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| Salleh Ben Joned during the shooting of The Big Durian (James Lee) |
Or
Down by the Salleh Gardens (An ABC of
Reading Poetry for Local Professional/Academic Critics as well as an
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There is no
doubt that Salleh Ben Joned, whose first collection of poems did not find a
publisher until he was in mid-forties, is an anomaly – a Malay anomaly.
Salleh’s anomaly is multi-dimensional, and this he has tried to suggest in the
Malay title of his bilingual book – Sajak-Sajak
Saleh.
The pun on
“Saleh” is obvious of course, but it
is not the only pun – Salleh’s Sajaks or Poems[1]
and, if a translinguistic pun is permitted, “Sullied Poems.”
If you want to involve a third language there is the French sale hovering somewhere behind the
English “sully”.) The “sullied” is for the benefit of those Malay critics and
writers who are excessively conscious of the bogey of “ethnic purity” in
poetry. They will read all kinds of
“impurities” into Salleh’s stuff and no doubt conclude that the guy is beyond
redemption, from the point of view of ethnicity at least. These poems are not
the works of a Melayu (Malay); only a writer whose sensibility has been sullied
by undesirable foreign matter could have written them.
In other words these are
poems of a Mat Salleh, i.e., an Orang Putih (White Man), specifically a
Britisher, albeit celup (not
authentic). (God knows why Brits are called Mat
Salleh). For those
Melayus who are also self-conscious about being Muslim (that means the
overwhelming majority), an added help would be in order. (This is after all and
ABC of reading for them, isn’t it?) These readers will have concluded from what
they have heard of Salleh Ben Joned (“Ben” is of course a clear sign of his
secret Zionist, therefore, anti-Islamic, sympathies) that the purity of his religious
identity is also questionable. They will be glad to be informed that the pun of
“sully” on Salleh/Saleh is an unconscious acknowledgment of this, for “sully”
is from Latin suculus which is a
diminutive of sus, a boar or swine.
See, I can be very helpful.
Salleh or
Saleh (one or two “l”s is immaterial,
I think as a common Malay name is Arabic in origin (there was a prophet long
before Muhammad named Salih). The name means “pious,” which is of course very
appropriate for a prophet; but in the case of our poet… well, I don’t know.
Perhaps
Salleh, acutely conscious of being alienated from the Malay cultural tradition
as it is currently or popularly understood, would like to make a claim to a
heritage that goes further back in time, perhaps into prehistory, long before
the race was saved by the coming of Islam. Perhaps he wants people to be aware
of the “Malay meaning” of saleh, not
the Arabic. For saleh, according to
Marsden and Wilkinson, means “distinct, particular.” Winstedt, who is more
alert to the variety of regional usages, has more to offer. His Malay-English Dictionary gives the
following meanings: 1(Kedah)
throwbacks – of animals, fruits; freak – e.g. albino 2. (Penang) motion to or from as in saleh
kemari (be pleased to come here); saleh
kembali (revert). The third meaning refers to that of the original Arabic:
pious.
I think one
should be constantly aware of the “Malay meaning” of saleh when reading Salleh’s poems. (I can hear an academic voice
objecting: “That so called “Malay meaning” was an invention of colonial
Orientalists, and therefore tak boleh
pakai (unacceptable).” Really, Prof? are you sure you know your sources? In
any case, the meaning is endorsed by no less an acceptable authority than Kamus Dewan, Prof.)
So saleh is “distinct,” “particulate,” “odd,”
“individual,” “freakish” (I particularly like that “albino” bit). An individual
who “comes and goes,” and who is a “throwback” to some lost ancestral form.
Now we know
why Salleh’s book got the reception it did. The book, apparently, was found to
be so “shocking” (dahsyat was the
word often heard) that it left the usually vociferous (and highly shockable)
Malay critics almost mute with disbelief. There was not a single review of the
book in the Malay papers or literary magazines. This is not really surprising
in a society which often prefers to deal with the uncommon or the unabsorbable
by pretending it doesn’t exist. The book, however, did get a response,
generally favourable, from the English reading public; all the reviews that appeared
were in English.
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| Prof Muhammad Haji Salleh |
This Malay
anomaly called Salleh Ben Joned recently received the attention of a leading
Malay literary figure, the academic poet professor Muhammad Haji Salleh. In a
special poetry number of the journal Tenggara
(24/89), of which he is co-editor, the Professor has three articles. One of
them is a survey of contemporary Malay poetry accompanied by a selection of
recent stuff in translation. Salleh Ben Joned is one of the poets dealt with in
that survey.
