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The poems of Doel CP Allisah are interesting and unique, as unique as him – a poet who always feel worry to find the truth and the new articulation in rhyming. Some of his friends, ridiculously, have changed his name as ‘the jumpy Doel CP’ in other word a man who always feels worry more over if he was late to blow the smoke from his cigarette. He is just like an Aceh people prototype he is an Aceh man, who has a creative talent with a bunch of cultures within, but was ‘grinded’ for years by the top kick regime, so that he became so anxious and worry to find an expressing freedom with the right articulation.
However, Doel – which is his chummy call – is the strongest Aceh poet in the history of the Serambi Mekah modern art, after the Hamzah Fansyuri belles letters. He is also the strongest poet in this time. Besides Doel, there are still many poets in Aceh who have the same wonderful ryhms ‘in tightly competition’. Such as A.Hasjmy, Ridwan Amran, Hasyim KS, D. Kemalawati, Sulaiman Tripa, Nurdin F. Joes, Din Saja, Rosni Idham, Moch. Harun Al-Rasyid, Mustafa Ismail and Fikar W. Eda – the two last names are living in Jakarta. Their poems are always showing the interesting articulation patterns and thematic phenomenon, which are presenting ‘a creative anxious’ of the Aceh belles letters.
The poems of Doel are unique because they have the untouchable individual articulation patterns of tends what have shown in the fatherland, especially Jakarta. So that, the articulations are continuously more presenting personal things in an everlasting ‘creative anxious’. The poems of Doel are also interesting, because they have the representative themes to read the heart and soul of Aceh -- a region which enriches with its cultures and the natural sources but always suffer and full of distortion almost in alongside history.
This short article is not able to reveal the whole poems aspect from a poet who was born in Banda Aceh, May 3rd 1961. There are so many interesting aspects that we can learn, both of the thematic or esthetic, both of the intrinsic or extrinsic, the inter-textual co-relation, and also the insufficiency or excess. It needs a special book to study about the whole aspect of Doel rhymes in the specific terms, the words, the couplets, the rows, the themes, and also the images. Thus, this article is only able for some of the important aspect cursorily, to find an esthetical achievement, the thematic broil and the main position from Doel in a modern Indonesian belles letters.
The Inter-textual Aspects
Considering the cultures and the problem complexity in his poems, especially social-politic, we can properly define it with an inter-textual analyzing model from the french post-structuralism, Julia Kristeva. Because when we read his rhymes we will not only read the resslestness and the beauty of him but also the resslestness of Aceh and the people as a community in the politic and culture that interference a new generation of modern Aceh poets.
According to Kristeva, the intertextuality is a key to understand an art text completely. In her books-- Revolution in Poetic Language (1974) and Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (1979) -- Kristeva was reminding the important of space and time dimension in order of interpreting an art text. She thought that an art text was made in a real space and time dimension. Therefore, there is a relation between texts to another one in the same space, and between texts to another one in the same time.
That is how Doel created his rhymes in this book. Even he realized that the space and time and the right publishing time for his rhymes are important, so that he gave the footnotes of the place and date for those poems. The sign of space and time became so important since he wrote about a big event or a particular condition which are influencing the life of Aceh people and he used it as the background for his rhymes. Such as, in the first two couplet of the rhyme Remembering you, my brother:
Remembering you, my brother
As sleeping in the ember
The hurts of pain has blackened my heart
The grudge was rushing in my blood
Became a tear in the morning
Became a muse in every breathe
Remembering you, my brother
No matter with the color of your dreams
Or with the rice that you ate
To your stomach?
Though I know it was hurt
Though I know your wound
And the grudge that you take every second
I only could write a note
About the humblest history of this nation
With the sign as ‘a gift for the victims of DOM’ below its title, defines that rhyme as the reward for Aceh people who died, defected or lost during the time of Military Operation District (DOM) in the new order regime. In fact, a DOM status in Aceh from 1991 until 1998, in order of depressing GAM (movement of Aceh independence), had given a remarkable misery for its people. We could see the corpse as the victim ‘military operation’ lied on the land of Rencong everyday, including the innocents. Sometimes, we have no clue that the murders are GAM or TNI.
