IN 1984, an essayist wrote: “The West has always made us restless.” A thing with unclear boundaries, a force that puts us at its feet, “And now still a place upon which we reflect.” A then-young man has continued to remember the essay’s imagery to this day, 40 years later. He quoted the essay by heart, almost verbatim: “West: mirror. We size ourselves up in front of it.”

The essayist was Goenawan Mohamad