Aku & Buku

"Kalau sekarang budaya membaca di Indonesia dipermasalahkan, dimana masyarakat lebih suka menonton televisi daripada membaca buku, bukankah itu juga sebuah budaya?"

Begitulah lebih kurang dosenku tercinta membicarakan hal yang menurut orang lain sangat membosankan. Membaca adalah hal yang sebetulnya mudah dilakukan tapi, entah kenapa banyak orang bahkan yang mengaku pelajar/mahasiswa pun terkesan alergi untuk membaca.

"Mungkin karena orang Indonesia g bisa baca font 10, makanya tulisan harus dibuat besar-besar. Spanduk yang tulisannya cuma itu-itu doang selalu dibaca berkali-kali dan mereka teriak-teriak dengan apa yang tertulis pada spanduk itu tanpa mengerti maksud atau maknanya."

Aku dan kawan-kawan tertawa. Logikanya kan memang begitu, setiap kali ada unjuk rasa pasti mereka akan menyerukan hal yang tertulis dengan penuh semangat, tapi ketika diminta untuk membaca buku teks untuk kebutuhan akademisnya, pasti ogah. Apalagi kalau buku itu tebalnya sampai 10cm, cukup tebal untuk dijadikan alas kepala alias bantal atau ganjal pintu  hhe. Teman-teman mahasiswa sastra d kampus MIRACLE dg minat sastra mungkin sudah shock waktu liat buku Literature-nya Perrine dan Theory since Plato yang luar biasa dahsyat tebelna. (mun dikilo lumayan hha).

Aku, alhamdulillah, tidak mengalami sindrom buku tebal (ngantuk, males, bosan). Allah swt kasih aku kesanggupan untuk melahap segala jenis buku dengan berbagai ketebalan dan masih merasa lapar. Sebennarnya ini atas andil kakek tercinta yang meninggal ketika aku masih siswa SMP. Sebagai seorang sastrawan, budayawan, seniman, pejuang, guru dan dosen, kakek menguasai beberapa bahasa asing selain berbagaia bahasa daerah. Bahasa Jerman, Belanda, Inggris, Jepang, Cina dan Arab fasih dituturkan. Karena kemampuannya berbahasa, rumah kami dipenuhi banyak buku, majalah atau koran dengan berbagai bahasa.

Sebagai sastrawan, seniman & budayawan Sunda, beliau pun banyak menghasilkan karya seni yang kemudian menurutku tidak menarik, saat itu. Anak kecil mana yang suka dengan pentas drama atau kawih Cianjuran atau mamaos??? Beliau selalu membiarkan aku mengacaukan tumpukan koleksi bukunya dan selalu menyodoriku buku baru.

Ulang tahunku yang ke-4, beliau sudah menyelesaikan sebuah sendratari berjudul SANGKURIANG. Buku naskahnya tipis, bersampul kuning, dengan gambar seorang wanita dan seorang pria. Beliau berpikir aku tertarik dengan naskah-naskah Sunda ketika melihatku membaca naskah miliknya, padahal aku sama sekali bingung dan so' tahu dengan apa yang ada dalam buku itu. Kapanpun kakek mengajakku jalan-jalan, pasti selalu saja menghadiahi buku baru yang pasti akan selalu ditanya tentang isinya setelah aku membaca.

Sangat disayangkan ketika seorang pelajar ataupun mahasiswa malas membaca, berlepas dari apa yang diperintahkan Islam tentang Iqro, membaca adalah sebuah kebutuhan. Dosen-dosenku tercinta selalu "menyiksa"ku dengan banyak teks bahasa inggris pula padahal semaasa SMA teks tidak pernah diberikan secara utuh.

Aku berharap para pengajar bahasa dan sastra di sekolah menengah mulai memperkenalkan karya-karya sastra supaya mereka tidak mengalami shock therapy ketika harus membaca teks sastra. Bukan berarti mereka dengan minat non-sastra bisa santai karena tidak harus berurusan dengan teks, selama menjadi manusia yang selalu butuh hal yang baru, BUKU bisa menjadi salah satu cara memberikan PANDANGAN yang BARU akan hal-hal yang SUDAH dianggap BIASA menjadi TIDAK BIASA.

BUKU JENDELA DUNIA, AYO MEMBACA!

Utile et Dulce

The significance of the Horatian concept of “utile et dulce” to the development of literary criticism was the way people to rethink about literature. Horace believes that literature, especially poetry, should have great values, utile et dulce, useful and beautiful. It means both teaching and delighting the readers should also exist in poetry. Horace surely influenced by previous philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in his ideas. This concept in personally is attempting, since it makes people need to redefine the term of beautiful and useful. These terms may have different definitions for each person, so that we cannot generalise them. A beauty for a person may be plain for others, and in contrary. As well with usefulness, a person may call it useful but not to others. So that, in my opinion the standard of beauty and usefulness is not equal for each person. 

