Postcolonial Author: "Pramoedya Ananta Toer"

Pramoedya Ananta Toer [1] (February 6, 1925 – April 30, 2006) was an Indonesian author of novels, short stories, essays, polemics, and histories of his homeland and its people. A well-regarded writer in the West, Pramoedya's outspoken and often politically charged writings faced censorship in his native land during the pre-reformation era. For opposing the policies of both founding president Sukarno, as well as those of its successor, the New Order regime of Suharto, he faced extrajudicial punishment. During the many years in which he suffered imprisonment and house arrest, he became a cause célèbre for advocates of freedom of expression and human rights.

Early years

Pramoedya was born on February 6, 1925, in the town of Blora in the heartland of Java, then a part of the Dutch East Indies. He was the firstborn son in his family; his father was a teacher, who was also active in Boedi Oetomo (the first recognized national organization in Indonesia) and his mother was a rice trader. His maternal grandfather had taken the pilgramage to Mecca.[2] As it is written in his semi-autobiographical collection of short stories "Cerita Dari Blora", the name was actually Pramoedya Ananta Mastoer. But he felt that the family name Mastoer (his father's name) seemed too aristocratic. The Javanese prefix "Mas" refers to a man of the lowest rank in a noble family. Consequently he omitted "Mas" and kept Toer as his family name. He went on to the Radio Vocational School in Surabaya but had barely graduated from the school when Japan invaded Surabaya (1942).

During World War II, Pramoedya (like many Indonesian Nationalists, Sukarno and Suharto among them) at first supported the occupying forces of Imperial Japan. He believed the Japanese to be the lesser of two evils, compared to the Dutch. He worked as a typist for a Japanese newspaper in Jakarta. As the war went on, however, Indonesians were dismayed by the austerity of wartime rationing and by increasingly harsh measures taken by the Japanese military. The Nationalist forces loyal to Sukarno switched their support to the incoming Allies against Japan; all indications are that Pramoedya did as well.

On August 17, 1945, after the news of Allied victory over Japan reached Indonesia, Sukarno proclaimed Indonesia's total independence from all colonialists. This touched off the Indonesian National Revolution against the forces of the British and Dutch. In this war, Pramoedya joined a paramilitary group in Karawang, Kranji (West Java) and eventually was stationed in Jakarta. During this time he wrote short stories and books, as well as propaganda for the Nationalist cause. He was eventually imprisoned by the Dutch in Jakarta in 1947 and remained there until 1949, the year the Netherlands accepted Indonesian independence. While imprisoned in Bukit Duri from 1947 to 1949 for his role in the Indonesian Revolution, he wrote his first major novel The Fugitive.

Post-Independence prominence

In the first years after the struggle for independence, Pramoedya wrote several works of fiction dealing with the problems of the newly founded nation, as well as semi-autobiographical works based on his wartime memoirs. He was soon able to live in the Netherlands as part of a cultural exchange program. In the years that followed, he took an interest in several other cultural exchanges, including trips to the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China, as well as translations of Russian writers Maxim Gorky and Leo Tolstoy.

In Indonesia, Pramoedya built up a reputation as a literary and social critic, joining the left-wing writers' group Lekra and writing in various newspapers and literary journals. His writing style became more politically charged, as evidenced in his story Korupsi (Corruption), a critical fiction of a civil servant who falls into the trap of corruption. This created friction between him and the government of Sukarno.

From the late 1950s, Pramoedya began teaching literary history at the left-wing Universitas Res Publica. As he prepared material, he began to realise that the study of Indonesian language and literature had been distorted by the Dutch colonial authorities. He sought out materials that had been ignored by colonial educational institutions, and which had continued to be ignored after independence.

Having spent time in China, he became greatly sympathetic to the Indonesian Chinese over the persecutions they faced in postcolonial Indonesia. Most notably, he published a series of letters addressed to an imagined Chinese correspondent discussing the history of the Indonesian Chinese, called Hoakiau di Indonesia (History of the Overseas Chinese in Indonesia). He criticized the government for being too Java-centric and insensitive to the needs and desires of the other regions and peoples of Indonesia. As a result, he was arrested by the Indonesian military and jailed at Cipinang prison for nine months.

Imprisonment under Suharto

In the first years after the independence struggle, a wave of anti-communist and anti-Chinese fervor came to a head with the assassinations of several right-wing generals, allegedly by elements loyal to the Communist Party of Indonesia. After the transition to Suharto's New Order, Pramoedya's position as the head of People's Cultural Organisation, a literary wing of Indonesian Communist Party caused him to be considered a communist and enemy of the "New Order" regime. He was arrested, beaten, and imprisoned by Suharto's government and named a tapol ("political prisoner"). His books were banned from circulation, and he was imprisoned without trial, first in Nusa Kambangan off the coast of Java, and then in the penal colony of Buru in the eastern islands of the Indonesian archipelago.

