Writing the Past, Inscribing the Future

Abstract

of their meaning and intent.The poet challenges readers to work toward comprehension, to learn that textual meaning is not a self-evident given served up for their passive consumption.And 50 he dares them to read in ways that will involve them in the active production of meaning-to enter into dialogue with the half-forgotten texts of the past. 3"Try to comprehend," Ronggasasmita writes in words that also mean "take up and extend the language" of the texts, thereby subtly reminding readers to work toward meanings that will be partially of their own, that is, our own, making. 4 These lines appear in Ronggasasmita's Suluk Acih (Songs of Aceh), a compilation of Islamic mystic songs, or suluk, written by the poet as he languished on foreign shores.Having made the holy pilgrimage to Mecca, Ronggasasmita was on his way home to the Central Javanese court-city of Surakarta where illustrious members of his family served the Pakubuwana ("Axis of the Universe") kings as professional literati.He was traveling with his uncle.When the two men reached the Sumatran port city of Aceh, the older man fell ill.It was then that Ronggasasmita took up his pen to reinscribe in Javanese verse the mystical teachings of his Sufi masters. 5 And in that text, written during a Sumatran interruption in his journey home to Java, the poet recalls prior texts expressly to call for their reactualization in present and future readings.In the same poem Ronggasasmita goes on to remember one very spe-3.The Javanese lepiyan ("venerable laid-by works") designates a written text which is no longer read, but has been laid aside (folded up) to be preserved-perhaps as a prototype for further copies.Old Javanese lepih means "to fold; double the sum, twice the amount" (P.J. Zoetmulder, Old Javanese-English Dictionary, 2 vols.[The Hague:

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