Living in Sindbad’s skin

Sindbad in Serendib by Richard Boyle. Published by Visidunu Prakasakayo. Price- Rs 1,950.Reviewed by Ethan Gelber

In the early paragraphs of the first and title chapter of Richard Boyle’s impressive new book, Sindbad in Serendib, we are introduced to the essential attributes of a hero:

“The principle (sic) injustice perpetrated on the character of Sindbad by film producers and scriptwriters is his portrayal as a young, swashbuckling adventurer. Nothing could be further from the original conception, which has him as a resourceful, middle-aged merchant who sailed the seas to trade rather than to seek treasure or rescue damsels in distress. Yet this mundane aspect in no way diminishes his attraction as a character, for he constantly displays intelligence and ingenuity more endearing than mere physical deeds.”

I confess this excerpt coloured Sindbad in Serendib in a surprising and satisfying way—one I willingly indulged—even when I discovered meaning where perhaps Boyle hadn’t intended. It set a tone for my literary expeditions, led by Boyle, through his 15 essays (many of which appeared in different form in The Sunday Times in the late 90s) described as concerning “strange tales and unusual aspects of Sri Lanka”. Perhaps more to the point, these essays and their author, both of them full of “extraordinary and esoteric information”, are as intelligent and ingenious as Sindbad.

“It seems that we need to find the giant squid, but also need not to find it.” —Richard Boyle, Sindbad in Serendib. It’s fitting to reflect Boyle’s words about Sindbad back on himself: his mundane aspect in no way diminishes his attraction as a character who consistently displays intelligence and ingenuity. In the light by which I read his essays, Boyle may be the author of material about others, but he is ever-present in what he writes. His strength of scholarship cuts a clear path for most to follow, but doesn’t restrict others in search of their own way.

In fact, having absorbed his essays, I found myself pondering: if any of the characters were alive today and possessed the skill to transcribe their voyages in their own hand or contextualise their observations in today’s world, how would they represent them? Would they hew to traditional narrative or scientific approaches or might they attempt something new, as Boyle has?

Boyle’s vision and scholarship—those of a Sindbadesque, resourceful, middle-aged information merchant with long experience in trading anecdotes—are of such force that I could answer these questions without detracting from the reading experience. And my early conclusion, provoked by the early excerpt, was most satisfying: I suspect Sindbad and others in Boyle’s cast of characters would happily channel the insights that Boyle brings to his readers. I imagine they would be pleased to find him so deeply under their skin, for he writes as much about them as if he is them, so much so that any discussion of the book is almost a discussion about Boyle himself.

British-born but resident in present-day Serendib since 1984 (although he first visited in 1973 to work on Lester Peries’ The God King), Boyle, like the “connoisseur, antiquarian and author” Horace Walpole, to whom he devotes part of an essay about the origins of the word serendipity, is “an exceptional Englishman”. And, also like Walpole, Boyle’s knack for resurrecting and expanding upon strange tales, both Oriental and Occidental, to elucidate his research is appealing and uncanny.

The strange tales are only the first tastes of the multifaceted rice and curry Boyle serves, for he brings Sri Lanka’s full spice to the fore. He does this not just by describing people and places; rather he inhabits them, reading what the people read (his knowledge of their contemporaneous literature is positively Walpolian), seeing what they saw (24 illustrations, mostly 19th-century drawings and etchings, are reproduced in the book), imagining their worlds and conveying them accurately.

Boyle gives full attention to word derivations and their uses in English literature grounded in Sri Lanka. We should expect no less from a bookworm immersed in the British colonial period in Sri Lanka (1796–1948); the consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary for words of Sri Lankan origin or association; and the author of Knox’s Words (2004), focusing on Sri Lankan words brought to English by Robert Knox, a 17th-century English prisoner of the Kandyan Kingdom.