He was banned from writing during his imprisonment on the island of Buru, but still managed to compose - orally - his best-known series of work to date, the Buru Quartet, a series of 4 semi-fictional novels chronicling the development of Indonesian nationalism. The English titles of the books in the quartet are This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps, and House of Glass. The main character of the series, Minke, a Javanese minor royal, was based on an Indonesian journalist active in the nationalist movement, Tirto Adhi Surjo. Pramoedya had done research for the books before his imprisonment in the Buru prison camp; when he was arrested, his library was burned and he was not permitted even to have a pencil in the prison. Doubting that he would ever be able to write the novels down himself, he narrated them to his fellow prisoners. Eventually, with the support of the other prisoners who took on extra labor to reduce his workload, Pramoedya was able to write the novels down, and the published works derive their name "Buru Quartet" from the prison where he produced them. They have been collected and published in English (translated by Max Lane) and Indonesian, as well as many other languages. Though publication was banned in Indonesia, copies were scanned by Indonesians abroad and distributed via the Internet to people inside the country.

Pramoedya's works on colonial Indonesia recognised the importance of Islam as a vehicle for popular opposition to the Dutch. On the other hand, his works rejected those who used religion to deny critical thinking, and on occasion show considerable negativity to the religiously pious which is speculated to have resulted from a low number of Hajjis in his native Blora and resentment of his Haji grandfather's divorce and abandonment of his grandmother.[2]

Release and subsequent works

Pramoedya was released from imprisonment in 1979, but remained under house arrest in Jakarta until 1992. During this time he released The Girl From the Coast, another semi-fictional novel based on his grandmother's own experience (volumes 2 and 3 of this work were destroyed along with his library in 1965). He also wrote Nyanyi Sunyi Seorang Bisu (1995; A Mute's Soliloquy), an autobiography based on the letters that he wrote for his daughter but were not allowed to be sent, and Arus Balik (1995).

More recently, he wrote many columns and short articles criticizing the current Indonesian government. He wrote a book Perawan Remaja dalam Cengkraman Militer (Young Virgins in the Military's Grip), a documentary written in the style of a novel showcasing the plight of Javanese women who were forced to become comfort women during the Japanese occupation. They were brought to the island of Buru where they were sexually abused, and ended up staying there instead of returning to Java. Pramoedya made their acquaintance when he himself was a political prisoner on the Buru island in the 1970s.

Pramoedya was hospitalized on April 27th 2006, for complications brought on by diabetes and heart disease. He was also a heavy smoker of clove cigarettes and had endured years of abuse while in detention. He died on April 30th 2006 at the age of 81. Pramoedya earned several accolades, and was frequently discussed as Indonesia's and Southeast Asia's best candidate for a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Awards

* 1988 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award.
* 1989 The Fund for Free Expression Award, New York, USA.
* 1992 English P.E.N Centre Award, Great Britain.
* 1992 Stichting Wertheim Award, Netherland.
* 1995 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts.
* 1999 Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Michigan.
* 1999 Chancellor's Distinguished Honor Award from the University of California, Berkeley.
* 2000 Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Republic of France.
* 2000 11th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize.
* 2004 Norwegian Authors' Union award for his contribution to world literature and his continuous struggle for the right to freedom of expression.
* 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll by the Prospect.

Major Works

* Kranji-Bekasi Jatuh (1947)
* Perburuan (The Fugitive) (1950)
* Keluarga Gerilya (1950)
* Bukan Pasarmalam (1951)
* Cerita dari Blora (1952)
* Gulat di Jakarta (1953)
* Korupsi (Corruption) (1954)
* Midah - Si Manis Bergigi Emas (1954)
* Cerita Calon Arang (The King, the Witch, and the Priest) (1957)
* Hoakiau di Indonesia (1960)
* Panggil Aku Kartini Saja I & II (1962)
* The Buru Quartet
o Bumi Manusia (This Earth of Mankind) (1980)
o Anak Semua Bangsa (Child of All Nations) (1980)
o Jejak Langkah (Footsteps) (1985)
o Rumah Kaca (House of Glass) (1988)
* Gadis Pantai (The Girl from the Coast) (1982)
* Nyanyi Sunyi Seorang Bisu (A Mute's Soliloquy) (1995)
* Arus Balik (1995)
* Arok Dedes (1999)
* Mangir (1999)
* Larasati (2000)

Books on Pramoedya Ananta Toer

* Citra Manusia Indonesia dalam Karya Pramoedya Ananta Toer, by A. Teuw, Pustaka Jaya, Jakarta, 1990.
* Pramoedya Ananta Toer dan Sastra Realisme Sosialis, by Eka Kurniawan, Gramedia Pustaka Utama, Jakarta, 2006.

