Read on - Jassin center offers literary treasure trove

Read on - Jassin center offers literary treasure trove

Lie Hua, Contributor, Jakarta

A pack of junior high school students swarmed into the narrow
reading hall. With beaming faces, some of them grabbed the
magazines on display, took a seat and were quickly absorbed in
the stories, taking them a world away from noise-filled Central
Jakarta.

Others wandered over to a large picture of Chairil Anwar,
staring up at the hard lines in the face of the pioneer in
Indonesian modern poetry.

Tucked behind shrubs in a corner of the Taman Marzuki Arts
Center at Jl. Cikini Raya 73, the HB Jassin Literary
Documentation Center is like a cave offering up a treasure trove
brimming over with delights, the likes of which are usually found
in a Stevenson adventure story or Chinese martial arts potboiler.

The center is named after HB Jassin, who, upon his death in
2000 at the age of 83, had earned the title of the "pope" of
Indonesian literature for his dedication to the documentation of
Indonesian literary works.

His four-volume Indonesian Literature in Criticism and Essays
confirmed his position as the most ardent -- and still
unparalleled -- critic of modern Indonesian literature. In his
lifetime, budding writers knew they needed the acknowledgement of
this towering literary figure; if he chose to write something
favorable about a new writer's work, the latter was destined to
get a place in Indonesia's literary arena.

He was also renowned for his nearly complete documentation of
Indonesian literary works, including handwritten manuscripts of a
great number of famous literary works and clippings of everything
connected with Indonesian literature.

Realizing the need to preserve the documentation for
generations to come, Jassin donated his collection to an
institution named the HB Jassin Literary Documentation
Foundation, set up on June 28, 1976.

The collection is grouped into six categories: criticism and
essays, prose and poetry, drama, translation works, biographies
of writers and special subjects. The collection is made up of
16,816 titles of fiction works, 11,990 titles of non-fiction
books, 457 titles of reference works, 772 titles of drama
books/scripts, 720 files of writers' biographies, 15,552 files of
clippings from the mass media, 571 titles of papers, 630 titles
of theses and dissertations, as well as a great number of audio
and video recordings.

An officer of the center, Isnain, told The Jakarta Post that
mostly school and university students from home and abroad
visited the center. Foreign researchers often do their library
research at the center for months at a time, finding it an
invaluable resource.

Despite its copious holdings, it's a small facility, located
on the second floor of the building with only one long reading
desk and about 10 chairs. However, Isnain said it has undergone
improvements in recent years, mostly thanks to corporate
donations; the ceiling has been replaced and the room is air-
conditioned.

In an interview with Tempo Interaktif early this year, the
center's current chairman, Endo Senggono, said that the center
was currently scanning its books and other documents.

In the first stage, only old and rare collections would be
scanned, with completion scheduled for 2004.

Funding remains a problem. Senggono said the center received
Rp 70 million from the Jakarta administration annually, a sum far
from adequate for optimal operations. For example, the air
conditioning cannot be turned on 24 hours a day -- despite the
dangers to old books in a tropical climate -- and the center has
to wait for the "kindness" of writers and publishers to donate
their new books.

He added that Rp 2 billion would be needed as perpetual
funding for the upkeep of the center.

To make up the shortfall, the center organizes regular
literary and arts programs to raise funds. In addition some
prominent community figures who love literature have set up a
partnership circle for the center.

It collects Rp 200,000 annually from its members and publishes
a newsletter about the activities of the center. This association
also organizes fund-raising activities and seeks donations from
individuals and companies.

In his address on the first-year commemoration of Jassin's
death, noted Indonesian poet and critic, Prof. Sapardi Djoko
Damono, stressed that efforts to introduce literacy -- including
cultural literacy -- must be coupled with the establishment of
libraries and literary documentation centers, or else a newly
literate people will soon again sink into illiteracy.

As the world marks International Literary Day on Sunday, it's
time to reflect once again on Jassin's lasting legacy, reflected
in the faces of those young students so hungry to get a chance to
read.