The epic will come back to us

Margosatubig: The Story of Salagunting by Ramon L. Muzones, translated from Hiligaynon by Ma. Cecilia Locsin-Nava (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2012)


The Hiligaynon language is one of many spoken in the Philippines, mainly in Western Visayas and parts of Mindanao, the central and southern part of the country. Spoken by around 8 million people, it is in some ways the prestige register of Ilonggo, the way Filipino language is to Tagalog.

Ramon L. Muzones (1913-1992) was the foremost novelist in Hiligaynon, according to translator Ma. Cecilia Locsin-Nava and to many of his writing contemporaries. He wrote 62(!) novels of various genre in his lifetime, and he was said to be an incomparable innovator in the Hiligaynon language, very much conscious of modern literary trends. A glimpse of his gifts as a writer was now made possible through the English translation and publication of one of his celebrated novels. Margosatubig: The Story of Salagunting first appeared in 30 installments in a local weekly magazine in 1946. It is a historical fantasy novel in the grand epic tradition, a compulsive tale of adventure and love, filled with magic and incredible battle scenes.

The novel was set in early colonial times when Christianity reached the northern and central shores of the Philippines. Margosatubig was the name of the Muslim sultanate kingdom of Magindanaw and Sulu whose leadership was highly contested. Salagunting was the rightful heir to the sultan's throne which he was seeking to regain. His father Datu Ibyn Parang was expelled from the kingdom through the machinations of Sultan Mohamed who planned to take over the sultanate. Datu Ibyn Parang was censured for marrying a Christian woman and bearing a child (Salagunting) with her. After his ouster and his defeat in battle, the old sultan, Salagunting's grandfather, was poisoned by Sultan Mohamed. The latter was able to seize power and rule over Magindanaw and Sulu.

Thus Muzones set up the great conflict between two competing interests. Salagunting's "might of right" against the new ruler Mohamed's "right of might". Who deserves to rule remains a relevant question, especially in societies beleaguered by incessant fighting and constant change in leadership.

The rule of Sultan Mohamed, pretender to the throne, was aided by two figures with miraculous powers. His right-hand man Pandit Gulamu had magical powers as unbelievable as they were (un)intentionally ridiculous and funny.

"What amazing things has he done?" queried Salagunting.
"He walks on fire. Weapons cannot pierce his body and he does other wondrous things."
[...]
"What did they say his name was?"
"They call him Pandit Gulamu. He is said to be one of a few who succeeded in scaling the high mountains of the Himalayas in order to visit the Dalai Lama. It was there that he acquired his potent magic."

The other magical character, more powerful than Pandit Gulamu, was the sultan's extremely beautiful daughter Dayang-Dayang Morgana. Her powers of enchantment and ability to change forms (metamorphosis) will repeatedly thwart Salagunting in his bid to wrest the Margosatubig sultanate.

Central to the novel's use of magic is the concept of kinaadman, a term left untranslated (rightly, I think) in the novel. This roughly pertains to the characters' magical abilities and powers, often a result of their having amulets but also a sort of innate status as rightful claim to power. More than amulets of magic, the bearer of kinaadman is the bearer of the right to rule a sovereign kingdom. It is a leadership quality deserving heroes and heroines must possess. As defined in the novel's glossary, kinaadman means "ability, skill cleverness, learning, knowledge, [and] wisdom".

As used by Muzones in [...] Margosatubig and his other epicohistorical novels, it is a special kind of skill or power not unlike those shown by busalians [persons of "unusual physical prowess and special powers" bordering on the incredible] and dalagangans ["extraordinarily brave, heroic and powerful" persons] that enable its possessor [to] perform preternatural things. Thus, kinaadman like those possessed by Salagunting, Morgana and Pandit Gulamu can among others, render their possessor invulnerable to weapons, enabling them to appear or disappear at will, divine the future, cure the sick or even bring the dead back to life.

In the case of busalians, their special power could be derived in several ways: "It could be given without one's wishing for it as a form of bugay (or gift from God for being kindhearted), it could come from a sinagod (adopted spirit being) or a friendly tamawo (fairy or spirit being). It could be derived from 'rare and unusual objects like a nodeless vine, a rivershell without opening (libon nga banag) or a daplak bird's egg.'"

Kinaadman is comparable to Max Weber's concept of charismatic authority. As with kinaadman, the connotation of righteous leadership is apparent. Weber defined charisma as

A certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.

The main difference was probably the kinaadman's stronger emphasis on superhuman abilities and the use of talismanic objects, making it more unearthly than charisma. The person may be inseparable from his/her power, was the very embodiment of that power. The legitimation of the kinaadman was obtained by its bearer through brave exploits and triumphs in adversities (wars). In the process, the warrior became a legendary, larger-than-life figure. Salagunting's powers made him a natural leader to be followed. His use of different kinds of power, derived from many talismans, would define his destiny.

