Portal:Indonesia/Selected biography/6

Amir Hamzah (1911–46) was an Indonesian poet and National Hero of Indonesia. Born into nobility in Langkat, Sumatra, Amir studied in both native- and European-operated schools. He began writing poetry whilst studying in Java, where he fell in love with one of his classmates, Ilik Sundari. His first poems were published in March 1932, and later that he worked together with Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana and Armijn Pane to establish the literary magazine Poedjangga Baroe, which published nearly all of his subsequent works. He was recalled to Langkat in 1937 and married to the sultan's daughter, despite not loving her. For the last years of his life Amir served as a prince of the court, and after Indonesia proclaimed its independence in August 1945, Amir was selected as the nascent nation's representative in Langkat, only to be killed the following year in a social revolution. Amir's oeuvre includes fifty original poems and eighteen pieces of lyrical prose, much of it found in two original poetry collections, Nyanyi Sunyi (1937) and Buah Rindu (1941). Themes vary, but mostly center on a sense of loss and longing, with inspirations found in Islam, traditional Malay literature, and Amir's lost love. (Read more...)