As far as
Salleh knows, this is the first time that his poetry is discussed by a Malay
academic critic. Salleh does not quite know whether he should be grateful for
this unexpected attention. The uncertainty is quite understandable. The
Professor’s comments on his poetry are frankly quite obtuse, but under the
circumstances even an obtuse reaction from such a quarter, he feels, may be
better than no reaction at all. Perhaps, Salleh is really not quite sure.
I must
admit if there was a Malay academic critic who could be expected to deal with
Salleh’s works with a fairly informed mind, that critic would be Professor
Muhammad Hj Salleh. Considering his educational background, formal
qualifications, exposure to literatures other than Malay and Indonesia, he
should not be part of the tribe of ethnocentric katak di bawah tempurung (frogs under a coconut shell), the kind of
kataks given the ketok (knocks) of ironic mockery in the opening paragraphs of this
piece.
But
something has obviously happened to the Professor since he decided to embark on
the programme of “recovering” his “Melayuness.” Now that he occupies the Chair
of Malay Literature at the National University, the need to assert his
“Melayuness” is even stronger, especially in the face of attacks by jealous kataks who dare to question his right to
pontificate about Malay aesthetics and arbitrate on the relative worth of Malay
writers and works, classic or contemporary.
This must
account for the Professor’s strange reaction to Salleh’s book. Confronted with
Salleh’s self proclaimed sacred and profane stuff (note the invisible hyphens
in the “Sacred and Profane” of the title, as they were by the alert Adibah Amin
in her review of the book in the New
Straits Times, August 14, 1987), Professor Muhammad’s critical faculties,
nay, even his very ability to read poetry seems to have deserted him. He admits
that the appearance of Salleh’s book was “the most traumatic of experiences”
for “the Malaysian literary scene.” (“Traumatic,” mind you! To be quite honest,
Salleh was rather pleased with that word, for never in his wildest dreams did
he imagine that poetry – least of all his – could have such an effect).”
Trauma
aside, Professor Muhammad takes particular exception to Salleh’s blatant
refusal to assume the stance of the “poet as a leader and elder of society.”
No, thank you, Prof… Salleh feels that it is this business of the poet as a
leader, solemnly and self-consciously assumed, that is in part responsible for
the typical Malay poet being a bloody bore. Salleh for his part gets easily
embarrassed and feels he would barely articulate by the suffocating mantle of
the elder of society. Especially when he feels (in spirit at least) forever
young, younger, in fact, the older he gets.
Salleh
wants to be heard of course, distinctly even if at times ambiguously. He wants
the ambiguity (not something much valued here) to be distinctly registered,
especially when there is a risk of him being considered for one of those
literary prizes on the committee of which out Professor may be sitting.
So, traumatized
apparently by Salleh’s “peculiar” approach to poetry writing, and puzzled by
his reluctance to play the part of the elder and leader, and also shocked
obviously by his plain-speaking about certain matters, our earnest Professor
could only react the way the typical Malay reader or critic would react. After
mumbling about “trauma,” “sacrilege,” etc., he categorically asserts that to
Salleh “nothing is sacred, neither family nor religion nor the moralistic
myths.”
The word
“nothing” can be dangerous when used so categorically. After all, even nothing
is nothing. Even the blasphemous Earl of Rochester, the notorious 17th Century
poet and rake, admitted nothing “hath a being ere the world was made.” You
ponder hard on that line, and you will realize that this kind of nothing is not
just nothing. Some of Salleh’s poems can be said to affirm this paradox. Even
“nothing” is sacred to Salleh. Disinherited Salleh’s mind may be, but certainly
not secularized. In fact, it helps to be “scared” of the sacred to make nothing
of it. (It’s symptomatic that every time he wants to say “sacred,” “scared”
gets typed.)
To buttress
his assertion of the anti-sacred or non-sacred tendencies in Salleh’s poetry,
our traumatized Professor could only and helplessly resort to the convenient
clichés of his trade. Clichés which are easy substitutes for hard thinking and
hard feeling, and which are much resorted to by Malay literary critics. “Rebel,”
“outsider,” “sacrilege,” and, of course, the inevitable kurang ajar (rude and untutored) are bandied about as if they were
nothing. And the Professor, of course, takes several paragraphs to say the
damned nothing (i.e. his “nothing”, not mine), and in awkward English too. And
in the process manages to make the reader suffer the hilariously painful sight
of the mangling of Salleh’s Malay poems in his deadening English translations.
