Rizal - Module II

MODULE 2: The Rizal Law and Philippine Literature
Summary
Rizal was the first attempt to write a national history that would disengage the country
from being treated as a mere appendage to Spain. Though what he produced, lacking the
time, was a shadow-history in the form of a critical annotation of Antonio de Morga’s
Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas still it stands as the first attempt by a Filipino to rehearse a
national history of theWe shall make thorough study of matters like Tagalog art and
Philippine literature when brighter days reign. Then we shall talk of purely native dramatic
presentation which of them are the exotic ones brought by the Spaniards.
The brighter days when he would write a treatise on Filipino aesthetics did not come
for Rizal. Literary discussions were driven by pressing events, enmeshed in a wider polemic
on racism and domination Philippines.
Motivation Question
What is the relationship between literature and society? How does one learn “patriotism”and “nationalism”
from literature?
Lesson 2.1: Jose Rizal and the Invention of a National Literature
In the previous lesson, we were able to learn tons of things about Rizal and now we are going to take what
we learned to another level.
Just a short recap, Jose Protacio Rizal y Realonda widely known as Jose Rizal was a Filipino nationalist and
polymath during the tail end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. An ophthalmologist by
profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propagand Movement which advocated
political reforms for the colony under Spain.
Rizal is not just a common hero, he also dedicated his life in producing quality literary pieces that mirrored
the times during the Spanish colonization. His works were quite frequently charged by religion, history,
philosophy and theory; therefore if you are in those types of disciplines, you may want to undertake a study
of his works in the Philippine literary aspect which made him capture not just the minds and hearts of
Filipinos but by foreigners as well.
Rizal, published in Germany the first Filipino novel, Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not). This literary
masterpiece exposed the Spanish political, economic, and sexual abuses in the Philippines. It and his other
other famous work, El Filubusterismo, are regarded as moving romantic novels and inspirations for
Philippine nationalism.
In 1880, the young Jose Rizal won first prize in a literary contest in Manila with his allegorical essay
entitled El Consejo de los Dioses. It is a young student’s essay, earnest to display of European learning, and
even colonially “patriotic” in the preeminence assigned to a Spanish writer. His essay narrates a council of
the gods in Mt. Olympus to determine who, among Homer, Virgil and Cervantes, is the better writer in terms
of art and virtue. Cervantes is judged as the winner for the premium he places on social reform and the rule
of reason. To attribute to Rizal, this intention is not just a case of hindsight, but a matter of the moment as
well. The year 1880, when Rizal wrote the essay, was also the year the Propaganda Movement was born. A
movement that emerged with the events of 1872 which incorporates the Cavite mutiny and execution of the
priests Jose, Burgos, Mariano Gomez and Jacinto Zamora.
Rizal, as we all know was not untouched by these events. In the 1880s, however, the propaganda movement
was still largely “assimilationist” in its call for colonial reforms, equal rights and local autonomy. Writing in
Spanish, praising a Spanish classic, inserting himself into European discourse, Rizal claimed parity with
GE 109: Readings in Rizal’s Life and Works
Spaniards as heir to a great Western tradition. Even Rizal’s call for social correction was not radically new
since it was already a theme sounded in the costumbarista writings of peninsular and Creole authors in
Manila at the time. While it can be said that, raised by an indio, Rizal’s critique had a different critical edge,
the literary space Rizal and like-minded Filipinos operated in, or sought to claim, was still Spanish-colonial,
pre-national space.
This space was then dominated by Spanish and Creole writers based in Manila. Men like Jose Felipe del
Pan, Francisco de Paula Entrala, and Antonio Vasquez de Aldana, a small, self-conscios intellectual elite
that had the run of the secular press and were assured, by reasons of race, of their right to speak. Their
ambitions were Spanish. They imagined themselves Spain’s emlightened voice in the colony and aspired to
be reconized as such in the metropolis itself. But they also cultivated native disciples who shared their ideas
of modernity but would eventually push these ideas in other political directions.
In 1880, Rizal stood at that point in time when the country’s literary scene was qualitatively changing from
pre-national to one that would, in the course of events, become distinctly national in its ambition. Here I
would like to describe the series of intellectual moves that brought about this change and created the
lineaments of a national literature.
In inventing a national literature, the first move is that of asserting difference, done typically on the basis of
a claim to a distinct culture, history and identity.
To assert difference was to disengage from a dominant discourse that rendered one voiceless and invisible,
carve out autonomous space, and lay claim to one’s own resources for creative production. It claims to a
deep native tradition and a wealth of local linguistic and cultural resources. Asserting difference was a
dominant theme of the Propaganda. It inspired Rizal and colleagues like Pedro Paterno, T.H Pardo de
Tavera, and Isabelo de los Reyes, in embedding the Philippines in a high, and ancient Malay Civilization; in
studying and extolling the virtues of local languages; and in harnessing the popular and the folk as resources
for the creation of an integral culture.
