Indonesian literature
Indonesian Literature can refer to literature produced in the Indonesian archipelago. It is also used to refer more broadly to literature produced in areas with common language roots based on the Malay language. This would extend the reach to the Maritime Southeast Asia (including Indonesia, but also other nations with a common language such as Malaysia and Brunei, as well as population within other nations such as the Malay people living in Singapore.
There are also works written in and about Indonesia in unrelated languages. There are several languages and several distinct but related literary traditions within the geographical boundaries of the modern nation of Indonesia. For example the island of Java has its own Javanese pre-national cultural and literary history. There are also Sundanese, Balinese, and Batak or Madurese traditions. Indonesia also has a colonial history of Dutch, British and Japanese occupation, as well as a history of Islamic influence that brought its own texts, linguistic and literary influences. There is also an oral literature tradition in the area.
The phrase Indonesian literature is used in this article to refer to Indonesian as written in the nation of Indonesia, but also covers literature written in an earlier form of the Indonesian language i.e. Malay language written in the Dutch East Indies.
The languages spoken in the Indonesian Archipelago number over a thousand, and for that reason alone it is impracticable to survey their entire literary production in one article. Since the thought of a national Indonesian language only struck root as recently as the 1920s, this means that emphasis in the present article is put on the twentieth century.
During its early history, Indonesia was the centre of trade among sailors and traders from China, India, Europe and the Middle East. Indonesia was then a colony of the Netherlands and Japan (1942â€"45). Its literary tradition was influenced by these cultures, mainly those of India, Persia, China and, more recently, Western Europe. However, unique Indonesian characteristics cause it to be considered as a separate path and tradition.
There is considerable overlapping between these periods, and the usual designation according to "generations" should not allow us to lose sight of the fact that these are movements rather than chronological periods. For instance, older Malay literature was being written until well into the twentieth century. Likewise, the Pujangga Baru Generation was active even after the Generation of 1950 had entered the literary scene.
Early Indonesian literature originates in Malay literature, and the influence of these roots was felt until well into the twentieth century. The literature produced by the Pujangga lama was mainly written before the 20th century, but after the coming of Islam. Before that time, however, there must have existed a lively oral tradition. Within traditional Malay-language literature, sometimes it is differentiated into 3 periods: before ~1550AD; between ~1550-1750AD; ~1750-1900AD.
Until the twentieth century, ethnic and linguistic diversity was dominant in the vast archipelago, and as a result, no national literature existed. Literature in Malay rubbed shoulders with works in other languages of the region, from Batak in the West through Sundanes, Javanese, Balinese, to Moluccan in the East. It is true that Malay was used as the lingua franca of the colony, and indeed, far beyond its borders, but it could not be regarded as a national language.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, changes became visible. National consciousness emerged among educated Indonesians especially. At the same time, the Dutch colonisers temporarily veered to a point of view which allowed for the education and unification of the Indonesian peoples to self-reliance and maturity, as it was perceived. Indonesian independence, however, wasn't contemplated by the Dutch. A 3rd factor was the emergence of newspapers, which at the beginning of the century began to appear in Chinese and subsequently in Malay.
Education, means of communication, national awareness: all these factors favoured the emergence of a comprehensive Indonesian literature. The Dutch, however, wished to channel all these forces, nipping any political subversiveness in the bud while at the same time instructing and educating Indonesians, in a way the government saw fit. For those reasons, an official Bureau for Popular Literature was instituted under the name Balai Pustaka, which became some sort of government-supervised publisher. Besides preventing criticism of the colonial government, Balai Pustaka blocked all work that might be conducive to any sort of religious controversy, and anything "pornographic" was avoided: even a novel featuring divorce had to be published elsewhere.
At the same time, school libraries were founded and were supplied by the new publisher. Works in Dutch as well as translations of world literature were brought out, but a burgeoning indigenous literature was also stimulated. From 1920 to 1950 Balai Pustaka published many works in high Malay, but also in Javanese and Sundanese, and occasionally also in Balinese, Batak or Madurese.
During this period, whose heyday was in the 1920s, Indonesian literature came to be dominated by fiction, and Western-style drama and poetry, which gradually replaced the earlier syair, gurindam, pantun and hikayat. Merari Siregar's Azab dan Sengsara was the very 1st modern novel appearing in Indonesian, constituting a break with the Malay romance tradition. While not completely successful, in that it rather schematically deals in black-and-white oppositions, and directly addresses the reader, subverting its realism, this may still be regarded as the 1st treatment of contemporaneous problems (i.e., the issue of forced marriage) in the realist tradition.
