Umar Kayam’s Para Priyayi : Interpellation and Negotiation

Stephen Rankin

This paper will examine a view of responsibility, authority and freedom,

constructed through the Javanese priyayi worldview of Umar Kayam’s novel, Para
Priyayi,1 and go on to consider the difficulty that such a worldview generates for the
Western reader in terms of cross cultural negotiation.2 Umar’s novel evokes the
traditions and values of the Javanese priyayi class3 and the role of ‘priyayiness’’ in an
Indonesia undergoing massive social transformation from a period of colonial rule,
through the Japanese occupation and the revolution, to the unrest of the post-coup
period, and the era of the New Order.

Priyayiness, as it is expressed in the novel, consists of a range and blend of

lineal and collateral values which privilege and celebrate community / family
centeredness, respect for and submission to authority (parental, communal and
national) and the preservation of order.4 The effectiveness of a benevolent patriarchal
leadership and respect for authority is compared in a positive light in the narrative to
the negative outcomes of Western individualising and democratising influences.
Constructing issues of authority and submission according to a traditional Javanese
paradigm, the narrative arrives at conclusions diametrically opposed to those put
forward by the liberal West. For example, Umar’s text portrays patriarchal leadership
and the delineation of social position within hierarchy not as repressive of individual
rights but as productive of a strong sense of community identity and interpersonal
responsibility. Paternal authority itself is constructed as an experience of self-
sacrifice (rather than exploitation or overbearance) in the way in which the father
figure in the narrative takes upon himself the responsibility of providing prosperity
and moral guidance to his wife and children. Respect for this kind of authority, on
the other hand, is portrayed as character-building and ennobling rather than
excessively submissive or repressed. Umar Kayam’s characters, in this sense, are not
modernist figures, alienated and alone (the archetypal ‘Western ’ individual found in
so many Indonesian novels) but rather the products and supporters of Javanese
community and cultural values.

Umar Kayam’s outspoken explication of priyayi ideology in Para Priyayi, the

fact of its constant narrative visibility, indicates, I would suggest, the acute phase of
splitting, currently being experienced within modern Indonesian / Javanese cultural
identity. As George Quinn argues, in his book The Novel in Javanese: Aspects of its
Social and Literary Character,5 the shift into a democratic and meritocratic modernity
has had especially traumatic effects on the hierarchic interdependence of the family as
the primary site of community obligation and belonging:
The weakening of pure blood lines among the old aristocracy, the
pressure put on families by crime, war, poverty and transmigration, the
effects of urbanization and industrialization, the rising status of
individualism, the decline of respect for parents and elders, these and

1
 many more factors continue to bring intense pressure to bear on the
Javanese cultural heartland-the nuclear family. 6

At another level the conception of a changing / hybridised identity in the

development of twentieth century priyayi culture is a key element of the novel. It is
developed through the story of the emergence of a priyayi family from peasant roots,
under the leadership and guidance of its patriarch, Sastrodarsono. While continuing to
propound the advantage and superiority of certain priyayi values, Para Priyayi
obliquely critiques the basis of traditional priyayiness by separating it from feudal
conceptions of heredity and establishing its validity instead in terms of notions of
personal merit and character.7

In this context the novel should be seen, I would suggest, in terms of the theory
of suture, therefore as an attempt to re-insert the modern Indonesian subject into
Javanese ideology through the signifier of alternative priyayi value orientations. In
Althusserian terms such a process constitutes the “re-interpellation of the [subject]
into pre-established discursive positions not only by effacing the signs of their own
production, but through the lure of the narrative”. 8

This (re)promulgation of Javanese priyayi values is explored and developed in

the novel through the narrative propulsion of strong characters.9 The central
paternal figure of Sastrodarsono (Sastro), for example, exemplifies the character-
driven nature of ‘true priyayiness’ in the vision of Umar’s text. While Sastro is born
into a poor farming family, after being raised into priyayi society he comes to
represent the embodiment of idealised priyayiness through his individual endeavours
and commitment to priyayi values.

