Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

THE WONDER OF IT ALL

2014; Routledge; Volume: 42; Issue: 124 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13639811.2014.930978

1469-8382

Carly Watson,

Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics

AbstractThe contemporary Sundanese short story takes many forms, one of which the article below describes as a modern fable. In introducing the term reference is made to the same genre in English literature, and then some attention is paid to how the genre has developed in West Java in the history of modern Sundanese literature. Following that there is a brief critical analysis of one story, Imah kontrakan (The rented house), the translation of which follows. An extract from notes of a discussion with the author of the story provides information about the influences which he acknowledges and at the same time gives the reader some understanding of Indonesian literature today.Keywords: SundanesetranslationfablesSufi influencesBandung Notes1A review article by Michael Caines (Citation2011) in the Times Literary Supplement is headed ‘T F Powys, an English Tolstoy’. This title, one discovers on reading the review is taken from a remark by Dennis Wheatley — of all people, but see London Review of Books letters, 3 February 2011 — that Powys is an English Tolstoy. Caines seems to intend the quotation as mocking Wheatley, but perhaps he is simply failing to observe that what Wheatley may have been referring to was the similarity between Powys' stories and Tolstoy's moral tales, of which there is no indication that Caines was aware.2I suspect that it is more than a coincidence that Michael also figures prominently in Mr Weston's good wine.3But see Buning (Citation1996: 3) who argues that allegory continues to be found in modern literature in the work of Kafka, Joyce, Beckett and Pynchon.4Korrie Layun Rampan (Citation2009: 23–4) describes a similar variety in contemporary Indonesian stories of the kind now published regularly in daily newspapers and weeklies.5All of these are to be found in the pages of the several publishing outlets briefly described by Watson (Citation2012: 315).6Rampan refers to these stories as misteri and says that one of the early writers in this tradition is Suwarsih Djojopuspito. It should be noted that Suwarsih was Sundanese and that she was almost certainly influenced by the Sundanese ghost story tradition, her stories being located as they are in West Java. Hatley (Citation2002: 171) offers a convincing interpretation of Suwarsih's best known supernatural story, Siluman Karangkobar. She argues very much in line with my own interpretation of many of these Sundanese spirit/ghost stories that Suwarsih is using the genre to make particular points about the relationship between spiritual and moral values and proper conduct in human relationships.7Translated by Ajip Rosidi into Indonesian as Memuja siluman (1977).8On the back cover of an edition (Citation1985) of Mohd. Ambri's Burak siluman.9In his introduction to a collection of short stories by Aam Amilia (Citation1992), Abdullah Mustappa also makes some interesting comments about this genre of the Sundanese short story. He writes (Mustappa Citation1992: 15):[C]arita-carita nu wandana pikasieuneun (nu ilaharna sok disarebut carita jurig) … . mungguh dina kahirupan urang Sunda mah lain barang anyar, Ti saméméh nyebar dina wangun carita tinulis, dongéng-dongéng Sunda teu kurang anu wandana kitu. Alam lelembut, jin, kuntilanak katut nu séjén-séjénna téh sigana pikeun urang Sunda mah mangrupa anu penting pisan dina hirup sapopoéna.Stories of this kind intended to frighten (which are commonly called ghost (jurig) stories] are of course nothing new in Sundanese society. Even before stories of this kind were written down, there were plenty of Sundanese folk-tales of this sort. The world of mysterious beings, of spirits, kuntilanak (a particular horrifying female headless ghost) and such, it seems, are for the Sundanese very imporatnt elements of everyday life.He then goes on to describe how Aam's stories of this kind, like Ki Umbara's, are intended to show that that these frightening things, ghosts and suchlike, have their source (sumberna) in the emotions of the characters in the stories.10Watson was using the Indonesian translation of the story by Ajip Rosidi which he found in the journal Budaja Djaja. This story — in Sundanese entitled Kasarung — along with others by different writers was subsequently published in translation in the collection Dua dukun (Rosidi Citation2001). It originally appeared in Sundanese in Ki Umbara's collection Teu tulus paeh nundutan (And so he did not die peacefully in his bed; Citation1985).11Though, against what I am arguing, see the short report below of my interview with the author in which he talks about his influences.12 Maya means the supernatural or spiritual as in dunia maya, the world of fantasy — and in contemporary Indonesian the virtual world of the internet. Thus the girl's name suggests she is an inhabitant of the non-natural world. At the same time there is some ambiguity since Maya is in fact also commonly used as a girl's name.13The reader must make up his or her own mind about the relationship of this second part to the overall purport of the story. When I read it on the day of its appearance I could not at first see the link with what I had read in the previous day's episode. The clue to understanding, however, is surely that in the struggle of having to earn a living one is sometimes tempted to take a wrong path, and that rather than hasten things one should simply make good use of what has been given.14This device in the crafting of fiction, the inclusion of the