Mantra or Nonmantra?: The Materialization of Language

摘要

The credo of Sutardji Calzoum Bachri that as a poet liberated the word from the imposition of meaning, so that word would restore to the origin as mantra (1973), the sacred-mystical word without meaning from the ancient civilization, was never openly contested by any other poet from 1970s until today. However, in the introduction of his collected poems, Berlin Proposal (2015), Afrizal Malna speaks about the concept of mantra with another interpretation. For him there is a moment when meaning should retreat from language, because if meaning come inside language and seize the word, the word become mantra, like blood that is poured to the sign and becomes icon or myth. So if for Sutardji the empty meaning of word became the "positive" mantra, for Afrizal the mantra is "negative" as meaning seize the word to be a myth. The survey will connect the poems by these poets to their credos, and examine the meaning as an ideological struggle in culture.