Philippine Literature in the Post-War and Contemporary Period by Francis C. Macansantos and Priscilla S. Macansantos
Published in 1946, Ginto Sa Makiling - a novel by Macario Pineda, is the first work of note that appeared after the second world war. In plot, it hews close to the mode of romantic fantasy traceable to the awits, koridos and komedyas of the Balagtas tradition. But it is a symbolical narrative of social, moral and political import. In this, it resembles not only Balagtas but also Rizal, but in style and plot it is closer to Balagtas in not allowing the realistic mode to restrict the element of fantasy.
Two novels by writers in English dealt with the war experience: (Medina, p. 194) Stevan Javellana’s Without
Seeing the Dawn (1947), and Edilberto Tiempo’s Watch in the Night. Both novels hew closely to the realist tradition. Lazaro Francisco, the eminent Tagalog novelist of the pre-war years, was to continue to produce significant work. He revised his Bayaning Nagpatiwakal (1932), refashioning its plot and in sum honing his work as a weapon against the policies that tended to perpetuate American economic dominance over the Philippines. The updated novel was titled Ilaw Sa Hilaga (1948) (Lumbera, p. 67). He was to produce three more novels. Sugat Sa Alaala (1950) reflects the horrors of the war experience as well as the human capacity for nobility, endurance and love under the most extreme circumstances. Maganda Pa Ang Daigdig (1956) deals with the agrarian issue, and Daluyong (1962) deals with the corruption bred by the American-style and American-educated pseudo-reformers. Lazaro Francisco is a realist with social and moral ideals. The Rizal influence on his work is profound.
The poet Amado Hernandez, who was also union leader and social activist, also wrote novels advocating social change. Luha ng Buwaya (1963) (Lumbera) deals with the struggle between the oppressed peasantry and the class of politically powerful landlords. Mga Ibong Mandaragit (1969) deals with the domination of Filipinos by American industry (Lumbera, p. 69).
Unfortunately, the Rizalian path taken by Lazaro Francisco and Amado Hernandez with its social-realist world-view had the effect of alienating them from the mode of the highly magical oral-epic tradition. Imported social realism (and, in the case of Amado Hernandez, a brand of socialist empiricism), was not entirely in touch with the folk sentiment and folk belief, which is why the Tagalog romances (e.g., Ginto Sa Makiling, serialized in the comics), were far more popular than their work.
It was Philippine Literature in English which tapped the folk element in the Philippine unconscious to impressive, spectacular effect. Nick Joaquin, through his neo-romantic, poetic and histrionic style, is reminiscent of the dramas of Balagtas and de la Cruz. His dizzying flashbacks (from an idealized romantic Spanish past to a squalid Americanized materialistic present) are cinematic in effect, ironically quite Hollywood-ish, serving always to beguile and astonish. Francisco Arcellana, his younger contemporary, was a master of minimalist fiction that is as native as anything that could be written in English, possessing the potent luminosity of a sorcerer’s rune.
Wilfrido Nolledo, fictionist-playwright growing up in the aura of such masters, was the disciple who, without conscious effort, created a school of his own. His experiments in plot and plotlessness, his creation of magical scenes, made splendorous by a highly expressive language, easily became the rage among young writers who quickly joined (each in his/her own highly original style) the Nolledo trend. Among these poetic fictionists of the 1960’s were Wilfredo Pasqua Sanchez, Erwin Castillo, Cesar Ruiz Aquino, Resil Mojares, Leopoldo Cacnio and Ninotchka Rosca. Of them all, only the last two did not publish verse. Their non-realistic (even anti-realistic) style made them perhaps the most original group of writers to emerge in the post-war period. But such a movement that slavishly used the American colonists’ language (according to the Nationalist, Socialist Tagalog writers who were following A.V. Hernandez) were called decadent (in the manner of Lukacsian social realism).
