Poetry
Indonesia, Tumpah Darahku
Not translated into English
Muhammad Yamin · 1928
Synopsis
Seated on a beautiful shore where the waves break into white foam, the poet gazes at an island resting on the green sea, at mountains girdled with water, and names what he sees: his native land is called Indonesia. He who had sung only of Sumatra extends the homeland to the whole archipelago. Over stanzas of seven lines, the poem honours the Indonesian nation morning and evening, exalts its heroes of legend and history, and becomes an oath to it for as long as the sun, the moon and the stars turn.
Context
The poem was completed on 26 October 1928, two days before the second youth congress, meeting at Weltevreden, proclaimed one homeland, one nation and one language. It has eighty-eight stanzas and first appeared with N.V. Nusantara, dedicated to a beloved woman. Eight years earlier, in a poem given to Jong Sumatra, the same author still called Sumatra alone his homeland. Muhidin M. Dahlan notes that its words, the native land, the blood shed, the noble land, are found again in the national anthem.
Who it is for
A single poem, long and rhymed, in Malay, with no French or English translation; it helps to know what the nationalist congress of October 1928 was.
Prizes and reception
Its date makes it a milestone in national history, and its author is regarded as a pioneer of modern Indonesian poetry.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.