In his language, he called the murders as ‘spectra team’ – the same term was made in the period of DOM to call the unknown ‘cruel executor’. The judgment of being spy – GAM or TNI -- has been accepted by the innocent most of the time, and later most of them were died and disappeared. Aceh people were living between two importances of the two strengths that created a sorrow for them in years. There was no clue between friend and foe because everything was so absurd and undefined, so that many people lived in the tension and suspicion.
It became the background for some of his poems, such as Remembering you, My brother (1998) and A Terror song (1999), and we also can feel the sorrow in The Sadness Song (1994) which is the title of this book. He has tried to ignore an old deep wound of Aceh people in some of his rhymes. It was not for recalling that wound, but considering it as a narrow escape so that the ‘grey history’ of Aceh will not be repeated in the future, and we can learn to take care of the problems wisely.
In his eyes, the armed people from both strengths were looked at as cruel evils, or as hungry wolves such as in the last two couplet of the rhyme Remembering you, My brother:
Remembering you, my brother
What I thought were the laughter of evils
Which unfold the bowels of the looser?
Or the pain of our mothers
Who’s forced to give their bodies?
Mastered by the spectra team
Remembering you, my brother
What I saw was a bunch of hungry wolfs
Surrounding the dying carcass of sheep
Though we have had look after it
With loves and tears!
The DOM status was made for Aceh in 1998, at the period of B.J. Habibie governance. But, the armed hardness has not been stopped automatically. The hardness bleed has still happened at Serambi Mekah, brought the fears for all the people in Aceh. That eeriness, for Doel and all the people in Aceh was an unforgettable terror. The bloods of innoncent of the hardness were still appeared. The scents of death are everywhere, and he wrote them in a rhyme A Terror Song, what is a poetic and adorable, it was made in 1999,
You are as the winds that infiltrate all room
Trembling the empty field
Trembling the body of awaked women
In the shaking arms of baby hugs
You didn’t only fill the alcove breath of old chests
But also a predawn terror
Creeping the country of bloods, Aceh
You are as the winds that infiltrate all room
Don’t give us the choice and hope
Besides the breath extension of fears
And the children record it within their souls
As the morning revenge
Ah! This half of land
Loaded by the floating souls
For a vaguely independence
For a tousled freedom
I don’t know who, was sheltering
in secrecy behind the shadow
In the scent of death!
In The Sadness Song rhyme, which is the strongest one in this book, Doel wrapped his tears in more poetic and lyric, without any secrets of the sadness images, bloods and death, which defines the farewell of a beloved person in his life.
THE SADNESS SONG
In the noisy drizzle, you came home
An endless silent and the span of fog
The tears of thousand deities melt in the blood pond
At the opened sky
I sang the praises of sea
The curve of continent far from the bound of gaze
That sunk your cry last night
At the oppressing emptiness
A thousand useless days that we prepared
Grasping the expectations and time relativity
The sorrow was stoning your dream
Scorching a soft heart and love suddenly
I was trembling, taking the light of your eye’s secret
Everything was dragging me to the memory and death
Everything was dragging me to an endless silent of sigh
Releasing you to a long tunnel of history
My heart was tired, drizzles and tears
Remind me of the wet road
Trembling between the bound of the existence and destruction
And your hazy shadow has gone
In the scaled off of leaves
Everything was dragging me to the memory and death
Everything was dragging me to an endless silent of sigh !
Banda Aceh,
May 3rd 1994
As they have seen in the poems citations above, according to Kristeva, an art text is a phrase and it always has a relation or relevant with another external things. Therefore, there are many factors such as historical with socio-cultural background, politic, economic, structural that we concern to learn the belles letters text. Because of there is a specific case (asbab an-nuzul) in each text. According to Bacon, all the belles letters text has their epoch spirit (zitgeist). The historical is not only covering the space and time, but also a historical co-relation with another text to complete the meaning of it.
