Fresh perspectives

Fresh Perspectives

Prominent Indonesian Writer's Work Offers Fresh Perspectives on Society and Life

William R. Wineke, Wisconsin State Journal

He's considered Indonesia's greatest modern writer, a man who may win the Nobel Prize for literature.

But Pramoedya Ananta Toer spent much of his life fearing his words would never be read.

A victim of the reign of former Indonesian President Suharto, Pramoedya spent three decades of his life either in prison or under house arrest.

He had to smuggle his writing out of his prison cells or the papers would be confiscated. Even a letter from Suharto, himself, was confiscated, Pramoedya says.

Yet, through it all, the frail intellectual kept working, creating the words he hoped would help society.

Pramoedya, 74, is making his first trip to the United States and is spending this week at UW-Madison. Other stops on his tour include Fordham University, the University of Michigan and the University of California-Berkeley.

Speaking through an interpreter Wednesday, Pramoedya told a reporter that writing was one way he kept his sanity while imprisoned.

For 11 years he was exiled to the penal colony on a remote island, Buru, where hundreds of his fellow prisoners died of starvation, brutality and disease and where prisoners had to forage in the jungle for their own food. He never was formally accused of a crime and he never went to trial.

''You have to struggle against such adversity by any means necessary to show you can survive,'' he said. ''You had to communicate, not only with writing but with words, as much as possible, using whatever was made available.''

The fact that much of his writing exists at all is due to a German Catholic priest, a former Nazi, who saved them for Pramoedya.

''He's the one who saved the letters and, also, the other manuscripts. When I was freed from the island, all my papers were destroyed.''

Pramoedya tells the story of his imprisonment and his insights into life in a newly published book, ''The Mute's Soliloquy'' (Hyperion: $ 27.50).

''In my life, I have seen a great deal of death. Some deaths have made me ponder and caused me to think but, in the end, I have made my peace with them,'' he wrote.

''For me, death is not something extraordinary. It's not a specter that has haunted me since childhood, the outcome of wrongdoing so frequently cited in children's stories and oral tales. No, death is nothing extraordinary.''

Literature, however, can be extraordinary, he suggested during his Madison interview.

Indonesian culture has its roots in ancient Hindu philosophy that ''is widespread and full of all kinds of philosophy and teachings about ethics. But what is the climax? A bloodbath of rival cousins,'' he said. ''The centrality of Indonesian thinking is influenced by a violent solution to problems.''

He said a literature that features cruelty can lead to a cruel ethic. On the other hand, he continued, literature can help rescue a society.

''A writer, consciously or unconsciously, plants a new ethic. Usually, a writer is a rebel against the current situation, not satisfied with what is.''

He said that, as he travels the country, he also wants to urge Americans to take a new look at their relationship with Indonesia.

''The past relationship between the United States and Indonesia is very dark,' he said. ''Up to the present, many of the weapons Indonesians are using to kill each other come from America. That didn't have to happen.''

Will things change?

''If there's no hope, why would I try'' Pramoedya asked.