Stories from two noted Indonesian poets<\/p>\n
HUJAN MENULIS AYAM;
\n(The Rain Writes a Chicken);
\nSutardji Calzoum Bachri;
\nIndonesiatera, Magelang, 2001;
\n94 + xiv pp;
\nRp 16,000<\/p>\n
Pengarang Telah Mati - Segenggam Cerita;
\n(The Writer is Dead - A Handful of Stories);
\nSapardi Djoko Damono;
\nIndonesiatera, Magelang, 2001;
\n156 + ix pp<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): All literature uses real life as its origin.
\nEvents, involving men and their fellow beings or men and nature,
\nare the sources from which writers depend on for inspiration.
\nThere is no literary work, just like works in any other art
\ngenres is divorced from reality, however abstract it may be.<\/p>\n
A poem is unique in that, like painting, it presents reality
\nin a compact form. A poet is inspired by a certain event,
\nextracts the essence of this event and expresses it in his poem.
\nIn short, a poem tells a story in a very brief manner, if not in
\nthe briefest. To be able to get across his message, a poet will
\nrely mostly on images. Words form images and through these images
\nthe reader can share the writer's ideas. This leads to a common,
\nbut not necessarily correct, belief that reading a poem is more
\ndifficult than reading a story or a piece of drama. More than in
\nthe other literary genres, words in poems are everything and must
\nbe used as efficiently and effectively as possible.<\/p>\n
Sutardji Calzoum Bachri and Sapardi Djoko Damono are two of
\nIndonesia's leading poets. Sutardji, who once claimed to be the
\nIndonesian president of poetry, is famous for his creed, which
\nsays, in essence, that words must be liberated from the shackles
\nof meaning.<\/p>\n
Words, in Sutardji's belief, must be allowed their freedom.
\nPutting his creed into practice, Sutardji is noted for his
\n"abstract" poems -- some call them magic poems as single words
\nare often repeated continuously throughout them to inspire a
\nmagic atmosphere. These poems can be understood only if the
\nreader interprets them phonologically first before attempting to
\nattach a semantic significance to his interpretation. In
\nSutardji's poems, words are like wild horses galloping in a
\nboundless expanse of the savanna of our imagination.<\/p>\n
Sapardi, unlike Sutardji, is noted for his tender rendering of
\nreality in soft images. He is like a craftsman shaping a poetic
\nreality from ordinary words. In his hands, words we are all too
\nfamiliar with in our everyday lives, can find new images and a
\nsubtle meaning. His poems are the world of images imbued with
\npoetic beauty so that when he talks about violence, this idea
\nbecomes more profoundly understood because it is presented very
\ngently to caress our imagination before eventually keeping it in
\nits grasp. Words never become wild in Sapardi's hands. He seems
\nto believe that the world is all gentleness. He never rebels and
\neven if he does, his rebellion would be conveyed in a highly
\nimaginative manner.<\/p>\n
These two poets, who seem to stand at two opposing extremes in
\nIndonesian poetry, have now surprised literary buffs with their
\nfirst collection of stories. Sutardji has come out with nine
\nstories while Sapardi has presented 27. The title of Sutardji's
\ncollection is made up of the titles of his three stories, while
\nSapardi's collection bears the title of his longest story.<\/p>\n
These two collections of stories are surprisingly similar in
\nthe choice of themes. Being poets, both Sutardji and Sapardi are
\nmore drawn to life's trivialities. Compared with a short story
\nwriter, a playwright or even a novelist, a poet usually pays
\ngreater attention to small matters, things that usually escape
\nour attention in our daily activities. A poem is interesting to
\nread because it reminds us of trivial things. We are made aware
\nthat life is not concerned only with grand things. There are too
\nmany things which we think are commonplace but which we,
\nactually, only have a little knowledge about. A poem will make us
\nrealize that such small things exist and that they have their own
\nwisdom.<\/p>\n
It is in this light that the two collections of stories are
\ninteresting to read. In "Hujan" (Rain), Sutardji tells a story
\nabout Ayesha, a teenage girl, and her friendship with the rain.
