Emmarie Marasigan

Our literary history in English begins with patriotic verse because, as with Rizal and Balagtas, Inang Bayan or Motherland was our first Muse. Quite apart from individual talent, an already rich literary tradition in Spanish and various indigenous languages, and the natural human impulse to song and poetry, the reality of a new Power at the turn of the last century was, for Filipino writers, chiefly that which tested his mettle and proved his nativity.

On April Fools’ Day by the American calendar, 1901, Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, captive President of the First Philippine Republic, took his oath of allegiance to the United States, and two months later, on July 4 ironically, William Howard Taft became the first Civil Governor during more than three decades of American rule and government tutelage. The first decade, which set the stage for “special relations” even to the present time, was characterized by (1) “pacification” or, as Gen. Arthur MacArthur, the Philippines’ last Military Governor, recommended, “bayonet treatment for at least a decade”² ; (2) the suppression of Filipino nationalism or, more precisely, the ilustrados’ non-violent campaign for immediate political independence (from Spanish times through the short- lived Malolos Republic, 1899-1901, they were the ruling socio-economic and political elite³); and (3) the subtle de-Filipinization or, if you will, Americanization of the native-Hispanic culture, chiefly through the American public school system and “free trade.”⁴

Fernando Ma. Guerrero, regarded during his time as the Poet of the Revolution against Spain, is better known in Spanish for his Crisálidas (1914) but might exemplify for us the transition poet. Like any stranger to a language, he may only have translated his English verses from his mind’s Spanish idiom: they were perhaps good wine but had evaporated in the English flask. Yet his attempt at English verses was a symbolically rich gesture: for literature, it marked the ascendancy of English as a national language; in politics, it suggested that the ilustrado class – the leaders of the Philippine Revolution of 1896 – had capitulated under duress to the American colonial regime. Clearly, when Guerrero looks for his lost May-time in “Where Is My May?” (1914), or implores his “beloved Mother” in “Come to Me!” (1924)⁵, he mourns Hispanic Philippines, lost to “that mighty Eagle,”⁶ America. In part, “Come to Me!” says: “Life to me has lost its glamour, / Dead the things I deem the best.”

This loss was fecund subject for poetry and oratory because the Philippine Revolution had aroused the Indio’s conscience⁷ and sharpened their realization that they were one people; besides, our writers were aware that the Americans themselves cherish in their own history their Declaration of Independence – a history that Filipino writers absorbed in the American public school system. In “Sursum Corda!” (1907) the poet Julianus (Justo Juliano) reviews through 115 verses of perfervid rhetoric our struggle with Spain and America: how, in the first war of liberation in Asia, we had proudly carried our flag to battle, only to have it lowered so soon by the superior force of another conqueror’s arms:

Julianus’ poetic diatribe succumbs to what S. P. Lopez calls the “two temptations” of most political or “activist” compositions: “sentimentality which, in the Filipino poet, is a congenital weakness; and declamation which becomes more blatantly histrionic still with every accession of the patriotic fire.”⁸ Yet Julianus is notable as our first Filipino poet in English who was hanged, figuratively, not for his verses but for his politics. Refusing to retract his slingshot against the American avis de rapiña,⁹ he was “forced to resign as a government teacher”; afterwards, he “attended university at Chicago” where he taught Spanish to support himself.¹⁰ A double irony! – that he should have sailed away to the Eagle’s roost and earned his keep from the language of Mother Spain.

In 1911, twelve years after Gen. Francis V. Greene had deceived Aguinaldo and seized Manila – Santiago Sevilla sings of “My Dream”:¹¹

Brave were the hearts that have gone before,

True to their country’s call;

Brave are the hearts that beat to-day

In scorn of a captive’s thrall.

Ours not to rest till our banner wave,

Lifting its folds on high;

Greeting the flag of the stars and bars,

The emblem of Liberty.

If “stars and bars” were merely unconscious irony, all the more poignant does the poet’s sentiment become.¹² Used as we are now to a measure of political independence, it is difficult to imagine – precisely the challenge for poets – the anguish of living under a mockery of two flags.¹³ The Flag Law of 1907, repealed only in 1919, threatened with imprisonment anyone displaying the Filipino flag and other emblems of resistance against American suzerainty; yet “our banner” waves again and again in many poems in the “free press” then¹⁴ – free to some extent and flourishing in English and Spanish because the Islands had been “pacified” and in 1907, Macario Sakay had been hanged and an ilustrado Philippine Assembly elected.¹⁵

But there really could be no great patriotic poem in English then for a very simple reason: it was a new idiom. Only a very few may claim some poetic merit (of course from the standpoint of their English models): Sevilla’s “My Dream,” for instance, or the third stanza, say, of Vicente Callao’s “Bella Esperanza” (1912)¹⁶:

Oft have I heard the deep with fury roar,

As if its viewless fetters it would break;

By rage convulsed, most fiercely on the shore

Its towering waves would hurl the shattered wreck;

And then from o’er the omnipotent, regal sea

I heard the breeze lament in doleful moan,

Like some lost spirit wandering o’er the lea,

Telling of glories lost and freedom gone.

Written conformably to English Romantic and Victorian poetry, which was chiefly the tradition then that American writers and Filipino poets in English drew upon, this stanza is yet remarkable – in 1912 – for its command of imagery and the new language (not to speak of poetic idiom). Unlike “Sursum Corda!” its emotional power is not diffused by oratory; its rhetoric is held in rein such that the depredation by “That mighty Eagle from across the sea” is yet struck and more tellingly. Thus too the poet is safe from political harassment behind his verses. But Callao’s poem also strikes a pathetic chord once we recognize behind it a generation of elders forced by circumstances to look to the younger generation as their country’s only hope – through education in English under American tutelage – to regain freedom.

Thus, our early verses in English manifest a kind of ideological rift where “our banner” only dimly waves, so overwhelming, it would seem, was the American influence on our consciousness – one that perhaps centuries of Spanish abuses of power have made all the more susceptible to American blandishments. For it looks as though the patriots and poets among them had abandoned or forgotten the ideal of Kalayaan in the Revolution of 1896, and been lulled by the material prosperity of their class and the benevolent promise of final political independence.¹⁷ It is significant that our first published poem in English, Ponciano Reyes’ “The Flood,” should have appeared in the first issue (April 1905) of The Filipino Students’ Magazine (pp. 14-15), the “official organ of the Filipino Students in America,” as its masthead declares. It was a quarterly published in Berkeley, California, by Filipino pensionados (scholars of the American colonial government), with Reyes as editor of its English, and Jaime Araneta its Spanish, section. It sought, as its editorial says, “to encourage in our fellow countrymen the study of literature and knowledge in the different branches … [but] since we do not believe ourselves competent … we will leave politics aside.” Yet its first issue was dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, “President of our United States,” it says (underscoring mine), with his full-page photo.

Yet, too, it is truly remarkable that in our first poem in English, in a foreign language whose idiom and syntax were still unfamiliar, the poet’s quest, as it were, for the Filipino began with those among us who, without the writer, have no voice else. A narrative poem running forty verses, “The Flood” celebrates our working people – fishers, farmers, traders – as they toil on the Pasig River under threat of a coming storm.

   The day was just coming to close

In gloomy mist of darkening clouds,

…..

…..

   The bankas pass swiftly along,

Returning from their daily toil,

Conveying the fruits of fertile soil,

Across the narrow Pasig long.

   Then slowly come with proud bearing

The big kaskos with slender mast,

With curious structure of the past;

Steady and silently gliding.

   Without any propellers or sail

Advancing like some mighty kings,

By faithful sons with long tikins

Moved on with great labor and pain.¹⁸

The boats so described are our first image of the common tao in our English verses – their “great labor and pain” which sustains the city (Manila) but is hardly noticed except in time of disaster and social relief. The comparison with “mighty kings” may well be a Romantic idealization, but yet not purely fanciful, for how would the city survive without their labor? From the quiet dignity that the procession of toilers on the Pasig evokes, we would not think either – unless we press with our economic indicators today – that they are poor or miserable; they live simply by their honest toil, taking from nature what they need. But soon the storm breaks, and the poem ends on death and desolation:

The fragile nipa huts are thrown

Down carried by maddening currents,

Leaving aghast the poor parents

With their young ones to mounds be flown.

                    * * *

Before the light of day had shone,

The village was to desert turned.

No mark of life or places known

But corpses washed ashore alone.

Is the storm perhaps symbolic? – if the ingenuous narrative itself precludes certainty, the poem nevertheless leaves one with a tormenting picture: who are responsible to those who have less in life? We should recall that the young writers in The Filipino Students’ Magazine were children of prominent families in the Philippines who had made their peace with “that mighty Eagle.”¹⁹

In Fernando M. Maramág’s sonnet, “Moonlight on Manila Bay” (1912)²⁰, for all that the poem’s language is strictly imitation of English Romantic diction, the poet’s “scene so fair” – like Sevilla’s “stars and bars” and Callao’s “lost spirit” – still waves his own soul’s flag in the ideological rift. Both poem and Filipino poet succeed in a way that Callao’s “Bella Esperanza,” with less rhetoric, might have. It is perhaps, for readers today, Maramág’s best. The poem’s ostensible subject is exactly what its title says, only moonbeams on the waters of Manila Bay: “All cast a spell that heeds not time’s behests.” As description, the sonnet’s first eight verses fall short of Callao’s remarkable third stanza because of its overwrought diction: “light serene … lambent light,” “cresting wave … wavy crests,” etc. But unlike the whole of “Bella Esperanza,” the sonnet resists diffusion by riptide rhetoric. The poet overcomes the spell of both his Romantic subject and idiom: “Not always such the scene,” he says. A historic consciousness presides over it: “Here East and West have oft displayed their might.”

If Sevilla’s “dream” in 1911 has, less than a year afterwards, become Callao’s “lost spirit,” Maramág, a month before Callao’s poem is published, is already celebrating Dewey’s flagship Olympia in the mock battle on Manila Bay on 1 May 1898:

Here bold Olympia, one historic night,

Presaging freedom, claimed a people’s care.

This couplet completely reverses Julianus’ theme only five years back: “What could a handful do,” he laments, “against a host? - / Leonidas e’en perished, tho not lost!” But yet, Maramág longs for that “scene so fair,” that clearing which is, as it were, our lost country that rises within.

The first part of Maramág’s sonnet celebrates our native scene as like Eden whose “light serene, ethereal glory,” suggests not only a spiritual realm – Filipinas as spirit-country – but also a state of nature outside history, for it “heeds not time’s behests.” This leap to a mythical time prepares for the historical consciousness which informs the sonnet’s concluding verses: East and West, Islam and Christianity, Spain, Chinese pirates, the Dutch and the English, and finally America have all waged battles “here” to claim our soul. Thus, while the sonnet finally celebrates America’s triumph on Manila Bay, that exultation is yet subverted by the first eight verses that insist upon our “scene so fair” which our troubled history has only “dimmed.” Maramág was only 19 years old when he wrote “Moonlight on Manila Bay”: it should perhaps have been sunset over Manila Bay because foreigners often rave over its splendor, but the poet chose moonlight, not because it is more romantic but because, as the poem suggests, it is under cover of darkness – more precisely, by duplicity – that foreigners wrest our country from us. Perhaps, too, the sonnet’s line – “The deep’s bare bosom that the breeze molests” – hints at sexual violation as a metaphor for colonization.²¹

As with Sevilla’s “stars and bars,” the subversion in Maramág’s poem may well have been unintended. But today we know better about that turkey shoot on Manila Bay, how America made stillborn the first Republic in Asia. So, in our reading now, “a people’s care” turns ambiguous with ironic edge, hanging upon a grievous doubt America’s duplicitous claim to “Benevolent Assimilation.” In any case, Maramág’s insistence on our own “scene so fair” in fact becomes, for the last century of writing in English (1905 to 2005), a chief motive and inspiration for the Filipino poet. For his own scene is nothing less than his lost country whose physical and spiritual geography it is his task to imagine and so rediscover. ²²

Here now, of course, I take “poet” as a figure of our writers and scholars, because our sense of country is how we imagine her, for which each time, always, a new language has to be found. The poet creates those images of his land and people, and those metaphors of the Filipino’s sense of his world, by which he finds again not only himself but his own people. In that light, the poet is the creator of the conscience of his race. There is no country unless the poet has first created those images by which people recognize their nativity. ²³

Notes:

¹ An expanded, largely revised version of a very small portion of an earlier essay, also called “Inang Bayan Our Muse,” in Dayaw Philippine Journal of Culture, I (1987), 1: 32-47, and reprinted in Diliman Review, 35 (1987), 2: 37-49.

