Poetry
Puspa Mega
Not translated into English
Sanusi Pané · 1927
Synopsis
Short poems, mostly sonnets, steeped in nature and love. On the slope of Mount Salak, the poet gazes at the golden rice fields and the Indian Ocean, lying in grass as soft as velvet, then weeps as he thinks of the city; elsewhere he waits for words worthy of his beloved, calls to her at the water's edge, or mourns a flower picked before it could bloom. Before an ancient temple, he wonders whether the nation he loves will regain its past greatness.
Context
The collection appeared in 1927, a year after the author's first book and four years before a second collection published by Balai Pustaka. It brings together thirty-four poems, including an ars poetica, “Sajak”, which places the value of verse in its form more than in its subject. Pustaka Jaya reprinted it in 1971, then in 1975. Critics note that Pane kept to the everyday language and borrowed its structure from the Malay pantun, while also practising the sonnet.
Who it is for
Thirty-four short poems, in the Malay of the twenties, with no French or English translation. The images come mainly from nature.
Prizes and reception
One of the first collections of modern Indonesian poetry, by an author whom Muhammad Balfas regards as the first Indonesian poet to express his inner self.