LW Continued: Reading the Man (Mind?) Behind the Words

There is something to get to the bottom of here.

Occasionally, I’m prone to getting this nagging feeling of there is something to get to the bottom of here in a literary work. I’ve felt it with the existential novels of Camus and Sartre, in the fragmented magical realism of the Latin American writers, in some of the Beat generation like Kerouac and Burroughs. I’ve felt it in Halsey’s lyrics and Lana del Rey’s videos; that itching, irritating feeling of something scratching at the back of your brain. In poetry, I’ve felt it in Plath, in Dickinson and Whitman. And now, more recently, in Lakdas Wikkramasinha.

Having, of course, an emotions-based approach has been what I personally believe has elevated my ability to understand or ‘get’ literature all these years. For contrary to whatever new-age opinions and theories that are out there, I stand firmly by my belief that literature — and out of all literature, poetry in particular — has to be experienced viscerally, intuitively, prior to any kind of ‘analysis’. Because with analysis is where the thinking, judging mind or so-called ‘rational intellect’ sets in; and poetry, when done right, is meant to be the opposite of thinking and more of feeling or ‘being’. When you ‘think’ too much into a poem, what is produced is more and more a reflection of your own thought processes, an interpretation of your own mind. Whereas if you let yourself feel a poem, intuitively, at least at first— layers open up to you of its inherent essence, that can never be touched through analysis alone. However near-impossible it is to get at one singular essence of a poem or work of literature, I posit that the closest you can come to that essence is through stillness, and letting yourself feel the poet’s mind through the words. The consciousness that was once attempting to consolidate itself through language and words.

The reader reading the poem, is consciousness communicating with consciousness.

It’s August now. The thought process of which the cogs started working some months ago, was recently reinvigorated by a meeting with a personal connection to the poet himself; the poet who has now been dead a good 45 years or so. So the Something to Get to the Bottom Of which had been fermenting submerged but not entirely dormant inside my brain for a good few months, was suddenly pulled up like a pickle from a tightly-closed jar, making a slight pop as the vinegary vat of memory re-opened. Hello, Lakdas, you old pickle. Your long-marinated words and I, we meet again.

I’ve pulled out my old sheets of poems of his, this time combined with a newly released book which purports to have his entire collection of poetry consolidated. Add to that, voices which murmur, was not an easy man to live with/ life with him was difficult/ moody, volatile/ could be gentle but prone to fits of rage/ dark moods/ anger inside him at the world. Voices that corroborate the initial emotional responses I had on thoroughly reading his poems, having discovered them properly for the first time in 2022.

The majority of scholarship on Lakdas Wikkramasinha that I could find seems to focus on the social and political commentary of his poetry; the broader social issues of gender, class, anti-colonialism etc. that are purportedly being highlighted and discussed. As such he is championed by critics as a ‘political poet’, using his angry voice for the “oppressed” and to unabashedly critique oppressive social structures. It’s remarkable that not much seems to have touched upon the inherent violent emotion, trauma and internal conflict lucidly apparent in the writer’s work; the complexities of which create much of the nuances of meaning and ambiguities in his poems. When Gamini Hattotuwegama calls him an ‘angry poet’, the general assumption seems to have been taken that Lakdas’s anger was directed towards the social ills and injustices of the system and the particular post-colonial era of Lankan society that he occupied. However, it is my personal feeling that Lakdas’s ‘anger’ goes far beyond merely that; it is too vast and all-encompassing to be neatly packaged into convenient, tidy boxes. I feel that little to no scholarship has attempted to look at the nuances of the poet’s anger in his poetry; the complex, internal conflicts expressing themselves through the violent emotion of his poetry. For as much as his poetry seeks to express, it seeks also to disguise: to conceal its meaning behind itself, to camouflage with language, to — perhaps subconsciously — repress.

Having “been there, done that” — perhaps, too, the reason why it’s easier to read between the lines and pick up the unsaid. :D

And so I’ve decided to look a little deeper into the more private emotions struggling to express themselves in the poetry of the man. I say man — so that we do not forget that there is a man behind the writing, no matter how erudite or powerful the literary works produced. For often the greatest mistake we make is placing men and women on a pedestal, thereby risking the of peril of transforming them into larger than life figures, vague and untouchable, concepts and constructions of our own minds. As much as we can divorce the writer from the text, it remains true, however, that a text is inevitably a product of a human consciousness, at a given point in time.

I’ve identified three themes, or strands of emotion, so far in my limited overview of Lakdas’s arguably more ‘private’ poetry. Albeit so far just a hypothesis, I wonder if — and, out of scholarly curiosity, hope that — the poetry in the larger, recent collection would corroborate the same. The three themes, I posit, are: 1) outward ancestral pride vs. internal revulsion and shame, 2) sex and violence as inextricably intertwined (eroticized rage?) and 3) anarchy, physical violence against ‘self’ and a sort of wishing for/inviting of death — imagery of the wounded, mutilated body. (The physical ‘body’ as site of violence?) Interestingly, in light of all these themes, I quote here his short poem, ‘I follow no one’, which seems to consolidate all three:

I follow no one, I have no loyalties —

Save to those of my blood who are one with me;

I have no faith, no god or devil —

I follow my imperatives:

My imperatives* are those of the knife

That moves in the direction of flesh.

This short poem of six lines, in itself, encapsulates all three themes; I shall take it upon me to explain in detail in another paper, another time.

Note: August the 3rd.

Having spoken to his widow/ex-wife while I was incidentally in the middle of writing this article, there is still more food for thought now. However, must try not to let the subjective knowledge and intuition of the man’s life and past interfere with an objective reading of his poetry. Perhaps, though, knowledge of these biographical details might aid to make inferences regarding the elusive poet’s life. A well-esteemed, high-up walauva lineage but financially decrepit, family not intellectually up to his standards, (could it be more of Sinhala sensibilities than English?), felt frustrated and trapped because neither family nor peers understood his capacity or genius, family probably may not have been able to support him financially to achieve things he might have wanted, one sister but not close or an intellectual peer, fits of moodiness and rage, volatile personality, premonitions that he would not live long to achieve his work’s potential? I am noting these here before I forget. Memory in itself is fickle; mine but should probably bear in mind regarding the lady’s narratives as well. But also, she kept saying, frustrated because he wanted to ‘come out’ and family did not understand him. Could it possibly be..?

Lakdas, where are you? What was your story?

“The muse is also any woman/ I lust for, as I lust for death.”

Notes for later consideration:

1. *Imperatives = urges? impulses (sexual?)? instincts? Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice in her Wonderland would say.
2. “What is often misunderstood about the word eroticized rage (ER) is that it doesn’t necessarily show up as someone violently acting out sexually on another person.. On the contrary, it is often more subtle… For many, ER stems from early childhood experiences; ones that were often traumatic. ER often stems from early life events that leave a child/teen feeling powerless, out of control and angry…”
3. “Our arousal template is also determined by our genetic code, physiology, and our learned experiences… For some, sexual arousal is most powerful when paired with anger and physical pain. (?)” → “three more factors often underlie sexually compulsive behaviors: eroticized rage, disowned parts of the self, and unfinished family of origin business.”
4. Studies on Family of Origin and sexuality interlinkage: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3655&context=thesesdissertations and also https://irl.umsl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1210&context=dissertation