A literary mirror; Balinese reflections on modernity and identity in the twentieth century

Front matter

C

Balinese reflections on modernity and identity in the twentieth century

I Nyoman Darma Putra

Contents

Abbreviations Preface

I Introduction; National literature, regional perspective Indonesian literature; An overview Newspaper literature Tension between national and regional literature Social commitment and mirror of identity

II The development of Indonesian literature from Bali Historical overview The colonial period The national revolution period The New Order period The Reformation period Filling the space

Conclusion

191 196 202 207 215 223

Contents vii

Appendices A Brief biographical notes on some Balinese writers 277 B Poems cited in Chapter III 285 C Poems cited in Chapter IV 305 D Poems cited in Chapter VI 329 E Sources of poems 337 F Sources of prose and plays 345

Glossary 371

Index 373

GMNI Himpi Bali

HPS KKPI

Krismon Lekra

Lesiba

Listibiya

LKN Manikebu Manipol Nasakom

PKI

PNI

Abbreviations

Gerakan Mahasiswa Nasional Indonesia, Nationalist Students’ Movement of Indonesia

Himpunan Penulis Indonesia Bali, Association of Indonesian Writers, Bali branch

Himpunan Peminat Sastra, Literary Association Konperensi Karyawan Pengarang Indonesia, Indonesian Writers’ Conference

Krisis moneter, monetary crisis

Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat, Institute of People’s Culture

Lembaga Seniman Indonesia Bali, Institute of Indonesian Artists in Bali

Majelis Pertimbangan dan Pembinaan Kebudayaan, Committee for Cultural Advancement and Development

Lembaga Kebudayaan Nasional, Institute of National Culture

Manifesto Kebudayaan, Cultural Manifesto Manifesto Politik, Political Manifesto Nasionalisme-Agama-Komunisme, Nationalism, Religion and Communism

Partai Komunis Indonesia, Indonesian Communist Party

Partai Nasionalis Indonesia, Indonesian Nationalist Party

USDEK

Abbreviations

Undang-undang dasar 1945 (1945 constitution), Sosialisme Indonesia (Indonesian Socialism), Demokrasi terpimpin (Guided democracy), Ekonomi terpimpin (Guided economy) and Kepribadian Indonesia (Indonesian identity)

Preface

In the mid-1920s, Balinese writers began to write new forms of literature in Malay, soon to be declared the national language of the future Indonesian nation. Their works were published in newspapers based in North Bali: Surya Kanta (The Beautiful Sun), Bali Adnjana (The Voice of Bali) and Djatajoe (The Messenger). Initially, most of the works written were syair and pantun, Malay poetic structures that were popular in the archipelago at that time, while short stories and plays appeared only occasionally. In the 1930s, in addition to poetry, plays and short stories, Balinese writers began to publish novels.

These new forms of literature are different from traditional Balinese literary genres, written in the Balinese or Old Javanese languages, which have developed at least since the sixteenth century (Creese 2004a:7). While traditional Balinese literature still continues to flourish, the birth of modern Indonesian literature in Bali in the 1920s not only marked a new phase in literary life on the island but also the beginning of Balinese writers taking part in the development of the national literature. This participation continues and the work of writers such as Panji Tisna (1930s), Putu Wijaya (1970s) and Oka Rusmini (2000s) has entered the Indonesian literary canon.

Since the 1950s Bali’s contribution to national literature has not been limited to literary works. The island has also hosted various literary activities, and Balinese writers have attended events around the nation. A number of national literary and cultural congresses attended by representative writers from most Indonesian regions were held in Bali, as well as some international events. In 1962, for example, the left wing cultural organization Lekra (Lembaga xii Preface

Kebudayaan Rakyat, the Institute of People’s Culture) held its national conference in Denpasar. The conference ran successfully in terms of the number of participants taking part and the resolutions reached, and this led to Bali being selected as the venue for the executive meeting of the Asia-Africa Writers Council in the following year, 1963. In 1982 Bali hosted the Temu Puncak Penyair ASEAN (Summit for the Appreciation of ASEAN Poets) in Denpasar. More recently the International Literary Biennale was held in 2003, with some Balinese writers taking an active part.