"My son, the powers on earth are nothing compared to those on water. I have already conferred on you the gems of the himag and the tagalyas. Your body is invested with the most potent talisman on air and on water. You are a peerless busalian, my son, possessed with extraordinary magical powers. Go to the cave of Sanggub, get the magical banawug. This is a potent weapon against earthly sorcery and protection against any talisman. The evil spirits will recognize your powers because you are invulnerable, fortified against all charms. Take with you the hamusog and hanugon algae and you will never feel the need for food or water."

The passage not only demonstrated the many skills Salagunting possessed but also the variety of words the translator failed to find equivalents in the English language. Most of these untranslated words were compiled and duly defined in a glossary found at the end of the novel. There were a total of 70 of these words in the glossary. This deliberately opened the text up to a debate between so-called foreignizing translation and domesticating translation. The translator's strategy to retain some words in original Hiligaynon was a risky one—it risked putting off readers who can't be bothered to turn from the page he's reading to the glossary at the back—but she justified the decision in her translator's introduction. She simply could not find any exact equivalent for these words in dictionaries and, moreover, the range of possible English words was inadequate to the task.

Nevertheless, there's a certain rhythm to these words that would not have been preserved had the translator opted to "domesticate" some details. Take for example the opening of the novel (ellipses not mine).

From north to south ... from east to west ... in the land of the pandita ... all over the territories of Magindanaw and Sulu ... the worshippers of Mahoma gathered to answer the sultan's summons to an assembly. Scores of biniday, pangku, kumpit and binta docked on Margosatubig's shores. Seen from afar their sails of many colors and varied patterns resembled clusters of flowers fluttering in the breeze.

Readers didn't need to be told that the last four foreign words described seagoing vessels. Something essential would be lost if these words for very specific kinds of boats were replaced with a set from the English language were they don't really exist.

The translator Locsin-Nava proved her dedication to her craft through careful research work on the contexts and milieu of the language, history, and society that informed Muzone's writing of this epico-historical novel. The carefully assembled critical apparatus of the novel—a foreword on the place of Muzones in "vernacular literature" by poet, critic, and National Artist Virgilio S. Almario; a short author's note; Locsin-Nava's note on the importance of Muzones to national literature; and her indispensable translator's notes; not to mention the inflated blurbs at the end of the book that I could really do without—were designed to secure for the author the canonization as the first National Artist for Literature who wrote in a regional and vernacular language other than Tagalog, presumably to fill the gap in the canon of Filipino writers who wrote only in English and Filipino.

The book was an overt campaign to the gatekeepers of the Philippine canon to anoint Muzones in the pantheon of literary masters. Margosatubig then demonstrated how a well-intentioned translator can be a canon-maker and thus contribute to national literature. It showed how a well-made translation can effectively secure for an author the title National Artist.

This is because the historical and societal contexts of Margosatubig were not unique to its own geography. Published immediately after the second world war, Margosatubig was a reflection of the turnover of power in colonial Philippines from one occupying nation to the next. Being set in war-torn Mindanao, it also anticipated the perpetual political wrangling and search for the ever elusive peace in the region.

Salagunting was against Moro slave raids, pillaging, and piracy in Christian towns conducted by the forces of Sultan Mohamed. These events were common occurrences before and even during the Spanish occupation of the Philippines. Proofs of these are the many kuta or concrete fortifications dotting the shores of many islands like Palawan. (I have visited more than half a dozen of them.)

It was not for nothing that the hero Salagunting was half Muslim-half Christian. His dream was to unite many lands by promoting justice and good governance.

"What concerns me is the banditry that is rife among the towns of the Christians. We should put a stop to this. People of the Philippines must learn to live with and understand each other. We must help each other so that we will prosper. Other countries have a bad impression of us. We must put an end to this."

Filipino historians like Ambeth R. Ocampo will contest the use of the name "Philippines" to describe the name of a group of islands prior to the arrival of Spanish colonizers. Shades of nationalist imaginings like these colored the book. The name "Philippines" per se, let alone the concept of a unified country of islands, was not yet invented during early colonial times (the Spanish conquistadors first named the islands San Lazaro before calling it Felipenas, later Filipinas). But Muzones here was writing a novel after the fact; and fiction, a fantasy one at that, was a good place to shake history.

The novel had a distinctive style that merges the appeal of fast-paced and highly visual fantasy novels and the political thrillers. It felt like reading a graphic novel. In fact, it was a timely publication since at present we have a golden age (of sorts) of Philippine graphic novels steeped in native mythology. Works like Trese, Skyworld, Zsazsa Zaturnnah, The Mythology Class, Siglo, and Underpass are proof of the continued interest in visual storytelling. I think that emerging graphic storytellers could benefit from Muzones's handling of narrative suspense, his fusion of various influences and sensibilities, and his painterly depiction of magic and bloody war scenes. Think of the novel's balu fishes (swordfishes) falling upon enemy warriors "like a rain of spears".