Overall, to catch the meaning of a belles letters we need more than language expression but imagination and an organized data in the social and psychology context and also an aim from the reader. The analyzing principles or the meaning of an art text is required when we wanted to analyze the rhymes of Doel so we could get a universal thematical image, so we could feel and think like him and see the inspiring face and heart of Aceh, which have become the background of him and his rhymes, it clearly displays inside the reader’s imagination. But, because of the insufficiency of space and time, a comprehensive intertextual analyze can not be completely done for all the rhymes of Doel in this book.
Theme and Poetic
As an Aceh poet, he did not only see the hardness and the dark side of the Rencong land. Because he does not want to identify Aceh with the things such as the armed hardness, terrorist, sorrows, and the scents of death. Aceh is a representing harritage of cultures which had built during the Hamzah Fansyuri time, in the Sultanate of Aceh period. Aceh is also promising the sustainable and the natural resources. Aceh is also an inspiring fascinate of the natural beauty for the poets. And, Aceh is also the source of a wise life and the values of moral that reference a progression in a civilization.
Added by the experiences of life and personal anxious, the themes of his rhymes have become very immeasurable. This book, as example, started with a faithfulness theme (the faithfulness) which was made in 1976 and got its revision in 1979 (this poems has a dimension of time during 1976-1979). Doel made that rhyme when he was young and he wanted to tell about the faithfulness as the readiness to share the hearts like clear dew in the morning, and then he made a short rhyme about the Pahang princess (Putroe Phang), the wife of Sultan Iskandarmuda, from Negeri Pahang, Malaysia. The next poems, until the 90’s, give a sweet and romantic individual experience, eventhough it has a bitter tones sometimes.
In the period of 1980-1990, in spanning 10 years, Doel wrote about his journeys, and the ‘memory’ about someone who has been ‘filled’ his heart, with the nature of Aceh as the background, and also some of religious rhymes that he wrote everywhere. In the poems And You’ve Come in Aim (1980), he wrote all his impressions and memories with the poetically and dialogically patterns, in a bitter tones, as he was talking to someone who has disappointed him.
And you’ve come in aim
After a difficult battle of feelings
From an ensnare of uncertainty
Through the dirty street
With the smolder in hands
Perhaps what we’ve done
Togetherness and care
Seeing day passing the yard
Delaying war until night
And coming in aim
You’ve locked every door
At the same time you breathe away
Or keep the fears inside the cupboard
From a future shadow
As if the world won’t stop its drama
That is disappointment
And you’ve come in aim
Smiling with the dreams
Closing every door
I am the one outside
Returning the night
At the same time abusing aimlessly
The poems of a journey with the ‘personal memory’ – with the bitter tones sometimes— with an unique culture and nature of Aceh as the background, such as One evening When we trough the Seulawah bevel with a frightening silent in the morning (1980/1981), with a special note about ‘the smell of hay burnt’ and Renggali (1982), The Song of Wind (1985), On Lau Sidebuk-debuk’s Street (1986), Meugo (1987), Teunom (1987), In The Silent of Sibanyak’s Night (1986), Once Upon A Time In The Tasteless Sea (1989), Blok M (1990), Come Home (1990), and The Landscape of Sabang (1986) that reveals the jengek phenomenon (economic jenggo) – a term for the smugglers at Jaya Freeport Sabang.
Besides there are rhymes which have not the name of places within, but the name of place remains them as the note of a journey. Such as, a short rhyme The Distance (1984) with Lamno as the name of place, which defines his boredom and fatigue in the distance between a poet and people. A condensed boredom / and these tired feet of mine/ progressively, separating the bound/ between you and I.
In the poem Let the Street Becomes the House (1986) that he wrote in Medan, Doel defined himself as the ‘traveler’ or the ‘jumpy poet in his lonely adventure’. He never comes home, and lives everywhere, or stays up late and stands on the sidewalk, and considering the street as his house, and the night as his friend. Nevertheless, The House that he wrote in Banda Aceh in 1990, he has realized that in fact house is a paradise, a place to get his happiness.
