Poet Laurens Koster Bohang considers the poems included in Nyanyi Sunyi as having been written between 1933 and 1937,[4] while Dutch scholar of Indonesian literature A. Teeuw dates the poems to 1936 and 1937.[5] The time was one of great emotional turmoil for Hamzah, who was required to marry the daughter of the Sultan of Langkat, who had funded his studies in Java. At the time Amir had reportedly fallen in love with a Javanese woman while studying, and was forced to leave her.[6]