Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/232

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS understood and appreciated. We are not so deep by nature that it will break any one's head to understand our wisdom. There is no word for selfishness in our language. Happy language where that word has never penetrated.

I wish that I could teach you my language, so that you could enjoy its beauties in their original freshness. The deeper I penetrate the soul of our people, the finer I think it. Among you wise men and poets are drawn usually from a certain station, and only the upper classes are educated. The great majority are—may I say it?—crude. There are some superior spirits among the lower classes; but the many, Stella? You know them better than I.

But go around with me into Kampong and Dessa; let us visit the small huts of the poor submerged tenth, let us listen to their speech, seek out their thoughts. They are an unschooled people always, but music comes welling from their lips; they are tender and discreet by nature, simple and modest. If I am ever with you I can tell you much of our gentle people; you must learn to know and love them as I do. There are so many poets and artists among them, and where a people has a feeling for poetry, the most beautiful thing in life, they cannot be lacking in the instincts of civilization.

Everything that is high and fine in life is poetry; love, devotion, truth, belief, art, everything that elevates and ennobles. And poetry means so much to the Javanese people. The least, the very humblest Javanese, is a poet. And what do you think of the deep respect which children have for their parents? And of the touching piety of the living toward the dead? There is no joyful occasion where the dead are not called to our remembrance, and their blessing and the blessing of heaven invoked. In joy and in sorrow, we think of our dead always.

And the name of Mother—how holy that is! In hours of pain and —210—