W. Sykorsky Some Additional Remarks on the Antecedents of Modern Indonesian Literature
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
W. Sykorsky Some additional remarks on the antecedents of modern Indonesian literature In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 136 (1980), no: 4, Leiden, 498-516 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 01:51:04PM via free access W. V. SYKORSKY SOME ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON THE ANTECEDENTS OF MODERN INDONESIAN LITERATURE The sociological bias of the last decade, which is manifest in Western European literary criticism, has led philologists to pay attention to many formerly ignored facts and phenomena of the literary process, including a vast body of urban Indonesian literature written around the turn of the century mainly in "Low" Malay. In an article entitled 'Some Preli- minary Remarks on the Antecedents of Modern Indonesian Literature' (BKI 1971/127-4:417-433), C. W. Watson presents a general analysis of this most interesting phenomenon. He refers to some 30 books published between 1875 and 1924. Thirteen of these are introduced by the author from the originals. The rest are drawn from indirect sources, i.e. advertisements, catalogues, 'and the like. Watson is preoccupied with the "language principle", and is not always aware that 'this period falls into two quite distinct phases ideo- logically, i.e. that prior to and that af ter the beginning of the second decade of this century. The body of works of the first phase is extremely amorphous and contradictory fout is, on the whole, saturated with a spirit of democracy. It is the real antecedent of national Indonesian literature. The works of the second phase, reflecting as they do the awakening of a national consciousness and the growth of political activity on the part of Indonesians, no longer constitute an antecedent to but mark the very beginning of Indonesian literature.1 There is, of course, strong continuity between the two phases with respect to style, figurative language and plot. The second phase has already been treated to some extent by the W. V. SYKORSKY, a graduate from the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies and currently a lecturer with the Institute of Asian and African Countries of Moscow University, is a specialist on Indonesian literature and "culture who has published Indoneziyskaya literatura, Moscow: Nauka, 1965, and an article on the Indonesian writer Utuy Tatang Sontani in Utuy Tatang Sontani; Biblio- grafischeskiy ukazatel, Moscow: Foreign Literature Library, 1977. Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 01:51:04PM via free access Remarks on the Antecedents of Modern Indonesian Literature 499 newspapers Harian Rakyat and Bintang Timur. It has been discussed in a number of journal articles2 and has even been introduced into the scheme of the Indonesian literary process by B. Siregar (1964), and later by A. Teeuw (1967),3 although with great reservation. In the present article I shall therefore give a detailed account of the first phase only, i.e., I will deal with the antecedents proper of Indo- nesian literature. In doing so I will use materials found in the libraries of the Soviet Union. These materials comprise almost a hundred original and translated works that were published bef ore 1800. They are all the more interesting because, as f ar as I know, many of them are not available either in the library of the Jakarta Museum or, judging from Watson's article, in the principal collections of Western Europe and the U.S.A. The only exception is formed by a fairly extensive body of translations, or rather rewrites, from Chinese that were reeently discussed in detail by Cl. Lombard-Salmon in articles published in the French journal .Archipel4 and treated earlier by Joe Lan Nio, whose works are also referred to by Lombard-Salmon and Watson. To avoid repetition I will only draw on publications already in scientific circulation beyond the U.S.S.R. in cases of necessity or when specifics are called f or.5 There is another interesting source which for some obscure reason has been neglected up till now, i.e., almanacs of the same period which include numerous works of fiction. In the Soviet collection 20 issues of four different Malay-language almanacs are found, which contain 36 syairs and four selections of pantuns. According to Watson the works of the period-that we are about to consider seem to have had as prerequisite the press regulations of 1856. These regulations put an end to the existing severe censorial restrictions and provided wider opportunities for private publishing houses. While the press law as such heralded the forthcoming victory of the liberal wing of the Dutch bourgeoisie and medium-level bureaucracy, it did not immediately to any considerable extent affect the Indonesian literary process. In this. respect the turning-point came with the political reforms of 1870, which signified a departure