”.

Pozdnychev’s paranoia was brought to a head at a concert when Trukhachevski and his wife played Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. During a surprise appearance at a subsequent practice session, Pozdnychev stabs his wife to death. The court decided that the accused was a wronged husband who killed his wife defending his outraged honour! Tolstoy raises awareness of a range of contemporary societal values and of the criminal justice system.

Depicting the ideology of Rousseau, that man’s salvation is to be found in returning to a primary culture and leading a life of simplicity and selflessness, and drawing heavily on his experience in the scenic Caucus Mountains and its inhabitants, Tolstoy wrote the novella, ‘The Cossacks’, which gained acclaim as his ‘mini-masterpiece’. Tolstoy re-lives his experience by sending his fictional representative, Olenin, a young nobleman of the Moscow elite, disillusioned by the falsity and depravity of his urban lifestyle, on a journey of self-discovery, seeking contentment among the Cossacks who inhabit the foothills of the scenic Caucasus. The Cossacks, renowned for their military prowess, sustain themselves by farming, fishing and hunting. Olenin befriends Eroshka, a stereotypical wise old man, who engages him on enthralling conversations; narrates folk tales and rhymes; introduces him to nature; and instils in him a sense of social conscience. The young aristocrat falls in love with a Cossack girl but his affection towards her is not reciprocated as she is betrothed to an injured Cossack warrior giving him an opportunity to re-evaluate love, in contrast to the carnal pleasures he indulged in Moscow. He returns home with a wealth of experience.

SHORT STORIES

The following is a sample of the many Tolstoyan short stories: ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need’ is about a man driven by greed that leads him to his downfall. ‘The Coffee House of Surat’ reflects the need for mankind to unite in one faith under a universal temple. ‘The Bear Hunt’: [semiautobiographical] the protagonist on a hunting expedition shoots a bear which falls at his feet resulting in a major emotional impact on him. He gives up hunting and becomes a vegetarian. ‘Little Girls Wiser than Men’ depicts the innocence of childhood: a children’s story that should be read by adults! ‘Three Deaths’ is a portrayal of our common humanity with a brilliant display of symbolism.

CONCLUSION

Leo Tolstoy, the Great Russian Novelist, has endowed us with an enormous literary wealth replete with philosophical concepts, moral wisdom, psychological insights and historical critique; and not without aesthetic value. With his extraordinary literary skill and descriptive precision he has turned real life into an art form with the development of characters in all their complexity, against a contemporary socio-political background. The life of one of the greatest storytellers of all time is an extraordinary story in itself that outshines the stories he wrote. His contribution to humanity has been made at a great cost to himself and his family, especially to his wife sofia, whose commitment towards his work has remained sadly unrecognised.

[sirigalhenage@gmail.com]

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Midweek Review

A question of national pride

Published

2 days ago

2026/02/11

Sahan Weerasooriya

Marshal of the Air Force Roshan Goonetileke speaking with Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka. Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda is in the middle (pic by Nishan S. Priyantha)

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who also holds the Finance and Defence portfolios, caused controversy last year when the Defence Ministry announced that he wouldn’t attend the National Victory Day event. Angry public reactions over social media compelled the President to change his decision. He attended the event. Whatever his past and for what he stood for as the President and the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, Dissanayake cannot, under any circumstances, shirk his responsibilities. The next National Victory Day event is scheduled in mid-May. The event coincides with the day, May 18, when the entire country was brought back under government control and the Army put a bullet through Prabhakaran’s head as he hid in the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon, on the following day. The government also forgot the massive de-mining operations undertaken by the military to pave the way for the resettlement of people, rehabilitation of nearly 12,000 terrorists, and maintaining UN troop commitments, even during the war.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

The majestic presence of Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka, Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda and Marshal of the Air Force Roshan Goonetileke, though now more than 16 years after that historic victory, represented the war-winning armed forces at the 78 Independence Day celebrations. Their attendance reminded the country of Sri Lanka’s greatest post-independence accomplishment, the annihilation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009.