The use of ellipsis after single word paragraphs for transition was quite like the scenes of graphic novels immediately panning from one panel to another. The spaces between ellipses heightened the sharp transitions, marking off the moment the director yelled "Cut!"

"Salagunting," asked Maria Cristina's parents, "what kind of food do you like? We know there are certain things we Christians eat that you do not."
"Cook whatever you like. Don't you know that I am half-Christian?"
"Yes, that is what Maria Cristina told us."
And ...
Because the Legaspi family was known to be the most affluent in Rom-Rom, a big feast was held.
But ...
While everybody was celebrating, news was suddenly relayed that the horizon was darkening with the boats of invading pirates. And ... the people fled like they had seen ghosts.
But ...
Salagunting stayed rooted where he stood. Then he directed his steps toward the sea.

The infelicitous use of ellipsis was a consistent feature of the novel. It cultivated suspense and cut quick to the pace of narrative.

And ...

It made for a disorienting, sometimes frustrating reading experience.

But ...

It was also a bit charming. Because ... what a story! One immediately got used to the quirk.

Meanwhile ....

So much has been explained about the novel's apparent contribution to national literature. But what of its place in world literature?

I think Margosatubig positively fulfills Borges's dream of the epic's return even before he expressed it in a lecture in Harvard in 1967. "As the future holds many things—as the future, perhaps, holds all things—I think that the epic will come back to us", Borges prophesied. "I think that the poet shall once again be a maker." Because it was in a language he doesn't speak, Borges couldn't know that, two decades prior to his pronouncement, one such unqualified epic was already sketched out. So it appears that some epics were not really lost to us; they are with us all this time. Sometimes we get lucky when they're pulled out of the dusty archives, and someone takes the time to translate the opaque verses for us. From one singing language to another, inhabiting the same amazement, the same astonishment.

Gitarista (Reev Robledo)

Gitarista by Reev Robledo (2013)

Set in 1975 Manila, when the city was under the iron rule of a dictator and curfew was the order of the day night, Gitarista tells the story of freshman music student and guitar virtuoso Alejandro Sebastian who was bent on perfecting his craft. While activists and protesters took to the streets and demanded basic freedom Alejandro was reading music sheets for his exacting maestro and rehearsing for the prestigious contest that will pit him against the most promising guitarists in the land.

There's nothing political in Reev Robledo's novel Gitarista, except maybe the politics of the heart and family ties. As if to echo the political turmoil brewing in the halls of the state university, Alejandro was undergoing an emotional crisis. His absentee father, whom his single mother will not let him know, was foremost on his mind. To add to the unresolved feelings between him and his mother and to the stress of preparations for the approaching competition, Alejandro fell in love with Dani, a plucky violinist. Could their relationship go beyond friendship and musical collaboration?

The greatest achievement of Gitarista for me is its cinematic evocation of the music scene of the era. Even for some of us who were not yet born in those tumultuous times, but who kept hearing those songs in our childhood, a feeling of nostalgia was inevitable. The narrative was even spruced up by cameo appearances of such benchmark musicians as Ryan Cayabyab and Hotdog band vocal Rene Garcia. The depiction of the artistic and cultural scene and the architecture of Manila in imeldific times was so assured one felt being transported there in spacetime.

Robledo is a talented songwriter and musical score composer, and it was not surprising to find in this book – his "love letter to Manila" and to the art and music of Spanish conquistadors – a singular playlist of classical pieces, Philippine folk songs, and signature songs of the times (70s). Alongside Isaac Albéniz's flamenco music Asturias (Leyenda) and Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring were heard Earth, Wind & Fire's September.

Music is the DNA of this novel. It boldly recreated a musical era while composing its own musical score through its acoustic effects and ear for musical prose.

The Toyota revved up its engine. The kalesa's horse snorted. The jeepney regurgitated diesel. Japan, Spain and America's quest for Philippine road supremacy was underway.

...

El Diablo [the jeepney] accelerated. The kalesa maintained its speed. The Toyota honked its horns. Steven Tyler screamed.

***

Once the dough was firm and elastic, he [the noodle maker] pulled it across his chest like an accordion then held up one end with one hand then let his other hand slice it into thin strips of noodles between his fingers.

***

The top string of his guitar snapped and sliced the skin of the back of his hand. He watched a stream of blood trace the lines on his palm and smear the frets.

The spotlight bounced off the guitar's maple board; reflections scattered around the theater, briefly illuminating men and women with faces aghast....

Strumming at an ungodly speed, he ignored his wounds and improvised with the remaining strings.

The writing often reminded me of the rapt prose of Vikram Seth's An Equal Music. Even the patches of purple prose and blues may be justified in this case by coming-of-age concerns. To be young, to be innocent, to be in love. To be alive in the days when youth was pursued by experience and experience was the reward of shedding innocence. "It was every musician's desire to translate their art into something interpretable. Something the heart can digest", a character intoned in the book. Here the musician interpreted his art with verve, heart, and tenderness. It is a sentimental education and an ode to a city, to family, and to musical memory. An altogether brave performance.



