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.