Anwar, Chairil 1922-1949

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ANWAR, Chairil 1922-1949

PERSONAL:

Born July 26, 1922 in Medan, East Sumatra, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia); died of complications arising from cirrhosis, syphilis, and typhus April 28, 1949, in Djakarta, Indonesia; married; one daughter. Education: Completed elementary and two years of middle school. Politics: Indonesian nationalist. Religion: Islam.

CAREER:

Poet and translator.

MEMBER:

45 Group (literary organization).

WRITINGS:

Deru tjampur debu (poetry), 1949.

Kerikil tadjam dan jang terampas dan jang putus (poetry), 1949.

(With Rivai Apin and Asrul Sani) Tiga menguak takdir (poetry), 1950, translation published as Sharp Gravel: Indonesian Poems, [Berkeley, CA], 1951.

Selected Poems, New Directions (New York, NY), 1963.

The Complete Poetry and Prose of Chairil Anwar, edited and translated by Burton Raffel, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1970.

The Complete Poems of Chairil Anwar, edited and translated by Liaw Yock Fang, with H. B. Jassin, University Education Press (Singapore), 1974.

Aku ini binatang jalang, Gramedia (Djakarta, Indonesia), 1986.

Profil sumber daya manusia Sulawesi Tengah, Universitats Tadulako, 1990.

Edisi kritis puisi Chairil Anwar, Dian Rakyat, 1996.

Derai-derai cemara, Horison (Djakarta, Indonesia), 1999.

The Voice of the Night: Complete Poetry and Prose of Chairil Anwar, translated by Burton Raffel, Ohio University Center for International Studies (Athens, OH), 1993.

SIDELIGHTS:

Chairil Anwar died in 1949 at age twenty-six, never living to see the publication of his works. Anwar is acknowledged as Indonesia's greatest modern poet, the first to fully utilize the Indonesian language to create unique an emotionally striking verse. "Although his total output was extremely limited, consisting of only about seventy-five poems," noted an essayist in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, "his impact upon the development of his nation's literature was enormous, a fact which is reflected in the common appellation for postwar Indonesian poets—'Chairil's Generation.'"

Very little is known about Anwar's early years, before he arrived in Djakarta, Java, in 1940 at age eighteen. He was born in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). His family appears to have been financially comfortable; he enjoyed the luxury of an education at a private Dutch school, a rarity for native-born children at the time, and learned English, German, Dutch, and the Indonesian language. His educational funds were cut off prematurely when his father remarried, prompting Anwar's mother to move to Djakarta with her son. Over the next nine years, before he died, he became Indonesia's premier poet. Anwar "lived wildly, even carelessly, but he wrote with infinite care," noted Burton Raffel in the Encyclopedia of World Literature. Anwar had "a rare ability to absorb and transform a host of influences. His use of the Indonesian language was both magical and as close to totally new as is possible: many Indonesian writers confessed that, until his work appeared, they had no idea what Indonesian was capable of as a literary instrument," according to Raffel.

In Djakarta, Anwar was unable to support himself beyond a meagre income from his writings. Within two years of arriving in Djakarta with his mother, the Japanese invaded the island of Java. Even earning a living from his literary efforts was difficult during the occupation period, as the Japanese military overseers suppressed the publication of indigenous poetry. They deemed literary works by natives inflammatory—Anwar's early, non-nationalist writings fit that description too readily. Not until 1949 and the end of the Japanese occupation was his work published outside of small, short-lived periodicals; for most of his life, readers simply received Anwar's work through person-to-person circulation.

Anwar was an irrepressible poet, writing amid extreme difficulties—even the Japanese occupation could not still his voice. His language is intense and direct; his themes range from patriotism to love. "Penerimaan" ("Willingness") is a vivid example. "If you like I'll take you back/With all my heart/I'm still alone/I know you're not what you were/Like a flower pulled into parts/Don't crawl! Stare at me bravely/If you like, I'll take you back/For myself, but/I won't share even with a mirror." The Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism reviewer also noted that "Anwar's poetry represents a conscious and dramatic rejection of both the Dutch-influenced literature of his country's long colonial period and the poetry of the Pudjangga Baru movement which immediately preceded Anwar's era and which looked to nineteenth-century Western poetry for its models."

Perhaps this was why Anwar became a model for his fellow, up-and-coming Djakartan poets. He became a member of the "45 Group," writers who had dedicated their art and their lives to the nationalist movement. These writers had come of age through the Japanese occupation, and their writings reflected a yearning for world-class literary recognition. Although he was a model for the members of the group, Anwar never formally led, having lived in stark contrast to such a role. As James S. Holmes noted in his introduction to Selected Poems by Chairil Anwar, "He was too apt to disappear suddenly in the midst of the planning, deserting all the literary ado for the sailors of the harbor area, the prostitutes of downtown Djakarta or the soldiers fighting the Dutch in the mountains."

Anwar died on April 28, 1949, leaving scholars to reflect on his brief, but influential, existence. In 1967 A. Teeuw, author of Modern Indonesian Literature, recalled the poet as one who "gained mastery over the power of words and determined their usage. That is the magic of poetry which lends power to the ordinary word; Chairil possessed that mysterious power which is so difficult to explain. He used words in such a way that they became new and he so combined them that they illuminated each other." In this and many other ways, Teeuw concluded, Anwar "remains a living and present force in the development of Indonesia. Through his personality and his poetry he contributed to the formation of that new Indonesia, and helped to give it direction."