To read the citation of the rhyme Let the Street Becomes the House – this has defined a friendship between Doel and the street through the poetic and phylosopy rows.
Let the street becomes the house
And the night becomes its garden
Our lives is a time adventurer
Giving the meaning of nothing
Becoming the lump of prayer
Let the street becomes the house
And the night becomes its garden
We are in default
Give you a sense of justice
For the future Childs
The religious poems of Doel, such as, The Hymn of Lebaran’s Night (1985) that he wrote in Medan (Medan as its name of place) and A Poem for Father that he wrote at Sigli in 1985. He was in Medan on the lebaran’s night 1985, away from his family and friends who live in Aceh. So he was just holding the desires to come home because of his duty, he was surrending his own to god: When takbir broke the silence at night/ Echoing the infinite highness We won the war, brother / I bundled body and soul / in brotherhood/ I won that war/ forgetting the far away slums/ forgetting our little deki/ who has blazed the candles at core/ with his noisy screams // ah, sweet deki/ even I forgot those memories/ and put them on my shoulder/ for a gift that came from him/ in a deepest surrending.
Meugo (1987) recalling a hero from Aceh Teuku Umar. The honour for Aceh heroes also defined in the poem of Teuku Paya Bakong Si Teuku Seupot Mata – a hero from Aceh in the epoch of Dutch Colonial, he was a blind man but he could be disappeared just in the nick of time. Meanwhile love, empathy, admiration and desires of a woman defines in My Lady’s Poem (1986), The Sadness Song of My Lady (1986), Georgia Linda (1986), Nonlis in My Poem (1987). In My Lady’s Poem Doel described a woman as smooth as silk, and as sweet as the female of deity, but later the image of woman has gone by the eeriness of him to reach his love.
The decay of his masterpiece in 1991-2000 began with his friendship with a senior poet from Aceh, who is also his best friend, Hasyim KS. In one of his poem Hasyim KS 51 Years Old that he wrote in Banda Aceh in 1991: After more than a half century walked/ time was almost up/ spire with the series of frightening agreements/ you and I melt in surrenderness/ the indifferent that we moderated.
In this period he wrote various themes, but the growth of the esthetics quality was not significant. He wrote the rhymes only with his instinct and natural talent, he created his own articulation pattern (poetic), and protected his rhymes from the influences of the recent rhymes in Indonesia. In the decay of 90’s, supporting a phenomenon from Afrizalian – the mosaic thymes which are tend to reveal the dark image products of an urban industry culture. But this phenomenon had not given any influence to his rhymes. He also awaked from the influence of the sufistic poems in the decay of 80’s.
He was traveling around the Sumatera, Java and even abroad (Thailand and Nederland) during 1990-2000. He wrote the poems that describe his experiences and impressions of those countries with their nature resourches and socio-culture in Tangse (1991), Banda Aceh (1992), An Evening in the Pole Hill Wind (1992), An Evening in Bandung (1993), At the Corner of Cilegon (1993), When I was Dreaming in Rotterdam (1993), An Evening in Cianjur (1993), The Predawn Configuration of Langsa (1995), Miwah River (1995), Sigli, My Tender Age Town, One in A Time (1996), Sambahe (1997), Throughed the Tahura Bukit Barisan, One in a time (1997), Ulee Kareng (1998), A Morning Monolog of Karnchanawanich Road (1999), In Narathiwat Fantasy (1999), dan The Pakem Orchestra (2000).
The other poems reveal some aspects, such as, romance, sexual life, the life, the longing and lonesome in abroad, religion tradition and ritual, and other interesting images. Such as, the poems of The Lechery Song (1993), Trance (1993), Trauma (1994), The Farewell Poem (1995), For Doel (1995), A Tripping Song (1996), The Fancy Song I (1996), In the Parish of Friday (1996), Tadarus Meunasah Papeun (1996), The Shalawat of Rasul (1997), Elis in the 31st Year(1997), The Silent Ritual for Nani (1997), Alienation (1997), dan A Silent Song (1998).