Though schooled in the European manner, Rizal had a studious interest in local cultural productions, as
shown in his references to folklore, the pasyon and komedya and Francisco Balagtas. His familiarity with
vernacular literature was evident in 1887 when he delivered in German a lecture on Tagalog metrical art
before the Ethnographic Society in Berlin.
Rizal was the first attempt to write a national history that would disengage the country from being treated as
a mere appendage to Spain. Though what he produced, lacking the time, was a shadow-history in the form
of a critical annotation of Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas still it stands as the first attempt
by a Filipino to rehearse a national history of the Philippines.
Rizal recognized the importance of local languages as a cultural resource. Even in his last years, he had
plans to study Bisayan, Subanon and Mangyan, publish a Tagalog grammar and produce a universal
dictionary of Philippine languages. He also considered writing a treatise on native aesthetics. In his reply to
Barrantes in 1890, he said:
We shall make thorough study of matters like Tagalog art and Philippine literature when brighter days reign.
Then we shall talk of purely native dramatic presentation which of them are the exotic ones brought by the
Spaniards.
The brighter days when he would write a treatise on Filipino aesthetics did not come for Rizal. Literary
discussions were driven by pressing events, enmeshed in a wider polemic on racism and domination. In this
polemic literature was a site of contestation on the natives’ capacities of reason, imagination and creativity, a
debate that raised important questions on the relationship of the indigenous and foreign and the native’s
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originality and assimilative power. In the highly charged polarities of the time, there was a little space for a
serene disquisition on aesthetic methods and principles and many questions had to wait.
They were claiming for Filipinos, a personality and visibility within the empire, as an autonomous province
or region in an idealized federal republic- like Galicia or Catalonia in the peninsula or, overseas Cuba and
Puerto Rico.
Rizal appreciated that a people’s literature must be grounded in their own history and store of social,
psychological and linguistic resources. Yet, in a second and simultaneous move, he recognized as well that
this literature can only grow through a vital conversation with the rest of the world.
For Rizal and his contemporaries, to internationalize was not an option but a necessity. Colonialism
incorporates native subject sinto a world system and puts them in a position where they have to enage with
an external power. They recognized, moreover, that in the work of nation-creation, they had to begin with
the living reality of a culture already contaminated, and vitalized by the intrusion of foreign elements.
Rizal positioned himself between the inside and the outside. Discussing Tagalog poetry, Rizal took an
insider stance in correcting Spanish misinterpretations, arguing that Tagalog poetry had its own rules of
practice. Responding to Barrantes’ attacks on Tagalog theatre, Rizal said that Barrantes does not know a
single thing about Filipino writing and is ignorant of Asian theater traditions. Yet, Rizal was also driven by
the need to make his country’s literature comprehensible in the world. His orientations and methods were
western and literate when he discussed questions of syllabication, rhyme, meter and stanza in Tagalog
poetry.
Rizal knew that a nation’s literature is not just what it once was but what it has and can become. It must not
only demonstrate that it has a past but a future. Thus Rizal asserted that Tagalog literature is living and
dynamic. In dismissing Barrantes’ claim that Tagalog lack the assimilative spirit, Rizal pointed to the
testimonies of Spaniards themselves about the natives’ gift not just for imitation but creative assimilation.
He was clearheaded about the fact that a nation’s literary capital is built up not just by harnessing the local
but by appropriating the foreign, diverting and absorbing its best elements in creating the nation’s literature.
Hence, the passion with which Rizal and his contemporaries devoured foreign literatures and languages, and
engaged in projects of annotation and translation. Rizal spoke of his desire to translate European classics
into tagalog, and found the time to translate Hans Christian Andersen and Friedrich Schiller.
Finally, Rizal recognized that a country’s literary capital is not just a collection of texts but a living
discourse. Literature, according to Octavio Paz is not so much the sum of individual works as the system
between them. It is a field of affinities and oppositions where through the medium of criticism, works meet
and enter into active dialogue with each other.
Rizal knew that a national literature is not created by a single author but by a strategic discourse community.
In this sense, he spoke frequently of the need to widen literacy and public education. He was interested in
making visible a community of Filipino writers and intellectuals. It was in this context that he repeatedly
urged Filipinos in Europe not only to buy and read books about the Philippines but buy books by Filipinos.
Rizal did not close the circle. He left a lot of unfinished business. Here it is instructive to dwell on the
enigma of his third, unfinished novel now known as Makamisa. It was written in 1891-1892 after the
appearance of El Fili.
What moved Rizal to write a third novel? The first reason, he said was to write a novel in Tagalog
addressing Tagalog readers rather than Europeans.
