The relation between aesthetics and poetry is far from simple. It is simple, but intricate. There are poets I know of who like to philosophize. It is felt that a spoon of philosophy adds to the richness, but I have found it, more often than not, falling into stereotype or becoming an activity of which – as a secondary sophistication – is more than enough to any reader. It’s worrying to think that writers keep trying to reflect on things when there is nothing to really reflect upon.

Today, Sri Lankan Literature and poetry has made seven-league strides. We have moved into new eras of human experience and if I recall right, it was Blake who said that to generalize would be idiotic.

Jean Arasanayagam is an exception. No two of her art is the same. Sometimes, in reading her, I have wondered if her mind first sets out to kill reality, for it is so evident that the intellect cannot be the creator. To me, her poetry in all its rich robes, are the mutual flames where one poem can never extinguish the other. She certainly is a paradigm, an exception, for she will tell of a beauty that can save the world and will not be cowed by the horrors and uglifications of history; the roar of guns, and even the scent of the jasmine. Everything is part of her faith.

In our world of poetry, we have Jean, who not only captures the vital essence of memory but also allows us to feel that if poetry is her religion, her art is the theory, and from the theory comes vision. I have seen her frequent reference to the Vedas, the Upanishads, as well as such as Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth, but she remains a romantic with a difference, leaning with ease on Truth, Goodness and Beauty. Call her a piper of the perennial appreciation of all about her, but the tunes she pipes will always be her own.

She does not look on her lines as a purely social product, or governed by utilitarian considerations or socio-economic factors. She knows too well that once she has written, once a poem is read, it is freed from its genesis and needs to emphasize its independence. That, I feel, is very like Creation. One cannot ask a dewdrop to tell us of its parentage, can we? I simply must quote Rabindranath Tagore, for he is one with Jean when he said:

"The materials or ingredients of Creation are supplied partly by History, partly by Society, but these neither make nor explain the Creator."

To Jean [and I intend to give you some extracts from her work at the end of this essay], poetry belongs to the procession of life. Its pilgrimage takes her to vanished years, unknown shrines, even above and beyond social and historic events. She offers a world of universal values, and yet, I have to marvel at the – shall I say – unstoppable and undiminished work she continues to produce. She does not seem to accept that the one side of her life that is finite can exhaust her. Rather, she asks us to accept that all her aspirations, joys, even sacrifices, are infinite. She has surely given us her symbol of immortality.

Jean [and knowing her as well as I do] has met, faced, suffered and overcome a tyranny of many days, and yet, she does not seek a refuge for avoiding the disagreeable facts of a past where encounters keep beating at her skull. She made of her writing a transformation of such vile realities – no, not nuances of nostalgia that brings about a fusion of opposites. To her, poetry is an intensification of human reality, never an impoverishment. We find the language of personality and a complex of ideas and attitudes.

In Indian terms, I have found that there are some of her works that equate sensibility and sanctity. We have rasa or relish, ananda or delight, and dhyana or contemplation. Her poems also carry elements of exploration and discovery – mapping out the paths of our past, making us wish to share, even talk of what is now not talked of.

I have often wondered what makes Jean so private a person, content to live in her own "nautilus chamber," but I think there is an answer. The true poet is an ascetic. She seeks the free self in her, but not outside her doors. How could she immure herself in today’s world of marginal, manipulable, instrumental creatures who are the victims of attachment and preference? No, it does not mean that she is a hermit, but her place, that is so distinctively hers above all other places, is her meeting-ground between her lesser and greater self. And in that swirling sense of being immersed and alone, she can bind together a vast empire of human society.

Jean often goes back to nature, the flowers and vines, and that, too, is embodied in her. I have felt that when she tells of the hills and the vales, the groves and the fruit trees around the wells of old-time northern plantations, she stands outside herself — standing as a signpost on the road to unity.

She puts aside all "hereness-thereness" divisions, becomes accessible to totality – so like Blake’s line: "To see a world in a grain of sand."

There are times, of course, when Jean becomes the generic heroine in her own poetry, but there is no search for sensation. She has distilled herself in her travel poems, her visits to other climes, but that is as it should be, shouldn’t it? Her voice remains unmistakably that of a serious poet.

In writing this, I ask myself, ‘am I passing judgment on a lifetime of her work, or only in those moments that crystallize her poetry. Frankly, it’s hard to tell for you will find no social platitudes, no abstractions, every line seen sharply, often giving expression to an individual moment balanced against the timeless moments of the past. Let me give you a few abstracts. Read what she has written and tell me if I have spoken truly:

[from "Left Behinder"] I do not know when I last knew The meaning of that word "merry" Belonging as it does to all those lost annals Including nativities, proselytization, ballads and lyrics. I do not make merry any longer Not with thoughts of blood-sodden battlefields With their unrecognizable dead, revolutions, Torture or burning tyre-piles and the weight Of fear my daughter still expresses of that Terrifying past in the minutiae Of her psyche.

[from "The Native Knocking] My forefathers carried arms, Musket, flintlock, sabre, Trundled cannons through jungles, Marched with their regiments of Mercenaries. Yet, the door opened For them with so much ease.

Why then do I lurk outside Stalking in the dark, Flailing upon a door with my clenched fists? I, the native, knocking on the door Inhabitant of the true paradise Now ambushed by history.

[from "Colonizer/Colonized] The blood of the Colonizer that runs in my veins is also the blood of the Colonized, an island invaded An island raped Subjugated/victimConqueror/victimizer. Where is there room here For the ancient gods; the ancient Goddesses? No conquest can destroy them Those who still inhabit the springs The rivers, the trees of this earth.