Balinese writers have frequently been invited to participate in literary forums in Jakarta and in regional areas like West Sumatra, Lampung, West Java, Yogyakarta and Surabaya, and also in international poetry readings both in Indonesia and overseas, an example being the Winternachten Festival in the Netherlands. The sustained contributions of Balinese writers to the national literature and the lively range of literary activities on the island suffice to show that Bali is one of the major regional literary centres in Indonesia.

Despite this, Indonesian literature originating from Bali receives very little scholarly and critical attention. Although Bali has been one of the most densely studied areas in many academic fields (Schulte Nordholt 1996:vii), local and foreign scholars tend to overlook literary texts in Indonesian written by Balinese writers. It is as though this literature and its associated activities do not exist. In fact, like traditional Balinese literature and other forms of artistic representation, modern Balinese literature in Indonesian offers a rich reflection of various aspects of the social and cultural changes that Bali has experienced. In other words, it provides a mirror of how the Balinese respond to ongoing social, political and cultural changes.

This book marks the first attempt to study Indonesian literature from Bali in its immediate cultural and historical contexts. The study of Indonesian literature produced in the region is important both from the perspective of the development of the national literature and that of regional cultural and social changes. This study focuses on two general areas. It describes the development of Indonesian literature originating from Bali from 1920 to 2000 and how this literature has contributed to the national literary tradition. It then analyses the dominant themes that appear in the literature, and how they relate

Preface xiii to Balinese ideas about their regional and national identity. The book complements the predominantly national approach to the study of Indonesian literature, and also contributes to existing studies of Balinese society and culture through its use of literary texts and discourses.

The writing of this book was possible because of the generosity of the University of Queensland. In 1998 the university awarded me a four-year scholarship for postgraduate studies at the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies in the Faculty of Arts. In 2007, I was awarded a postdoctoral research fellowship, which allowed me to reshape my thesis into this book and also to carry out further research in areas that will lead to future publications. I want to thank the University of Queensland for all the support it has provided me.

Ialso wish to express my deepest thanks and gratitude to Associate Professor Helen Creese, who has encouraged me, supervised me, and supported me, for her wisdom, insight and scholarly brilliance, both during my postgraduate study and my postdoctoral research. Her deep knowledge of Balinese literature and culture has helped me in shaping this book. Without her, this book and my other projects related to Balinese literature and culture would never have come to fruition.

One focus of my research has been the issue of Balinese identities and how they are expressed in regional and national literature as well as in other texts. During the research and writing of this project, I received invaluable support and comments from many people. I would like to thank Henk Schulte Nordholt, Thomas Hunter and Keith Foulcher for their comments on this project, and Mark Hobart, Adrian Vickers, Thomas Reuters, Graeme MacRae, Michel Picard, Jeff Lewis, Belinda Lewis and Michael Hitchcock for their continued academic support and encouragement. I would like to thank my friends at the University of Queensland, including Simon Patton, Jo Grimmond, Annie Pohlman and Wijaya Herlambang, for their collegial support.

My gratitude is also due to a number of Balinese friends and authors who helped me when I was carrying out this research. They are Widminarko, IDG Windhu Sancaya, I Nyoman Wijaya, xiv Preface

Gde Dharna, Raka Santeri, IGB Arthanegara, Ngurah Parsua, Made Suarsa, Gde Aryantha Soethama, Frans Nadjira, Gde Artawan, Oka Rusmini, Warih Wisatsana, Tan Lio Ie, Putu Fajar Arcana, I Gusti Made Sukawidana, and Putu Oka Sukanta. I also would like to thank Prof. I Wayan Ardika, Dean of the Faculty of Letters at Udayana University, Bali, for his academic and administrative support throughout my studies and the postdoctoral research program. I also thank my family — Diah, Ary and Siwi — who I always share happiness with when we are together and moments of sadness when we have to be apart, at times when we cannot all be together in either Brisbane or Bali.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to my friend Christopher Dames, who read my drafts word for word on more than one occasion and improved certain weaknesses in my English. This book would have never attained its present form without his suggestions and his enthusiasm for learning more about Balinese culture, Indonesian language and literature. However, despite the significant help of many people, I retain sole responsibility for any shortcomings in this work.