² See Teodoro A. Agoncillo and Milagros C. Guerrero, History of the Filipino People, 7th edn. (Q.C.: R. P. Garcia, 1986), 247 ff. This military governor is the father of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

³ I think we might distinguish between independence which to the ilustrados was chiefly political, and freedom or kalayaan which to the Filipino masses was not merely political nor socio-economic but, above all, a spiritual rebirth of the Filipino – as it were, Amador T. Daguio’s “Man of Earth” (1932): “the Filipino,” not a pure “essence,” beyond history and harm, nor a banausic recuperation of “the native” in a pre-colonial Eden, but each one’s imaginative construct, an empowering fiction or myth, an article of faith, if you will, which, because it is yet based upon a sober and honest understanding of our history and culture, might conduce to personal and social transformation.

⁴ See Agoncillo and Guerrero, op. cit., 342 ff. Needless to say, that culture, as with any other culture in the world today, is a special and dynamic mix or hybrid (as even before Spanish times).

⁵ “Where Is My May?” in Rodolfo Dato, ed. Filipino Poetry (Manila: J. S. Agustin and Sons, 1924), henceforth R. Dato, 34-35, from Builders of a Nation, Feb 1914; also in Gémino H. Abad and Edna Z. Manlapaz, eds., Man of Earth An Anthology of Filipino Poetry and Verse from English 1905 to the Mid-‘50s, henceforth Abad and Manlapaz (Q.C.: Ateneo de Manila University, 1989), 27. The “you” in this poem (“Cheer me, my star, … Show me your eyes”) may well be, other than the beloved, the poet’s lost country:

With thoughts of care I bend my head,

       Where is my May?

I am alone, I eat my bread

       Away from you, so far away.

“Come to Me!” in R. Dato, 79, from The Philippines Herald, 2 Dec 1924; also in Pablo Laslo, ed. and trans., English-German Anthology of Filipino Poets (Manila: Libreria Manila Filatelica, 1934), 38; Alberto S. Florentino, ed., Makata 6 Early Poets (1909-1942) (Manila: National Book Store, 1973), 57; Abad and Manlapaz, 27-28. The poem’s fourth stanza says: “Come, [beloved Mother] and tell me … Why my stars of yore a-gleaming / Are extinguished all to-day.”

⁶ Quoted from Justo Juliano’s “Sursum Corda!” (1907), first published in The Philippines Free Press (henceforth, FP); our own text is from Jesus C. Olega, ed., Filipino Masterpieces: Collection of Prize Orations and Poems, Speeches, Lectures, Articles, etc. (Sta. Cruz [Manila]: Juan Fajardo, [no date given]): 96-99.

⁷ That conscience, fundamentally religious because rooted in the Spanish Catholic theology and morality of the time, is profoundly reread in Reynaldo Clemeña Ileto’s Pasyon and Revolution Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910 (Q.C.: Ateneo de Manila, 1979). Ileto’s account may be limited to, say, Macario Sakay’s “Tagalog Archipelago,” but in our time, that conscience may have evolved into what came to be called “People Power” which toppled the Marcos dictatorship in 1986 at EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue or, poetically read, the Epiphany of the Saints). I take that word “conscience” in its widest etymological sense from Latin conscire, “to be conscious.”

⁸ “Introduction” to Rafael Zulueta y da Costa’s Like the Molave and Other Poems (Manila: McCullough Printing Co., 1940), reprinted as Like the Molave & Collected Poems (Manila: Carmelo and Bauermann, 1952), 9, and as Makata 7 Like the Molave and Collected Poems (Manila: Alberto S. Florentino, 1973), 9.

⁹ “Sursum Corda!” was dedicated “To the Renacimiento Filipino, the brightest torch of Philippine Progress, Culture and Civilization.” A year later, on 30 October 1908, the daily El Renacimiento (founded in 1901) came out with the city editor, Angel V. Flores’ scathing editorial, “Aves de Rapiña,” denouncing the abuses of American government officials and businessmen. The publisher, Martin Ocampo, and the editor, Teodoro M. Kalaw, were sentenced to jail for libel, and the daily had to be sold to pay for damages. See Agoncillo and Guerrero, 255-256.

¹⁰ Editor’s biographical “Note” in Olega, Filipino Masterpieces, 99.

¹¹ R. Dato, 18, from FP, 20 May 1911; also in Florentino, Makata 6: 7.

¹² One might still grant that the irony is deliberate because “Stars and Stripes” is the accepted usage. The poet’s verses, however, being too plain, cannot excavate those lashes and welts which are, as it were, too deeply buried in “stripes” (prison bars of course imply those stripes – not only those of the prisoner’s garb in America); besides, the “scorn” is soon dissolved in the “Greeting” and acknowledgment of “The emblem of Liberty.”

¹³ Hardly is there such anguish by 1938 in Teofilo del Castillo’s Under Two Flags – as the author’s Preface tells us, “a collection of poetry written largely in Chicago, Illinois, during the writer’s extended stay in the United States as a student.” Except for “Rizal on the Luneta” (written 1937; p. 47) and “A Hero’s Rite (on Gen. Gregorio del Pilar; written 1930; p. 48), the poet’s dominant anguish is romantic – many love verses seem addressed to American lasses.

¹⁴ Callao addresses in “Gloria!” (1911) the first “twenty” (says the poem) graduates of the University of the Philippines (founded in 1908):

Rejoice, our fatherland, the day is near

        When, firm, thy sacred freedom thou shalt have,

Thy noble sons with pauseless toil shall make

        Our flag from shore to shore in glory wave.

And later, Pedro de la Llana’s “To the 1922 U.P. Graduates” (1922):

Whose creeds of social service shall outlast

        The pow’r of tyrants and the Thrones of Might,

March on beneath the banner of the free,

……

As soldiers of your country’s liberty,

……

Whose hearts that throb with patriotism grand

        Subdue the very forces of despair.

(“Gloria!” in R. Dato, 17, from FP, 13 May 1911; “To the 1922 U.P. Graduates” in R. Dato, 63-64, from Varsity News, 4 Apr 1922.)

¹⁵ See Ileto’s account, “The Path to Kalayaan, 1901-1910,” in Pasyon and Revolution, op. cit., esp. pp. 239-244. But see also O.D. Corpuz’s stirring account of American imperialism and the Filipino-American War in The Roots of the Filipino Nation, II (Q.C.: Aklahi Foundation, 1989), 342-567.

¹⁶ FP, 2 March 1912; in R. Dato, op. cit., 23-24. Only the third stanza, for the entire poem (four stanzas) is vitiated by too much rhetoric. In that third stanza,for instance, the image of the sea that “would break … its viewless fetters” is a potent image of the lost Revolution; but the “impulse” that moves “Th’ industrious bee” in the first stanza is not congruent with “that divine impulsing” (in the second stanza) which stirs “The studious Youth …Of morrow’s patriots to be the van and guide.” And when the last stanza exults: “Behold the Youth triumphant wings unfold! / Rise, rise, O Youth, … / And blaze, thy country’s freedom’s meteor!” the poem is lost to oratory.

¹⁷ Of 89 poems in R. Dato’s Filipino Poetry (1924), there are strictly only 8 patriotic poems: Santiago Sevilla, “My Dream” (1911), Vicente Callao, “Gloria!” (1911) and “Bella Esperanza” (1912), Fernando Ma. Guerrero, “Where Is My May?” (1914) and “Come to Me!” (1924), Nicasio Espinosa, “Philippines My Motherland” (1919), Pedro de la Llana, “To the 1922 U.P. Graduates” (1922), and Juan Pastrana, “America, Hear!” (1922). But we might include Fernando M. Maramág, “Moonlight on Manila Bay” (1912), Gabriel Q. Arellano, “Hawaiian Sunrise” and “Hawaiian Sunset” (1923), and two very early verses of social comment, as it were: Maximo M. Kalaw’s “Faded Rice-fields” (1910) and “The Storm” (1911). This list is significant because Dato’s aim, in our first anthology of “Filipino-English” verses, was to “offer the substance of FILIPINO POETRY … those [poems] most representative” of our body poetic during the “formative period of Filipino-English literature.” (R. Dato, “Introduction,” Filipino Poetry, 5.)

     Arellano’s poems make interesting reading by indirection: “Sunrise” celebrates love of country (“Our bliss upon this Island Paradise”) in nature imagery and erotic guise, while as its sequel, “Sunrise” may read too as patriotic verse and so yield a symbolic content – the sun as symbol of our native freedom, now westering (with our land as its bride), and “the moon’s pale lamp,” a symbol of American rule.

¹⁸ Gloss: banka, a canoe with outrigger; kaskos, a large boat used to convey merchandise; tikin, a long bamboo pole used to steer a boat.

¹⁹ Two other poems appeared in the short-lived Filipino Students’ Magazine (June, 1905): a love poem, “Forget Me Not” by Rafael Dimayuga (p. 35), whose last stanza (mark its religious note in “shrine”) goes:

Don’t forget me; make a shrine to hold me,

      Its one treasure, from all else apart;

Weave a web of happy thoughts to fold me

     Safe, in life or death, within your heart.

And a patriotic, Maria G. Romero’s “Our Reasons in Study,” which reads in part (first and last stanza of four):

On this beautiful western shore

Is a spot which we all adore,

Far from the buzzing noise and hum

Of the city from whence we come.

…….

And when these happy days are past,

Through toil conquered many a task,

To the beloved country returned,

We will give what the years have earned.

Romero celebrates in all innocence, without irony, that “spot which we all adore” – an ocean away from Maramág’s “scene so fair.” A small detail this, but indicative of “a captive’s thrall” (Sevilla’s words) “On this beautiful western shore.” In any case, it may not be purely coincidental that our first verses in English have already marked out dominant themes in our body poetic over the last hundred years (1905 to 2005): “the beloved country,” love, and social commitment (Ponciano Reyes’ “The Flood”).

²⁰ R. Dato, 22-23, from The College Folio (U.P.), Feb 1912, 127; also in Abad and Manlapaz, 32.

²¹ We might well note that the first three stanzas of Sevilla’s “dream” also celebrates Maramág’s “scene so fair” for which “brave hearts … scorn a captive’s thrall”:

Oh glorious isles of my birth,

     Bright gems of the Eastern sea,

List to the song of a younger son

     Who greets thee on bended knee.

Land of the pine and the fronded palm,

     Where the spicy breezes blow;

Where a thousand tree-clad hills look down

     On a thousand vales below.

Fair is the sampaguita’s bloom;

     But fairer thy daughter’s breast,

Wooed by the zephyr’s song,

     By the ardent sun caressed.

The celebration of course underscores the beauty and desirability of one’s own country of origin (“Oh glorious isles of my birth”) whence the patriots’ fidelity “to their country’s call.” It is interesting that where Maramág has “The deep’s bare bosom that the breeze molests”, Sevilla evokes in “a younger son” a native lover’s desire (“thy daughter’s breast … Wooed … caressed”) as an image of the patriot’s aspiration: “Ours not to rest till our banner wave.”

