{"id":104216,"date":"2022-11-19T17:33:23","date_gmt":"2022-11-19T17:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/?p=104216"},"modified":"2022-11-19T17:35:33","modified_gmt":"2022-11-19T17:35:33","slug":"merlin-the-classics-wizards-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/merlin-the-classics-wizards-odyssey\/","title":{"rendered":"Merlin the classics wizard\u2019s odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Merlin the classics wizard\u2019s odyssey<\/span><\/h2>\n

Surrounded by books and memories in photographs, one of Sri Lanka\u2019s premier classicists, 91-year-old Prof Merlin Peris talks to Yomal Senerath-Yapa<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Merlin<\/p>\n

Source:<\/span><\/strong>Sundaytimes<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Prof. Merlin Peris\u2019s little house in Dangolla, Kandy is his own Arcadia, where, after a long romance with the Peradeniya University (his second love, after wife Kshanti) he has retired.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

He still has emeriti ties with the old place where he spent a lifetime of classical scholarship, proving wrong the great Sir Ivor Jennings who once declared: \u201cA Classics PhD is impossible for a Sri Lankan; it is a thoroughly ploughed field.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The first Sri Lankan to acquire a doctorate in Classics, the professor now 91, has written more than 50 books, a number of them not limited to the standard textbooks and translations, but comparative studies that weave glorious arras, with such diverse interests as Ceylon history, wildlife and the classical world\u2019s encounter with our East.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A great bubble chandelier dominates Prof Merlin\u2019s bungalow scattered with books. Here are cluttered memories in photo \u2013 including mementos of the friendship he enjoyed with cousin J.R. Jayewardene, and a few images on holiday in Greece against the Ionic columns from the world of The Iliad and The Odyssey, that epic Mediterranean world he loved, as Sri Lanka\u2019s premier classicist after the old generation of dons like Cuthbert Amerasinghe, J.L.C. Rodrigo, George Wickramanayake and Roland C. Pathmanathan.<\/span><\/p>\n

While he would demur that there is \u2018nothing to write about me\u2019, a whole phalanx of stories unfolding like a sepia album \u2013 absorbing, emblematic of an era- proves otherwise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Merlin\u2019s ancestors were compradors whose story Kumari Jayawardene so assiduously recorded in her book \u2018Nobodies to Somebodies\u2019. They were \u201crenda-raalas\u201d, arrack renters who would go on to be local grandees.<\/span><\/p>\n

Merlin\u2019s father was chief clerk at Aitken Spence and they lived in comfort near S. Thomas\u2019 College Mount Lavinia at Watarappola Road. In those balmy days sandwiched between the two wars and the heady sea breezes, cricket ruled.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the Second World War came, Merlin left S. Thomas\u2019 for Nalanda College and after the air raids and \u2018excitement\u2019 had ceased, resumed schooling at St. Peter\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

Merlin\u2019s first brush with classics was providential, and came at age ten.<\/span><\/p>\n

He kicked open a coverless book lying on the corridors of the school by the sea and was sucked in inexorably by the lines \u201cYou wine sack, with a dog\u2019s eyes\u201d. It was The Iliad, and Merlin\u2019s fate was sealed- he would forever be lost to that warm Mediterranean wine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Snapshots from the past: Merlin with wife Kshanti in Greece<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It is with a guffaw that Prof Merlin recalls being Junior Mr. Ceylon in the \u2018forties when Dougie Roberts was all the boys\u2019 hero \u2013 though they were all really \u2018katu witharai\u2019<\/em>\u00a0(only bones).<\/span><\/p>\n

Greek was taught at the\u00a0bana maduwa<\/em>\u00a0(preaching hall of the temple) and one imagines Merlin, fighting in his head the witch Circe and the giant Polyphemus behind horn rimmed glasses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Merlin was an undergraduate at both Colombo and Peradeniya as the university then changed its seat. Shifting to Peradeniya, he was asked which hostel he preferred and why. He said the James Peiris Hall because it was his namesake. \u201cBut the real reason,\u201d he admits laughing, \u201cwas that it was close to the Hilda Obeysekere where my girlfriend was.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Young Merlin and Kshanti were among the first couples to know romance in that dreamy setting against Hantane and the lush flora, the Mahaweli and the campus corridors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like with most successful academics Merlin\u2019s life was governed by the hermetic discipline born of books and austerity. It was no surprise when he earned a rare First Class Honours in Classics (subjects \u2013 Greek and Latin); the papers were marked rigorously in England.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was to be an interlude (not very enthusiastic) in the Ceylon Civil Service after graduation serving in Kalutara, Batticaloa and Polonnaruwa.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was Stanley Kirinde, a good friend, who informed Merlin that the Classics Department had advertised for an assistant lecturer. So began in 1959 a legendary career, at Peradeniya save for the five years when he had to serve the Vidyalankara campus (1974 to 1980), where he used to get down from the bus with heavy tomes under his arms and stride up the hill (there were no classics books then at the fledgling campus).<\/span><\/p>\n

