The Fili off the press

Apt image from Monceau who captions it ‘Book press relief with owl’ (flickr.com/); I like it because it looks sufficiently ancient. On 18 September 1891, Rizal writes from Ghent that he is sending Jose Ma Basa 2 copies of his 2^nd book El Filibusterismo, one for their friend Sixto Lopez, both of them in the Philippines.

If by the following mail I receive passage money, I will sail on 4 October and will arrive there on the 4^th or 5^th of November, bringing with me some 800 copies. It is fitting then for you there to read these two volumes without much noise in order that they may not be able to prevent the entry of the remainder into Manila.

In the collection of letters printed as the book Rizal Correspondence With Fellow Reformers (National Historical Institute, 1992), there is no other letter previous to this one (page 595) dated September. Nothwithstanding, if I were Rizal, I would have sent the first copy to my friend Blumentritt; I would surmise he did that the day before, on 17 September, which I would further surmise was the day the book came off the press. If you were the author of a second book, a radical book at that, you would want to send a copy to your family and your best friend at once, wouldn’t you? I would.

In search of reason,
in defense of the faith

Image from T.P.O. which he captions 'In search of reason' (flickr.com/). Text from Gregorio F Zaide’s Jose Rizal: Life, Works And Writings (Manila, National Book Store, 2003: 216-217), these lines about Rizal’s own defense of himself:

When Lt Taviel de Andrade took his seat, the court asked Rizal whether he had anything to say. Rizal then read a supplement to his defense which he wrote in his prison cell. In his supplementary defense he further proved his innocence by twelve points:

1. He could not be guilty of rebellion, for he advised Dr Pio Valenzuela in Dapitan not to rise in revolution.

2. He did not correspond with the radical, revolutionary elements.

3. The revolutionists used his name without his knowledge. If he were guilty he could have escaped in Singapore.

4. If he had a hand in the revolution, he could have escaped in a Moro vinta and would not have built a home, a hospital, and bought lands in Dapitan.

5. If he were the chief of the revolution, why was he not consulted by the revolutionists?

6. It was true he wrote the by-laws of the Liga Filipina, but this is only a civic association – not a revolutionary society.

7. The Liga Filipina did not live long, for after the first meeting he was banished to Dapitan and it died out.

8. If the Liga was reorganized nine months later, he did not know about it.

9. The Liga did not serve the purpose of the revolutionists, otherwise they would not have supplanted it with the Katipunan.

10. If it were true that there were some bitter comments in Rizal’s letters, it was because they were written in 1890 when his family was being persecuted, being dispossessed of houses, warehouses, lands, etc and his brother and all brothers-in-law were deported.

11. His life in Dapitan had been exemplary as the politico-military commanders and missionary priests could attest.

12. It was not true that the revolution was inspired by his one speech at the house of Doroteo Ongjunco, as alleged by witnesses whom he would like to confront. His friends knew his opposition to armed rebellion. Why did the Katipunan send an emissary to Dapitan who was unknown to him? Because those who knew him were aware that he would never sanction any violent movement.

I’m sorry to say this, but if I were the military court, I could easily refute all the arguments of Rizal except perhaps one or two.

1. He could have openly advised Valenzuela against the revolution but secretly supported it.

2. That he did not correspond with the radicals did not mean that he did not support them.

3. He could claim that the radicals used his name without his knowledge, but where’s the proof? No proof that he could have escaped in Singapore either.

4. No proof either that he could have escaped in a Moro vinta. The home and hospital he built, the lands he bought in Dapitan do not prove anything – they could only be camouflage of his true intentions.

5. No proof that that he was not consulted by the revolutionists.

6. The Liga Filipina could have been a front.

7. The Liga Filipina died after Rizal was banished to Dapitan. Granted.

8. No proof that he did not know that the Liga was reorganized nine months later.

9. In fact, the Liga served the purpose of the radicals – it was a front.

10. There is no excuse for bad words in oral or written form.

11. That his life in Dapitan had been exemplary could just be to hide his true intentions.

12. Point well-taken. Those who knew him were aware that he would never sanction the taking up of arms – at that time.

2 out of 12 and you’re out!

