RI poets in exile: On the outside looking in

RI poets in exile: On the outside looking in

Lie Hua, Contributor, Jakarta

Di Negeri Orang -- Puisi Penyair Indonesia Eksil;
(On Foreign Shores -- Poems by Exiled Indonesian Poets);
Published by Amanah Lontar, Jakarta, in cooperation with Yayasan
Sejarah Budaya Indonesia, Amsterdam, 2002;
xiv + 253 pp;
Rp 60,000

The Sept. 30 (G30S) incident, which the New Order regime
blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as an attempt to
wrest power from the then president, Sukarno, is still a black
spot in this country's history.

It claimed many lives -- estimates vary from 500,000 to 2
million, most of them innocent people who were killed in the
witch-hunt against communists and their sympathizers. It left
untold suffering as innumerable families were left incomplete or
separated from their loved ones.

The stigma of even "alleged" involvement in the abortive coup
has been passed on to the victims' children and grandchildren,
causing the latter to be socially ostracized, the proverbial
outcasts in their own country.

Many left-wing writers, generally associated with the
Literature Institute (Lestra) attached to the Institute of Peo
ple's Culture (Lekra), tasted life behind bars and banishment to
distant Buru Island in Maluku. Names like Pramoedya Ananta Toer,
Sitor Situmorang, S. Anantaguna, Putu Oka Sukanta and Martin
Aleida are just a few of those who experienced incarceration
under the merciless military and authoritarian New Order regime
of Soeharto.

But life under sheer repression led to greater esthetic
creativity, not least because by channeling their creative and
esthetic feelings into literary creations, they could survive and
hope for a better tomorrow. Thus we are now acquainted with
Pram's epic tetralogy of the Earth of Mankind and a dozen other
titles which he conceived during his years on Buru. We have also
gotten to know the Sound of Prison Walls and Kecapi of Iron Bars,
a collection of poems about his prison years by S. Anantaguna,
one of Lekra's foremost poets in the 1960s.

Other voices from behind bars are found in the collections of
poems by Putu Oka Sukanta and Sitor Situmorang, the latter being
one of the most important lyricists in the history of modern
Indonesian poetry.

The works created or conceived during their harsh prison life
helped these writers to survive. Perhaps, their poetic and
literary creations could serve as a purgatory that purifies the
soul and prepare it even for the worst in life.

While many left-wing writers were in strict confinement in
Indonesia, many other were roaming foreign lands because they
were unable to return home. Their attachment with Lekra made them
stateless people who had to rely on the charity of foreign
governments.

Some of them resided in China, Vietnam or the then Soviet
Union, but later they moved to France and the Netherlands and
became their citizens. Surf the Internet, and names like Sobron
Aidit, the younger brother of PKI chairman DN Aidit, and Hersri
Setiawan are easy to find. They regularly write about their past
and present experiences either in poems and essays.

As Mawie Ananta Jonie said in an e-mail interview, these left-
wing writers who live on foreign shores have to work in order to
survive. Many of them write poems and explore other literary
genres as the manifestation of their resistance against the
Soeharto regime.

Mawie added that they write about their experiences in exile.
They are free, not like those incarcerated back home, but they
have left all their loved ones in their home country and, worst
of all, they cannot come home. Yet, in spirit, they were long
united in a shared goal all the resistance forces back home: to
fight against Soeharto's New Order regime.

Now a collection of their poems has been published in a book
called Di Negeri Orang (On Foreign Shores). As many as 15 Indone
sian poets in exile contributed their poems to this collection as
a testament of their deep longing for their homeland.

Poets of great stature during Lekra's heyday in the 1960s --
A. Kohar Ibrahim, Kuslan Budiman, Agam Wispi, Sobron Aidit and
Hersri (formerly known as Setiawan Hs) -- express in this book
their experiences while living as exiles abroad.

If you read these poems carefully, they mirror all the
longing, desperation and hope of these exiled poets. They are
yearning to get home, come what may. It is also clear from these
poems how the writers keep their hope aflame and in their own way
continued to resist Soeharto's regime.

Alone in a foreign land, these exiled Indonesian poets keep
nurturing their hope that their own land back home will again be
a peaceful land free from the rein of a tyrant. It's a strong
conviction as expressed in the lines, "although this wind is only
softly blowing/my land needs a storm and a typhoon/they are sure
to come" (News by A. Kembara).

There is also an ability to be soul-searching; as one poet
says, "trembling, I feel the walls/my belonging is only a piece
of broken mirror (Mirror on the Wall by Soepriadi T). Although
Soeharto is now gone, at least from center stage, the lines they
have written and collected in this book speak as a lasting
reminder of the innocent victims of history.