by HENDRIK M. J. MAIER
Dramatist, poet, director Willibrordus S. Rendra (1935 – 2009) was the true heir of Chairil Anwar, the personification of the Angkatan 45 IMAGE/Aksara Sastra
Once upon a time notions and appreciations of Indonesian literature were based on a simple idea: every literary form of writing newly published could be categorised as the work of Angkatan 45 (Generation of 45), a term that referred to the writers who were coming of age in the years of the revolution and were given the floor in cultural life over their Dutch-trained predecessors in their glorification of the newly created nation.
The term Angkatan 45 came in handy for political as well as for cultural reasons. The Republic of Indonesia had declared independence in 1945, followed by four years of struggles and violence and, as is the case in every other new nation, intellectuals and the political elite in the capital felt the need to have a literature that dealt with the formation of the nation.
National literature was written in Indonesian, a new form of Malay which had been made the national language, meant to unite multicultural Indonesia and create a new culture, shared, recognised and expanded by all citizens. The spread of Indonesian became a success story and Indonesian writing, which was supposed to serve as an important device in this story, was primarily created and discussed in the capital, the centre of administrative and commercial life, the place of publishing houses, press and government.
And of course kesusasteraan Indonesia (Indonesian literature) primarily dealt with the revolution and its aftermath, circling around nation-building and nationalism – and their successes and failures. Is literature not always written and appreciated in the shadow of contemporary socio-political developments. And is literature not supposed to foreshadow those developments?
Twenty-first century textbooks should tell readers and critics, young and old, that Indonesian literature had an impressive start. In the 1950s some serious authors emerged – Chairil Anwar, Idrus, Mochtar Lubis, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Utuy Tatang Sontani, Sitor Situmorang, Nasjah Djamin, Trisnojuwono, Ajip Rosidi. Their work has serious staying power to the present day.
Before long, however, the imagined unity of the nation-state came apart in ideological bickering, economic scandals, military conflicts and social unrest; tensions were reflected in fiery discussions about the desired character of Indonesian literature, which had become dominated by short stories and lyrical poetry rather than novels and essays, in number as well as appreciation. Indonesian literature was meant to consist of evocations, realistic or allegorical, of the nation and its struggles; in practice authors were soon having difficulties in holding their work together around that single issue.
Conflicts in socio-political and economic life and tensions in cultural life eventually led to the military coup of 1965, to the killings of 1965/66, and to the construction of a new socio-political system for the nation, summarised in the term New Order. And in 1966 it was not only a large number of politically engaged intellectuals, farmers and workers who disappeared from the scene: their discourse and worldviews were also silenced.
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