The Sea and Seacoast in Old Javanese Court Poetry: Fishermen, Ports, Ships, and Shipwrecks in the Literary Imagination

Abstract

This article analyses some of the less well-known passages in Old Javanese kakawin court poems, in which the sea and seacoast are represented. Unlike classical Malay literature, Old Javanese texts show little interest in the socio-cultural environment of the seacoast, and even less information is provided about the maritime environment of the open seas that enclose the island of Java. Yet, the seascape as a natural environment of substantial aesthetic beauty is often marked by Javanese poets, and represented as one of the targets of the so-called royal “pleasure trips,” and locus where kawi poets can immerse in a sort of aesthetic rapture, called laṅo in Old Javanese. In four sections, I discuss the literary motifs that develop the theme of the sea and seacoast: the activity of fishermen, a unique description of a harbour, and often metaphorical depictions of ships and shipwrecks.