Letters Of A Javanese Princess

Letters of a Javanese Princess

When you sail from Chambra fifteen thousand miles on a course between south and southeast, you come to a great island called Java. And experienced mariners of those Islands who know the matter well say that it is the greatest Island in the world and has a compass of three thousand miles. It is subject to a great King and tributary to no one else in the world. The people are idolaters. The Island is of surpassing wealth, producing black pepper, nutmegs, spikenard, galin-gale, cubebs, cloves and all other kinds of spices. This Island is also frequented by a vast amount of shipping, and by merchants who buy and sell costly goods from which they reap great profit. Indeed, the treasure of this Island is so great as to be past telling." Marco Polo.

Letters of a Javanese Princess

Letters of a Javanese Princess

These letters which breathe the modern spirit, in all of its restless intensity, were written by a girl of the Orient, reared in an ancient and outworn civilization. They unfold the story of the writer with unconscious simplicity and present a vivid picture of Javanese life and manners. But perhaps their chief interest lies in their value as a human document. In them the old truth of the oneness of humanity is once more made manifest and we see that the magnificent altruism, the spirit of inquiry, and the almost morbid desire for self-searching and analysis that characterize the opening years of the Twentieth Century were not peculiar to Europe or to America, but were universal and belonged to the world, to the East as well as to the West. Kartini, that was her only name-Raden Adjeng is a title-wrote to her Dutch friends in the language of the Netherlands. In her home circle she spoke always Javanese, and she was Javanese in her intense love for her land and people, as well as in dress and manners. She did not live to see the work that has been accomplished in her name during the last ten years. Today there are "Kartini Schools" in all parts of Java. The influence of her life and teachings is perhaps greater than that of any other woman of modern times because it reaches all of the thirty-eight millions of Javanese and extends to some extent throughout the entire East.