Among the other veterans at the Independence Square event was General Shavendra Silva, the wartime General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the celebrated 58 Division. The 58 Division played a crucial role in the overall Vanni campaign that brought the LTTE down to its knees.

The 55 (GOC Maj. Gen. Kamal Gunaratne) and 53 Divisions (GOC Brig. Prasanna Silva) that had been deployed in the Jaffna peninsula, as well as newly raised formations 57 Division (GOC Maj. Gen. Jagath Dias), 58 Division and 59 Division (Brig. Nandana Udawatta), obliterated the LTTE.

Chagie Gallage, Fonseka’s first choice to command the 58 Division (former Task Force 1) following his exploits in the East, but had to leave the battlefield due to health issues then, rejoined the Vanni campaign at a decisive stage. Please forgive the writer for his inability to mention all those who gave resolute leadership on the ground due to limitations of space. The LTTE that genuinely believed in its battlefield invincibility was crushed within two years and 10 months. Of the famed ex-military leadership, Fonseka was the only one with no shame to publicly declare support for ‘Aragalaya,’ forgetting key personalities in the Rajapaksa government who helped him along the way to crush the Tigers, especially after the attempt on his life by a female LTTE suicide bomber, inside the Army Headquarters, when he had to direct all military operations from Colombo. And he went to the extent of addressing US- and India-backed protesters before they stormed President’s House on the afternoon of July 9, 2022. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, wartime Defence Secretary, whose contribution can never be compared with any other, had to flee Janadhipathi Mandiyara and take refuge aboard SLNS Gajabahu, formerly of the US Coast Guard. The same sinister mob earlier ousted him from his private residence, at Mirihana, that he occupied previously without being a burden to the state. It was only after the attack on his private residence on March 31, 2022, that he came to reside in the official residence, the President’s House.

The presence of Fonseka, Karannagoda and Goonetileke at the Independence Day commemoration somewhat compensated for the pathetic failure on the part of the government to declare, during the parade, even by way of a few words, the armed forces historic triumph over the LTTE against predictions by many a self- proclaimed expert to the contrary. That treacherous and disgraceful decision brought shame on the government. Social media relentlessly attacked the government. To make matters worse, the elite Commandos and Special Forces were praised for their role in the post-Cyclone Ditwah situation. The Special Boat Squadron (SBS) and Rapid Action Boat Squadron (RABS), too, were appreciated for their interventions during the post-cyclone period.

The shocking deliberate omission underscored the pathetic nature of the powers that be at a time the country is in a flux. If Cyclone Ditwah hadn’t devastated Sri Lanka, the government probably may not have anything else to say about the elite fighting formations.

The government also left out the main battle tanks, armoured fighting vehicles, tank recovery vehicles and various types of artillery, as well as the multi barrel rocket launchers (MBRLs). The absence of Sri Lanka’s precious firepower on Independence Day shocked the country. The government owes an explanation. Lt. Gen. Lasantha Rodrigo of the Artillery is the 25th Commander of the Army. How did the Commander of the Army feel about the decision to leave the armour and artillery out of the parade?

The combined firepower of armour and artillery caused havoc on the enemy, thanks to deep penetration units that infiltrated behind enemy lines giving precise intelligence on where and what to hit.

The LTTE suffered devastating losses in coordinated attacks mounted during both offensive and defensive action, both in the northern and eastern theatres. The current dispensation would never be able to comprehend the gradual enhancement of armour and artillery firepower over the years to meet the growing LTTE threat. The MBRLs were a game changer. President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s government introduced the MBRLs in 2000 in the aftermath of devastating battlefield debacles in the northern theatre. (If all our MBRLs had been discarded after the successful conclusion of the war in May 2009, there is no point in blaming this government for non-display of the monster MBRLs. But, there cannot be any excuse for the government decision not to display the artillery.

Even during the three decades long war and some of the fiercest fighting in the North and East, the armour and artillery were always on display. It would be pertinent to mention the acquisition of Chinese light tanks in 1991, about a year after the outbreak of Eelam War II, and T 55 Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) from the Czech Republic, also during the early ’90s, marked the transformation of the regiment. Let me remind our readers that both Armour and Artillery were deployed on infantry role due to dearth of troops in the northern and eastern theatres.

