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Abracadabra
English (translation)
- GenresIndonesian Literature
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
3 people are currently reading
86 people want to read
About the author
Danarto
27 books40 followersDanarto dilahirkan pada tanggal 27 Juni 1941 di Sragen, Jawa Tengah. Ayahnya bernama Jakio Harjodinomo, seorang mandor pabrik gula. Ibunya bernama Siti Aminah, pedagang batik kecil-kecilan di pasar.
Setelah menamatkan pendidikannya di sekolah dasar (SD), ia melanjutkan pelajarannya ke sekolah menengah pertama (SMP). Kemudian, ia meneruskan sekolahnya di sekolah menengah atas (SMA) bagian Sastra di Solo. Pada tahun 1958–1961 ia belajar di Akademi Seni Rupa Indonesia (ASRI) Yogyakarta jurusan Seni Lukis.
Ia memang berbakat dalam bidang seni. Pada tahun 1958—1962 ia membantu majalah anak-anak Si Kuncung yang menampilkan cerita anak sekolah dasar. Ia menghiasi cerita itu dengan berbagai variasi gambar. Selain itu, ia juga membuat karya seni rupa, seperi relief, mozaik, patung, dan mural (lukisan dinding). Rumah pribadi, kantor, gedung, dan sebagainya banyak yang telah ditanganinya dengan karya seninya.
Pada tahun 1969—1974 ia bekerja sebagai tukang poster di Pusat kesenian jakarta, Tam Ismail Marzuki. Pada tahun 1973 ia menjadi pengajar di Akademi Seni Rupa LPKJ (sekarang IKJ) Jakarta.
Dalam bidang seni sastra, Danarto lebih gemar berkecimpung dalam dunia drama. Hal itu terbukti sejak tahun 1959—1964 ia masuk menjadi anggota Sanggar Bambu Yogyakarta, sebuah perhimpunan pelukis yang biasa mengadakan pameran seni lukis keliling, teater, pergelaran musik, dan tari. Dalam pementasan drama yang dilakukan Rendra dan Arifin C. Noor, Danarto ikut berperan, terutama dalam rias dekorasi.
Pad tahun 1970 ia bergabung dengan misi Kesenian Indonesia dan pergi ke Expo ’70 di Osaka, Jepang. Pada tahun 1971 ia membantu penyelenggaraan Festival Fantastikue di Paris. Pada tahun 1976 ia mengikuti lokakarya Internasional Writing Program di Iowa City, Amerika Serikat, bersama pengarang dari 22 negara lainnya. Pada tahun 1979—1985 bekerja pada majalah Zaman.
Kegiatan sastra di luar negeri pun ia lakukan. Hal itu dibuktikan dengan kehadirannya tahun 1983 pada Festival Penyair Internasional di Rotterdam, Belanda.
Tulisnanya yang berupa cerpen banyak dimuat dalam majalah Horison, seperti “Nostalgia”, “Adam Makrifat”, dan “Mereka Toh Tidak Mungkin Menjaring Malaekat”. Di antara cerpennya, yang berjudul “Rintrik”, mendapat hadiah dari majalah Horison tahun 1968. Pada tahun 1974 kumpulan cerpennya dihimpun dalam satu buku yang berjudul Godlob yang diterbitkan oleh Rombongan Dongeng dari Dirah. Karyanya bersama-sama dengan pengarang lain, yaitu Idrus, Pramudya Ananta Toer, A.A. Navis, Umar Kayam, Sitor Situmorang, dan Noegroho Soetanto, dimuat dalam sebuah antologi cerpen yang berjudul From Surabaya to Armageddon (1975) oleh Herry Aveling. Karya sastra Danarto yang lain pernah dimuat dalam majalah Budaya dan Westerlu (majalah yang terbit di Australia).
Dalam bidang film ia pun banyak memberikan sumbangannya yang besar, yaitu sebagai penata dekorasi. Film yang pernah digarapnya ialah Lahirnya Gatotkaca (1962), San Rego (1971), Mutiara dalam Lumpur (1972), dan Bandot (1978).