According to what he has done for Hasyim KS, he also wrote some of poems for all the beloved people and his friends, such as the poems of Nonlis in My Rhyme II-III-IV (1996-1997-1998), and A Wedding Song (1997) which has dedicated for the wedding of Fikar W Eda and Devie Komala Syahni. Besides there are some other poems such as, For My Best friend Nurdin (1998), For Sarah as the dancer (1998), and The Sorrowful Song I (1998) on the funeral day of M. Alirisyad, and The Sorrowful Song II (1998) that he wrote on the funeral day of AR Nasution.
He also wrote various themes in 2001 until 2007, including some of his journey poems and the notes of Tsunami in Aceh in the end of 2004, such as, Under the Panorama of Lhok Geulumpang (2001), At a Side of Malaka’s Strait (2002), Holiday Inn 301 Sabang (2002), A Predawn at Sabang’s Bay (2002), The Predawn of Kuala Lumpur (2002), and Sound of Baiturrahman (2003).
He wrote about love, affection, sexuality, ritual, tradition, the religious things, empathy, friendship, live and the life, with the sadness and lonesome when he was in abroad into some of his poems, such as, A Blue Shadow (2002), Dei (2002), The Fancy Song II (2002), The Oligiospermania Tragedy room 101 HP (2002), The Addo Ritual I-II (2002), For My Little Cordelia (1992-2002), De II (2003), Flight to July (2003), In The Sight of Your Eyes (2003), The Cartoon Parody of Underdol-Sweet July (2004), The May-July Concerto (2004), The Scent of Flower in May (2004), Moon of A Thousand Month (2004), About Ning II (2004), About The Willingness (2004), and About my Grandmother, Sitijam (2006).
He also wrote about the sorrow, eeriness, and missing of the Tsunami in The Memory I (2004) that he dedicates for all the victims of tsunami in Aceh on December 28th 2004. And also in Ulee Lheue (2004-2005), The Beach (2005), and The Memory II (2006). He was expressing his tears, sorrowful and missing for all his family and friends in Aceh, he wrote all his feelings in a prayer.
THE MEMORY. 1
: For the victim of the earthquake/Tsunami
What is the remain from all the memory
Besides our incessantly tears and prayers
Our willing to release the sudden journey
It is the unlimited sincere
With no one can measure
How is the pain for a thousand souls of yours
Inviting their destiny and doom
But we must be strong
My brothers
My children
My friends
A thousand of unidentified corpses
We must be tough
You all are the syuhada
Who have been halfway to heaven
And god has forgiven those sins
By his hands which are the destiny lines of life
(And we will meet in the eternity
With a different way, perhaps)
What is the remain from all the memory of you
Besides our incessantly tears and prayers
Only a prayer-only a prayer
(And us who are still alive) suffering
In His unlimited power!
Banda Aceh,
December 31th 2004
In the period of the last seven years, that we read above, there is no a significant esthetics progress or new articulation (poetic). The only significant progression of it that he wrote all the rhymes with love and tender and wise to interpret the problems of life, with his experiences and age.
In the style of articulation, he used the imagination rhymes with the nature images and cultures as the background for his rhymes since 1980 until today. Eventhough some of the rhymes tend to find a new articulation, but most of them are original.
Conclusion
However Doel CP Allisah is the strongest poet from Aceh today. It has shown in his book The Sadness Song, even for Indonesia and Southeast Asia. The quality of his belless letters can not be defeated by other poets in Java, Bali, Sumatera, or Malaysia. No wonder if he often gets the invitations from national or international organization especially Malaysia to perform and read his rhymes.
The problem is that Indonesia has the crisis of art criticus in its poet world. Almost none of art criticus in Indonesia after HB Jasssin who was the art pioneer in Indonesia, especially in Aceh. Hopefully this book can be a wayout to solve the crisis and give a new spirit for the entire art observer in Indonesia, to see more about Aceh and find out the poems of Doel CP Allisah.
Jakarta, June 10, 2007
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