Post-war poetry and fiction was dominated by the writers in English educated and trained in writers’ workshops in the United States or England. Among these were the novelists Edilberto and Edith Tiempo (who is also a poet), short-fictionist Francisco Arcellana, poet-critic Ricaredo Demetillo, poet-fictionist Amador Daguio, poet Carlos Angeles, fictionists N.V.M. Gonzales and Bienvenido N. Santos. Most of these writers returned to the Philippines to teach. With their credentials and solid reputations, they influenced the form and direction of the next generation mainly in accordance with the dominant tenets of the formalist New Critics of America and England.
Even literature in the Tagalog-based national language (now known as Filipino) could not avoid being influenced or even (in the critical sense) assimilated. College-bred writers in Filipino like Rogelio Sikat and Edgardo Reyes saw the need to hone their artistry according to the dominant school of literature in America of that period, despite the fact that the neo-Aristotelian formalist school went against the grain of their socialist orientation. Poet-critic Virgilio Almario (1944- ), a.k.a. Rio Alma, in a break-away move reminiscent of Alejandro Abadilla, and in the formalist (New Critical) mode then fashionable, bravely opined that Florante at Laura, Balagtas’ acknowledged masterpiece, was an artistic failure (Reyes, p. 71-72). It was only in the early 1980’s (Reyes, p. 73) that Almario (after exposure to the anti-ethnocentrism of structuralism and Deconstruction) revised his views.
The protest tradition of Rizal, Bonifacio and Amado Hernandez found expression in the works of Tagalog poets from the late 1960’s to the 1980’s, as they confronted Martial Law and repression. Among these liberationist writers were Jose Lacaba, Epifanio San Juan, Rogelio Mangahas, Lamberto Antonio, Lilia Quindoza, and later, Jesus Manuel Santiago. The group Galian sa Arte at Tula nurtured mainly Manila writers and writing (both in their craft and social vision) during some of the darkest periods of Martial Law.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes on the printed page, oral literature flourished in the outlying communities. Forms of oral poetry like the Cebuano Balak, the Ilokano Bukanegan, the Tagalog Balagtasan, and the Samal Tinis-Tinis, continued to be declaimed by the rural-based bards, albeit to dwindling audiences. In the late 1960’s, Ricaredo Demetillo had, using English (and English metrics) pioneered a linkage with the oral tradition. The result was the award-winning Barter in Panay, an epic based on the Ilonggo epic Maragtas. Inspired by the example, other younger poets wrote epics or long poems, and they were duly acclaimed by the major award-giving bodies. Among these poets were writers in English like Cirilo Bautista (The Archipelago, 1968), Artemio Tadena (Northward into Noon, 1970) and Domingo de Guzman (Moses, 1977).
However, except for Demetillo’s modern epic, these attempts fall short of establishing a linkage with the basic folk tradition. Indeed, most are more like long meditative poems, like Eliot’s or Neruda’s long pieces. Interest in the epic waned as the 1980’s approached. The 1980’s became a decade of personalistic free verse characteristic of American confessional poetry. The epic "big picture" disappeared from the scene, to be replaced by a new breed of writers nourished by global literary sources, and critical sources in the developed world. The literary sources were third world (often nativistic) poetry such as that of Neruda, Vallejo and Octavio Paz. In fiction, the magic-realism of Borges, Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie, among others, influenced the fiction of Cesar Aquino, Alfred Yuson, and poet-fictionist Mario Gamalinda.
On the other hand, the poets trained in American workshops continue to write in the lyrical-realist mode characteristic of American writing, spawned by imagism and neo-Aristotelianism. Among these writers (whose influence remains considerable) are the poet-critics Edith L. Tiempo, Gemino Abad, Ophelia A. Dimalanta and Emmanuel Torres. Their influence can be felt in the short lyric and the medium-length meditative poem that are still the Filipino poet’s preferred medium. Some contemporary poets in English such as Marjorie Evasco and Merlie Alunan, derive their best effects from their reverence for the ineluctable image. Ricardo de Ungria’s and Luisa Aguilar Cariņo’s poems, on the other hand, are a rich confluence of imagism, surrealism and confessionalism.
