Abstract:
The poetry of Afrizal Malna, a contemporary Indonesian writer, is often seen as unconventional and “non-lyrical” because he writes in seemingly “disconnected” phrases and disjointed images. This characteristic earns Malna’s style its own unique name, “afrizalian”. This thesis looks to present the “afrizalian” style as Malna’s concept of poetic economy. Through critical reading from historical, post-colonial, philological, and translingual perspectives, I discover that five of Malna’s poems discussed in this thesis, namely “Toko Bekas Bahasa A dan B”, “Keluarga Indonesia dalam Ambulans”, “Pemadam Api Setelah Kebakaran”, “Rendra Diares: Lubang Bahasa”, and “Mauerpark”, exhibit Malna’s poetic economy at least in these two ways: first, the economy of the tongue; and second, the economy of language cyclicity. The economy of the tongue largely represents the situation of the Indonesian polylingual tongue which Malna was born into. The oppressive nature of the Indonesian tongue against the ethnic tongues due to the historical interference from the Dutch colonisers and the dictatorial New Order government opens up a kind of “hole” of longing for a true “mother tongue”. In the end, I argue this coveted “mother tongue” may no longer exist. Meanwhile, the economy of language cyclicity discusses various cyclical relationships found in Malna’s poems that present the theme of second-hand-ness, namely “Toko Bekas Bahasa A dan B” and “Mauerpark”. I found that the economy of language cyclicity in these poems displays three notions: one, the notion of perpetual rejuvenation in the act of translation and in the transference of objects; two, the cycle of language “creation” as depicted in the poem and performed by the dissimilarities of the Indonesian and English version of the poem; and three, the cycle of “co-creation” that is seen in the action of the co-staring in the poem and the use of the word “like” as a means of categorisation and as a simile.