I have spent the last ten days traveling in the Philippines – a place that, until now, had never been on my mental or literary map. Geographically, I had gotten close before, with Eka Kurniawan’s Beauty is a Wound (Indonesia) to the South, and Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathiser (Vietnam) to the East. I had had a passing interest in phases of late-20th century Indonesian and Vietnamese history. The Philippines, however, had remained a mental blank; apart from a single occasion when my father had told me about the dictatorship – and overthrow – of Ferdinand Marcos.
All that changed, however, with a dip into its literature, which – as literature always does – unfolded world after world with each successive novel. During my time on the Islands, I gathered that there were three crucial historical moments in recent Filipino history: the 1890s, which saw a successful indigenous challenge to three centuries of colonial-catholic Spanish rule, and an unsuccessful struggle against its immediate successor, the United States; the 1940s, when Intramuros, the old city of Manila, was utterly destroyed by American bombs, soon after which the Philippines gained independence from the United States; and the ushering in of the 21st century into Manila, a sprawling metropolis that was – and is – home to a smorgasbord of cultures, ethnicities, races, languages, and dialects, and continues to exist in an uneasy relationship with its former colonisers. And, after all, as the Foreword to Nick Joaquin’s book of short stories notes, “for the Philippines, an archipelago geographically fragmented, linguistically fissured, occupied by not one but two invaders heralding a fierce but frayed republic dominated by the oligarchic spoils of our split, postcolonial selves – in a land tectonically and climatically doomed to dissolution – for the Philippines, perhaps it is only through its fictions that it can conceive itself a unity.”
In different ways and to different extents, these three moments feature in the four Filipino novels that I read. Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere is the Filipino national novel, the compulsory starting point for all forays into Filipino literature. Noli Me Tangere (1887) is called not only the first Filipino novel, but also the novel that created “the Philippines” as a nation. It was written by Jose Rizal, one of a group of ilustrados – Filipinos educated in Europe, and the intellectual leaders of the incipient independence movement. Chronicling the abuse of the Spanish friars (who more or less ruled the Philippines), the novel had such an impact that Rizal was eventually executed (in 1896) – an event which, in turn, triggered the revolution against Spain.
If we keep its political impact to one side, and examine it as a piece of literature, Noli Me Tangere feels a decidedly uneven work. The plot is simple enough: it tells of a deadly conflict between Crisostomo Ibarra, an ilustrado recently returned after seven years in Europe and determined to work for the progress of his country, and Father Damaso, a villainous Franciscan friar bent upon Ibarra’s destruction. Revolving around these two principal characters and their struggle is an ensemble of sub-plots and subsidiary personages: the rivalry between the Franciscan and Dominican orders, the tension between the secular Spanish authority and the religious orders, the subordinate status of the “Indios” (Filipino natives), the constrained, Catholic-influenced social and sexual mores of the time, and so on. And Rizal has a sharply deadpan sense of humour, which, at times, makes for some magnificent satire. In the opening pages, for instance, we are treated to this:
“In those days Captain Tiago was considered the most liberal of men, and it was known that the doors of his house, like those of his country, were closed to no one but tradesmen or perhaps a new or daring idea.” (p. 5)
And:
“Short, light-skinned, round of body and face thanks to an abundance of fat, which according to his admirers comes from heaven and according to his enemies from the blood of the poor, Captain Tiago appeared younger than he actually was…” (p. 34)
A little way into the novel, however, the enormity of its themes appear to overwhelm the author into abandoning the humorous style for something much more turgidly serious. This is punctuated by numerous references from the Greek and Roman histories, that seem forced at the best of times – almost as if it was a composition for a classics examination. However, as the Introduction warns us, we should avoid the temptation of judging Noli Me Tangere from the vantage point of 2017, and the 130 years of literature that has been written since 1887; quite possibly, both the references, as well as the political disquisitions that are scattered throughout the novel, were fresh and new for their time. For example, the lengthy debate between Ibarra and another character called Elias, where the latter is trying to persuade the former to adopt the method of armed revolution against Spain, while the former – still a moderate – counsels incremental reform – might seem worn out and trite after having seen the same conflict play out for decades in every part of the world and in every decolonisation struggle; for 1887, perhaps, it was something entirely original (I had a similar feeling while watching the anti-capitalist oration in Ibsen’s Enemy of the People).
But even despite that, and quite apart from its centrality to Filipino history, as a piece of literature, Noli Me Tangere remains an important, novelistic account of its times, fulfilling (one of) the goals of literature – to bear witness.
F. Sionil Jose’s Dusk (1984) takes on where Noli Me Tangere left off. At the cusp of being
defeated by the insurgent Filipino revolutionary forces, Spain “sold” the Philippines to the United States, and left. What followed were three years of the Filipino-American War (1899 – 1902), during which 250,000 Filipinos died. Dusk, the first volume in a five-part series, features the tribulations of a farming family during the course of the transition from fighting the Spanish enemy to the American enemy. We see a cross-section of the People that is similar to the ones depicted in Noli Me Tangere: Spanish priests, soldiers, Filipino ilustrados, the Indios working the land; unlike Noli Me Tangere, however, which was told from the perspective of an ilustrado, Dusk is written form the point of view of Istak Samson, the son of a farmer who is initially taken in and educated by a priest, but is dismissed by the priest’s successor, when he accidentally sees the latter making love to the local Captain’s daughter.