The Philippine novel, whether written in English or any of the native languages, has remained social-realist. Edgardo Reyes’ Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (1966), for instance, is a critique of urban blight, and Edilberto K. Tiempo’s To Be Free is a historical probe of the western idea of freedom in the context of indigenous Philippine culture. Kerima Polotan Tuvera’s novel The Hand of the Enemy (1972), a penetratingly lucid critique of ruling-class psychology, is entirely realistic, if Rizalian in its moments of high satire, although unlike the Rizalian model, it falls short of a moral vision.
Only a few novelists like Gamalinda, Yuson and Antonio Enriquez, can claim a measure of success in tapping creative power from folk sources in their venture to join the third world magic-realist mainstream. But the poets of oral-folk charisma, such as Jose Corazon de Jesus, are waiting in the wings for a comeback as astonishing as Lam-ang’s legendary resurrection. Modernist and post-modernist criticism, which champions the literature of the disempowered cultures, has lately attained sufficient clout to shift the focus of academic pursuits towards native vernacular literatures (oral and written) and on the revaluation of texts previously ignored, such as those by women writers. Sa Ngalan Ng Ina (1997), by prize-winning poet-critic Lilia Quindoza Santiago, is, to date, the most comprehensive compilation of feminist writing in the Philippines.
Nick Joaquin (b. 1917)
Philippine novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist writing in English, the National Artist for Literature. Joaquin is widely considered the best postwar author in his country. He has written largely about the Spanish colonial period and the diverse heritage of the Filipino people. Often he deals with the coexistence of 'primitive' and 'civilized' dimensions inside the human psyche. In his short story 'The Summer Solstice,' set in the 1850s, Joaquin portrayed the collision between instincts and refined culture. Doņa Lupeng first rejects ancient beliefs, but under the spell of the moon, she becomes possessed by the spirit of the Tadtarin cult - she does not want to be loved and respected anymore but adored as the embodiment of the matriarchal powers.
"He lifted his dripping face and touched his bruised lips to her toes; lifted his hands and grasped the white foot and kissed it savagely - kissed the step, the sole, the frail ankle - while she bit her lips and clutched in pain at the windowsill, her body distended and wracked by horrible shivers, her head flung back and her loose hair streaming out of the window – streaming fluid and black in the white night where the huge moon glowed like a sun and the dry air flamed into lightning and the pure heat burned with the immense intense fever of noon." (from 'The Summer Solstice' in Tropical Gothic, 1972)
Nick Joaquin was born in Paco on Calle Herran, as the the son of Leocadio Y. Joaquin, a lawyer and a colonel of the Philippine Revolution, and Salome Marquez, a schoolteacher. After three years of secondary education at the Mapa High School, Joaquin dropped out of school to work on Manila’s waterfront and in odd jobs. On his spare time he read widely at the National Library and on his father's library. English had became the official medium of instruction in 1898 after the Spanish-American war. Especially through the work of short story writers English became the most developed literary genre and virtually all Spanish literature ceased. Starting as a proofreader at the Philippines Free Press, Joaquin rose to contributing editor and essayist under the pen name 'Quijano de Manila' (Manila Old Timer). After World War II Joaquin worked as a journalist, gaining fame as a reporter for the Free Press. In 1970 he left the Philippines Free Press and went on to edit Asia-Philippine Leader. During the reign of Ferdinand Marcos, who had won presidency in 1965, corruption started to fuel opposition to his administration. When martial law was declared in 1972 Joaquin was subsequently suspended. He then became the editor of the Philippine Graphic magazine and publisher of the Women’s Weekly. Joaquin started to write short stories, poems, and essays in 1934. One year later his first work appeared in the Tribune in 1935. In 1947 his essay on the defeat of a Dutch fleet by the Spaniards off the Philippines in 1646 earned him a scholarship to study in Hong Kong at the Albert College, founded by the Dominicans. Joaquin's studies for priesthood explains part the Christian setting of his stories and constant attention to the practices and superstitions of his characters. However, he left the seminary in 1950, finding it impossible for him to adjust to rigid rules. Prose and Poems (1952) was followed by the Barangay Theatre Guild's production of his