No kudos for infantry

The Armour and Artillery were followed by the five infantry formations, Sri Lanka Light Infantry (SLLI), Sinha Regiment (SR), Gemunu Watch (GW), Gajaba Regiment (GR) and Vijayabahu Infantry Regiment (VIR). They bore the brunt of the fighting. They spearheaded offensives, sometimes in extremely unfavourable battlefield situations. The team handling the live media coverage conveniently failed to mention their battlefield sacrifices or accomplishments. It was nothing but a treacherous act perpetrated by a government not sensitive at all to the feelings of the vast majority of people.

The infantry was followed by the Mechanized Infantry Regiment (MIR). Raised in February 2007 as the armed forces were engaged in large scale operations in the eastern theatre, and the Vanni campaign was about to be launched, at the formation of the Regiment, it consisted of the third battalion of the SLLI, 10th battalion of SR and 4th battalion of GR. The 5th and 6th Armoured Corps were also added to the MIR. The 4th MIR was established also in February 2008 and after the end of war 21 battalion of the Sri Lanka National Guard was converted to 5 (Volunteer) MIR.

The contingent of MIR troops joined the Independence Day parade, without their armoured vehicles. Perhaps the political leadership seems to be blind to the importance of maintaining military traditions. Field Marshal Fonseka, who ordered the establishment of MIR must have felt really bad at the way the government took the shine off the military parade. What did the government expect to achieve by scaling down the military parade? Obviously, the government appears to be confident that the northern and eastern electorates would respond favourably to such gestures. Whatever the politics in the former war zones, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led Jathika Jana Balawegaya (JJB) must realise that it cannot, under any circumstances, continue to hurt the feelings of the majority community.

The description of Commandos and Special Forces was restricted to their post-Ditwah rehabilitation role. The snipers were not included in the parade. Motorcycle riding Special Forces, too, were absent. The way the Armour, Artillery, Infantry, as well Commandos and Special Forces were treated, we couldn’t have expected justice to other regiments and corps. In fact, the government didn’t differentiate fighting formations from the National Guard.

The National Guard was raised in Nov. 1989 in the wake of the quelling of the second JVP-led terrorist campaign. Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s government swiftly crushed the first JVP bid to seize power in April 1971. The second bid was far worse and for three years the JVP waged a murderous campaign but finally the armed forces and police overwhelmed them. On Nov. 1, 1989, prominent battalions that had been deployed for the protection of politicians were amalgamated to establish the first National Guard battalion and upgraded as a new battalion of the Volunteer Force.

The Navy and Air Force, too, didn’t receive the recognition they deserved. Just a passing reference was made about the Fourth Attack Flotilla, the Navy’s premier offensive arm. The government also forgot the turning point of the war against the LTTE when Karannagoda’s Navy, with US intelligence backing, hunted down Velupillai Prabhakaran’s floating arsenals, on the high seas.

Karannagoda, the writer is certain, must have felt disappointed and angry over the disgraceful handling of the parade. The war-winning armed forces deserved the rightful place at the Independence Day parade.

The government did away with the fly past. Perhaps, the Air Force no longer had the capacity to fly MiG 27s, Kfirs, F 7s and Mi 24s. During the war and after Katunayake-based jet squadrons thundered over the Independence Day parade while the Air Force contingent was saluting the President. Jet squadrons and MI 24s (Current Defence Secretary Air Vice Marshal (retd) Sampath Thuyakontha commanded the No 09 Mi 24 squadron during the war (https://island.lk/govt-responds-in-kind-to-thuyaconthas-salvo/). Goonetileke’s Air Force conducted an unprecedented campaign to inflict strategic blows to the enemy fighting capacity. That was in addition to the SLAF taking out aerial targets and providing close-air-support to ground forces, while also doing a great job in helicopters whisking away troop casualties for prompt medical attention.

