dunia kesusasteraan malaysia kehilangan sebutir lagi bintang. al-Fatihah untuk Allahyarham. semoga dia dikumpulkan bersama-sama orang yang beriman.
[If you're in the mood to read a radically censored version of this, checkout page 3 of The Star today.]
USMAN AWANG (1929-2001): Death of a patriot
By Amir Muhammad
With the passing of Usman Awang, Malaysia is left with one less person whoknows what matters. He is one of the very few Malaysian writers whose appeal could cut across racial and cultural barriers, and he maintained right to the end the spirit of questioning those in power.
Several of his poems, plays and short stories are comfortably ensconced in the collective imagination of two generations of Malaysians. Equally important is the image of the man himself, whose integrity, humility and open-heartedness have served as inspiration to many.
He once recounted an early experience that served as a guiding principle for the rest of his life. During the Japanese Occupation he was a forced labourer for the invaders before managing to escape with the help of a Tamil clerk, who hid him in his house. The clerk's wife told him, "Treat this as your own house, Usman. We are all the same. Regardless of race, we all have the same red blood. People are divided between the rich and the poor, the bad and the good."
As a policeman during the Emergency, he was compelled to arrest many people but later said, "I don't know why they were caught. They seemed to us to be good people, teachers, shopkeepers, workers . It was only gradually that I started to learn the truth about the political situation, detentions, police action and so on." Another formative experience was when he was assigned to guard a political congress; listening to the left-wing nationalist leaders like Burhanuddin Helmy, Shamsiah Fakeh and Ahmad Boestamam were invaluable in shaping his social conscience.
War and poverty had cut short his formal education at Standard Six but his immersion in the university of life - as policeman, journalist, editor, and activist - made sure that his works were grounded in the social verities of their time. His early poems such as the anti-war "Bunga Popi" (1955) burned with a commitment to universal humanity and a hatred of brutality and discrimination. His "Pak Utih" (1954) is the ballad of a neglected farmer that ends:
Pak Utih masih menanti dengan doa,
Bapak-bapak pergi ke mana di mobil besar?
He wrote a second poem called "Pak Utih" in 1974 which underscored the fact that independence from our colonial masters nevertheless left the rural poor as poor as ever, but with perhaps a different set of problems:
Tiba-tiba Pak Utih pandai menulis
Ditulisnya huruf-huruf sebesar batang kelapa:
I-N-F-L-A-S-I
In his later poems, the undoubted strength of his convictions became tinged with irony and satire instead of mere righteousness. "Bagaimana Kalau", "Benarkah Ketam Mengajar Anaknya Berjalan Betul?" and "Surat dari Masyarakat Burung Kepada Datuk Bandar", all written in 1979, are brilliant socio-political critiques cloaked in fun and mocking laughter, although
his language remained as supple and unpretentious as ever.
Not all his poetry revolved around the theme of social injustice. "Kekasih" (1971), with its sensuous metaphors and seductive rhythms, remains one of the greatest expressions of romantic love in the language; its popularity is proven by the fact that it has been set to song several times.
Although best-known as a poet, he did make some important contributions to other genres. His groundbreaking verse-play "Matinya Seorang Pahlawan" (1961) helped to popularise the idea of 15th century Malaccan warrior Hang Jebat as the real hero in his fight against Hang Tuah. Jebat was recast as a fierce idealist who valued truth and friendship above feudal allegiance to an unjust king:
Raja adil raja disembah
Raja tak adil raja disanggah!
The theme so captured the public imagination that "Matinya Seorang Pahlawan" has become one of the most performed of local plays. His musical "Uda Dan Dara" (1972), which is due to be restaged in a big way next year, is not just a love story but a socialist protest against class barriers and capitalist exploitation.
A handful of his short stories will also survive as testaments to his dramatic acumen and moral rigour. "Sebuah Khemah Didirikan" (1961) commemorates the Utusan Melayu strike when journalists from that newspaper were trying valiantly to save it from political interference. In its depiction of the lonely struggle of maintaining integrity and self-worth against the lure of easy money, it is one of the finest short stories written in this country. Equally powerful is "Matinya Seorang Perempuan" (1959), in which the murder of a woman becomes the catalyst for a boy to realise just how dangerous his politician father is.