play, A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino. The title refers to James Joyce's famous book, not without ironic tone. A Portrait is considered the most important Filipino play in English. In it Joaquin focused on a family conflict, in which old cultural models are reconciled with modern values. The descendants of the declining Don Lorenzo refuse to sell the masterpiece which he has painted for them. With Stevan Javellana, N.V.M. Gonzalez, Celso Al. Carunungan, and Kerima Polotan Tuvera he influenced the development of the Philippine novel and short story. He writing also build a bridge from modern literature to the religious themes of Spanish heritage and primitive beliefs. When the young Guido in 'The Summer Solstice' had returned from Europe to his home, he tells Doņa Lupeng: "Ah, I also learned to open my eyes over there - to see the holiness and the mystery of what is vulgar." The prize-novel The Woman Who Had Two Navels (1961) examined the pressures of the past upon the present. Monson, the ex-revolutionary, hides in Hong Kong, afraid to face the trials of postwar independence. Again Joaquin dealt with the tensions between illusion and reality. The novel won the first Harry Stonehill Award, an yearly grant. The Aquinos of Tarlac (1983) was a biography of the assassinated presidential candidate Benigno Aquino. He led the opposition to President Ferdinand Marcos and was shot dead in the airport when he returned from exile. Three years after his death his widow Corazon Aquino became President of the Philippines. Cave and Shadows (1983) occurs in the period of martial law under Marcos. For his work Joaquin received several awards. His essay 'La Naval de Manila' (1943) won in a contest sponsored by the Dominicans; 'Guardia de Honor' was declared the best story of the year in 1949, he received in 1963 the Araw ng Maynila Award, and in 1966 he was conferred the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Literature, Broadcast and Journalism. In 1976 Joaquin was declared a National Artist. He is the most anthologized of all Philippine authors.
For further reading: The Trouble with Nick & Other Profiles by Marra PL. Lanot (2000); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999, vol. 2); Subversions Of Desire: Prolegomena To Nick Joaquin by Epifanio San Juan, Jr. (1988); Filipino Writers in English by Florentino B. Valeros and Estrellita V. Gruenberg (1987); New Writing from the Philippines by L. Casper (1966); Brown Heritage, ed. by A. Manuud (1967); 'Hauted Intensity' by Miguel A. Bernard in Bamboo and the Greenwood Tree (1961); 'The Stories of Nick Joaquin' by Harry B. Furay in Philippine Studies, i (1953) - For further information: The Storyteller's New Medium - Rizal in Saga by Nick Joaquin - A Summary of Nick Joaquin's The Four Little Monkeys Who Went To Eden –
Selected works:
Prose and Poems, 1952
The Woman Who Had Two Navels, 1961
Selected Stories, 1962
La Naval de Manila and Other Essays, 1964
A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, 1966 - film 1965, dir. by Lamberto
V. Avellana, starring Daisy H. Avellana and Naty CrameRogers
Tropical Gothic, 1972
Reportage on Crime, 1977
Reportage on Lovers, 1977
Nora Aunor and Other Profiles, 1977
A Question of Heroes, 1977
Stories for Groovy Kids, 1979
Tropical Baroque, 1979
Manila: Sin City and Other Chronicles, 1980
Reportage on the Marcoses, 1979, 1981
The Ballad of the Five Battles, 1981
Cave and Shadows, 1983
The Aquinos of Tarlac, 1983
Collected Verse, 1987
Manila, My Manila, 1990
The Woman Who Had Two Navels. 1991
Prose and Poems, 1991
La Orosa: The Dance-Drama that is Leonor Goquingco, 1994
One Woman's Liberating: The Life and Career of Dr. Estefania
Aldaba-Lim, 1996
By Jaime C. Laya
National Artist Nick Joaquin may have been the first to bring the Tadtarin to general attention. His celebrated short story, The Summer Solstice was set in the 1850s and centers on a celebration of the women of Paco, Manila. The cult of the Tadtarin is celebrated on three days: the feast of St. John and the two preceding days. On the first night, a young girl heads the procession; on the second, a mature woman; and on the third, a very old woman who dies and comes to life again. The crowd parted, and up the street came the prancing, screaming, writhing women, their eyes wild, black shawls flying around their shoulders, and their long hair streaming and covered with leaves and flowers. But the Tadtarin, a small old woman with white hair, walked with calm dignity in the midst of the female tumult, a wand in one hand, a bunch of seedlings in the other. Behind her, a group of girls bore aloft a little black image of the Baptist - a crude, primitive, grotesque image, its big-eyed head too big for its puny naked torso, bobbing and swaying above the hysterical female horde . . . the screaming women fell silent: the Tadtarin was about to die.