Actually, the problem was not that Rizal argued poorly (assuming that his lawyer argued well) – but that he argued at all. This was a military court all right, but all the odds were against him. Did Rizal feel that logic would sway those gentlemen to his side? He did. It was his high regard for the intelligence of the human race. Surely, they would do him justice?

That was his big mistake. If I were Rizal, if I knew that my life was at stake any which way, I would not have argued. Instead of appealing to reason, I would have appealed to faith.

This was the best time! Rizal studied his Bible very well; he would have known and should have done a St Paul the size of a king. We go to the book of Acts 25-26, inclusive verses. Paul had been captured and had appealed that he stand trial before the tribunal of Caesar:

I am standing before the tribunal of Caesar and this is where I should be tried. I have done the Jews no wrong, as you very well know. If I am guilty of committing any capital crime, I do not ask to be spared the death penalty. But if there is no substance to the accusations these persons bring against me, no one has a right to surrender me to them. I appeal to Caesar.

On his part, Rizal could have appealed to General Camilo Garcia de Polavieja, who later showed the heart of a dictator: he led an attempted coup in Spain when that country lost the Spanish-American War in 1898 (Wikipedia). It would have been a drowning man clinging on straw, but Rizal had everything to gain and everything to lose. It would have been a wise gamble: A dictator has a soft heart somewhere and Rizal was an eloquent speaker when he chose to be.

On his part Paul did not appeal to King Agrippa’s reason. He knew better. He appealed to his belief in God. He told the king about what happened on his way to Damascus, his own conversion from killer to healer, from barbarian to Christian, and finally asked the king whether he himself believed in Moses and the prophets.

And to all that, King Agrippa replied: ‘A little more, Paul, and you will make a Christian out of me.’

Did King Agrippa say that sarcastically, or did he actually mean what he said? He meant what he said. He pronounced Paul innocent!

For Rizal to appeal to Polavieja was well worth a try. It was worth a life to try. Sadly, he failed to realize that reason would get him nowhere. He was logical and deadly wrong.

To Love And To Hold

How much can you love – and hold?

A diary entry that reveals much of Jose Rizal, lover (from Gregorio F Zaide, Rizal: Life, Works And Writings, Manila, National Book Store, 2003: 119):

Japan has pleased me. The beautiful scenery, the flowers, the trees, and the inhabitants – so peaceful, so courteous, and so pleasant. O-Sei-San, Sayonara, Sayonara! I have spent a lovely golden month; I do not know if I can have another one like that in all my life. Love, money, friendship, appreciation, honors – these have not been wanting.

To think that I am leaving this life for the uncertain, the unknown. There I was offered an easy way to live, beloved and esteemed ...

To you I dedicate the final chapter of these memoirs of my youth. No woman, like you, has ever loved me. No woman, like you, has ever sacrificed for me. Like the flower of the chodji that falls from the strem fresh and whole without falling leaves or without withering – with poetry still despite its fall – thus you fell. Neither have you lost your purity nor have the delicate petals of your innocence faded – Sayonara, Sayonara!

You shall never return to know that I have once more thought of you and that your image lives in my memory; and undoubtedly, I am always thinking of you. Your name lives in the sighs of my lips, your image accompanies and animates all my thoughts. When shall I return to pass another divine afternoon like that in the temple of Meguro? When shall the sweet hours I spent with you return? When shall I find them sweeter, more tranquil, more pleasing? You the color of the camellia, its freshness, its elegance ... Ah! Last descendant of a noble family, faithful to an unfortunate vengeance, you are lovely like ... everything has ended! Sayonara, Sayonara!

How much can you love – and withhold?

You and I have been reading about love in the physical sense – and spiritual sense. Rizal was a man; the letter was written in April 1888; he was 27 at that time – he was capable of love, and marriage. And here was happiness being offered on a silver platter: love, money, friendship, appreciation, honors, he says. Enough temptation for a lesser man. But he was not a lesser man. He did not take advantage of all that; he did not make love to O-Sei-San given that she was willing and able: ‘Neither have you lost your purity nor have the delicate petals of your innocence faded.’ He could love, but he could also withhold. My hero!

The very apt image is from JTravassos who captions it 'When a man loves a woman' (flickr.com/.) You can almost feel the attraction as well as the restraint, the tension and the retention, the two becoming one, emphasis on becoming.