Postcolonial literature

Postcolonial literature (less often spelled "Post-colonial literature", sometimes called "New English Literature(s)") is literature concerned with the political and cultural independence of peoples formerly subjugated in colonial empires, and the literary expression of postcolonialism.

Postcolonial literary critics re-examine classic literature with a particular focus on the social "discourse" that shaped it. For instance, in Orientalism, Edward Said analyzes the works of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire and Lautréamont, exploring how they were influenced by and helped to shape a societal fantasy of European racial superiority. Postcolonial fictional writers interact with the traditional colonial discourse, but modify or subvert it; for instance by retelling a familiar story from the perspective of an oppressed minor character in the story, for example Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which was written as a pseudo-prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Often the protagonist of a postcolonial work will find him/herself in a struggle to establish an identity, feeling conflicted between an old, native world that is being abolished by the invasive forces of modernity and/or the new dominant culture.

Postcolonial literature uses a wide range of terms, like "writing back", re-writing and re-reading, which describe the interpretation of well-known literature under the perspective of the formerly colonized. In Wide Sargasso Sea, the protagonist is renamed several times, and exploited in several ways. Other authors use different analogies for the colonized, but also very different approaches. Ayi Kwei Armah in "Two Thousand seasons" establishes a history for Africa.

Indian English literature

Indian English Literature (IEL) refers to the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. It is also associated with the works of members of the Indian diaspora, especially people like Salman Rushdie who was born in India. It is frequently referred to as Indo-Anglian literature; Indo-Anglian is a specific term in the sole context of writing that should not be confused with the term Anglo-Indian. As a category, this production comes under the broader realm of postcolonial literature- the production from previously colonised countries such as India.

IEL has a relatively recent history, it is only one and a half centuries old. The first book written by an Indian in English was by Sake Dean Mahomet, titled Travels of Dean Mahomet; Mahomet's travel narrative was published in 1793 in England. In its early stages it was influenced by the Western art form of the novel. Early Indian writers used English unadulterated by Indian words to convey an experience which was essentially Indian. Raja Rao's Kanthapura is Indian in terms of its storytelling qualities. Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Bengali and English and was responsible for the translations of his own work into English. Dhan Gopal Mukerji was the first Indian author to win a literary award in the United States. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, a writer of non-fiction, is best known for his The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian where he relates his life experiences and influences. P. Lal, a poet, translator, publisher and essayist, founded a press in the 1950's for Indian English writing, Writers Workshop.

R.K. Narayan is a writer who contributed over many decades and who continued to write till his death recently. He was discovered by Graham Greene in the sense that the latter helped him find a publisher in England. Graham Greene and Narayan remained close friends till the end. Similar to Thomas Hardy's Wessex, Narayan created the fictitious town of Malgudi where he set his novels. Some criticise Narayan for the parochial, detached and closed world that he created in the face of the changing conditions in India at the times in which the stories are set. Others, such as Graham Greene, however, feel that through Malgudi they could vividly understand the Indian experience. Narayan's evocation of small town life and its experiences through the eyes of the endearing child protagonist Swaminathan in Swami and Friends is a good sample of his writing style. [source: wikipedia]

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists, who began exhibiting their art publicly in the 1860s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.

Characteristics of Impressionist painting include visible brushstrokes, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles.

The emergence of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon followed by analogous movements in other media which became known as Impressionist music and Impressionist literature.

Impressionism also describes art created in this style, but outside of the late 19th century time period.

Overview

Radicals in their time, early Impressionists broke the rules of academic painting. They began by giving colors, freely brushed, primacy over line, drawing inspiration from the work of painters such as Eugene Delacroix. They also took the act of painting out of the studio and into the world. Previously, not only still lifes and portraits, but also landscapes, had been painted indoors, but the Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air. Painting realistic scenes of modern life, they emphasized vivid overall effects rather than details. They used short, "broken" brush strokes of pure and unmixed color, not smoothly blended, as was customary, in order to achieve the effect of intense color vibration.

Although the rise of Impressionism in France happened at a time when a number of other painters, including the Italian artists known as the Macchiaioli, and Winslow Homer in the United States, were also exploring plein-air painting, the Impressionists developed new techniques that were specific to the movement. Encompassing what its adherents argued was a different way of seeing, it was an art of immediacy and movement, of candid poses and compositions, of the play of light expressed in a bright and varied use of color.

The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if it did not receive the approval of the art critics and establishment.

By recreating the sensation in the eye that views the subject, rather than recreating the subject, and by creating a welter of techniques and forms, Impressionism became seminal to various movements in painting which would follow, including Neo-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism.

