Letters of a Javanese princess/Chapter 44
XLIV[1]
August 15th, 1902.
HURRAH for our native Art and Industry! They are well started now on the road to a splendid future. I cannot tell you how pleased I am. We like to admire our own people and it is so easy to make us proud of them!
The future of our Javanese artists is assured. Heer Zimmerman was in ecstasies over the work that he saw here by the despised brown race: Wood carving, the art of the gold smith, and textile weaving have reached a high degree of excellence. Our artists here have received a large order from East and West for St. Nicholas. We are delighted. Now the clever artist can bring out new ideas and express his poetic thoughts in graceful undulating lines and in ravishing, glowing, changing colours. Oh, it is splendid above everything else to seek the beautiful—a spark of God is everywhere, even when things outwardly appear most evil.
There was once a child who went to an old woman who asked her what she would like to have, for the little one had neither sweets, nor ornaments, nor clothes; but the child said "Oh Mother, give me a flower that opens in the heart."
How do you like that? You must see it in the original—the answer of the child sounds so sweet. There is a deep meaning in bloementaal.[2] "Njoewoen sekar melati hingkang mekar hing poendjering ati." That is what one hears all the time. We are now busy writing down everything interesting that we hear from the mouths of the people. There is no word for poetry in our language. We say "bloementaal," and is it not well said.
We are learning songs. Not songs of rejoicing—have you ever heard one of that kind from a Javanese? The gamelan never rejoices, even at the most extravagant festivals, its tone is mournful. Perhaps that is well, life is mournful; not a song of rejoicing.
These pages have been written under the influence of sweet and sad singing. It is evening, windows and doors are open; the fragrant breath of the blooming tjempaka beyond our chamber comes to greet us with the cool breeze that rustles through its branches. I sat upon the floor, just as I do now at a long low table, at my left was sister Roekmini also writing. To the right of me was Annie Glazer, she too on the floor. Before me was a woman who read from a book of songs. They were very beautiful, and the pure, serene, sonorous tones seemed to carry our souls far away, nearer to the realm of the blessed. How I wish that you could be sitting there with us in that little circle. You would have felt with us and dreamed with us. Dreams! Life is not a dream. It is cold, sober reality, but even reality does not have to be ugly, unless we make it so.
It is not ugly—it is beautiful. We always have beauty within us. This is the reason that I wish that in education, emphasis were laid upon character forming, and first of all upon the cultivation of strength of will; it should be instilled into the child.
But I am wandering from my subject. This time I wanted to write to you about our people, and not about education.
There is an old woman here from whom I have gathered many flowers that spring from the heart. She has already given me much, and has still more to give, and I wish for more; always more. She is willing, but first I must earn her treasures, I must buy her flowers—why? Why must I pay?
Solemnly the words sounded from her lips; "Fast a day and a night, and pass that time awake and in solitude."
"Door nacht tot licht[3]
door storm tot rust
door strijd tot eer
door leed tot lust."
sounds like a requiem in my ears.
The meaning behind the words of the old woman is: Fasting and waking are symbolical; "Through abstinence and meditation, we go toward the light." No light, where darkness has not gone before. Do you not think that a beautiful thought? Fasting is the overcoming of the material by the spirit; solitude is the school of meditation.
As a child I did everything mechanically without question, because others around me did the same thing; then a time came when my mind began to question, why do I do that, why is so and so? why—why—It is endless.
I would not do things mechanically without knowing the reason. I would not learn any more lessons from the Koran, saying sentences in a strange language, whose meaning I did not understand and which probably my teachers themselves did not understand. "Tell me the meaning and I am willing to learn everything." I was wrong, the Book of Books is too holy to be comprehended by our poor intelligence.
We would not fast and do other things which seemed senseless to us. Every one was in despair; we were in despair, no one could explain the things which were incomprehensible to us. Our God was our conscience, our Hell and our Heaven too was our own conscience; if we did wrong our conscience punished us; if we did good, our conscience rewarded us.
The years came and went; we were called Mahommedans because we had inherited that faith, and we were Mahommedans in name^ no more. God—Allah—was for us a nam—a word—a sound without meaning.
Now we have found Him for whom unconsciously our souls had yearned during the long years. We had sought so far and so long, we did not know that it was near, that it was always with us, that it was in us.
It had been working in us unconsciously for a long time; but she who opened the door for which we had sought, was Nellie Van Kol. And who leads us now, and shows us the way toward Him? It is Mamma. We have been so stupid all our lives; we have had a whole mountain of treasure under our hands and we have not known it.
Foolish, headstrong, pedantic persons that we were, we reproach ourselves now for our own conceit and self sufficiency. We say to console ourselves: "It has pleased God to open your hearts at last, be thankful for that."
God alone understands the riddle of the world. It is He that brings together paths that were far asunder for the forming of new roads.