from the feudal system of serfdom and forced cultivation, and stimulated die development of bourgeois relations in colonial Indonesia. A characteristic feature of this new socio-historical period was the - animation of urban life, particularly in Java. The towns now became the ceritres of economie life, and their populations increased due to the influx of dispossessed farmers from the rural districts. A distinctive Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 01:51:04PM via free access 500 W. V. Sykorsky culture developed here at the time. It was different both from the European culture, which it attempted to imitate, and from the local or traditional culture, which it was coming to replace. Later on this culture was defined as mestiezen cultuur, which has been interpreted in different ways but has almost always had a hint of derogatoriness. It should be noted here, however, that "Historical merits are judged not by what has been omitted to be done by historical figures [writers, in this case, W.S.] in comparison with modern requirements, but by the innovations they have introduced as compared with their predecessors".0 Despite its aesthetic immaturity, this urban culture satisfied the requirements of a third estate society and reflected the latter's vision of the surrounding reality. In the ethnically mixed towns the wayang, with its intensively symbolic nature, gave way to the new entertainment theatre called Komedi Stambul,7 the gamelan yielded to the sensual melodies of the kroncong, and traditional Malay and Javanese literature was pushed aside more and more decisively by the typically urban stories and lyric poetry in the "Low" Malay language, i.e., the language that is directly descended from "trading" Malay, which for a long time had been used in interethnic communication throughout the archipelago and was the forerunner of the Indonesian language. Many newspapers were also published in this same "low" Malay. They played an important part in the Indonesian literary process, as they still do today.8 In the early stages the persons most active in literature and the publishing business were the "naturalized" Dutch (métis or "Indos", as they were generally called) and the Chinese (mostly métis "Pera- nakan"). But from the very beginning, the fiction writers and journalists included many representatives of the indigenous population who were graduates of the then not very numerous schools and colleges.9 It'is not always possible to establish the nationality of an author, because books were often published anonymously or under a pseudonym. This is not all that important, however, because except in some rare cases (Chinese novels were only translated by local Chinese) the nationality of the author had very little to do with the character of the work or the composition of the reading audience. It was only at the beginning of the second phase that Malayo-Chinese literature attained its distinctive form as an ideologically independent literary trend.10 During the period that we are interested in, centripetal tendencies were more in evidence than centrifugal ones. G. Schlegel, who as early as 1881 first drew attention to the steady stream of translations of Chinese classical novels and stories, said that one of the reasons for Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 01:51:04PM via free access Remarks on the Antecedents of Modern Indonesian Literature 501 their commercial success was that they "were eagerly read by the aborigines"." The Chinese published many Malay syairs, (poems) in the Roman script. Tan Tjhan Hie, in the introduction to the amusing allegorical and moralizing Sair Ikan of Moh. Hasan, explained: "I do not think that many readers understand Arabic writing and to help them I have rewritten these poems in Dutch characters" (45). Much of the Dutch use of Malay (whether of the "High" or "Low" variety) was marked by a slight Kulturtrager element,12 or influenced by missionary considerations.13 But for many Dutchmen who had become fluent in the new medium it came to satisfy a kind of intellectual need. Thus H. Krafft, in his introduction to a collection of plays for the Komedi Stambul theatre, assures the reader that his only object in writing these has been his own amusement and that of his friends.14 There is no doubt that Krafft knew Dutch and could have entertained his friends in that language. In his cultural environment, however, the "low" Malay language was preferred. Somewhat later in time, but in exactly die same way, Dutch was preferable to Javanese in the intel- lectual circle of the gif ted poet Notosoeroto of the house of the Surakarta rulers. Likewise Sanusi Pane from Sumatra and the Javanese author Intoyo for some time altemated between the Dutch and the Indonesian language in their creative work. In the long run they came to favour the latter. This linguistic confrontation is also characteristic of what is called the mestiezen culture of the 19di and early 2Oth centuries.