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Belenggu
Cover of the 21st printing
AuthorArmijn Pane
LanguageIndonesian
GenreNovel
PublisherPoedjangga Baroe
Dian Rakyat
Publication date
1940
Publication placeIndonesia
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages150 (21st printing)
ISBN978-979-523-048-8 (21st printing) Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character

Belenggu (translated to English as Shackles) is a novel by Indonesian author Armijn Pane. Inspired in part by Sigmund Freud's theories on psychoanalysis, it follows the love triangle between a doctor, his wife, and his childhood friend; the triangle eventually causes all three characters to lose the ones they love. Originally published by the literary magazine Poedjangga Baroe in three installments from April to June 1940, it is the magazine's only published novel and the first Indonesian psychological novel.

Belenggu was based on themes present in two of Pane's early short stories: "Barang Tiada Berharga" ("Worthless Thing"; 1935) and "Lupa" ("Forget"; 1936). The resulting novel, written to represent humanity's stream of consciousness and with heavy use of ellipses and monologues to show internal struggle, was very different from earlier works. Unlike earlier Indonesian novels, which kept to traditional themes such as good versus evil, Belenggu was mainly focused on its character's psychological conflict. It also showed modernity and traditionalism as a binary system, unable to reach a compromise.

After completion, Belenggu was offered to the Dutch colonial government's state publisher, Balai Pustaka, in 1938, but rejected as "immoral". It was then picked up by Poedjangga Baroe. Initial critical reception to the novel was mixed. Proponents argued that it served as an honest representation of the internal conflicts faced by Indonesian intellectuals, while opponents dismissed the novel as "pornographic" because of its inclusion of prostitution and adultery. Later reviews have been more positive: in 1976, poet Muhammad Balfas called it "in every respect the best novel of pre-war Indonesian literature".[1] Belenggu has been translated into several languages, including into English in 1989.

Plot

The novel begins as Sukartono (Tono), a Dutch-trained doctor, and his wife Sumartini (Tini), residents of Batavia (modern day Jakarta), are suffering a marital breakdown. Tono is busy treating his patients, leaving no time for him to be with Tini. In response, Tini has become active in numerous social organizations and women's groups, leaving her little time to deal with household work. This further distances Tono from her, as he expects her to behave like a traditional wife and be waiting for him at home with dinner ready when he returns from work.

One day, Tono receives a call from a Nyonya Eni, who asks him to treat her at a hotel. After Tono arrives at the hotel where Eni is staying, he discovers that she is actually his childhood friend Rohayah (Yah). Yah, who had had romantic feelings for Tono since childhood, begins seducing him, and after a while he accepts her advances. The two begin furtively meeting, often taking long walks at the port Tanjung Priok. When Tini goes to Surakarta to attend a women's congress, Tono decides to stay at Yah's house for a week.

While at Yah's, Tono and Yah discuss their pasts. Tono reveals that after he graduated from elementary school in Bandung, where he studied with Yah, he attended medical school in Surabaya and married Tini for her beauty. Meanwhile, Yah was forced to marry an older man and move to Palembang. After deciding that life as a wife was not for her, she moved to Batavia and became a prostitute, before serving as a Dutchman's mistress for three years. Tono falls further in love with Yah, as he feels that she is more likely to be a proper wife for him; Yah, however, does not consider herself ready for marriage.

Tono, a fan of traditional kroncong music, is asked to judge a kroncong singing contest at local Gambir Market. While there, he meets with Hartono, a political activist with the political party Partindo, who inquires about Tini. On a later date, Hartono visits Tono's home and meets Tini. It is revealed that Tini was romantically involved with Hartono while the two of them were in university, where Tini surrendered her virginity to him; this action, unacceptable in traditional culture, made her disgusted with herself and unable to love. Hartono had made the situation worse by breaking off their relationship through a letter. When Hartono asks her to take him back, Tini refuses.

Tini discovers that Tono has been having an affair, and is furious. She then goes to meet Yah. However, after a long talk she decides that Yah is better for Tono and tells her to marry him; she then moves back to Surabaya, leaving Tono in Batavia. However, Yah feels that she would only ruin Tono's respected status as a doctor because of her history as a prostitute. She decides to move to New Caledonia, leaving a note for Tono as well as a record showing that she is also Tono's favourite singer, Siti Hajati. On the way to New Caledonia, Yah pines for Tono and hears his voice calling from afar, giving a speech on the radio. Tono, now alone, dedicates himself to his work in an attempt to fill the void left in his heart.