The son of a Javanese subsistence farmer, Sastro enters the world of priyayi
(“dunia priyayi”) when he finishes school and receives an appointment as a
government teaching assistant. Sastro’s social elevation is achieved in large part
through the patronage of a local priyayi leader and government official, Ndoro Seten
Kedungsimo. While Sastro is, of course, Javanese he enters a quite different system
of values when he enters the priyayi class. Concepts of refinement (kehalusan) and
social consciousness (eling Jv), along with the strong valorisation of a hierarchic
structure separate the priyayi conception of community obligation and unity from that
of the Javanese peasantry.

From the moment Sastro steps onto the lowest rung of the priyayi ladder he is
determined to adapt to the demands of his new life. Sastro’s willingness to submit to
the requirements of traditional priyayi culture is illustrated when a marriage partner
(Dik Ngaisah) is chosen for him by his parents. Sastro accepts without demur the
traditional Javanese procedures of negotiation between the parents and the ritual
practice of nontoni (looking), at which he is given his first sight of his bride-to-be
when the two families negotiate the marriage at her parent’s home. The selection of
Dik Ngaisah as a life partner for Sastro proves to be fortuitous, and she and Sastro
come to represent an ideal partnership in the novel.

Umar uses the characterisation of Sastro and Dik Ngaisah (their determination
to live according to the priyayi ethic and their achievement in fulfilling the goal of
raising their children as well-educated and successful priyayi adults) as a counterpoint
to most of the other characters in the book who are less submissive to the priyayi

2
worldview, and apparently as a result of this, experience much more muddled and
unsatisfactory lives.

The crucial break made by these characters from priyayi value typically relates
to the notion of hierarchy, a notion which demands that each individual recognise and
remember his / her place within the family and the community. Umar constructs this
sense of hierarchical remembering (in terms of both authority and submission) as a
positive effect which generates a sense of belonging and productiveness. This attitude
of remembering is important, firstly in relation to one’s own family and, secondly, in
relation to one’s immediate community. In the text, familial / communal values are
constructed as the best hope for Indonesia in avoiding the anarchic pitfalls of Western
individualism and the devaluation of those social / cultural values which have
sustained the Javanese family and community. According to this view, to forget, and
therefore act in a way that contravenes priyayi social value, not only brings shame
onto the individual and his/her family, but disturbs broader community order.

A recurrent form of forgetting, of failing to live up to, one’s role and

responsibilities as a priyayi involves the pursuit of individual desires to the detriment
of the community. As George Quinn explains the role of the individual in the life of
the community has been a central preoccupation of Javanese literature (i.e. fiction
written in Bahasa Jawa rather than Bahasa Indonesia) throughout this century. In
most Javanese novels
community is paramount, whether that community be the nuclear
family, the village or the home town, or ultimately the Javanese
community in general. Ethical norms and personal identity become
diffuse and are perhaps even unthinkable outside a strongly familial
and clearly Javanese context. Preoccupation with personal desires
and ambitions is depicted as obsessive, individualism is foreign and
un-Javanese. (emphasis added) 10

The forgetting of community obligation is represented in Javanese by the word

‘nekad’ or ‘nekat’. Edroes defines nekad as being “reckless, selfishly insisting on
acting perversely regardless of the consequences to oneself or others”. 11

In Para Priyayi, Dik Ngaisah’s father, Romo Mukaram, a government opium

dealer, provides a clear example of ‘kenekatan’ when he brings misfortune and shame
on his family by ‘conniving’ (kong-kalikong) with Chinese traders to smuggle opium
and as a consequence loses his job. When a colleague tells a story about Romo
Mukaram smoking some of the opium and causing himself to vomit for the rest of the
day the story gets out and becomes the source of further embarrassment
(menanggung malu) to Mukaram and his family.

Importantly, Sastro considers Mukaram’s behaviour as a particular type of

“kenekatan” which he compares to the behaviour of Yudhistira, the eldest brother of
the Pendawa heroes in the Javanese wayang. In the Mahabharata story, Yudhistira is
described as “nekad bermain dadu” [determined to keep on playing dice] to the point
where he loses the Pendawa kingdom to the Kurawa brothers. This moment of
willfulness leads his family into a period of shame, and physical and emotional
suffering lasting for many years before their kingdom is regained. Mukaram’s moral
failing is seen in a similar light to Yudhistira’s: a temporary or momentary form of
forgetfulness.