Of his third novel, he wrote: If I write it in Spanish, then the poor Tagalogs to whom the work is dedicated,
will not get to know it though they may be the ones who needs it most. As it turned out, Rizal began his
third novel in Tagalog but then shifted to Spanish.
Rizal’s language shift is not as simple as it seems. To begin with, even in the Noli and the Fili, Rizal was
addressing in the form of double address, Filipinos as much as Europeans, and subsequently the medium of
translation would enable his novels’ circulation across languages. Yet, he recognized not only that the
political moment called for a more direct form of address to his people, he appreciated that a national
literature cannot exist that does not speak to the people in their own language.
In choosing to write in Tagalog, Rizal could not quite reconcile the difficulties of internal translation of
rendering European thoughts in Tagalog. It is shocking that what survives of Rizal’s last novel is not in
Tagalog or Spanish, but a bilingual hybrid text.
His second motive, Rizal said, was to write a novel in the modern sense of the word—an artistic and literary
novel. Smarting from the criticism, he resolved to write a novel more artistic and literary, distanced from the
polemical imperatives that drove the writing of the Noli and the Fili.
The comments on these novels by Barrantes, Rizal and Antonio Lunaare interesting for the attention paid to
whether the novels succeeded as novels, or novels in the European manner. Thus, Rizal faults Barrantes for
errors of misreading, in confusing the views expressed by characters in the novel with those of the author.
For his part, Luna defended Rizal’s work by situating it in the context of the European manner. Thus, Rizal
faults Barrantes for errors of misreading, in confusing the views expressed by characters in the novel with
those of the author. For his part, Luna defended Rizal’s work by situating it in the context of the European
novel’s evolution from classicism to romanticism to realism. Putting Rizal in the company of Hugo, Balzac,
Flaubert, Zola and Maupassant. Luna praised Rizal’s extraordinary realism in capturing the dynamics of a
society’s development.
As Rizal had turned to writing for Tagalogs in their own language, Rizal meant to write of Tagalog society
in its own terms, integral and autonomous, rather than a reflext of the colonial encounter.
As it turned out, Rizal was stymied not only by the problem of language but the challenge of representing
something that did not quite exist in a form amenable for treatment as a realist novel instead of romance,
pastoral or myth. Thus, Rizal came face to face with the impossibility of writing a novel outside of the
present and outside of history. Writing Makamisa, he did not only struggle with Tagalog but gravitated
towards composing what seems as a reprise of the Noli.
When Rizal abandoned his third novel, he may have thought that it was a novel to be written in another time
and perhaps by writers other than himself. He had a good sense of how literature is intimately implicated in
history. He said as much when he peevishly declared that the Noli cannot be judged, because its effects still
persist. Only when crime, immorality and prejudice disappear, he said, when Spain ends the condition of
strife by means of open-hearted and liberal reforms.
The literature that Rizal and his contemporaries tried to bring about was vigorously promoted in the work of
state-building that began with the establishment of the Malolos Republic and continued under the new
conditions by US colonial rule.
In the early twentieth century, there was a wide interest in the issue of national identity and in creating the
conditions for a national literature to flourish. Hence the surge of literacy and journalistic publishing, the
promotion of local languages and drive for a national language, the proliferation of literary societies, the
dissemination of native culture in the schools, the writing of national literacy histories the codification of
local poetic practices and the canonization of exemplary writers.
Nation-formation is a continuing process, and such a contruct as the national literature must remain unstable
and unsettled, for it is when it is so that it is most open and creative. The issues Rizal faced at the close of
the nineteenth century continue to challenge Filipino writers at the beginning of the twenty first.
The issues Rizal faced at the close of the nineteenth century continue to challenge Filipino writers at the
beginning of the twenty-first. To assert difference; difference not merely for the sake of being different, but
difference that meaningfully revises and renews not only how we see ourselves but how others see us and
themselves. To reconcile “internationalizing” and “nationalizing” positions.
Lesson 2.2:NECESSARY FICTIONS: Philippine Literature and the Nation
Mid 1950s – Jose Rizal became the subject of a political controversy and there had been an issue of
including his life and works in the curricula of public and private schools, colleges, and
universities. So before we actually had to study Rizal's life and works, it had been first a big
issue in their time allowing him to be part of our curricula.
Republic Act No. 1425 (Rizal Bill) – this made literature and nationalism be bound together wherein
literature was used as a way of instilling the idea of nationalism among Filipinos to decolonize or
to free the “culture” of the Philippines.
- the literature includes Rizal’s two novels, the Noli Me Tangere and its sequel, El
Filibusterismo which were described as “a constant and inspiring source of patriotism” of the
minds of the youth.
