Centenary
Chairil Anwar exists within the ‘modernist’ spirit. He is renowned for using the metaphor ‘wild beast’ as his choice of destiny: he is a creature who is unbridled. He was often considered ‘strange’. But he paid no heed.
Goenawan Mohamad
April 25, 2022
WE should celebrate Chairil Anwar’s centenary. This extraordinary Indonesian poet was born in 1922, the year that is also called the beginning of ‘modernism’, the huge change in literature in the world—the change that two decades later shaped the character of the Medan-born writer Chairil Anwar.
The word ‘modernism’—used by critics and art historians in Europe and adopted by other scholars elsewhere&mdas
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