Thanks to K.D. for a copy of the book.

Manila Noir

Manila Noir, edited by Jessica Hagedorn (Akashic Books, 2013; Anvil, 2013)


"I like to think of Manila as a woman of mystery, the ultimate femme fatale. Sexy, complicated, and tainted by a dark and painful past, she's not to be trusted." In her introduction to Manila Noir, a collection of stories, Jessica Hagedorn found a convenient metaphor for the nation's capital. The "dark and painful past" she referred to was that of years of colonialism and foreign occupation and the attendant cultural, political, social, and economic degradation. It is easy to reject this kind of metaphors for its tendency to oversimplify history; for any one metaphor, another one can be proposed and there really is no lack of them in novels set in Manila. The stories in Manila Noir seemed to skirt around this simplification. Although an argument could be made for the existence of femme fatale characters in certain stories ("The Professor's Wife" by Jose Dalisay, "A Human Right" by Rosario Cruz-Lucero, "Desire" by Marianne Villanueva), an argument could also be made for their rejection of traditional portrayal of a cosmopolitan femme fatale. The female characters in these stories were not originally from Manila, their dark past obtaining from outside the metropolis, in the countryside, and the city was there to offer them refuge and freedom from the "narrowing" provincial confines. In some stories, the city marked the end of their journey, the consummation of erotic fantasies, sexual desires, sincere acts of murder.

There was enough material here to subvert Hagedorn's conception of Manila as femme fatale. The theoretical schools would have ample time to interpret some stories using feminist, post-colonial, and queer theories. In "Comforter of the Afflicted" by F. H. Batacan, a Jesuit priest – the same lead as in the writer's previous crime novel Smaller and Smaller Circles – investigates the murder of a woman who not only had her own shadowy past but was also entangled in the lives of other women running away from the past. The deconstruction of the motive to a murder of another woman was at the center of "Darling, You Can Count on Me" by Eric Gamalinda. It was based on the actual infamous murder of Lucila Lalu in 1967, a case that gripped the imagination of the nation for the unbelievable twists and turns in the story. The story was a version of truth no less bizaare than reality but no less truthful than the poetry of its precise telling. Gamalinda is a very fine writer.

Her neck is long and white, and her laughter gurgles out warm and rippling like water, like she's choking on her own laughter. He drops the knife. He inches closer to her, closer to the source of that mysterious sound.

...

He slips her shoe off and takes her foot in his hand, the way the prince did with Cinderella. He tells her it feels like he's taking a rose, small and delicate, in his hand, and if he catches her with another boy again he's going to snap that foot off, like a flower.

The weight of history was not a burden but an opportunity for playful exploration of alternative histories, alternate realities, and alternating correspondences in "The Unintended" by Gina Apostol. It was a brilliant story framed by different types of translation, also featuring the characters Magsalin and Estrella Espejo, two of the feisty annotators of Apostol's heavily footnoted novel The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata. The preponderance of film references provides the writer with the materials to question the authenticity of these films in the language department (how certain subtitled dialogues were conveyed in a language different from what it was supposed to be). The film as a translation medium was still part of the running theme.

The Unintended is a hypothetical unfinished movie about 1901 wartime massacre in Samar Island. It can also be a reference to "the Intended", Kurtz's mourning fiancee in the signature novel of colonialism Heart of Darkness. The movie was a companion to Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, a modern adaptation of the Conrad novella about the Vietnam War which was filmed on location in Philippines. (With the presence in the story of the fictional film director's daughter, the real film-false film correspondence can be extended to the real director's real daughter Sofia Coppola directing Lost in Translation. The translation/adaptation angle was further refracted by the story's setting of Ali Mall, the site that became a commemorative place of Muhammad Ali's successful heavyweight title fight against Joe Frazier in 1975.) The investigation of history was very like a movie.

I think we are stuck in someone's movie, and the director is still laying out his scraps of script, trying to figure out his ending. He does not have an ending. Everything around him has the possibility of becoming part of his mystery plot—his lost love for his wife, that fly over there licking the sugar on the bun, the clown in the corner playing with a knife, a moment in a mirror store in New York when he sees himself replicated through his camera lens in all the mirrors except he cannot see his eyes, the unanswered questions about a writer's death, the unanswered questions about a country's war, that schoolboy carefully folding a white shirt and tucking it neatly into a paper bag, a heart attack he has in 1977 when his movie is still not done, when it has a beginning and an ending but no idea, and twelve hundred feet of unedited stock, with takes, retakes, and other duplications. That is what we are: twelve hundred feet of unedited stock, doing things over and over, and we are waiting for the cut. But who is the director? What is our wait for? I would like to make a movie in which the spectator understands that she is in a work of someone else's construction and yet as she watches she is devising her own translations for the movie in which she in fact exists.

