We would like to invite the readers to focus on the second line of the pantun, the second line of the pembayang “Suratkan saya kertas biru” especially on the object “kertas biru” i.e. blue paper.
Why Blue?
We are trying to have a deeper understanding on why, out of many colours for paper, it is blue that is used? Commonly used paper is now white in colour. Could this be an indication that once, mass paper production used for letter writing or maybe general writing purposes is blue?
Why 'biru'?
Easy answer: So that it will rhyme with ‘rindu’
If we are to use ‘putih’, ‘rindu’ nak campak mana? And this is easily understood, because there are instances recorded of other colour associated with paper used for letter writing that are paired with different feeling/emotion, that has the same rhyme with the colour.
Example:
See, in the example above, instead of requesting the letter be written on blue paper, the pemantun request it on ‘kertas merah’ (red paper). And now since merah won’t rhyme with ‘rindu’, the whole maksud of the pantun is adjusted, and the emotion picked for it is ‘marah’.
If ‘merah’ is rhymed with ‘marah’, in the example above, ‘putih’ is rhymed with ‘kasih’. I know it’s not the end-rhyme, unlike the case of merah/marah and biru/rindu, but the idea of rhyming corresponding words in the pembayang-maksud pair, especially those in the middle of respective line, is common and in fact considered as a characteristic of good pantun (for some). Therefore the argument is valid.
Rhyme, especially the end-rhyme of each pembayang-maksud pair is crucial in a pantun structure. Yang ni jangan argue dengan aku.
Therefore, when asked, why ‘biru’ out all many colours there are in this world, we could easily take it for granted that it is selected to rhyme with the word ‘rindu’.
Tamat, habis cerita. Betul? Belum lagi. There’s still a lot to talk about.
Well of course rhyme is the key in constructing pantun. Therefore choosing ‘biru’ to pair with the word ‘rindu’ seems enough an explanation. However, we have to realise that the pembayang in pantun of the old days (most of the time) wasn’t simply designed based on rhyme. The pembayang must be set in a way that
It makes sense. Which here means the elements used in pembayang must tally with its function and must be set to follow the norms of the elements Example, the pembayang Anak gahara turun ke sungai, Turun ke sungai mencuci baju; Well, at first glance, this seems okay. It tells us that an ‘anak gahara’ go to a river, to wash clothes. Human can wash clothes. And a river, sources of water, is a good place to do your laundry. However, 'anak gahara', is the child of a king and the queen, being a royal blood, an 'anak gahara' won’t do his laundry, let alone in a 'sungai'. So, it semantically makes sense, but culturally, it does not. So always keep in mind, that whenever you’re constructing a pembayang, always take good care of using the right things for the right purpose.
It must echo the maksud. The keyword ‘bayang’ in pembayang could be loosely translated to shadow. What is the nature of shadow? It must be attached, faithfully to an object. In pantun then, the maksud is the object, with pembayang being the shadow. Now if the object is a cat, it’s pretty much impossible for it to cast a shadow of an elephant, right? Not that it couldn’t be achieved, but the nature of a shadow must reflected and attached faithfully to the object. The same goes with pembayang in a pantun. It is not the case that it is impossible to create a pembayang that does not in any way echo the maksud, it could be done. However, the whole pantun would not be of good construction.
With these two points in mind, let’s us see how could this ‘kertas biru’ makes sense and echoes the maksud?
In order for it to make sense, we have to firstly answer whether the object exist or not? And then go to whether it makes sense that this kind of object (if it exist) used in this way i.e does ‘kertas biru’ at that time really used for writing things on? Or was it only used for other purposes like producing luxurious painting, or wrapping things with?
Whether it makes sense?
For whether it exists (of which the answer is YES!), here’s an overview of blue paper.
How did they produce paper?
Paper is well known to be made of pulp, of which can be harvested from trees. But, the old days ni we talk about the paper production mill zaman dulu, they don’t directly use fresh pulp for paper. What they used, mostly are used rags and linen, which is recycled from the excess of the clothing industries at the time.
These excess, discarded from clothing mills, are used as the source of fibre, to produce the paper.
So, to make the long story short, it is either the case where the rags/linen is already blue in colour (tengok la kilang tu buat kain warna apa kan?) or white but with blue pigment (mostly indigo, but sometimes ultramarine and smalt (cobalt blue) are also used) added to the fabric as corrective.
Blue was (and still is) used as corrective, because white cloth will be yellowish in time. So to prevent the white fabric easily turn yellow, they used blue pigment and dye as correction.
Now, if the fabric they got from the clothing mill is already dyed with blue, they simply make use of it. Some instances recorded the mixture of red fabric into the pile to make the paper produced to be more purple. This was also done, because they need to increase the amount of pulp to have more fibre yield, and thus have more papers.
This job of mixing and balancing blue dye and the excess rag/linen was not an easy task. It is a complex procedure, which required the specialized knowledge of mill workers, and sometimes even the expertise of hired fabric dyers.
Use of blue as corrective
Synthetic ultramarine has been used as corrective for the yellowish tinge often present in things meant to be white, such as linen, paper, etc. This colour blue is not exclusively used for paper, it is also widely used as what is known as “Laundry Blue” when washing white clothes to make the clothes appear white.
