JEFFREY JABSON
BSCS Life and Works of Rizal
M-Th, 10:30 – 12:00 nn
Instructor: Mr. Ablang
MY RETREAT
Beside a spacious beach of fine and delicate sand
and at the foot of a mountain greener than a leaf,
I planted my humble hut beneath a pleasant orchard,
seeking in the still serenity of the woods
repose to my intellect and silence to my grief.
Its roof is fragile nipa; its floor is brittle bamboo;
its beams and posts are rough as rough-hewn wood can be;
of no worth, it is certain, is my rustic cabin;
but on the lap of the eternal mount it slumbers
and night and day is lulled by the crooning of the sea.
The overflowing brook, that from the shadowy jungle
descends between huge boulders, washes it with its spray,
donating a current of water through makeshift bamboo pipes
that in the silent night is melody and music
and crystalline nectar in the noon heat of the day.
If the sky is serene, meekly flows the spring,
strumming on its invisible zither unceasingly;
but come the time of the rains, and an impetuous torrent
spills over rocks and chasms—hoarse, foaming and a boil—
to hurl itself with a frenzied roaring toward the sea.
The barking of the dog, the twittering of the birds,
the hoarse voice of the kalaw are all that I hear;
there is no boastful man, no nuisance of a neighbor
to impose himself on my mind or to disturb my passage;
only the forests and the sea do I have near.
The sea, the sea is everything! Its sovereign mass
brings to me atoms of a myriad faraway lands;
its bright smile animates me in the limpid mornings;
and when at the end of day my faith has proven futile,
my heart echoes the sound of its sorrow on the sands.
At night it is a mystery! … Its diaphanous element
is carpeted with thousands and thousands of lights that climb;
the wandering breeze is cool, the firmament is brilliant,
the waves narrate with many a sigh to the mild wind
histories that were lost in the dark night of time.
‘Tis said they tell of the first morning on the earth,
of the first kiss with which the sun inflamed her breast,
when multitudes of beings materialized from nothing
to populate the abyss and the overhanging summits
and all the places where that quickening kiss was pressed.
But when the winds rage in the darkness of the night
and the unquiet waves commence their agony,
across the air move cries that terrify the spirit,
a chorus of voices praying, a lamentation that seems
to come from those who, long ago, drowned in the sea.
Then do the mountain ranges on high reverberate;
the trees stir far and wide, by a fit of trembling seized;
the cattle moan; the dark depths of the forest resound;
their spirits say that they are on their way to the plain,
summoned by the dead to a mortuary feast.
The wild night hisses, hisses, confused and terrifying;
one sees the sea afire with flames of green and blue;
but calm is re-established with the approach of dawning
and forthwith an intrepid little fishing vessel
begins to navigate the weary waves anew.
So pass the days of my life in my obscure retreat;
cast out of the world where once I dwelt: such is my rare
good fortune; and Providence be praised for my condition:
a disregarded pebble that craves nothing but moss
to hide from all the treasure that in myself I bear.
I live with the remembrance of those that I have loved
and hear their names still spoken, who haunt my memory;
some already are dead, others have long forgotten—
but what does it matter? I live remembering the past
and no one can ever take the past away from me.
It is my faithful friend that never turns against me,
that cheers my spirit when my spirit’s a lonesome wraith,
that in my sleepless nights keeps watch with me and prays
with me, and shares with me my exile and my cabin,
and, when all doubt, alone infuses me with faith.
Faith do I have, and I believe the day will shine
when the Idea shall defeat brute force as well;
and after the struggle and the lingering agony
a voice more eloquent and happier than my own
will then know how to utter victory’s canticle.
I see the heavens shining, as flawless and refulgent
as in the days that saw my first illusions start;
I feel the same breeze kissing my autumnal brow,
the same that once enkindled my fervent enthusiasm
and turned the blood ebullient within my youthful heart.
Across the fields and rivers of my native town
perhaps has traveled the breeze that now I breathe by chance;
perhaps it will give back to me what once I gave it:
the sighs and kisses of a person idolized
and the sweet secrets of a virginal romance.
On seeing the same moon, as silvery as before,
I feel within me the ancient melancholy revive;
a thousand memories of love and vows awaken:
a patio, an azotea, a beach, a leafy bower;
silences and sighs, and blushes of delight …
A butterfly athirst for radiances and colors,
dreaming of other skies and of a larger strife,
I left, scarcely a youth, my land and my affections,
and vagrant everywhere, with no qualms, with no terrors,
squandered in foreign lands the April of my life.
And afterwards, when I desired, a weary swallow,
to go back to the nest of those for whom I care,
suddenly fiercely roared a violent hurricane
and I found my wings broken, my dwelling place demolished,
faith now sold to others, and ruins everywhere.