Setelah menamatkan pendidikannya di sekolah dasar (SD), ia melanjutkan pelajarannya ke sekolah menengah pertama (SMP). Kemudian, ia meneruskan sekolahnya di sekolah menengah atas (SMA) bagian Sastra di Solo. Pada tahun 1958–1961 ia belajar di Akademi Seni Rupa Indonesia (ASRI) Yogyakarta jurusan Seni Lukis.
Ia memang berbakat dalam bidang seni. Pada tahun 1958—1962 ia membantu majalah anak-anak Si Kuncung yang menampilkan cerita anak sekolah dasar. Ia menghiasi cerita itu dengan berbagai variasi gambar. Selain itu, ia juga membuat karya seni rupa, seperi relief, mozaik, patung, dan mural (lukisan dinding). Rumah pribadi, kantor, gedung, dan sebagainya banyak yang telah ditanganinya dengan karya seninya.
Pada tahun 1969—1974 ia bekerja sebagai tukang poster di Pusat kesenian jakarta, Tam Ismail Marzuki. Pada tahun 1973 ia menjadi pengajar di Akademi Seni Rupa LPKJ (sekarang IKJ) Jakarta.
Dalam bidang seni sastra, Danarto lebih gemar berkecimpung dalam dunia drama. Hal itu terbukti sejak tahun 1959—1964 ia masuk menjadi anggota Sanggar Bambu Yogyakarta, sebuah perhimpunan pelukis yang biasa mengadakan pameran seni lukis keliling, teater, pergelaran musik, dan tari. Dalam pementasan drama yang dilakukan Rendra dan Arifin C. Noor, Danarto ikut berperan, terutama dalam rias dekorasi.
Pad tahun 1970 ia bergabung dengan misi Kesenian Indonesia dan pergi ke Expo ’70 di Osaka, Jepang. Pada tahun 1971 ia membantu penyelenggaraan Festival Fantastikue di Paris. Pada tahun 1976 ia mengikuti lokakarya Internasional Writing Program di Iowa City, Amerika Serikat, bersama pengarang dari 22 negara lainnya. Pada tahun 1979—1985 bekerja pada majalah Zaman.
Kegiatan sastra di luar negeri pun ia lakukan. Hal itu dibuktikan dengan kehadirannya tahun 1983 pada Festival Penyair Internasional di Rotterdam, Belanda.
Tulisnanya yang berupa cerpen banyak dimuat dalam majalah Horison, seperti “Nostalgia”, “Adam Makrifat”, dan “Mereka Toh Tidak Mungkin Menjaring Malaekat”. Di antara cerpennya, yang berjudul “Rintrik”, mendapat hadiah dari majalah Horison tahun 1968. Pada tahun 1974 kumpulan cerpennya dihimpun dalam satu buku yang berjudul Godlob yang diterbitkan oleh Rombongan Dongeng dari Dirah. Karyanya bersama-sama dengan pengarang lain, yaitu Idrus, Pramudya Ananta Toer, A.A. Navis, Umar Kayam, Sitor Situmorang, dan Noegroho Soetanto, dimuat dalam sebuah antologi cerpen yang berjudul From Surabaya to Armageddon (1975) oleh Herry Aveling. Karya sastra Danarto yang lain pernah dimuat dalam majalah Budaya dan Westerlu (majalah yang terbit di Australia).
Dalam bidang film ia pun banyak memberikan sumbangannya yang besar, yaitu sebagai penata dekorasi. Film yang pernah digarapnya ialah Lahirnya Gatotkaca (1962), San Rego (1971), Mutiara dalam Lumpur (1972), dan Bandot (1978).
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 31, 2025
I am adorned with beautiful bracelets and a terrible arrow. I provoke love and lust. I kill and am killed. I am the tearing lance. I am the blood. I am the ground with receives everything including the bleeding flesh. I am the guest who knocks at the door, I am the door, I am the knocking, I am the host, I am the cry ‘who’s there?’, I am the separation and I am the memory. I am the soldier, the tent, the rice, the sword and death.