3
 There are two different kinds of behavior associated with ‘kenekatan’: an
ongoing or characteristic form, or alternatively a momentary, uncharacteristic lapse.
This latter form is known as lali. The Javanese word lali means, to momentarily
forget yourself, to be momentarily, or for a period, beside yourself, or out of your
mind. Sastrodarsono immediately recognises Mukaram’s behaviour as a case of lali
and he comforts his wife with the thought that all men are prone to its power at one
time or another, “Yes, its name is man, Buni. Our ancestors said melik nggendong
lali. The desire to possess brings with it forgetfulness.” 12 The concept of lali
evokes the Javanese valorisation of social obligation and respect, the importance to
the priyayi of remembering your place in, and obligation to (eling), the family and, in
certain matters, the broader community.

Quinn asserts, in describing the influence of the concept lali in the Javanese
novel
When an individual places personal desires and interests above those
of the community, he endangers community order, and inasmuch as
the community is a microcosm of the universe and is intimately
integrated with it, he upsets cosmic order as well. The idea is
expressed in the aphoristic phrase melik nggendhong lali, ‘desire to
possess bears with it forgetfulness’.” 13

It is the fact that the needs of the family and the community have been forsaken
in order to achieve individual advantage that makes ‘lali’ reprehensible in the
Javanese mind and which makes ‘eling’ (remembering) a positive characteristic
especially attributable to the priyayi social ethic.

Mulder relates this notion of remembering your place in the order of things to
the Javanese conception of metaphysical orderliness and interdependence:
Impulsive actions, or sacrificing oneself to one’s lusts and desires,
giving free rein to one’s passions, are reprehensible because they upset
personal, social and cosmic order. Therefore one should master
oneself, inwardly and outwardly, while trying to shape life beautifully.
14

In Para Priyayi, it is the recognition of one’s responsibility to one’s own family

and local community which takes precedence over every other social value according
to Sastrodarsono’s understanding of the priyayi mentality. Umar Kayam illustrates
this process when the principal of the school at which Sastro teaches, Mas
Martoamodjo, risks and eventually loses his government position because of his
determination to oppose colonial government injustices. Mas Marto (Martoamodjo,
the radical) reads sections from Mas Tirto’s newspaper “Medan Priyayi”, which
opposes colonial rule, to the local peasants even though it has been banned by the
government.15 Eventually, he and his family are sent to a remote school as
punishment but Marto continues to stand up for his beliefs by setting up private
schools for the poor in the face of colonial regulations that forbid it.

Initially, Sastrodarsono is influenced by Marto’s idealism and wonders whether

he should take a similar path of open defiance to the colonial government. When he
seeks the advice of his parents and in-laws they all advise him to submit to the
government regulations and highlight the priyayi dependence on government favour.

4
 On visiting his priyayi patron, Romo Seten, Sastro discovers that Seten also
reads “Medan Priyayi” and supports its views but Seten practices a more subtle and
priyayi-like form of resistance to colonial injustice that involves a recognition of his
responsibilities to his family and local community before the masses (wong cilik).
Seten does not openly oppose the government but instead provides opportunities for
poorer families to educate their children (as he has done with Sastro), thereby,
according to his explanation to Sastro, equipping them to contribute to a more just
and enlightened society under Dutch rule:
All my efforts together with other progressive civil servants is to
develop the ranks of progressive priyayi, not priyayi who later on will
try to arbitrarily set themselves up as little kings lording it over the
people. (emphasis added) 16

According to this view, the best hope for the Indonesian masses, in the future
Dutch East Indies, rests with the development of a well-educated and concerned
priyayi elite, secure in its relations with its colonial rulers and prepared to lead the
wong cilik into the modern era. When Sastro is offered the position of principal at the
school from which Mas Marto has been expelled he decides to take it and use it to
help his community and protect his family.