- this bill made the act of reading literature an act of (re)discovering the nation’s origins in
ideals embodied by the life and works of the nation’s heroes since the content of our heroes’
lives especially that of Rizal and his works embodied the nationalist ideals of virtue,
patriotism, and self-sacrifice.
- the legal handmaiden of a Philippine state that sought to regulate education to do its task of
developing or instilling “moral character, personal discipline, civic conscience and teaching
of the duties of citizenship”
- the bill was the outcome of an apparent paradox. It was a paradox since the sad fact that Rizal
is visible everywhere through its monuments, his face in our one-peso coin, in classrooms,
stamps, etc, his works are largely unread that is why in the Mid 1950s Rizal’s life and works
were included in the curricula.
How do we go about preserving or reshaping our culture?

The answer given by the Rizal Bill was: Literature. Literature served as a means of unifying the
Filipino people despite the linguistic diversity and social heterogeneity. The works in literature at the
same time were means by which other Filipinos could acquire, preserve, and reshape Filipino cultures.
With Rizal’s life and works being in our curricula, in the teaching of literature, Filipino lawmakers had
to confront the danger inherent in reading Rizal. This danger lay in two things: to be read meant being read
unavoidably in different ways; and different ways of reading are ideological, and therefore political. The
first danger which is to unavoidably read in different ways which means that we might generate a lot of
interpretations or we might misinterpret Rizal from what it’s really meant. Then the second danger, different
ways of reading is ideological where we, readers, can create ideas which is political. The debate over Rizal’s
readability actually arose from the Church’s insistence that Rizal’s satirical jabs or criticisms at friar abuses
and other practices and beliefs were the ranting of a heretic or a person who oppose a certain religious
opinions. Then, advocates of the Rizal bill were able to curtail this attack by saying that Rizal’s novels
belonged in the past, and spoke essentially about the past. (Locsin, 1956d, 63) The journalist’s remarks were
just to neutralize the more upsetting strands of thoughts in Rizal’s novels. But Locsin added that the evils
that Rizal denounced exist very much to this day.
Necessary Fictions – argues in favour of a long standing connection between literature and nationalism on
the basis of common ideas and concerns dealing with the possibility and necessity of social change.
There is also a connection between the two through the notion of “excess”.
- “excess” – a term used to refer to the heterogeneous elements – “the people,” “the indigenous,”
“the political,” etc. – that inform, but also exceed, nationalist attempts to grasp the complex realities
at work in Philippine society.
- this book also argues that the importance of Philippine nationalism accorded to literature, and vice
versa, is founded on two assumptions:
1. the capacity of literature to represent history truthfully; and
2. the capacity of literature to intervene in history.
For the first, it is true that literature can history truthfully like for example that of the abuses
that the Spaniards had done when they colonized the Philippines for 333 years. The colonization, the
abuses, and the like can be traced through the writings of Filipinos who exist at that moment. For the
second assumption, it's the capacity of literature to intervene in history. Since everyday life and our
thoughts are contingent, meaning it can happen by chance or they can change. Hence, the chances of
everyday life of what will actually happen, the need for decision-making and political action are still
subject to chance. There are many possibilities that can happen. This excess rather is the basis of
these possibilities of both literature and politics because no writing or political program could let out
the possibilities of the social reality it seeks to engage. The nationalist project is always unfinished
because literature and politics only make and make more writing and action because as excess exists,
writing and action cannot end.
- these excesses are necessary byproducts of different nationalist projects of imagining and making
the community that they want meaning, these excesses are a constitutive feature of nation. They
constitute in making a community and their core principle is social change.
Social transformation was a real and theoretical problem of our country in which "culture" plays a
crucial, enabling role. This culture is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that
characterizes an institution or organization. It provides a way of talking about the problem of effecting social
change, and more important, culture itself is often held to provide a solution to that problem.
What is and what should be the basis of political action that aims at transforming society? How does
culture (and literature) formulate an account of political action and help to actualize it?
There are two things that can be said which the question of social transformation has been
understood in the Philippines. First: this question usually originated in terms of a specific ordering of
the relationship between truth and action. The imperative for social change is often posed as a "problem
of national(ist) consciousness", that is, it suggests that a nation or society can be transformed if it is
informed by the country's "true" history. Second: social change is premised on powerful norms of
freedom, self-determination, and development which surround the term "culture".
In addition to the relationship between truth and action, the anticolonial nationalist literature yokes
together two powerful imperatives - the imperative to truth, and the imperative to action. These two
imperatives informing nationalist literature also relate to the nationalist understanding of history that it is
not just the representation of how to write the country's past but history is also a matter of action, of
making and constructing the country's future.
The link between truth and action helps in understanding the connection between literature and
history. The whole book about necessary fictions would actually attempt to answer the questions: What
is the relationship between real and fictional? the history and literary? historical truth and fictiona
truth? because it focuses on the literary texts.