Soon after that, Samson’s family is forced to vacate their farm on the orders of the priest; when Samson’s father goes to reason with the priest, finding the latter cold, vengeful and bent upon his family’s destruction, he is seized by a fit of rage, and murders him. Thus begins the family’s long flight from “Spanish justice”, as they flee into the heart of the Philippines, crossing forests, mountains, and rivers, to escape the pursuing soldiers. During the course of their travel through the land, the insurgents rise up against Spain and defeat the forces of the Empire – only to find themselves under the new rule of the Americans; and at that point, Samson finds himself forced to choose between the life of the farmer (which he desires) and the life of the nationalist (which is compelled upon him).
Dusk is written in simple – and intense – prose, the form moulding itself around the lives of its characters. It also has one of the best literary indictments of colonialism that I have ever read:
“I should worship, then, not a white god but someone brown like me. Pride tells me only one thing: that we are more than equal to those who rule us. Pride tells me that this land is mine, that they should leave me to my destiny, and if they will not leave, pride tells me that I should push them away, and should they refuse this, I should vanquish them, kill them. I knew long ago that their blood is the same as mine. No stranger can come battering down my door and say he brings me light. This I have within me.” (p. 143)
Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado (2010): After the heaviness of Noli Me Tangere and Dusk, this is a very different kind of novel. Crispin Salvador, a famous Filipino novelist, living in self-imposed exile in New York, is unexpectedly found dead in his room. The draft of his latest novel – The Bridges Ablaze – a damning indictment of the Filipino high families’ historical links to crime, and with which he intended to restore his lost reputation – is missing. Was it this novel that was the cause of his death? His Filipino student – and the narrator of the novel – certainly thinks so, as he embarks on a quest to find the missing draft of the last novel, and also to piece together Crispin’s life for a biography. And so begins a darkly noir adventure through the United States and Manila, punctuated by excerpts from Crispin’s inexhaustibly diverse oeuvre of writing, and flashbacks of various kinds.
Ilustrado’s style is reminiscent of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathiser (although Syjuco’s novel came first). There is the same taut sense of pace, the same half-detached, half-savage treatment of the immigrant experience, the same flair for the short, crystalline, devastating sentence (“Like those phrases, we’re a collection of clichés, handy types worn as uniforms over our naked individuality.” (p. 25); and, “betrayal had wound its way between us like barbed wire“ (p. 141)), those same, rare moments, where the playfully savage tone is dropped for an instant of something deeper and more serious (“He seemed to understand my thirst for those obscure things that I didn’t yet possess as part of me.” (p. 73) and “Poets lie, though beautifully. Don’t make things new, make them whole.”) – and lastly, those few, long passages of sustained, almost distilled intensity:
“It was January 1970 and we had our fists raised against Marcos. When you’re like that, you observe yourself from outside your body, enjoying the sight of you engaged in heroism among a crowd of fellow heroes. Mutya just went and lay down on the street. I wanted to stop her, but I was being pinned by a cop. The tank pushed toward her. The street shook. The tank didn’t slow. A few feet from her small body, it stopped. All of us watching nearly became Catholic again. Three soldiers got out. They dragged her, screaming, to the side. I should say, it was they who were screaming. Mutya didn’t say a word. They beat her. She lost her teeth and nearly lost her child. It was then that we found out that the baby was a girl. In the hospital, I stood by Mutya’s side, crying, and asked her what had gotten into her head to do such a thing. She said she’s been thinking of the dedication Jose Rizal wrote for Noli Me Tangere. Imagine?! That part about sacrificing to the truth everything. Death was nothing if her country was dying.”
Crispin paused and looked very sad.
“Truly, romantic bullshit, in retrospect,” he said. “And yet…” He wagged his finger. “And yet, ‘No lyric has ever stopped a tank,’ so said Seamus Heaney. Auden said that ‘poetry makes nothing happen.’ Bullshit! I reject all that wholeheartedly! What do they know about the mechanics of tanks? How can anyone estimate the ballistic qualities of words? Invisible things happen in intangible moments. What should keep us writing is precisely that possibility of explosions. If not, what then? A century and a decade ago, Rizal’s prose kindled revolution. They didn’t have tanks during that time, see? But when he wrote both his great Noli and El Filibusterismo, he was more concerned about the present than the future, and far more concerned with both those than about the past. An important clue to writers like you. Rizal’s books were good, but their lyrics on the page were most certainly futile against the Guardia Civil, not to mention tanks. But their lyrics in the hot head and swelling heart of a young reader, well, Mr. Heaney, there by the grace of God goes your tank buster.
