Melati en rotan: Gedichten van F. Kunst, pentekeningen van Johanna Roberti (“Jasmine and Rattan: Poems by F. Kunst, pen-drawings by Johanna Roberti”) was a Dutch-colonial poetry collection published at Bandoeng in 1947 — comprising poems by F. Kunst with pen-drawings by Johanna Roberti — that contains two poems specifically concerned with Atjeh: “Westmoesson (Kust van Atjeh)” (“West Monsoon (Coast of Atjeh)”), a landscape-poem on the Atjehnese coast in the west-monsoon rains, and “Bij den dood van Generaal Swart, den pacificator van Atjeh” (“On the Death of General Swart, the Pacifier of Atjeh”), an elegy for the Pacificator van Atjeh. The collection — published in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese occupation and the early phase of the Indonesian National Revolution — is the principal literary source for the Dutch-colonial poetic memory of Atjeh in the mid-twentieth century.
Publication
The collection was published at Bandoeng in 1947 — the year of the Linggadjati Agreement and the early Dutch military actions of the Indonesian National Revolution — by the Vacuüm-Handel Maatschappij Vortex and the Uitgeverij en Boekhandel W. Mellink. The collection comprises poems by F. Kunst with pen-drawings by Johanna Roberti, and is preserved in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek under the shelfmark 1105 AR2.
The collection’s Opdracht (dedication) — addressed to those “schandelijk verlaten en vergeten” (“shamefully abandoned and forgotten”) in the secret camps of the interior — fixes the collection’s occasion in the Japanese occupation and the Indonesian National Revolution: the poems are dedicated to the Dutch internees who, in the editor’s framing, had been abandoned by the motherland. The collection’s literary-political horizon is therefore that of the late-colonial Dutch community in the Indies, in the moment of its destruction.
The Atjeh-related poems
The collection contains two poems specifically concerned with Atjeh:
- Westmoesson (Kust van Atjeh) — a landscape-poem on the Atjehnese coast in the west-monsoon rains, depicting the rain on the coconut-plantations, the swollen rivers carrying trees to the sea, the smell of rotting leaves and overripe fruit, and the sudden late-sun breaking through the clouds. The poem is recorded in the separate article on the poem.
- Bij den dood van Generaal Swart, den pacificator van Atjeh — an elegy for the Pacificator van Atjeh, lamenting not the general’s death but the post-war destruction of his life’s work — the reduction of the country’s well-being to chaos, the raging of fanatic hatred where Swart had brought peace, and “Holland in blindheids nacht” (“Holland in night of blindness”). The poem is recorded in the separate article on the poem.
The “Anak Laoet” Sabang poem
The collection also contains the poem “Anak Laoet” (“Child of the Sea”), whose second stanza fixes the bay of Sabang — the colonial haven of Atjeh — as a place of resort for ships’ passengers on the Europe–East-Asia route, with the lake Kin der Zee near “Sabangs schoon belijnde bocht” (“Sabang’s beautifully contoured bay”). The poem is the literary document of the scenic quality of the Sabang bay in the colonial imagination, and is recorded in the Sabang article.
Significance
The Melati en rotan collection is significant for the encyclopedia of Achehnese history as the principal literary source for the Dutch-colonial poetic memory of Atjeh in the mid-twentieth century. The collection’s two Atjeh poems — the landscape-poem of the west-monsoon coast and the elegy for the Pacificator van Atjeh — together fix the two poles of the Dutch-colonial poetic imagination of Atjeh: the scenic landscape of the coast (the rain, the coconut-plantations, the swollen rivers) and the political memory of the pacification (the general who brought peace, the destruction of his work). The collection’s publication in 1947 — in the moment of the destruction of the colonial order — gives the poems an elegiac quality that extends from the general to the colonial project itself.
See Also
- Anak Laoet (poem)
- Bij den dood van Generaal Swart, den pacificator van Atjeh
- Bandoeng
- H. N. A. Swart
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Sabang
- Westmoesson (Kust van Atjeh)
- 1947
Source
Melati en rotan: Gedichten van F. Kunst, pentekeningen van Johanna Roberti (Bandoeng: Vacuüm-Handel Maatschappij Vortex en Uitgeverij en Boekhandel W. Mellink, 1947). Koninklijke Bibliotheek, shelfmark 1105 AR2.