In memory of poet Chairil Anwar

In memory of poet Chairil Anwar

By Harkiman Racheman

MEDAN (JP): On April 28, 1949, Chairil Anwar died at the
Jakarta General Hospital from numerous chronic diseases. His
medical records show that, during the latest stages of his 26-
year lifespan, this most prominent poet of the Angkatan '45 ('45
Generation) suffered severely from incurable syphilis, typhus and
other serious infections.

Chairil's sudden death, a surprise to his family and all his
friends, became the most talked-about event in the country's
literary scene. However, how many of us today realize that
throughout his six-and-a-half year's of creativity, Chairil was,
in fact, pondering deeply and expecting his own death?

In order to experience the intensity of his almost forgotten
obsession with death, it may well be essential to revisit the
poet's life and, especially, his poetry. Hopefully, this effort
will bring fresh to our mind the heritage this literary master
has left us.

Born in Medan, the capital of North Sumatra province, on July
26, 1922, Chairil Anwar apparently did not have any tragic
experiences in childhood. It is not known what cause his life-
long fascination with death.

And, in his poetry there are no signs to explain this. On the
contrary, Chairil's childhood was mostly marked by pleasant,
self-fulfilling and unforgettable experiences.

Given such a relatively pleasant early life, it is not
surprising that Chairil would later refer to his childhood days
as a kind of lost paradise. His poetry, for instance, testifies
to his frequent desire "to become a child again".

In the early 1940s, Chairil left Medan for Jakarta with his
mother. It is said that this was due to his parents' decision to
live separately after an official divorce. It was in the capital,
which was no doubt the center of important cultural and political
life in those days, that Chairil may have begun to nurture a keen
interest in broader human issues.

During this time he became increasingly preoccupied with,
among other things, the philosophical significance of human
mortality. This sudden mental inclination may well have been
triggered by his extensive readings of the fatalistic philosophy
of existentialism then in vogue.

Chairil's early poems project death as an object of
philosophical speculation and contemplation. Looking at it at
this stage as an abstract object of concern, he clearly
distinguishes death as a fatalistic concept, as opposed to an
actual flesh-and-blood event.

In Suara Malam (Voices of the Night), for example, the poet
philosophizes about death as a dry, static, emotionless,
passionless and extremely boring experience. Having no first-hand
knowledge whatsoever of what it is (something which begins to
show through meaningfully only in later poetry) and being in
utter uncertainty, Chairil here is still speculative about all
aspects related to death.

The word "perhaps" in the following extract portrays the
typical philosophical doubt of the poet:

Perhaps it is only silence and stiffness/While being one with
the calmness/Which subdues pleasure and pain/Which is immune to
dust and desire./Lying down unconsciously/Like a wrecked ship on
the ocean floor/Tired of the pounding waves.

There is profound disappointment and despair within the poet,
reminiscent of the mythological suffering of the first man Adam
and his famous spouse Eve when they both realized that -- after
their exodus from the Garden of Paradise -- they were mortal, or
death-bound. Human mortality is perceived by Chairil as only
parasitic in nature: The transitoriness/which marks all things is
attached so strongly to the tree of life (from Kepada pelukis
Affandi, To the painter Affandi). Therefore, in so doing, the
post-lapsarian mortality continuously decreases the intrinsic
integrity of life.

In Penghidupan (Life), one of Chairil's earliest published
poems featuring this notion explicitly, he compares human life to
a dyke being ceaselessly crashed by the "waves of transience" (or
death). As life cannot maintain "the reward of happiness"
forever, true happiness will only be "uselessly nurtured,
uselessly cultivated".

This brief poem, which is worth quoting in full, most clearly
depicts the poet's philosophical stance on the idea of
destructive death:

The baseless ocean/Forever banging/Testing the strength of our
dykes/Forever banging/Until broken into pieces/The Reward of
Happiness/A little heap/Uselessly nurtured/Uselessly cultivated.

It is interesting to notice, however, that in light of such a
state of affairs Chairil shows no signs of despair. On the
contrary, as indicated in the poem Merdeka (Freedom), he had a
tremendous amount of courage to break free from it. He says in
Merdeka, "I want to be free from all/To be free".

In order to stay alive under the pressing shadow of death, the
poet plunged himself completely into a carpe diem lifestyle.
Although, as it turned out, the chosen mode of living appeared to
only have ruined his already vulnerable physical condition.

In the celebrated and most often quoted poem Aku (Me), this
lifestyle is compared to that of a "wild beast/Cut off from his
herd".

By assuming a bohemian lifestyle, mortality for Chairil
seemingly became a concept of the distant future; while sensual
pleasures (now capable of transcending his fear and
disappointment with death, though only momentarily) were the
primary need of the day.

The poem Kita Guyah Lemah (We Wobble Along), which provides a
justification for Chairil's bohemian existence, clearly suggests
that to rebel against orthodox life is for him a legitimate
choice. (Also, compare this point to Chairil's own lines in Aku:
Let the bullets pierce my skin/But I'll keep on groaning and
attacking). For Chairil, only by overcoming or, rather, subduing
life, can he really expect to put an end to his suffering.

Put metaphorically, as a full moon effortlessly cuts through
clouds, so does he wish to transcend his suffering in order to
control his life. Chairil writes: Let's stand straight/Snap at
the surroundings/Tonight the full moon breaks through the clouds.