Hurled upon a rock of the country I adore;
the future ruined; no home, no health to bring me cheer;
you come to me anew, dreams of rose and gold,
of my entire existence the solitary treasure,
convictions of a youth that was healthy and sincere.
No more are you, like once, full of fire and life,
offering a thousand crowns to immortality;
somewhat serious I find you; and yet your face beloved,
if now no longer as merry, if now no longer as vivid,
now bear the superscription of fidelity.
You offer me, O illusions, the cup of consolation;
you come to reawaken the years of youthful mirth;
hurricane, I thank you; winds of heaven, I thank you
that in good hour suspended by uncertain flight
to bring me down to the bosom of my native earth.
Beside a spacious beach of fine and delicate sand
and at the foot of a mountain greener than a leaf,
I found in my land a refuge under a pleasant orchard,
and in its shadowy forests, serene tranquility,
repose to my intellect and silence to my grief.
From the age of 9 until the day he died at 35, Rizal had always, almost always, been a poet. He was a novelist only from age 26 with his first novel, Noli Me Tangere. He was a journalist, pamphleteer, and his many other personas only for a few years of his brief stint on earth. He was a poet fluent in at least two languages: Tagalog and Spanish. His first poem was in Tagalog (Sa Aking Mga Kababayan). His last poem was in Spanish (Ultimo Adios). In between he was a novelist (two novels) in Spanish. As he roamed the world, he had in his pocket the masterpiece work of the Tagalog bard, Franciso Balagtas Baltazar. On the eve of his execution on Dec. 30, 1896, he wrote a long poem—unsigned, untitled, undated—on which people have tacked a redundant title, Ultimo Adios. Mystery has always surrounded the time, place and circumstances of the poem’s creation or composition: how the poet wrote the poem in his cell unobserved; how it was smuggled out of his cell by one of his sisters; how it reached his family, friends and followers; how it was published (in Spanish and in translations) all over the world from 1897 to today. On his last day or hour on earth he wrote down 70 lines, in 14 stanzas, and never made a correction. He was, first and foremost, a Poet. Rizal’s role as a martyr (which began only after the morning of his execution), as "National Hero" (which was tacked on him by the Americans, like a sash in a beauty contest in our time) began in the first decade(s) of the 20th century that he never lived to see. Among his personas, he was a poet the longest time, from ca. 1870 to 1896. The millions of Filipino people, in the last part of the 19th century, never got to know neither the poet nor his poem(s). Nor did the Filipino people in the next (20th) century. His role as national hero, martyr, novelist, scientist, polyglot, painter, sculptor, ophthalmologist, and a hundred other personas or roles have always gotten in the way. His two novels were seen and read as propaganda, agitprop, proletarian literature, and today, probably as "new journalism" before there was such a name. His valedictory poem was seen as an extended farewell note to his family. What got in the way was that the Filipino people never really adopted the Spanish language like the other colonies under Spain. English was proclaimed an "official national language" with Spanish and Tagalog, and became the lingua franca of the Filipinos in the 20th century but again was never adopted as a national language (except by legislation). The Filipino people in the 20th century (except for the last generation of Spanish-speaking elders) read him and his novels in translation, by force of law that made the reading an academic requirement, as was the reading and possession of them in the last century a crime forbidden by law. The 20th century Filipino reads him largely in translation. The valedictory poem, as well as his other poems, his other literary works (2 novels), have been read in a wide variety of translations by a wide range of translators (teachers, textbook writers, educators, language teachers, poetasters, and rarely by poets). The novels as translated by Leon Ma. Guerrero were not the novels translated by Soledad Locsin in the 90s and different from translations by the American Charles Derbyshire in the early 30s, and translations into languages other than English and Tagalog. Some translations were made by non-Spanish writers who worked on a translation from Spanish or a translation of another translation. It is now the 21st century and the 3rd millennium. The Filipino Americans in the US (the 3rd or 5th generation) have slowly grown aware of their historical, cultural, literary roots in the last decades because of the demand from mainstream America for a multicultural, bilingual, multilingual literature that embraces the cultural luggage that the immigrants in 200 years have brought down the planks of the Mayflower, through customs at Ellis Island, down the wheeled-in stairs from the sleek, futuristic British Concorde. Lately, the Filipino Americans in New York and in other parts of the US discovered—or rediscovered, since he was never covered or lost—the poet Jose Garcia Villa as poet and immigrant (although retaining Filipino citizenship) and New Yorker, Greenwich Villager, as their own. Soon, with the death of V.C. Igarta, they will re-discover the painter who came during the Depression as a young man and made himself into a painter who became the only Filipino to have hung a painting ("Northern Philippines") in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. As they earlier re-discovered Carlos Bulosan. The time has come to re-discover Jose Rizal and see him as a poet and novelist apart from his role as martyr and national hero. The time has really, finally come.