Looking back, it is pretty known during my childhood that people use ‘nila’ (indigo), mixing a small amount of it with the detergent when washing white clothes, like the school uniform. Well, mixing too much of it, it will be blue, which stroke me as something weird, why people want to mix blue things to make it white?
The answer is because blue is the subtractive shade that will neutralize yellow. (easy explanation of this. For detailed explanation, search on colour mixing).
The first recorded mention of blue paper appeared in northern Italy in the year 1389, at that time only used for painting. The popularized used of blue paper from Italy, especially the Venetian blue paper ensure its survival.
This production of blue paper flourishes because of the flourished local fabric industries (that already used blue dye) in addition to how Venice imported indigo and other foreign dye goods.
Later, it spread to surrounding places, notably northern Europe. Dutch 17th- and 18th-century paper makers were known for their production of finely crafted papers, especially those of a purplish color. The French named it the Bleue Hollande or Dutch blue.
By 1600’s, blue paper has also been used for wrapping sugar, linen, candles. This is to show how what started exclusively for painting (a luxury) has become available for the masses.
By 1700’s, the advent of uniformly coloured, pale blue papers (partially thanks to the discovery of Prussian blue in 1710) boost this “blue paper” production. And thus, this paper, more uniformly dyed, paler in shade, used for letters, printing, albums, as well as for drawing.
By 1800’s, this industry expanded. Synthetic ultramarine (1830) as well as Prussian blue, logwood (and other dyewoods), and smalt enable more variants of coloured paper to be produced. And thanks to colonization, this blue paper which once was so localized, found itself to all over the globe, brought together by the imperialists.
And that’s how the locals also may have access to blue paper. Or at least an access to the idea that blue paper exist for writing.
Why?
I mean, paper was a scarce commodity at that time. One does not simply could afford to have blue paper, and to use it to write letter to a lover, that must be some sort of luxury spent to do that. And this strengthens the reason ‘kertas biru’ is requested, because it is not cheap (at that time la). So a way to exaggerate you love towards someone, is to spend some money (this ideas stuck until now, unfortunately). Takkan tulis atas daun pisang je kot?
Here’s a shot of account of Alfred Russel Wallace’s visit to Aru dated 1872. It’s really blue. It’s too blue to be white. The paper is identified as European blue paper.
So, it does exist. And it is used for writing purposes. Sekarang orang dah pakai kertas putih, sebab zaman berubah, teknologi berubah.
This overview of the history and how it got here just for extra readings, to enable us to appreciate the pembayang more, instead of taking it for granted. The pantun here is a record, for us about the life of the old days.
Does it echoes the maksud?
As for whether it echoes the maksud, well this is lil bit complicated.
We, humans have this ability to make sense of everything. For example, a poet simply want to use certain words in his/her poetry, without any particular deep meaning for it. But then when it comes to the audience, a lot of very deep interpretations suddenly come out.
So there are 2 easy possible answers for it, either
No, pemantun saja je pakai biru; OR
Yes, 'biru' must have been chosen to at least lightly mirror the act of ‘rindu’ (missing someone or something)
[I am tempted to include maybe as the choice, but I would like to keep the discussion short]
For the first choice, I am not obligated to give lengthy explanation on why one should take this to be the answer for the question whether the ‘kertas biru’ serves to echo any part of the maksud.
But to address the second choice, bit tedious. There’s a lot of approach in dealing with this. But since aku malas nak tulis panjang, I’ll pick my favourite method (?) in justifying the assertion that 'biru' in some way must echo the word rindu. The method is by looking through the corpus, to see whether this ‘biru’-‘rindu’ pair is common.
Disclaimer: by doing this, though, it won’t directly tell you that the colour ‘biru’ must have some sort of connection to the word ‘rindu’. But, it does shade some light on how, this pair usage is common, and this repetitive pattern is at least accepeted the pemantun sphere (else, people won’t use it anymore for other pantun).
And since it’s accepted, then it is sufficient to say that 'biru' does echo the word ‘rindu’ although this method(?) won’t tell you exactly how they are related? It won’t tell you what is the deeper symbolism that binds these two words that it frequently comes up in pantun.
But by sampling the corpus, it does give us an empirical proof to justify it.
So here’s 6 easy search of pantun that use the ‘biru’-‘rindu’ pair.
But then again, it could simply be the case that ‘rindu’ conveniently rhymes with ‘biru’, thus the frequent pairing of ‘biru’ with ‘rindu’.
So yeah, you decide. There’s no textbook to tell you how to think. Ni bukan SPM.
So, in summary
We can allow ourselves to take the reason that for the pembayang, the pemantun choose biru as the colour for the paper because of either
To rhyme it with ‘rindu’; OR
To use the colour as a symbolism that will parallel the feeling of rindu (missing, feeling blue because missing someone. Am I making any sense here?); OR
As a record to show that there’s actually blue paper variety used for writing purposes at that time; OR
Combinations of any of the above.
And this method in questioning whether the pembayang makes sense or not, and whether it echoes the maksud, is a valuable tool in ensuring that the pantun is well constructed.
Hope you enjoy this entry.
Till then.
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