Characters

Sukartono
Sukartono (abbreviated as Tono) is a doctor who is Tini's husband and Yah's lover. A doctor, he treats poor patients for free and is thus well-liked by the general populace. He is also a big fan of traditional kroncong music: in medical school he preferred to sing instead of study, and as a doctor he keeps a radio in his treatment room. This affection for traditional music reflects his desire to have a traditionally-minded wife to take care of his needs. Suffering from his loneliness in his loveless marriage with the modern-minded Tini, he falls for Yah, whom he perceives as being more willing to play the traditional wife. However, after Tini and Yah leave him, he is left alone.[2]
Sumartini
Sumartini (abbreviated as Tini) is Tono's ultra-modern wife. While in university, she was very popular and enjoyed partying. During this time she lost her virginity to Hartono, an act which is viewed as unacceptable in traditional Indonesian culture; when he left her, she became increasingly aloof and distant from men. After marrying Tono, she felt increasingly lonely and engrossed herself in social work to give her life meaning. After learning of Tono's infidelity and seeing that Yah could take better care of him, Tini leaves her husband and moves to Surabaya.[3]
Yoseph Yapi Taum, a lecturer at Sanata Dharma University in Yogyakarta, views Tini's aloof nature as a major force driving Tono to Yah; her lifestyle, of which Tono is not a part, alienates him and drives him to find a more traditional woman.[4] Tham Seong Chee, a political scientist from Singapore, views her as a weak-willed character, unwilling to act without outside intervention and even then unable to work out her issues with Tono. He also sees her as being fettered by her own values, which are incompatible with those held by the general Indonesian populace.[5] Indonesian poet and literary critic Goenawan Mohamad views her as being driven in part by the stress placed on her by her husband's expectations.[6]
Rohayah
Rohayah (also known by the pseudonyms Nyonya Eni and Siti Hayati; abbreviated Yah) is Tono's childhood friend and lover, as well as a popular kroncong singer. After Tono, who is three years her elder, graduated from elementary school, Yah was forcibly married to man twenty years her senior and brought from Bandung to Palembang. After escaping him, she returned to Bandung and found that her parents had died, she moved to Batavia and became a prostitute; she also became a popular kroncong singer under the pseudonym Siti Hayati. When she discovers that Tono has become a doctor in Batavia, she pretends to be a patient and seduces him by letting her houserobe slip and revealing skin. Although the two fall deeply in love, Yah decides to leave Tono and move to New Caledonia because she feels that society would view him poorly if he married a former prostitute.[7]
Tham sees Yah as being a good match for Tono in personality, as she shows a willingness to serve as the traditional wife. He sees the underlying message of her refusal to marry him as that "morals and ethical standards are frequently beyond the ken of intellect, reason, or rationality".[5] Mohamad describes her as being fatalistic and notes that she downplays her past by saying that any of a thousand girls in Tanjung Priok could tell the same story; he also found her touching without being melodramatic. Mohamad notes that Yah was the first prostitute featured in an Indonesian work who was portrayed sympathetically.[6]
Hartono
Hartono is Tini's lover from university; he was also Tono's friend.[8] After hearing that Tini enjoys partying, he approaches her and they begin dating. After they have sex, he breaks off their relationship through a letter.[3] He then drops out of university and becomes involved with the nascent nationalist movement, following future-president Sukarno;[9][10] these acts cause his family to disown him. He later comes to Batavia to search for Tono and is surprised to find that Tini has married the doctor. Hartono asks her to run away with him, but is refused. He then goes to Surabaya.[3]
Clive Christie, a lecturer on Southeast Asian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, describes Hartono as the only overtly political character in the novel.[10]
Women's group
The various members of Tini's women's group, including Mrs. Sutatmo, Mrs. Padma, Mrs. Rusdio, and Aminah, aid her in planning different social events.[11] Mrs. Rusdio is Tini's friend from university. Aminah was one of Tini's competitors for Tono and enjoys interfering in the couple's lives.[12] The other two disapprove of Tini's modernness and her lack of attention to Tono.[11]
Servants
Tono and Tini are served by two men, Karno and Abdul. Karno, Tono's loyal manservant, dislikes Tini and considers her overly emotional.[13] Abdul is their driver, who usually drives Tono to meet his patients.[14]

