Chairil Anwar
1922–1949
Biography
Chairil Anwar (1922–1949) was an Indonesian poet and one of the leading writers of the so-called 1945 Generation, the young authors who came to prominence around the time Indonesia declared its independence. He was born in Medan, in North Sumatra, and in 1940 he moved with his mother to Batavia, now Jakarta, where he began to find his way into the city's literary circles. He died in Jakarta in April 1949, aged twenty-six, of an illness whose cause is still uncertain.
His first published poem appeared in 1942, during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, when writing was watched closely and some of his work was rejected or cut for being too individualistic. His verse deals with death, personal freedom and inner unrest. He wrote in the everyday speech of his time and stretched its word forms and sentence patterns in new ways, and critics often say that this helped shape the modern Indonesian language. Many of his poems were still unpublished when he died, and they were later gathered into posthumous collections. The anniversary of his death is marked in Indonesia as National Literature Day.
Aku Ini Binatang Jalang, the collection on this site, takes its title from a line in "Aku" ("Me"), the poem that is his most celebrated work. The line can be rendered as "I am a wild beast", and it captures the defiant, restless voice that made him a symbol for his generation. Reading the book is a direct way to meet the poet whose work changed what Indonesian poetry could sound like.
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Books
Aku Ini Binatang Jalang
by Chairil Anwar
Chairil Anwar's poems of 1942 to 1949, the verse that broke with the old Malay forms and gave Indonesian its modern voice, from 'Nisan' and 'Aku' to 'Krawang-Bekasi'. The collection was assembled in 1986 from the poet's manuscripts, so a poem sometimes appears in two versions.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.