A Quest of Truth: The Inspiration of Tarzie Vittachi in the Political Poetry of Richard de Zoysa
Abstract
The present paper examines the influence of journalist Tarzie Vittachi on Sri Lankan writer Richard de Zoysa’s poetry practice as an instrument of protest and criticism of the state. Vittachi, a Magsaysay award-winning newspaper editor in Sri Lanka’s immediate post-independence period, through the 1950s, had made a reputation as a fearless critic and insightful satirist of local politics. His allegorical representations of politicians and events were playful and highly effective as social commentary. Vittachi’s Emergency 58, a commentary on Sri Lanka’s anti-Tamil riots that broke out in 1958, a pioneering work on the country’s early ethnic troubles, in particular, seems to influence Richard de Zoysa at the start of his literary career in the late-1970s. From about 1977 to 1988, de Zoysa emerged as a powerful creative voice in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, writing fearlessly against (what he judged to be) the political excesses of government that included corruption, election violence and organized riots targeting Tamils. In these efforts de Zoysa endorses, in part, the ethical view that governed Vittachi’s journalism as a guide for Sri Lankan politics, while modelling a style closely resonant of the allegories and satiric improvisations of Vittachi’s own writing in the 1950s: an experiment which was cut short by de Zoysa’s extra-judicial murder by government paramilitary in February 1990.
