Situated Testimonies: Dread and Enchantment in an Indonesian Literary Archive

Chapter 2. At Home and Not at Home in Empire: Transnational Phantasies of Colonial Modernity

CHAPTEr 2 At Home and Not at Home in Empire: Transnational Phantasies of Colonial Modernity Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences. (Breuer and Freud, Studies on Hysteria) Can we afford to leave anxiety out of the story of the empire? (Guha, “Not at Home in Empire” If Maria Dermoût both refuted and commemorated her awareness of the politics of empire, the same cannot be said for Louis Couperus, arguably one of Holland’s most prolific and respected authors. Couperus firmly rejected the career in the Indies colonial service that he was groomed for by his family and felt no compulsion about exposing the decadence of the Dutch imperial bureaucracy. Dermoût was a writer of Indies Letters, but Couperus’ inclusion as an author of Indies Letters is based on only one of almost forty novels that he wrote during his lifetime (1863–1923). Couperus thus stands within the mainstream of Dutch literatuur (literature ) rather than writing “only” Indische Letteren, as Dermoût did. Couperus spent five and a half years of his adolescence in the Indies, and he said those years had profound effects on his life and development. In 1899, at the age of thirty-six, he spent another year in the Indies—where he began his celebrated Indies novel of 1900, De stille kracht (The Hidden Force)—and he returned once again for several months near the end of his life.1 Couperus came from a prominent family of colonial bureaucrats, old Indies hands who retired to Den Haag, after either a few years or a lifetime spent in the Indies.2 Many cite Couperus’ Haagsche romans (Den Haag At Home and not at Home in Empire 51 novels), which captured habitual life in and around Den Haag at the turn of the last century, among his best works. These works include Eline Vere (1889), The Books of Small Souls (four volumes, 1901–1902), and the 1906 novel with a truly untranslatable title, Van oude mensen, de dingen, die voorbij gaan (Old People and Things That Pass Them By). Before Couperus, the Dutch literary scene had been centered on Amsterdam, and Couperus is credited with putting Den Haag on the literary map.3 In addition to being a writer of Indies Letters and a celebrated author of Dutch literature, Couperus is also included in the small circle of late-nineteenth- and earlytwentieth -century writers of “decadent” literature, as it was called at the time.4 Married to a close cousin and considered a dandy, Couperus was also known as an effeminate writer. Because decadence and effeminacy were dangerous forms of recognition in his day, especially if equated with homosexuality, Couperus kept his personal life hidden. Dutch metropolitan culture, as portrayed in Couperus’ novels of Den Haag, makes an interesting comparison with Dutch Indies colonial culture, as depicted in the novellas and essays of Tirto Adhi Soerjo, upper-class Figure 3 Performance of a play, Esther, inTegal, Java, with Louis Couperus in the center as King Assuérus, ca. 1899. Courtesy of rob niewenhuys Collection, KITLV Archive, Leiden. 52 Chapter 2 Javanese journalist, editor, and fiction writer of the early twentieth century . In Tirto’s day, there was a blending of various forms of Malay that were circulating in the Indies, but Tirto’s revolutionary literary language was a form of resistance to Dutch, Dutch-sponsored literary Malay, and the long-lived Malay of Dutch colonial command. Many people have become familiar with Tirto through his fictional fabrication as the character Minke, an early nationalist leader, in the Buru Quartet of Pramoedya Ananta Toer. I explore the writings of Tirto and Pramoedya’s biography of Tirto in this chapter, and I return to Pramoedya’s fictional portrayal of Tirto in Chapter 5. Both Couperus and Tirto turned away from careers in the civil service of the colonial Indies that their families wanted them to pursue, and both became prolific writers of fiction and nonfiction. Themes of imperial modernity and sexual degeneracy permeate the works of both, producing angst (dread) and melancholia in the work of Couperus and haunting anxiety in Tirto’s fiction, too, despite the author’s enchantment with capital, media, and fashion.5 After being called upon for information and protected by the Dutch Governor General J. B. van Heutsz (r. 1904–1909) in the first decade of the twentieth century, Tirto was rejected by the new colonial administration , attacked by his enemies, and exiled...