Love offered on a silver platter and the lover withholds? Yes. I believe it. I’m no hero, but I did that myself once or twice. If you set your heart to a higher ideal, you can do it. It strikes me now that Rizal was Roman Catholic when it came to all the women he loved!

Ateneo's favorite son,
an agriculturist?
Image captioned simply 'Agriculture' by MidnightSoleil (flickr.com/), source text by Gregorio F Zaide, Jose Rizal: Life, Works And Writings, National Bookstore 2003: 27). While he was studying at the University of Santo Tomas, Rizal also studied at the Ateneo In those days, Ateneo offered courses in agriculture, commerce, mechanics and surveying. I don't know why Ateneo forgot agriculture but not his favorite son: when he was in Dapitan, he was both a doctor and an agriculturist, among other things. He planned his North Borneo project with people and agriculture in mind. He could not have gotten away from Calamba to Madrid without agriculture - his father was a rich sugarcane farmer. Now I know why those friars in Calamba in those days bungled their hacienda - they were poor agriculturists! (Or poor farm managers, which makes it worst.) Meanwhile, Ateneo excels, but not in agriculture - why not? Rizal had gold medals in agriculture and topography. I would give each a gold medal to MidnightSoleil and Zaide for their works, their humanity in their works. Now then, I challenge Ateneo to offer BS Agriculture and not copy UP, which has too much science and not enough humanity.

Rizal's retraction,
26 July 2006
Image by Mia 2447 (flickr.com/); at the top, she writes 'I wish I were a Catholic for a split second' and at the bottom of the photo she continues, ' so I could go to church here.' In December 1896, 110 years ago, the Philippine national hero Jose Rizal had one last chance to become Roman Catholic again - if he would just prepare and/or sign a retraction letter. Did he or didn't he? I have my own answer now, which I shall give you in a little while but, first, let us examine the retraction letter in its fullness. Here it is, from Gregorio F Zaide's Jose Rizal: Life, Works And Writings (2003: 223):

I declare that I am a Catholic, and in this religion, in which I was born and educated, I wish to live and die.
I retract with all my heart anything in my words, writings, publications and conduct that has been contrary to my character as a child of the Church. I believe and profess what it teaches. I submit to what it demands. I abominate Masonry as an enemy of the Church and as a society prohibited by it.
The Diocesan Prelate, as the superior ecclesiastical authority, may make this manifestation public. I declare this spontaneously, in order to repair any scandal which my acts may have caused and so that God and man may pardon me.
Manila, December 29th, 1896.
Jose Rizal

That is a beautiful piece of writing if you haven't noticed.

Rizal was born a Catholic; he was raised and educated a Catholic; he lived a Catholic until he went to Europe. I have this crazy thought just now: Did Rizal leave abruptly for Europe without saying goodbye except to a few because he wanted out of Roman Catholicism and could not bear to see for himself the hurt in the eyes of his family and friends? I believe it was one big reason for the French leave.

‘I retract with all my heart anything ... that has been contrary to ... the Church.’ One of these things would be his extreme ridicule of Catholic practice – by both priest and parishioner, master and slave, friar and Filipino – in the Philippines from the late 1870s to the late 1880s. And where do you find that ridicule? Right under your nose; even the students know where to look. Read Noli Me Tangere again!

The disrespect was too much. I do not wonder now why the Catholic Church was vehemently against Claro M Recto’s bill that eventually became the Rizal Law. And the Church was right: Having studied the Noli all these years, we have taken for granted that what the Noli paints about Catholicism is all that needs be said about Catholicism: a painting is worth a thousand words; a book is worth a thousand paintings. Why, in 1887 right after the book came out in March, even Rizal’s friends complained that Rizal could have painted the positive side of the natives instead of the negative, which was what everybody else have been painting all along. I would have written Rizal a stinging letter myself!

Oh, I am a Catholic and in this religion in which I was born and educated I wish to live and die. We had religion class in high school; in college, at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños, I heard mass fervently if not frequently. But I did not look at the retraction letter like I’m looking at it now like this: a concise, strong, moving, almost literary piece. The cadence, if I understand cadence, is powerful and just right – I cannot but conclude that it is Rizal’s and nobody else.