\nThe more she gets acquainted with the rain, the better she under
\nstands it and finally the rain becomes a part of her. The end of
\nthe story is pleasingly surprising. At the height of her dance
\nwith the rain, her mother comes into the room. She looks at the
\nceiling, but there are no leaks. Yet, Ayesha is soaked with rain.
\nShe takes a towel and dries Ayesha with it and this slowly brings
\nAyesha back to the world that is as dry as a bone.<\/p>\n
In a similar vein, Sapardi is attracted by drizzle in his
\nstory titled "Gerimis (Drizzle). Drizzle comes to see us through
\na small opening in a window. It protects us from a kind of
\nlonging that we know not where it comes from. Yet we dream about
\ndrizzle, about its velvet-like legs. Sapardi does not openly
\nstate that this world is as dry as a bone, yet his depiction of
\ndrizzle and our longing refers to this. It is surprising to find
\nthat Sutardji is attracted to the rain while Sapardi, usually
\nconsidered a gentler poet, prefers to deal with drizzle. Yet both
\nseem to lament about our dry world, a world that needs both the
\nrain and drizzle.<\/p>\n
While Sutardji's collection contains relatively short
\nstories, Sapardi's has one long one Pengarang Telah Mati (The
\nWriter is Dead). This is quite an interesting story in terms of
\nstructure. A writer is dead and leaves behind a manuscript of his
\nunfinished stories in his computer, kept in 15 files.<\/p>\n
This story is interesting as in Sapardi's imaginative world
\nthere is a mixture of reality and non-reality. The story is
\ndivided into three parts: Tamu (Guest) - File Ragangan Cerita
\n(Files of Story Draft) - Aku (I). In Tamu, the speaker is Sukram,
\none of the characters in the unfinished story. He talks to
\nsomeone he calls Saudara (you). This "you", Sukram says, must
\nknow that the dead writer has an unfinished story because the
\n"you" comes to the writer's burial and must get some info about
\nthis.<\/p>\n
Sukram asks "you" to save the files, asks the writer's wife to
\nread them and then determine what to do with them. Then in the
\nsecond part, we can read 12 files of the story, which is full of
\nrecent events, like discrimination against the nonindigenous
\npeople, the shooting of students, the occupation of the building
\nof the House of Representatives and so forth.<\/p>\n
Then comes the third part, Aku. This "I" reads the files and
\nthen, at Sukram's request, finds three more in the recycle bin of
\nthe computer. The "I" gets permission from the dead writer's wife
\nto edit the files and later publishes them in book form. But
\nSukram never appears again. The story has a surprise ending when
\nthe "I" says that he sees Bonar and Yatno, two characters in the
\nunfinished manuscript, during the burial of the writer. The "I"
\nalso says that these two characters approach him and tell him
\nabout the unfinished story. In short, Sapardi talks about the
\npower of words, which can change imagination into reality.<\/p>\n
Both collections seem to bear what Sutardji says in one of his
\nstories Menulis (Writing):<\/p>\n
"I have seen ordinary things ... I want to write what I have
\nseen, what I have felt and what other people have felt, too, but
\nhave forgotten or ignored (p. 59)."<\/p>\n
The two poets -- or better yet, story-tellers -- dwell on very
\nordinary things as some of the titles reflect: Human Waste, Hand,
\nChicken (Sutardji) and Arithmetics, City Bus, Leaf, Calendar and
\nClock, River or Spatial Layout (Sapardi). They talk about grand
\nideas through small things. They talk about life but choose
\ntopics which are narrow in scope. Their stories, just like their
\npoems, give us surprises because they remind us of what we
\nusually forget or ignore. In their small way, these stories open
\nup the horizon of our mind toward the greatness of life,
\nmultifaceted and colorful.<\/p>\n
One last thing to say about these two collections is that the
\nlanguage that both Sutardji and Sapardi use in their stories are
\npoetic and full of images. Very often they read like long poems.
\nOr perhaps they are indeed long poems. The boundary is blurred.<\/p>\n
-- The reviewer, Lie Hua, teaches at the Dept. of English,
\nUNAS Faculty of Letters, Jakarta.<\/p>",
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