the young girls stooping over the young rice plants in the rain; she wanted to write so as to give a full picture of their living conditions and of the problems and hardships they faced in everyday life. She tells us that by describing the present difficult circumstances of the peasants she hoped to help bring about for them, as soon as possible, a new and just era, in the interest of peace and true independence for Burma. (Now, nearly forty years later, after all that has happened in Burma, there is a sad irony in such a statement.) The journalist in her wanted the novel to be authentic, based on actual peasant lives, reflecting the way peasants really spoke and what they really did. How could a person who had never in her life walked in a flooded paddy field write such a novel? She decided to make a close study of the subject.
As with her previous novel, she was constantly being pressed by the editor of Shumawa to give him something to publish for his readers. First she promised a story, then a long story, but as she wrote the work became longer and longer, exceeding the permitted length of a long serial, until the editor told her that they would publish it as a separate book. This enabled her to take her time and to accumulate background material. Even though she had been told that she was now free to write as long a work as she wished, she tried to keep the number of pages, and thus the price, down. Finally, she says, she left out passages dealing with new methods for farmers to pay land tax, and details of attempts to nationalize paddy land near Syriam! However well told the story might be, a novel loaded with such ambitious social purpose and such heavy educational content was not likely to win a popular literary prize.
Whether because of a lesson learned or natural development as a writer, however, when it came to Ma Ma Lay’s fifth novel, the one translated here as Not Out of Hate, creative inspiration seems to have taken over from, though not supplanted, social concern. There is no explanatory foreword of any kind, and the story and the characters are left by the author to speak entirely for themselves.
Perhaps the final words of introduction should be given to a fellow Burmese writer, Daw Saw Mon Nyin, writing soon after Ma Ma Lay’s death:
Her seat was empty at the general meeting of Burmese writers; at this meeting she was no longer able to attend as the delegate from Yangin district—Gya-negyaw Ma Ma Lay, who is held in such great respect by everyone for the clarity and excellence of her writing, and for her ability to give artistic expression to her thoughts and feeling. Her books were serious in intent, thought-provoking, informative, and have been accorded an important place in the history of Burmese literature. Anyone can write so as to produce a book. But not everyone has the courage to lay open their own life and recount it just as it is, or has the ability to portray it in its full reality. Her reader is carried away by the outstanding quality of her writing.9
We hope that something of this quality shines through in this version, the first Burmese novel to be translated into English outside of Burma.10
1. After 1964 the military government instituted a series of National Literary Prizes for different categories of work. Increasingly, political rather than literary criteria have come to determine the choice of prizewinners, with the result that some prize-winning novels have not been popular with the reading public and have not sold well.
2. The name Hswi is not Burmese and suggests that Ma Tin Hlaing’s mother was partly of Chinese descent.
3. The use of pen names is long-established and widespread in Burma; there are several reasons for this. Burmese names are short and often shared by many persons, hence writers customarily identified themselves by adding their place of birth to their given name. When novels and short stories were becoming established as new genres on the literary scene at the beginning of the twentieth century, certain writers of scholarly or religious works did not wish to reveal that they were also writing fiction. Later in the 1920s some young authors, keen to increase the number and readership of periodicals, would submit material under several different names at the same time. Other writers wanted to conceal their identity from rival publishers or from the authorities. In addition to identifying themselves by place of birth, writers frequently used the name of a magazine, such as Dagon (in the 1920s), or the words theikpan (college) or teggatho (university) before their own name or their chosen pen name.
4. Shumawa is difficult to translate with a single English expression. Literally it means “not to be able to have one’s fill of looking at,” “something one cannot look at enough.” This type of monthly fiction magazine, more than just a vehicle for short stories but not really a news magazine, had become well established in the 1920s; one of the best-known titles was Dagon. In the 100th issue of Shumawa, a special number published in September 1955, there is a list of the most regular contributors. Ma Ma Lay comes fourth in the list of 29, having contributed 31 pieces in all since the magazine’s inception in 1947. Of the 29 listed, only 4 are women; the two women with a greater total of contributions that Ma Ma Lay are both poets, which leads us to the realization that Ma Ma Lay was indeed exceptional in being almost the only serious, influential woman prose writer in Burma during the early years of independence.
5. In Burmese this is known as pyeithu akyobyu sapei. Such slogans were adopted by the military government after 1962 as part of the official policy toward literature.
6. It is interesting to note that one of the first activities to be organized by Ma Ma Lay for the members of the club was a series of lectures on the contemporary literary scene in countries outside Burma, starting with Great Britain followed by China and the Soviet Union.
7. The title Not Out of Hate is particularly interesting because it can describe much else in the novel besides the colonial relationship and the principal love relationship. Clearly, if somewhat more subtly, it may for example refer to the relationship Westernized Burmese have with traditional Burmese culture and society, or the relationship which the Buddhist nun in this story has with her family.
8. It is worth noting that the Russian “translation” of Monywei Mahu is a drastically shortened version—119 pages as opposed to 364 pages in the original Burmese edition. Even if one calculates two pages of Burmese as equal in length to one page of Russian, some 126 pages of Burmese have been cut to produce the Russian version. The resulting “novella” reads well enough, but it is not a translation of Ma Ma Lay’s novel, and was done without any reference to her.
9. From a memorial number of Shumawa, June 1982, pp. 163-68.
10. There have been at least two novels, or works resembling novels, translated into English in Burma, but they were intended for audiences there and not distributed elsewhere. The first was U Nu’s Man, the Wolf of Man, written originally in Burmese in 1941 while he was under house arrest, then translated and serialized in The Guardian Magazine (Rangoon) I (June - October, 1954) and II (November 1954 - January 1955). Also worth mention is the work by Lu-du U Hla, really a series of portraits of prisoners, translated and published a number of years ago by Kathleen Forbes and her husband, the botanist Than Htun.
NOT OUT OF HATE
THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
Way Way. A young Burmese girl, about seventeen years of age when the story opens, who lives at home and helps her father with his business.
U Po Thein. Way Way’s father, aged about sixty, a rice-broker dealing with British firms. He is in poor health and suffers from tuberculosis.
Daw Thet. Way Way’s aunt, sister of U Po Thein, who lives with the family.
Hta Hta. Way Way’s older sister.
U Thet Hnan. Hta Hta’s husband; a government medical doctor.
Ko