With regard to the literary texts found on this book, they were actually the texts written by people
whose works are traditionally considered as important in the Philippine literary and educational scene. The
literary chronology of this book begins with Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and ends, almost a century later, with
Posada's Hulagpos which stood as culmination of the literary tradition. Aside from Jose Rizal, there were
also other writers who have solid public reputations:
 Amado Hernandez and Nick Joaquin enjoy official recognition as national artists
 Kerima Polotan, Carlos Bulosan, Edgardo Reyes, and Ricardo Lee who are critically acclaimed
Filipino writers who are often anthologized and taken up in literature classes.
Their works actually have the ability to define Philippine literary tradition and the truthful, realitistic
depiction of Philippine society which are the following:
 Noli Me Tangere (Jose Rizal)
 Mga Ibong Mandaragit (Amando V. Hernandez)
 A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino (Nick Joaquin)
 Huwag! Huwag Mong Kukuwentuhan ang Batang si Wei-fung! (Ricardo Lee)
 Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Edgardo Reyes)
 The Hand of the Enemy (Kerima Polotan)
 The Cry and the Dedication (Carlos Bulosan)
 Hulagpos (Mano de Verdades Posadas)
Chapter 1 of this book looks at the mechanisms regulating a concept of literature that links the 'nationalist'
literary texts truth-telling capacity wherein literature is employed in the public and private education like
what we are having now as our subject for the formation of a "Filipino", a patriot who can help in
transforming the society.
Chapter 2 focuses on Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and how scholars of the generations have used Rizal's novels
to describe the Filipino community.
Chapter 3 subjects nationalist theorizing of the "foreign" provenance or origin of Filipino culture through
close reading of Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and Joaquin's A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino. These foreign
provenance are actually the foreign influences to the Filipino culture like our language.
Chapter 4 provides one such case study about the "alien Chinese" which focuses on the conflictive and
ambiguous relationship between citizenship and class, between formal political equality and actual
economic inequality, and the nationalist attempt to fix the Chinese's problematic relationship to the
Philippine state.
Chapter 5 organizes the relationship between the individual and the society through the reading of Kerima
Polotan's The Hand of the Enemy. It also examines the boundaries that separate the author from her text, and
the writer from the society in which she lives.
Chapter 6 uses Carlos Bulosan's unfinished novel The Cry and the Dedication which provides a rich
suggestion for the need of a program for social change.
Chapter 7 concentrates on the novel Hulagpos which is Marxist-inspired which attend to the specific
classes of people especially the upper and lower class.
So in this book, literature can teach us readers about the Filipino society even as it is also a social
artifact or an object made by the people in the past which is also shaped by the society it seeks to represent.
Let us end this report with Raymond William’s words: "We need a more than ordinary awareness of the
presence of active and general life which is misrepresented entirely by description as 'background'. There are
no backgrounds in society; there are only relations of acts and forces."
Lesson 2.3: Hard to Imagine
In the late 1950s, the domestic controllers of the Philippine state began preparations for an elaborate for an
elaborate centennial celebration of the birth of Dr. Jose Rizal on June 19, 1861. Rizal was not just a greatest
national martyr but he was also a highly gifted poet, historian, scientist, journalist, linguist, satirist, political
activist, and above all, novelist. It had long been agreed that his two novels, Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo are the masterpieces of Philippine literature, and had an imoortant role in the "awakening" of
Filipino nationalism. These works were actually in Spanish but unluckily, the American had wiped out the
local use of Soanish except in a few rich families. Then, there was the spread of public education under
Washington's auspices, American had become more widely understood than any of the Philippine
vernaculars and it resulted to Rizal's two novels being inaccessible in their original form. It became the
climax of the centennial celebrations, a prize competition for the best new translation.
Among those stimulated by the competition to undertake a new translation was Leon Ma. Guerrero (1915-
82), at that time the Philippine Ambassador to the Court of St. James. His fluent translations were very
successful, and quickly took olace all older versions in high school and university libraries. As Doreen
Fernandez noted, they have become "the only translation anybody reads now," so it is safe to say that
Filipinos who have actually read the novels in American have already read them in Guerrero's version.
In trying to understand Guerrero's Noli, it is essential to bear in mind the strange features of his Introduction.
He began by describing his translation as an "attempt" to make the novel "palatable to a new generation of
English-speaking Filipinos, and give it, beyond them, a wider audience among other English-speaking
peoples on the centenary of Rizal's birth." Because it wss stated that Rizal's style is often unlikely to appeal
to the modern era; Spanish, moreover, is a language that can afford to be more florid and sentimental than
modern English, so Guerrero allowed himself to paraphrase certain passages. But with what Guerrero did
with Noli, the necessary nationalist means for keeping Rizal alive for Filipino youth, and preserving his
Filipino glory from Anglo-saxon mirth seems to have no connection to the stated purposes.