Later when news reaches Sastro that Marto has been sent to an even more
remote location for his defiance of government regulations, Dik Ngaisah expresses
her admiration and sympathy for Marto’s wife while making a subtle criticism of Mas
Marto himself:
Mbakyu Marto is the real Sembodro . . .. 17 As a mother, I can imagine
the busyness and trouble she is experiencing raising children in exile.
How will those children turn out when they’ve grown up. What will
they become later? 18

In this and their subsequent conversations there is a note of disappointment

and reproach in relation to Mas Marto. Although Marto has acted like a ‘ksatria yang
mulia’ [a glorious knight] through his “social work in helping the people in the
community” 19, he has separated himself from his responsibility to raise his children
as priyayi. In considering Marto’s actions later Sastrodarsono thinks:
I certainly admire their courage and integrity [i.e. Mas Marto and
people like him] but I cannot understand their determination
[kenekatan] no matter what to brazenly gamble with the fate of their
families. 20

He considers Romo Seten, on the other hand, to be a truly

. . . glorious knight, who loves his people, but is not grusa grusu, is
not reckless, is mature and refined in his actions. He accepts defeat in
his endeavours without blackening his name by being a rebel and
sacrificing the future of his wife and children. He yields because he
wants to give an opportunity to his children to find their own way.21

Thus Marto’s behaviour is characterised as ‘nekat’ according to Edroes’s

definition of reckless and willful. He has, according to Sastro, sacrificed his family
because of his own willful and determined pursuit of an ideal. Despite the fact that he
has given everything up to defend the rakyat, this is to his detriment.

5
 Seten on the other hand is the true priyayi (ksatria yang mulia) who does not act
gegabah (rashly or recklessly) but in a refined and mature manner refuses to foreclose
on his children’s future by confronting authority head-on. He thus works against
injustice and defends the rights of the peasants while maintaining the priyayi values
of family responsibility and social order.

At a separate, more pragmatic level he recognises that to instigate or participate

in ‘pemberontakan’ (rebellion) against the colonial government would undermine
both the priyayi valorisation of ‘halus’ behaviour and endanger the political and
economic interests of the priyayi which were inextricably linked to colonial good -
will. 22

Sastro’s assessment of Marto and Seten is for the Western reader rich with
critical possibilities and cross cultural difficulties which contain the potential for
misunderstanding and misconstruction. For instance, would a Western reading of
these passages recognise different cultural value, an ethical otherness, which requires
negotiation in order to be fairly represented? Or would it, without attempting to
engage the value of the other, simply appropriate the voice into its own ideological
construct and thereby override the necessity for negotiating its unsettling
indeterminacy? The universe of Western ideology could easily draw the ‘aberrance’
it perceives into its own orbit, a universal which is the Western construction of all
values, by identifying and interpreting the voice of the other in this passage as merely
an elitist attempt at reinforcing control through the production, or reiteration, of an
ideology of the ruling class.

In the context of familial and hierarchic values expressed in this passage, for
instance, it might appear ‘natural’ and perhaps incumbent on the Western reader to
impose his / her more ‘enlightened’ social ethic on the ‘belatedness’ of the other.
Such thinking might argue that it would be inappropriate, a backward step (a
transgression of Western progressivism) to entertain the familial, hierarchic values it
itself once owned and has largely discarded. The contemplation of such values in the
other frequently produces within Western readers an immediately critical response
drawn from socio / historical memory, the criteria of ideological plausibility and the
limits of discursive possibility which disallow serious negotiation.

Alternatively, such a reading could, in anthropological terms, construct Para

Priyayi as a typical Javanese retreat from engagement, the justification of a colonised
people which hides its capitulation behind the multiplication of traditions or the
vagaries of cultural mysticism. One example of such a reading of Javanese priyayi
culture, John Pemberton’s On the Subject of ‘Java’ 23, describes the way in which the
Central Javanese royal families were able to submit to colonial authority while
maintaining, through the proliferation of ritual, the appearance of retaining power.

On the other hand, taking a more difficult and dialogic approach, more
problematic in terms foreshadowed by Julia Kristeva in her examination of Chinese
culture, the Western reader could permit the text to read as different, to be a valid,
alternative voice which speaks back (or even interrogates) the Western position.