Apostol is a Borgesian writer. Her ideas about the Argentine writer's politics of postcolonialism and postnationalism are evident in this intertextual and metafictional story.

Perhaps a throwback to Hagedorn's femme fatale idea was the prominence of queer figures in stories such as R. Zamora Linmark's "Cariño Brutal", Jessica Hagedorn's "Old Money", Eric Gamalinda's "Darling, You Can Count on Me", and Jonas Vitman's "Norma from Norman". In the first and last of these stories, the homosexuals dealt with violence inflicted against their humanity. They resisted and, in Vitman's story, even went so far as to fight back, with a thorough and calculated vengeance.
 
Manila Noir was a collection meant to explore the untold mystery and criminal side of Manila while showcasing the best contemporary Philippine writing. Not all stories succeed. Lysley Tenorio's "Aviary" was an unconvincing adventure of street children fighting against the discriminatory attitude of an elite shopping mall. The story, told in a collective first person "we", had the children speak in a sophisticated language not fit to their age and status. Lourd de Veyra's "Satan Has Already Bought U" was an amusing take on a drug transaction gone wrong, reminiscent of the dialogues-only exposition in Hemingway's "The Killers", but was ultimately just that – amusing. Even the graphic installment of Trese by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo felt a bit stale in the storytelling department although some panels by Kajo were really so freaky, in a cool way. 

Surrealist imagery and language were the strength of stories like "Broken Glass" by Sabina Murray, a tension-filled story about an unlikely death committed in the grounds of a rich household, and "After Midnight" by Angelo R. Lacuesta, about a simple accident told in a distinctive language. (I liked the latter so much I went to buy Lacuesta's story collection, White Elephants.) Language-driven stories like these, like the stories by Apostol, Zamora Linmark, and Gamalinda, were thankfully not immersed in the ghostwritten words of the past. The best stories had moved on, wearing the fresh language and idioms of the present. They unfolded, as in Gamalinda's words, in a transparent dream.

She closes her eyes and imagines it. Through this maze of dilapidated alleys and dead ends, there's nothing but long stretches of desolate highways, cities teeming with anonymous faces, restrooms that stink like a sewer, motels full of bugs where the walls still throb with love's sticky whispers, and always a lot of stations where people come and go. She wonders if he can see it too. Of course he can. Everything is transparent in a dream.

 

Cacique novels of F. Sionil José

He who owns the land holds power. That, in a nutshell, is the basic principle of caciquism. In the countryside, the ruling class is usually made up of landowners and land grabbers. The political economy of the Philippines is closely tied to land acquisition and the transfer of properties, from one colonial master to the next, from the hacendero to the heirs of the hacendero. Land is the very stage of lifeways and cultures. It is also, ultimately, the modern space of class conflict. Finite and limited, the parcels of vacant land are running out. Those enterprising individuals who invested in land are the prime movers of that space. They maneuver in their hands the social, political, and economic spaces of the nation.

Among novel writers in the Philippines, F. Sionil José is one of those who closely documented in his fiction the historical conflicts and interplay between the landed and the landless. As a journalist, his reportage on the post-war national agrarian problem are influential in the crafting of land reform policies. His famous novels – the widely translated five-part epic called the "Rosales novels" (1962-1984) and Ermita (1988) – coincided closely with the rise of the cacique in Philippine society.

Origins of cacique

The political theorist Benedict Anderson charted in his country study "Cacique Democracy in the Philippines" [1] the emergence and ascendance of cacique/landlords from late 19th century colonial Philippines to the immediate aftermath of 1986 People Power Revolution. This is the same period which Sionil José sporadically mapped in his novels dealing with relations between the landlord and the common mass. His fiction was colored by nationalist calls for social justice, equity, and rights-based governance.

Anderson traced the origins of the cacique to "Chinese mestizos who bloomed economically under the Spanish colonial regime and consolidated their wealth with political power under the Americans". The "-co" suffix in the surnames (Cojuangco, Cuenco, Tanjuatco, etc.) of prominent Filipino-Chinese oligarchs at present was apparently derived "from the Hokkienese k'o, a term of respect for older males". The Manila galleon trade (1564-1815) was an opportunity for long-term economic exchange with Chinese merchants. The Church's indoctrination of Christian faith would eventually target these merchants (sangleys). The Chinese would sire "Chinese mestizos" [2], and the Church will be successful in converting them. When the sangleys were expelled from the Philippines after they aided the British in occupying Manila in 1762, the mestizos took over and later came to dominate local trade and even acquired lands.

The expulsion of the Chinese was lifted in 1834 when Manila was once again opened to international trade after the final galleon sailed in 1811. The Chinese, through their hard work and legendary work ethic [3], once again captured the market. The mestizos were driven to the countryside where they were able to capitalize on fertile lands for cultivation. They became hacendados. In the course of the Spanish rule, the religious orders were also able to parcel out vast tracts of land among themselves, what became known as "friar lands".