Here are the seven rubrics of Guerrero's translation strategy and we'll find out which of these is quite
consistently employed over the hundred pages of Noli:
DEMODERNIZATION
It is a characteristic of Rizal's style that although the story of Noli is set in the recent pasg, and thus the
dominant tense is the past, there are frequent rapid modulations into the present. Yet, they were turned by
Guerrero into the past.
For example:
Rizal's text "Cual una sacudida electrica corrio la noticia en el mundo de los parasitos, moscas o colados
que Dios crio en su infinita bondaf, y tan cariñosamentr multiplica en Manila"
English: "Like an electric shock the news [of Don Santiago de los Santos' party] ran through the world of
parasites, spongers and gatecrashers whom God created in his infinite goodness, and so affectionately
multiplies in Manila."
Guerrero: "whom God, in his infinite wisdom, had created and so fondly multiplied in Manila."
In every instance, the effect of Guerrero's alterations is not all to "update" Rizal's novel, but rather to push it
into an antique past.
EXCLUSION OF THE READER
This technique sets time aside and sucks the reader deep into the narrative, engaging her emotions, teasing
her curiosity, and pleasures.
For example (a scene where Father Damaso pushes Don Santiago into the latter study of
confabulation):
Rizal's text: "Cpt. Tiago se puso inquieto perdio el uso de la palabra, pero obedecio detras delcolosal..."
English: "Capitan Tiago became uneasy, and lost his tongue, but obeyed and followed after the colossal
priest, who locked the door behind him."
Guerrero: Capitan Tiago became uneasy he was unable to reply, and obediently followed the burly priest
who closed the door behind them. Meantime, in another part of the city the scholarly Dominican, Father
Sibyla, had left his parish house.
At a stroke Rizal's wittily insinuating or confident voice is muffled or decreased its voice because a silent
wall is set up between author and reader in this aspect of exclusion of the reader, and once again, everything
urgent and contemporary in the text is dusted away into History by Guerrero.
EXCISION OF TAGALOG
The term excision refers to the the act or procedure of removing something. In Rizal's Spanish text, it is
bejewelled with Tagalog words and expressions, or there were a mixed Tagalog words and expressions into
it for comic effect, sometimes to deepen the reader's sense of the conflicts between Spaniards, creoles,
mestizos, and indios. But most often the usage of the Tagalog expressions simply reflect the casual
penetration of the imperial vernacular by local languages.
For example, the brutal pensinsular Franciscan, Father Damaso, may say:
Rizal's text: "Cualcier bata de la escuela lo sabe!"
Bata is the tagalog word for a child of either sex, but here clearly means "boy."
Guerrero: "Any schoolboy knows as much!"
His translation was as if Rizal had used muchacho rather than bata. In other places, Tagalog words such as
salakot (a type of local straw hat), timsim (a type of kerosene lamp), paragos (a Tagalog sled), or sinigang (a
kind of local food), far from being in their original form wherein they would be like easier to understand or
are more familiar to young Filipino readers were rendered or translated as if they were from the Spanish.
They were translated as "native straw hat," "crude lamp," "native sled," and "native dish." Similarly with the
Tagalog exclamations naku!, aba!, and susmariosep!
This translation stance is especially strange that one can hardly imagine even the most Amerjcanized
Filipinos in 1960s speaking to each other of "native hats" and "native dishes." Even then, Filipinos were
already quite familiar with "Taglish" and really, the elimination of these terms and expressions in the
translation serves to distance rather than familiarize the national hero.
BOWDLERIZATION
This term refers to the act of changing (a book, play, movie, etc.) by removing parts, and Guerrero
bowdlerized many passages which made him uncomfortable.
A nice example is a passage where Rizal discusses the superstitious veneration of Capitan Tiago for certain
religious images: anonymously collectively as "the most renowned performers in Manila." These performers
may not be as familiar to the young Filipinos but rather than removing it, Guerrero should have been
accentuated them to the readers. Like young Filipinos in 1950s would certainly not know "who" Yeyeng
was, they would still be able to recognize her name as tagalog and thus see her as a Filipina. One would
have thought that keeping Rizal's names would have better served to bring 1880s readers closer to modern
readers rather than estranging them from it.
DE-EUROPENIZATION
Rizal was an unusually cultivated man. He knew Spanish, English, French, German, as well as Italian and
Hebrew. He also read widely in European literature. It is nor surprising therefore to find in the Noli some
tags, quotations, or references from famous European masters but Guerrero's aporoach to all these references
was to eliminate or naturalize them.
For example:
Rizal's text: "Temo que no estemos empezando a bajar: Quos vult pedere Jupiter dementat prius"
English: "I fear lest we may be beginning to decline. Whom Jupiter wishes to destroy he first makes mad."
