Richard Manik de Zoysa (18 March 1958– 18 February 1990) was a well-known Sri Lankan
journalist, author, human rights activist and actor, who was abducted and
murdered on 18 February 1990. His murder caused widespread outrage inside the
country, and is widely believed to have been carried out by a death squad
linked to elements within the government.
Richard de Zoysa was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka in March of
1958. His mother was, Dr Manorani Saravanamuttu, a prominent surgeon of the
Tamil community and his father, Lucien de Zoysa, was Sinhalese. As a young man
he was educated at S. Thomas’ College in Mount Lavinia
He was considered born in a privileged class in Sri Lanka. In
contradictory, his activities portrays his ideological liberation from a
privileged class to which he was born, and shined for the first two decades of
his life. Here, Richard, in his re-entering of society, has to first throw
himself against the very walls which he was brought up to be the master of,
cracking them from within and in breaking down the narrow, classed-corridor;
and in venturing out. Most of his “political poetry”, dated between 1977 and
1990, readily testify to this coming of age, in political and class terms.
The most crucial observation that was made was as to how
with Richard ends a writer’s concern with the immediate day-to-day politics and
social issues: how, the generation that takes over from Richard and the like
have produced very few writers who descend from the colonnades of ivory to
prick the underbelly of socio-political transaction.
Perhaps, Richard’s greatest strength as a poet is his
perception and his commitment to the world around him, which, twenty-five years
after his death, remains one of the strongest achievements by a Lankan poet in
the nation’s post-imperial aftermath. His is, with very little exception, the
most progressive poetic intervention by a Lankan English author in the past
three decades.
In his poem Apocalypse Soon, Richard skillfully captures the
eerie atmosphere which led to bloody riots of 1989 and how it profoundly
affects the lives of the people at large. One of the significant features of
the poem is that it is laden with metaphors upon metaphors unfolding of which
would reveal graphic descriptions of the racial strife, described using Tarzie
Vittachi's potent metaphor of 'The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse'. Richard skillfully
epitomizes the callous attitude and inaction on the part of the law enforcement
authorities in the face of the 'racial strife' as 'and to the singing of the
lead, khaki and gunmetal and iron tread, advance and take their vantage at the
corner'.
The poem 'Animal Crackers' is also about the riots. The poet
through a lesson to a child plays with the symbols associated with the parties
to the conflict. The commotion out there is captured in an evocative line
" Just a party down the lane, A bonfire, and some fireworks, and they're
burning -No, not a tiger - just some silly cat". Who is burning is not 'a
tiger' but 'a cat'. His skillful use of metaphors taken out of the day-to-day
life is manifested in the poems such as 'Rites of Passage', '1984 - Elephant
passes, GAJAGAVANNAMA and '.GOOD FRIDAY, 1975'
Although his pen was made silent giving no justice to his
death, contrary to the expectations of his murderers his voice widespread
around the world. His unanswered murder scarred the face of the nation still distorting
the image of the country before the world. It is a great loss for the country
as Sri Lanka could not produce a poet of such caliber up to now. His mastery of
language and poetic perception is not second to any literature personality in
the history.
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