Bali, four hundred years of journey
Traveling To Bali: Four Hundred Years of Journeys Compiled and introduced by Adrian Vickers Published by Oxford University Press, New York, 1994 278 pages
DENPASAR (JP): Tourists: "They have a lot of money, yes, but they know nothing about gods, they can't dance or play music, except for they own sort of radios, they don't understand rice and many of them don't even eat rice."
This quotation -- from Diana Darling, an Australian -- can be considered an outsider's perception of local discourse. It comes from an anthology of 40 pieces entitled Traveling to Bali, four hundred years of journeys.
The compiler is Adrian Vickers, a historian from the University of Wollongong, Australia, whose previous important book Bali, Paradise Created (Penguin, 1989) has been widely discussed for its provocatively well-researched historical analyses. In the previous book, Adrian suggested that the idea of Bali as a "paradise island" was a political construction of the colonial occupation which then became a post-colonial tourist attraction.
Adrian's recent anthology consists of forty articles. Each writer describes one or more encounters with Bali and its people. The oldest piece was written in 1597 by Aernoudt Lintgenszoon, a Dutchman. The other pieces are the effusive outpourings of 1920s travelers to 'paradise' and the reflections of Balinese writers on what was happening to their island in the 1970s and 1980s. The cultural backgrounds of the writers are various: Belgian, British, French, German, Javanese, Mexican, Thai and so on. Two Balinese whose works are included in the book are Putu Satria and Nyoman S. Pendit, both of whom have spent time in Java.
Vickers seems to believe that recent writers, tourists and the Balinese people themselves owe a debt to the hordes of writers on Bali who have come before. Descriptions, explanations and reports on Bali are always linked to the expectations, aims or interests of other writers and the images of the Bali they want to create. As Vickers says, the 'truth' about Bali is second-hand (page XV). Sometimes that it obvious in the writing itself. Sometimes, it is a not at all apparent to the reader, however. Speculation about what has 'influenced' each writer is one of the attractions of this book.
"In choosing the various works I have used a number of criteria, the first being my own tastes and interests. Since these are usually the result of earlier academic attempts to discover how others have known Bali," Vickers says in the introduction.
Writing aims to alter the reader's consciousness. Vickers' awareness of the connection between the truth and that aim is expressed in his question in the introduction: "How do we know that any of the writers were telling 'the truth' about Bali to their readers, or telling it all of the time?" (page XIV).
The important part of this anthology are the notes provided on each writer. These serve to enhance the reader's imagination. Take Vickers' notes on H.A. Van den Broek (A Less than Respectful Encounter; page 45): "He was sent by Raffles who had reestablished European interest in the island. Van den Broek was sent to follow up on that interest, particularly with a view towards making treaties with the various kings -- the usual prelude to a military take-over."
Another good example are Vickers' sympathetic noes on Raden Sasrawijaya (A Javanese Journey, page 9-13): "He was a lower- ranking aristocrat from the Sultanate of Yogyakarta," and was "religiously educated". Vickers explains that this writer's account of his journey in 1871 shows that a devout Muslim or santri did not have any great qualms about Bali's Hinduism. Instead, the word Sasrawijaya used to describe his travels was nyantri, which means "to go on a journey which helps one become a better Muslim". Sasrawijaya was interested in a journey of inner knowledge and saw "no incongruity in an adherent of Islam traveling to a non-Islamic island in order to further his own spiritual knowledge".
This kind of background information, important for the general reader, makes this anthology the most well-selected of its kind.
-- Benito Lopulalan