He was a man imbued by principles of justice and equality but he knew how to have fun. Pictures of him from his early days show a striking dandy, and anecdotes abound of his romantic pursuits. His appetite for life included in it an antipathy for the corrupt and the exploitative - in other words, people who would be most likely to reduce the quality of that life.
He was a fierce defender of the Malay language and wrote "Keranda 152" (1967) to commemorate the occasion in which language activists protested against the continual marginalisation of Bahasa Malaysia, but he was no ethnocentric bigot. His poem "Sahabatku" (1983), dedicated to his friend Dr. M. K. Rajakumar, contained his vision of a united nation:
Bilakah semua warga negara mendapat hak
layanan dan keadilan yang sama
Dikenali dengan satu rupa nama:
Bangsa Malaysia?
It's no accident that among the eight men who have been awarded the title of Sasterawan Negara (National Laureate), his is easily the most widely-read and recognized among non-Malays. It was wonderful to see artists from so many language streams pay tribute to him at Salam Benua, an event organised in 1998 by the privately-owned Actors Studio, which is most commonly associated with English-language theatre.
Even Usman's tenure as editor in Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in the 1970s is fondly remembered as a time when the institution was open to, and encouraging of, participation from writers and cultural figures from all races. The official notion of cultural space became narrower and more exclusionary after he left. The cultural bureaucrats of today should perhaps read deeply into the closing stanza of his "Salam Benua" (1970):
Salam
tanpa visa
paspot
golf
warna
kemanusiaan rakyat
seluruh benua.
Although ill health reduced his creative output to a trickle in the last decade of his life, he remained an important icon frequently consulted or visited by younger writers. Rather than be bought over by the comforts of the establishment, he preferred to be autonomous and remained a champion of the underdog: Two of his last poems, written in 1999, were called Jentayu Yang Luka (Untuk Wan Azizah) and Saudara Anwar Ibrahim. They are collected in Dari Derita Bangsa (2001), a book of protest and humanitarian poems that he helped to compile.
Usman Awang - a good writer with a few great works, a lover of truth and life, a scourge of the false and the rapacious - is emphatically a credit to the burgeoning Malaysian race that he helped to create.
THE END.
[If you're in the mood to read a radically censored version of this, checkout page 3 of The Star today.]
USMAN AWANG (1929-2001): Death of a patriot
By Amir Muhammad
With the passing of Usman Awang, Malaysia is left with one less person whoknows what matters. He is one of the very few Malaysian writers whose appeal could cut across racial and cultural barriers, and he maintained right to the end the spirit of questioning those in power.
Several of his poems, plays and short stories are comfortably ensconced in the collective imagination of two generations of Malaysians. Equally important is the image of the man himself, whose integrity, humility and open-heartedness have served as inspiration to many.
He once recounted an early experience that served as a guiding principle for the rest of his life. During the Japanese Occupation he was a forced labourer for the invaders before managing to escape with the help of a Tamil clerk, who hid him in his house. The clerk's wife told him, "Treat this as your own house, Usman. We are all the same. Regardless of race, we all have the same red blood. People are divided between the rich and the poor, the bad and the good."
As a policeman during the Emergency, he was compelled to arrest many people but later said, "I don't know why they were caught. They seemed to us to be good people, teachers, shopkeepers, workers . It was only gradually that I started to learn the truth about the political situation, detentions, police action and so on." Another formative experience was when he was assigned to guard a political congress; listening to the left-wing nationalist leaders like Burhanuddin Helmy, Shamsiah Fakeh and Ahmad Boestamam were invaluable in shaping his social conscience.
War and poverty had cut short his formal education at Standard Six but his immersion in the university of life - as policeman, journalist, editor, and activist - made sure that his works were grounded in the social verities of their time. His early poems such as the anti-war "Bunga Popi" (1955) burned with a commitment to universal humanity and a hatred of brutality and discrimination. His "Pak Utih" (1954) is the ballad of a neglected farmer that ends:
Pak Utih masih menanti dengan doa,
Bapak-bapak pergi ke mana di mobil besar?
