DYAH NUGRAHENY P.

147835012 / CLASS A
PHILOLOGY ASSIGNMENT

A Study of Sindhunata’s Kutukan Asu Intertextual References to

Chairil Anwar’s Aku: An Essay

Intertextuality is one of the most commonly used terms in contemporary

literary theory. According to Kristeva, Barthes, Riffaterre, and other pioneers
of the field, every text has its meaning only in relation to other texts; texts as
viewed by modern literary theory are lacking in any kind of independent meaning.
According to the theories of intertextuality, works of literature, after all, are
built from systems, codes and traditions established by previous works of
literature. This essay will examine the intertextuality in Sindhunata’s Kutukan Asu
with Chairil Anwar’s Aku.

Kutukan Asu is a poem by Sindhunata which was published in 2003. It

seems to take inspiration from Charil Anwar’s Aku which was released in 1943.
There similarities that can be seen in the words that Sindhunata used in his poem
like “Aku ini bukan binatang jalang” (I am not a wild animal) which he mentions
seven times along the poem with Chairil’s words “Aku ini binatang Jalang”( I am
a wild animal) which is a striking line in his poem. Both works used “Aku” and
“Binatang Jalang”. The only difference is in the word “Bukan” (Not). It seems
like Sindhunata tries to alter Chairil’s words, make his work as a binary
opposition of Chairil’s works. Other Sindhunata’s altering are “Tak ada peluru
menembus kulitku” and “Tak mungkin aku hidup seribu tahun lagi” which are the
opposite of Chairil’s “Biar peluru menembus kulitku’ and Aku mau “hidup seribu
tahun lagi”. Sindhunata tries to makes his work contrast to Chairil’s. This is in
line with Deridda’s concept of “différance” which point out that writing does not
copy or follow speech (Allen, 2011, p. 211). Sindhunata’s work does not copy
Chairil’s, he made it very different with chairil’s, even like the opposite of it.

As it was mentioned above, Sindhunata always tries to change Chairil’s

work and transform it to his work such as when Chairil mentioned “Aku tetap
meradang menerjang” which means that the speaker always struggle, he then
change it to “Aku hanya asu kampungan/Namun aku juga punya hak meradang
menerjang” which means that the speaker only wants to show that he have the
DYAH NUGRAHENY P.
147835012 / CLASS A
PHILOLOGY ASSIGNMENT

right to struggle and also “melihat sesamaku asu meradang menerjang” which
means that the speaker does not do anything but only sees his friend in struggle. In
Aku, Chairil compare himself as the “binatang jalang” who always struggles and
brings wounds and poison in his body with a hope that it will disappear sooner or
later “Luka dan bisa kubawa berlari/Berlari/ Hingga hilang pedih peri” then
Sindhunata changes it to “yang jalang yang meradang menerjang/yang dengan
luka berlari membawa pedih peri.../ yang jalang dan liar seperti roh Chairil
Anwar”. Sindhunata seems to realized the comparation between Chairil and
“binatang jalang”, transformed what he realized to other text, then added it in his
last line that the spirit of chairil is the one like the wild animal after he changed
Chairil’s real work. The transformation of Chairil’s work by Sindhunata is like
what Kristeva mentions as transposition which she defines as an unconscious
process that "involves an altering of the thetic position ...[transposition] specifies
that the passage from one signifying system to another demands a new
articulation of the thetic" (Keltner, 2011, p. 41). Sindhunata transpose Chairil
Anwar’s original text into a new and different text by changing the words position
and adding new words.

Authors do not create their texts from their own original minds, but
rather compile them from preexistent texts (Allen, 2011, p. 35). Besides Chairil
Anwar’s Aku, Sindhunata also took other sources to be put in Kutukan Asu to
magnify the characteristic of “asu” (dog) which he mentions many times in the
poem, such as tangkuban perahu legend with its character Dayang Sumbi who
married a dog then almost marrying her own son, Sangkuriang like in Oedipus
legend and also Majapahit legend with the character Menak Jingga who has a face
like dog. Sindhunata’s poem does not come from his own mind, rather from few
texts that he might read or heard then collaborated and added with a piece of his
mind to create a new text. His text is a permutation of several texts.

We come to realization that a text might not originally comes from the
Author’s mind but comes from the previous texts which are then compiled and
trasformed into a new text just like what Sindhunata did to make Kutukan Asu.
Sindhunata took some Chairil’s line in Aku and then changed it. It is in line with
DYAH NUGRAHENY P.
147835012 / CLASS A
PHILOLOGY ASSIGNMENT

Kristeva statements in Allen (2011, p. 35) that a text is ‘a permutation of texts, an

intertextuality in the space of a given text’, in which ‘several utterances, taken
from other texts, intersect and neutralize one another’. In Sindhunata’s Kutukan
Asu, some lines of Chairil Anwar’s poem and sentences (more like narratives) of
legend, which Sindhunata took, is used to support each other and give
characteristics to his “asu” (dog). Chairil Anwar’s work Aku is the hypotext while
Sindhunata’s work Kutukan Asu is the hypertext, a new text that was a result of
the previous texts transposition.

References

Allen, G. (2011). Intertextuality: Routledge.

Keltner, S. K. (2011). Kristeva: thresholds: Polity.