Scholarly acumen aside, Boyle is at his best when he plunges the reader into a text straight from his fertile, informed imagination (although he often quotes from fictional or quasi-fictional historical source material). Undoubtedly one of the book’s highlights is the inclusion of Boyle’s own fictional addendum to “Tales of a Giant Squid”, his essay about the mysterious foundering of the schooner Pearl off the coast of Sri Lanka, apparently attacked and dragged under by a squid. His superb short essay, “Galle in Its Heyday”, perhaps the best concise rendering of the history and appeal of this storied Sri Lankan port city, pales in comparison.

“You don’t reach Serendip by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearing serendipitously.” —John Barth, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor

Within the fantastical context of Sindbad’s adventures, Boyle describes the Serendib he visited as “a place where the magical and the miraculous are commonplace. For it is evident that Serendib was regarded as not only a centre of early trade but also as an enchanted island abounding in wisdom and majesty.”

This is a suitable place from which Boyle sets out to chronicle the alluring land he has made his home. He finds his topics and inspiration in all corners of the country, and his descriptions do not shy away from expressions of boyish excitement. Little estrained by the geographical focus, Boyle’s essays, topically discrete, find descriptive depth in the least seen, the least known, the least read and the least understood—fictional and historical figures who have visited and written about Sri Lanka (Sindbad, Ernst Haeckel, C.G. Jung), legendary and infamous creatures (mermaids, dugongs, giant squids, anacondas, cobras) and cultures (the Nittaewo, the Rodi) associated with Sri Lanka, significant sites in Sri Lanka (Galle, Ritigala, Mulgirigala) and some of Sri Lanka’s storied sources of lucre (pearls and rubies).

There is no obvious sense of organisation to the essays, but at the end of each, and certainly having read them all, I came away with an understanding of the whole. For example, in the essay “In Quest of the Great Ruby”, is it the search for the singular legendary Great Ruby of Ceylon or the more general rush for lapidary riches that matters more? Boyle is writing as much about all of Sri Lanka as he is its gemstones, for his grasp of the island encompasses the whole in the particular and vice versa.
Boyle’s readiness to freely discuss themes is also not at all limited to the empirical. Just imagine the Sri Lankan world in which Boyle walks. For example, to him “Galle is redolent of history far beyond the confines of physical appearance. Using a little imagination, this testament in stone can yield up a corridor into the past, a journey down which evokes images of remoter times, and which reveals the full glory of Galle.”

Boyle may be as his fictional Captain James Floyd is: never able to approach Galle ‘without a sense of apprehension and never [able to depart] its environs without a sense of relief”. How else can we describe a living eye that sees in today’s Galle a past he has come to know “better than any other seafarer he had met”?

“Sometimes clouds introduce a sense of mystery by partly shrouding the terrestrial features beneath. Always they enhance.” — Richard Boyle, Sindbad in Serendib

Boyle’s fitting final essay, “C.G. Jung’s Field of Vision”, reports on the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, the “20th century’s master physician of the soul, interpreter of symbols, and intrepid explorer of the mind”, who once visited Sri Lanka.

Today’s Boyle of Sri Lanka—chronicler, inhabiter, re-animator—demonstrates how he has bridged the divide “between Orient and Occident, matched perfectly Jung’s concept of introversion and extraversion, since “the occidental being projected meaning into objects, while the oriental being felt the existence of meaning within”. He has moved from an examination of external qualities to full commitment to “alchemy, astrology, spiritualism and folklore, which [Jung’s] colleagues and critics dismissed as unworthy of genuine scientific attention”. So far from dismissing it, Boyle revels in it. He perhaps sees in his experiences a Jung-like “affirmation of his destiny, an acceptance of the condition of existence and of his own nature”.

To me, Sindbad in Serendib makes clear that, while Boyle’s Sindbad never exhibited literary pretensions, so too does Sindbad’s Boyle not seem bent on epic adventure. Both are ready to accept their place in the world. Fortunately for us all, Boyle’s place is one that finds its way deep into those of others and presents them to us. Such is the strength of association between Boyle and all of his heroes.

Sindbad in Serendib was launched on Friday, March 29 at the Barefoot Gallery and is now available at Kiyawanna Nuwana Bookshop, Nugegoda and other leading bookshops.