²² Less than a year after Fernando Ma. Guerrero despairs of Liberty for his country in “Come to Me!” (1924), the poet still extols our “Freedom’s Sword” – “Peace [with America]”, he says, “ends not its story.” That poem, consisting of 16 cinquains, is “Dedicated to the Veterans of the Philippine Revolution” (in The Sunday Tribune Magazine, 1 Nov 1925: 8; reprinted in The Philippines Herald Mid-Week Magazine, 29 Nov 1933: 24). See Abad and Manlapaz, 28-29.

     But earlier, when Juan Pastrana raises “The cry of the ten million men of color brown” in “America, Hear!” in 1922, it is “plaintive,” a loyal son’s entreaty, as it were, with his parent; if freedom is a people’s inherent right (Pastrana’s “all-important principle”), the poet’s plea makes its object appear as a delayed gift from a superior if fair-minded master:

America, land of mine sweet and rosy dreams,

Home of the free, where freedom in full splendor gleams;

…..

Hear, hear, oh, hear the sharp and plaintive cry

…..

The cry of the ten million men of color brown

For freedom limitless, but never for a crown.

They claim the very thing for which with England once

Did fight with might and main your brave and loyal sons;

…

Appeal they do right now to your fair-mindedness

To give them what they want, that means, their happiness.

…..

Such is the all-important principle involved

In this hard problem that now must and should be solved.

…..

America! Her freedom lost, her liberty,

Her own statehood and individuality

Most earnestly the Philippines pleads for again!

Shall you now hear the plea, or be like Mother Spain?

It is significant that Pastrana’s prose yet sounds the anguish of lost “individuality.” But the colonization had converted our population of “ten million” to the New Gospel: America as the “Home of the free” has become the model for Filipinos yearning for freedom, and as the “land of mine sweet and rosy dreams,” the inspiration and pattern for a people’s well-being. Pastrana’s brief, such as it is, was our first Independence Mission to Washington in verse. (“America, Hear!” is in R. Dato, 66, dated 19 October 1922; Dato does not indicate where it may have originally appeared. It is also in Makata 6: 29-30.)

²³ The matter of “new language” and “sense of country” is my subject in another essay, “A Sense of Country: Our Body Poetic” in Bulawan 18 (Manila: National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2005), 70-85. See also my “Introduction” to A Native Clearing: Filipino Poetry and Verse from English Since the ‘50s to the Present (Q.C.: University of the Philippines, 1993), esp. pp. 9-18.

OMITTED:

We might speculate further, by way of illustrating what we have earlier called an “imaginative construct” (yet real for all that it is only imagined). Perhaps, that “conscience” I speak of is, at the present time, the dominant bourgeois, materialist, largely Americanized, culture of Christianized lowlanders who, centuries before, had been gathered bajo las campanas (under the church bells); perhaps, at a deeper level of the mind (psyche or consciousness) – more evident, it may be, among those who were not brought to the Christian fold – patriotism is a meaningless word, and nationalism a European import. Macli-ing Dulag, when an arrogant military engineer, a lowlander, demanded the Kalingas’ titles to their ancestral lands, retorted: “How can you speak of owning the land when the land shall own you? The land belongs to the race because only the race lives forever.” Such a perspective may well be indigenous, even mystical too. [Mariflor Parpan, an adopted daughter of a Kalinga community, told me that story, and assured me that it is documented.] The poet Alfrredo Navarro Salanga also speaks of the “folk gothic sense – the dark, primeval, sensual precolonial beings that lurk behind our westernized colonial facades … what we are deep down inside, the core that we suppress in the name of borrowed good and borrowed honor.” [So far, unfortunately, I have not been able to trace my source. But see also Nick Joaquin’s stories, “The Summer Solstice” (1947) and “Doña Jerónima” (1965), and his novel, Cave and Shadows (1983).] My point is: “the Filipino” is different imaginative constructs, all labile and dynamic, yet over all is an aspiration to live in harmony as one people; that aspiration is a power of imagination that moves each one toward the realization of a community where differences become, as it were, the warp and woof of the same tapestry.

THE POEM IS THE REAL: A POETICS*

Gémino H. Abad

English

The real is the poem. To write the poem is to get real.

The real is what we call “our world.” But our world is only our experience of it. If so, the world is only, for each one, that little time-space where we “ex-ist” or stand out as conscious beings; the world is only our consciousness of it in our experience of it. It is our only world; we have no other. A cat's world is its own; we have no access to it: the living of it.

What we call reality is only, and forever, a human reality: what we are able to perceive. The world of matter is our science; the world of spirit is that of our world's religions.

And who are “we”? – Not I, not you, not the other; it is in their interconnectedness that we are: thence, you and I and the other, and thereby we are.

“To experience” anything, in consciousness of it, has from its etymology in Greek,enpeiran , and Latin, experiri , both an active and a passive sense: it is “to try or attempt, to pass through, to undergo.” The word in both Greek and Latin is associated with going on a journey, faring, meeting with chance and danger, for in setting forth nothing is certain. Such the meaningfulness of our English word “experience.”

But then, it is only with words and words that, after the event – that “fundamental entity,” the experience – we again try and remember, undergo and pass through what we call our world. This other journey is verbal; it may end nowhere, the trial fail, the experiment pall. But working our language – soil and fallow of all human thought and feeling, our only ground – we invest our words with a power to evoke, to call forth, to our mind and imagination a meaningfulness that we seem to have grasped in that human event or experience: indeed, whether that event did happen, or had only been dreamed or imagined, or is only an inextricable conflation of fact and fiction; indeed, too, that we call an “event” or experience may only be a thought that seeks a clearing or a feeling that haunts. And in that finished weave of words – the very text – our aim is to apprehend, to understand, the living of it, the full consciousness of the event or experience: its very sensation.

When we speak, write, or read a word, we begin to create our world again – our world in our image, in or from our language; this is so because it is with words that we connect to reality with each nerve of perception – a filament of feeling, a spore of thought: we have no other means for connection but our words; with our words, we give a meaningful form to the feeling or thought that pulses with our grasp or apprehension of the world in our experience. And that apprehension sows our mind with images of the encompassing reality and thereby re-forms our language and shapes us, forms us within. We are in-formed, we are formed within.

To understand our experience then is with words and words to stand under a cloud broken by shafts of light from a makeshift sun. To understand, to stand under, for the immense Reality of creation is essentially, infinitely mysterious. Here is the poem, this poem, and that poem: we journey from sun to sun, then pass to night again. What we understand is not a meaning, fixed and stable, but a meaningfulness of the living of it: the very sensation of it.

Yet the living of it is only one human being's memory of it: as Eduardo Galeano says, “to remember is to pass through the heart.” And the reader, another human being, also remembers what he may have lived or passed through: the living of it as he now imagines it himself. And thus, as he reads alive, he dwells where all things live – that universal plane where his humanity is always achieved, for that moment, as he reads, as he is also read. Here, indeed, on that plane, is that vibrant interconnectedness of the human community: each one immersed in a history, a culture, and a natural environment – all change, transformation, energy. The words chosen, to convey that vibrancy of interconnectedness, are cathected : that is to say, invested with mental and emotional energy.

Poems are forms of thought and feeling wrought from language by an individual mind and imagination. Feeling is deeper and wider than thought; it is also the most honest part of oneself. And, as Derrida suspects, peut-être, “perhaps, there may be forms of thought that think more than does that thought called philosophy.” The poem leaps over Derrida's perhaps ; for what is wrought there is what has been lived as imagined . We may see only what our words permit us to see, and yet, with imagination, we are enabled, also with words and words, to see beyond them the infinite possibilities of invention and innovation; we perceive other worlds, other possibilities.

A POETICS

So here then is my own poetics, in response, it may be, to present and future critics:

Poems are forms of the imagination. The imagination has infinite possibilities of apprehending a human experience in the very living of it. Thus, my critical standpoint seeks to engage with the varicolored forms of the imagination because, for me, what is most imagined is what is most real. I would much rather go by what Wallace Stevens says of “the nobility of the imagination.”

The word “criticism” and its kin, “crisis,” both come from Greek krinein , “to divide and judge”: that is, to discriminate, to perceive distinguishing features, to use good judgment. Thus, in any critical approach, from any standpoint, it is in fact much simpler, and more honest, to say just what you mean. It is also much more exciting to be free to draw from all sources of possible enlightenment: for revel and revelation. You need only choose your words with care and respect for their freight of meaningfulness.

This is why I would much prefer for my standpoint not to be pinned by any label on the critical board. All labels are constrictive: formalist, feminist, Marxist, deconstructive, poststructuralist, postmodern, postcolonial, other “posts.” My chief care and concern is to rescue the living experience from the discombobulations and borborygmus of theory and ideology – to rescue the experience, as lived as imagined , even from the words that would evoke it: just as though the words themselves were a hurdle to leap over. One aspires to that state of contemplation where no words break – where one no longer has even any need for words.

Only for convenience of overview, I here encapsulate certain assumptions about language, about the literary work and its form, about the writer's playing field, and about a country's literature as its image. The “field work” in research – that is, the reading of the poetic texts themselves over the last century, our poetry from English since Man of Earth through A Native Clearing to A Habit of Shores; our short stories throughEnglish, 1956 to 1989 so far in my field work, from Upon Our Own Ground to Underground Spirit – all that field work enabled me to clarify to myself, chiefly by the inductive method, those assumptions. The argument is as follows:

 

 

About Language

Particularly when the work is literary, linguistic usage is essentially translation. The word, “translation,” is from Latin transferre, translatus , meaning “to carry or ferry across.” When we write, we ferry across our words our perceptions of reality. Such working or tillage of language is work of imagination: it makes things real to the mind, for it is the mind that has the imaginative power. This implies that one's sense for language is the basic poetic sense. It is intimately bound with one's sense of reality. As Albert Camus says, “When the imagination sleeps,” says Albert Camus, “words are emptied of their meaning.” The same tillage or cultivation of language implies that the meanings of our words do not come so much from the words themselves as from lives lived. This is why, in the critical response to literary works, the stress falls not on meaning but on meaningfulness. We translate a thought, a feeling, or an impression into the words of a language; the translation could fail. We try and choose the right words in the right order, we invent or even reinvent our words, or transform or even subvert their accepted syntax, in order that we might ferry across them our own soul's freight without hurt.

I might note here that English is already one of our Philippine languages, not regional, but national. We have used it for our own purposes for over a century now, and it ischiefly through that language, in speech and writing, that we are understood in the world outside our shores. English is already a national language like Tagalog, Cebuano, and Ilocano; that cannot be helped, it was simply inevitable, for their speakers live all over the archipelago, and even globally. Only by legislation is Tagalog-based Filipino the national language. This certainly is not to assert that Filipino is adventitious; it is an inherent aspect of our aspiration to be our own country, one people. That aspiration should be rooted in respect for all our languages and their cultivation in literature because our literature presents our image of ourselves. Personally, I believe that there is no English, no Tagalog, no Filipino: there is only one language – language itself. And that language is most manifest in our finest writers, whatever the provenance of their idiom.

About the Literary Work

The literary work itself, without Theory, isn't mute. The word “theory” is from Greektheoria , meaning “a way of looking.” Any theory then is only a way of looking, and essentially heuristic; none has monopoly of insight. Now then, for me, a literary work's chief appeal is to the imagination, and the basic requirement for intimate engagement with a work of imagination is a sense for language. There in any literary work a human action, a human experience, as imagined as lived, is feigned or mimicked in language; be that human action or condition only someone's mood or train of reflection, as in a lyric poem, if it is then shaped or endowed with form, it becomes meaningful. Not a fixed meaning, but meaningfulness. That meaningfulness is its moral or ethical dimension. And that moral dimension raises it to a universal plane. That plane isn't the site of eternal verities, it is the clearing of everlasting questioning.

