Pudjangga Baru and the Tachtigers: J. E. Tatengkeng

Abstract

These were the kinds of problems which occupied the minds of the young pudjcngga. These polemics on culture are not very original or shocking by international standards, but it is easy in retrospect to criticize their results and belittle their scope. This generation was. not able to see its own limitations;, imposed by its own nature and external circumstances, and therefore its representatives could hardly avoid giving the impression of boundless pretentiousness and even conceit to the post-war generation. Indeed these young pudjanggas were very strictly tied to their surroundings. Their literary education was mainly restricted to what they read in Dutch books; perhaps, one should even say, in textbooks for High Schools. Their great example and inspiration was the generation of writers which is known in Dutch literature as the Tachtigers (the generation of 1880).⁶⁵ This was a group of young poets and writers who had brought about a radical renewal in Dutch literature in the 1880s, Before the Tachtigers came on to the scene, Dutch literature of the mid-nineteenth century had slowly degenerated into a kind of “sermon” literature in which poetic inspiration had been replaced by moralising, and which babbled along self-sufficiently, without any contact with contemporary European literature. Shortly after 1880 a group of young people started to revolt, and in 1885 they united themselves in De Nieuwe Gids (The New Guide).