Insulinde Selected Translations from Dutch Writers of Three Centuries on the Indonesian Archipelago
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Insulinde Selected Translations from Dutch Writers of Three Centuries on the Indonesian Archipelago Edited by Cornelia Niekus Moore This book was published by ANU Press between 1965–1991. This republication is part of the digitisation project being carried out by Scholarly Information Services/Library and ANU Press. This project aims to make past scholarly works published by The Australian National University available to a global audience under its open-access policy. Insulinde: Selected Translations from Dutch Writers of Three Centuries on the Indonesian Archipelago wv/!*>!v!vjMv!v!v!v! 'Wife w!wXv!v!v! * Xv!v!v.. !v!,!v!v!,!v!,!v;- v.v.v.v.v.* • •••••••••••••••• ....... •,»*»*»*»*»*»*»*»*****************» INSULINDE Selected T ranslations from Dutch Writers of Three Centuries on the Indonesian Archipelago edited by Cornelia Niekus Moore Australian National U nivesity Press Canberra Copyright © 1978 by The University Press of Hawaii All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Simultaneously published by The University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, and the Australian National University Press, Canberra. Frontispiece courtesy of Lewis H. Moore Contents Introduction vii 1. Willem Ysbrandtszoon Bontekoe 1 Memorable Description of the East-Indian Voyage 1618-1625 4 2. Johan Splinter Stavorinus 18 Voyages to the East Indies 20 3. Multatuli (Eduard Douwes Dekker) 24 The Sermon of the Reverend Blatherer 28 The Story of Sai'jah and Adinda 35 4. Louis Marie Anne Couperus 55 The Hidden Force 57 5. Augusta De Wit 76 The Three Women in the Sacred Grove 78 6. Johan Fabricius 100 Java Ho! 102 7. Charles Edgar du Perron 112 The Land of Origin 114 8. Elisabeth (Beb) de Willigen-Vuyk 136 All Our Yesterdays 13 8 9. Herman J. Friedericy 144 The Heron Dance 146 Vi CONTENTS 10. Albert Alberts 150 The Chase 152 11. Maria Dermoüt-Ingerman 168 The Sirens 169 Glossary of Indonesian, Javanese, and Dutch Words Occurring in the Stories 179 Bibliography of Translations of Dutch Literary Works about the East Indies/Indonesia 183 Introduction For more than three centuries, the presence of the Dutch was felt in an Asian archipelago much larger than their own European territory. Known as Indonesia today, the Dutch called it the Indies, the Dutch East-Indies, or Insulinde, the name Multatuli gave it in his famous work, Max Havelaar. Although works by others might give us an adequate in sight into Dutch colonization in Asia, only by reading Dutch literature can we realize the tremendous impact of colonization on the colonizers themselves. The excerpts and short stories in this anthology have been chosen to elucidate the impact of the colonies on the Dutchman who left his own country to spend time in Asia. In most of these selections, there fore, the Dutchman is the protagonist. The chronological arrangement shows the progression from an attitude of European superiority to an ap preciation of the foreign culture in spite of a growing awareness of polarization. But whatever the attitude toward the colony was, the colo nial experience changed all those who went. Insight into the reaction of the Dutch toward their new surroundings is made easier by the fact that their accounts are primarily autobiographic. The literary forms they chose are indicative of this: travel narratives, in formative works, letters, essays, etc. Even the novels and short stories set against an Indonesian background are either frankly autobiographical or thinly veiled romans ä clef describing situations which were in all likeli hood experienced by the authors themselves or their acquaintances dur ing their Indonesian years. This immediacy between impression and ex pression may also account for the fact that there is little poetry or drama in Dutch colonial literature. viii INTRODUCTION Another factor that enhances the reliability of the authors’ accounts is their experience. Most of them were no bystanders, but rather took an active part in the trade expansion and colonization by the Dutch. Bon- tekoe and Stavorinus for example were captains of the V.O.C., the Far East Indian Company. Multatuli was an official of the Dutch colonial government. Couperus belonged to a family with a long record of service in the Indies. Alberts and Friedericy both had government functions. Thus, the authors, by virtue of their colonial experience, are in an ideal position to show their fellow-countrymen the changes they experience in themselves during and after their stay in the tropics; and the heroes of their works, both autobiographical and imaginary, are clear exponents of these changes. However, it is an injustice to these authors to regard their creations solely as a source of political, sociological, and cross-cultural informa tion. As the selections in this anthology prove, these works offer keen literary pleasure. Traditionally, this literature has had a wide appeal, and there were many reprints and