The old woman closed her eyes and bowed her head and sank slowly to her knees. A pallet was brought and set on the ground and she was laid in it and her face covered with a shroud. Her hands still clutched the wand and the seedlings. The women drew away, leaving her in a cleared space. They covered their heads with their black shawls and began wailing softly, unhumanly.... . . When the moon rose and flooded with hot brilliance the moveless crowded square, the black-shawled women stopped wailing and a girl approached and unshrouded the Tadtarin, who opened her eyes and sat up, her face lifted to the moonlight. She rose to her feet and extended the wand and the seedlings and the women joined in a mighty shout. They pulled off and waved their shawls and whirled and began dancing again — laughing and dancing with such joyous exciting abandon that the people in the square and on the sidewalks, and even those on the balconies, were soon laughing and dancing, too. Girls broke away from their parents and wives from their husbands to join in the orgy. The all women procession then moves on to a chapel, where the ritual ends.
Choreographer Alice Reyes found inspiration in the legend and created Amada, a celebrated Ballet Philippines number described as follows:
In the Philippines, Spanish Catholicism was absorbed and mixed with local pagan rites and rituals. One of the more primitive ones was that of the "Tadtarin" which was practiced once a year during the Summer Solstice at the Feast of Saint John. It was a Dionysian festival where women reigned supreme for three days and the men who participated could do so by wearing some female garb as a symbol of subservience.
I haven't found any definitive reference confirming cross-dressed male participated in the Tadtarin, although history books do say that among ancient Filipinos, spiritual leaders (babaylan) included men dressed as women. The usual presumption is that the latter were gays, although a male supremacist friend insists that Spanish explorers jumped to the wrong conclusion in much the same way that a fascinated indio may have decided that the Spanish gold embroidered priestly robes were scintillating ball gowns.
