10:29 PM
DawsonP
Yesterday I was reading a 'novel', for the second time, which one of the most famous novels in Sri Lankan literature history, written in 1959 by professor Sarathchandra; actually it’s rather a great one for me because it reflects some of my experience being living outside in another country too. How can I say the name of the novel? It’s simply the “Dead People”! In Sinhalese its name is ‘Malagiya Aththo’[“මළගිය ඇත්තෝ”], ‘Malagiya’ means dead, and ‘Aththo’ means people, or beings. So this novel is not basically centering its theme into an ideology of death or whatever the consequences of being dying or something similar to 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead
' etc, but it spiraling around an human axis which one of the This tale of an isolated man being alone with his painting tools, starts to live in another country and finding some passion to investigate his inner mysteries is represented in very much poetical language. One of the most influential constituent of the novel is to get some awareness of Japanese tradition and its culture, remarkably fabricated. Most of the spiral arms of Japanese culture are depicted through the pursuance of DS’s inner ambition to find his style in his artistic vision drives the reader to another depth of Japanese arts and culture through his observations. I like this human affair as well as the cultural paradigms emerges into one another through the text is very much unique in the context of Sri Lankan literature.
If you really interested in Malagiya Aththo’s complete understanding of character progression and their fate, you have to read the second part of the novel came in 1965 as 'Malawunge Avurudu da' ['මළවුන්ගේ අවුරුදු දා' 'the dead people’s new year day'] which was written in the Noriko’s perspective, will solve the mystic affairs that made Devandora’s sources and reasons of his internal conflicts of being in 'love'.
These reviews and critical essays are very much helpful to get into the nucleus of the ‘Malagiya Aththo’; is helpful to dig into most perspectives of reading a novel in modern context.
I was reading this novel while listening to some Japanese music made my reading a pleasurable by synchronizing music with text. That experience is very much cinematic and I used some music of ‘Secrets of Zen’ album and some other ‘Ensemble Nipponia-Traditional Japanese Vocal & Instrumental Music’ album with Kabuki backing themes very nicely marching with the contents of the novel incidentally. Most of the time these mystified lovers, Devendora Sung and Noriko are spending their time together in coffee shops listening Japanese music and watching kabuki in opera halls.
Sometimes I think music playing in background will heighten the reading pleasure of some novels mostly poetical ones. I can remember the best novel ‘Baththalangunduwa’ which was won the title by year 2008, by Manjula Wediwardena is the most poetical novel we experienced reading for the last decade in Sri Lankan literary history, I used ‘Bambaru Ewith’ cinema theme music to play in the background to get into the deep contextual singularity of the ‘Baththalangunduwa’ while I was reading it for the third time. Both the movie and the novel fixed their geographical anchor and context into the coastal life of fishermen and so and so. You can hear the breeze of the sea while you are imagining the portrayed architecture of the characters in textual form in the coastal arena is the mystifying thing here.
This nature of cinematic effect due to background music will be there in most of the English novels too which I came across. “The mysterious flame of Queen Loana
” by Umberto Echo is another mysterious novel I can mention here with some classical Italian instrumental music in the background to enhance its reading pleasure such as I used to.
” by Umberto Echo is another mysterious novel I can mention here with some classical Italian instrumental music in the background to enhance its reading pleasure such as I used to. By theory there must be some sort of genre of music each novel can be read in keeping playing background is, mostly, very personal experience and rely on judgment.
[thanking for the image source ]
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1 Response to "Reading with Music [“මළගිය ඇත්තෝ”]"
"Baththalangunduwa" which is my favourite as well as believe it is the magnum opus of Manjula Wediwardhane .
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