6
Kristeva explains the value of this self-reflexive dynamic in the encounter with
cultural otherness in About Chinese Women when she writes:
I think that one of the functions - if not the most important - of the
Chinese Revolution today is to introduce this breach (‘there are
others’) into our universalistic conceptions of man and history. It’s
not worth the trouble to go to China if one insists on closing one’s
eyes to this breach. Obviously there are those who find a solution:
they try to fill the abyss by rewriting a China for ‘our people’ (who
may have some revolutionary or revisionist or liberal cause which will
be strengthened by proving that the Chinese are like us, or against us,
or to be ignored); or else by creating a China against ‘them’ (against
those who are deforming China by making it conform to ‘their’
ideology rather than ours’). To write ‘for’ or ‘against’: the old trick of
a militant committed to maintaining his position. It can help, it can
stifle: what is lost is the chance that the discovery of ‘the other’ may
make us question ourselves about what, here and now, is new,
scarcely audible, disturbing. (emphasis added ) 24

There are many narrative events and character developments in the novel that
would provide difficulties for the Western reader and would fuel the conception of
Indonesian otherness as belated and socially / morally retrograde.

One interesting example of the genuine difficulties raised for the Western
reader by this text in terms of the development of a truly dialogic engagement with
Indonesia occurs when Sastro’s daughter Soemini returns to her parent’s home after
discovering her husband’s unfaithfulness. When she informs her parents of her
husband, Mas Harjono’s, sexual liaison in Jakarta they are shocked and wonder how
this could happen in such a successful and well-to-do family. Perhaps, her mother
thinks, it is because they have so much that they have never needed to learn an
attitude of acceptance25 as she and Sastro have had to learn over the years. This
concept of surrender and acceptance is a central theme in much of Umar Kayam’s
writing. Also, unlike she and Sastro, their children have only had to look after their
own family not the extended family of nieces and nephews. These larger
responsibilities had always kept Sastro and Ngaisah from being over-concerned with
their own needs and problems.

Rather than nrimo (surrender) Dik Ngaisah sees in her daughter keras hati (hard
heartedness, stubbornness). This rather than Harjono’s adultery is perceived to be the
cause of the marital breakdown. “Your child,” Dik Ngaisah says to Sastro “is hard
hearted. Goodness, her children are already adults, she has grandchildren and she still
wants to separate.”26 Dik Ngaisah sees her task as that of melting her daughters heart.
27
Later, as she gently probes the situation she asks her daughter if she has sent a
letter to her husband. Soemini says she hasn’t and that it is better to just let it be.
Again Dik Ngaisah thinks “Hm, how hard this child is”.28

Eventually Dik Ngaisah suggests to Soemini that Harjono is acting in a way that
is typical of men. Men are ‘pembosan’” (prone to boredom) she tells her:
“He will become bored with his knew plaything as well. As long as. . .
.” “As long as what, Bu?” “As long as you are patient and clever”. 29

7
 According to Dik Ngaisah, part of being patient and clever entails Soemini not
going out of the house to the organisation that she has been involved with:
You must take good care of your husband and children. . . Now then,
later on slowly, slowly you may urge your husband to draw back from
[sangres] itu. Possibly without your urging he will draw back of his
own accord. 30

In Dik Ngaisah’s mind, as it is constructed by Umar Kayam, keeping the family

together is her daughter’s responsibility. In fact, from her point of view it seems that
it is Soemini’s, rather than the adulterous Harjono’s, fault that the family has been
momentarily divided.

Such a passage raises obvious difficulties for the Western reader in relation to
the patriarchal control of discourses. Thus, read from a Western orientation Dik
Ngaisah’s pragmatism represents patriarchal hegemony, the foregrounding of a
system which encloses the woman’s voice within a prisonhouse of obligation,
primarily the obligation to nrima (surrender) whenever men transgress.

