A journey to self-discovery through verse

Lie Hua, Contributor, Jakarta

The Rites of the Bali Aga; By Sitor Situmorang; With Introduction + Epilog by Harry Aveling; Metafor, Jakarta, 2001; xix + 55 pages; Rp 65,000.

In late 2001, Metafor brought out a collection of poems by Sitor Situmorang, one of Indonesia's foremost modern poets. This collection, The Rites of the Bali Aga, is interesting in that it contains poems that Sitor wrote in English. (Many of his poems have been translated into English and some other major foreign languages).

The poems in this collection were written in late 1978, two years after he was released from prison, where he spent eight years for alleged involvement in the bloody coup attempt on Sept. 30, 1965, which was blamed on the now defunct Indonesian Communist Party.

In the 1950s Sitor was regarded as a very gifted Indonesian lyric poet much influenced by existensialism. The period he spent behind bars -- without ever being tried in a court of justice and barred from reading, writing or meeting anybody -- gave him ample time to ponder his own existence and as, he admitted, allowed him to be reborn as a mystic.

So, when he finally could set foot on the beach of the Island of the Gods, Bali, it was like a pilgrimage for a newborn man. Bali was then, to him, like a spiritual river in which he could bathe, purifying himself as a new man. By chance, he found himself among a group of hippies, who were in Bali to celebrate their freedom on this island.

Living with these hippies, Sitor talked in their language and shared their rites in practicing a free life. On the way back to Jakarta, while on the bus or on the train, Sitor kept on writing, like in a trance, poems in English, the language he spoke with the hippies while in Bali.

It is apt to say, therefore, that the poems in this collection embody Sitor's deep wish to see his own existence relived in freedom. The dark days in prison were over, his contemplation was over. He found himself still sane and would celebrate this freedom in the way hippies celebrated their newfound freedom in Bali.

In The Image, the opening poem, he writes: Out of the cage of matter/gulping in/ the image you left/ in my void/ I sing./ It was this feeling that he had while in prison: he was deep inside a cage of matter and he sang in his void. What did Sitor sing? He sang of his own existence. In the dark cell, he sang his own existence and kept himself sane.

The second poem in the collection, The Island, shows his great respect of the sea, which he says, is "the abode of days, moons and centuries". The island of Bali and the sea around it bear the footprints of approaching century. The sea and the island are like book without alphabet. How can you read the book if there is no alphabet? So, the sea and the island remain mysterious, just like a book without alphabet.

The title poem, The Rites of the Bali Aga, dwells on the lives of the original Balinese, now making up only 2 percent to 3 percent of the Balinese population. They are believed to be custodians of early Hindu practices in Bali. So, when Sitor writes about the rites of the Bali Aga, he actually writes about his own spiritual journey, which may be likened to a rite performed by the Bali Aga people. qIt is in this spiritual journey that Sitor has finally come to terms to his own life and his search for existence. He writes: /Where we will rest/bride and bridegroom/in one/ a body of sheer light/heatless/colorless/soundless.// a formless vessel/of beauty and/truth/beyond delight

When he has given himself to the universe and rest like a bride and a bridegroom, he will find beauty and truth beyond delight. This is the ultimate goal of his search for his own existence. To be at one with the universe must be the greatest mystic experience that anybody can have and Sitor has beautifully described the process of this union in this long poem.

Clearly, he identifies himself with the Bali Aga people in approaching the cosmic universe. While the Bali Aga perform their rites to maintain their survival, Sitor survives because he mentally went through a similar rite while spending eight dark years in what he calls a "submarine block".

He has finally transcended his own ego and united himself with nature and the universe. This is quite an achievement for existentialist Sitor. He has found existence beyond existence -- the existence of the universe as a whole.

The other two poems in this collection, To My Friends on Legian Beach and The Beach describe the happiness that Sitor cherishes as a free man. He has been born again, a new man with full realization of his own existence.

The poems in this collection differ from most of his poems in Indonesian in that here the poems are made up of lines containing only a few syllables, generally ranging from two to five syllables. The effect is that while his Indonesian poems can be read melodiously because of longer syllables, his originally English poems read like a prayer.

At first reading you will get the impression of monotony but after some time you will realize the beauty of this monotony. This repetition reminds you of the repetition that you observe every day: birds in the morning, breathing, the moon at night, the sun at daybreak -- everything is repeated in this universe. They come and go.

It is this monotony that finally gives you a feeling of peacefulness and it is here that Sitor has successfully captured the essence of existence.