Bali, Java andKawiletters: Translating more than words

Abstract

I am not a specialist on Bali. I did live in Bali for more than a year in total over the past several decades, thus witnessing first hand its changing lifeways. I am a cultural and intellectual historian of Bali's neighbouring island of Java, and I carried out research on the central Javanese, specifically Solonese, shadow theatre in the early part of my career. I spent around five years in the city of Solo between 1972 and 1984, half of that time attending performances, and the other half hanging out with puppet masters, shadow theatre aficionados, and students of shadow theatre, and organising a project on collecting branch stories, stories that deviate from the trunk stories of the Solonese shadow theatre repertoire. The repertoire I was researching was the Javanese Mahabharata and Ramayana stories, a repertoire with which I was quite familiar. I was asked to be part of this special review to offer comparative insights between southern Balinese and central Javanese cultures from the point of view of the performing arts. From this perspective, I felt exhilarated to read Richard Fox'sMore than wordsand to read how literally alive Balinese letters, writ large and small, are in present-day Bali.