THERE are many wrong ideas about the poet Amir Hamzah. He was killed in social unrest in North Sumatra in 1946, not long after Indonesia was proclaimed. The Dutch and Japanese rules had been declared over, but the “state” in the republic just a few months old had not yet been formed. The machine of power was not yet functioning when, everywhere, the euphoria of “populism” exploded. The word “Revolution” (with a capital “R”) was pa