Tengku Amir Hamzah (born in Tanjung Pura, Langkat, in 1911; died in 1946) was an Indonesian poet and is counted among the country's National Heroes. Born into a Malay aristocratic family in North Sumatra, he wrote in Malay and Javanese at a time when much of the educated elite preferred Dutch. He matters because he stands as the leading poet of the generation that came before the Indonesian revolution, and as the only one of that era regarded as working at an international level.
He was educated in Sumatra and Java, studying in Medan, Batavia and Surakarta. In Surakarta he joined the nationalist movement and fell in love with Ilik Sundari, a Javanese schoolmate. Left without parents, he depended on the sultan of Langkat to fund his law studies. In 1937 he was called back to Sumatra to marry the sultan's daughter and take up court duties. He was unhappy in the marriage but carried out his obligations.
His poetry deals with love and religion and often expresses a deep inner struggle. He mixed Malay and Javanese vocabulary and reshaped traditional forms to suit rhythm and metre. His early poems speak of longing and of a love that is both physical and idealised; later ones take on a more serious religious tone. In 1932 he helped found the literary magazine Poedjangga Baroe, around which many of the writers of the period gathered. After returning to Sumatra he almost stopped writing. Most of his poems appeared in Nyanyi Sunyi and Buah Rindu, and the former is usually judged his most mature work.
After independence he represented the government in Langkat. In 1946 he was killed during a social revolution led by the PESINDO and buried in a mass grave. His reputation rests on his role as the foremost poet of the Poedjangga Baroe era.
Key works
- Nyanyi Sunyi (1937), a collection of poems and his most developed work, marked by a search for religious meaning.
- Buah Rindu (1941), a collection of poems on longing and love that moves toward a religious outlook.
- Bhagavad Gita, a translation made between 1933 and 1935 and published in Poedjangga Baroe.
Curiosities
Immaculate sheets
His fellow student Achdiat Karta Mihardja later recalled that Amir's bed sheets were folded so neatly that a stray fly could have slid across them.
Insisting on Malay
In Surakarta, when most educated young people preferred Dutch, he insisted on speaking Malay.
A big-brother nickname
His classmates called him abang, meaning older brother, because he was much taller than them.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.