Dorothea's poems cry out for equality

Dorothea's poems cry out for equality

KILL THE RADIO, Sebuah Radio Kumatikan;
Dorothea Rosa Herliany;
Editor & Translator: Harry Aveling;
Indonesiatera, Magelang, 2001;
127 + xxxiv pp;
Rp 40,000

JAKARTA (JP): Readers of the literature columns in local
newspapers must be familiar with Dorothea's poems. One of the
younger Indonesian poets that first emerged in the mid-1980s, she
has published many of her poems in the print media and has now
five poetry collections to her credit.

Dorothea's poems prominently show her as a woman who rebels
against the traditional bonds that, in a way, still shackle
Indonesian women. As Harry Aveling says in the introduction: "Her
writings present a full-blooded, determined woman, demanding far
more than mere complementariness: she was equality, and perhaps
even dominance."

With dexterous ease, she intentionally uses words that, when
coming from a woman, sound rude and aggressive. When she talks
about love, it is not the kind of love that is traditionally
associated with a woman. There is no submissiveness but rather
rebellion. There is the kind of initiative that is commonly
though to belong only to male lovers, as these three short lines
will testify:

let me embrace you now,/before I finally satisfy/my hunger
(Wedding Diary, p. 25).

There is in love, for her, a kind of aggressiveness. It is as
if she is saying a woman has the right to subjugate her male
lover to satisfy her desires. These short lines clearly show her
rebellion. It is not only men who can manipulate women to satisfy
their desires, but the reverse also is true. This is the kind of
equality that Dorothea insists should prevail.

She believes, very strongly, that as a woman writer she must
fight for women equality. Hence:

to write other poems/with new words. to create new myths. to
give you a different history. (Elegy, p. 26)

It is only a myth, for her, that a woman is a plaything for a
man. This situation must be reversed so that there will be a
different history. Our history, she seems to protest, is one full
of male domination. It is now time for the creation of new myths.
Poems must be written with new words. The words that are usually
associated with men or those usually controlled by men must now
be in the hands of women.

This bilingual collection, consisting of 49 poems, are divided
into three sections: Secret Sex Telegrams (15 poems), Kill the
Radio (7 poems) and Talking Trash (27 poems), with subject
matters ranging from love to the recent political crisis,
evidence of her keen awareness of what is going on in society.

A poem is an independent work and is sometimes said to be
untranslatable. Words play a vital role in a poem. Reality is
compacted into a few lines and the poet manipulates words and
chooses them to enable him to convey his or her message.
Therefore, when the words in a poem are wrongly understood, the
poem may render a different interpretation in translation.

In general, the English translation by Harry Aveling, one of a
few foreigners noted for their excellent knowledge of Indonesian
literature, is quite good. The fact that this collection is
bilingual makes it easier to read both the original version and
the translation, as they are placed side by side. Despite
Aveling's excellent translation, there are some words or phrases
which are not properly translated, largely because the translator
lacks familiarity with the source language.

Look at this line: "the cheap hotel is located in a lane where
the rats live" (line 1, The City of Quarrels, p. 10). Reading
this line, one may think that there is a lane full of rats and
there a cheap hotel stands. The original line reads: "dari sebuah
gang tikus, aku masuki hotel murah". This line means that the
persona (I) gets into a cheap hotel and she comes out of a small
alley. Obviously "gang tikus", literally "a rat alley", does not
mean that it is an alley or a lane where you have a lot of rats.
This refers to a network of small alleys that look like a maze
and you go through as a shortcut.

Then look at this: "she shapes history's river: a century
long" (The Woman who Sinned, p. 17). The original line reads:
"menciptakan sungai sejarah: sepanjang abad!

"Sepanjang abad" is not literally "a century long". Rather, it
refers to eternity, something like "for all eternity".

Now, still another example. In Sympathy Card (p. 38), we have
these concluding lines: /the waves flatten the days,/time becomes
shorter -- each disaster is closer/than the last./ The original
lines read: /gelombang meratakan hari menjadi waktu/yang pendek -
sebab jarak bencana./ Literally they mean: the waves flatten the
days into time/which is short -- as distance means disaster.
There is no idea of each disaster being closer than the last.

If you read the original lines carefully, the idea will be
something like if there is a distance, in this context, if time
is not short, i.e. if there is a large distance between one day
and the next, this is disaster.

Of course, translating a poem is always difficult. This is an
even more difficult task here, considering that Dorothea is very
free in using words and creating metaphors and comparisons. It is
a good idea, therefore, that when a translator translates a
foreign poem, for him or her to be aided by a native speaker of
the language of the poem with a good mastery of the translator's
native tongue. Only in this way will possible misunderstandings
be cut to a minimum, if not eliminated completely.

--Lie Hua is a lecturer in the Department of English at
National University (UNAS), Jakarta.