A note on spelling

Titles of literary works and quotations from texts that use the old spelling system are given in the modern Indonesian spelling system, but the spelling of proper names — authors, publications, organizations, et cetera — follows the original form customarily used.

CHAPTER I Introduction National literature, regional perspective

Indonesia’s literary world is heterogeneous, but based on language use and form its literature can be broadly divided into two sections: national literature and regional literature. National literature, also known as modern Indonesian literature, is that which is written in the Indonesian language, while regional literature is written in regional languages such as Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese and Buginese. The term ‘regional literature’ is ambiguous, because apart from referring to literature written in regional languages, it is also used somewhat pejoratively to refer to literature in Indonesian that originates at a regional rather than a national level. In this context, the term regional literature is defined in ‘a negative way as being of appeal only to restricted audiences’ (Kratz 1991:193). Similarly, the term ‘regional writers’ often has an inferior connotation when comparison is made with ‘writers from the centre’ — a term that refers to writers who live in the capital, Jakarta (formerly Batavia), have been nationally recognized or have written work regarded as part of the Indonesian literary canon. Both regional literature and its writers are considered, in post-colonial terminology, as ‘an inferior Other’ (Newton 1997:283).

The study of Indonesian literature continues to concentrate predominantly on its canon, a body of work written by nationally recognized writers and published in Jakarta — the political, economic and cultural centre of Indonesia. Good examples of this are the intensely studied novels of Pramoedya Ananta Toer and more recently those of Seno Gumira Ajidarma and Ayu Utami. Studies that focus on this canon exclude much significant work from outside the capital and reinforce the idea that Jakarta is the centre of all literary activity (Sumardjo 1979 cited in Hellwig 1994:4, Hill 1993:246-7, 253). But, as Henk Maier (2004:494) has pointed out, although Jakarta ‘has set the tone in the political as well as in the cultural arena of the Indonesian nation as whole’ it remains a ‘location that can in no way claim to represent life and experience’ throughout the archipelago. In terms of literary life, Maier’s point is that it is not possible to claim a comprehensive view of Indonesian literature without giving due attention to its manifestations at a regional level, beyond Jakarta. Will Derks’ opinion (2001:369) that ‘in the study of modern Indonesian literature almost all energy has been devoted to the literary work of authors published in the capital, Jakarta’ clearly suggests that critics or scholars of Indonesian literature should also devote some energy to the study of national literature originating from regional centres.

A trend toward applying a regionally oriented approach to the study of Indonesian literature began to emerge in the late 1970s. Examples of this are Alberta Freidus’s 1977 examination of the contribution of Sumatran writers to the development of Indonesian literature, Rosslyn von der Borch’s 1987 study on art and activism in Central Java and Farida Soemargono’s 1979 survey of literary groups in Yogyakarta between 1945 and 1960. Soemargono argues that while Yogyakarta is only a regional centre it is nevertheless vital to the overall development of Indonesian literature (Teeuw 1996:47). Andries Teeuw (1996:207) acknowledges the importance of Soemargono’s study and suggests that similar research should be ‘undertaken for other regional centres before it is too late and the materials are lost forever!’. His statement accepts that away from Jakarta, there are other centres where Indonesian literature is developing, with much literary work and activity that is worth studying. Among others, West Sumatra, South Sumatra, West Java, East Java and Bali are valid candidates to satisfy Teeuw’s concept of ‘other regional centres’.