Meanwhile, not all publications in the languages of Indonesia appeared under the Balai Pustaka imprint. As mentioned, this publisher was a government-supervised concern, and it operated in the context of political and linguistic developments. Notable among these developments were an increasing consciousness of nationality, and the emergence of Indonesian as the embodiment of a national language.
In 1908, Budi Utomo, the 1st indigenous movement, was founded. Conceived as a political organization, it soon adapted its objectives under pressure from the Dutch government, and mainly restricted itself to cultural activities. Political concerns were more prominent in Sarekat Islam, founded in 1912 as a society of tradesmen, but which soon evolved into a nationalist movement, counting among its members the future President of the Republic, Soekarno, and the communist Semaun. Meanwhile, other societies were founded, and a political party mainly aimed at halfcaste Dutch and Indonesian members appeared.
In due course, the Dutch colonizers followed suit, and a Volksraad ("People's Council") was founded in 1918. This Council was an assembly of Dutch and Indonesian members, whose powers, however, were severely restricted. It was a consultative committee advising the Governor General, the Dutch viceroy of the East-Indies, who could react to the Council's advice as he pleased.
One of the 1st actions the Volksraad took was to request the sanction of the use of two official languages in its meetings: Dutch and Malay. Although until well into the 1930s only one Council member consistently used Malay, it was significant that the language had now acquired official status.
In 1928, an association of young Javanese intellectuals referred to the language as "Bahasa Indonesia", for the 1st time, thus emphasizing the notion of a national rather than an ethnic language. A few months later, on October 28, 1928, a congress of associations of young Indonesians, known as the Youth Congress (Sumpah Pemuda) adopted the principles of "one people, one nation, one language"., and this step may be regarded as the birth of the Indonesian language.
It was, however, still a language in development. Indonesian had never been a national language, and to most Indonesians it, or its ancestral Malay, had never been their mother tongue. For all this, in addition to the publications of Balai Pustaka and its magazine Panji Pustaka, various other magazines featured work by Indonesian writers as well, although there wasn't as yet one particular indigenous magazine devoted exclusively to the emerging literature. However, a notable source was Jong Sumatra, a magazine founded in 1918 as the platform of Jong Sumatranen Bond, the Association of Young Sumatran intellectuals.
Angkatan Pujangga Baru was created as a reaction to all this. This "Generation of the New Literates " adopted its very name, Poedjangga Baroe, to emphasize its striving for renewal, attempting to break away both from the set forms of traditional Malay literature and from the yoke of colonial constraints: the objective was a new poetics and a new national consciousness.
To this end, in 1933 they founded the 1st national literary magazine, Poedjangga Baroe, created by Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana, Amir Hamzah, and Armijn Pane. Its main protagonists were the three founders, together with Sanusi Pane (brother of Armijn).
Poedjangga Baroe occasionally, and for reasons that have not been explained, included prose in English, and more regularly and perhaps understandably, prose and poetry in Dutch. However, the magazine was characterized by its position as the 1st literary periodical in the national language. In contrast with Panji Pustaka, its editors were all Indonesians, who had as often as not received their editorial training by working for the government publishers in the 1920s. There was one exception: Beb Vuyk, an Indo-European (Eurasian) author of Dutch nationality but with strong nationalist sympathies, was briefly on the editorial board before the war broke out.
The contents of the magazine were dominated by essays, often touching on the requirements and exigencies of the new literature; and by poetry in the modern vein. This modernism was a conscious breakaway from tradition, although two quite distinct tendencies were discernible.
Bikin gua, Masinis mulia,Jadi sekerup dalam masinmu,Yang menjalankan kapal dunia,Ke pelabuhan sama ratamu.
Related Sites for Indonesian literature
- Indonesian Literature Books - Goodreads read Indonesian literature
- Indonesia WWW VL: Cultural Resources - Coombsweb: ANU … read Indonesian literature
- UNE - Indonesian - Indonesian - The University of New England ... read Indonesian literature
- Indonesian cultures, art, religion - Visit Indonesia's sights ... read Indonesian literature
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