England in the early 1960s was a strange place where the old graciousness was replaced by a lot of leg and lipstick. Here came Merlin for his Masters and PhD at the University of London.<\/span><\/p>\n

He still recalls the panic he felt when searching for lodgings one night \u2013 knowing that his young family (wife, son and daughter) was already on a ship to join him soon- and he knew no one in London. He would ring the bell at one place which advertised rooms \u2013 only to hurry away when he saw a further notice coyly asking to \u201cRing twice for Dolores\u201d!<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally they lodged with his professor, D.M. Balme, though at the princely sum of 5 pounds a week.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Merlin\u2019s books: He has authored more than 50<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Over the years, it was Greek drama that has been Merlin\u2019s forte. He introduced Sri Lankan readers to many comedies (while everyone was concerned with tragedies), and it is thanks to him that Aristophanes is today well known in Sri Lanka.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the late Sirancee Gunewardene (the first Sri Lankan principal at CMS Ladies\u2019 College) was the editor of Loris, the journal of the Wildlife & Nature Protection Society, she would rope in Merlin to author numerous pieces, including \u2018Wildlife in the Jatakas\u2019 and \u2018Of Elephants and Frogs\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

For elephants he has had a soft spot always \u2013 and one of his volumes of comparative studies, titled \u2018Mahavamsa Studies- Kandula: the Elephant at War\u2019 was born of the sentiment that while history boasts many elephant heroes (from Dutugemunu\u2019s Kandula to Hannibal\u2019s Surus) no academic study has ever honoured these pachyderms.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prof Merlin does not believe that Euripides or Menander need to be enjoyed essentially in the original. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter whether you get your classics in the first hand or second hand,\u201d he reiterates. That it is the essence not the cadences that matter, he holds strongly.<\/span><\/p>\n

With restricted Sinhala, Merlin always needed an editor for the Sinhala books on classics he churned out, but he made sure they found their way to be the diet of the casual reader.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of Merlin\u2019s later academic breakthroughs was when he revealed that the Yonakas of Anuradhapura, from the Mahavamsa, were some of Alexander\u2019s doughtier men who went further south than any fellow Greeks did \u2013 and this during Alexander\u2019s own time.<\/span><\/p>\n

These days \u2013 unfortunately no longer academically active- the harmonica is his friend and he obliges me with a lively playing of \u201cThere\u2019s no place like home\u201d. His late brother Reggie was a musician who played with Sunil Santha while another brother was with Amaradeva after finishing off at Santiniketan.<\/span><\/p>\n

As we linger in his book-lined cosy nest in Hantane there are many more nooks and crannies of memory to explore (like the story of the academic wrangle over a leopard called \u2018yuga-diviya\u2019) but as his nurses are getting edgy we say goodbye to this gentle scholar who, despite being able to talk weather as well as philosophy in Greek and Latin, always wore scholarship lightly, and popularized heartily \u2013 what others sought to guard as ivory towers of privilege.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merlin the classics wizard\u2019s odyssey Surrounded by books and memories in photographs, one of Sri Lanka\u2019s premier classicists, 91-year-old Prof Merlin Peris talks to Yomal Senerath-Yapa Source:Sundaytimes Prof. Merlin Peris\u2019s little house in Dangolla, Kandy is his own Arcadia, where, after a long romance with the Peradeniya University (his second love, after wife Kshanti) he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":104217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[49505,49504,48521],"class_list":{"0":"post-104216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-aside","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-articles","8":"tag-kumari-jayawardene","9":"tag-prof-merlin-peris","10":"tag-sunil-santha","11":"post_format-post-format-aside"},"yoast_head":"\nMerlin the classics wizard\u2019s odyssey<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Prof. 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