The filthy rich mestizos, now "provincial caciques", were able to send their children abroad for education. In 1880s these students came to be known as ilustrados, an anticlerical intelligentsia who started to acquire nationalist sentiments and, by the end of 19th century, to call themselves "Filipino", a term originally designated for Spanish creoles. The intermarriage within this emerging class consolidated power and property among themselves. The ilustrados and mestizos would play significant (ideological) roles in the outbreak of Philippine Revolution against Spain in 1896 and in the ensuing Philippine-American War. At the turn of the 20th century, the new colonial masters, the Americans, would eventually seize the friar lands and award them to some Chinese mestizos.

Po-on (1984), or Dusk, was the first chronological volume of Sionil José's Rosales saga. It was also the last to be written to close his five-novel cycle. The focus is on the extended Salvador family who was displaced from their ancestral lands by the Spanish authorities after Ba-ac, the maimed patriarch of the Salvador clan, killed a Spanish priest after the priest – the same one who ordered the torture that led to Ba-ac's disability – ridiculed and hit him. The hardships and persecution encountered by the family as they fled the Spanish guards was almost biblical in tone. They came face to face not only with the cruelty of the authorities but with cruel forces of nature. By the second half of the novel, the Salvador family (who later changed their name to Samson to avoid detection) finally came to the large plains of Rosales which were owned by several mestizos. It was a place where they can finally settle in after a very long journey.

It was one of those new towns carved out of cogonal wastes and forests by settlers like them. Like most of the new towns that lined the road to the Valley, its leading citizens were mestizos [4] who were the favorites of the friars. Some took advantage of the recent opening of the colleges in Manila for Indios and went to the University of Santo Tomas to study law and medicine, and be infected, too, with the ideas of liberalism, that deadly contagion which the friars detested and ranted against. Large tracts of land toward the east, all the way to that prosperous village of Balungaw to the very foothills of Mount Balungaw, were claimed by the first Spanish settler in this part of the country, but there was also equally large areas titled to the principalia—the educated men like Don Jacinto.

The locals advised the Samsons, now led by Istak, to seek the help of the wealthy landowner Don Jacinto, a cacique positively depicted here as a good Samaritan. Don Jacinto is presented as a typical ilustrado class whose progressive, anti-colonial leanings are evident when he gave refuge to Apolinario Mabini, a historical figure and crippled intellectual and known as "Brains of the Revolution". He also secretly treasured the two subversive novels of José Rizal. (The richest of the landowners in the area were the Asperris, the focus of the next two volumes of the novel.)

Istak accepted the landlord's offer for them to cultivate the land for him in exchange for seed rice and a place to stay. So began the Samson family's new life as farm workers under a landlord.

Being essentially about the emergence of national identity as offshoot of colonialism exacted by the Spanish and Americans, Po-on was not what can be properly called a "cacique novel" since caciquism was only slightly touched upon in the end and served only to bridge it with the rest of the novels in the saga. Its concerns were nonetheless significant in re-imagining the shared identity of a community, consistent to the template on nationalism given by Anderson.

It was interesting how in the second Rosales novel, Tree (1978), the narrative voice was entirely given over to the young son of an overseer (encargador) of land for the absentee landlord Don Vicente Asperri. The overseer appeared to be a descendant of Don Jacinto. We know this only from the big, old balete tree in front of Don Jacinto's house – the titular tree that was a marker and also symbol for time who was the enduring witness to all the blood and tears of the tenant farmers working for Don Vicente. How the overseer came to work for the Spanish Don Asperri was categorically explained.

Father took the job because Don Vicente trusted him and, more than that, it gave Father a sense of power such as he would never have known if he tended no more than the land and properties under his name. Once, I heard him say to a tenant, “Don’t you know that I can drive you all away from your homes today, right now, if I wanted to? Where will you live? Don Vicente’s word is law and I am that law!”

Don Vicente now wielded such naked power because his landholdings were more expansive than ever – "It’s common knowledge [Don Vicente] grabbed these lands because the farmers didn’t know anything about cadastral surveys and Torrens titles." It's possible he came to acquire some of the lands of Don Jacinto. (One can surmise that the Americans confiscated some of Don Jacinto's lands for his involvement in the Philippine Revolution and awarded the same to his neighboring rival.)

The reliable voice of the unnamed young narrator of Tree provided an intimate look at rural life in the Philippines during the first half of the 20th century from American rule up to the 1935 Commonwealth period and the Japanese invasion in the second world war. An heir to an upper middle class landowner, the boy reminisced about his childhood and his relations with the characters (his family's servants, laborers, and farm workers, all below his class standing) [5] that left indelible memories to his young mind. As various character portraits began to accumulate, we came to know more and more not only about the narrator but about the life of his father as a broker for the landlord Don Vicente. The local conflict between the landlord and the landless was set against the larger backdrop of colonial history and yet the weight of history and politics was balanced by the moving personal stories of the working class characters. It also proposed a "personal form of ethics"

I continue, for instance, to hope that there is reward in virtue, that those who pursue it should do so because it pleases them. This then becomes a very personal form of ethics, or belief, premised on pleasure. It would require no high sounding motivation, no philosophical explanation for the self, and its desires are animal, basic—the desire for food, for fornication.

