Those Timeless Stories (Updated)

What happen in dreams may not happen in real life. Even if they do not, they have timeless meanings. (I.S. Kijne, 1899-1970)

Which dreams have enduring values? The sequences of mental images during sleep, daydreams, things hoped for, idle hopes, vague states, or beautiful things? Visions, fantasies, aspirations, wishes, goals, desires, delight, joys, pleasures, marvels, or ideals? Any combination of some of these dreams or a combination of all of them?

To Kijne, one of the most prominent Dutch missionaries of the Dutch Reformed Church Missionary in the northern coast of the former Dutch New Guinea (now Papua and West Papua), those dreams are related to the mythology and even to the nocturnal dreams with mythological contents of the coastal Papuans of which he showed thorough knowledge. These stories from their deep "collective unconscious" have revealed for countless seasons and generations their fantasies, visions, aspirations, wishes, desires, goals, hopes, and ideals "filtered" through their choices of folly, ignorance, and misleading or misled freedom. They are stories with imaginary characters that probably never existed in real life, yet whose enactment of the mythological ideologies, particularly, the meaningful belief systems, of their communities has revealed ageless truth of human life. The underlying truth of local dreams can, therefore, be also the underlying truth of universal dreams of humankind.

Such universal truth can be noticed in the mythologies of other communities or nations. For example, Achilles, perhaps the greatest figure in Greek mythology, is known throughout the world. As a famous mythical hero, he embodies the human ability to overcome his personal and local limitations to achieve normal human forms. He also symbolizes the ideals of the universal man, the man of any place and any time. He is, therefore, both a modern and eternal man. As a hero, he died as a modern man. As an eternal man, however, he has been perfected, unspecified, and universal through his rebirth. His rebirth as an eternal man also signifies the rebirth of any society.

Heroes such as Achilles can be observed in various myths from Papua. Wei, Merne, Gura Besi, and Lord of the Utopia, for example, are four famous mythical heroes. Wei from the Jayapura area and Merne from Sarmi were culture heroes and second creators; Gura Besi was the war hero from Biak who helped the Sultan of Tidore (in Eastern Indonesia) of the fifteenth century to defeat his enemy by killing all the enemy soldiers with only one magic arrow; and Lord of the Utopia was another culture hero and second creator from Biak-Numfor who mastered the secrets of material abundance and eternal life.

Unfortunately, no one or probably a few people have known such great mythical characters embodying universal truth from Papua. One of the aims of this blog is to popularize these great stories to you.

Another aim is to tell you other stories whose fundamental truth is either the same as the ancient mythological truth or is enriched through modern mythologies. (Such modern mythologies include world-famous movies such as "Star Wars", "Star Trek", and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".) Selected short stories, diaries, sketches, descriptions, book reviews, and lyrics from Papua and other places in Indonesia rarely or never told before will also be published through this blog.

Did Papuan writers never write any modern short stories or poems? Did none of them retell Papuan folk tales? Some did.

During the Dutch period, the monthly magazine Triton published in the 1950s by the Dutch government and distributed to Papuan teachers, Papuans working for the Dutch government and private companies as well as students contained what can be considered short stories and poems usually written in Malay and sometimes in Dutch by various Papuan writers.

These writers include teachers, government officials, and students. Willem Inuri, a teacher and school inspector from Roon who worked in Hollandia (now Jayapura), published various short stories in Malay in Triton. (Malay or Bahasa Melayu is actually Indonesian which for various reasons was not mentioned during the Dutch period in New Guinea.) Inuri's pen name was Rayori, the name of a mountain in Sowek, an island near Biak. Markus ("Max") W. Kaisiepo from Biak, a government employee at the Office for Public Information in Hollandia, was another writer in that magazine. Both Inuri and Kaisiepo belong to the older generation of Papuan writers during the Dutch period. Papuan writers of the younger generation include Fritz M. Kirihio (from Serui, Yappen), a student at Leiden University in Holland, and Jos Marey (from Nabire),a government employee and journalist. Kirihio wrote a few short stories and poems in Malay and a retold Papuan folk tale, Swandey, in Dutch. Marey wrote both in Malay and Dutch about various things.

Selected short stories in Triton were later compiled by S. van der Werff, a Dutch government official who was Head of the Office for Public Information in Hollandia, under the title of Sesuai Zaman (In Accordance with Time). This title was quoted from the title of a short story by Rayori (W. Inuri). It can be said that this short story meets the requirements of modern short-story writing, such as conflict and its complication as well as its climax and anti-climax. The story, mixed with typical rural humor, is about the unavoidable social change in the rural areas of Dutch New Guinea caused by modern life and the need for villagers to change their life styles to adapt to the change. Kirihio's short story, Rumah Baru (A New House), is a Christmas story about a rural drunkard who experienced some inner change during Christmas, became a new man in a new house that he entered at the beginning of a new year.

For reasons not understood yet, all these writers, except few, stopped writing short stories and retold folk tales when Indonesia took over the region from the Dutch in the early 1960s. In the mid 1960s, Fred Hengga (from Sentani), a Papuan journalist who managed Teropong (a weekly in Indonesian published in Soekarnapura, the former name of Jayapura), published a short story in that weekly. C. Akwan (from Manokwari), another Papuan writer of the late 1970s, wrote Yanes, Penakut Yang Menjadi Pemberani (Yanes, the Coward Who Became a Brave Boy), a thematic short story for children. Yanes, a rural boy who was a coward, was turned into a brave boy through a daring sea action few of his peers could show. The short story was the result of a short-story workshop conducted by Dr. Marion Van Horne from the USA at BPK Gunung Mulia, a leading Christian Publishing House in Jakarta in the late 1970s, and was published by this company in 1978. Half a million copies of Akwan's story were then republished under a presidential decree by the Department of Education and Culture in Jakarta in 1982 and were distributed throughout Indonesia. Ditawan Naga (Held Captive by the Dragon) is another book by C. Akwan, also published by BPK Gunung Mulia, Jakarta, in 1991. The book contains a collection of selected folk tales from Irian Jaya (the former name for the current Papua and West Papua); one of the folk tales, newly titled as Escape from the Dragon, will be published in this blog. It seems that the efforts of the Dutch government to develop modern Papuan writers, including writers of short stories, have not been continued or developed during the Indonesian period.

So, still another aim of this blog is to enable Papuan and non-Papuan writers to continue what the older Papuan writers of short stories, folk tales, and poems achieved in the past. These types of stories should meet modern requirements of story writing.

It is our hope that this blog can enrich your life with universal truth based on local truth in mythologies, short stories, poems, and others - from the tropical Papua and Indonesia. The local truth, its enduring values and meanings in them, underlies these evergreen tropical stories.

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