'Tempo doeloe' and 'Pudjangga Baru' : aspects of social and intellectual life in twentieth-century Batavia, focussing on the Indonesian community 1933 to 1942

Abstract

"Tempo Doeloeu" is the Dutch transcription of a Malay phrase meaning ’time past’, an expression often used hy ex-colonial officials, returned from Java or the Outer Islands, to refer to that time when Holland had the Dutch East Indies. It is a nostalgic expression, evocative of tiled houses and bamboo chairs, servants in tight white collars, Balinese carvings and Dutch wives.1 Pudjangga Baru, the ’New Writer’ or ’New Man of Letters’, was a cultural periodical published in Batavia (Djakarta) between 1933 and 1942 by a group of Indonesian intellectuals. These idealistic young men wrote and worked to give form to their ideas of a national Indonesian language, literature and culture; their eyes were on the future.