Granted a fair enough sense for language, to read an essay or a poem is first to interpret the text on its face, to deal with it by and on its own terms. The text, after all, has come to terms with itself. That close reading, attending to the form of the literary work, is the antidote to the text's predestination, that is, the privileging of Theory over text such that the text is read to conform to the theory one prefers. Such theory-bound dealing with the text is eisegesis: that interpretation of the text by reading into it one's own ideas. The critic aspires to a reading of the text that isn't beholden to any theoretical or ideological commitment.

“To interpret” is from Latin interpretari , from interpres , agent, negotiator, interpreter. To interpret then is to present in understandable terms, as when you interpret a dream. You might say that the literary text is the dream on the page. To interpret is also to bring to realization by performance or direction, as when you play a role in the theatre. You might say that the literary text is a stage on which a moment or a life is lived.

What I have in mind is first-level interpretation, for the literary work is already interpretation of a human experience, it already represents that experience by means of art. First-level interpretation then means that you present that experience again in understandable terms. You bring to realization in your mind – and in the reader's mind – that experience as already interpreted and realized by the means of art. You have to deal with those means of art. The human experience in the literary work has already been performed and directed in the text by those means of art.

This is what is meant by close reading of the text.

When we read a story or poem, we need to imagine the human action, the human experience, that is mimicked or simulated there. That is the form of the literary work. It is that which must direct and validate the interpretation of its content. For the form that has been wrought is that by which the content is achieved, that is, endowed with a power of meaningfulness by which we are moved. Form is the matter of art, content the matter of interpretation. When Jose Y. Dalisay, Jr., was asked whether his stories are true, he said, Yes, of course, because “on the page,” where the story is, “is the life that matters.” That life is achieved by the story's form.

In practice, it may be useful to distinguish the literary work as a work of art from the literary work as discourse . In my view, the work of art precedes the discourse. There is no meaningfulness without form; but form is achieved content; in discourse, the focus is on cultural and ideological content, but in a literary work, content is achieved by the means of art.

About the Writer's Playing Field

The writer's playing field is the field of imagination. For the writer, poem or short story is only a convenient label; when they write, they do not adhere to any fixed criteria or theory of the literary work. They only aspire to creating something unique in their playing field: they make things anew or make new things. Without a masterful use of language, no literary work can rise to the level of art. For that thing made anew, or that new thing, is the very form of the human experience as imagined as lived that has been simulated by a particular use or deployment of language, a particular style. Albert Camus speaks of such style as “the simultaneous existence of reality and of the mind that gives reality its form.”

We shouldn't forget that the word “poem” is from Greek poiein , “to make.” The poem or short story is a thing made of words, an artifact. It may sometimes be claimed that “in English, we do not exist.” But of course, nor indeed in any language, except in andthrough the poem, where – as the poet Isabela Banzon says – “the lights mutate from artifice to real.”

About a Country's Literature as Its Image

A country's literature is its own imagination of how its people think and feel about their world and so, justify the way they live. In short, its literature is its lived ideology. In that light, our writers and scholars create our sense of country. Our writers and scholars do not proclaim their nationalism, their love of country; their works proclaim it – but of course, as with everyone else, not only their writings, but all the other things that they do.

Let me make myself clearer by stressing the obvious. The things that a people do make their country. Writing is also doing, and more: those who write create a people's sense of their country. In their writing is a people's memory, and a people is only as strong as its memory.

For one's sense of country is basically how one imagines her; essentially then, a poetic sense: an imaginative perception of our day-to-day living in the very element of our history and culture. While it may be shared through education, the mass media, the arts, and other means and institutions, our sense of country is, in the first place, personal and subjective, but that doesn't make it any less real. It is more image than concept, more feeling than thought. Which of course is why that sense is more readily apprehensible in the artistic media – painting, film, theatre, song, the literary text. The literary text, as language purposefully worked, may be the clearest expression of one's sense of country; in that light, a poet's sense for language – whatever the language he has mastered – may be his most intimate sense of his country's landscape and his people's lived lives.

For the writer, one's country is what one's imagination owes its allegiance to.

Gémino H. Abad

20 October, 19, 30 November 2008

U. P. Faculty Center, Rm. 1062

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*ICW Panayam Centennial Lecture series, UP Faculty Center, 5 December 2008. This lecture sums up earlier essays: “Poiesis: Toward the Lyric – A Way To Hear,” Tomas 10 / The Literary Journal of the UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies, March 2006: 54-59; “Creativity and Philippine Literature” in the University of the Philippines Forum , vol. 7, no. 3, May-June 2006: 1-3; “As Imagined as Lived: Sense for Language, Sense of Country,” Bookwatch / Quarterly Publication of the National Book Development Board, Apr-Jun 2008: 14-17 (from my Centennial Fellow lecture, in U.P. Mindanao, 29 Feb 2008).

Covenant Writing

Consolacion R. Alaras

English

In 1994 – as chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature in the University of the Philippines, I was given a grant by the Philippine-USA Faculty Development to study Writing Centers in the United States. It was during this year that my research on Covenant Writing emerged, influenced by the Covenant Writing of the ancestral spiritual groups in our country as documented in my 1988 book Pamathalaan: Ang Pagbubukas sa Tipan ng Mahal na Ina (Sacred Prophetic Politics: The Unfolding of the Covenant with the Great Mother).

As I toured the United States and experienced identified Writing Center, I began to realize that I must expand the idea of University Writing Center to Community Writing Center: Community Writing Center to mark the Community Covenant for Transformation and Peace, Unity and Development. This notion was strengthened when I discovered in 1995 the Covenant Cave in Pamitinan of Rodriguez, Rizal. This Covenant Cave is the site of the April 1895 Holy Week Pilgrimage Covenant of the Philippine Revolutionary Movement called Katipunan which means the sacred coming together of Worthy Sons and Daughters for God, Country and Compatriots) for Freedom Nation with Honor and Holiness.

My discovery of this Covenant Cave in 1995 led to the Centennial Celebration of the Katipunan Pilgrimage Covenant in 1895 – which led to the July 7, 1996 Declaration of the place as a National Historical Site – and the October 10, 1996 Presidential Declaration as a Protected Area Landscape. My Photo-Text book on this Covenant Cave published by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts led to the immediate beginning of the Pamitinan Protected Area Management Board – and in this Board I was recommended to be the representative of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.

My 1994 study of the Writing Centers in the United States and my 1995 discovery of the Covenant Cave in Pamitinan made me realize the need to establish a National Monument to mark the Philippine Pilgrimage Covenant for Freedom Nation with Honor and Holiness, as done by our Philippine Revolutionary Movement in Pamitinan Cave – the Covenant Cave. The model for this National Monument to distinguish the Philippines will be America’s Statue of Liberty – a gift from the Freedom-Loving People of France and the American citizens – since the citizens contributed to build the massive base of the Statue of Liberty.

In addition, the Centennial of the Covenant Cave was also marked by the June 1995 Filipino Earth Charter – which enshrined the concept I studied – Pamathalaan or God-Centered Governance. This 1995 Filipino Earth Charter marks the Philippines as the first government to contribute to the drafting of the People’s Earth Charter – the Pilgrimage Covenant of Nations of the World for sacred ancestral and heroic legacies – to ensure an Earth that is a Caring Home, a Caring Community, a Caring Nation.

As head of the National Committee on Cultural Information and Special Events, National Commission for Culture and the Arts – I conceptualized special events to make alive basic cultural information like 1) the result of the three world studies indicating that the Philippines tops the list of countries in terms of values and spirituality; 2) the transforming and unifying Presidential Commitments of Fidel V. Ramos, Joseph Ejercito Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to the Pilgrimage Covenant of the Philippines for Freedom Nation with Honor and Holiness in the Covenant Cave of Pamitinan Protected Area Landscape; and 3) the need to realize these transforming and unifying Presidential Commitments through the establishment of the Millennial Monument in Pamitinan Protected Area Landscape – to distinguish the Philippines, just like America’s Statue of Liberty, France’ Eiffel Tower, China’s Great Wall, etc. The Philippine Millennial Monument will rise as our leaders and citizens will make their Pilgrimage Covenant for Freedom Nation with Honor and Holiness.

So far I have identified the two sources of my concept of Covenant Writing: 1) the University Writing Centers in America and the Statue of Liberty which I now consider the Covenant Monument for Freedom Nation with Honor and Holiness, just like the Millennial Monument I envision to mark the Philippine Pilgrimage Covenant for Freedom Nation with Honor and Holiness; and 2) the Covenant Cave in Pamitinan Protected Area Landscape which marks the April 1895 Holy Week Pilgrimage Covenant of our Philippine Revolutionary Movement for Freedom Nation with Honor and Holiness.

The third crucial source of my concept of Covenant Writing is the Covenant Writing of our National Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal. This Rizal Covenant Writing embodied the entire being of the hero in the prison cell – as he prepared for his execution on December 30, 1896. Translated in major languages of the world, this Covenant Writing of Rizal addresses all – leaders and citizens – in a Covenant with God, Country and Compatriots – without bitterness and hatred. For this reason, among the folk or ancestral spiritual groups I studied, this Covenant Writing of Rizal is sacred, almost like the New Testament of the hero with his people.

It is not surprising that I have made Rizal as the model of English Language Education. In my classroom teaching and community training, I always say that Rizal excelled in various knowledges and languages to exalt his native culture. Rizal then is my source for the concept of English for National Purpose (ENP).

Providentially, in December 2004 – the Rizal Shrine Complex in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya – will provide possibilities for leaders and citizens to fulfill the expectations raised by the Covenant Cave of Pamitinan Protected Area Landscape of Rodriguez, Rizal and the Covenant Writing of Dr. Jose Rizal.

This biggest Rizal structure in the World is done by Jordanian Sir Mahmoud A.M. Asfour, the Deputy Area Commander for Northern Philippines of the Order of the Knights of Rizal, chartered under Republic Act 646 – which provides for the establishment of chapters in nations of the world.

This Mahmoud Asfour Rizal Shrine Complex epitomizes for me the concept of English for National Purpose – since the complex pays tribute to the Filipino people and World.

The Covenant Writing anchored on English for National Purpose is – therefore – transformational, unifying, integrative, multisectoral, interfaith, interdisciplinary. This thrust and focus is been seen in the project I conceptualized called English Plus for the Filipino Earth Charter as supported by the University of the Philippines and the Commission on Higher Education. The Plus in this English Plus I viewed in terms of culture, history and spirituality. For this reason, the Covenant Writing through the English Plus or English for National Purpose, will document the communities implementation of the Filipino Earth Charter Preamble, Principles and Values – since the Philippines is the first government to contribute to the drafting of the People’s Earth Charter – as the People’s Pilgrimage Covenant for sacred ancestral and heroic legacies to ensure the Community of Life, Community of Ideals.

The visuals of the Community Covenant Writing will form the Travelling Exhibit called Rizal and the Katipunan Pilgrimage Covenant in the Philippines and Earth Charter Countries. The initiative for this Travelling Exhibit was launched in September 2004 at San Fernando City, La Union – led by Czech Republic Ambassador Stanislav Slavicky, La Union Governor Victor Ortega, Mayor Mary Jane Ortega, and Sir Mahmoud A.M. Asfour, KCR. Highlights of this La Union Launch were 1) the presentation of the draft bill for the establishment of the Millennial Monument to Mark the Pilgrimage Covenant of the Philippines for the People’s Earth Charter; and 2) the Renewal of the 1999 La Union Consecration to God the Father for the People’s Earth Charter – in support of the August 6, 2004 Consecration of the Philippines to God the Father by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in Malacañang Palace.

Significantly, the draft bill was presented to the folk spiritual groups which nurture the Pilgrimage Covenant of the Philippines for Pamathalaan or God-Centered Governance as enshrined in the Filipino Earth Charter.