Nearly two decades after the studies by Freidus and Soemargono, Derks, building on Soemargono's example, published a number of studies on the development of regional Indonesian literature (Derks 1996a, 1996b, 1996c, 2001, 2002). In his essay on Indonesian sastra pedalaman (hinterland literature), Derks emphasizes the lively activities of literary communities in various towns throughout the archipelago including Palembang, Pekanbaru, Bandung, Solo, Semarang, Ngawi, Malang, Denpasar, Pontianak, Banjarmasin and Makassar. Quoting Melani Budianta, he also notes an expansion in the number of literary groups and clubs, now numbering around fifty, that has taken place in Jakarta and its surrounds, including Bogor, Tangerang and Bekasi, and that they are ‘only remotely connected to the literary establishment in the capital’ (Derks 2002:344). This growth in literary activity in areas beyond the Jakarta ‘centre’ indicates that ‘any endeavour to map the tradition of modern Indonesian literature in general can no longer afford to ignore or even dismiss these phenomena’ (Derks 2002:344).

There has still been insufficient attention given to the development of national literature in regional centres. Among the few studies so far are those on Indonesian literature from Bali by Thomas Hunter (1998), I Nyoman Darma Putra (1998a, 1998b, 2000a), I Nyoman Wijaya (2000), Maya Sutedja-Liem (2000, 2003) and one on contemporary poems in Indonesian from West Java by Ian Campbell (2006). It is clear from the dates of these studies, and those of Derks, that they emerged during and after the last years of the centralizing New Order government, which finally gave way to a reformation movement in May 1998. The radical decentralization of government processes in the post-Reformation period and the increase in literary activities outside Jakarta has particularly encouraged these studies. Regional autonomy has made ‘the region’ an interesting subject of study (Aspinall and Fealy 2003; Schulte Nordholt and Van Klinken 2007), in the arts and culture as well as in the areas of politics and government, and regional studies will complement the nationally focused studies of Indonesian literature.

This book eschews a nationally oriented approach and follows the path pioneered by Freidus and Soemargono and established by Derks and others, using Bali as a case study. Bali has already proved to be a productive field for studies of anthropology, history, tourism, arts and traditional literature, but there has never been a comprehensive study of its modern literature in Indonesian. In reality, from the mid- 1920s onwards the island started to produce a challenging range of work in modern literary genres, written in the national language (see

Chapter II). This study has two interrelated aims: to examine the development of Indonesian literature that comes from Bali and locate it within the totality of the national literature, through understanding the role played by Balinese writers in the progress of modern Indonesia’s national literary traditions; and also to analyse how this literature reflects the changing ways Balinese have perceived their identity between the late colonial period and the end of the twentieth century.

Stuart Hall (1997:51) points out that identity is ‘a “production”, which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation’. This raises two points: that identity is not a fixed, final and static label for individuals or groups of people, as has conventionally been understood, but a changing, fluid, dynamic process; and that identity can be traced from a variety of forms of representation. Hall’s position is supported by Simon During (2005:150) who emphasizes that ‘all identities are in constant mutation’. Literature is a form of cultural representation, and can therefore be used to investigate the ongoing transformation of personal or collective identities. Following the dynamic view of identity, Jeff Lewis (2008:398) has argued that individuals ‘have a degree of choice about who they are and which cultural elements they wish to mobilize in order to express their identity’.

Using these concepts of identity, this book examines how changes in identity construction are reflected in the literature that Balinese writers have written in Indonesian and how social and cultural politics influenced such identity mutation.

Indonesian literature; An overview

To understand the heterogeneous and multi-centred nature of Indonesian literature it is first necessary to present a broad overall survey of its development. Attempts to define what constituted the beginning of Indonesian literature continue. This involves a consideration of whether particular literary works should be included or excluded, the position of literature in regional languages, and works that were written by ethnic groups. The social and political situation has always played an important role in the construction of the history of Indonesian literature. A recent attempt to include regional literature or literary work in regional languages such as Acehnese, Javanese, Sundanese and Buginese in the world of Indonesian literature, as seen in the anthology Dari Fansuri ke Handayani (From Fansuri to Handayani) (Taufiq Ismail et al. 2001), is closely connected to the radical shift in the Indonesian government system from central control to regional autonomy. Under the new system, regional cultures and literatures have become important and some of their literary history has undergone redefinition.

