Plus

Plus

Honour Ian’s precious gift to Peradeniya
By Ashley Halpé
We stand in the desolate room looking at the stripped yet familiar walls, the empty rows of shelves. Boxes and bundles of books and papers, stacks of paintings and drawings ready to be carried out to the lorry. A short two hours ago the Senior Assistant Librarian who had come with us to supervise the packing paused thoughtfully by the desk at the window looking out on a prospect of fields.
“Was this where he worked?” he asked reverently.

An appropriate note. Absorbed in organizing this final ritual we had drifted a bit from its essential significance, that it was an end even as it marked a beginning.
Ian Goonetileke had bequeathed all his books, papers and paintings to the University of Peradeniya, successor to the University of Ceylon, to which he had given the best part of his life and to which he had lent the lustre of his achievements. When he retired to the “Walden of (his) own choosing” at Oruwela, he had completed five volumes of his magnificent Bibliography of Sri Lanka and was working on the sixth - it was part of our duty to carry with us to Peradeniya the little desk-side card index from which he operated.

This bibliographical labour of love was a natural extension of the vocation to which Ian had been called. It is not fanciful to use such language to describe the way in which Ian Goonetileke embarked on his lifelong adventure with books and the arduous task of sustaining research and teaching in an unfriendly and indeed, I venture to say, cynical environment.

”Words have been a source of joy and sorrow, strength and consolation, learning and knowledge; 'Words are sheer pleasure, a cure for anguish' as Osip Mandelstam, the Russian poet summed it up,” he said that day in Peradeniya, adding “As an only child, orphaned of both parents at an early age, I grew up with books as my mute, though surprisingly eloquent, companions... I devoured books, magazines and newspapers as soon as I learned to read - the greatest boon to a budding librarian... school possessed a splendid library... and teachers who encouraged the reading habit. My father's small library was a treasure island...”

When he entered the University and went through the portals of “Villa Venezia” where the library was housed he experienced “the cardinal moment of inspiration” to “the serendipitous calling of a book man in a library.” The “ precincts of that ornate Italian-style mansion... the magic casements of its book stacks, reading rooms and its compelling aura were to prove decisive.” One afternoon he plucked up the courage to tell Enright, the University Librarian of his “ desire to become a librarian.” Enright lent him some basic texts on librarianship and, finding him “burrowing in the stacks more often than usual for a normal adolescent...once remarked: 'A librarian who reads is lost, but a librarian who does not read is also lost.'” Ian decided to “get lost for good and all!”

Twenty years later he was appointed to an assistant librarianship and “for the next 27 years, Peradeniya became the inspirational centre of (his) professional career” and “the most rewarding, fruitful and enlightening period of (his) life.” He “learned ... that work is a sacrament, and its only reward, and librarianship, in its highest forms, an act of social service to the mind of one's fellow man.” During that period the University “quickly outgrew its confining colonial mould and became an ever-burgeoning centre of higher education” and Ian Goonetileke was “particularly happy to have been a participant in University affairs when the winds of change were blowing, and altering the forms, styles and essence of University education for the greater good of the larger community.” His premature departure was on a matter of principle, yet he went without any bitterness for the institution itself but rather as a reminder to us all of the nature of academic honour and academic standards.

Ian Goonetileke was a totally civilized academic professional, whose civilization included an intense human concern for persons as much as for principles. It was fitting that such a man should have been at the centre of the Peradeniya Library, the living heart of the institution, in its greatest days of growth as well as in its darkest days of lean supplies and unintelligent university management. It is in this sense that Ian Goonetileke has been a Peradeniya man. He has been closely identified with that ideal university on the banks of the Mahaweli envisioned by the founding fathers. He has stepped out of his professional precinct to wage war for the institution when exigency demanded assembly at the barricades, as during the fight against the insane and unprincipled reorganization of university education in 1973.

It was the same man of conscience and humane concern who helped nourish the minds of university students in custody after the insurrection of 1971 with loans of books and who compiled a bibliography of that insurrection with a substantial introduction, thorough but written from the heart.

Thus while we acknowledge and admire the range and depth of the publications he gave the world despite his energetically committed professional life, we also celebrate the many other ways in which Ian has enriched our lives: the innumerable fruitful consultations, conversations and those miracles of micro-calligraphy embodying felicitous apercus and trenchant comment, sometimes excoriation (as I called them in my 75th birthday felicitation) which so many of us treasure.

It was entirely characteristic of him, therefore to make the stupendous bequest that I alluded to at the beginning of this tribute. I trust I will be forgiven if I continue in verse:
'Hail and Farewell'? - Farewell and Hail!

An elegy for Ian
Dead, your benediction leaves our spirits
In the bouquet of your fine cool mind
And your compassionate heart, passional only
For justice, angry only
When truth was crucified or learning mocked,
Or hypocrisy carried off the palm -
Your benefaction stuns with its munificence:
Keyts, Claessens, Ivan Perieses, Gabriels... to nourish
Peradeniya's starved thousands;
Rare editions, papers, letters from the great,
Princely gift no prince had thought to make
But you, benign deva of our realm of gold,
Drab-clothed, sandalled guide and guardian:
Your fate not 'gloomy night' but countless lamps
Lit at your temple of the enquiring mind.

The benefaction's munificence stuns indeed. But it is entirely in keeping with the astonishing generosity of his whole life, of which another example already continues to bless Peradeniya: the institution in memory of Professor E.F.C. Ludowyk of the annual Ludowyk Memorial Lecture and Shakespeare Prize.

But Peradeniya was not ready to receive the gift when he died, though over six years had passed since he conveyed his intention to the Council. The university has yet to bring to reality the museum and gallery that was part of the original plan of the founders. The bequest has had to be placed in safekeeping in the library until a home worthy of it can be built on the campus.

Fortunately the alumni have stepped in and Ashley de Vos has generously lent his talent and taste to the project. He has suggested a gallery/museum, which will wind as an extended corridor through the trees behind Jayatilake Hall, part of it reflected in the large pond set in the hillslope facing Wijewardene Hall across the Galaha Road. Exquisitely simple and elegant in form, it will be eminently part of the environment while its modular design will enable a phased and economical building programme. A committee of alumni headed by the present writer is now working energetically to raise the funds for it.

But more of that anon. What is to the purpose here is that Ian Goonetileke is assured of a fitting memorial when a central part of the new gallery is named after him and his wife Roslin in gratitude for his bequest. In honouring him, we honour ourselves by proving that we are worthy heirs and our farewells are sanctified by a spirit of filial piety.

Back to Plus