The Millennial Monument to rise in Pamitinan Protected Area Landscape is envisioned in spirit to be like America’s Statue of Liberty – marking the sacred coming together of nations striving to realize the Pilgrimage Covenant for Freedom Nation with Honor and Holiness as embodied by Rizal Covenant Writing and the Katipunan Covenant Cave of Pamitinan Protected Area Landscape in Rodriguez, Rizal.

Philippine Literary Workshops and Contests

Cirilo F. Bautista

English

As a communal text, any literary discourse is a contrived utterance that addresses several levels of reality, but to communicate through this text, writer and reader must put into operation certain sociological processes that will make it intelligible. "I write, therefore, I am," might as well provide the structural foundation of this sociology. To write a poem or a story involves the deliberate reworking of social elements to achieve the writer's intention. But it is, first of all, a linguistic construction, fixed in a situs of specific explication, demanding of the writer and the reader a vast expertise in language, in the first, to configurate the human condition according to a planned aesthetics, in the second, to be able to embrace it.

Grammatical and compositional knowledge - the first level of reality - clears away impediments to the comprehension of the work's literalness, that is, the human condition as articulated through concrete and physical verbality. Matters of diction, idioms, and phraseology when clarified and refracted in relation to the writer's sociological perspective will ultimately lead to the formula that encodes the work's thought or idea. At the same time, when linkages between the cultural milieu and the linguistic character of the work are established, semiotics produces the metaphoric significance. In this second level, figurative language processes literalness to make it yield additional facets. Meaning becomes more than literal and offers itself to cultural interpolation. Consequently, the work encourages the reader to draw from the wellspring of his societal consciousness those materials that will complete and validate his interpretation.

In this sense (the poem or the story) must be properly situated in relation to the subtext (the social or human conditions) before a signification is gained. Their context (relationship) often produces in the reader a particular perception of the textual idea. A creative discourse, then, is ultimately culturally determined. It cannot be understood without reference to the human factors that provide its framework. Also, it emerges as a rational conjoining of individual and national experiences, the raw materials really of any creative product. Shelley meant this when he wrote that the "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," because, through their meditations on human affairs, their texts become the uncredited almanac of the human development. The power of such works as Rizal's "Noli Me Tangere" and Hernandez's "Isang Dipang Langit" resides in the ability to pragmatize in artistic terms the crisis and exigencies of the human condition.

The world of literature itself, it must be apparent now, comprises another level of reality. All existing literary discourses exert a tremendous pressure on the human mind and heart, compelling them to examine things in a new and, sometimes, perilous manner. This "intertextuality," occurring on the cultural level and intervening in the operation of the other levels, improves our comprehension of the text, and the same time, provides a rigorous criticism of any aspect of personal and social existence. The writer labors in isolation, and he is not even sure that the poem or story will turn out the way he intends it to. He only has himself to rely on in his attempt to explicate the mysterious meanderings of his soul. It is a painful and demanding commitment. Consequently, he inclines to the invention of devices that will postpone it, even if momentarily only. Such ritual evasions - smoking cigarettes, taking a shot of whiskey or a bottle of beer, fussing over pages of notes, cleaning the computer, making that last-minute phonecall to someone suddenly remembered -- are ostensibly intended to oil the machinery of his imagination but in reality are diversionary tactics to justify the delay. For man is a social animal, and writing frustrates his contact with his species. Dylan Thomas called it a "sullen art" because it effects a melancholia in the writer. "The most terrible thing for a poet is to be confronted by a blank sheet of paper."

To write is to wrestle with that horrible blankness, to squeeze it and to bleed it and to maul it until it surrenders to fruitfulness. The struggle debouches into a war whose rules are unclear but whose pain is all too real. Only after his war with words can the writer be at war with other men, Thomas adds. That is why it is imperative that the writer be adequately equipped for this job. It is not enough that he knows the principles of grammar, diction and composition -- the basics of linguistic usage - but he must know their aesthetic ramifications as well. The role of metaphor, the forms of versification, the reason for rhymes, and the balancing of illusion and reality, for instance, once comprehensible to him, will confer on his work an unmistakable direction and a convincing excellence.

The Third World environment, in general, does not offer the writer sufficient equipment to accomplish his task. In fact, there is a certain amount of hostility with which the writers are viewed in the Philippines, truncating their efforts to make creative writing a profession. It is almost impossible for a writer to survive through writing alone in the milieu. Why this is so is another subject, but it is relevant to mention in passing that we are a "seeing" society, not a "reading" society. The trimedia of radio, television and newspapers are the dominant purveyors of what is called "literature in a hurry," which reflects the primacy of simple survival in a society that is not yet prepared for the refinement of its national intellect. The trimedia productions overwhelm the social mind, influence the social taste, and determine cultural direction.

In such an environment, creative writing workshops, literary contests and such literature-related activities as seminars and conferences perform significant roles in influencing the writer's artistic growth, his creative potential and, ultimately, his literary productivity.

The importance of creative writing workshops started being felt in the 1970s. Writers before then had to learn the craft largely on their own, mainly through trial and error and emulation of their favorite authors. On the side, they relied in their friends' critical evaluation of their works. Their language teachers, if any good, taught them skills with which they understood the first level of reality; their literature teachers, if any good, encouraged them to read the classical and contemporary masters. But the matter of stylistic refinements, of philosophical and cultural groundings needed to situate their discourses in aesthetic excellence - these they had to learn on their own.

But the coming of workshops helped clarify misty areas of creativity and craftsmanship. Teachers with sufficient training in the creative art fashioned pedagogical models that served as guidelines to the beginning writers. Lectures during sessions delineated linguistic and artistic concepts that helped the writers focus on specific problems and their solutions. Discussions of various critical theories and their influences on writing techniques provided a variety of options for literary approaches. Finally, and this was the heart of the workshop, a communal critique of works submitted brought out the strength and weakness of the authors. The analysis involved a close reading of the poem or story to discover how it internalized the elements of coherence, harmony, counterpoint, etc.; to justify or reject prosodic or narrative tactics in the context of the work's aesthetic direction, and to evaluate the clarity of its meaning within the boundaries of its function.

The machinery of today's writing workshops are no different, except perhaps in the sense that it is more organized, more momentarily sustained, and more attractive to aspiring writers. The National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City was the first to be set up in the country. Directed by Edilberto Tiempo, it is patterned after the famous Iowa Writers Workshop in Iowa City, U.S.A., which they themselves had attended.

The creative writing workshops in Iowa, it must be remembered, has three levels --the undergraduate, where students majoring creative writing are accommodated; the graduate, where students majoring in creative writing are accommodated; the graduate, where students taking up the degree Master of Fine Arts major in creative writing are guided in their areas of genre concentration; and the international, which is really a separate and independent workshop for writers from various parts of the world. Participation in the international workshop is by invitation only, and participants are acknowledged major writers from their specific countries. It is not really any more a workshop for, as its Director, the late Paul Engle, averred, participants were already masters of their craft, and the workshop was really meant to give them a "vacation, to do whatever they want to do." It was after the first two levels of the Iowa workshops that the Tiempos shaped their Silliman writers workshops .

Practically all Filipino writers off any importance have joined this workshop at one time or another, either as fellows, lecturers, or panelists. It is held for four weeks every summer amidst the pleasant and quiet surroundings of the seaside city,. It will be an understatement to say that it has a significant influence on the growth of our literature. The applicants wanting to join it increase in number each year, and the works and the works of writers who have passed through it continue to enrich our arts and letters. The amount of learning these writers got from this workshop is incalculable, and is measurable only in the way they have contributed to the qualitative and quantitative growth of our literature. Being a pioneer, the Silliman Writers Workshop occupies a premier position in the history of creative writing in the Philippines.

The U.P. Creative Writing Workshop is held also in summer, with the venue being any of the university's campuses all over the country. Understandably, it has the widest coverage in terms of participants, for it can draw from thousands of potential writers among the university's vast student population.

The Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center of De La Salle University, established in 1991 in honor of the noted fictionist, holds a workshop every December. Following Santos's expressed wish, the workshop gives priority to new writers, from our mass-based universities -- U.E., F.E.U., Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, P.U.P. - and from La Salle campuses.

The Iligan National Writers Workshop, in the short three years that it has been operating, has already established a firm reputation as an excellent training ground for aspiring poets, fictionists and dramatists. Conceived and managed by Jaime An Lim, Cirilo F. Bautista, Tony Tan, Christine Godinez-Ortega, and supported by funds from the MSU-IIT Office of the Chancellor for Research and Extension, NCCA, and private corporations, it brings together some fifteen writers from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao for a weeklong intensive literary interaction. It is the only workshop that publishes in book form the fellows' works taken up in the discussion and the transcripts of the panel discussions.

The U.S.T. Creative Writing Workshop, directed by Ophelia A. Dimalanta, holds sessions for two weeks in April.

The aforementioned are the "institutionalized" workshops. There are other, smaller and irregular ones sponsored by the offices and agencies. Writers in English and in Filipino get training from workshops sponsored by Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Filipinas (UMPIL), Galian sa Arte at Tula (GAT), the Rio Alma Poetry Clinic, The Cirilo F. Bautista Poetry Repair Shop, Palihang Amado Hernandez, Writers Academy of the Philippines, Carlos Palanca Foundation, and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, to mention a few.

What impact do these workshops have in the production of Philippine literature in English? A very significant impact, I would say. From the '70s to the present, "literary workshoppers," to coin a convenient term, have formed the first order of literary artists who have, to a large extent, determined the configuration and philosophy of Philippine literature. Most of them are college graduates or have had college experiences. Because are inextricably linked to the academe, they have a sustained faculty of mentors and well-managed programs. We must not forget that Philippine literature in English was born in the campus as an initial adjunct to Filipino students' obligation to learn the English language. Because the American teachers in our schools used literature to teach the language, linguistic and literary skills were acquired by the students at the same time. Those with literary ambition were encouraged by their teachers and, if they went on to the teaching profession themselves, they in turn encouraged their own students. Before the '70s, therefore, the linkage was tenuous and temporary, depending on the presence of teachers with the literary inclinations; afterwards, with the workshops being set up and managed by the English departments in the universities, student writers' training became more systematic and directional.

This training eventually developed into two branches: the criticism of creative writing and the teaching of creative writing.

The first is really the focal interest of most of our writers' workshops where the participants do not actually do any writing but where their submitted works- the workshop materials - are subjected to rigid and varied critical scrutiny. In effect, literary analysis serves the purpose of showing the writers the different philosophies and techniques of writing. Depending on the persuasion of the panelists, therefore, the writers, in the end, may be convinced to adopt this or that school of thought in his craft. The Tiempos, for instance, are very strong exponents of New Criticism; the U.P. Writing Center inclines heavily towards all forms of Marxism; the De La Salle Writing Center encourages various kinds of engagement, and U.S.T., to a large extent, remains Thomistic.

The second emerged with the offering of creative writing courses in the universities. By the '80s, the academic community realized the growing needs to organize and systematize the teaching of the writing craft. Literary production, they admitted, could only be improved in quality and quantity by a conscious program to uplift the literary producers. In De La Salle and U.P., for instance, there are bachelors if arts degrees major in creative writing as well as MFA degrees in the graduate schools. In other universities, creative works are accepted as theses requirements for graduation in undergraduate levels. With creative writing degree units in formal educational curricula, students with literary ambitions get competent and sufficient instructions from teachers with adequate preparation and experience in literary craftmanship. Many of them are writers themselves who pass on to their students invaluable knowledge not found in textbooks. It is also worth noting that there has been a significant increase in the number of students pursuing creative writing degrees. In DLSU, where I teach, the idea of offering creative writing courses in the undergraduate and graduate levels was unthinkable five years ago. This semester, we have our fifth batch of graduate creative writing students.

