THE news from Solo, Central Java, excited the young Amir Hamzah. In 1926, famous Dutch archaeologist Willem Frederik Stutterheim opened his Algemene Middelbare School with an oostersch letterkundige course. Known by its initials of AMS A-1, this school, equivalent to a senior high school today, offered the first course on eastern literature studies in the Dutch Indies, following a similar one in western literature opened six years earlier in Band