December/January, 1998
No. 032/VI/97
cover story
Christians in
Paradise
How Christianity came
to Bali
Once Upon a
New Years Eve
MC-ing a New Year's
Eve party during a
blackout
bali focus:
nusa dua and
jimbaran
The Origin of
Nusa Dua
A fable
People of a
Fertile Sea
The fishers of
Jimbaran beach
Center Stage
Steve Charles revamps
the Candraloka
Amphitheatre
Nusa Dua Nights
How to survive them
The Sacred
Wilderness
Colonial encounters with
Bali's southern peninsula
arts and
culture
Latter Day
Laksamana
A.A.M. Djelantik's
recently launched
autobiography
Kulkul
new Fiction by Gde
Aryantha Soethama
Who are Bali's literati?
beyond
bali
An Eddy in The
Counter of Time
Kayaking off the west
coast of Lombok
Slick and Cool in
Sengigi
Round midnight at the
famed Lombok resort
regular
Fashion
Adventure
Into the blue
Food
Jewel of the southren rim
Jungle Drums
Bali Update
On the Road
Home Grown
Made Adi Putra
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The Rat Pack
CULTURAL GUERILLAS
A second literary movement didn't emerge until much later, in the sixties and seventies, when literary activity gathered momentum around such figures as Frans Nadjira, Gerson Poyk and Putu Wijaya. Unlike their predecessors at Suryakanta, these writers did not have a political agenda and generally tended to keep out of the public eye and the mass media. They therefore quickly developed a reputation as bohemians, or cultural guerillas. Like most Indonesian poets of this period, they practised their art by reading, writing and discussing poetry in small village communities, sometimes in the middle of a rice field. Far from the galleries, museums and journalists of the establishment, they forged a literary sub-culture that bridged the 'modern' and the 'traditional'.
But as is usually the case, art movements with bohemian, anti-establishment beginnings get drawn into the mainstream sooner or later, be it willingly or otherwise. Take the case of crazed Balinese poet Warih Wiratsana who, when riding on the back of a friend's motorbike some years ago, screamed "STOP!" out of the blue, leapt off the bike, drew a pencil and paper from his pocket, and began scribbling furiously. "Some words just popped into my head," he explained to his friend, before mounting the bike again, and riding off, somewhat relieved. Last month, this mad poet was the proud winner of the esteemed national poetry prize known as the Borobudur Award.
THE RAT PACK
Bali's third and most recent literary movement has formed around a Sumbanese writer called Umbu Landu Paranggi, who before coming to Bali in the late seventies had already gained a reputation in the Central Javanese city of Yogyakarta as 'the president of Malioboro'. In this city of artists, the main street Malioboro is a major bohemian hangout, and the Sumbanese remains to this day a living legend there.
In 1978, Umbu left for Bali where he gathered around him a circle of poets as he had done in Yogyakarta. He continues to be a prime force behind the appreciation, publication, reading and performance of poetry in Bali, in rural as well as urban areas. "Poetry infuses every aspect of human life," teaches the softly spoken poet. "Even architecture and mathematics have elements of poetry in them."
The Umbu generation was born with the establishment of a weekly literary page in the local daily Bali Post. Under Umbu's editorship the page quickly gained prestige, and soon became the most sought after place for poets to be published in Bali. The existence of theBali Post literary page prompted the emergence of an informal, Bali-wide network of poets, and spawned a core of writers who humurously refer to themselves as 'The Rat Pack'.
Jadi sajak bilang apa saja pada kau/Alhamdullilah, begitu rupa kau/Jadi penggembara...Let poetry speak freely to you/Thanks be to God, that is your place/To be a vagrant ('Upacara XXXIII', Umbu Landu Paranggi)
By the late eighties the network centering on The Rat Pack had formed into a number of sanggars, or artists' communities, involving not only poets but also actors, playwrights and other writers. The Denpasar-based Sanggar Minum Kopi (Coffee Drinking Sanggar), which organised a series of poetry contests acclaimed as one of the best in Indonesia, and the Forum Apresiasi Kebudayaan (Forum for Cultural Appreciation) are two of the most renowned sanggars in Bali. And there exist a whole host more throughout high schools and universities across the island.
At its core, The Rat Pack consists of a few well-known artists and journalists who make a living from writing. But through the popularisation of the sanggar as an institution, this core has extended its influence to people from all walks of life. As well as students, journalists and teachers, there are architects, doctors, agriculturalists, technicians and even martial artists who are members of sanggars. Ethnically too,sanggar membership is varied, including Balinese Chinese, Javanese and Macassan (and of course Sumbanese), as well as those from outside Indonesia.
From the poetry coming out of Bali, and the discussions that proceed in the sanggars, it is evident that the Balinese literary community is characteristically open to ideas, un-parochial as it were. This distinctive openness has trained enquiring minds to journalism, which is where many Balinese poets have ended up - Putu Wirata, Rai Sulastra and Ketut Sumarta to mention a few. "My mother tongue, Balinese, is significantly different to the Indonesian language of journalism," explains Rai Sulastra, nicknamed leyak (a kind of Balinese goblin) for his penchant for reporting on the mystical. "A knowledge of poetry has helped me infuse my journalistic writing in Indonesian with a Balinese feel." Hartanto, a journalist who originates from Java and is perhaps Forum Apresiasi Kebudayaan's most active member, responds to Sulastra by offering a different angle on the matter. "There is an inherent poetry in Bali, we just need to open our senses to it."
by Benito Lopulalan
photos courtesy of Hartanto
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