Thus, these two branches provide the serious beginning writers with sufficient support and encouragement to fulfill their potentials. At the same time, they have attracted more and more new writers. The mergence of the classroom and the workshop, as it were, has brought together all the forces necessary to make creative writing a profession, with the underlying assumption that literary production, like any human discipline, can be taught and learned in a controlled environment. In addition, the quality of writing continues to show marked improvement. In addition, the quality of writing continues to show marked improvement. The new writers, possessed of the advantages of the expert teachers and technological facilities, are more familiar with recent developments in literary theories, techniques and philosophy. Consequently, their immersion in the world of letters hastens their expertise and mastery of their craft. Also, with more writers joining the field, national literary titles exhibited in the various book fairs held more frequently now.

There are those of course, who belittle the effectiveness of writing workshops. They argue that workshops do not make writers; they even unmake them. What can be learned in workshops can be learned somewhere else. A sane enough attitude, on the surface, especially when we hear of the insanity of some workshop panelists, like the one who would tear a poem to pieces to register his displeasure with it, or the one who would insist that young fictionists would do the country a lot of good by giving up writing and planting camotes instead. We remember Sinclair Lewis telling participants in workshop on how to write fiction, "You want to know how to write a novel? Well, go home and write a novel."

But that is not as easy as it seems. One does not simply go home and write a poem if he does not know what a poem is or how to go about creating it. True, he can read poems, and books about poems, but he would not have the benefit of another consciousness explicating to him the phenomenology and problems of writing. He would not, in short, have the appropriate direction suited to his potential and limitation. Only teachers can do that. True, there are teachers who abuse their position, but they really the exception rather than the rule. Alone, it will take the beginning writer some time to master his craft, with the help of workshops and literary courses, the time span can be significantly reduced. With his sensitiveness and imaginativeness unhampered by misconceptions, he can apply himself more productively to the acquisition of those qualities that will maximize his writing potential.

Taken historically and psychologically, then, the effectiveness of these workshops is beyond doubt. The Tiempos of Dumaguete believe that workshops confer on the participants an amount critical skill by which they are able to examine a text rationally and dispassionately though they may belong to different philosophies and personalities. "Communal text investigation," as I call it, exposes writers to crucial and even nebulous aspects of creativity which will have profound repercussions on their own craftsmanship. Knowledgeable in the ways of the New Criticism, the Tiempos emphasize poetic integrity and resonance, formal excellence and veracious autonomy - qualities a work must possess by necessity and not endowment of external agencies. "Many Palanca-awardees come to us to find out if they can really write," Ed Tiempo once averred. He implied a suspicion for awards, for they are, at best, palliatives. Workshops, Edith Tiempo said, "teach a writer to be his own severest critic." If he learns anything at all, it is to exercise the ability to tell when the parts of a work succeed, and how to functionalize these parts through judicious selection, paring, repairing, and harmonizing. In due time, his expertise may lead him to introduce innovations in the structure and concepts of the literary genres. Indeed, as a literary editor and critic, I have come across such innovations in the works of Filipino poets and fictionists.

The Carlos Palanca Foundation has of late realized the value of creative writing workshops. Through A.B. Battung, executive director, it started last year as a series of workshops designed for emerging writers in the provinces. "In this way," Battung said, "we would bring the benefits of literary know-how to those who are not able, by reason of time or distance, to join workshops in Metro Manila." He has put together a team - composed of fictionist Jose Dalisay, Jr., poet Cirilo Bautista, and dramatist Rene Villanueva - which manages three-genre workshops for pre-enrolled participants. The team has held workshops in Bicol at the Ateneo de Naga University, in Cebu at the San Carlos University, and in Ilocos Norte at the Divine Word College. "In holding these workshops," Battung added, "the Palanca Foundation is signaling its recognition of the important role that our writers carry, not only in advancing our literary development but also in shaping our national cultural taste." Several outstanding writers from the provinces have been discovered through the Palanca workshops.

Also, the usefulness of writing workshops is evidenced in the patronage that our cultural institutions have been giving them. For years, the Cultural Center of the Philippines extended funding assistance to creative writing workshops. The National Commission for Culture and the Arts, understandably, has been very supportive of writing workshops.

In summary, it is evident that there is no need for statistical figures to confirm the factuality of creative writing workshops' effectiveness. Indeed, there is no need for statistics. After all, the effects of workshops are cumulative, rather than periodic. But the effervescence evident in the writing scene denotes a reinvigoration of the creative spirit, and this alone, is an encouraging sign. Big or small, these workshops answer the need for a rational and sustained effort to build up the country's literary resources by attending to the requisites of its primary component: the writers. The number of books published by literary workshoppers increase annually, thus fattening the literary treasury. Creative writing workshops attract more and more new writers who realize the beneficence of the workshops' intention to develop persons extremely sensitive to the human condition, to the alterations and flow of the cultural milieu, and to the determination of the national consciousness. Writer's contribute to the sharpening of the people's desire for the finer things in life, for the improvement of the national intellect. Through their literary productions, they propose ways of upgrading the quality of national life. Their works, when judiciously inputed by the state of authorities in their national policies, may provide them with ideas for social amelioration. The writers' honest and profound critique of social realities is their ultimate contribution to the formation of an uplifted national intelligence. But the sensitivity, the imagination, and the craftsmanship they need to accomplish this critique is inaugurated to a great extent in the environment of writing workshops.

The effect of literary competitions in the production of literature in English, on the other hand, is quite a different thing. At best, the matter is speculative, for these contests are arbitrary, limited, and often short-lived, making it difficult for us to make conclusive statements vis-a-vis literary production. From the Commonwealth Literary Awards of the 1940s to the Palanca Literary Awards of the 1990s, certain currents of creative energy can be stipulated, and this can be the basis of some tentative findings. It stands to reason, however, that the popularity of these contests definitely exerts certain influences on individual writers' attitude toward literary and social realities, and these can be understood only if we ask the writers themselves.

The major and minor literary competitions that we have -- the Palanca, the CCP, the Free Press, The Graphic, The Panorama, the Procyon, and the Home Life -- confer a psychological, and not an artistic, beneficence on the writers. Winning them has a palliative effect -- for a while the writer is a few thousand pesos above the poverty line and enjoys some degree of admiration --but cannot be equated with the winner's ascendancy over other writers. It would be erroneous, if not pretentious, to assume that a contest winner is a better artist than a non-winner. I have known many naive writers who think winning the Palanca is the highest achievement for a Filipino writer; there are even those who think it is the equivalent of literary apotheosis. They ignore the fact that it is just a contest, that is all, and a winner is just lucky that the judges, who have their own nebulous system of rating entries, were favorably disposed to his work. It is indisputable that there are many outstanding writers who have never won any literary prize.

Why then do writers join these contests? In an attempt to find some answers, I posed that question to some twenty (20) respondents in an informal, random survey. They were a mix of established and beginning writers, of winners and non-winners. The tally I had at the conclusion of the survey included all responses, even multiple ones from the same respondents.

Why do you join literary contests?

Response	Frequency
1. To find out if I can really write	16
2. For the money	10
3. To know if I'm good as others	6
4. To know if I have potentials	4

Insufficient as it is, the survey can give us some idea of the psychology of literary contests. Response #1 indicates the writers desire for the "confirmation" of his literary ability; that is winning will be a validation of his artistic capability. This is the most satisfying effect of contests, for it resolves for him questions that otherwise would remain unanswered. The Palanca Prize, in this regard, is perceived as the best validator; its prestige, history, and scope make it a reliable measuring instrument. Winning it provides entry into the exclusive group of outstanding writers whose excellence has passed a rigid test and who would, from now on, be forces to consider in our literary development.

Confirmation gives the writer the signal that the pursuit of letters is not, after all, a futile thing for him. "I want to find out if my estimation of myself as a poet is correct, " a respondent said. "Am I getting anywhere with my writing - I want to know," another said. In effect, confirmation is a highly personal search for the justification of a writing life. The writer, as it were, competes with himself, not with others. Winning finally settles for him questions about writing as a serious engagement.

Response #2 reflects the practical attractiveness of contests. Writers join them for the money -- the bigger it is, the more their desire to win. Those who gave this response were either already multiple winners or financially hard-pressed. For the first, sure of their ability, the money, as it were, has already been earmarked for certain things -- a TV, a vacation, to pay a debt. Winning has become not only a habit for them, but also a source of steady income. For the second, winning is a small refuge from the perils of insolvency. These are the struggling writers whose social circumstances make them look at contests as an agency for temporary salvation. All of them said that present contest prizes are unrealistic and should be raised to meet the demands of our actual cost of living.

Response #3 shows the writers' interpretation of contests as a canonical agent. They compete to prove that they are as good as, if not better than, writers who have won already. Their competitiveness assumes a hierarchy of writers where winners occupy top ranking. To win is to be elevated to the pantheon of the literary greats. "When I won my first Palanca," one of them said, " I could not sleep for a week. I felt so high." "I joined because I got sick and tired of the boastfulness of one winner. When I won, all of a sudden he became silent." These respondents also think that the more contests one wins, the more excellent an artist he becomes.

Response #4 exhibits the naivete of some writers. The respondents thought of contests as an instrument to discover whether they had talents, and they ended by losing. The truth is, the Palanca and the CCP contests are not for those without talent, and if one is just trying to find out if he has, workshops are the appropriate venues for him. Amateurish entries in these contests are easily weeded out by the judges who have vast experience in this kind of thing.

Whether literary contests and other similar projects contribute to the production of literature, as I have said, is difficult to ascertain. It is not farfetched, however, to say that they improve the quality of writing in the country. The high level of competition, the increasing number of contestants, and the spread of knowledge about literary techniques and theories, force a contestant to upgrade his skill. By comparison and contrast, by absorption or opposition, he posits himself against others and undoubtedly learns from the experience. I know many writers who study the style and techniques of contest winners with the aim of understanding the finer elements of literary discourses.

The psychology of contests, particularly focused on the human desire for recognition, compels the beginning writers to prove to themselves and to others that they are worthy of membership in the society of letters. In the process, they struggle to grow artistically in order to meet the standards of the contests. Because they cannot win if they are no good, contests exert a subtle educative influence on the participants. In this manner, contests are invisible workshops, which hone the skills of the beginning writers desirous of literary notability. They are one way of learning and excelling in the craft, albeit a difficult one.

Creative writing workshops, literary contests, literary seminars and conferences, it must be clear now, have a definite role in the literary growth of our literature. Each in its own particular way has direct and indirect influences on the quality and quantity of literary production. Taken together, they are a dominant force in the formation and strengthening of our national soul and in the direction of our social life.

Reference: from the book Illumined Terrain: The Sites and Dimensions of Philippine Literature

Another Look at Teaching Poetry

Cirilo F. Bautista

English

With summer around, can teachers’ conferences be far behind? For the teachers of literature, these will be for the purpose of assessing and evaluating their effectiveness in the pedagogy of fiction and poetry. With poetry specifically, there are certain questions that will have to be re-answered in the light of changing classroom realities and social concerns. Here are some which I am asked often in conferences and discussions, and my answers—

1. What poems do I take up in class? This should not really be a problem, since it is assumed that the teacher knows his students, their intellectual character and social background, the material resources of the library, and the objective of the course. With a little imagination to work on these conditions, the teacher should be able to determine what poems are available and suitable for classroom use. He must relate them to the students’ political, religious, personal, and cultural values and realities, otherwise, the poems will be strange pieces of writing to the students. The teacher must not forget that, above all, a poem is a sociological utterance and cannot be understood outside the domains of social relationship.

2. Is there only one interpretation of a poem? The richness and value of a poem resides in the multiplicity of meanings that it offers. In this sense, the more interpretations it has, the better, since this indicate a wide magnitude or university of appeal. Readers may have a variety of reactions to the same poem, for they have different personal and social circumstances. No interpretation is better than another—it can only be profound or relevant considering the aspects of the poem being studied. The only rule is that these interpretations, to be acceptable, must not contradict each other but must sustain, strengthen, and support each other. If not, some error of analysis has been committed, and the teacher must re-examine the reading. There is not only one interpretation of a poem, be it a good or a bad poem, for language has a variety of effects and significance to different readers. Indeed, one may read the same poem several times and get different meanings each time. One may concentrate, for instance, on social aspect on the first reading, and on the political aspect on the second reading, and on the religious aspect on the third reading; his interpretation will not be the same on the three readings, but they will not cancel each other. In fact, they will show the rich layers of meaning available in the poem.

