post-colonial_translation

86 André Lefevere
None of them can withstand Holland here,
And help from their hands, even if they freed us,
Would bring us into their power and would not cost less.
Their friendship is always the price of the highest bid,
And money only is the Europeans’ God.
Whereas the Maatschappij is rightly afraid of the British, it knows how
to deal with the ‘native’ rulers: its troops ‘Hurl lightning on the shore
and tear, for its punishment / Strong Joepandan off its foundations, /
And found, on the rubble of those toppled walls / A fortress that will
brave their spite, nay, the centuries’ (p. 45). Here is the same event, seen
through Fathemah’s eyes in Agon: ‘Macassar’s throne in the dust
through Holland’s proud power, / And the rice field of the East smothered
in its own blood!/Samboepo itself in flames’ (p. 237b). Fathemah goes
on to say that her mother lost her life when ‘Samboepo’, which
corresponds to de Marre’s ‘Joepandan’, fell. The text type of the neoclassical
tragedy allows for multiple points of view to be heard, whereas
in the epic the reader is always limited to the epic poet’s voice.
Consequently, van Haren is able to paint a picture of the Dutch in their
India which contains many more nuances and talks about the ‘natives’
in much more positive ways than de Marre’s. Haafner, too, has
something to say about Macassar, the country whose capital city is
Samboepo. He states (p. 123) that the
natives’ resentment is fired by the dethroning of their lawful
princes, on the flimsiest pretexts, and the filling of the throne
with Bouginian chiefs. They send such dethroned princes to
Batavia, where the High Council, simply on an accusation,
or even a statement by the governor, condemns them to
languish away the rest of their lives at the Cape, on Robben
Island, or else, in exile. In the meantime the governor of
Macassar finds his due by means of the recommendation he
gives this one or that for the vacant throne, for which he has
his hands richly filled and also stipulates special privileges
for himself.
But if the Portuguese are no longer a threat, though the British remain
so, the greatest threat is that of ‘going native’, of ‘luxury and rest’ that,
presumably, threaten the moral fibre of the Dutch, as they have,
supposedly, threatened that of so many other nations. De Marre
describes it as follows (p. 204):