translations of the earlier works in their own time. Travel narratives like Bontekoe’s provided the reader with the same literary pleasure as did other fictional and factual travel accounts. The publisher of Memorable Voyages complained that he could not keep up with the demand for books like Bontekoe’s. Stavorinus’s well- informed account and others like it were meant for the enlightened eigh teenth century reader. Stavorinus’s work was translated into French and English immediately after its Dutch publication. Multatuli’s Max Have- laar with its biting wit left a lasting mark not only on the colonial scene but also on Dutch literature. D. H. Lawrence hailed it as a great work of literature. Augusta de Wit and Maria Dermoüt were read by a large circle of Dutch readers. Their works can be described as popular classics. And children’s books like Java Ho! by Fabricius remain favorites with chil dren to this day. Their continuing appeal in the Netherlands thirty years after Indone sian independence is one more factor which attests to the quality and timelessness of many of these works. Most of Couperus’s works have re cently been published again. The complete works of du Perron and Mul tatuli are presently in preparation and several volumes have already been published. Although only a portion of the works of these authors can be classified as “ colonial literature,” few of their literary endeavors can be understood or appreciated without the recognition of the authors’ colo nial experience. Most other writers represented in this anthology and others are available in paperback in Dutch; colonial literature shows no signs of dying out as many of the modern authors continue to publish works about their own experiences. INTRODUCTION ix The person most responsible for the recognition of colonial writing as a separate form of literature is Robert Nieuwenhuys, although he was not the first, Gerard Brom having published his Java in onze kunst in 1931. In his Oost-Indische Spiegel (Amsterdam, 1972), Nieuwenhuys provides the reader with an excellent literary history which begins with the early travel narratives of the seventeenth century and takes the reader through three centuries of colonial literature to the authors of the fifties and the sixties and their memories of what has been. Scholarly works like Nieuwenhuys’s have established colonial literature as a respected genre, and the continued interest by the Dutch reading public attests to the readability of this genre. Dutch colonial literature differs from other colonial literatures be cause of the particular composition of the colonial population in the East Indies and the contribution that each group made to literature. Roughly, the population in the Indonesian archipelago could be divided into three groups: The Dutch Caucasians, the Indo-Europeans, called Indisch, and the Indonesians. It is beyond the framework of this introduction to discuss at length the ramifications of this stratified society and the in teractions between the different groups. These deserve a more subtle and lengthy treatment than is possible here. What is relevant for this in troduction is the participation of each group in the literary process. In this respect it is of importance that until the twentieth century most Dutch iiterary contributions regarding the colonies were made by those Dutchmen who went to the Indies to serve their term and then returned to Holland. Unlike the North American continent, there was no large scale settlement of Dutch families in the Indies. J. P. Coen’s grandiose visions of populating Java with Dutch families never materialized. Most ly men chose to go, and even if they married in the colonies or fathered children, they returned to Holland alone. At the beginning of the twen tieth century a larger number of Dutch women started to accompany their husbands who had been employed for work in the colonies, and we then see the publication of their works, known as ladies’ novels. These couples also returned in the end. The major portion of Dutch colonial literature therefore is written by Dutch authors who are newcomers to the Asian scene, who never lose touch with the homeland, and who re turn to Holland. Their works are published not in the Indies but in cities like Amsterdam and The Hague, and their reading public are the Dutch “ at home.” The major literary consequence is that the authors have to describe sights their readers have never seen, explain lifestyles alien to their own, and beliefs difficult to comprehend. They also are compelled to explain how this has affected them to an audience which has not undergone this X INTRODUCTION same experience. Dutch colonial literature through the ages shows a con tinuing attempt to explain the unexplainable, to familiarize the reader with the unfamiliar, and most of all, to describe phenomena, impres sions, opinions. The Dutch people understood or misunderstood, en joyed or rejected the alien world which was thus offered to them, and basked in the awareness of being a world power in spite of the size of their little country.