Indonesian wasteland: The verse of Rivai Apin

10 Water, in this misdirected verse, is one of the potential symbols, as are stars, wind, the female body sexually used, heat, roads, doors and ships: dunia alcmi dengwn. dunia benda numusia, the world of nature and the world of things of man.11 The aim is to shock,or delight, without exploring or linking the significance of nature and things; rather they are, by slight-of-hand, tied to a quasi-philosophyof puzzlement at transience or a naive excitement over experience. 354 H. G. AVELING (field of stubble/ hot parched/ dryness sticking out, black/ dry blackness// when later this wandering man/ will be dryness sticking out/ in the field of grass of broken hopes/ perhaps he will desire a streak of lightning to come swooping down//.) Heat is also associated with illicit sexuality in a number of poems,21 and the energy of adolescence in one or two places 22: only in one place, Kepada pemimpin,23 To Our Leaders, is it associated with warmth (the warmth of Independence, which the leaders, standing in the doorway to shelter the people, block.24) Night, on the other hand, almost invariably suggests death and extinction.25 Finally the beach is potentially a significant symbol, as the place where our ideals form, where the world of nature and the world of the things of man actually meet2e and a place where lovers join hands for a moment before the man returns to the helm, to the hurricanes and the infinite variety of the world.27 In Rivai's early verse, then, the symbols are present but pooriy developed, "his could never be a lyric talent" 28 to cite Raffel again. [...]result the texture of Rivai's poem is very different. In the next three strophes Rivai presents the reality of the revolution: ceaseless tears, anguished thought, one's self dry ash after the burning (burning is the last image of Part III, The Fire Sermon, of The Waste Land); the image of the dry season and the wind scattering death (as in Batu TapaT) linked with "Truth happiness in the first explosion", joy at the beginning of the struggle; death peering out from along the lanes.61 "Man", he concludes, "is only the child of a few hours", suggesting either that his whole life is brief, or that the quality of a person's life is determined by a few, short decisions.