Chagie’s salvo

Maj. Gen Chagie Gallage

The armed forces paid a very heavy price to bring the war to a successful conclusion. During the 1981 to 2009 period, the Army lost nearly 24,000 officers and men. Of them, approximately 2,400 died during January-May 2009 when the Vanni formations surrounded and decimated the enemy. (Army, Navy and Air Force as well as police suffered loss of lives during the campaigns against the JVP in 1971 and during the 1987-1989 period) At the crucial final days of the offensive, ground forces were deprived of aerial support in a bid to minimise civilian losses as fleeing Tigers used Tamil civilians they had corralled as a human shield. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as revealed by Wikileaks acknowledged the armed forces gesture but no government sought to exploit such unintentional support for Sri Lanka’s advantage. That wasn’t an isolated lapse.

In the run-up to the now much discussed 78 Independence Day parade, Gallage caused unprecedented controversy when he warned of possible attempts to shift the Security Forces Headquarters, in Jaffna, to the Vanni mainland. The GR veteran’s social media post sent shockwaves through the country. Gallage, known for his outspoken statements/positions and one of the victims of global sanctions imposed on military leaders, questioned the rationale in vacating the Jaffna Headquarters, central to the overall combined armed forces deployment in the Jaffna peninsula and the islands.

Regarding Gallage’s explosive claim, the writer sought clarification from the government but in vain. About a year after the end of the war, the then government began releasing land held by the armed forces. In line with the post-war reconciliation initiatives, the war-winning Mahinda Rajapaksa government released both government and public property, not only in the Jaffna peninsula, but in all other northern and eastern administrative districts, as well. Since 2010, successive governments have released just over 90 percent of land, once held by the armed forces. Unfortunately, political parties and various local and international organisations, with vested interests, continue to politicise the issues at hand. None of them at least bothered to issue a simple press release demanding that the LTTE halted the forcible recruitment of children, use of women/girls in suicide missions and end reprehensible use of civilian human shields.

The current dispensation has gratefully accepted President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s proposal to reduce the Army strength to 100,000 by 2030. Wickremesinghe took that controversial but calculated decision in line with his overall response to post-Aragalaya developments. The Island learns that the President’s original intention was to downsize the Army to 75,000 but he settled for 100,000.

Whatever those who still cannot stomach the armed forces’ triumph over the LTTE and JVP had to say, the armed forces, without any doubt, are the most respected institution in the country.

Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe can never absolve themselves of the responsibility for betraying the armed forces at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Oct. 2015. The treacherous JVP-backed the Yahapalana government to co-sponsor a US-led accountability resolution. That massive act of unprecedented betrayal should be examined taking into consideration primarily two issues – (1) the Tamil electorate throwing its weight behind Sirisena at the 2015 presidential election at the behest of now defunct Tamil National Alliance [TNA] (2) a tripartite agreement on the setting up of hybrid war crimes court. That agreement involved the US, Sri Lanka and TNA. Let me stress that at the 2010 presidential election, the TNA joined the UNP and the JVP in supporting war-winning Army Commander Fonseka’s candidature at the first-post war national election. Thanks to WikiLeaks, the world knows how the US manipulated the TNA to back Fonseka, the man who spearheaded a ruthless campaign that decimated the LTTE. Fonseka’s Army beat the LTTE, at its own game. Then, the Tamil electorate voted for Fonseka, who won all predominately Tamil speaking electoral districts but suffered a humiliating defeat in the rest of the country.

Let us not forget ex-LTTE cadres as well as members of other Tamil groups who backed successive governments. Tamil men contributed even to clandestine operations behind enemy lines. Unfortunately, successive governments had been pathetic in their approach to counter pro-Eelam propaganda. Sri Lanka never had a tangible action plan to counter those propagating lies. Instead, they turned a blind eye to anti-Sri Lanka campaigns. Dimwitted politicians just played pandu with the issues at hand. The Canadian declaration that Sri Lanka perpetrated genocide in May 2022 humiliated the country. Our useless Parliament didn’t take up that issue while three years later the Labour Party-run UK sanctioned four persons, including Karannagoda and Shavendra Silva, in return for Tamil support at the parliamentary elections there.