Painters known as Impressionists

The central figures in the development of Impressionism in France, listed alphabetically, were:

* Frédéric Bazille
* Gustave Caillebotte (who, younger than the others, joined forces with them in the mid 1870s)
* Mary Cassatt (American-born, she lived in Paris and participated in four Impressionist exhibitions)
* Paul Cézanne (although he later broke away from the Impressionists)
* Edgar Degas (a realist who despised the term Impressionist, but is considered one, due to his loyalty to the group)
* Armand Guillaumin
* Édouard Manet (who did not regard himself as an Impressionist, but is generally considered one)
* Claude Monet (the most prolific of the Impressionists and the one who most clearly embodies their aesthetic)[13]
* Berthe Morisot
* Camille Pissarro
* Pierre-Auguste Renoir
* Alfred Sisley

Among the close associates of the Impressionists were several painters who adopted their methods to some degree. These include Giuseppe De Nittis, an Italian artist living in Paris who participated in the first Impressionist exhibit at the invitation of Degas, although the other Impressionists disparaged his work.[14] Federico Zandomeneghi was another Italian friend of Degas who showed with the Impressionists. Eva Gonzalès was a follower of Manet who did not exhibit with the group. James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born painter who played a part in Impressionism although he did not join the group and preferred grayed colors. Walter Sickert, an English artist, was initially a follower of Whistler, and later an important disciple of Degas; he did not exhibit with the Impressionists. In 1904 the artist and writer Wynford Dewhurst wrote the first important study of the French painters to be published in English, Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development, which did much to popularize Impressionism in Great Britain.

By the early 1880s, Impressionist methods were affecting, at least superficially, the art of the Salon. Fashionable painters such as Jean Beraud and Henri Gervex found critical and financial success by brightening their palettes while retaining the smooth finish expected of Salon art.[15] Works by these artists are sometimes casually referred to as Impressionism, despite their remoteness from Impressionist practice.

As the influence of Impressionism spread beyond France, artists, too numerous to list, became identified as practitioners of the new style.

Some of the more important examples are:

* The American Impressionists, including Frederick Carl Frieseke, Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Lilla Cabot Perry, Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, and J. Alden Weir
* Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann, and Max Slevogt in Germany
* Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov in Russia
* Francisco Oller y Cestero, a native of Puerto Rico, who was a friend of Pissarro and Cézanne
* Laura Muntz Lyall, a Canadian artist
* Władysław Podkowiński, a Polish Impressionist and symbolist
* Nazmi Ziya Güran, who brought Impressionism to Turkey
* Chafik Charobim, who was a well known impressionist painter in Egypt

::more about impressionism, click here

Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage

The second edition of Collier's Short View.

Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage is an anti-theatre pamphlet written in 1698 by the Non-juror bishop and divine Jeremy Collier. Collier attacks the most popular recent comedies on the London stage, notably Love For Love (1695) by William Congreve and The Relapse (1696) by John Vanbrugh.

The target of Collier's "Immorality" charge is the lack of poetic justice and exemplary morality in the plays discussed. Collier performs detailed readings to demonstrate that all the characters are wicked and immoral and denounces the playwrights for failing to punish them, indeed for even, in many cases, rewarding them.

Collier's charge of "Profaneness" is also supported by quotations from the plays, containing exclamations of "Heavens!" and accusations against Providence and Fortune which must seem comparatively mild to modern playgoers. Collier does not provide examples of downright oaths or frank blasphemy, which were not tolerated on the stage or in print at the time.

Collier's tactics of packing the Short View with selected quotations from recent plays were innovative and effective, especially compared to the earlier English tradition of nonspecific anti-theatre rants such as William Prynne's Histriomastix (1633). A pamphlet war for and against Collier's case broke out, where Congreve attempted to refute Collier in a lengthy reply, Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations. Vanbrugh, by contrast, refused to take the attack on his plays seriously, and his response, A Short Vindication of The Relapse and The Provok'd Wife From Immorality and Prophaneness, is brief and jocular, charging the clergyman Collier with being more sensitive to unflattering portrayals of the clergy than to real profanity.

In popular accounts, the Short View is often credited with changing public taste and starting a wave of outrage against the sexual explicitness of Restoration comedy. However, the tide had already turned against Restoration comedy when Collier wrote. In the view of modern Restoration scholars, the Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage serves rather to illustrate the fact that the tolerance of respectable Londoners for Restoration comedy had run out at this time, eroded by demographic change, by the Glorious Revolution of 1688, by the Society for the Reformation of Manners (founded in 1692), and by William and Mary's cold dislike of the theatre.

References

* Collier, Jeremy (ed. Kaneko, Yuji ) (1996; first published 1698). A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English stage. London: Routledge.
* Cordner, Michael.(2000) "Playwright versus priest: profanity and the wit of Restoration comedy." In Deborah Payne Fisk (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Vanbrugh, John (1698). A Short Vindication of The Relapse and The Provok'd Wife From Immorality and Prophaneness, in Bonamy Dobrée and Geoffrey Webb (eds.) (1927), The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, vol. 1, Bloomsbury: The Nonesuch Press.