“Now, a hundred and ten years into the future, our present, it’s as if nothing else has been written in our sunburned isles since. Oh, sure, they broke the mold with Rizal, Mr Malay Renaissance Man himself. Like China’s Sun Yat-sen. Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh. Rizal’s books are the literary and historical touchstone, so we still like to crow about our revolution, the first democratic republic in Asia. How it was stolen by American backstabbing and imperialism. We talk as if we were actually there! Aiming our Remingtons. Pow! Planting our machetes in the Spanish cabezas. Shhlock! These are our greatest accomplishments and saddest tragedies. Since then, has nothing else happened?”
The sun had disappeared. The footpath’s lampposts were far away, remote, like moons fractured by the branches of the trees. Leaves and twigs brushed our faces. The city seemed but a rumor. (p. 205 – 6)
What’s different from The Sympathiser is that Syjuco tries a number of stylistic pyrotechnics, which don’t always work (the numerous shifts in narrative voice can get annoying), and even drag the novel down at times. However, the ending is a sheer punch in the gut, the most unexpectedly devastating twist imaginable, and that alone – apart from everything else – makes this novel worthwhile.
Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic (centennial edition, 2017): This set of short stories (and one play, A Portrait of the Filipino as Artist) is an utterly brilliant read. The Foreword observes – and in my view, this is perfectly put – that:
“His style has a term: Joaquinesque. His command of voice, language, and form is absolute. Some of his sentences are like labyrinths that if you pulled a string through, you get this architectonic surety, a marvel… almost maddeningly Manileno, subversively religious, pitch-perfectly bourgeois, preternaturally feminist, historically voracious, Joaquin’s work has a fatality – it simply is.” (ix)
An instance of this unique style is the interminable sentence, whose clauses run into each other, overleap each other, join, part, and join again, and all the while communicating a dense, rich, almost intoxicating sense of place. For example:
… and of his home in Malaga, and of the fountains in Granada – and the intimate streets there: the families gathered on benches by the wayside, and girls’ eyes flashing from behind grilled windows as he rode past with the muleteers to the market, while up on the Sierra Morena were the cypresses and bandits among them and an old, old, bearded hermit brooding in a cave, and down in Ronda the weeds ate the mute circus of the Romans and he and he had come upon some shepherds gathered in silence to roast a lamb but he was fifteen and had no silences, no stillness within him and so went sailing down the Guadalquivir on a raft with two boys, past Cordoba with its conquered Arabic ramparts, past the vineyards and the convents, past the orange and olive groves and deep at last into the shining marvel of Seville, its minarets swarming in the sky and spilling doves and hours – the gypsies everywhere, sailors and merchants everywhere, silks and spices everywhere, taverns and palaces everywhere, with tapestries gorgeous upon their windows, for the king was rising forth in a glory of gold flags and brocades, the jeweled majas crowding on the balconies to drop roses and wave their fans, and himself munching figs and boiled chestnuts and feeling happy, very happy, until in Sanlucar the river ended, the glory ended, youth ended among the whores, and he had gone to Cadiz where the ships were, their tall wings whispering of the flawless worlds in the West but the fishing-fleet had taken him to Palma, where it smelled of clams, and to Tarragona, where it smelled of goats, and he had ended up in Toledo, among the lazarillos, playing thief and pimp and beggar amidst the busy gloom of the wintry imperial city, not having cared to go home to Malaga where now – alas! – he would never return again… (p. 20 – 1)
Joaquin’s short stories are a cross between the half-eerie half-detached tone of Borges, and the relentless wit of Oscar Wilde. They chronicle Manila’s Spanish colonial past, with all its Hispanic undertones, its American-dominated early-20th century, and the post-War devastation. Archbishops rub soldiers with has-been revolutionary leaders, street boys share the pages with new-age religious cults, and in every story there is just that slightest, spine-chilling hint of the fantastic, the other-worldly. And through these stories, Joaquin explores Filipino nationalism, Spanish colonialism, American Imperialism, youth, love, and old age in a shattered Manila, and so much more. As the Foreword – once again – puts it: “His unapologetic, Calibanic choice of English is both rebuke to the occupier and revenge upon it… the Romanism of Chaucer is archaic, but the Romanism of Joaquin is current: it’s about grief under empire.” (xii – xiii)
The last piece in the book – the play – is strikingly different. It reads akin to something by Brian Friel – an intense, melancholy musing on loss and parting, accomplished through tense, taught dialogue, stretched as though on a bowstring. As the bombs of World War II begin to fall, two old women live with their father in their revolution-era Intramuros house, determined to resist all attempts to force them to sell it and move, even at the cost of bankrupting themselves. A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino is about the claims of the past upon us, written in the “grief under empire.” As one of the women tells a powerful politician who has come to try and persuade them to move – an old, revolutionary friend of their father’s, but who gave up the struggle and joined politics – “the sublime is always ridiculous to the world, senator.” (365 – 66)
But not to the world of Nick Joaquin, or to the world that he gives to us in this striking and beautiful collection.
anenduringromantic 