He wrote a second poem called "Pak Utih" in 1974 which underscored the fact that independence from our colonial masters nevertheless left the rural poor as poor as ever, but with perhaps a different set of problems:
Tiba-tiba Pak Utih pandai menulis
Ditulisnya huruf-huruf sebesar batang kelapa:
I-N-F-L-A-S-I
In his later poems, the undoubted strength of his convictions became tinged with irony and satire instead of mere righteousness. "Bagaimana Kalau", "Benarkah Ketam Mengajar Anaknya Berjalan Betul?" and "Surat dari Masyarakat Burung Kepada Datuk Bandar", all written in 1979, are brilliant socio-political critiques cloaked in fun and mocking laughter, although
his language remained as supple and unpretentious as ever.
Not all his poetry revolved around the theme of social injustice. "Kekasih" (1971), with its sensuous metaphors and seductive rhythms, remains one of the greatest expressions of romantic love in the language; its popularity is proven by the fact that it has been set to song several times.
Although best-known as a poet, he did make some important contributions to other genres. His groundbreaking verse-play "Matinya Seorang Pahlawan" (1961) helped to popularise the idea of 15th century Malaccan warrior Hang Jebat as the real hero in his fight against Hang Tuah. Jebat was recast as a fierce idealist who valued truth and friendship above feudal allegiance to an unjust king:
Raja adil raja disembah
Raja tak adil raja disanggah!
The theme so captured the public imagination that "Matinya Seorang Pahlawan" has become one of the most performed of local plays. His musical "Uda Dan Dara" (1972), which is due to be restaged in a big way next year, is not just a love story but a socialist protest against class barriers and capitalist exploitation.
A handful of his short stories will also survive as testaments to his dramatic acumen and moral rigour. "Sebuah Khemah Didirikan" (1961) commemorates the Utusan Melayu strike when journalists from that newspaper were trying valiantly to save it from political interference. In its depiction of the lonely struggle of maintaining integrity and self-worth against the lure of easy money, it is one of the finest short stories written in this country. Equally powerful is "Matinya Seorang Perempuan" (1959), in which the murder of a woman becomes the catalyst for a boy to realise just how dangerous his politician father is.
He was a man imbued by principles of justice and equality but he knew how to have fun. Pictures of him from his early days show a striking dandy, and anecdotes abound of his romantic pursuits. His appetite for life included in it an antipathy for the corrupt and the exploitative - in other words, people who would be most likely to reduce the quality of that life.
He was a fierce defender of the Malay language and wrote "Keranda 152" (1967) to commemorate the occasion in which language activists protested against the continual marginalisation of Bahasa Malaysia, but he was no ethnocentric bigot. His poem "Sahabatku" (1983), dedicated to his friend Dr. M. K. Rajakumar, contained his vision of a united nation:
Bilakah semua warga negara mendapat hak
layanan dan keadilan yang sama
Dikenali dengan satu rupa nama:
Bangsa Malaysia?
It's no accident that among the eight men who have been awarded the title of Sasterawan Negara (National Laureate), his is easily the most widely-read and recognized among non-Malays. It was wonderful to see artists from so many language streams pay tribute to him at Salam Benua, an event organised in 1998 by the privately-owned Actors Studio, which is most commonly associated with English-language theatre.
Even Usman's tenure as editor in Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in the 1970s is fondly remembered as a time when the institution was open to, and encouraging of, participation from writers and cultural figures from all races. The official notion of cultural space became narrower and more exclusionary after he left. The cultural bureaucrats of today should perhaps read deeply into the closing stanza of his "Salam Benua" (1970):
Salam
tanpa visa
paspot
golf
warna
kemanusiaan rakyat
seluruh benua.
Although ill health reduced his creative output to a trickle in the last decade of his life, he remained an important icon frequently consulted or visited by younger writers. Rather than be bought over by the comforts of the establishment, he preferred to be autonomous and remained a champion of the underdog: Two of his last poems, written in 1999, were called Jentayu Yang Luka (Untuk Wan Azizah) and Saudara Anwar Ibrahim. They are collected in Dari Derita Bangsa (2001), a book of protest and humanitarian poems that he helped to compile.
Usman Awang - a good writer with a few great works, a lover of truth and life, a scourge of the false and the rapacious - is emphatically a credit to the burgeoning Malaysian race that he helped to create.
THE END.
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