Initially, it was generally accepted that Indonesian literature emerged in the 1920s, when for the first time Indonesian writers began to use new forms of expression and articulate new social concerns, which had not customarily appeared in traditional literature (Teeuw 1967:1-2). The novels Sitti Nurbaya by Marah Rusli (1994, first published in 1922) and Salah asuhan (Wrong upbringing) by Abdul Muis (1928) are usually mentioned as examples of early Indonesian literature. These works were published by the Dutch-controlled publishing house Balai Pustaka and their subject matter centres on protests against adat (custom) in favour of modern values. There are two poems by Mohammad Jamin titled Bahasa, bangsa (Language, nation, 1921) and Indonesia tumpah darahku (Indonesia is my fatherland, 1928) that are also good examples because they express a new feeling of national identity.

The 1920s is usually also associated with the rise of the Indonesian nationalist movement. In 1928 the Congress of Indonesian Youth, in a famous and far-reaching symbolic gesture, relabelled the long-standing lingua franca of the archipelago, Malay, as Indonesian and declared it to be the national language. The poet Mohammad Jamin played an important role in formulating the Sumpah Pemuda (Youth Oath) when he included the spirit of nationalism from his poems in ‘one fatherland, one nation and one Indonesian language’! Just as the Indonesian language is a cultural and political adaptation of the

1 For a critical discussion about the formulation, meanings and changes in wording in the history of the Youth Oath, see Foulcher 2000.

Malay language, so Indonesian literature has grown out of a long process of transforming Malay literature.

From its first manifestations, modern Indonesian literature developed under the patronage or control of the colonial government. A central role was played by Balai Pustaka (Bureau voor de Volkslectuur), established in 1917 with a policy of commissioning Indonesian literature in accordance with colonial practices (Teeuw 1972). Balai Pustaka had a strict rule that they would not print anything that discussed sex, politics, religion or race (Maier 2004:280). Works under consideration that did not comply with the publisher’s policies were rejected or subjected to revision. For example Salah asuhan was only published after the author, Muis, revised the negative portrayal of one of its European characters, Corrie. In the original version she is killed by her sexual partner but after the revision she dies from cholera (Mahayana 2000:482). In another example Armijn Pane’s Belenggu (Shackles) (1995) was rejected because apart from having political overtones, it was thought that the novel ‘contains philosophical reflections about love, life, and death’ aimed at adult readers, while the publisher’s policy was primarily designed to ‘edify and entertain secondary-school students on Java and the other islands and make them more sensitive to literature’ (Maier 2004:281). The political goals of the colonial rulers defined what could and could not be published as Indonesian literature at that time.

Balai Pustaka was taken over by the Indonesian state after independence and still operates today, as a publisher of school textbooks as well as literature. During its period as the pre-eminent publisher, the social and political policies of successive governments strongly influenced what it published and consequently it controlled the direction in which Indonesian literature developed. To be published by Balai Pustaka was a major aim of every writer. However, from the 1980s onward, its dominant status was weakened by the emergence of many private publishers including Gramedia, Grasindo, Buku Kompas, Hasta Mitra, Indonesia Tera and Bentang. They have behaved more assertively than Balai Pustaka and have become a major factor in the publication and distribution of Indonesian literature — and except for Indonesia Tera (Surabaya) and Bentang (Yogyakarta) they are all located in Jakarta, the centre. A decrease in government protection and subsidies rendered Balai Pustaka unable to compete with these new private publishers and caused it to lose its power over the direction of Indonesian literature. By the 1990s, the glory days of Balai Pustaka were over.

