M.I. Kuruwilla – Navasilu 1976
If one were to judge Basil Fernando's poems by the last poem in his
collection of poems, which provides the title as well – A New Era to Emerge –
one is apt to be disappointed. However, what one should remember is that
Basil Fernando writes best not when he looks idealistically into the future
speaking of the New Man or the New Era to Emerge but when he contemplates the
present, the immediate reality. So there are a few poems tainted by
idealistic, propagandist fervour and some which are rather slight in
content. If we exclude these, the achievement of Fernando is still
remarkable.
Fernando's poems are created out the experiences of local living – mostly in
the rural countryside. Fernando is very much part of that
countryside. He belongs to it, although he observes the rural scene
without idealization, without sentimentality. It is a story of rural
destitution, the stark poverty of the countryside movingly presented. His
treatment of the rural theme is quite authentic and I dare say we haven't had
such a treatment of such an important theme before. It is unique.
See how feelingly he writes about the village girls immolated by the new monster
who has appeared on the rural scene – a Weaving Mill – the first poem in this
collection.
Fernando is at his best when he deals with the present not directly but
indirectly, that is symbolically. What I consider the four best poems in
this collection are all in the symbolic mode – Age Four Revisited,
Mosquito, Its Beloved Awaiting and Tying the
Lightning. It is not difficult to see that the precariousness of
the life of the mosquito has its own parallel in the world of man:
Mosquito resting on the wall
Awaiting digestion
Contemplated its own
fate
Sadly….
Age Four Revisited, making use of the symbol of the
butterfly, is a serious commentary of the self-centred egotism on its own
destructiveness. Perhaps one of the finest poems in this collection is
Its Beloved Awaiting with the rive motif:
As I listened
To the thick darkness
Of the night
Disturbed by the
casual converse
Of night birds
I heard the thin river
Moving on
slow
On some secret purpose
Deeply hidden within it
Rather hostile to
me
Complaining.
Of my unwanted intrusion
Of my insensitive
judgement
Against its pain-ridden
Long enduring love
In the thick
darkness
Its beloved awaiting.
Within a small selection of poems the range achieved is remarkable – a range
not only of themes but of tome, Fernando is not only a master of controlled
pathos, he can be witty and satirical too. So he can say in a poem on
The Philatelic Bureau:
Wild flowers, sea fish
Painted dolls on walls
Enough friend this
kidding
Curse be to all.
And in one of his poems he relates a strange dream of his spitting on the
faces of all he meets – only to meet someone later who actually spits on him and
passes by. There is the exalted emotion of love in the poem The
Creation of the World when the poet in love can indulge in the fancy
that he created the world. This may be contrasted with the terrible
feeling of bitterness of the 'lost life' expressed against the background of a
graveyard. A passing mood of contentment like that of a Zen devotee is
capture in Encounter – encounter with his own self:
I shook hands with myself
Was received in sheer delight
We viewed the world together
Agreed I was right
I looked in and me looked out
The world was full of
light.
The major problem confronting the poets whose mother tongue is not English is
the language itself. It is easy for a Sri Lankan or Indian poet to slip
into an academic literary affecting Eliot and Auden, Stevens and Pound. In
fact, this kind of academic approach to the writing of poetry bred in the
Universities and sponsored by prestigious literary journals is the besetting
vice in the writing of English poetry today. I am told that Basil Fernando
was Sinhala educated and learnt English on his own. If I were to parody
one of his poems he would have wanted on this:
If there be a god
Let him grant me
A single request
To a good man's
heart
Let me be given access
To be tutored
Into good
speech.
Fernando has tutored himself into good English, into a kind oflanguage that
is simple, natural, concrete and spontaneous. He can use the spoken
language with absolute mastery and with deft rearrangement and changes obtain
fine evocative effects. Consider, for example, the following lines from
his poem Tying the Lightning:
Let this lightning
So beautiful when dancing
Dance from a
distance
To the sky stage.
Let it itself confine
And not disturb
The
dance of life.
I feel that among those writing English poetry in Sri Lanka Basil Fernando is
unique in many respects. In fact, although his output may be small, in
range and depth he could stand his own ground when compared with poets writing
in a more vital tradition that ours – for example the African poets.
I should not fail to mention that the reproduction on the cover of a painting
by one of our young artists expresses fully the spirit of this collection – the
spirit of anguish, of suffering.
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