Victory parade fiasco

In 2016, the Yahapalana fools cancelled the Victory Day parade, held uninterrupted since 2009 to celebrate the country’s greatest post-independence achievement. By then, the Yahapalana administration had betrayed the armed forces at the UNHRC. The UNP-SLFP combine operated as if the armed forces didn’t exist. Sirisena had no option but to give in to Wickremesinghe’s despicable strategy meant to appease Eelamists whose support he desired, even at the expense of the overall national interest.

The Victory Day parade was meant to mark Sri Lanka’s triumph over separatist Tamil terrorism. It was never intended to humiliate the Tamil community, though the LTTE consisted of Tamil-speaking people. Those who complained bitterly about the May Victory Day celebration never wanted to publicly acknowledge that the eradication of the LTTE saved them from being terrorised any further. All concerned should accept that as long as the LTTE had the wherewithal to wage terror attacks, peace couldn’t have been restored. As Attorney-at-Law Ajaaz Mohamed repeatedly stressed to the writer the importance of UNP leader Wickremesinghe’s genuine efforts to address the national issue, he could have succeeded if the LTTE acted responsibly. The writer is also of the view that Wickremesinghe even risking his political future bent backwards to reach consensus at the negotiating table but the LTTE exploited the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) arranged by Norway, to bring down Wickremesinghe’s government.

Wickremesinghe earned the wrath of the Sinhalese for giving into LTTE demands but he struggled to keep the talks on track. Then, the LTTE delivered a knockout blow to his government by withdrawing from the negotiating table, in late April 2003, thereby paving the way for President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga to take over key ministries, including Defence, and set the stage for parliamentary polls in April 2004. The LTTE’s actions made Eelam War IV inevitable.

The armed forces hadn’t conducted a major offensive since 2001 following the disastrous Agnikheela offensive in the Jaffna peninsula. Wickremesinghe went out of his way to sustain peace but the LTTE facilitated Mahinda Rajapaksa’s victory, at the presidential election, to create an environment which it believed conducive for the final war. Having killed the much-respected Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, in August 2005, and made suicide attempts on the lives of Sarath Fonseka and Gotabaya Rajapaksa in April and Oct 2006, the LTTE fought well and hard but was ultimately overwhelmed, first in the East and then in North/Vanni in a series of battles that decimated its once powerful conventional fighting capacity. The writer was lucky to visit Puthumathalan waters in late April 2009 as the fighting raged on the ground and the Navy was imposing unprecedented blockade on the Mullaitivu coast.

The LTTE proved its capabilities against the Indian Army, too. The monument at Battaramulla where Indians leaders and other dignitaries, both military and civilian, pay homage, is a reminder of the LTTE fighting prowess. India lost nearly 1,500 officers and men here (1987 to 1990) and then lost one-time Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in a suicide attack in Tamil Nadu just over a year after New Delhi terminated its military mission here. The rest is history.

Midweek Review

Theatre and Anthropocentrism in the age of Climate Emergency

Published

2 days ago

2026/02/11

Sahan Weerasooriya

Saumya Liyanage as Silindu in Beddegama (Village in the Jungle) television series directed by Priyantha Kolambage. Photo credit Priyantha Kolambage.

A few days ago, I was in a remote region of Sri Lanka, Hambantota, a dry zone area, where people mainly live on farming. The farming methods are still very primitive. I was engaged in a television series, titled Beddegama, directed by Priyantha Kolambage. The character I play is ‘Silindu’, a hunter. Silindu is a character created by Leonard Woolf, a colonial administrator, who lived in Sri Lanka in the early 20th century. In his widely read book, Village in the Jungle, Silindu, the hunter lives with his two daughters and his sister in a mud hut in the forest. They are one of the few families in this village struggling to survive amidst drought, famine and overbearing government authority.