I think post-modernist literature is simply not for me, as I've not liked any that I've read. I like surreal atmospheres, but post-modernist lit just always seems a tad bit too pretentious and self-aware; almost like it's eye-rolling at you eye-rolling at it. I picked this up in the CAL lib after scouring for and failing to find the Thailand section. I'd read Kurniawan (and hated it!) adn I flipped through this a bit and found interesting prose so I was like, why not? Well. A bunch of reasons, apparently, but I'm glad I read it anyway. It reminded me a lot of Flann O'Brien (who I also hated). I liked the little illustrations and I respect where Danarto's coming from but this was just not for my literary tastes. He employs a lot of absurdity (which is fine. I enjoy that usually...) but with anacrhonism and metafiction that renders it inaccessible. There is also a lot of gratuitous cruelty and violence, which proves a point, but I could have lived without it. I did enjoy some scenes and the half-abrasive, half-irreverent writing, but wow, this was weird and unpleasant. If that's your thing, you might like this.
Quotes and notes:
GODLOB
⁃ Father finds son in a field of dead bodies being feasted on by crows. He’s barely alive, and o. the way back they converse about the nature of war: how the father has safrificed all his sons to war and how he gets nothing back. He ends up killing his son to make him into a hero. After a glorious funeral, the mom digs him back up and shoots the father after exposing his murder
⁃ Nice surreality to it. I liked the birds. Was a little bored with the war war stuff so the killing took my by surprise in a good way. So effective
RINTRIK
⁃ We live in the body of God.
⁃ "I can have anyone I want. I stand on the outside and put my hand in. Anything I find, I take and destrov!"
⁃ "No, you can't!" said the girl. Her eyes began to glaze. "You know you can't. I love you. With everything I have. But you don't want me. You want a love which will never die. Rintrik, listen to me. He wanted a love that would never die. He thought I was a china doll, so he decided never to touch me.
⁃ He was frightened that his dirty hands would destroy eternity, crush the world of his dreams. Rintrik, listen to me. He treated me for a long time like a goddess in his world of dreams. He said I was pure and I should always be pure - he was even ready to fight death to protect me. What could I do, Rintrik? Do you think I could love like that? I was terrified - the idea was so holy. I ran away.'
⁃ "You betrayed me," said the youth.
⁃ "What else could I do?" The girl wept.
⁃ Despite your suffering you seem happy enough, Rintrik," said the Hunter. "I am. Happiness intertwines with sorrow in never. ending circles. I find happiness in my suffering, because my joy revolves in circles of grief. So when I suffer, I am happy, because suffering is linked with circles of joy. I cannot see any difference between the two.”
⁃ Supreme Personality of the Godhead
⁃ SUMMARY: Sort of Jesus-Pontius Pilate story with a blind old woman who buries babies in a forsaken land/barren valley
PLAY WITHIN A PLAY
⁃ “We burn, our souls glow, and we are beaten into hard, bitter bas-relief. We worry all the time, frightened from behind. The faces create us. We are fragmented, with no way of telling what we really are.”
⁃ That isn’t true.
⁃ Yes it is! We love the characters and their suffering; they trip us up and tear us to pieces.
⁃ Who are you performing for, Hamlet? Who is celebrating your anniversary? Who are you trying to teach? Yourselves? Ha, ha. There’s nothing funnier than a troupe of actors. They decide the offering, they prepare it, then they eat it themselves. Ha, ha. We didn’t need to come at all.
⁃ DEJI: Relationship between the performer and the actor. Corny. Dramatic. Didn’t like. Pretentious.
LOVE CHARM
⁃ “O beautiful flowers. To know you is to know eternity.”
⁃ Pain, misery and joy are too profound, the stars are too far away. They try to touch the bottom of the sea but their music, poetry, paintings, theories and ideas, will never suffice.
⁃ "God has abandoned us," said the Myrtle.
⁃ "Has He?" said the woman.
⁃ "Yes."
⁃ "I'm going after Him."
⁃ "You can't. He runs too fast."
⁃ "I have to chase Him," said the woman. "I'm hungry.
⁃ DEJI: Weird!
