What really happened to poet Ronggowarsito?

What really happened to poet Ronggowarsito?

By Hartono Hadikusumo

YOGYAKARTA (JP): The great 19th century Javanese mystic and poet Ronggowarsito died 125 years ago, on Wednesday, Dec. 24, 1873, in Surakarta.

Eight days before he died, he wrote his last masterpiece titled Sabda Jati (The Sermon of Truth), consisting of 19 stanzas. In the last three stanzas, the poet foretold his own death. There has been considerable debate about this prophecy. For it was an uncanny prophecy.

It foretold the time of the poet's death down to the day and the hour when death would come (at noon). Some have cast doubt on the last stanzas being written by the poet himself. They say the stanzas were written posthumously by an unknown friend who was familiar with the poet's style. Some adamantly say that the poet wrote the prophecy himself because apart from being a great poet, he was also known as a great seer.

Ronggowarsito was a palace poet in the Surakarta court. He served no less than six kings, from Pakubuwono IV to Pakubuwono IX. He was descended from a long line of palace poets, beginning with Yosodipuro I to his father Ronggowarsito II.

So Ronggowarsito was actually Ronggowarsito III. He was credited with no less than 56 works. Some of his works were in the form of poetry 10 stanzas to 20 stanzas long, some were of book length up to 70 stanzas long, from five to 10 lines each and all written to match the regulated mastery of Javanese classical music, the gamelan.

Kalatida was the most famous work known to the Javanese. It is interesting perhaps that both the late president Sukarno and former president Soeharto, both Javanese men, often quoted from this work when they were confronted by their political enemies. They both quoted from the seventh stanza, which contains an allusion to a time of madness and an admonition that men should accept their lot patiently.

It was not clear what they really meant by quoting these lines. Perhaps they wanted their enemies to lay off political nagging and just accept their fate. At the later stage of his rule, Soeharto liked to call his enemies setan gundul (hairless devils), quoting from another of the poet's work, Jaka Lodhang, which tells of men possessed by hairless devils in search of material wealth.

Suicide?

The poet wrote Kalatida in 1861. And in 1873, he wrote his farewell Sabda Jati. The uncanny detail of the prophecy has induced a furious debate among his devotees. Today, some of his devotees say that the poet was sentenced to death by the king at the orders of the Dutch.

That was why he knew the exact time of his death (that is, his execution). Only there is no record in Javanese annals or Dutch archives if indeed this was the case.

Some say that he died of natural causes, and as a seer, he should know when his time was due. Only one or two people voiced the suspicion that he took his own life by swallowing a diamond or poison.

So, what really happened to this great poet and seer? Maybe we will never know the truth.

But on the possibility that he committed suicide, perhaps we are allowed to offer a theory. Although Ronggowarsito served in the Surakarta court for almost 30 years, his relationship with the kings was never good.

There were stories of his troubled relationship with Pakubuwono IX, the last king he served. No one knows the cause of the trouble but it was surmised that Pakubuwono IX blamed the poet's father, Ronggowarsito II, for the banishment and then the death of his father, Pakubuwono IV, in exile. Ronggowarsito II was accused of telling the Dutch of Pakubuwono IV's rebellious intent. Whatever the truth of this story, it was known that their relationship was not a cordial one.

The result of this was that Ronggowarsito was passed over by younger court servants for the nobility rank of tumenggung, which in the case of the poet was long overdue. There was a weighty cultural burden in this.

In Javanese culture, there is a sense of shame which is expressed by the Javanese words isin and wirang. Of the two, wirang is the utmost in humiliation, to be relieved only through death.

Ronggowarsito saw, day by day, the younger generation of palace servants raised to the rank of tumenggung, while he remained a somewhat lower ngabei for many years. We can only imagine his deep humiliation and resentment.

Ronggowarsito elaborated on his hurt feelings in his work Kalatida. In this work, he writes of this disappointment at not being raised to the rank of tumenggung as had been promised to him by the king. There is a curious, not to say a mysterious, line in this work.

The poet wrote in the last line I submit my life to You (God) in heaven. The words in Javanese are borong anggo sawargo mesi martayo. The underlined second syllable of each word, when put together, reads: Ronggowarsito.

So the poet put his name into that mysterious last line. Was there any significance in this? Was the poet, in fact, expressing his intention to depart this unfair world?

The title of the work, Kalatida (The Time of Great Anxiety), supposedly alludes to the societal condition of the time, but it could also be taken as signifying the poet's mental state.

For Kalatida also means the time of indecision. And so it was, only 12 years later, that he wrote his farewell in Sabda Jati.

His humiliation at the hands of the king was only one reason for the poet's distress. Another reason might be the lack of material wealth, for it was known that the poet lived in near poverty. The emoluments from the palace were not big. And his writings did not pay much.

From time to time, his friend Carl Frederik Winter, a scholar in Javanese, had to give him money to tide him over until the next payday. With this friend, a Dutchman, Ronggowarsito wrote a dictionary of old Javanese words (Kawi). This work is, today, the reference work for those studying old Javanese.

A belated reward

Ronggowarsito was buried in the village of Palar, near Klaten, Central Java. In 1952, he was posthumously raised to the rank of tumenggung by Pakubuwono XII. It was a belated recognition of the poet's worth to the court of Surakarta. In 1955, the Ministry of Education and Culture built a mausoleum over his grave.

In 1984, the remains of his friend, Winter, were removed from his grave in Surakarta, and reburied near the poet's grave at the northern side of the mausoleum. Now the two friends, one a Javanese, the other a Dutchman, both lovers of the Javanese culture, lay side by side forever in the peaceful village of Palar.