Letters of a Javanese princess/Chapter 21

by Raden Adjeng Kartini

XXI^[1]

1st of August, 1901.

WE Javanese cannot live without flowers and sweet odours. The native flowers in their splendour awaken in me a world of thought and feeling whenever I breathe in their perfume. Days afterwards it lives in my memory, and I feel the strong Javanese blood coursing through my veins. Oh soul of my people, that used to be too beautiful, that was full of kindness, poetry, gentleness and modesty—what has become of you? What have time and slothfulness not made of you?

It is so often said that we are more European than Javanese in our hearts. Sad thought! We know that we are impregnated with European ideas and feelings—but the blood, the Javanese blood that flows live and warm through our veins, can never die. We feel it in the smell of incense and in the perfume of flowers, in the tones of the gamelan, in the sighing of the wind through the tops of the cocoa-nut trees, the cooing of the turtle doves, the whistling of the fields of ripened rice, in the pounding of the haddi-blokken^[2] at the time of the rice harvest.

Not for nothing have we passed our whole lives amid surroundings where everything depends upon form; we have learned the emptiness of those forms, their lack of meaning and of substance; there is much good in the Javanese people. We are so anxious for you to admire our people. When I see something fine, some trait of character, that is peculiarly Javanese, then I think "How glad I should be if Mevrouw A. were with us. She would be pleased at this thing, would appreciate it, she who has wide open eyes for everything that is noble."

Our little Javanese wood-carver-artist as you call him, has made something very beautiful with the whole wajang history^[3] carved upon it. Wajang figures on the cover, on the outside and inside both, and on all four walls. There is a case designed to protect it, which is also ornamented with wajang figures. The box is lined with orange satin, which is gathered and pleated, and it is set off by a silver rim, also of native workmanship. Indeed it ought to be very beautiful, for it is designed to hold the portraits of the Regents of Java and Madeira, which the queen has ordered sent to her. This mark of homage is a pretty idea. The Regent of Garoat ordered the box and I was given free play. I might spend as much as I liked for both objects.

1. To Mevrouw Abendanon.
2. In Java the rice is beaten from the husks by great wooden mortars. The pounding noise made by these on the sawahs (rice fields) at the time of the harvest produces a monotonous cadence.
3. Wajang is the Javanese drama, it is very ancient and in the 9th century was already a traditional institution in its present form. It presents always the romantic legends or sagas of the Island, though some of the stories are versions of those in Hindu mythology and were introduced after the Hindu occupation of Java. There are three principal forms of wajang, the most common is the wajang kelitik or little wajangs, puppets made of leather. The master of the show or delang manipulates the strings and recites the lines behind the scenes. Sometimes the performances last from 7.30 in the evening until 6 in the morning. The wajang topeng or lyric drama existed in the year 1000 and probably earlier. The performers are men and women wearing grotesque masks. Animal masks such as tigers, elephants, wild boars, birds, etc., are often worn. In the presence of royalty the actors play unmasked. The wajang beber is of very early origin and is a shadow play, shadows of marionettes being shown through a white cloth. At the time of the Mohammedan conquest in the 15th century and after the forcible conversion of the Javanese to Mohammedanism, an effort was made to change the wajangs to conform with the Mohammedan law which forbade the representation of human beings, hence the introduction of the grotesque contorted masks still in use. Wajang performances are always accompanied by gamelan music, explanatory verse and a chorus with chants.