Ongoing research into Indonesian literary historiography offers a variety of insights into how the beginnings of a literary world in the archipelago are assessed. Rather than simply focusing on the relationship between literature, nationalism and the birth of the Indonesian state, researchers have looked at the nature of literary culture in the region that later became Indonesia and argued that the birth of Indonesian literature cannot be separated from a long preceding literary tradition. This research challenges the important role allocated to Balai Pustaka. Some studies, for example, have argued that modern Indonesian literature has antecedents in various forms of nineteenth-century Malay language literature written by Indonesians of mixed European-Indonesian descent (Indos) or of mixed Chinese-Indonesian descent (Chinese peranakan) and by other ‘non-indigenous’ residents of Indonesia.”

Modern literary features and deeply held social concerns had been displayed in works of Malay literature dating back to the nineteenth century (Chambert-Loir 1987, 1991; Jedamski 2002), so they were not a new phenomenon in the 1920s works published by Balai Pustaka mentioned above. Henry Chambert-Loir’s study shows that there is a modern spirit and an interesting range of modern elements in the ‘classic’ Malay story, as exemplified in work by the Bataviabased writer Muhammad Bakir from the 1880s. Among the modern features of these stories are the inclusion of the author's name, the mode of expression used and comments made about contemporary life in Batavia. Henry Chambert-Loir's study offers an alternative way of defining modern literature in Indonesia as a continuation of earlier, late nineteenth-century literary works (Chambert-Loir 1987:147). His position is supported by Doris Jedamski's study on

2 Watson 1971; Salmon 1981; Hellwig 1994. It should be noted here that the entire vocabulary of ‘race’ in Indonesia has been strongly influenced by colonial constructions of race and ethnicity. Important works on this subject include Maier 1993 and Stoler 1996.

the Malay translations of nineteenth-century European adventure and crime literature including Robinson Crusoe, The count of Monte Cristo and Sherlock Holmes and their adaptation into an Indonesian setting.

Although Jedamski’s (2002:45) study emphasises the ‘colonizing role’ of Western popular literature in colonial society and its classrooms, it also makes clear that the enthusiastic popular response to these indigenous translations and adaptations into Malay and regional languages such as Sundanese and Javanese suggests that there was a lively literary life in Indonesia before the end of the nineteenth century. The studies by Chambert-Loir and Jedamski establish two points — that modern literary genres had been introduced to Indonesia in the nineteenth century, much earlier than had been generally accepted in the 1920s, and that the multi-ethnic origins of Indonesian literature and of its distribution across the archipelago can be confirmed.

Reprinting works that pre-dated the establishment of Balai Pustaka or were printed by other publishers is another way of redefining the beginning of Indonesian literature and the kind of work that formed it. There are a number of literary anthologies that in their own right offer new perceptions of the history of Indonesian literature. In 1982, Pramoedya Ananta Toer brought out a collection of stories from the early nineteenth century titled Tempo doeloe (Past times). He has termed this the literature of ‘pre-Indonesia’ (Toer 1982:9). Most of the works in the anthology were by writers of Indo-European descent and used the Malay language, and had been excluded from the Indonesian canon for political reasons by both the Dutch and Indonesian governments. For example, the Dutch colonial government labelled them bacaan liar (wild reading), considering them to be written in an inferior language style and not attuned to colonial moral standards and sensibilities (Tickell 1987:31). This also applies to works written by Chinese peranakan from the early twentieth century, which were usually published outside Balai Pustaka. The publication of Tempo doeloe aimed both to put early modern Malay writing back into public consciousness and to revise the history of modern Indonesian literature (Maier 2002:473).