This ethical vision will not be realized until the appearance of Pepe Samson, the protagonist in the final Rosales novel whose independent, individualistic spirit contrasted with the fatalistic attitudes of his forebears.

Political entrenchment

Anderson explained how the cacique consolidated power during the American occupation of the Philippines. The political and economic systems introduced by the new colonizers were conducive to the hacendados. In the first place, the lands expropriated from the Spanish religious orders were auctioned off to affluent mestizos. The "Congress-style bicameral legislature" introduced by the Americans wherein elective positions were contested in insulated bailiwicks were also favorable to them. Political power was easily attained by the influential few. This, Anderson noted, expanded the role of caciques from local landlords to elite members of the national oligarchy. This, in effect, also contributed to the rise of political dynasties in the country.

But Congress, which thus offered them guaranteed access to national-level political power, also brought them together in the capital on a regular basis. There more than at any previous time, they got to know one another well in a civilized "ring" sternly refereed by the Americans. They might dislike one another, but they went to the same receptions, attended the same churches, lived in the same residential areas, shopped in the same fashionable streets, had affairs with each other's wives, and arranged marriages between each other's children. They were for the first time forming a self-conscious ruling class.

In the third Rosales novel My Brother, My Executioner, the charismatic figure of Don Vicente Asperri, the missing and yet omniscient landlord in Tree, finally appeared and fulfilled the role of the cruel hacendado. The novel introduced a philosophical conflict between two brothers: the poet and journalist Luis (Don Vicente's son) and his half-brother Victor who joined the Hukbalahap rebels. As with Tree, Sionil José privileged the voice of the privileged. It was a self-critical voice, aware of the chameleon-like character of the cacique in times of war and peace.

Look around you and whom do you see? It's the scum who are getting the largest part of the cake—the thieves, the grafters—and we know it. The traitors, those who collaborated with the Japanese—and it's only five years after the war—it is they who are now in power and they even call themselves patriots.

Luis was a character study in inconsistency, flawed character for a flawed human being. He was heir to Don Vicente's huge fortune yet he identified with his mother and with Victor because he grew up poor with them before his father claimed him and brought him to the Asperri mansion.

The story was filled with emotional conflict and dramatic action (there was a mass killing scene that was as relevant as yesterday's news). However, My Brother, My Executioner failed in terms of plot and style. The narrative this time felt contrived and didactic and, by relying too much on Luis's emotive reflections and less on Victor's fiery views, overtly sentimental and precious.

In contrast, the "cacique novels" in the vernacular language covering the same postwar period—Lazaro Francisco's Maganda pa ang Daigdig and its sequel Daluyong, and Amado V. Hernandez's Luha ng Buwaya—contained more than a powerful exposition of land tenure system as a deadly disease of society. The tenants in these fine novels took center stage as they actively resisted the caciques and fought their way out of their predicament, whereas Sionil José here, though he provided some emotional contexts about the tenancy problem, complicated the plot too much.

The bottom line, however, was similar to these novels. Luis, in his unsent letter to his brother, recognized that the activist is the true artist, the architect of revolution, shaper of destinies—"It is you then, my fearsome executioner, who is the artist, the rebel and creator, for it is you who will make beauty out of the ugliness which pervades our lives, out of the dungheap that surrounds us". Rebels and revolutionaries are the "ultimate modernizers", for they will execute the cacique figures in society. The true poet has literal blood in his hands. Sionil José was pointing to the method of ridding the country of evil, the same method Pepe Samson espoused in Mass.



Notes:

[1] Anderson, B. 2004. The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World (Ateneo de Manila University Press), pp. 192–226, originally published by Verso in 1998. The essay first appeared in New Left Review, 169 (May–June 1988).

[2] The term "mestizos", Anderson noted, came to mean the children of Chinese and local women, and not of Spaniards and "natives".

[3] For a description of the nature of Chinese merchants as incomparably enterprising individuals in 16th century Philippines, see "Taipan Origins in 1590" by Ambeth Ocampo in his Looking Back 6: Chulalongkorn's Elephants: The Philippines in Asian History (Anvil, 2011), pp. 48–51.

[4] Sionil José's usage of "mestizo" refer to the offspring of Spaniards and local women. Ambeth R. Ocampo explains the term mestizo as a half-breed, in "1896 Philippines: Racial context of the revolution", Bones of Contention: The Andres Bonifacio Lectures (Anvil, 2001), pp. 103–104:

The term "mestizo" (from the Latin mixticius) meant the children of parents of different races, particularly a mix of indio and foreign blood. More often than not, however, mestizo meant Chinese half-breeds—mestizos de sangleyes or mestizos chinos—of either Spanish-Chinese or Chinese-indio mixtures. The equally prominent, but numerically small Spanish mestizos posed a bit of a problem: in the first centuries of the Spanish period, officially, a Spanish[-indio] mestizo could not exist.