seemingly irrelevant and extraneous description of a detail, in order to enhance the credibility of the context of a story, seems especially common to the short story where the writer does not have the space to narrate several incidents or delve too deeply into the psychology of character since the genre usually requires a focus on simply one incident. To make that incident more immediate and accessible to the sensibility of the reader the writer must provide enough signposts of familiarity to make the narrative not only convincing but effective. I was recently struck by this style of writing when reading some of Alice Munro's stories. In one, Chance (Citation2006), there is an episode in which the heroine of the story several times refers to the fact that she is experiencing her monthly period and that makes certain situations awkward for her: she is worried at one point that a man kissing her will move his hand down between her legs and feel the pad she is wearing. For the male reader — at least for this one — the detail not especially relevant to the story except for the little it reveals about the anxious character of the woman, seems obtrusive, but presumably for the female reader it is exactly the familiar detail with which she can identify and therefore helps to carry the story.15Rumi is also the source of another story of his (Yus R. Ismail Citation2013a), one which like many Sundanese (and, for that matter, Malay) stories uses the trope of personifying tigers. He states (Ismail Citation2013a: 30) at the end of the story that it derives from an Indonesian translation of a story about tigers taken from Rumi's Matsnawi.16Though he did admit to liking the stories of Usép Romly H.M. (b.1949) and R.A.F. (Rahmatullah Ading Affandie, 1929–2008) which were set in the world of the Sundanese village of the 1950s as conceived by those writers. He mentioned the former's story ‘Hayati’ (2013) about an unsuccessful first love, and the latter's story Pipisahan (Parting; Citation1977).17I have subsequently read this story, Miang (Yus Rusyana Citation2010). It is an account of a man realising that the time to take a certain train has come and can no longer be postponed and his feelings about realising the time has come. I can understand its appeal to Pa Yus. Its attraction to him, though, appears to bear out my contention that there is a Sundanese tradition which he may want to deny but which has influenced him.18In an informative essay specifically about the religious dimension of Ki Umbara's stories Ajip Rosidi (Citation1998: 96) argues plausibly that Ki Umbara was influenced by the Anbiya (Stories of the Prophets) Amir Hamzah tradition which entered Sundanese literature through other languages, especially Javanese, and became wawacan (poetic stories) much recited in religious circles. The stories relate the defeat of kafir and also of jinn whom Amir Hamzah converts to Islam. One well-known wawacan which Ajip singles out is the Wawacan Rengganis. But I suspect that in addition to this obvious source of inspiration there are also Sufi tales which have entered popular Sundanese folklore.* This short story (Ismail Citation2014) was carried in Tribun Jabar over three days 4–6 March 2014 and appears here with the permissions of the author and of the editor of Tribun Jabar, to both of whom I am grateful.19I have used ‘I’ here but it is noteworthy that although this is a first person narrative it is not until the fifth paragraph into the story that the first person pronoun is used. Up till that point the reader takes it for granted. This seems to reflect a general tendency in both the spoken and written language to restrict usage of pronouns. But this is unlike a similar case with some European languages such as Spanish, since Sundanese is not inflected and the subject of the verb is therefore not automatically indicated by the verb-ending.20When renting a house it is customary in Indonesia to pay a year's rent in advance so the initial outlay can be quite considerable.21Using one's house for small businesses enterprises is a common feature of Indonesian life and a large percentage of Indonesian economic activity is generated by these small home enterprises.22The Sundanese word here is kiriditanna, a good example of the way in which English words are adapted into contemporary Sundanese. See footnote 29 below.23Motorbikes have become the most common form of transport in Indonesia over the the last 10 to 15 years. Imported from China they are very cheap and affordable to most families. An initial down payment may be as little as £30.00, and regular monthly payments may continue for years. Finding money for these monthly payments can become a burden on people who have low monthly incomes so this sentence about paying instalments inserted in passing here would resonate with readers.24I have translated as mosque here the Sundanese/Indonesian word musholla. In fact a musholla is not as big as a mosque though it serves the same functions and its use is largely for the small community, a collection of houses or a section of village, which is to be found in the immediate vicinity. Compare the idea of a chapel in Christian communities.25This straightforward naturalistic description again confirms for the reader the realistic setting of the story. The actions and the gestures of the people at prayer, both those performing the zikir before the ritually prescribed daily prayer — from the context the reader takes this to be ashar, the late afternoon prayer — and after, when people say private prayers, is exactly what the reader of the short story would be familiar with.26One characteristic of Sundanese first-person fiction writing which the Sundanese reader is very