Guerrero: "Whom God would destroy, He first makes mad"
Rizal does not translate the Latin because he assumed that his readers would understand his tag in which he
was having fun, but the result of the translation is the erasure of Rizal's civilized laughter.
There is a curious irony in all this, since Guerrero prided himself on his anti-American nationalism. For the
effect of his de-Europeanized translation is not to Filipinize Rizal, but rather to Americanize him.
ANACHRONISM
POSTSCRIPT
In the interview with Doreen Fernandez cited earlier, Guerrero mentioned with special pride his success in
rendering the celebrated scene where Doña Consolacion and her husband argue over how to pronounce
"Filipinas"
The Spanish original reads as follows:

-Una de las bellas cualidades de esta señora era el procurar ignorar el tagalo, ó al menos aparentar no
saberlo, hablándolo lo peor posible: así se daría aires de una verdadera orofea, como ellos solía decir. Y
hacia bien! porque si matrizaba el tagalo, el castellano no salia mejor librado ni en cuanto se refería á la
gramática, ni á la pronunciacíon. Y sim embargo su marido, las sillas y los zapatos, cada cual había puesto
de su parte cuanto podía para enseñarla! Una de las palabras que costaron más trabajo aun que à
Champollion los geroglificos, era la palabra Flipinas.
Cuéntase que al día siguente de su boda, hablando con su marido, que entonces era cabo, habia dicho
Pilipinas ; el cabo creryó deber suyo corregirla y le dijo dándole un coscorron: "Di Felipinas mujer! no seas
bruta. No sabes que se llama así á tu p-pais por venir de Felipe?" La mujerque soñaba en su luna de miel,
quiso obedecer y dijo Felepinas. Al cabo lr parecío que ta sa acercaba, aumentó los coscorrones y la
increpó . . . "Pero, mujer, no puedes pronunciar: Felipe? No lo olvides, sabe que el Rey Don Felipe . . .
quinto . . . Dí Felipe, y añadele nas que en latin significa islas de indios, y tienes el nombre de tu rep--pais!"
La Consolación, lavandera entonces, palpándose el chichon ó los chichones, repetio empezando á perder la
paciencia. "Fe . . . lipe, Felipe . . . nas, Felipenas, asi ba?"
El cabo se quedó viendo visiones. Por qué resultó Felipenas en vez de Felipinas? Una de dos: ó se dice
Felipenas ó hay de decir Felipi? Aquel día tuvo por prudente callarse; dejó á su mujet y fue á consultar
cuidadosamente los impresos. Aqui su admiración llegó all colmo; restrégose los ojos: A ver . . . despacio!
-Filipinas decían todos los impresos bien deletreados: ni él ni su mujer tenian razon.
"Como?" murmuraba, "puede mentir la Historia? No dice este libro que Alonso Saavedra había dado
este nombre al país em obsequio al infante D. Felipe? Cómo se corrompio este nombre? Si será un indio el
tal Alonso Saavedra . . .?"
A literal translation might be:
One of the charming qualities of this lady was attempting not to know Tagalog, or at least pretending not to
know it, speaking it as badly as possible: thus she could give herself the aird of a true orofea [European], as
she was wont to say. Just as well! For if she tortured Tagalog, Castilian fared no better either in grammar or
pronunciation. And yet her husband, chairs, and boots had each done their best to teach her! One word
which cost her more trouble than hieroglyphics had cost Champollion, was the word Filipinas. The story
goes that on the day after her wedding, while talking with her husband who was then a corporal, she had said
Pilipinas. The corporal, believing it his duty to correct her, gave het a cuff and said: "Say Felipenas,
woman!" Don't be an idiot. Don't you know that's what they call your country, from Felipe?" The woman,
then in her honeymoon dreams, wanted to obey and so said Felepinas. The corporal felt she was getting
closer, so he stepped up his cuffing and scolded her thus: "But woman, can't you pronounce Felipe? Don't
forget it, you know that King, Don Felipe the . . . Fifth . . . Say Felipe, then add on nas, which is Latin for
'islands of indios,' and then you'll have the name of your country!"
La Consolación, in those days a washerwoman, gingerly felt her bruise or bruises, and repeated the word,
trying not to lose her patience. "Fe . . . lipe, Felipe . . . nas, Felipenas, that it ba?" The corporal found
himself seeing visions. How could it turn out to be Felipenas instead of Felipinas? One of the two: either it
was Felipenas or one had to say Felipi?
The day he found it prudent to keep quiet. Leaving his wife, he went off to consult, very anxiously, the
books. Here his astonishment reached its peak; he rubbed hid eyes. Let's see slowly now. All the well-
printed books said Filipinas: so neither he nor his wife was right.