ARMAGEDDON
⁃ DEJI: Weird and murderous!
⁃ The water-melon moon wept blood.
⁃ The sky wept blood.
⁃ the light wept
⁃ the waste-land wept
⁃ the rocks wept
⁃ the grass wept.
NOSTALGIA
-Genuine heroism submits to fate.
⁃ I am adorned with beautiful bracelets and a terrible arrow. I provoke love and lust. I kill and am killed. I am the tearing lance. I am the blood. I am the ground with receives everything including the bleeding flesh. I am the guest who knocks at the door, I am the door, I am the knocking, I am the host, I am the cry ‘who’s there?’, I am the separation and I am the memory. I am the soldier, the tent, the rice, the sword and death.
LABYRINTH
⁃ Weird crucifixion/resurrection story…
ASMARADANA
⁃ A Javanese verse metre used specifically in the composition of love songs
⁃ “Perhaps I was a bit careless. But I don’t think anyone else thinks so. My actions are related to time and space.” “And status.”
⁃ He departed, followed by his officers.
⁃ Salome watched them go, smiling. Then she ordered the soldiers to go. She was left alone, with the thousands of corpses scattered beneath her. Standing on her horse's back, she took off her nightgown. Then she lifted her bow and fixed an arrow. She looked into the sky and laughed arrogantly.
⁃ "God!" she shouted. "We meet again. I think of You all the time. Didn't that make You angry?"
⁃ She pointed the bow into the air and fired it.
⁃ "Somewhere up there God is watching me. Find Him, lovely arrow."
⁃ After briefly watching the arrow fly, she sat down
ABRACADABRA
- Hamlet and the nature of death. Danarto propsoes that souls becomes these metaphysical eggs, which is creative at the very least
I think post-modernist literature is simply not for me, as I've not liked any that I've read. I like surreal atmospheres, but post-modernist lit just always seems a tad bit too pretentious and self-aware; almost like it's eye-rolling at you eye-rolling at it. I picked this up in the CAL lib after scouring for and failing to find the Thailand section. I'd read Kurniawan (and hated it!) adn I flipped through this a bit and found interesting prose so I was like, why not? Well. A bunch of reasons, apparently, but I'm glad I read it anyway. It reminded me a lot of Flann O'Brien (who I also hated). I liked the little illustrations and I respect where Danarto's coming from but this was just not for my literary tastes. He employs a lot of absurdity (which is fine. I enjoy that usually...) but with anacrhonism and metafiction that renders it inaccessible. There is also a lot of gratuitous cruelty and violence, which proves a point, but I could have lived without it. I did enjoy some scenes and the half-abrasive, half-irreverent writing, but wow, this was weird and unpleasant. If that's your thing, you might like this.
Quotes and notes:
GODLOB
⁃ Father finds son in a field of dead bodies being feasted on by crows. He’s barely alive, and o. the way back they converse about the nature of war: how the father has safrificed all his sons to war and how he gets nothing back. He ends up killing his son to make him into a hero. After a glorious funeral, the mom digs him back up and shoots the father after exposing his murder
⁃ Nice surreality to it. I liked the birds. Was a little bored with the war war stuff so the killing took my by surprise in a good way. So effective
RINTRIK
⁃ We live in the body of God.
⁃ "I can have anyone I want. I stand on the outside and put my hand in. Anything I find, I take and destrov!"
⁃ "No, you can't!" said the girl. Her eyes began to glaze. "You know you can't. I love you. With everything I have. But you don't want me. You want a love which will never die. Rintrik, listen to me. He wanted a love that would never die. He thought I was a china doll, so he decided never to touch me.
⁃ He was frightened that his dirty hands would destroy eternity, crush the world of his dreams. Rintrik, listen to me. He treated me for a long time like a goddess in his world of dreams. He said I was pure and I should always be pure - he was even ready to fight death to protect me. What could I do, Rintrik? Do you think I could love like that? I was terrified - the idea was so holy. I ran away.'
⁃ "You betrayed me," said the youth.
⁃ "What else could I do?" The girl wept.