alert to is that in addressing the reader the ‘I’ of the narrative uses a register of speech which is marked by being moderate or low in terms of politeness. However, when direct speech is used the register changes immediately to reflect the relative status of the two speakers. Here in the first address of the old man to ‘I’ he uses a polite formal register indicated, for example, by the use of atos meaning ‘already’, a marker of the past, whereas the more colloquial form would be geus. He also uses Bapa (‘sir’) again a polite form, rather than maneh (you) which he would have used if he was taking a superior stance in relation to the other. The same register is used in the narrator's reply to the old man. The word for yes, for example is the polite muhun and he too uses atos. The contrast between the speech levels is noticeable further on when the reader is told in indirect speech about the person who owns the house, anu boga. Boga is the colloquial form. When the old man refers to the owner he uses the word anu gaduh which is the polite form conveying exactly the same meaning. The switch from register to register adds considerably to the richness of Sundanese writing which is difficult to convey in translation.27This is the first time a first-person singular pronoun is used. Sundanese has several pronouns for ‘I’ — aing, siah, dewek, abdi, kuring, personal name — and the choice of which to use depends on the intimacy of the relationship between people in a conversation or on the verbal insult one may want to convey. Kuring used in the story here indicates an informal but polite intimate relationship of equality with the reader. It is the usual choice for first person narratives of this kind and is also used in semi-formal contexts, in academic speeches for example.28The term used here is Aki, meaning grandfather and is used as an expression of respect at the same time indicating friendliness and equality of status.29The word I have translated here as peddling is séles. I have not been able to find the word in the dictionaries I have and I suspect that it derives from the English ‘sales’. It means here a person who acts as a small time sales representative going round selling packets of food manufactures.30The Sundanese here is dérékdék ngadongéngkeun. The word ngadongéngkeun on its own would mean just ‘tell stories’. But by including the infrequently used anterior (a word used to introduce a verb to add a nuance to it) dérékdék with its onomatopoeic association the reader appreciates the sense of how the stories were told quickly and energetically. See footnote 33 below for another good use of onomatopoeia.31This is my translation of the to-my-mind strange idiom mobok manggih gorowong which literally mans while digging to come across a hole already there, hence to have a stroke of luck in one's endeavours.32The Sundanese is léléngkah halu, an expression referring specifically to a child's first tentative steps learning to walk and falling down from time to time.33Noisily rather feebly translates the Sundanese onomatopoeic bébérékétékan from the root word bérék meaning boisterous, tumultuous. By adding prefixes and suffixes the writer conveys the idea of the iterative action and emphasises the noisiness of the occasion.34Most small businesses of the type described here are not formally registered. However, if one wants to win Government contracts, as is the case here, then everything has to be done according to the regulations, and companies tendering for a contract have to be officially registered. What seems to be described here is a scheme for shadow contracts with which the ‘I’ of the story goes along willingly, and is very common in the kind of everyday corruption which goes on though the Indonesian government through the agency of the powerful Anti- Corruption Commission (KPK) is struggling to stamp out.35In Indonesian the common formal term of address to a man is ‘Pak’ and he is known as ‘Pak plus name’. In Sundanese as opposed to Indonesian the final /k/ in words is pronounced hard and it has become usual to write Pa rather than Pak. This reflects the appropriate Sundanese spelling of the word which they recognise is not pronounced in Indonesian with a hard /k/. This spelling sometimes surprises non-Sundanese speakers.36The Sundanese is nga-sms; cf. footnotes 22 and 29 above on the adaptations of English words. I am told that the Sundanese for ‘to skype’ is nyakaip.37The Sundanese term is proyek and it stems from Indonesian which in turn is derived from English. The word is heavily laden with negative connotations since it is through the (corrupt) financial administration of proyek that individuals throughout the civil service frequently line their own pockets. There always seem to be ways in which money can be siphoned off for the individual, not just in fiddling expenses but in myriad schemes. However hard the government tries to work to close loopholes, dishonest individuals invariably manage to find a way round the regulations. This reference to proyek and ways of scooping out money from it, then, brings a wry smile to the face of the reader.38The reference to help here, bantuan, is of course a request for a bribe to facilitate or accelerate a bureaucratic procedure. It is a common feature of many official transactions in Indonesia which the Government is trying to eradicate but is still recognised as a common feature of daily life.39About £20. One can assume that the profits from the project would run into several million rupiah.40The Jabar Bank (BJB) is the big local bank of West Java and it specialises in loans and credit to West Javanese small and large businesses. The by-the-way reference to the transaction described here