Influences

Bakri Siregar, an Indonesian socialist literary critic associated with the socialist literary organisation Lekra, notes that Pane was influenced in part by Sigmund Freud's theories on psychoanalysis; he writes that it is most evident in the treatment of Sumartini.[15] Taum notes that the novel follows the individual characters stream of consciousness, which gives the reader a greater understanding of the characters and their conflicts.[16] The novel was written in the middle of Pane's career, and two of Pane's earlier short stories, "Barang Tiada Berharga" ("Worthless Thing"; 1935) and "Lupa" ("Forget"; 1936), contained plot points used in Belenggu. "Barang Tiada Berharga" also dealt with a doctor and his wife, Pardi and Haereni, who were characterized in a similar manner as Sukartono and Sumartini, while "Lupa" introduced the main character Sukartono.[17] As the reigning Dutch colonial government forbade the involvement of politics in literature, Pane minimized the explicit effects of colonialism in the novel.[10]

Style

Belenggu uses ellipses and monologues heavily to represent the main characters' internal turmoil; Dutch scholar of Indonesian literature A. Teeuw calls it a "three-pronged interior monologue".[a][18] Unlike works published by Balai Pustaka, the state-owned publisher of the Dutch East Indies, Belenggu does not provide full exposition; instead, it only explicitly states key points and leaves the rest for the reader to interpret, thus inviting more active participation.[19]

Unlike authors of earlier works published by Balai Bahasa, Pane does not use proverbs; he instead uses similes. Another way in which he writes differently than earlier writers is by limiting his use of the Dutch language; earlier writers such as Abdul Muis and Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana used the language of the dominant colonial power to illustrate the intellectualism of the main characters. Instead, in Belenggu Pane relies on the Indonesianized loanwords, with a glossary of difficult or uncommon words provided with early editions of the novel.[1][20] Siregar wrote that Pane's language reflected the actual use of Indonesian well.[20]

Analysis

Symbolism

According to Taum, the title Belenggu reflects the inner conflicts faced by the main characters that limit their actions. Taum points to the climax of the novel – in which Rohayah refuses to marry Sukartono because if she were to marry him he would lose face owing to her past – as a prime example of these limitations.[21] Siregar notes that this is supported by dialogue between Hartono and Sukartono, in which they note that humans are inherently held back by their reminiscences of the past.[22] Belenggu was the first Indonesian psychological novel.[23]

Uncommonly for Indonesian literature during this time period, Belenggu's chapters were labeled with only a number – other works, such as Abdul Muis' 1928 novel Salah Asuhan (Wrong Upbringing), gave both a number and subtitle to the chapters. According to Taum, this change in style represents humanity's stream of consciousness, as opposed to the earlier style that kept chapters separate.[24]

Themes

Teeuw notes that, unlike most Indonesian novels at the time, Belenggu did not feature a good and pure protagonist in a struggle against an evil antagonist or deal with conflict and differences between different generations.[25] It also did away with the common themes of forced marriage and the youth's nonacceptance of adat (traditional culture).[1] Instead, it showed a love triangle – common in Western literature but then unheard of in Indonesian literature – without an indication of whether any characters were good, evil, right, or wrong. He writes that the novel portrayed the interior struggle of a "new kind of human",[b] one who is the result of a mixture of Eastern and Western cultures.[25]

Taum indicates that Belenggu presents modernity and traditionalism as a binary system, contrasting the new with the old. For example, Sukartono, a doctor (considered a symbol of modernity), is obsessed with the past, including his schoolmate Rahayah, and prefers traditional kroncong music over modern genres. Through the contrast of Sukartono and his ultra-modern, emancipatory wife Sumartini, Pane emphasizes that modernity does not necessarily bring happiness. Taum writes that this may have been influenced by or even written as a response to Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana's 1936 novel Layar Terkembang (With Sails Unfurled), which dealt with a similar theme but supported modernization.[26]

Christie notes that Belenggu also contains a strong sense of alienation. He writes that the characters seem to be part of a "society suspended in a vacuum", without an explicit connection to colonialism but also unable to come to terms with traditional mores. Christie describes Sukartono's relationship with Rohayah as symbolic of attempts by intellectual to engage with the masses through a shared popular culture, but ultimately failing.[10]

