IN 1921, Semaoen wrote a novel, Hikajat Kadiroen (The Story of Kadiroen) This sentences is from the preface: "I hope this tory that I written in prison with tears of misery will be enjoyed by many, namely all readers and ordinary people".
It's not known whether many people enjoyed it at the time. Actually, the novel was not intended to entertain. It was more like propaganda for the Communist Party an engrossing story. Speeches, statements, predictable dialogue; all were important aspect of the body of text. Written in clumsy Malay, the novel indeed probably had no other ambition. Literature, at this stage, was no more nor less than a project of politics. But it is interesting that Hikajat Kadiroen, a book about a youth who becomes attracted to communism, illustrates something, rather strange about the fate of a tale.
Semaoen was more of a leftist Sarekat Islam activist than a writer. Just prior to writing this novel, he was imprisoned for four months because the newspaper where he worked, Sinar Hindia, published an article by the socialist figure H.J.F.M. Sneevliet titled "Hunger and the Show of Power". This novel, which labelled itself with the old noun "hikajat" ("story"), was a story about a youth who wanted to become an assistant resident but then, as a "satria" (an old word for noble warrior), become attracted by communist ideas--a combination of the "old" and the "new". The story is loaded with ideals of liberation from traditional customs of the nobility and colonialism--yet strangely, at its end we do not find a class struggle. There is also no criticism of the Dutch as the figures of colonialism. An assistant resident is depicted as someone who "loves the Natives". But maybe because of this Hikajat Kadiroen was not one of the books banned at a time when anything sounding "leftist" or mentioning revolution was frightening. It became one book lined up among others, routine, like a character without a stage.
Probably a tale indeed ends up tending to take on its own development. It escapes from the initial planning of the author. Whether ideas or ideology, intention or program,perhaps it is like a command, an Utterance. But this command eventually finds life on the journey, where bends and slopes are unpredictable.And this is just what happens in a political novel, a work of propaganda moreover, which usually must be straight and thunderous and effective, for politics means a struggle for victory.
But what is politics, actually? If we listen to Semaoen and others of his time, the word has connections to the "struggle" of "satria". Kadiroen tales shows a moral story, this one at a time of smothering colonialism. But there are also others that show politics is by nature concerned with trifles.
One day in 1970, an American poet came to Indonesia and gave a disappointing talk. He was speaking on the relationship between a writer and politics, but what he read out was a short essay about his experience with recycled bottles. Don't get me wrong. This poet came from a small town in California. That town had a population of only fifteen thousand, and at one time he became a member of the local parliament. He submitted his nomination,campaigned and won because he had an interesting program about how to recycle bottles that where thrown away after people had been drinking in the parks each weekend.
He is talk was actually amusing and clever, fresh, and semi self deprecating, but members of the audiences in Indonesia grumbled and asked: what, is this politic? Isn't "politic" in Indonesia almost synonymous with the work of Making History and Changing the World? In other words, something serious, boisterous, tense, -something,whether carried out or not, having heavy consequences?
Maybe this is why Mao's interpretation--coming from a country similarly precarious--sort of fits with our context in Indonesia, when he said that politics is war without the spilling of blood.Even though it is not entirely true, of course.For blood can also spill. Indonesia has a long history of "politics" as something that can make someone exiled or imprisoned,kidnapped and murdered. In other words "politics" is drama. And in a dream like this there are inevitably those read and heroes, those seen as victim, those appearing as cowards, and those heard of as traitors. From this viewpoint, 'politics' becomes something fused with grand narratives and large scenarios, not with recycled bottles.
But perhaps this will not always be so. One day, Indonesia will enter a time when politics has lost drama, and any kind of grand scenario will become an Utterance--an ideological formula or big plans--which will not be capable of creating an absolute, straight journey. And when it is that the Utterance becomes dull, then politics will inevitably become routine. What will then be important will no longer be a number of brave heroes, but rather people who are patient.And there, what will have a role to play will no longer be yells of battle, but rather negotiation. Negotiation will become normal, and people will begin to see the wisdom of compromise. There will no longer be an atmosphere shaped by crisis, no longer an atmosphere of emergency so that the army comes to feel of obligatory to enter the arena, with its guns.
Certainly this process will become bland, a bit like organizing bottle recycling. But it will mean a loss of meaning? . No. For no matter what, this is an activity that is tied to the desire to nurture life within a frame of community,within a police, which is where the word 'politics' comes from. And there it will be possible for 'satria' to be born, who are called in the Hikajat Kadiroen--in a rather confusing sentence--those who 'renounce all their own needs for the common people'. Even without a stage.
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