The Legacy of Tissa Abeysekara
Dayananda Attanayake
නික්ම නොගිය අප්රමාණ මිනිසා
We
heard the sad news of the demise of Tissa Abeysekara in 2009. He
was a veteran film maker, versatile fine arts critic, brilliant writer,
actor, academic and political activist. He excelled
in many facets of film making and he was Sri Lanka's finest, foremost and
most accomplished screenplay writer( Nidhanaya, Welikatara etc.). He had a proven talent of writing
both in English and Sinhala on any subject ranging from films, drama,
music, poetry, Literary fiction, philosophy, culture, history or any social subjects. He
made over 40 documentary films for the Government Film Unit before breaking through as a feature filmmaker with Karumakkarayo, based on Gunadasa Amarasekara's controversial novel. This was followed by Mahagedara (1983) and Viragaya (1988), based on Martin Wickramasinghe's novel, which was formerly thought unfilmable: Viragaya is considered one of the finest Sinhala films ever made. In 1996, his novella Bringing Tony Home won the prestigious Gratiaen Prize
for the best piece of Creative Writing in English by a resident Sri
Lankan. After his demise one commentator stated: "The void that he has
left can only be
understood if one looks at a washed away painting and understands and
realizes that its beauty can never be glorified or recreated again."
The death of Dr. Tissa Abeysekara
leaves the inevitable question: are we doing enough to preserve the
legacy of this man who was a journalist, scripter, filmmaker, actor,
presenter, teacher, novelist and bilingual? Such virtuosos are not
surplus in our country.
Dayananda Attanayake
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The following is a part of a message sent by Tissa's American Publisher in 2009.
On April 18, Tissa Abeysekara — writer, filmmaker, actor — passed away in his native Sri Lanka from complications resulting from a mild heart attack, two weeks shy of his 70th birthday. We feel honored to have had the privilege of introducing Tissa’s poignant fiction to an American audience with Bringing Tony Home. Tissa will be missed by his family, friends, and readers.
The following memories and reflections were contributed by Mark White, Scala House Press.
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The argument that what constitutes poetry is precisely what is lost when poetry is translated into another language is generally ascribed to Robert Frost. Until I had the honor of working with Tissa Abeysekara on the stories that would ultimately form Bringing Tony Home, I had always paid closer heed to the other half of that partial truth, that what constitutes poetry (and literature in general) is precisely what is saved in translation: namely, the poet’s and, by extension, another culture’s voice.
From my first introduction to Tissa’s work, what struck me most about his writing were the traits that we generally use to judge poets: his use of language, diction, syntax, and his ability to remain fixed on a detail — a piece of landscape, for instance — until he was satisfied that it was fully explored.
None of this is to say that his stories aren’t extremely moving on many levels: “Elsewhere” can be read as a severe indictment of Sri Lanka’s classist and patriarchal systems, and “Hark, the Moaning Pond ” is as powerful a myth-telling as I have ever come across. But for the most part it was less the terrain that Tissa covered than it was the language he used to explore that terrain that I found so affecting.
Randomly opening the collection, for example, I find this passage from “Elsewhere”:It was dark under the rubber trees, and the sad whistle held until the Little Train came out of that gloom into the bright sunlight, and beyond the embankment on the left I saw a strip of paddy, a winding river of emerald green. On either side the undulating land was thickly timbered, and past all that and far away on the patch of blue sky there was a bluer shape like a brush stroke — Sri Pada, the Holy Peak — and it began moving with my angle of vision.
These two sentences are representative of the style he uses throughout all of his fiction. At their core, I believe, they reveal less a storyteller’s prose than they do a mirror to the movements of a mind. Like waves in the incoming tide, each phrase that Tissa employs, each fragment of thought, moves just beyond the previous one to cover the next piece of landscape, the next node of thought that he was exploring.
Tissa didn’t write to convey knowledge; his stories reveal a mind, nearing the end of its life, trying to make sense of everything in it. It was through language, through the distinct, undulating cadence of his sentences, that Tissa explored that mind.
And words. Like a poet, Tissa clung tenaciously to his words. A Sinhala writer who had adopted English as his “mother tongue” in the early 1960s, Tissa’s command of the English language was impeccable, and words were his blood. But of course he remained Sinhala, and Sri Lankan, and words like Amerikkan piti, banian, Gamage, hackery, niyara, Wesak, and so on, filled his prose. Most of Sinhala derivation, and some the legacy of Portuguese and British colonialism.
And nearly all of it “Greek” for Americans with little knowledge of Sri Lanka beyond news accounts of tsunamis or civil wars. So in the process of preparing the stories for American publication with Tissa, we were faced with the challenge of what to do with those words. While the meaning of most of them, in the context of their respective passages, could be inferred by a careful reader, there were many that I suggested we might consider “translating” for the sake of inclusivity. With not much effort, we certainly could have found “American” replacements that would have retained the integrity of the stories while making them slightly more accessible.