3. Should we teach only poems in the traditional style or poems in the modern style? It is better to teach both. Classical verse (those with definite rhyme-schemes and meter) and free verse and all its varieties, are valid means of poetic expression. The teacher must know their history and characteristics so that he can point out to his students certain areas of similarities and differences between these two modes. Free verse, actually, is only free from definite meter and rhyme schemes; in all aspects, it is governed by strict rules prosody linked to its philosophical framework. Free verse and traditional verse can also be seen as simply means of linguistic expression, and not as ends in themselves. We cannot, therefore, say that a poem is good because it is written in traditional or in free verse.

4. How do we know if it is a good poem? We must remember that a poem is “good” not in the moral but in the aesthetic sense. A poem is a good poem when, using the artistic and linguistic materials demanded by his craft, the poet is successful in fashioning he rich multiplicity of meaning earlier mentioned. The good poem changes the reader for the better—it makes him realize, through its skillful mergence of form and content, the authentic state of human conditions. He personalizes his knowledge when he applies it to his own individual situation. Thus, we say that the poem “inspires” us or that we “learn” from it.

5. What is the best method of teaching poetry? This is the most asked question, and the most difficult to answer, considering the mysteries of pedagogy. But it seems that the method is best which achieves the best results. Since environmental factors differ from classroom to classroom and from region to region, the teacher should be innovative enough in his approach. Because he will encounter many problems making his students understand and appreciate the poem, he must adapt his teaching techniques to his milieu. For instance, he must employ audio-visual devices to concretize the ideas in the poem and make students grasp poetic principles. Drawings, pictures, audio- and video-tapes and anything of such nature available can facilitate poetic learning. At the same time, they will help students in justifying or confirming their own interpretations.

Notes:

Originally published in the Philippine Panorama, April 23, 2000.

Writers are made, Not Born

Cirilo F. Bautista

English

The ability to verbalize human experience for the aesthetic enjoyment of others is not, contrary to popular notions, inborn; it is a product of training. This genius to textualize beauty in excellent language results from years of struggling with language, not from the happy confluence of parental genes. The talent might be there at birth, but if it is not prodded or nurtured, it will come to nothing.

Modern science has shed light on this matter. In the annual conference of the British Psychological Society, Michael Howe of Exeter University averred that “as extraordinary as geniuses with exceptional scientific or creative talents are, they have much in common with ordinary people. Genuine creative achievements depend more on perseverance over the long haul than prodigious childhood skills.”

The genius for writing, in short, is the product of an unswerving involvement, of “keeping the faith” and mastering the craft, even in the most desperate and unfavorable situations. Anyone can write, but not anyone can write well—that thin demarcation line separates he true practitioner from the mere dabbler and indicates degree of their commitment. “What makes geniuses special,” Howe added, “is their long-tern commitment. They struggle very hard and they keep on persisting. They enjoy their work. They excel in concentrating and persevering. Their efforts are focused, and all geniuses have a firm sense of direction.”

The real writer realizes in life that to be of any significance, he must dedicate much, if not all, of his being to the mastery of his craft and the production of a meaningful body of work. His capability and preparedness emanate from his sensitivity to human conditions of his milieu, which in turn create his “view of life” – that is, his literary agenda for recreation of the world. For the world is never satisfactory to the writer, that is why he is always examining it and trying to fins out justification for its state. He does not intend to improve it—no writer can improve the world—but simply to probe it and expose all aspects of its reality for the readers to have a true appreciation of it.

Struggling and persisting in their work, creative geniuses ultimately accomplish their objectives. Jose Rizal, though assaulted at times by desperation and personal grief, did not lose his concentration until Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo saw the light of textuality. “The Bronte sisters did not suddenly begin writing great novels. They perfected their writing skills through intense preparation over periods of many years. And George Eliot had an excellent training. She was immensely diligent and made herself into a superb scholar and writer through her serious and sustained effort,” Howe asserted.

That persistence is welded to a well-focused effort, of course. Persistence is the mother of production, as one might say, for literary inventors need a staying power that is concentrated on a definite field. The good writer is not easily discouraged nor deflected from his intentions. He has already assessed his capacity and knows his limit, but he continues to increase his capacity and to push his limit.

Writing now becomes his right as well as his burden, but he will not give up easily either of them. Difficulties in the actual writing of his work may initially obstruct his course, but he will be inventive in overcoming them. Helen Bevington wrote that, “Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up. Burns chose the autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelly flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night.”

The true creative writer, lastly, has a firm understanding of his direction. His genius never falters in the struggle to achieve his goal—a novel, an epic, a drama. It may take him months or years to do this, but he plods on, energized by the knowledge that success will come sooner or later.

Sunday, May 7, 2000, Philippine Panorama

Our Revolutionary Tradition

Adrian E. Cristobal

English

(Inaugural of Plaridel Lecture, August 27, 2005)

The talk about revolution in our interesting times makes us pause for some serious thought, mainly because it comes from privileged sectors like the military, acclaimed authors, and respected academicians and not from social malcontents.

Last July, the Young Officers Union, as distinguished from the Young Officers Union "new generation," announced that it was breaking its truce with the government. This is not idle talk, as YOU, better known had already shown, in the Oakwood incident, its capability for action, although what it tried to mount was a coup, not a revolution. This time, YOU is speaking of an "unfinished revolution," tracing its origins to the true nationalists of 1898. This is significant, for only a generation ago, the military suppressed student activism for being subversive. It became the anchor of the martial law regime, from which RAM (Reform the Armed Forces Movement) "broke away" because the communists were growing in numbers and getting stronger. The "breakaway" launched the EDSA revolution, a revolution pitted against Marcos' "democratic revolution," a revolution that restored a democracy that for its failings is now threatened by talk of revolution.

YOU's manifesto is a less elegant version of the Nationalist Manifesto of 1959, which characterized colonial Philippines as a "clerico-fascist society," denounced foreign domination and the brazenly iniquitous social order, and was consequently denounced by Catholic prelates as "godless" and "subversive" and "Marxist" and "communist" by now acclaimed authors, who now say that they have been impatiently waiting for a revolution, presumably for much of their life.

Isn't it significant that the military is no longer monolithic and that yesterday's frenetic anti-communists are now passionately preaching revolution? But, of course, it's understood they do not mean a communist or leftist revolution, neither do they mean a rightist revolution. What they want is a righteous revolution, dedicated to setting things right in the rotten state. If memory serves, EDSA was also acclaimed as the triumph of righteousness, as it is so celebrated to this day, although with diminishing conviction.

The notion of a righteous revolution brings to mind Apolinario Mabini's famous counsel for an "internal revolution" that ought to go hand-in-hand with an "external revolution." In the once current term, it's some kind of "moral rearmament movement" within the womb of revolution.

This leads to the respected academicians' advocacy for a "revolutionary council," which immediately raises the question whether a revolutionary council could be created without a revolution. YOU's manifesto provides some kind of answer, but it's anyone's guess whether the acclaimed authors, who have been impatiently waiting for revolution, will accept the ramifications. Certainly, these advocates of revolution have read and heard that revolutions are no picnic, that revolutions have not nicely discriminated between the innocent and the guilty, exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed, that they have spawned an orgy of vengeance, collective and individual, ideological and personal, before things settled down. If even the peaceful EDSA revolution-if that is not an oxymoron-- was not a model of rectitude, how can anyone be sure that a more earnest revolution would be any better?

Ironically, for all the talk about revolution, public sentiment is said to be against another EDSA, against so-called people power, thus providing aid and comfort to the Administration. The leaders of the revolution known as EDSA are now weary of it. Fidel V. Ramos recently warned that another people power revolution would be a bloody one, and that, of course, he is against it. Let us not also forget that the beneficiaries of the two EDSA's are also weary of people power. Does this mean that they are against revolution or potential "counter-revolutionaries"? Does it matter?

The fastidious historians among us will have noted by this time that revolution, the word, has been used in different senses. They will rightly ask whether Revolution is spelled with a capital "R" or a small "R," or whether Revolution without quotes is illegitimately equated with revolution with quotes. This is what happens whenrevolution is freely used to describe innovations in cuisine, fashion, technology, and sexual behavior. It's no wonder that revolution has become a fashionable and respectable word, thus reducing its awesome power.

As intellectuals, it's our mission today to liberate revolution from the confusion created by the communication revolution. But, first, a word of caution: I am not assigning an exalted meaning to the term intellectual, I am simply giving a name to persons with a passion, wisely or foolishly, for ideas and expressing them. They may be doctors, lawyers, engineers, journalists, bartenders, or anything so long as they are educated in some sense, united only by their common interest in social and political questions, in sum, in public issues. The Americans have recently called them public intellectuals,redundantly, I might add, for I cannot conceive of a private intellectual , unless he or she is confined, like Oblomov, to a small room, lying in bed and looking at the ceiling, which, by the way, is an occupational hazard. I caution you then not to regard ourselves as special beings entitled to the awe and respect accorded to tycoons, high public officials, prelates, jueteng lords, terrorists and law-enforcers.

All the same, there was a time when intellectual merited a halo, particularly in our case when he was also referred to as illustrado, identified in turn with the intellectuals, the so-called intelligentsia, of the American, French, Russian, Chinese, and Cuban Revolutions. As every Filipino schoolboy knows (provided he has had the rare good fortune of having a good teacher and getting the right books), the aforementioned revolutions were inspired and led by intellectuals, by Jefferson, Hamilton, Rousseau, Robespierre, Marat, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao Zedong, Castro-but you know all that. Similarly, we attribute our Revolution of 1898 to the Propaganda Movement which gave us Jose Rizal, and, of course, Marcelo H. del Pilar, the patron saint of Plaridel and UMPIL, whose annual meetings are held approximately on del Pilar's birthday.

The role of intellectuals in the great revolutions accounts for the conservative wisdom that they are a sinister force in societies. By their words, they give a shape and form, spirit and body, to discontent. Conservative wisdom even accuses them of even creating discontent in the midst of stability. And yet when revolutions succeed, they are honored by the new order for what they have wrought. Still intellectuals are never satisfied, unless they have been co-opted, and so the time inevitably comes when they find themselves again on the side of subversion. Like journalists, to put it in the vulgar sense, intellectuals "do not stay bought," not by ideology, love, or money. Julien Benda's stinging rebuke in his famous book, The Betrayal of the Intellectuals , is a familiar theme.

In this light, we can rightfully say that our nation was born of the Revolution inspired by the intellectuals of the Propaganda Movement. By their words, intellectuals espoused and exposed our human condition, and by their deeds (imprisonment and death) aroused our indignation. It is not surprising, then, that the spirit of revolution throbs in the hearts of us all.

The Revolution bequeathed to us our political vocabulary. We have only to recall Ramon Magsaysay's "revolution of the masses," Carlos P. Garcia's "Filipino First policy," Diosdado Macapagal's "unfinished revolution," Ferdinand E. Marcos' "democratic revolution," also labeled as "revolution from the center," and the EDSA revolution of Juan Ponce Enrile, Fidel V. Ramos, Corazon C. Aquino, and Jaime Cardinal Sin. The heart of these revolutions is the plight of the poor masses, described by Mabini as "the inarticulate" in whose behalf "the articulate" made Revolution. It's also in their name that we have embraced globalization, a revolutionary new economic order that still awaits their liberation in our time and place.