Release

Belenggu was submitted to Balai Pustaka for publication in 1938, but was not accepted due to its perceived dissonance with public morality,[27] particularly its portrayal of adultery – a key part in the plot – as normal. Eventually Belenggu was picked up by the literary magazine Poedjangga Baroe, which Pane had helped found in 1933, and was published in a serial format in three editions between April and June 1940.[25][27] Belenggu was the only novel published by the magazine.[27]

Belenggu has been translated into multiple languages: in 1965, Malay; in 1988, Mandarin; and in 1989, English. The English translation – published by the Lontar Foundation under the title Shackles – was done by John McGlynn.[28]

Reception

Upon its release, there were two main reactions. Proponents of the novel stated that it was daring, as it dealt with themes based on societal realities.[29] For example, journalist S. K. Trimurti wrote that the novel clearly reflected issues faced by highly educated Indonesians in dealing with traditional culture.[30] However, opponents of the novel dismissed it as "pornographic", emphasising traditionally taboo acts like prostitution and adultery.[29] Alisjahbana wrote that it was fatalistic and defeatist as he felt it did not portray the freedom of spirit necessary for people to choose their own destiny,[31] and he decried the plot as lacking causality.[27] According to Teeuw, the initial mixed reception was due in part to Indonesian readers – accustomed to idealized literature – being shocked by the realistic portrayals in Belenggu.[31]

Later reviews have generally been more positive. Literary documentarian HB Jassin wrote in 1967 that, although the characters came across as caricatures, Belenggu was capable of making readers stop and think about modern conditions.[32] In 1969 the novel received an award for outstanding literature from the Indonesian government;[33] that same year, Indonesian writer and literary critic Ajip Rosidi wrote that the novel was more interesting than earlier works because its ending was open to interpretation.[32] Indonesian poet and literary critic Muhammad Balfas wrote in 1976 that Belenggu was "in every respect the best novel of pre-war Indonesian literature".[1] In his 1980 book on Indonesian literature, Teeuw wrote that despite several flaws in the psychological portrayal of the main characters, Belenggu was the only novel from before the Indonesian National Revolution in which a Western reader would feel truly involved.[31] Tham wrote in 1981 that the novel was the best reflection of the growing consciousness of the Indonesian people that Western values, such as individualism and intellectualism, contradicted traditional values.[34]

Notes

  1. ^ Original: "... sebuah monologue interieure yang berganda tiga".
  2. ^ Original: "... manusia jenis baru...".

References

Footnotes
  1. ^ a b c d Balfas 1976, p. 69.
  2. ^ Taum 2008, pp. 139–141.
  3. ^ a b c Taum 2008, pp. 142–143.
  4. ^ Taum 2008, p. 142.
  5. ^ a b Tham 1981, p. 114.
  6. ^ a b Mohamad 1985, Yah.
  7. ^ Taum 2008, pp. 144–146.
  8. ^ Pane 2008, p. 112.
  9. ^ Pane 2008, p. 100.
  10. ^ a b c d Christie 2001, p. 69.
  11. ^ a b Pane 2008, pp. 41–43.
  12. ^ Pane 2008, p. 52.
  13. ^ Pane 2008, p. 18.
  14. ^ Pane 2008, p. 19.
  15. ^ Siregar 1964, p. 103.
  16. ^ Taum 2008, p. 137.
  17. ^ Balfas 1976, p. 71.
  18. ^ Teeuw 1980, p. 122.
  19. ^ Siregar 1964, p. 102.
  20. ^ a b Siregar 1964, pp. 103–104.
  21. ^ Taum 2008, p. 147.
  22. ^ Siregar 1964, p. 105.
  23. ^ Rampan 2000, p. 92.
  24. ^ Taum 2008, p. 138.
  25. ^ a b c Teeuw 1980, p. 119.
  26. ^ Taum 2008, pp. 148–150.
  27. ^ a b c d Balfas 1976, p. 68.
  28. ^ Mahayana, Sofyan & Dian 2007, pp. 83–84.
  29. ^ a b Taum 2008, p. 113.
  30. ^ Tham 1981, p. 115.
  31. ^ a b c Teeuw 1980, p. 121.
  32. ^ a b KS 2010, p. 99.
  33. ^ Mahayana, Sofyan & Dian 2007, p. 83.
  34. ^ Tham 1981, p. 112.
Bibliography

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