But in the end it was Tissa’s voice that won out — virtually every Sinhala or “colonial” word or phrase remained as he had originally placed it — and rightfully so. For it was in those words, I came to realize, it was in the precise details of his childhood landscapes that, if not his muse, then certainly Tissa’s identity as a writer, resided.
Sixty years into his life, as he set out to explore his memory through these beautiful stories, those words remained just as they were when he first experienced them as a child: Amerikkan piti, banian, Gamage, hackery, niyara. . . “Translating” them for the sake of “understanding” would have obliterated Tissa’s landscape, and with it, precisely what constituted his poetry.
Dayananda Attanayake
(Former Secretary to the Late President R. Premadasa)
Deshabandu Dr. Tissa Abeysekara, my school mate at Dharmapala Vidyalaya Pannipitiya in the early 1950’s, and since then my friend for nearly six decades has departed, leaving an indelible impression of awe and admiration in the minds of all Sri Lankans devoted to indigenous culture, literature and the arts. Happy and eventful memories of the time we spent together in school during those carefree and idyllic days of the post-independence era still linger in my mind. Even though Tissa was three years junior to me in class he came to prominence as a young and charismatic titan who spoke perfect English and made no bones about his revolutionary political leanings. He loved his school and respected his teachers. As a senior student he displayed exemplary leadership qualifies.
" His latest work in English is Roots, Reflections arid Reminiscences. It stands out as a work of art in which he embarked on a constant search for our roots as well as an identity of our own in the historical and cultural context "
The students of our generation enjoyed the best of both worlds with English as the medium of instruction and equal emphasis being given to the study of the Sinhala language and literature. Tissa was a voracious reader who had a good memory and in due course became a vast storehouse of knowledge. In later life he acknowledged with great humility that all the formal education he received was at Dharmapala, which was complete and comprehensive and had stood him in good stead in his literary pursuits. He participated in almost every conceivable extracurricular activity that the college offered. Being a good orator and debater he represented the college in inter-school oratorical contests and debates both in English and Sinhala. He held several key positions in the college literary societies - Film Society, Drama Society etc. He proved his journalistic capabilities by editing college magazine. He displayed his talents as a cadet in the college Cadet Platoon and was adjudged the best Sergeant at the annual cadet camp at Diyathalawa. While still in college, Tissa attempted a review of Dr. Lester James Pieris’s ‘Rekhawa’ the forerunner to a new generation of true to life art forms. Lester saw the streak of brilliance in young Tissa and took him into his fold and moulded him to be a great film director of our times.
Tissa Abeysekara was unique to the extent of being a genius in the two fields in which he excelled namely, creative writing and innovative film making. He made his debut in the Sinhala Silver screen in the early 1960s as a screenplay writer and later directed some box-office hits including Karumakkarayo, Mahagedara, Nidhanaya and Viragaya. Tissa had acknowledged in his writings that his mother’s influence in his life and demeanor through the inculcation of traditional Sinhala village values and human qualities of loving kindness and compassion had been positive and lasting.
" His mother’s influence in his life and demeanor through the inculcation of traditional Sinhala village values and human qualities of loving kindness and compassion had been positive and lasting "
He was supremely bilingual; communicating in both Sinhala his mother tongue and English which he calls his surrogate mother tongue. Among his literary works are; Ipanella (Short stories) and Pitagamkarayo (Novel); other creative literary works are Ayale Giya Sithaka Sata, (essay) Rupa-Svarupa (essay on film) and Cinema Sithuvili (art of film). Later in life Tissa Abeysekara started writing in English. His English novel 'Bringing.Tony Home' made him the winner of the coveted Gratian prize in 1996. His latest work in English is Roots, Reflections arid Reminiscences. It stands out as a work of art in which he embarked on a constant search for our roots as well as an identity of our own in the historical and cultural context.
He was a man of many parts; having been a versatile film director, actor, film critic and writer. As far as I could fathom his uniqueness stems from his genealogy, social background, rural upbringing and liberal education. His creativity and intellectual prowess could be attributed to the genetic diversity which he acquired through the two divergent genetic strains namely that of his father hailing from weather beaten low country stock as against that of his mother a serene, docile and deeply religious village lass of Kandyan roots. His personality, approach and behaviour have been characterised by this multi-cultural and multi-social background. His father came from an anglicised English-speaking upper middle-class and his mother from a Buddhist, vernacular lower middle-class with roots in the village.
As beautifully portrayed in his creative writings and on celluloid, Tissa Abeysekara was brought up in a modest, unpolluted and verdant rural environmental in the Kelani-valley rich in folk art, dance, drama, music etc. which had enriched his creativity and whetted his appetite. To cap it all, the wise decision made by his parents to admit Tissa Abeysekara to Dharmapala Vidyalaya opened the doors for a liberal, bilingual and complete education which gave him access to both Eastern and Western thinking, literature, culture and fine arts though he did not pursue higher studies, the senior secondary education be received at Dharmapala in the heydays of bilingualism was good enough to equip him with the necessary wherewithal for him to end up as a renowned writer and an accomplished filmmaker.