Amir Hamzah
Amir wrote 50 poems, 18 pieces of lyrical prose, and numerous other works, most of which was produced while in Java. His works deal with the themes of love and religion, and his poetry often reflects a deep inner conflict. Amir's diction was influenced by the need for rhythm and metre, as well as symbolism related to particular terms. His earlier works, published in his 2nd anthology Buah Rindu, deal with a sense of longing and both erotic and idealized love. His 1st compilation, Nyanyi Sunyi, includes works written later and has deeper religious meaning. Of the two, Nyanyi Sunyi is generally considered the more developed. For his poems, Amir has been called the "King of the Poedjangga Baroe era Poets" and the only international-class Indonesian poet from before the Indonesian National Revolution. A National Hero of Indonesia, he has numerous namesakes throughout Indonesia.Amir was born Tengku Amir in Tanjung Pura, Langkat, North Sumatra, the youngest son of vice-sultan Tengku Muhammad Adil and his 3rd wife Tengku Mahjiwa. Through his father, Amir was related to the Sultan of Langkat, Machmud. Sources disagree over his date of birth. The date officially recognised by the Indonesian government is 28 February 1911, a date Amir used throughout his life. However, Amir's elder brother Abdullah Hod states that the poet was born on 11 February 1911. Amir later took the name of his grandfather, Teungku Hamzah, as a 2nd name; thus he was referred to as Amir Hamzah. Though a child of nobility, Amir would often associate with non-nobles.
It is known that Amir was schooled in Islamic principles such as Qu'ran reading, fiqh, and tawhid, and studied at the Azizi Mosque in Tanjung Pura from a young age. He remained a devout Muslim throughout his life. However, sources disagree on the period in which he completed his formal studies. Several sources, including the Indonesian government's Language Centre, state that Amir started school in 1916, while biographer M. Lah Husny puts Amir's 1st year of formal schooling as 1918. At the Dutch-language elementary school where Amir 1st studied, he began writing and received good marks; in her biography of the poet, Nh. Dini writes that Amir was nicknamed "older brother" by his classmates as he was much taller than them.
In 1924 or 1925, Amir graduated from the school in Langkat and moved to Medan to study at the Meer Uitgebreid Lager Onderwijs there. After completing his studies some two years later, Amir entered a formal relationship with his cousin from his mother's side, Aja (also Aje) Bun. Husny writes that the two were arranged to be married by their parents, while Dini casts the relationship as vow to be always faithful. As his parents permitted him to finish his studies in Java, Amir moved to the colonial capital at Batavia (now Jakarta) to complete his studies.
Alone aboard the Plancus, Amir made the three-day boat trip to Java. Upon arriving at Batavia, he enrolled at a Christian MULO there, whence he completed his last year at MULO. There Amir became involved with the social organisation Jong Sumatera. During this period Amir wrote his 1st poems. Husny credits several to his heartbreak after he found that Aja Bun had been married to another man without Amir's knowing, while Dini suggests that the poem "Tinggallah" was written not long after Amir boarded the Plancus, while he was longing after his parents.
After a brief return to Sumatra, Amir continued to a Boedi Oetomo-operated Algemene Middelbare School in Surakarta, Central Java, where he studied eastern literature and languages, including Javanese, Sanskrit, and Arabic. Preferring solitude to the bustle of the dormitories, Amir boarded at a home privately home owned by a Surakartan resident instead. Later, however, Amir met several future writers, including Armijn Pane and Achdiat Karta Mihardja; they soon found him to be a friendly and diligent student with complete notes and a spotless bedroom (sheets folded so well, Mihardja later recalled, that a "lost fly could have easily slid over them"[a]), but also a romantic prone to thinking wistfully beneath the lamplight and isolating himself from his classmates.
In Surakarta Amir began to join the nationalist movement. He would meet with fellow Sumatrans and discuss the social plight of the Malay archipelago's populace under Dutch colonial rule. Though most educated youth at the time preferred using Dutch, Amir insisted on speaking Malay. In 1930 Amir became head of the Surakartan branch of the Indonesia Muda, delivering a speech at the 1930 Youth Congress and serving as an editor of the organisation's magazine Garuda Merapi.
His time at school also introduced him to Ilik Sundari, a Javanese woman nearly his age with whom he fell in love. Sundari, the daughter of Raden Mas Kusumodihardjo, was one of the few female students at the school, and her home was near one of the ones in which Amir boarded. According to Dini, the two grew closer, Amir teaching Sundari Arabic, and Sundari teaching Amir Javanese. They were soon meeting every day, conversing on a variety of topics.