Phenomenologically speaking, Silindu is an environmental philosopher. He believes that the jungle is a powerful phenomenon, a living entity. He thinks that the animals who live in the jungle are also human-like beings. He talks to trees and hunts animals only to dull the pangs of hunger. He is an ethical man. He believes that the jungle is an animate being and its animals are his fellow travellers in this world. His younger daughter, Hinnihami, breastfeeds a fawn. His sustainable living with fellow animals and nature is challenged by British law. He kills two people who try to dominate and suppress poor villagers by using their administerial powers. He is sentenced to death.

What I want to highlight here is the way our predecessors coexisted with nature and how they made the environment a part of their lives. Silindu’s philosophy of nature and animals is fascinating because he does not think that humans are not the centre of this living environment. Rather humans are a part of the whole ecosystem. This is the thinking that we need today to address the major environmental crises we are facing.

When I first addressed Aesthetica, the International conference on Performing Arts, as a keynote speaker, at Christ University, Bangalore, in 2018, in my keynote address, I emphasised the importance of understanding the human body, particularly the performing body as an embodied subject. What I meant by this term ‘embodied subject’ is that over the centuries, our bodies in theatre, rehearsal spaces and studios are being defined and described as an object to be manipulated. Even in modern dance, such manipulation is visible in the modernist approaches to dance. The human body is an object to be manipulated. However, I tried to show the audience that the performing body was not a mere object on stage for audience appreciation. It is a being that is vital for the phenomenological understanding of performance. The paradox of this objectification is that we objectify our bodies as something detached from the mind and similarly, we assume our environment, the world as something given for human consumption.

Performance and Sustainability

Just to bring the phenomenological lexicon to this discussion, I will draw your attention to one of the chapter in my latest book, titled, Lamp in a Windless Place: Phenomenology and Performance (2025) published by VAPA Press, University of Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo. This project is based on Sarah Kane’s famous play text 4.48 Psychosis. In this chapter I wrote phenomenological environmentalists explain the two ways that human beings interact and engage with the life-world. The one way of this engagement is defined as ‘involvement’ we involve with various activities in the world and it is one of the ways that we are being-in-the-world. The second way of being-in-this-world is that we ‘inhere’ in the world meaning that we are built with worldly phenomena or we are made out of the same stuff of our environment. (James cited in Liyanage 2025, pp. 98-99). This coupling and encroachment between our bodies and the environment occur mostly without our conscious interference. Yet, the problem with our human activities, and also our artistic practices is that we see our environment (human body) as an object to be consumed and manipulated.

Today, it is more important for us to change our mindsets to rethink our daily practices of performing arts and understand how human, nature, space and non-human species are vital for our existence in this world. Sustainable discourse comes into play with the United Nations initiative to make humans understand the major crises we are facing. In 2016, 195 parties agreed to follow the treaty of the Paris Agreement, which is mainly focused on climate change and the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Major scientists are talking about the ‘tipping points’. Tipping points indicate the current crisis that humans and other-than humans are going to face in the coming years.

Among those sustainable goals, the most important and the urgent point to be focused seems to be the climate emergency. Leading scientists of environmental sciences have already warned that within a few years, global warming will increase up to the level that the consequences will be catastrophic and dangerous to all, human and non-human. Ice sheets are shrinking; sea water level is increasing, and coral reefs are dying. It is becoming increasingly evident that countries in our region, particularly in South Asia, have been experiencing major climate shifts over the past few decades. Recent Cyclone Ditwah and the catastrophic flood devastated parts of not only Sri Lanka but also Malaysia, Sumatra, India, etc. Professor Missaka Hettiarachchi and Devki Perera published a landmark book, titled Nature – based method for water resource management (2025). In this work Hettiarachchi and Perera clearly argue that flood, erosion, and landslides are a part of the geological evolution and transformations. They are inherent activities in nature, which form new landscapes and conditions in natural environments. But the problem is that we experience these natural events frequently and they abruptly occur in response to human-nature collisions.

