The curious thing about my encounter with Malaysian-Singaporean writers and intellectuals is that I was singularly unprepared to assume the roles of critic, academic or anthologist over their productions at a time when their activity was mainly confined to the University of Malaya in Singapore. And yet, paradoxically, I became just that kind of an exegete, owing to a series of "wilful errors" on my part. Instead of choosing to settle for a career by qualifying in Singapore where the region’s institutions of learning, such as, the Raffles College for the Arts or the King Edward the VIIth College of Medicine, I opted for Bar Studies at the Inns of Court School of Law in London as an external student. After a series of further "abetted errors", I found myself teaching English (and American) literature at the University of Maryland in Heidelberg in 1960-61. The university offered me a five-year Fullbright to do a Ph.D. in English (while teaching) at College Park in Maryland, but then as usual I knew better, and I quite naïvely accepted a grant from the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an international cultural organisation whose siege social was in Paris, to travel and report during a tour of South and Southeast Asia. It didn’t occur to me then that I could have kept both, for the grant was for only a couple of months. To make things even more difficult for myself, I asked the cultural body representatives (to whom I was introduced and recommended by the Thirties poet Stephen Spender), if they couldn’t publish an anthology of writing by Malay(si)ans and Singaporeans. They said they would try the Rockefeller Foundation for a subsidy. The reply: no one was interested in such a collection, not sufficiently enough to subsidise such a project. The muddle-head that I was made me insist that I would go it alone and on my own steam. I didn’t realise I was heading headlong into mainstream muddled-up Malaysian politics.

My published doctoral dissertation: Etude comparée des littératures nationales et/ou officielles de la Malaisie et de Singapour depuis 1941, and the present volume do not therefore constitute areas of research I would have wanted to probe. They are accidental fallout instituted by random circumstances.

Some published work on specifically Tamil topics has not been included in this volume, for, it occurred to the author, further research on the subject would have been necessary. On the other hand, in an essay like "The Exotic in Aesthetics", a certain amount of the discussion though seemingly alien to the subject matter of this publication leads by argument to the introduction of the treatment of Tamil proverbs and Tamil classical poetry. The review on the re-construction of Borobudur finds its place here for, at the time of its creation, Tamil know-how and culture reigned in the Indonesian archipelago.

The author does not wish to lay claim to being a Tamil scholar or Tamilologist. He is more than aware that he has no genuine competence which could be diligently exercised in the vast and abundant field of Tamil studies. De bon gré, he has 

produced these pieces by his own autodidactic effort and ventures to hope he might have shed some critical light on some Tamil topics, beliefs, and ways of life.

He feels however that the distinguishing feature introduced in this particular mode of academic publication is the section, "Commentary via fiction" or rather "fictionalised comment". Fiction as a receptacle for ideas and concepts in no way diminishes academic rigour; if anything, it enhances receptivity, makes palatable what is normally dry and difficult.

Of one thing though he is certain. As a Tamil, he cannot be discouraged from venturing further in the field of Tamil studies.

T. Wignesan - November 14, 2006  Paris, France

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Twenty three of the thirty-one propositions of the "Disquisitions on Poietics", together with the articles on the poïetics of the "pantun", in French, and the "Yijing" first appeared in the Journal of Comparative Poïetics, Vol. II, n° 1 (Paris), 1992. The article on "Gerard Sekoto" and the account of "Aintinai: la théorie de cinq paysages" appeared in JCL, Vol. I, n° 2 & 3 (Paris), 1991. An earlier version of the propositions XXIV to XXXI of the "Disquisitions on Poïetics" first appeared in Breaking Out: A Critical Miscellany in 1999. Here, in this volume, the disquisitions have been brought up to date and revised. The Mobipocket eBook version does not contain the same number of articles or some of the arguments either.

The second part of the book consists of seven articles/critiques and an interview - on various subjects and whose main purpose was to examine the nature of creativity through each of the topics discussed. As such, what follows the disquisitions proper has been entitled: Further Explorations into the Art of Creation.

Even if the author has found it necessary to debunk the way the subject of poïetics has been treated and/or managed in France (cf. Chapter I: "The Exotic in Aesthetics: A Case Study of Poïetics as the Science and Philosophy of Creation"), and almost subscribes - with certain mostly unexpressed reservations - to a heretical overview of the subject’s future research possibilities, he is nonetheless aware of the intrinsically fundamental properties of the ontological approach he has undertaken right from the start and which over time has led him to exploit the subject for a more general and encompassing overview of life as revealed by the ancient Chinese Canon of Changes, the Yijing.

The insights he has gained by a long and personal experience of this book has convinced him of the validity of his convictions and propositions. The substratum of his ideas is therefore to be found in the basic concept of the unfolding year in temperate climes. No book that can foretell the future and advise the inquirer on how to avoid disaster may be ignored. He is convinced that countless generations of Chinese have by the application of rigorous scientific method and inquiry obtained the results that have been fused into the imagery and dicta of the hexagrams and moving lines of the book. It is only by patiently sifting through observable phenomena and collating an infinite number of data, made available through minute observation of Nature in all its unfolding, paradigmatic and cyclical aspects, have these savant Taoists been able to put together a concise statement of the science and/or philosophy of the course of human life on Earth. That the language in which these repetitive behavioural patterns are couched sometimes or mosttimes eludes proper evaluation and interpretation is a matter for education and application. Nothing is for free in life. If one wants to benefit from advice, one has first to be able to find the right wavelength which enables one to listen with humility. And this is no easy chore as far as the book is concerned. And, unfortunately for some, the wondrous music of poesy may even then fall on hardened ears!

In the Yijing, the ancient Chinese had already expounded, as far as the author is concerned, the secrets of the very art of creation which takes the world for its laboratory and life in all its forms as the vehicle of its art form. The present book on poïetics can only serve as a signpost for the very first and ultimate book on the subject.                                                           

 T.Wignesan

Paris, July 5, 2007