This year saw Amir's 1st two poems, "Sunyi" and "Mabuk..." ("Nauseous..."), published in the March edition of the magazine Timboel. His other eight works published that year included a syair based on the Hikayat Hang Tuah, three other poems, two pieces of lyrical prose, and two short stories; the poems were again published in Timboel, while the prose was included in the magazine Pandji Poestaka. Around September 1932 Armijn Pane, upon the urgings of Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana, editor of "Memadjoekan Sastera" ("Advancing Literature", the literary section of Pandji Poestaka), invited Amir to help them establish an independent literary magazine. Amir accepted, and was tasked with writing letters to solicit submissions; a total of fifty letters were sent to noted writers, including forty sent to contributors to "Memadjoekan Sastera". After several months of preparations, the initial edition was published in July 1933, under the title Poedjangga Baroe. The new magazine was left under the editorial control of Armijn and Alisjahbana, while Amir published almost all of his subsequent writings there.
In mid-1933 Amir was recalled to Langkat, where the Sultan informed him of several conditions which Amir had to fulfill to continue his studies: be a diligent student and abandon the independence movement. Despite the Sultan's disapproval, Amir became more heavily involved in the nationalist movement, bringing him under increasing Dutch scrutiny. He continued to publish in Poedjangga Baroe, including a series of five articles on Eastern literatures from June to December 1934 and a translation of the Bhagavad Gita from 1933 to 1935. His legal studies, however, were delayed, and by 1937 he had still not graduated.
After the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, the government of the Indies began preparing for a possible Japanese invasion. In Langkat, a Home Guard, or Stadswacht, division was established to defend Tanjung Pura, in Langkat. Amir and his cousin Tengku Harun were in charge; the nobility, trusted by the general populace, was selected to ensure easier recruitment of commoners. When the invasion became a reality in early 1942, Amir was one of the soldiers sent to Medan to defend it. However, he and the other Dutch-allied forces were quickly captured by the Japanese. He was held as a prisoner-of-war until 1943, when influence from the Sultan allowed him to be released. Throughout the remainder of the occupation, which lasted until 1945, Amir was employed as a radio commentator and censor in Medan. In his position as prince, he was tasked with helping to collect rice to feed the Japanese occupation army.
Amir was raised in a court setting, where he spoke Malay until it had "become his flesh and blood".[d] From a young age was exposed to oral and written pantuns and syair, both listening and improvisationally creating his own. As with his father before him, Amir enjoyed traditional texts, such as Hikayat Hang Tuah, Syair Siti Zubaidah, and Hikayat Panca Tanderan. He would listen to these when they were read in public ceremonies. As an adult Amir kept a large collection of such texts, though these were destroyed during the communist revolution.
Throughout his formal education Amir read works of Arabic, Persian, and Hindu literature. He was also influenced works from other Eastern countries: poems translated in Setanggi Timur, for instance, include works by Omar Khayyam, Du Fu (China), Fukuda Chiyo-ni (Japan), and Rabindranath Tagore (India). These works were not read in the original, but from Dutch translations. Balfas writes that, unlike his contemporaries, Amir drew little influence from sonnets and the neo-romantic Dutch poets, the Tachtigers. Foulcher, however, noting that Amir quoted Willem Kloos's "Lenteavond" in his article on pantuns, suggests that Amir was very likely influenced by the Tachtigers.
Jassin writes that Amir's poems were also influenced by his love for one or more women, in Buah Rindu referred to as "Tedja" and "Sendari-Dewi"; he opines that the woman or women are never named as Amir's love for them is the key. Husny writes that at least nine of the works in Buah Rindu[f] were inspired by Amir's longing for Aja Bun, portraying a sense of disappointment after their engagement was called off. Regarding the book's three-part dedication: "to the lord, Greater Indonesia / to the ashes of the Mother-Queen / and to the feet of the Sendari-Goddess",[g] Mihardja writes that Sundari was immediately recognisable to any of Amir's classmates; he considers her an inspiration to Amir as "Laura to Petrarch, Mathilde to Jacques Perk". Critic Zuber Usman finds Sundari's influence on Nyanyi Sunyi as well, suggesting his parting from her led Amir closer to God, an opinion Dini echoes. Burton Raffel connects a couplet at the end of the book, reading "Sunting sanggul melayah rendah / sekaki sajak seni sedih" as a call out to a forbidden love. Dini credits Amir's love for Sundari for his frequent use of Javanese terms in his writing.
Altogether Amir wrote 50 poems, 18 pieces of lyrical prose, 12 articles, 4 short stories, 3 poetry collections, and 1 original book. He also translated 44 poems, 1 piece of lyrical prose, and 1 book. The vast majority of his works were published in Poedjangga Baroe, although some earlier ones were published in Timboel and Pandji Poestaka. None of his creative works are dated, and there is no consensus regarding when individual poems were written. There is, however, a general consensus that the works included in Nyanyi Sunyi were written after those included in Buah Rindu, despite the latter being published last.