There are four major periods of Greek literature: preclassical, classical, Hellenistic-Roman, and Byzantine. Of these the most significant works were produced during the preclassical and classical eras. All of them are influencing the literary thought both on Renaissance and Augustan literature and criticism. All philosophy is footnoted to Plato, which is a similar point can be made regarding Greek literature as a whole. So that Renaissance age was marked by an intense interest in the visible world and in the knowledge derived from concrete sensory experience. It turned away from the abstract speculations and interest in life after death that characterized the middle ages. Although Christianity was not abandoned, the otherworldliness and monastic ideology of the middle ages were largely discarded. The focus during the Renaissance turned from abstract discussions of religious issues to the morality of human actions. Augustan Age was the period after the Restoration era to the death of Alexander Pope. The literature of this period conforming to Pope's aesthetic principles is distinguished by its striving for harmony and precision, its urbanity, and its imitation of classical models such as Homer, Cicero, Virgil, and Horace.

Metaphor and Metonymy: The Linguistic Disorders

Roman Jakobson illustrates the complexity relationship between psychological linguistic and literary criticism. The description begins with a discussion about the relationship between metaphor and metonymy–the two polar types of aphasia, a brain disorder affecting speech. Aphasic disturbance consist some impairment, either for selection and substitution or for combination and contexture. The relation of similarity is suppressed previously, while the contiguity is the latest type of aphasia. Jakobson presumes that metaphor is an alien to the similarity disorder and metonymy to the contiguity disorder. But the discourse happens in the semantic phase where one topic may lead to another either through their similarity or contiguity. Yet, in normal verbal behaviour, metaphor and metonymy reveal under the influence of the cultural pattern and personality, the verbal style preference is given to one of the two processes over the other. Manipulating the similarity and contiguity in positional and semantic aspects is exhibiting someone’s personal style, his verbal predilections and preferences.

In poetry there are various motives determining the choice between metaphor and metonymy. A competition between them is manifested in any symbolic process, either intrapersonal or social. J. G. Frazer principle divides them into two types: charms based on the law of similarity and those based by contiguity. The first of the two great branches of sympathetic magic has been called homeopathic or imitative, and the second is contagious magic. Romantic is closely linked metaphor, whereas reality to metonymy. The similarity in meaning connects the symbols of a metalanguage with the symbols of the language referred to. Similarity connects a metaphorical term with the substituted one.

Poetry is focused upon sign, and pragmatically prose primarily upon referent, tropes, and figures were studied mainly as poetical devices. The principle of similarity underlies poetry; the metrical parallelism of lines or the phonic equivalence of rhyming words prompts the question of semantic similarity and contrast; there exist, for example grammatical and antigrammatical but not a grammatical rhyme. Prose is forwarded essentially by contiguity.

In my opinion, metaphor and metonymy are not language disorder or aphasic disturbance as they are improved along with someone’s development, personality, culture, thought and environment. Both are important types of figurative language deviating on someone’s apprehend as the ordinary or standard, significance or sequence of words to achieve special meaning or effect. Metaphor and metonymy are where one word may be used in place of another. I believe that these two “aphasia disturbance” are come from Saussure theory of sign, which is constituted by an inseparable union of signifier or the speech-sounds or written marks composing the sign and the signified or the conceptual meaning of the sign. So that those are the reason poetry and prose have these to express thought, idea and feeling.

The Act of Speaking is The Act of Behaving

Human beings is created as a social creature, they use words, signs or symbols to express their thoughts or feelings. We can notice someone’s thought or feeling by their uttered words which is then become a continue action if we reply them. The way a man talks showing his social status both in white or black community. Each social class has its own language to communicate and unite them.

“A language also means how a person uses that language, or a collection of signs or expressions a person or a specific group of men has. On account of that, we knew of a variety of ‘language’, such as the children language, the student language, the scholar language, the workers language, the craftsmen language, and so on. We know even of the ‘language’ of animals, taking the word in a very board sense.” [1]

In the adventure of Huckleberry Finn, such matter of language is occurred, even in the beginning of the story. I choose several characters to show how their act of speaking has significant impact on their behaviour and has great differences among them all. The character will be Huckleberry Finn, Jim, Colonel Grangerford and Buck.

First is Huckleberry who has his own language to utter his thoughts or feelings. At first Huck speaks like a naïve village boy but then he improves his speaking as the result of his unconscious acceptance of Mrs Douglas and Mrs. Watson’s education. This state exists when Huck tell stories of Moses, King of Solomon and Louis XVI to Jim. But in a part of the story Tom Sawyer accused him as a dull boy though he has already have read Don Quixote.  His freedom addict makes him live uncomfortable with Mrs. Douglas. Sometime his thought or feeling is not uttered but only occurred inside of him, still, it has impact on his behaviour so that other people may notice what goes in his mind.