Rizal retracted because he believed it was right, finally! For his family, for his friends, for himself. I understand he said to one of the priests who accompanied him on his personal death march: ‘My pride was my downfall.’ And at the very end, what did he shout? ‘Consummatum est!’ It is finished! The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit perfectly.

Pancit: Good food,
bad mathematics
Pancit is one of the favorite foods of the Filipinos. The pancit, made up of long thin noodles, is of Chinese origin (photo by patriciaofoz in flickr). Jose Rizal is also of Chinese origin, his great-great-grandfather being Domingo Lamco, a native of Chinchew, China's City of Springs (Gregorio F Zaide, Jose Rizal: Life, Works And Writings, 2003: 5). And Rizal was fond of pancit. When he was staying in Brussels in 1890, he stayed in a modest boarding house with Jose Albert, later with Jose Alejandrino. Alejandro tells the story of Rizal's pancit (146):

In Brussels, we took our meals in a house and Rizal on one occasion suggested that we eat pancit. We were spending so much a day and so we spent one day's appropriations for the purchase of the necessary ingredients. It seems, however, that he commited an error in his calculations this time for we spent more than what we intended to have. In order to remedy the error we were compelled to have pancit for lunch and supper for two days.

When you make a mistake, you have to pay for it.

Condemned to sunrise
From Barcelona, Rizal writes his family on 23 June 1882, more than a month after he ran away to Europe: At the beginning, the sailing was good. We passed opposite Greece, the Island of Candia; on the 10th, with good weather, we sighted the coast of Italy; the first town we saw was (unreadable) with a very beautiful beach which at the time a train was crossing. Thence the sailing was very pleasant on account of the beauty of the Italian coasts, thickly populated and well cultivated, presenting a picturesque aspect, full of life and poetry. xxx On the same afternoon of the 10t6h we passed through the Strait of Messina with a sea so smooth that we didn't notice a single wave. xxx A city viewed at night with beacons of different colors and electric lights that seemed to wander from one place to another seemed to me a monster with a thousand restless and distrustful eyes. We deferred then for the next day our curiosity. I am condemned to see cities at sunrise which surprise a traveler who sees a pleasant thing suddenly and not gradually.

The photo shown here is from se.inf.ethz.ch/ and simply titled 'Sunrise in Spain.' It is a magnificent view, and so I am surprised that Rizal would prefer not to see a city first at sunrise. He is thinking of studying a city. He is thinking too rationally he allows his logical mind to ignore the beauty of the surprise.

In Sumatra,
where we
all started?
Look at these women smiling and thinking even as they 'express hope' (text by Don Northup, photo by US Navy Tyler J Clements, pbase.com/). They all look like Filipinas, don't they? Their attitude towards disaster is also Filipina-like; this photo was taken after the devastating tsunami last year (2005). Jose Rizal would not have been surprised. It was he who found 'many similarities between the customs of the Sumatrans and the Filipinos' which had led to the scientific theory (not Rizal's) that the Filipinos had come from Sumatra. He believed not that the ancient Filipinos came from Sumatra but that the Sumatrans and the Filipinos, among others, may have come from the same stock, and have developed a little differently for having been 'exposed to many foreign and powerful factors that have influenced their customs as well as their nature.' Rizal's letter to Blumentritt, 17 April 1890. Lovely people.

The power of the pen
Here is a quill pen, like that used by writers in the time of Rizal in the 19th century. 'The pen is mightier than the sword' according to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, playwright, and as a writer I find that I agree with Bulwer-Lytton. Rizal himself was not only a playwright; he was also poet, novelist, essayist in languages (German, Spanish, English) other than his own (Tagalog). Gregorio F Zaide writes (Jose Rizal: Life, Works And Writings, 2003: 111): Hounded by powerful enemies, Rizal was forced to go abroad for a second time in February 1888. He was then a full-grown man of 27 years of age, a practising physician, and a recognized man-of-letters. The first time he went abroad in June 1882, he was a mere lad of 21, a youthful student in search of wisdom in the Old World, a romantic idealist with beautiful dreams of emancipating his people from bondage by the magic power of his pen.

And with that, as a writer I find I agree with Zaide too. Except that the pen oftentimes becomes the writer's master and not his tool, his slave. To me, Rizal's writings did not succeed in freeing his people from the bondage of their tribalism. That is Rizal's Unfinished Revolution.