The literary anthology Dari Fansuri ke Handayani (2001), aims at providing a ‘snapshot’ of Indonesian literature starting with the seventeenth-century writer Hamzah Fansuri and ending in the early 2000s with works by Handayani, a high school student who has produced one poetry collection, three novelettes and two plays (Taufig Ismail et al. 2001:6). In his introduction, the editor states that the writing of Indonesian poetry began with Hamzah Fansuri, an Acehnese poet of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century who used the Malay syair form. The editor considers Fansuri as a ‘great poet’ and places his name in the title of the anthology to mark the beginning (titik awal) of Indonesian literature (Taufiq Ismail et al. 2001:5). Despite a lack of critical argument, the inclusion of works from the seventeenth century onward indicates that the book intends to redefine the history of Indonesian literature. It not only rejects the 1920s as the starting point but also includes literature in regional languages such as Javanese and Buginese in the corpus of national literature, reinforcing the heterogeneous nature of Indonesian literature.

Since 2000, work by writers of Chinese peranakan from the early twentieth century have been edited by A.S. Marcus and Pax Benedanto (2003) and reprinted in a series of books under the overall title Kesastraan Melayu Tionghoa dan kebangsaan Indonesia (Malay Literature by Chinese-Indonesian writers). Ten volumes have so far been published, each containing several items, mainly novelettes and plays. Among its many goals is to promote an acknowledgment of this group’s contribution to the formation of the Indonesian nation, culture and literature. During the colonial period, these works were ignored, criticized for using low Malay and considered ‘wild reading’ but their current reprinting is evidence of the richness and variety of Indonesian literary life outside the Balai Pustaka mainstream in the 1920s and 1930s.

Newspaper literature

Indonesian national literature, which to some extent has developed like other world literatures through the publication of novels, poetry anthologies and short stories, is still regarded by some critics as sastra koran (newspaper literature), because a major proportion of literary work first appears in newspapers and magazines.? In the 1930s, Indonesian writers including Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana and Armijn Pane published Poedjangga Baroe (New writers), which became an important medium for writers who wanted to make their literary works and essays on arts and culture more available to readers. After independence, there were a number of magazines on literature and culture such as Mimbar Indonesia, Sastra and Horison. Along with Balai Pustaka, these relatively widely circulated journals became pillars of Indonesian literature.

Ulrich Kratz’s Bibliography of Indonesian literature in journals (1988) clearly indicates the important role of newspapers and magazines as outlets for Indonesian literature. His volume was based on a survey of periodicals published between 1922 and 1982, where he identified more than 27,000 poems and stories as well as a smaller number of plays (see also Kratz 1987). From all this material, little ever appeared in books (Derks 1996b:342-3). Similarly, many important literary debates have taken place in newspapers and magazines. The ease and speed with which literary works can be published in these media, and the limited accessibility to commercial publishers before the early 1990s (Salleh 1991) are factors which have contributed to Indonesian literature being sastra koran. In regions like Sumatra and Bali, where commercial considerations were not the main motivation driving the production of literature, literary life and publication depended heavily on newspapers and magazines. In his Sumber terpilih sejarah sastra Indonesia abad XX (Selected sources for the history of Indonesian literature in the twentieth century, 2000), Kratz once again proves the important debt Indonesian literature owes to the print mass media, because most of the essays in this book were

3 ‘Sastra Indonesia bukan sastra Buku’, Kompas 25-9-1997. www.sriti.com is a website that was especially created to defend and celebrate the characteristics of Indonesian literature as sastra koran. Among other things, the site posts poetry short stories and other work from the main Indonesian newspapers published every week. From 2002 until October 2008, the site has uploaded 2,741 short stories. It also uploads new anthologies, containing poetry or short stories, which contain material that has been published in newspapers.

reproduced from magazines and newspapers such as Poedjangga Baroe, Siasat, Horison, Star Weekly, Kompas and Suara Karya.

The growing number of commercial publishers in Jakarta and inthe other major cities of Java since the late 1990s who have been prepared to publish novels, short story collections and poetry anthologies has not necessarily meant an end to the sastra koran nature of Indonesian literature. This is because most prose and poetry anthologies and even novels published as books first appeared in newspapers. In addition, many literary figures work as editors or journalists for these newspapers or magazines, which helps to maintain the strength of sastra koran.