“I couldn’t stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, ‘Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry; and ‘Don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry – set up straight’ and pretty soon she would say, ‘Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry – why don’t you try to behave?” [2]

Jim is a big black slave of Mrs. Watson. He soon becomes Huck friend or side-kick through their journey to Cairo, Illinois. As an uneducated watchman, Jim also has his own language which influenced by his background or culture in believing thing, for example when he was asked by Huck about Father Finn, he asked to his hairy ball. When he speaks, his words are structurally wrong but Huck and other persons can understand his intention. But Jim gets a hard time to comprehend Huck’s explanation about French and English people using the example of a cat and a cow.

“Well then, why ain’t it natural and right for a French-man to talk different from us? You answer me that.”

“Is a cat a man, Huck?”

“No.”

“Well, den she ain’t got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of ‘em. Is a Frenchman a man?”

“Yes”

“Well, den! Dad blame it, why doan’ he talk like a man? You answer me dat!” [3]

Colonel Grangerford is a gentleman and his aristocracy exposes on the way he talks and acts. Huck is amazed by his performance. His words are gentle but straight to the point. I presume anyone talking to him will feel his self pride and awareness but it seems that everyone loves him.

            “There – I reckon it’s all right. Come in” [4]

Buck is Huck’s slave given by Col. Grangerford. His words are uttered perfectly in good sequences. He is the contrary of Jim. Perhaps it caused by his improvement and education in Col. Grangerford household. Huck feels the same way like I do, so in a part of the story Huck asked him to investigate whether his feeling is true or not.

            “Can you spell, Buck?”

“Yes,” he says.

“I bet you can’t spell my name,” says I.

“I bet you what you dare I can,” says he.

“Allright,” says I, “go ahead.”

“G-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n – there now, he says.

“Well,” says I. “you done it, but I didn’t think you could. It ain’t no slouch of a name to spell – right off without studying.”[5]

Lie is also an outcome of someone’s thought and expressed on his action or words.  Huck tells many lies some are useful and some don’t. Finn thinks that making lie is tolerable to have fun or to save his or others life. His first lie is when he was still living with the widow. His biggest lie is the making of his own death which leading Pap Finn and Jim, the slave, accused as the murders.

Reference

Bracher, Mark, “Jacques Lacan, Diskursus dan Perubahan Sosial: Pengantar Kritik-Budaya Psikoanalisis”. Jalasutra. 1997.

Leahy, Louis. “Human Being”. Kanisius. 2008.

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[1] Leahy, Louis. Human Being. Kanisius. 2008. Page 39

[2] Twain Mark. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. London. 1991. Page  238-239

[3] Twain Mark. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. London. 1991. Page  324

[4] Twain Mark. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. London. 1991. Page 343

[5] Twain Mark. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. London. 1991. Page 346

The Heart of A Poetry

In preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth alters relationship between poem and reader to poet and poem. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t consider the reader. He considers the poet as a teacher of natural intuitions and describes the idea of poet by stating: “a man speaking to men; a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm, and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind.” While he describes the idea of poem as “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.” Wordsworth’s preface offers the theory of poetic diction by attacking the popular style using a gaudy and inane phraseology veiling nature rather than revealing its spirit. Readers who have been accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers will struggle with the feelings of strangeness and awkwardness. Wordsworth doesn’t want to be censure for his propose and explain for the main reasons of determining his propose.

Wordsworth was advised once to prefix a systematic defence of the theory upon which the poems were written, but he was unwilling to do it since he might be suspected of having been influenced by the selfish and foolish hope as well adequately displayed the enforcing arguments. Without saying any few words it is easy to notice that poem has different materials than others and by writing in verse an author makes a formal engagement gratifying habits of association. It also reflects the different expectations from every different literature eras. So that propose of the poem is to choose incidents and situations from common life, to relate or describe them which at the same time let imagination go wilder. This could make ordinary things presented in an unusual aspect. All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Thus, each poem has a purpose and his purpose is to imitate and to adopt the language of men which prompted by passion. A poet is a man speaking to men, he is a man pleased with his own passion and volitions as well rejoiced more than others in the spirit of life. He has an ability to conjure up in himself passions which are far from being the same as those produced by real events. Further he has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and feels especially thoughts or feelings from his own mind. Wordsworth believes that poetry is the first and last of all knowledge, as immortal as the heart of man. In conclusion, he wants reader will determine how far a poem has been attained and what will be worth to be attained; for that he lets the claim to the approbation of the public