Sitor Situmorang poses next to a poster of his collection of short stories. JP/P.J. Leo

Batak, poet, nationalist – that’s how I recognized Sitor Situmorang as the romantic “Maruli” in Blanche d’Alpuget’s novel Monkeys in the Dark (1980), set in Indonesia in the turbulent years surrounding the alleged Communist coup of 1965.  

In the late 1970s I was researching my bachelor’s thesis about politics and literature in Indonesia under the Old Order (1959-1965). While my main focus had been Lekra, the cultural organization of the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party), I also interviewed Sitor.  

In 1978 he was just three years out of prison, where he had been detained for leading the LKN, the cultural organization of the PNI (Nationalist Party of Indonesia). The PNI was president Sukarno’s party, and like its founder, it leaned hard to the left.  

To be detained for eight years without trial must have been a soul-shriveling experience, but I found Sitor warm, friendly and helpful – and more than willing to answer the intrusive questions of a young researcher. I had not realized at the time that I was making friends with one of Indonesia’s literary giants, a friendship that still continues today.

Born in 1924, Sitor Situmorang is considered one of Indonesia’s foremost poets, held in high esteem by critics both domestically and abroad. He is also arguably its most prolific. He wrote an astonishing 605 poems between 1948 and 2005 . Painstakingly collected and edited by JJ Rizal, they were published in two volumes by Komunitas Bambu in 2003.  

And Sitor is still writing today.  In fact, for over 60 years Sitor’s poetry has been an expression of his life and a testament to his surroundings: from his Batak homeland to the development of Indonesia as a nation to his constant wanderings in Europe. So when Sitor recently published a complete collection of his short stories, again compiled and edited by JJ Rizal and published by Komunitas Bambu, expectations were high.

Prepare to be disappointed if you’re expecting a tome. The collection features just 23 pieces, but they are no less expressive and varied than his poetry. In fact, Rizal writes in his introduction that many observers say that “in Indonesian literature [Sitor’s short stories] are beyond compare”, and that “they deserve to be published in an anthology of Western literary works”.

If that sounds like Western-ethnocentrism (can literary merit only be measured by Western standards?), that’s because these remarks came originally from A. Teeuw, a Dutch critic considered the doyen of Indonesian literature in his time. But they also reflect the fact that Sitor’s work straddles many worlds – not just East and West – but also different historical periods and even states of being.

The first story in the new collection, “Kembang Gerbera” (“The Gerbera”, a type of daisy), written in 1950, is an expansion of two poems Sitor wrote in 1948: “Kaliurang: Pagi” (Kaliurang: Morning) and “Kaliurang: Tengah Hari” (Kaliurang: Noon). It tells of his relationship with L.E., “an exotically beautiful young [Dutch-Austrian] woman”. Two poems were not enough to express his love, so he wrote a short story – his first - as “a way to close the book, and open new developments and possibilities”.

In the collection I also found the short story that bookends “Kembang Gerbera”, one that reminds me of my second encounter with Sitor, in 1980. “Fiksi dalam Fiksi” (“Fiction within a Fiction”) is about his passionate love story with an Australian woman, the same woman who wrote “Monkeys in the Dark”. He wrote it in 1980, and hasn’t written a short story since.

Like all poets, Sitor has written much about his loves (of which there have been many), but none seems greater than his love for his mother. “Ibu Pergi ke Surga” (“Mother Goes to Heaven”) – the titular story of the collection and his most famous – is on the surface about his dying mother. But set in a remote hillside village, it also expresses deep conflicts between the Batak tradition and Christianity.

In fact, world-wanderer though he is, Sitor is no stranger to his own native culture. In “Toba Na Sae” (roughly translated as “Toba Is Finished” (2004), for example, he writes about the history of his ancestors, and a period of “cultural revolution” fraught with conflict and crisis due to colonialism that brought about a merger of the old and the new. Other stories in the collection – “Pertempuran” (“Battle”), “Harimau Tua” (“Old Tiger”), and “Jin”, for example – are also reflections on his native Batak culture.

In “Fontenay Aux Roses”, however, Sitor transports us to France, where he cynically reflects on his existence in Paris, one of the key sites of his philosophical explorations. Like much of Sitor’s work, this story is also in part an intellectual biography. He doesn’t consider himself an existentialist, yet his works often expresses classic existential conflicts and dilemmas. Wherever he is, however, his ultimate goal is always to reconcile the light and dark sides of the human spirit.

Sitor Situmorang is a poet, short-story writer, journalist, playwright, film and theater critic, lecturer, observer of the arts, and a political activist. He is a universalist, and not a man one can describe in a few words. But whatever aspect of his writing you choose, you can be sure to find reflected there at least one of the myriad dimensions of this complex and brilliant Indonesian and, I’m willing to bet, something that resonates with your own life too.

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