Warming up to the topic, my friend points out that women were topless then and wore a tapis while men ordinarily wore g-strings or bahag. It is likely, he concludes, that ceremonial occasions required 16th century males to throw on a blanket or a sarong, no great shakes among Khmer, Burmese or Malay warriors whose wardrobes, to this day, are heavy on sarong, Q.E.D. If truth be told, the Philippines is a nation of strong women. Directly or behind the scenes, they run business empires, government, haciendas, etc. while commanding an army of househelp and keeping an eye on potentially errant husbands. They hold purse strings. Wives feared by husbands, mothers by grown sons, grandmothers by all. Why rub it in with a festival of woman triumphant? Anyway, modern day feminists appear to consider the Tadtarin as symbol of militant, conquering, and triumphant womanhood. Modern day gays also cite babaylans and Tadtarin as evidence that gayness enjoyed higher regard in those days. Possibilities are great and Andy Cristobal Cruz confides that bidding over movie rights of The Summer Solstice is brutal. It turns out (surprise!) that Tadtarin is alive and well. Not on June 21 (the summer solstice) or on June 24 (the feast of St. John), but on two other separate occasions. The first is close to the winter solstice, on the second Sunday of December at the Paco parish church. The second is on the second Sunday of November at the chapel of Nuestra Seņora de Penafrancia on the way to Pandacan. With tropical days being much the same length, Filipinos never did fuss about solstices. The December Tadtarin is held during the Paco fiesta of Nuestra Seņora del Rosario, when dancing women join the procession. Paco-bred GSIS President Federico "Ding" Pascual reminisces that in his youth, participants danced to Santa Clara, pinung-pino, kami po ay bigyan mo ng asawang labing walo . . . which happens to the identical music of the celebrated procession of Obando in Bulacan. The lyrics beg St. Claire for 18 husbands, more or less consistent with the theory that the procession is a transformed pre-Hispanic fertility rite. However, with the old ladies who now take part, current practice is a far cry from the prancing, screaming, writhing, hysterical female horde orgying away and the abjectly crushed men of Nick Joaquin. Today's women now dance in the Tadtarin in prayerful supplication for a child or spouse or in fulfillment of a vow or panata. The spirit of militant and victorious womanhood, regretfully, fails to surface in the waltzy melody of Santa Clara . . . On the other hand, as the lyrics do imply an unsinkable merry widow who tries and tries again, further research could be fruitful.
Nick Joaquin's story describes the Paco Tadtarin as a three-day affair dedicated to San Juan Bautista, with daily themes identical to those of modern day Obando. The three-day fiesta of the latter successively honors a trio of saints — Nuestra Seņora de Salambao, Sta. Clara, and San Pascual Baylon. The first day is dedicated to San Pascual Baylon, to whom lovelorn suitors pray for a wife. The second day is in honor of the Virgin of Salambao, patroness of childless couples. The third day is for Sta. Clara, who is believed to listen to requests for a fiance. At the procession for the three saints, devotees pray and sway, skip and hop in accordance with traditional steps, preceding the images' carrozas. The theory is that during pre-Spanish times, couples would converge from afar to offer sacrifices to a renowned priestess in petition for a child. The early Spanish friars were quick to redirect the petitioning to the Catholic pantheon of saints and possibly to tone down any wildness in the ancient rituals. The practice caught on and one will recall how Rizal's heroine, Maria Clara, was born nine months after her long childless mother danced at Obando. (The powerful input of the ever ready Padre Damaso was kept confidential.) It is also interesting that Paco and Obando were within Franciscan territory and that both San Pascual and Sta. Clara are also venerated at Paco's Peņafrancia church.
A well-known linguist points out that tadtarin means chop up (as in mince) in Tagalog and that the December Tadtarin could well be in reference to King Herod's massacre of the innocents. On the other hand, The Summer Solstice explanation could also be true. Holy Week Pabasa participants are perfectly aware that Herod's wife, the sneaky Herodias, saw to it that the prize for daughter Salome's alluring dance was St. John's head on a serving dish. The latter obviously squares with the female supremacy theory and for good measure, also a definitely deplorable male view of womanhood, i.e., tempting but sneaky. Held throughout the Spanish and American regimes, the Tadtarin ceased during World War II but was revived in 1985, the brainchild of then city councilor Susano "Jun" Gonzales Jr. when the image of Nuestra Seņora de Peņafrancia was canonically crowned at the Luneta.
Nowadays, the Peņafrancia Tadtarin is held in a general atmosphere of revelry. The Virgin's image, an old painting of Nuestra Seņora de Peņafrancia, is borne on the shoulders of carousing parishioners on its andas or decorated platform. Now more Dionysian than ever, menfolk, beer and gin bottles in hand, tipsily stagger with the image through crowds of gaily dressed celebrators. De rigueur attire of late has been Hawaiian. There could still be a twitter of badings and a swagger of tibos in the crowd, but no doubt about it — the Peņafrancia Tadtarin has turned macho.