Earlier in the novel, Dik Ngaisah is critical of the idealistic school teacher,
Mas Marto, who likes to attend ledak tayub, a dance performed by hired female
dancers at feasts in which the male guests often join. But rather than concentrating on
the man’s transgression of decent behaviour she suggests that the solution is in his
wife’s hands:
Mbakyu Marto [Marto’s wife] didn’t make a scene about that, Pak?
She kept quiet, she kept the knowledge of it to herself, but she
continued with patience and determination to repair and strengthen her
relationship with her husband and children. 31

Mas Marto’s behaviour is clearly portrayed by Dik Ngaisah in Umar’s text as

reprehensible. On the other hand, Marto’s wife had been wronged but she had to put
her feelings aside in order to preserve the family. The responsibility implied here is
that the woman patiently care for the husband and children even when she is wronged
by the husband; and that the husband maintain the family’s social and economic
standards and standing in the community and provide opportunities for the children’s
future. He is, it would appear, permitted sexual relations outside the marriage
relationship (although there is shame attached to it for both the husband and wife)
provided he fulfils these other obligations. Here the family is again portrayed as
holding the privileged place in priyayi social interaction over the rights and feelings
of the individual.

Seen from a different perspective (the perspective of cross cultural negotiation

i.e. allowing the cultural other’s voice to be true to itself) it could reasonably be
argued that these difficulties relate to differing conditions of plausibility. 32 The stress
on individual responsibility and rights on one side and the focus on familial
obligations (the rights of the family) on the other, the transgression of familial rights
motivating a different solution than the transgression of individual rights. Such an
argument is difficult, if not impossible to make, however, while everything continues
to be measured by its relation to a standard of universality set by the West.

If, on the other hand, the preferred Western reading could be fended off
momentarily, these difficulties might be appreciated from an alternative perspective

8
which re-constructs the cross-cultural clash, in terms of differing conditions of
plausibility or ways of seeing, rather than in regard to progress and belatedness, good
and evil. In Kristeva’s words: “‘[T]he other’ may make us question ourselves about
what, here and now, is new, scarcely audible, disturbing”. 33 In this way the ideal of
a dialogic, a metonymic rather than metaphoric relationship to difference, might
become a possibility. Such an approach to the difficulty of cross-cultural negotiation
would require a willingness and capacity to delay the metaphorical work of
substitution in order to interact with difference. But such an approach would also
open the Western reader to genuine cross cultural negotiation with a difficult alterity.