Climate Emergency

Professor Jeffry Sachs stresses the importance of taking action to prevent future climatic change. For him, we are facing three mega environmental crises: 1. Climate crisis leading to greenhouse gas emission due to fossil fuel burning. We have already come to the 1.5 warming limit now. He predicts that humans will experience 2.0 degree Celsius within two decades. 2. Second is the ecological crisis. This is the destruction of rainforests in South East Asia, Amazon and other regions. He argues that Amazon has reached the tipping point, meaning that the rain forest is in danger and it would be a dry land in a few decades time. Because of ocean acidification, scientists have already warned that we are in the wake of the destruction of coral reefs. The process is that high carbon dioxide dissolves in the water and it creates the carbonic acid. It causes the destruction of the coral reef system. 3. The third ecological crisis is the mega pollution. Our environment is already polluted with toxic chemicals, our waterways, ocean, soil, air and food chains are polluted. Micro plastics are already in our blood streams, in our lungs and even in our fetuses to be born.

The climate crisis is not just a natural catastrophe; it is political in many ways. Greenhouse gas emission is still continuing, and the developed countries such as the United States of America, Canada, China and Germany produce more carbon than the countries in the periphery. As Sachs rightly argues, the US politics is manipulated by the biggest oil companies in the world and President Trump is an agent of such multinational companies whose intention is to accumulate wealth through oil burning. Very recently, the US invaded Venezuela not to restore democracy but to gain access to the largest oil reserves in the country. We have seen many wars, led by the US, due to greed for wealth and natural resources. The US has withdrawn from the Paris agreement. President Trump calls climate change a hoax! So, the world’s current political situation is directly linked to the future of our environment, our resources and climate change.

Anthropocentrism in Performance

Back to creative arts. In the modernist era of our artistic practices and culture, we mimicked and replicated proscenium theatre inherited from Europe and elsewhere and revolutionised the ways that we see performance and perceiving. Our traditional modes of performance practices were replaced by the modern technology, architectural structures, studio training methods and techniques. Today, we can look back and see whether these creative arts practices have been sustainable with the larger human catastrophes that we experience almost daily. Eddie Patterson and Dr. Lara Stevenson have recently published an important and influential book, titled Performing Climate (2025). Being performance studies scholars, Patterson and Stevenson’s book contains 14 chapters interconnected and explores the human and non-human or more than human elements in the world. Patterson and Stevenson write that ‘performance is a messy business; a bloody mess’. ‘Performance is a mess of matter, climate, things, actors, and affects: neither a dramatic or postdramatic theatre but a network of dramaturgical elements; a site of birth and death, decay and renewal’ (Patterson and Stevenson, 2025, p. 1). In this book, they further explore the new ways of reading performance, making performance and perceiving performance. They argue that ‘we are interested in analyzing performance not as an insulated, exclusive art form predicated on human centrality but as a process that celebrates the transformative properties of waste – bacteria, debris and breakdown – composting and mulching within a larger network of bacteria, fungi and microbes embedded in the skin, air, soil and interacting with cellular networks and atmospheric conditions’ (ibid).

Our modern theatre has always been anthropocentric. Even in Sri Lanka, the father of modern Sinhala theatre, Professor Ediriweera Sarachchandra adapted traditional dance drama and developed a modern theatre for middle class theatregoers. This modern theatre was anthropogenic, patriarchal and marginalised the subaltern groups such as women, non-human beings, environment and so forth. The traditional dance and dramas, nadagam and kooththu were much more embedded in rituals performed by communities for various social, cultural and spiritual purposes were uprooted and established in the proscenium theatre for the audience, whose aesthetic buds were trained and sustained by the colonial theatre and criticism. Even traditional dance was uprooted from its traditional setting embedded in the ecosystem and placed on the proscenium theatre for the sake of modernisation of dance for the modern theatregoers. A new group of spectators, theatregoers, were produced to watch those performances which took place in city theatre buildings, insulated architectural spaces where the black boxes were lit up with expensive lighting technology and air-conditioning. As Patterson and Stevenson argue, the Western theatre has been obsessed with the human drama or autobiography. This western history of theatre has been ‘blind to the non-human agency and the natural world has always been in the background to the human centred stories’ (Patterson and Stevenson 2025).