⁃ Despite your suffering you seem happy enough, Rintrik," said the Hunter. "I am. Happiness intertwines with sorrow in never. ending circles. I find happiness in my suffering, because my joy revolves in circles of grief. So when I suffer, I am happy, because suffering is linked with circles of joy. I cannot see any difference between the two.”
⁃ Supreme Personality of the Godhead
⁃ SUMMARY: Sort of Jesus-Pontius Pilate story with a blind old woman who buries babies in a forsaken land/barren valley
PLAY WITHIN A PLAY
⁃ “We burn, our souls glow, and we are beaten into hard, bitter bas-relief. We worry all the time, frightened from behind. The faces create us. We are fragmented, with no way of telling what we really are.”
⁃ That isn’t true.
⁃ Yes it is! We love the characters and their suffering; they trip us up and tear us to pieces.
⁃ Who are you performing for, Hamlet? Who is celebrating your anniversary? Who are you trying to teach? Yourselves? Ha, ha. There’s nothing funnier than a troupe of actors. They decide the offering, they prepare it, then they eat it themselves. Ha, ha. We didn’t need to come at all.
⁃ DEJI: Relationship between the performer and the actor. Corny. Dramatic. Didn’t like. Pretentious.
LOVE CHARM
⁃ “O beautiful flowers. To know you is to know eternity.”
⁃ Pain, misery and joy are too profound, the stars are too far away. They try to touch the bottom of the sea but their music, poetry, paintings, theories and ideas, will never suffice.
⁃ "God has abandoned us," said the Myrtle.
⁃ "Has He?" said the woman.
⁃ "Yes."
⁃ "I'm going after Him."
⁃ "You can't. He runs too fast."
⁃ "I have to chase Him," said the woman. "I'm hungry.
⁃ DEJI: Weird!
ARMAGEDDON
⁃ DEJI: Weird and murderous!
⁃ The water-melon moon wept blood.
⁃ The sky wept blood.
⁃ the light wept
⁃ the waste-land wept
⁃ the rocks wept
⁃ the grass wept.
NOSTALGIA
-Genuine heroism submits to fate.
⁃ I am adorned with beautiful bracelets and a terrible arrow. I provoke love and lust. I kill and am killed. I am the tearing lance. I am the blood. I am the ground with receives everything including the bleeding flesh. I am the guest who knocks at the door, I am the door, I am the knocking, I am the host, I am the cry ‘who’s there?’, I am the separation and I am the memory. I am the soldier, the tent, the rice, the sword and death.
LABYRINTH
⁃ Weird crucifixion/resurrection story…
ASMARADANA
⁃ A Javanese verse metre used specifically in the composition of love songs
⁃ “Perhaps I was a bit careless. But I don’t think anyone else thinks so. My actions are related to time and space.” “And status.”
⁃ He departed, followed by his officers.
⁃ Salome watched them go, smiling. Then she ordered the soldiers to go. She was left alone, with the thousands of corpses scattered beneath her. Standing on her horse's back, she took off her nightgown. Then she lifted her bow and fixed an arrow. She looked into the sky and laughed arrogantly.
⁃ "God!" she shouted. "We meet again. I think of You all the time. Didn't that make You angry?"
⁃ She pointed the bow into the air and fired it.
⁃ "Somewhere up there God is watching me. Find Him, lovely arrow."
⁃ After briefly watching the arrow fly, she sat down
ABRACADABRA
- Hamlet and the nature of death. Danarto propsoes that souls becomes these metaphysical eggs, which is creative at the very least
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 28, 2011
Karya-karya Danarto yang diterjemahkan dari Bahasa Indonesia ke Bahasa Inggris cukup membuatku 'asing' dengan Danarto, semacamada sesuatu yang 'hilang'. Tapi terjemahannya bagus juga, cukup berterima (nampaknya).
P.S
Lebih yahud baca versi Bahasa Indonesia nya
P.S
Lebih yahud baca versi Bahasa Indonesia nya
August 20, 2007
Buku 'surealis' pertama yang gw baca. Absurd. Aneh. Menarik. Buku yang merefleksikan sisi dalam seorang manusia.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews