Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/236

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS flowers that spring from the heart. She has already given me much, and has still more to give, and I wish for more; always more. She is willing, but first I must earn her treasures, I must buy her flowers—why? Why must I pay?

Solemnly the words sounded from her lips; "Fast a day and a night, and pass that time awake and in solitude."

sounds like a requiem in my ears.

The meaning behind the words of the old woman is: Fasting and waking are symbolical; "Through abstinence and meditation, we go toward the light." No light, where darkness has not gone before. Do you not think that a beautiful thought? Fasting is the overcoming of the material by the spirit; solitude is the school of meditation.

As a child I did everything mechanically without question, because others around me did the same thing; then a time came when my mind began to question, why do I do that, why is so and so? why—why—It is endless.

I would not do things mechanically without knowing the reason. I would not learn any more lessons from the Koran, saying sentences in a strange language, whose meaning I did not understand and which probably my teachers themselves did not understand. "Tell me the meaning and I am willing to learn everything." I was wrong, the —214—