Jassin writes that Amir maintained a Malay identity throughout his works, despite attending schools run by Europeans. Unlike the works of his contemporaries Alisjahbana or Sanusi Pane, poems by Amir didn't include symbols of a Europeanised modernity such as electricity, trains, telephones, and engines, allowing "the natural Malay world to show wholely".[h] Ultimately, when reading Amir's poems "in our imagination we don't see a man in pants, a jacket, and tie, but a youth in traditional Malay garb".[i] Mihardja notes that Amir wrote his works at a time when all of their classmates, and many poets elsewhere, were "pouring their hearts or thoughts"[j] in Dutch, or, if "able to free themselves from the shackles of Dutch",[k] in a local language.
Amir's work often dealt with love, with religious influences showing in many of his poems. Mysticism is important in many of his works, and his poetry often reflects a deep inner conflict. There are several thematic differences between his two original poetry anthologies, discussed further below.
Amir's 1st poetry collection, Nyanyi Sunyi, was published in the November 1937 issue of Poedjangga Baroe, then published as a stand-alone book by Poestaka Rakjat in 1938. It consists of twenty-four titled pieces and an untitled quatrain, including Hamzah's best-known poem "Padamu Jua". Indonesian literary documentarian H.B. Jassin classifies eight of these works as lyrical prose, with the remaining thirteen as regular poems. Although it is Amir's 1st published collection, based on the well-developed nature of the poems within, general consensus is that the works in Buah Rindu were written earlier. Poet Laurens Koster Bohang considers the poems included in Nyanyi Sunyi as having been written between 1933 and 1937, while Dutch scholar of Indonesian literature A. Teeuw dates the poems to 1936 and 1937.
Readings of Nyanyi Sunyi have tended to focus on religious undertones. According to literary critic Muhammad Balfas, religion and God are omnipresent throughout the collection, beginning with its 1st poem "Padamu Jua". In it, Jassin writes, Amir shows a feeling of dissatisfaction over his own lack of power and protests God's absoluteness, but seems aware of his own smallness before God, acting as a puppet for God's will. Teeuw summarises that Amir recognises that he would not exist if God did not. Jassin finds that the theme of religion is meant as an escape from Amir's worldly sorrows.
Amir's 2nd poetry collection, Buah Rindu, was published in the June 1941 issue of Poedjangga Baroe, then published as a stand-alone book by Poestaka Rakjat later that year. It consists of twenty-five titled pieces and an untitled quatrain; one, "Buah Rindu", consists of four parts, while another, "Bonda", consists of two. At least eleven of the works had previously been published, either in Timboel or in Pandji Poestaka. This collection, though published after Nyanyi Sunyi, is generally considered to have been written earlier. The poems in Buah Rindu date to the period between 1928 and 1935, Amir's 1st years in Java; the collection gives the two years, as well the location of writing as Jakartaâ€"Solo â€"Jakarta.
Teeuw writes that the collection is united by a theme of longing, which Jassin expands on: longing for his mother, longing for his lovers, and longing for his homeland. All are referred to as "kekasih" (beloved) in turn. These longings, Teeuw writes, are unlike the religious overtones of Nyanyi Sunyi: they are more worldly, grounded in reality; Jassin notes another thematic distinction between the two: unlike Nyanyi Sunyi, with its clear depiction of one god, Buah Rindu explicitly puts forth several deities, including the Hindu gods Shiva and Parvati and abstract ones like the god and goddess of love.
Amir's diction was influenced by the need for rhythm and metre, as well as symbolism related to particular terms. This careful diction emphasised simple words as the basic unit and occasional uses of alliteration and assonance. Ultimately, however, Amir is freer in his language use than traditional poets: Jennifer Lindsay and Ying Ying Tan highlight his "verbal inventiveness", injecting a "lavishness of expression, a mellifluous of sound and meaning" into his poetry. Indonesian critic Bakri Siregar writes that the result is "a beautiful wordplay".[l] Teeuw writes that Amir had a complete understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of Malay, mixing eastern and western influences.
The choice of words depends heavily on old Malay terms which saw little contemporary use. He also borrows heavily from other Indonesian languages, particularly Javanese and Sundanes. As such, early printings of Amir's work would be accompanied by footnotes explaining these words. Teeuw writes that Amir's poems included numerous clichxs common in pantuns which would not be understood by foreign readers. According to John M. Echols, Amir was a writer of great sensitivity who was "not a prolific writer but his prose and poetry are on a very high level, though difficult reading even for Indonesians." Echols credits Amir with a revival of the Malay language, breathing new life into Malay literature in the 1930s.
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