"How's this?" he murmured. "Can history lie? Doesn't this book say that Alonso Saavedra gave the country
this name in honour of Prince D. Felipe? How did the name get corrupted? Could it be that this Alonso
Saavedra was an indio?"
Guerrero's version:
Indeed, one of this lady's lovable qualities was to try to unlearn her Tagalog, or at least to pretend she did
not understand it, speaking it as badly as possible, thus giving herself the air of a true "Yorofean," as she put
it. It was just as well; if her Tagalog was deliberately tortured, her Spanish was no better, either
grammatically or in pronunciation, for all that her husband, with the aid of his boots and a handy chair or
two, had done his best to teach her. One of the words she had trouble with, even more than hieroglypgics
had given the most eminent Egyptologists, was Philippines.
It is said that the day after her wedding, conversing with her husband, who was then a corporal, she had
pronounced it: Pehleefens. The corporal thought it is his duty to correct her and admonished her with a cuff:
"Say Feeleepines, girl! Don't be so stupid. Don't you even know your goddamn country is named after King
Philip?" His wife, who was still wrapped in honeymoon dreams, did her best to obey and made it:
Feeleefens.
The corporal thought she was getting closer, gave her few more cuffs, and upbraided her: "Can't you even
say Philip, woman? Don't forget King Philip the . . . Fifth . . . Anyway, say Philip, add pines, which in Latin
means nigger islands, and you have the name of your goddamn country!"
Doña Consolacion, who was then a laundress, gingerly felt with her fingers the effects of her husband's
cuffings, and repeated, almost at the end of her patience: "Peeleep--Peeleep . . . pines --- Peeleepines, is that
it?"
"Not Peeleep, with a p!" roared the corporal. "Feeleep, with an f!"
"Why? How do you spell Peeleep? With a p or an f?"
The corporal thought it the better part of wisdom to change the subject that day, and meantime to consult a
dictionary. Here his wonder reached its highest pitch. He rubbed his eyes. Let's see. . . slowly now. . . but
there was no doubt about it.
P-h-i-l-i-p-p-i-n-e-s; he and his were both wrong: it was neither p nor f, but ph.
How now, he muttered to himself. Could the dictionary be wrong? Or was this dictionary was written by
some stupid native?
Rizal's laughter in this passage is aimed at brutishness, ignorance, and stupidity of La Consolacion's
peninsular husband. All of the fun is erased in Guerrero's version. Another target was Guerrero's version
targetting to distinguish p from f which was in fact the real minor target was the usage of the Spanish
language from Las Filipinas that it was derived from Felipe and such. But in Guerrero's version, it was
already on the difficulties of Filipino trying to distinguish p from f.
What is the most instructive of all, however is Guerrero's omission of the final paragraph. There in this way,
no lying History. Quite deliberately, Alonso/Alvaro de Saavedra, who gave the Philippines the name it still
bears 450 years later as well as the Spanish ruler thereby honoured (Prince D. Felipe, later to become
Braudel's Habsburg antihero Felipe II) have been, as we say these days, "disappeared." Hernan Cortes?
Learning Tasks/Activities
THOUGHT PAPER 1 discuss the question and then write a paper on the topic: “Given the characteristics of
literature and the hazards of translation, is Republic Act 1425 realistic? Why or why not?” Answer this
question from your perspective as student.. The paper must not be less than 1,000 words and not be more
than 1,500 words.
Criteria for grading rubrics:
Clarity in the discussion of the characteristics of literature and (20%);
Application of these characteristics to a discussion of merits of the Rizal Law (20%);
Clarity in the discussion of the hazards of translation (15%);
Application of these hazards to a discussion of the merits of the Rizal Law (15%);
Strength of the overall argument or thesis (20%);
Quality of writing and composition (10%)
Assessment
1. What is the relationship between literature and society?

2. How does one learn “patriotism “and “nationalism” from literature?
References
Hau, Caroline S. 2000. Introduction. In Necessary fictions: Philippine literature and the nation, 1946–1980,
1–14. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. PS9991 H38
Mojares, Resil. 2013. Jose Rizal and the invention of a national literature. In Isabelo’s archive, 213–21.
Mandaluyong City: Anvil.
Anderson, Benedict. 2004. Hard to imagine. In Spectre of comparisons: Nationalism,
Southeast Asia, and the world, 235–47 only. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila
University Press. DS525.7 A53 2004

Rizal - Module II

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MODULE 2: The Rizal Law and Philippine Literature

Lesson 2.1: Jose Rizal and the Invention of a National Literature

Lesson 2.2:NECESSARY FICTIONS: Philippine Literature and the Nation

How do we go about preserving or reshaping our culture?

Lesson 2.3: Hard to Imagine

The Spanish original reads as follows:

1. What is the relationship between literature and society?

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