being processed through the BJB is another example of how the writing works to establish the authenticity of the narrative for the West Javanese reader.41It is commonly acknowledged that returned pilgrims should ostensibly be more pious and honest than those Muslims who have not made the pilgrimage. In fact there are many hypocritical haji, a point often made by the late Pramoedya Ananta Toer — see his novel Midah bergigi emas [Sweetheart with gold tooth]. Readers here too are being asked to concur with a common observation.42All the items mentioned here are immediately recognisable to the reader as typically those on which the middle-class spend their money. Reference to an outing here refers to a visit to a local recreation spot somewhere near Bandung, a typical leisure occupation of middle income earners of Indonesia. For the more well-off an outing could be anything from a shopping trip to Singapore to a few days holiday in Bali and Lombok.43The fish pond, balong, is an integral part of Sundanese life, a universal feature of many houses in rural areas. In the towns and cities of West Java there are are also large fish ponds which provide recreation for leisure anglers, and fishing is a common pastime. The saung, found in or by fish ponds or in rice-fields and upland gardens is a simple structure where people sit and relax from their labours.44In the infamous Pisa league tables of national achievement in education Indonesia always does badly; South Korea, by contrast, always comes at the top, or near it, in terms of pupils' academic skills. On the other hand, Indonesia comes top when the measure is whether the children are happy in schools, and Korea comes near the bottom. One of the reasons for Indonesian children enjoying school so much is that they enjoy a strong feeling of cameraderie in and out of school, bonding very closely with their classmates, and this applies to all levels in the education system. A common bonding activity is studying together. It is quite usual for small groups of pupils or students to meet after school and do their homework together, learning from each other in a congenial environment which everyone enjoys. It is this activity which is referrred to here, and it is again something immediately recognisable to Indonesian readers.45The term Mang, literally uncle, is commonly used for men who carry out menial jobs and was a common term until fairly recently. Becak (pedicab) drivers were for example commonly called Mang. Because of its associations with status inferiority, however, the term is now much more seldom used. There seems to be a greater tendency to use the term Kang (elder brother), even for people younger than the speaker, since it is an indicator of equality. One imagines Mang Maman here to be of the older generation to whom the prefix Mang had long ago become attached.46Cihanjuang is in the northwest of Bandung, not far from Lembang and in the last two decades has become known as the centre of West Javanese flower gardening, where the Bandung elite buy their flowers and fruit trees.47The Sundanese here is parner bisnis, straight from English.48 Arisan are rotating credit associations meeting usually once a month and a common feature of social life at all levels of Indonesian society. In addition to encouraging monthly savings, arisan are equally important for providing a forum for an exchange of social information, as indicated here. Internet communication has over the last ten years come to supplement, especially among elite housewives, the arisan as a source of information.49In the original the sentence here is Itu ieu cruk-crek maruji. Itu ieu is ‘that and this’, maruji is to praise including the plural signifying infix -ar- therefore they praise(d). Cruk-crek is one of those typical Sundanese alliterative rhyming couplets which I have found it difficult to translate here. The dictionary gives the meaning: ‘description of a clacking sound (made with the tongue as an expression of surprise or disapproval etc.)’ (Hardjadibrata Citation2003). So one imagines the speakers sprinkling their comments with clucking sounds of surprise.50Carrefour is the big French franchise supermarket of which there are several in Bandung. And shopping at Carrefour, in one of the upmarket malls, is again a feature of middle-class life.51Surga means heaven. The first time I read the story I missed the implication of it and how it functions symbolically here, prefiguring what comes shortly. I have left it in Indonesian here to sustain the curiosity of the reader of the translation.Additional informationYus R. Ismail was born in 1970 in Sumedang, West Java, where he still resides. His Indonesian stories and poems have been published in national and local newspapers including Kompas, Republika, Pikiran Rakyat, Lampung Pos, Bangka Pos, Banjarmasin Pos, Padang Ekspres, and in magazines including Gadis, Femina, Matra, Horison. His Sundanese work has been published in Manglé, Galura, Langlang Budaya. His published books comprise collections of short stories, Disebabkan oleh cinta, Pohon tumbuh tidak tergesa-gesa, Sepanjang Jalan Cinta, Pencuri hati, Si Kabayan jadi Sufi, a novel, Ambilkan bulan bu, and a collection of poetry Airmata doa. His stories have also been publushed in several anthologies. He has worked as a journalist on Bengkulu Pos, Sunda Midang, and as a regular contributor to Pikiran Rakyat. He is now a full time-writer and rears chickens for a hobby. Email: yusrustandiismail@yahoo.co.idC.W. (Bill) Watson is a Professor at the School of Business and Management at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Indonesia, and is Emeritus Professor of the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent, UK.