In Kepada Kawan (To A Friend), the poet says further: So/Fill
up the glass to the brim then finish it off/Exploit the world and
turn it upside down/Embrace and kiss the girls, but leave them
when they flatter/Choose the wildest horse and spur him
faster/Don't tie him to the noon or to the night/And/Smash what
you've done to pieces/Off you go without inheritance, without
family/Without begging for forgiveness for all your sins/Without
saying a farewell to anyone.

By surrendering himself to the most primitive drive (that is
to say, his inner desire to seize the most sensual pleasure in
any possible way without worrying about consequences), Chairil
aimed at nothing but to rule over death.

In the poem Kepada Kawan, this objective shows through
exceptionally clearly: "Let's decide once and for all/The death
that is dragging us will strangle itself."

However, at the end of a series of confrontative reactions, a
certain awareness arose in him. The poet was made increasingly
aware of the fact that there is no way mortality can be
eliminated or abolished from the surface of physical human life.
It was due to this psychological awakening that he began to lose
faith in the chosen path of bohemians; which, according to one
poem, "is only a temporary game".

The poet himself was of the belief that, in spite of the
hypnotic remedy of escapism, there was no way the self-
destructive lifestyle could have ever settled the philosophical
question of the meaninglessness of life.

He said in Buat Album D.S. (To D.S. Album), That an escape
will always remain an isolation,/And in that distant land the sun
will not return either.

Likewise, the poem Kabar Dari Laut (News From the Sea)
suggests that his debauchery would eventually only demolish his
physical integrity. It would only lead him ever faster into
complete physical surrender. To his lover, who explored the ocean
of intense sexual adventures with him, the protagonist of the
poem now talks about his bodily impotence in some detail:

Now there is a wound in my body/Ever-widening, spilling out
bloody/From the part where you once kissed lustfully and
fiercely/I am only weakening and surrendering.

The struggle by way of sexual ecstasy, and other carnal
pleasures, as it turned out, seems to have offered only a brief
hypnotic escape. It was, in other words, still far from touching
the heart of the issue. Therefore, the poet's acceptance of his
own death reflects, if any, only the inability of the carpe diem
lifestyle itself in coming to terms with death.

However, viewed from the context of his entire body of poetry,
Chairil's acceptance of death is not to be taken lightly or,
worse still, simplistically. Not a self-surrender at all in the
psychological sense (something which is out of Chairil's
character), the poet's acceptance of his own mortality more
importantly indicates his physical incapacity.

The well known poem Yang Terampas Dan Yang Putus (The Ravaged
and the Broken) projects a poet who welcomes his own mortality
peacefully, in the silent world which overwhelms his later body
of works. This poem impressively portrays an imaginary dialog
between the lyrical narrator and his personified death.

Here, death is spoken to directly. The conversation takes
place in terrifyingly clam natural surroundings (the night is
penetrating deeper/ the jungle as dead as a monument/). This
dialog occurs as the protagonist is on the verge of his physical
collapse

In preparing himself, alienating himself emotionally from the
objective world by entering the transitional stage symbolized
here by the lonely, cold deathbed, the protagonist attempts to
befriend his approaching death. All kinds of intruding thoughts
are shied away and replaced by only positive projections of
death. Among pleasant thoughts is that death is an old friend to
be feared by no one.

With absolute peace and maturity, the protagonist who is now
"silent and alone" waits to be fetched up by his old mate for a
long one-way journey to Karet graveyard. To this particular
friend, he has the following to say: At Karet, at Karet (my
future abode) reaches the howling wind/I prepare myself and my
heart in my room in case you come/and I can share other new
stories with you.

Within the last minutes of his life, the poet's overwhelming
vitality appeared so strong, as well as the apparent peacefulness
and maturity. Derai-derai Cemara (The Whispering Pines) regards
this vitality as his life's remaining energy, still kept intact
in case the long-awaited physical breakdown begins.

The key word in the poem which suggests Chairil's salient
vitality is "to defer". There is an implication here that the
poet's life energy can no longer support the continuity of his
physical subsistence. It has, in fact, deteriorated significantly
from an offensive stance to a defensive position. There is no
more emotional rebellion, aggression or rejection. The remaining
life force exists only as a necessary accompaniment for the
death-defeated poet.

Chairil writes: To live is to defer death/We become
increasingly distant from the puppy love of school days/And know
there is something that remains untold/Before we finally
surrender.

Chairil's life was an intense adventure of grappling with his
own pressing awareness of mortality. The struggle is both
philosophical, psychological and empirical.

Philosophically, it is a rebellion against "the dissolution
into nothingness", while psychologically, it constitutes a fight
which culminates in "the calm that will come".

The most tangible of all is Chairil's struggle with death in
the empirical sense. As such, it constitutes his effort to
liberate himself from "the danger in all corners", that is to
say, from the various manifestations of haunting death.

For Chairil's reader, all this indicates that the relation
between the poet and his obsession with his own mortality, even
though this area of interest has not been thoroughly discussed,
is really a long-time self-involvement.

To use Chairil's wording in Puncak (Mountain), his problematic
association with death is an age-old obsession -- it is "an old
question, an old query, an old one".

Thus, in commemorating the life and death of the country's
once most celebrated literary giant, it may be essential to look
back at Chairil's poetry to discover the mystery of his
obsession that has not up to now been fully unraveled. At the
same time, it is worth remembering that there are many more
possible fascinating journeys into the work of one of the most
inspiring Indonesian literary figures.

The writer graduated from the faculty of arts at Victoria
University in Wellington, New Zealand. Based in Medan, he is
currently teaching English and Indonesian literature.