Westmoesson (Kust van Atjeh) (“West Monsoon (Coast of Atjeh)”) is a Dutch-colonial landscape-poem by F. Kunst, published in the *Melati en rotan* collection (Bandoeng, 1947), that depicts the coast of Atjeh in the rains of the west monsoon — the rain on the coconut-plantations, the swollen rivers carrying uprooted trees to the sea, the smell of rotting leaves and overripe fruit, and the sudden late-sun breaking through the clouds. The poem is the principal Dutch-colonial literary document of the Atjehnese coast in the west-monsoon season, and a counterpart — within the same collection — to the political elegy “Bij den dood van Generaal Swart, den pacificator van Atjeh.”
The poem
The poem, as published in *Melati en rotan* (p. 32), reads:
*De regen ratelt op de klappertuinen, Die mijlenver de huivergrauwe zee bezoomen. Uit regenfloers en wolkenflarden doemen Van verre bergen somb’re, ruigbegroeide kruinen, En gonzend stuwen zwaargezwollen stroomen Ter monding voort leemgeler wastren wilden vloed, Meevoerend willoos losgewoelde boomen, Wier wankel evenwicht de wieling kant’len doet.
De geur van rottend loover en d’aromen Van overrijpe vruchten, die met doffen, Gedempten val op molmzachten bodem ploffen, Verwaait de regenwind in vochte vlagen, Die rits’lesd door het groen der blanke sawahs zwerven, Om aan den grauwen einder weg te sterven… Daar splijt de late zon de lage wolkenlagen: Goudlichte glorie overstraalt de landen En purper vlammen op de duist’re tufsteenwanden.*
Poetic structure
The poem is composed in the sonnet-like form typical of Kunst’s Melati en rotan: a single fourteen-line stanza of regular Dutch-colonial verse, with the turn (volta) at line 13 — “Daar splijt de late zon de lage wolkenlagen” (“There the late sun splits the low cloud-layers”) — that introduces the sudden illumination of the closing couplet. The imagery of the first twelve lines is uniformly dark: the “huivergrauwe zee” (“shivering-grey sea”), the “somb’re, ruigbegroeide kruinen” (“sombre, roughly-grown peaks”), the “leemgeler wastren wilden vloed” (“clay-yellow wild flood”), the smell of “rottend loover” (“rotting foliage”) and the overripe fruit falling with a “gedempten val” (“muffled fall”) on the “molmzachten bodem” (“mould-soft ground”). The closing couplet reverses the darkness: the late sun splits the clouds, the gold-light glory overstrains the lands, and the purple flames on the dark tufa-stone walls — the sudden illumination that is the structural turn of the poem.
The Atjehnese landscape
The poem’s Atjehnese landscape is composed of four elements: the coconut-plantations (klappertuinen) that fringe the grey sea for miles; the distant mountains with their sombre, roughly-grown peaks; the swollen rivers that carry uprooted trees to the sea in a clay-yellow flood; and the sawahs (rice-fields) — described as “blanke sawahs” (“white sawahs”) — through which the rain-wind rustles before dying at the grey horizon. The imagery is the documentary image of the Atjehnese coast in the west-monsoon season: a landscape of rain, swollen rivers, and tropical decay, lit at the last moment by the late sun breaking through the clouds.
Significance
The Westmoesson (Kust van Atjeh) is significant for the encyclopedia of Achehnese history as the principal Dutch-colonial literary document of the Atjehnese coast in the west-monsoon season. The poem’s imagery — the rain, the coconut-plantations, the swollen rivers, the rotting leaves, the late sun — is the poetic counterpart of the geographical image of Atjeh fixed in the *Atlas van Nederland en de Indiën* of G. Prop: the territory recently pacified, productive of pepper, with its coast exposed to the west monsoon. The poem’s placement in the *Melati en rotan* collection — alongside the political elegy for General Swart — fixes the two poles of the Dutch-colonial poetic imagination of Atjeh: the scenic landscape of the coast and the political memory of the pacification. The closing couplet’s sudden illumination — “Goudlichte glorie overstraalt de landen” (“Gold-light glory overstrains the lands”) — is the poem’s structural counterpart to the political lament of the Swart elegy: where the Swart poem laments the destruction of the colonial achievement, the Westmoesson poem finds, in the late sun breaking through the rain, a momentary image of glory that the political poem denies.
See Also
- Acheh
- Atlas van Nederland en de Indiën (1930)
- Bij den dood van Generaal Swart, den pacificator van Atjeh
- H. N. A. Swart
- Melati en rotan
- Sabang
- 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), p. 32.