A Study of Singapore Literature in the English Language(<Special Issue>I

Towards a Creative Use of the Alien Tongue: A Study of Title Singapore Literature in the English Language(<Special Issue>Images of the Southeast Asian World Author(s) Kosetsu, Miyuki Citation 東南アジア研究 (1984), 22(1): 92-107 Issue Date 1984-06 URL http://hdl.handle.net/2433/56163 Right Type Departmental Bulletin Paper Textversion publisher Kyoto University Southeast As£an Studz'es, Vol. 22, No.1, June 1984 Towards a Creative Use of the Alien Tongue: A Study of Singapore Literature in the English Language Miyuki KOSETSU * exercise. Singapore writers who write In I English cannot fully express themselves Singapore literature m the English lan except in this language; it is the language guage refers to a body of literature produced in which they feel most at home of all lan in Singapore by those writers who can ex guages and dialects they may have at com press themselves best in English though it is mand in varying degrees. The passage not their mother tongue. Singapore, mul from a poem quoted below expresses in a tiracial and multicultural, has a bewilder succinct manner these writers' feelings of ingly complex language situation, with more uncertainty about their identity; this poet than 20 languages and linguistic variants is Chinese in race and cultural background, currently spoken. Of the four official lives in the Malay world, and nevertheless languages, Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and has to express herself in the alien tongue: English, the first is designated the national language, but only in a symbolic sense. My country and my people English is the de facto national language I never understood. I grew up in China's mighty shadow, because of its racial neutrality and its with my gentle, brown-skinned neigh- importance as an international language bours; and, as the language of technology and but I keep diaries in English. commerce, indispensable for Singapore's Lee Tzu Pheng "My Country and My economic development. But for most People" people, it is a medium only of communica tion of a practical nature and not yet a One cannot afford to be very optimistic language in which to express complex about the future of Singapore literature in thoughts and delicate feelings. However, English, or in any language for that matter, this is not to suggest that Singapore poems when one looks at the general conditions in English, for instance, have little more surrounding literature there. There is an significance than, say, SOseki's English po absolute paucity of literary talent due to the ems written as a pastime and intellectual smallness of the nation. There is a lack of maturity in the language which suggests * '*W~~ ~, Department of Literature, Doshisha that, in this linguistically diversified society, University, Karasuma Higashi-iru, Imadegawa dori, Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto 602, Japan where each language is hampered by the 92 M. KOSETSU: Towards a Creative Use of the Alien Tongue coexistence of the others, the writer can be 2]. intimately at home in no one language, as opposed to the situation in a monolingual II society. In addition, readership is frag Singapore literature m English began mented [Enright 1969: 187]. However, with poetry in the 1940s. As to why it what creates a far more serious obstacle to should have begun with poetry, the follow the growth of literature is the materialistic, ing remark by one of the most influential pragmatic ethos that permeates the society; 20th-century British poets T. S. Eliot people tend to value skillfully solving real, may be pertinent: concrete problems by using practical knowl edge and technology and pursuing the The impulse towards the literary use of the languages of the peoples began with fulfillment of secular desires, rather than poetry. And this appears perfectly nat being absorbed in reflection in seeming ural when we realize that poetry has pri idleness, or appreciating arts for no tangible marily to do with the expression of feeling gain. The President of the Republic, and emotion; and that feeling and emo tion are particular, whereas thought is Devan Nair, when he was President of the general [Eliot 1969: 19]. National Trades Union Congress, in his speech in Parliament on March 14, 1980, The inference is that people first feel the decried Singapore writers who write in need to express what is particular and English, calling them "snooty arty-crafty intimate m themselves. In Singapore types" and "arty-crafty dodgers of reality" wntmg, even now, poetry surpasses fiction [Nair 1980: 2-3J, while one writer self and drama in both quantity and quality; mockingly refers to himself as, at best, one and it has been constituted almost invariably of the "humorous figures" [Forum 1980: 3]. of efforts of the faculty, graduates, and The tendency to depreciate literature and