On the leaf of the bamboo tree

Fireflies are flying,
Fireflies are lighting in the forest quietly,
On the good root’s smell they are staying,
Aligning on the leaf of the bamboo tree,
Among children flying.
When I was tiny,
Young and brave before marrying
Whatever people said - good things of eagles and fireflies -
To be their friend again, I am not willing.

-excerpt from Dingguk-Dingguk, Wehean song, translated from Wehean to Indonesian by Ledjie Taq; from Indonesian to English by Ratih Karnelia Kusumawardhani, with modifications in structure by Hugh Trenchard

The excerpt above is from a poem in which Pungguk anguishes over being unable to see his wife again. In the story that precedes the poem in the sequence of mythical events, Pungguk’s wife, Bulan, gives birth to a fish. Pungguk blames Bulan for this and becomes abusive toward Bulan, who flees her husband. Pungguk chases her wherever she goes; she even attempts to flee beneath the water. Pungguk seeks the assistance of the Fish King and the Crocodile King to help him to chase Bulan beneath the water. Unable to escape Pungguk beneath the water, Bulan prays to God, who allows her to flee to the sky, where she becomes the moon. Pungguk tries to chase her there, but cannot chase her so far into the sky, though he becomes a bird which forever after calls out to her only during nights of the full moon.

In the excerpt above, Pungguk has found no one to help him reunite with his wife, and he is left to watch the full moon alone and despair. Though their marriage was at first very good, Pungguk blames his wife for an event that was not in her power to cause or to change; he becomes abusive and loses her love, as forgiving as she may have been for a long time. The poem is beautiful in its symbolism of the universal human capacity for people to fail to accept things they cannot change and to blame others for them, and to suffer the consequences of lost love. The excerpt above indicates Pungguk is both sad and bitter, and one could interpret his bitterness to reflect his continuing propensity to blame others. Without truly recognizing his role in Bulan’s absence, and by suggesting her absence is partially the fault of those who could bring him good news or could help him chase her, it is his destiny to forever wonder why she will remain inaccessible to him, and to call out in despair on nights of the full moon.

I’ve had the opportunity to type out the Wehean story, Donggeng Pungguk Dan Bulan, and the poem excerpted above, Dingguk-Dingguk. My homestay host father, and leader of the Adat (customary) law in Nehas village, had recorded them in handwritten form, but nowhere have they been typed or recorded electronically. Ledjie Taq had translated the original Wehean versions into Indonesian, and I offered to type them out. While the students were in the Wehea Forest these last few days, one of our translators, Ratih Kusumawardhani, translated the Indonesian versions into English.

Because the original Wehean version has a rhyme scheme which Ratih did not reflect in her translation, I made some modifications to the syntax to bring the English version of the poem, Dingguk-Dingguk, a little closer to the original Wehean rhyme scheme, though I was only partially successful at doing so. I do like the result of our combined efforts, however, with credit mostly to Ratih of course.

In making these modifications, I found it an interesting exercise to balance my intention not to change the meaning of Ratih’s translation while seeking to understand the intentions of the story tellers and while also seeking to align the translation more closely with the poetic characteristics of the original Wehean poem. This was less an issue with the story, as it did not appear to exhibit any particular poetic characteristics, although it was still necessary to understand the essence of the story itself in modifying Ratih’s translation to read more smoothly in English, which in more than one instance required some interpretation on my part.

It is not clear whether the Pungguk bird is strictly mythical or whether it actually exists. One forest ranger I asked thought that it represented a real bird, perhaps a Doja crow (or something similar – unfortunately I did not have my notebook when I acquired this information and did not record it before I forgot it and have not since asked again about it), while another ranger I asked thought it was strictly mythical, and there is no bird known only to call out during the full moon.

On that note, we arrived back from the Wehea Forest (Hutan Wehea) yesterday. The forest experience was wonderful, from the Red Langur sightings, to the haunting forest sounds, the firetower, Will’s rig to the treetops to view the forest canopy, the morning/evening surveys, our forest ranger hosts, and my student colleagues and our instructors, and the dark nights full of stars. I’ll update that more fully in a subsequent blog.