9
1
Kayam, Umar, Para Priyayi: Sebuah Novel. Jakarta: Pustaka Utama Grafiti, 1993.
2
This text, published in 1992, is the work of an Indonesian academic, born in East Java who gained his doctorate at
Cornell University.
3
George Quinn defines the term priyayi as:
Traditionally, a high-level Javanese official in the old Javanese states and the Dutch colonial
administration of Java; also used to refer collectively to these officials and their distinctive pseudo-
aristocratic lifestyle; in more recent times often used to refer to persons descended from priyayi families
or with an upper-class lifestyle reminiscent of the priyayi of former times. (294)
4
As Koentjaraningrat notes in Javanese Culture (Singapore: Oxford U P, 1985), community is understood more as a
collateral orientation in Javanese peasant society than amongst the priyayi who have traditionally concentrated on a
‘lineal value orientation’ (respect for, and submission to elders and superiors). This, according to Koentjaraningrat, fits
more closely with the priyayi ‘civil-servant mentality’ (459). For Umar, however, the stress on the collateral, or
horizontal, orientation is pronounced and in this sense may reflect an intention to construct a broader reading of the
modern priyayi role in Indonesian society.
5
Quinn, George. The Novel in Javanese: Aspects of its Social and Literary Character. Leiden, Netherlands: KITLV,
1992.
6
Quinn 105
7
Class patronage continues, however, to be a crucial and defining element in the introduction of the non-priyayi into the
privileges and responsibilities of priyayiness.
8
Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. (New York: Oxford UP, 1983) 221.
9
It should be noted that the passages from the novel quoted in this part of the article will be my own translation as no
English version of the text was available at the time of writing.
10
Quinn 120
11
Quinn 114
12
“Yah, namanya manusia, Buni. Leluhur kita bilang melik nggendong lali. Nafsu memilih itu membawa serta lali”.
(85)
13
Quinn 116
14
Mulder, Niels. Individual and Society in Java : A Cultural Analysis. Yogyakarta : (Gadjah Mada UP, 1992) 12.
15
Minke the central character in Prameodya’s Bumi Manusia tetralogy who produces the radical paper “Medan” is
loosely based on Tirto Adi Suryo, as Mas Tirto, who published “Medan Priyayi”.
16
Semua itu usaha saya bersama pangreh praja maju lainnya untuk membangun barisan priyayi maju, bukan priyayi yang
kemudian hari kepingin jadi raja kecil yang sewenang-wenang terhadap wong cilik. (63)
17
In the wayang stories Sembadra (or Sembodro), who is married to the hero Arjuna, represents an ideal wife in the
Javanese mind, being “faithful, patient, sympathetic”.
18
Mbakyu Marto itu Sembodro betul...Sebagai ibu, saya membayangkan akan repot dan susah membesarkan anak-anak
di tanah pembuangan... Bagaimana anak-anak itu nanti kalau sudah besar. Akan jadi apa anak-anak itu nanti? (87)
19
Pekerjaan sosial buat bantu-bantu rakyat sendiri… . (101)
20
Saya memang kagum terhadap keberanian dan ketangguhan mereka [Mas Martoamodjo dan orang-orang seperti dia],
tetapi saya juga tidak memahami kenekatan mereka untuk berani mempertaruhkan nasib keluarga mereka. (110)
21
Ksatria yang mulia, yang mencintai rakyatnya, akan tetapi ksatria yang tidak grusa-grusu, tidak gegabah, matang dan
halus langkah-langkahnya. Beliau menerima kekalahan dari usaha beliau tanpa harus mencemarkan namanya sebagai
pemborantak dan mengorbankan nasib istri dan anak-anaknya. Beliau mengalah karena ingin memberi kesempatan
kepada anak-anak beliau untuk mau dan menemukan jalan mereka sendiri. (110)
22
The prized nature of kehalusan relates back to wayang mythology and its manifestation in the smooth, controlled, and
refined behaviour of the satria (knight) in comparison to the loudness, agitation, aggression and lack of control exhibited
by the kasar demons and giants. Such control requires tremendous effort and concentration and reflects the inward power
of the individual (as opposed to lack of control which is the natural state). According to Anderson, the accumulation of
power that kehalusan represents can only be undermined by pamrih (i.e. “concealed personal motives”):
This complex term means doing something not because the act has to be done, but because one’s
personal interests or desires are thereby satisfied. The traditional motto of the Javanese administrator,
sepi ing pamrih, rame ing gaweI, still frequently quoted by politicians and officials, means that the
correct attitude of the priyayi official should be to refrain from indulging personal motives, while
working hard for the good of the state. At the level of everyday morality, pamrih is the socially
undesirable quality of selfishness and personal aggrandizement. (Mythology and the tolerance of the
Javanese 51)
23
Pemberton, John. On the Subject of "Java". (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994).
24
Kristeva, Julia. About Chinese Women. Trans. from the French by Anita Barrows. (London: Marion Boyars, 1977) 9.
25
‘Sikap nrimo’ - Jv passive, acquiescence to one’s fate.
26
“Anakmu keras hati. Ee, anak sudah pada jadi orang, sudah punya cucu, masih mau pecah.” (217)
27
“…melumerkan hati Soemini” (217)
28
“Hm, alangkah keras anak ini.” (218)
29
“Dia akan bosan juga dengan mainannya yang baru. Asal...”
“Asal apa, Bu?”
“Asal kau sabar dan pintar.” (219)
30
Kau urusi suami dan anak-anakmu dengan baik... Nah, nanti pelan-pelan kau bisa desak suamimu supaya mundur
dari sangres itu. Mungkin tanpa kau desak pun dia akan mundur sendiri. (220)
31
Mbakyu Marto tidak bikin rame soal itu, to, pak? Dia diam, pengetahuannya disimpan sendiri, tapi dia terus dengan
sabar dan tekun memperbaiki dan memperkokoh hubungannya dengan suami dan anak-anaknya. (87)
32
See Sinfield, Alan. Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading. Oxford, England:
Clarendon P, 1992.
33
Kristeva 3.