Indonesia

Indonesia appears in Jean-Baptiste Clamence's monologue not as a visited place but as a recurring symbol of exotic escape and colonial nostalgia, a dreamlike counterweight to the fog-bound, guilt-ridden Europe he inhabits. It is the distant isle toward which the Dutch cyclists of Amsterdam are perpetually heading in their minds, a realm of grimacing gods and spice-perfumed women where men die mad and happy. Clamence invokes Indonesia to define the doubleness of the Dutch—"they are here and elsewhere"—and to mark the gulf between the flat, waterlogged reality of his exile and the luminous, impossible islands of the imagination.

Indonesia as the Dream of the Dutch

Clamence describes the Dutch as somnambulists cycling in circles through the fog, their heads in copper-colored clouds, dreaming of Java and the distant isle. They pray to the grimacing gods of Indonesia with which they have decorated their shop-windows, gods that float aimlessly above the streets before alighting like sumptuous monkeys on signs and stepped roofs. These gods remind the homesick colonials that Holland is not only the Europe of merchants but also the sea that leads to Cipango and to those islands where men die mad and happy. The Indonesian archipelago thus becomes the hidden destination of a whole nation's waking dream, a place that gives meaning to the gilded herrings and dead-leaf-colored jewels of Amsterdam's shops.

Clamence's Own Longing for Islands

Clamence confesses that what he likes most in the world is Sicily, especially from the top of Mount Etna in the sunlight, provided he dominates the island and the sea. Java, too, he loves—but at the time of the trade winds. He went there in his youth. In a general way, he likes all islands because it is easier to dominate them. This preference for islands connects Indonesia to Clamence's deeper psychological need: the desire to be above, to dominate, to escape the flat, horizontal hell of Amsterdam's concentric canals. The islands represent a vertical, sunlit alternative to the soggy, negative landscape of the Zuider Zee, where space is colorless and life dead.

The Contrast with Greece and the Greek Archipelago

Clamence contrasts the Indonesian dream with his memory of the Greek archipelago, where constantly new islands appeared on the horizon, their treeless backbone marking the limit of the sky and their rocky shore contrasting sharply with the sea. In Greece, no confusion was possible; in the sharp light everything was a landmark. From one island to another, on a little boat that dawdled, he felt as if they were scudding along on the crest of short, cool waves in a race full of spray and laughter. Greece drifts somewhere within him, on the edge of his memory, tirelessly. But Indonesia belongs to a different order: it is the destination of the Dutch dreamers, a place of fog, incense, and grimacing gods, not of clear light and pure-hearted friendship.

The Thematic Significance: Colonial Nostalgia and the Dream of Escape

Indonesia functions in Clamence's narrative as a symbol of the colonial nostalgia that permeates Dutch society—a nostalgia for a lost, exotic world that exists only in the imagination of homesick colonials. The Dutch, Clamence says, have ceased to be here; they have gone thousands of miles away, toward Java. This dream of escape mirrors Clamence's own longing for a different life, a life of summits and islands, of domination and freedom from judgment. Yet Indonesia remains inaccessible, a dream of gold and smoke, just as Clamence's own attempts at redemption remain trapped in the circular canals of Amsterdam. The islands where men die mad and happy are the opposite of the little-ease, the dungeon cell where one can neither stand nor lie down—the condition Clamence says he must live in after his fall.