Before we again ask ourselves the tired question of what went wrong, let me recall the words of Colonel Kalentong to the leaders of the Philippine Revolutionary Government. In all humility, since he was unlettered, Colonel Kalentong wanted to know whether the condition of common people like him would be alleviated with the triumph of the revolution. It's anybody's guess whether he had read Rizal's admonition about "today's slaves" becoming "the tyrants of tomorrow," but if he were immortal, Kalentong would have gotten his answer today. The masses are immortal and they know, by their suffering, the answer to Kalentong's question.

By the time Kalentong asked his question, the Revolution was no longer in the hands of Andres Bonifacio, it had passed on to abler hands of the elite, the illustrados, the educated, the propertied. But there is a lesson there that requires an elaborate, even circuitous, explanation.

Consider the fact that the great revolutions, the American, French, Russian, Chinese, were ideologized and "strategized"-if one may use that ugly word-in English, French, and Chinese. The revolutionists and the people, the elite and the masses, were not separated by a foreign language. It didn't matter that the French butcher didn't read Rousseau, that the American woodsman did not speak the stately language of Jefferson, that the Russian peasant could not follow Lenin's dialectical materialism, or that the Chinese coolie did not read Mao Zedong's numerous lectures, but they were moved by the harangues, tracts, pamphlets, and slogans of revolution in their own languages.

Revolutions do not descend from heaven in a foreign language. It's therefore a mistake to credit the illustrados with the making of the Philippine Revolution. To say that is not to diminish their heroism, but merely to point out that there's nothing in La Solidaridad, nothing in the satires and polemics of the Propagandists that can be constructed as an incitement to revolution. Though they were damned as filibusteros,persecuted and martyred as heretics and traitors to Spain, they argued, eloquently and bravely, for reforms: representation in the Cortez, freedom of the press, and what we now call human rights. They did not seek separation from Spain. Like Sinibaldo de Mas, the Spanish diplomat assigned to study the situation in the Philippines, they warned that the abject condition of the oppressed would make them rise against their oppressors. Our heroic propagandists wrote in Spanish for the edification of the Crown and liberal Spaniards, for their mission was to convince the colonial power of the urgency of reforms.

The one exception was Plaridel, whose savage satire on the Lord's prayer was addressed to his fellow Indios in their own language. History has since recruited Balagtas' Florante at Laura in the proto-revolutionary canon. Rizal's Noli Me Tangere andEl Filibusterismo are also regarded as sparks that started the prairie flame. But has anyone ever researched how many Indios of the time had enough Spanish to read these great novels? Were they translated in any of the native languages before the American colonial period? That the novels were meant for the Spanish-speaking Indios, a minority, and Spain's liberals and satraps in the Philippines can be deduced from Rizal's attempt at a Tagalog novel, MakaMisa. It can be argued that by this time, he had advanced from reform to revolution, although it was his martyrdom that became the password for the revolutionist Katipunan.

The Fili has been misread as a summons to revolution, when it is in fact a warning. Why did he make Simoun fail? Why did he kill Elias instead of Crisostomo Ibarra, who later became the sinister Simoun? And why did he write the chapter on a cochero'sChristmas where the poor man asked Basilio whether the King of the Tagalogs had freed his other foot from his chains? In that chapter alone is a whole anthropology of the Indios' craving for a legendary liberator, which is still the mark of our masses.

But the Revolution did come, organized not by intellectuals, unsupported by the elite and the illustrados. It was only when the Katipunan was disenfranchised by the Philippine Revolutionary Government that the elite had joined the fight against the Americans in what should really be called the War of Philippine Independence. Subdued, the American regime courted the elite, placed them in positions of power, paving the way for their eternal sway. It will be recalled that Antonio Luna and Apolinario Mabini joined the Revolution when it was no longer in the hands of the non-illustrado, Andres Bonifacio, the man from Tondo and outsider from theprincipalia. There is no intention here to denigrate the illustrados of the 19 th century, who, after all, sacrificed but their so-called heirs in the 20th and 21 st . Their main advantage is the English language, the language that makes them socially, politically, and economically dominant, an advantage, moreover, shared by acclaimed authors and prominent academics, for which reason they cannot reach the heart of the masses.

Consider: the French had their Ecrasez l'infame, not to mention liberte, egalite, fraternitie,the Americans 'Give me liberty or give me death!,' the Russians kto kvo (who/whom?), the Chinese "fish to water," and the Cubans' venceremos- words, words, words, but words that moved the masses who heard them. True, our home-grown revolutions-let's have in mind the communists-speak the language of the masses, but what their most eloquent appeal is in English, the so-called letters of transmission of the Huks were in English, making them understandable to the ruling powers-and for what? One doubts if any of the rebellious had read the Communist Manifesto in English. Those who have been won to rebellion and dissidence credit experience rather than manifestos.

Our own slogans are inspired by the moment, without resonance, even dissonant, in the course of time. Ibagsak si Marcos disappeared with Marcos, Marcos' Alis Dyan! in the 1965 elections taken from the sitcom starring the comedian Pugo. They were "point of sales" verbalizations of the electoral moment.

Intellectuals may believe that injustices can be overwhelmed by verbosity but only if their language is shared by many in a country of many languages.

Consider again that until Bonifacio spread his manifesto entitled Ang Dapat Malaman ng Mga Tagalog through the Katipunan organ, Kalayaan did the Katipunan count a membership of 30,000. Parenthetically, a nationalist historian translated Mga Tagalog toFilipinos, which, to me, borders on the perverse, for certainly Bonifacio meant the Tagalogs, as he had no way of knowing that Ilocanos, Visayans, and the rest would be moved to revolution, although he must have known that the Ilocanos and Visayans had revolted against the colonial authorities. Conditions may be ripe for revolution but language makes it raw.

Conditions explained Gen. Douglas MacArthur's words as quoted in his biography, "American Caesar." He said, "They tell me that the Huks are socialistic, that they are revolutionaries, but I haven't got the heart to go after them. If I walked in these sugar fields, I'd probably be a Huk myself." Too bad the sacadas had no MacArthur that it took Tagalogs, pardon me, to try and organize them.

The recurring theme then of our revolutionary consciousness is social justice, mouthed relentlessly and indifferently pursued. Our Englished leaders were moved in the days of the Commonwealth by an oration entitled "I am the Tao." It was eloquently elocuted by Raul Manglapus. There was a tremor in the hearts of the elite, it's now a murmur.

In this brief exploration of revolutionary history, with capital "R" and small "R", without and without quotation marks, the purpose is far from resuscitating and aggravating the language issue. That is probably futile, since English has won hands down because the mantra is that we must go "global." The prevailing Taglish in media is temporary, for sooner or later, the education system will just have to improve so that it will produce perfect English workers for burgeoning call centers. In some ideal time, all Filipinos will be adept at English, which means that prosperity will drive out unseemly thoughts of revolution, since English is the language of success. There will be no more talk of revolution.

Meanwhile, however, we are complaining, so many of us are restive, but that's only natural in a democracy, and we are a democracy, believe it or not.

"Western observers are looking for attributes of, or departures from, normal democratic procedure. But our elections are different. The big falsification is the big falsification of the whole political process, the falsification of almost all participants in that process. There are no real political subjects, no real independent political actors."

That observation was made about Soviet democracy by the Ukrainian political analyst Volodymyr Polokhalo, in Andrew Wilson's book, "Virtual Politics: faking democracy in the post-Soviet world.' Wilson argued that to enter what he called the "black arts of political manipulation, the dilettante would require a whole new vocabulary.

" Kompromat can be placed in a 'poisoned sandwich,' a positive news piece contaminated by a nagging bit of slander. Kompromat can alternatively be aired by the satirically dubbed 'General Prosecutor,' who, while staging a 'war on corruption,' really works as a PR agent airing allegations against rivals just before elections. The Prosecutor's allegations need not be grounded in evidence and are quietly dropped after the damage at the polls is done. The 'conveyor belt' involves hiding a falsehood in a general parade of truth. The 'toss' is the 'news' story pitched onto the Internet and picked up by mainstream media. Of course, if a player has the funds, he or she can publish a whole bogus newspaper or political poster allegedly ascribed to the rival party and designed to make the rival look like an anti-Semite, a raging nationalist or hard-core Communist. 'Clones' are politicians who are hired to take up the campaign promises of a rival in order to steal vote. 'Clones' differ from 'doubles,' who are candidates that run with nearly the same name as a rival so as to confuse voters, 'Administrative resources' describes a range of activities in a politician's toolkit, from ballot-stuffing, selective taxation and prosecution, and just plain threats employed to command local bureaucrats to get out and/or obstruct the vote. Secret agents infiltrate rival parties to 'cut short' or 'disrupt' the enemy camp by creating disputes between members and thereby discrediting the organization in the eyes of the rank and file. Of course, one can set up a whole sham party designed as a bogey, such as a Communist or extreme nationalist party, to scare moderate voters or win support from the West. Often the election is so sewn up by the ruling elite that the biggest problem political technologists encounter is in finding a 'credible loser to run against a predetermined winner, such as Putting in 2004."

If one didn't know better, one would think that the above quotation is a description of aspects in our own political universe. The book, written in English, is certainly not going to be translated into Russian, at least not just yet. The despotic democrats wouldn't risk Petrovich's and Petrushka's access to it.

Revolutions do come in the native tongue, as Rizal said, speaking through Simoun speaking to Basilio, that it was right that the Indios were not taught in Spanish so that they would discover their souls. But what can be accomplished in a nation of tribes speaking different languages and dialects, moved by different values and beliefs, producing as everybody knows, numerous associations in contention against one another? Everyone has lamented how Filipinos abroad behave without a common feeling for one another, unlike Italians and Mexicans. Many reasons have been given, but an interesting one is that they are alienated from one another.

We are the only country in Asia where a national language and two official languages have to be legislated, official languages, one of which is used only for entertainment, elections, and informal communication. Even when Tagalog, euphemized and elevated as Filipino, is taught to students who unashamedly find it more difficult than English, proficiency in it marks one as merely bright without reducing the elite status of those who are not proficient because they speak and write-English.

English is not the enemy, it's the absence of a common language. We can, as intellectuals-whether writers, journalists, orators, politicians-fulminate as much as we can against an unjust social order-but it's doubtful that we can move our multitudes to revolution. We cannot touch their minds and hearts because we speak in a foreign language, because despite all protestations, we are also of the elite by virtue of our alien education. We gain prestige, we can even achieve glory, but we shall remain out of touch because we cannot reach the hearts and minds of the many. For to reach the heart of the Filipino requires the discovery of its language.

But let us not despair. Nothing can stop us from speaking and writing. It says so in the Constitution. We shall be remembered when at some unimaginable time, Revolutionwill have recovered the name of action.

Many years ago, when I was still young and desperate enough to be brave, I wrote:

"We writers, as inventors of tales, and we intellectuals, as inventors of meaning, are surely so entitled, but only with the proviso that our only privilege is the genuine use of our critical and moral intelligence. That this privilege does not include the happiness of the romantic who found love among the cannibals nor the comfort of the middle-class creature who 'assesses' the Vietnam War watching television in his minimalist den, his consciousness far removed from the scenes of rude reality. There are conveniences that we cannot claim for ourselves.

"The coin of our privilege is an all-embracing solitude that is the endurance of a bad conscience. For whatever we do, whether as liberals marching for a cause, or as radicals juggling pen and pistol, or prelates agitating for the alleviation of poverty or promising salvation by white violence, we must understand, provisionally at least, that these have no meaning for the men, women, and children who today live lives of unimaginable horror and whose daily companions are terror and pain and whose only happiness is death. But all the same, we owe them a meaning.

"They-these men, women, and children-are the only true judges of our worth. They constitute the parameters, the parable, of our unresolved existence, and we owe it to them to shed the subterfuges of solitude by accepting with good grace the ineluctable fact that we can only endure a bad conscience. That is what it means-and no other-to be an intellectual today."

The intellectuals of a century removed, the illustrados, but not their heirs-certainly not their heirs -had a good conscience.