The
Professor (quite surprising this, considering his reputed familiarity with world
poetry and poetics in English) simply cannot read poetry except in the manner
sanctioned by the established habits of his Malay-educated fellow critics. For
example, he cannot make the elementary distinction between the “scandalous”
autobiographical elements and their poetic transformations.
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| SBJ with Aussie wife & daughter Anna |
What
“scandalous” autobiographical elements? Oh, well… you know, those… those
“personal sexual act (sic) with women”… with women, mind you!) that Salleh is
supposed to have re-enacted shamelessly in his salacious stuff; all the
scandalous things he says about his dead father (imagine making the dying
father hiss “bloody bastard!” with his last breath!), his wives (infidel wives,
too), and his daughters. One of the daughters he claims to be proud of, and
even dedicates the book to her. Yet, for some perverse reasons known only to
himself, he could write a lengthy light verse that seems to make unkind fun of
the poor girl!
The poem
that Professor Muhammad focuses on in his discussion of the “scandalous
autobiographical elements” in Salleh’s work is Dendang Si Tegang Pulang (The Salacious Rhymes of the Self-Taut
Prodigal). His reading of the three-part poem is not only literal but earnestly
one-dimensional, showing no sensitivity to its formal and rhetorical strategy
as well as its tone. Because of this, he is not aware that the poem is in part of
the mocking allusion to his own Pulang Si
Tenggang (The Return of Si Tenggang). The allusion is direct only in a few
places – especially in the title and in the phrases sopan santun (courteous) and Melayu
jati (true Malay) in the first and third parts of the poem; but the whole
of the Dendang Si Tegang Pulang could
be read as in part a “parody” of Muhammad’s Tenggang
poem.
Like
Muhammad’s poem, Salleh’s too alludes to the legend of Si Tenggang, the
archetypal prodigal son who forgot that paradise lies at the feet of mothers –
or the shores of the Mother Country; but the allusion is mocking and ironic, as
the punning variation on the name suggests (Tenggang/Tegang) Salleh’s Si Tegang (tegang literally means “tense,”
taut,” erect”) is, as the Professor for once accurately comments, a voice very
much “on heat.” Propelled by the swinging beats of its syllabics, the poem
mockingly echoes the Muhammad Hj Salleh-type English-educated poet’s defensive
postures and predictable thinking about identity. Among other things, it says
that if you believe and feel in your liver that you are still essentially a
Malay after all the cross-cultural wanderings and acts of miscegenation
(literal or metaphorical), then you are one. No need to make a self-conscious
or defensive noise about it, saying, as Muhammad does in his poem, that “I am
still a Malay, still courteous,” and saying it in lines that are not only
deadly solemn but embarrassingly self congratulatory (“I am still a courteous
person you know.”)
I would say
that a Malay poet’s “Malayness,” to the extent that the thing matters in
poetry, must be allowed to speak for itself while the poetry is busy on other
things. Damn those chauvinistic critics who question what you in your liver
know to be the case, and pity those insecure poets and professors who are
self-consciously defensive about cultural identity. In any case, a distinction
has to be made between essential and formal or official “Malayness.” And even
that “essential Malayness,” whatever it is, does not have to remain completely
pure, if that is possible, for a Malay poet to remain Malay. If your
“Malayness” is somewhat sullied, so what? So much the better if it means you
are a fuller human being open to the sheer variety and richness of life. The
purity of a poet’s identity, cultural or racial is not necessarily important to
the business of writing poetry. All that writing poetry requires here is
honesty, skill, clarity of mind and heart. That, and a sensitivity to the furious
rumblings in your ancestral gut, the kind of sensitivity suggested by the
aphorism that Lin Yutang once memorably and shamelessly burped: “What is
patriotism but the love of the good things we ate in our childhood?”
May 1990
[1] Sajak means rhymes, verse. It also means handsome,
as in pemuda yang sajak (handsome
youth); or fitting, appropriate, as in mendapat
isteri yang sajak (found a fitting wife). I can personally prefer sajak to puisi, but I can see there is a case for using both words. Sajak can be used to mean rhyming verse
(without the connotation of lightness which the English word sometimes
carries), and puisi to mean what its
English original, “poetry” suggest - something more comprehensive, embracing
both free verse and poetic prose as well as rhyming and blank verse.