students ofwhat is now the National U niver other arts is not unique to Singapore; it sity of Singapore. Thus, there being as can be seen in the early stages of many yet no tradition of fiction or drama sufficient nations which developed from immigrant to warrant a meaningful study, in this paper societies, for instance in the United States, I intend to concentrate on poetry, especially Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where on poems which were written after 1965 practical skills were demanded first and when Singapore became a fully independent foremost in the struggle against unpropi nation. tious environments. All the same, it is this The development of Singapore poetry in materialistic, pragmatic Singaporean ethos English is usually divided into three phases. that is decidedly inimical to the nurturing The first is the imitative phase, covering, of literature. The poet Edwin Thumboo roughly, the 1940s and the early 1950s, laments: "the master-image of a thriving, during which people wrote, as an elegant viable, efficient, go-getting metropolis is the pastime, poems imitating English ones, source of our difficulties" [Thumboo 1970: especially Romantic and Victorian. Cited 93 below is an example from this phase: sage from Lloyd Fernando's "Variation on a Theme by T. S. Eliot": The twilight grey has faded fast, And darkness on the world is cast; I would meet you upon this honestly A lonely bird flies homeward bound, I was near to your heart and saw your And takes with her the day's last sound. beauty The stately palms that tower high, But I have lost my passion From side to side all sway and sigh... Why should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be Adulterated dismal imitation? As the following quotation shows, the passage is strongly reminiscent of the 18th The "you" here may be taken to refer to century English poet Thomas Gray's English literature. The original passage in "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," Eliot's poem "Gerontion," expressing a poem familiar to every student of English modern man's inability to surrender himself literature [Koh 1981: 160J. either to divine love or to human love ofman The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, and woman, reads: The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, I would meet you upon thi.s honestly. The plowman homeward plods his weary I that was near your heart was removed way, therefrom, And leaves the world to darkness and To lose beauty in terror, terror in in to me.... quisition. Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r I have lost my passion: why should I The moping owl does to the moon com need to keep it plain... Since what is kept must be adulterated? Sensibilities trained in the English literary Fernando's entire poem IS actually some tradition made writers respond to the thing less than an imitation of Eliot; sadly Malayan landscape according to that tra it is a mere changing of words here and dition. If they wrote poems, they could there. only come up with honeysuckle and snow In the second phase, a period of rising drops, which they had probably never seen, nationalism and anti-colonialism, writers but which commonly appear in the scenes sought to create definitely Malayan poems, of English lyrics, when what they actually writing on consciously Malayan subjects saw were likely to be frangipani and and scenes and sometimes using Eng bougainvillea flourishing in the tropical sun. malchin, a synthetic language based on The unexorcisable doubt of these writers English but incorporating elements from that, whatever they write will never be any Malay and Chinese. The following poem thing more than a pathetic imitation of is typical of such attempts: English poetry, is revealed in the next pas- 94 IVY. KOSETSU: Towards a Creative Use of the Alien Tongue Ahmad was educated. emotions, such as love or hate, and on the He never liked his masters, but he was. other hand, there are "public" poems deal He can be a clerk, all thought, ing with social and political problems. The But in his heart he had stirrings for Cam, Where his Head has been, who was so following is an example of the former: clever. I distrust, mistrust you equally: His wife with child again. The whole field of sun- Three times had he fasted, flowers charged, choked, Andpuasa was coming round once more. can't stand themselves One hundred to start with--a good their earth electrified scheme; Quarters too, their sky steers away rapid With a room for his two little girls. west-west-wise. You distrust Kampong Batu was dirty! mistrust yourselves equally. Thoughts of Camford fading, your roots' stirrings beyond Contentment creeping in. all right or wrong, water-wise. Allah has been kind; Your faces Orangputeh has been kind. Only yesterday his brother said, sun-drawn, tired now, accurate.

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