Find as many short stories or poems published in newspapers as
possible, and you’ll see how most of them try to shock you with
peculiarly unique themes (see Seno Gumira Ajidarma’s and Budi Darma’s),
strangely shocking ways of presenting morals (see Mariana Aminudin’s
and Hudan Hidayat’s), or mentally provoking with paradoxical truth (see
Putu Wijaya’s). To us, their stories are what stories should look like.
We take for granted that their qualities are what we believe as the
esthetics of short stories.
With this mindset, it’s gonna be a
shock for us to read a book by Dr. DJoko Saryono. He is a Doctor in
Indonesian literature in the State University of Malang. The book
itself is Pergulatan Estetika dalam Sastra Indonesia (or, let's say,
Twists and Turns in the Esthetics of Indonesian Literature). It could
be that some of you, who live in Euro-austro-merican countries, have no
ideas about how unique Indonesian people were in the past. I bet you
don't.
Look, Indonesian people were categorized as the
so-termed 'Oral Society'. By this term, Djoko wants to say that
Indonesian people--or, archipelagic people, since the name Indonesia
was not used until around the second decade of the twentieth century,
hehehe...--lived with sense of literature kept alert in their mind.
They were closely related with literature. In that age, the kind of
literature which was pervasive was oral literature. People knew shadow
puppet--the stories of which were commonly only written in the head of
its puppeters--or parikan--a kind of poetry created, uttered, and
modified by rural communities. Both kinds of literature, along with
several other kinds, were created by some people, and then uttered by
firsthand listeners, and sometimes uttered again by secondhand
listeners with some modification, and still sometimes this modification
was then modified again by other people, without anyone claiming to
have the copyright. In those days, literature belonged to everyone as
well as to noone. Anybody had the right to modify it but nobody had the
right to claim it theirs.
Further, Djoko writes that the
esthetics of Indonesian (Javanese and Malayan) literature of that age
was the so called 'The Esthetics of Harmony". In this literature, we
could find teachings and musings aiming at making those who happened to
hear them wiser, more informed, enlightened. Newnesses in presentation,
breakthroughs in sentence, and irony in themes were nowhere to be
found. The literature was solely for the sake of betterment. Well, do I
sound scholarly enough? Hehehe... We call this 'The Esthetics of
Harmony'. Remember this term by head, okey? I'll ask you to define it
in the final exam. Hahaha...
It was later, around the
beginning of the twentieth century, that an intruding esthetics was
caught in the act. This esthetics sowed its seeds in literature written
in Indonesian (or modified Malayan language, or lingua-francanized
Malayan language). People began to find that literature was filled with
the desire to present new things, fresh forms, different ideas,
shocking ending, belief-shattering ideas, and so on. We could, and CAN,
see how Indonesian writer compete in a rat race in search of shocking
themes, amazing ironies, etc. Coming up with a
new-shocking-nevereverseenbefore literary works is every wannabe
writer's dream. And some authors deemed writing pornographic literature
claim to have, as a matter of fact, presented a theme, dilemma,
phenomena for people to ponder and digest and come up with wisdom.
Well, this is the so called 'The Esthetics of Contradiction' (I hope
you don't find this translation, from ESTETIKA PERTENTANGAN,
confusing).
However, this book is far from telling you that
‘The Esthetics of Contradiction’ is lower than ‘The Esthetics of
Harmony. No. It points out that there has been a shift of esthetics.
And discussing about esthetics, it’s way too childish for us to judge
whether one is right or wrong in his/her esthetical creed.
More summaries about the Pergulatan Estetika Dalam Sastra Indonesia