Carbon Emission theatre

The performance practice that we have inherited and is continuing even today is highly problematic in the ways that we centre human agency over the non-human and the environment. This anthropocentric performance practice, as German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk called it, is ‘biospherical’. The biospherical theatre sees human action in the artificially constructed atmospheres for artistic innovations (Patterson and Stevenson 2025). Biospherical theatre is proto-laboratories and human greenhouses – in which able-bodied actors are trained and perform within air-conditioned black boxes; or more tellingly white people in white cubes’ (ibid).

Patterson and Stevenson further assert that ‘biospherical theatre is an enclosed Western form it is labour intensive, carbon intensive, hierarchical, exclusive, inaccessible extractive rather than generative of new knowledge and different ways of being with the world (ibid, p. 10). We inherited this hierarchical, exclusive, and carbon-oriented performance space from our past; as a colonial heritage. This colonial heritage of labour intensive, carbon intensive theatre is the major practice of performance in our societies. I am currently the Chairman of the National Theatre Sub-Committee under the purview of the Arts Council of Sri Lanka. Theatre practitioners today in Colombo are highly critical of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs for not having quality enclosed theatres in major cities in the country. They do not see the problems pertaining to the performance practice that is not ecologically sustainable for island nations like us.

We are possessed with the model of Globe theatre, which has been the model for theatre and entertainment in our regions for centuries now. However, today, we are forced to revisit and rethink this model of Globe theatre in the wake of the climate emergency. Patterson and Stevenson remind us that ‘inside these globes, art develops in enclosed and air-conditioned bubbles (laboratories, rehearsal rooms, conservatories, and galleries). This kind of theatre is biospherical: a human centric endeavour, evolving inside the globe, largely upholding the fantasy of itself as disconnected from atmospheric and environmental interactions beyond the human’ (Patterson and Stevenson 2025, p. 16).

Conclusion

According to Jim Bendell, it is not enough for us to develop resilience towards the climatic emergency; we need to embrace relinquishment (Stevenson, 2020, p. 89). It is the letting go of certain assets, behaviours and beliefs. Grotowski articulated this concept many decades back in his actor training at the Polish theatre laboratory. Grotowski developed the idea of via negative, letting go, or elimination for actors. Letting go of all the acculturations as Eugenio Barba articulates, to tap into the pure impulses and action. Grotowski even rejected the audience participation in his later works, para theatre, like Antonin Artaud, who rebelled against the dialogic, bourgeoisie theatre in France at the time. So, the modernist theatre directors have shown us that the Globe theatre is no longer a sustainable pathway for performance practice. It is time for us to rethink the carbon intensive, labour intensive, hierarchical, exclusive, and class-oriented theatre and performance.

References

Hettiarachchi, M., & Perera, D. (2025). Nature-Based Methods for Water Resources Engineering. The Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka.

India Today Global. (2025, September 24). “U.S. government is in an open war against the Sustainable Development Goals”: Jeffrey Sachs. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb4Jpqq4wvE

James, S. P. (2009). The Presence of Nature A Study in Phenomenology and Environmental Philosophy. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN IK.

Liyanage, S. (2025). Lamp in a Windless Place: Phenomenology and Performance. VAPA Press. (Original work published 2025)

SDSN. (2024, October 11). Sustainability Fundamentals with Jeffrey Sachs. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJR0Q8ueQpc

Stevens, L. (2019). Anthroposcenic Performance and the Need For ‘Deep Dramaturgy’. Performance Research, 24(8), 89-97.

Stevens, L., & Varney, D. (2022). The Climate Siren: Hanna Cormick’s The Mermaid. TDR, 66(3), 107-118.

Woolf, L. (2012). The village in the jungle. Forgotten Books.

Author wishes to thank Himansi Dehigama for proofreading this manuscript.

Professor Saumya Liyanage is a professor of Drama and Theatre Currently working at the Department of Theatre Ballet and Modern Dance, Faculty of Dance and Drama, University of the Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo. He is the chairman of the State Theatre Subcommittee.

by Saumya Liyanage