[5] Chapter 13 of Tree contained a portrait of the narrator's uncle Tio Doro, a man devoted to politics and at odds with the Chinese rice merchant Mon Luk whom he detested for controlling the retail trade and to whom many people owed money. Mon Luk suffered during the Japanese occupation and became a pauper overnight when his rice mill was razed to the ground. Later, Mon Luk became friends with Tio Doro and even "borrowed a little capital from [Tio Doro] to start business anew." Another Chinese entrepreneur, Chan Hai, also seemed to recover his business after the war.

The atoll in the mind

One, Tilting Leaves by Edith L. Tiempo (Giraffe Books, 1995)



1 Giraffe on the shelf

The backlist of Giraffe Books has recently been lining up the shelves of the popular bargain store Booksale. I'm not sure if the publisher already closed shop or they were just downsizing volumes from their cluttered warehouses. But one could do worse than acquire some of the musty but must-have titles by eminent Filipino writers like Edith L. Tiempo (poems and novels), Antonio Enriquez (fiction), Linda Ty-Casper (fiction), Leonard Casper (literary criticism), Edilberto K. Tiempo (short story collection), and Eileen Tabios (poetry).

2 One, tilting leaves

The deceptive title of Edith L. Tiempo's 1995 novel, seemingly ungrammatical, was taken from the poem "The Atoll in the Mind" (1955) by Alex Comfort. The last stanza appeared as the novel's epigraph.

... the mind's stone tree, the honeycomb,
the plump brain coral breaking the pool's mirror,
the ebony antler, the cold sugared fan.

All these strange trees stand upward through the water,
the mind's grey candied points tend to the surface,
the greater part is out of sight below.

But when on the island's whaleback spring green blades
new land over water wavers, birds bring seeds
and tides plant slender trunks by the lagoon

I find the image of the mind's two trees, cast downward,
one tilting leaves to catch the sun's bright pennies,
one dark as water, rooted among the bones.

The poet at first compares the mind (brain) to varieties of corals ("stone tree") in the reef, including tabulate coral ("honeycomb"), branching black coral ("ebony antler"), and massive or brain coral. A couple more lines and the poet finally settled on another image, possibly that of a mangrove tree that colonized the sandy substrate. The canopies of coral and mangrove conjured the two hemispheres of the brain, pointing toward a duality or divided nature of the self: "two trees ... / one tilting leaves ... / one dark as water". Two contending qualities in a person: light and darkness, good and evil, civilized and savage.

For her novel, Tiempo transplanted the image of the submerged, rooted trees from underwater to land. She used the characters of twins as literal representation of duality. And the trees were made literal trees for the story surprisingly traced an ecological theme of forest loss and environmental degradation. Perhaps it was not that surprising since Tiempo, in her illustrious literary career, had been carefully mapping in her works the search for kindly habitat and habitation, a secure and peaceful dwelling place for humans.

The story centered on Primo Gutierrez, chairman of the Biology Department in a Christian college in a mountainous region in northern Philippines. Primo had an identical twin brother, Pascual, who was shot to death while doing research in a forest area in Mindanao three years before the present story. Pascual was a sociologist studying the mythical epics of the Manobo tribe. He was searching for an old chanter whose version of the Creation myth was "distinctly pagan, [with] no Christian influence". He wandered into a logged over area and most likely came into contact with illegal logging operators who may be responsible for his death.

The story's background of a new statewide policy banning commercial logging of natural forests was a significant national issue. In the early 1990s, the popular sentiment in the country was the stoppage of all forms of logging. The clamor reached a high pitch in 1993 when the Supreme Court handed a famous decision that practically terminated all permits issued to timber companies. The Court found that there was no impairment of contract on the part of the companies since the continued logging operations posed a threat to public interest and ran against the constitutional provision on the public's right to a "balanced and healthful ecology". It was a victorious moment for environmentalists as the Court established a precedent in defining the legal basis for protecting "human welfare" in the face of activities that can lead to depletion of natural resources. Just last year the President signed an executive order that prescribes a moratorium on logging of natural forests.

3 Twins, trees

At the start of the story, a high-ranking environmental officer visited Primo's town to have a dialogue with university officials, businessmen, and the locals about the new government regulations and how the logging ban will be implemented. Conflict ensued between logging concessionaires and a populace who were sympathetic to the environmental cause and who believed that forests need immediate protection. Meanwhile, a fellow scientist and friend of Primo asked if he can capture a local species of a river snake to be displayed in a museum. (Legend has it that one of these snakes went on shore from time to time to meet its human twin.) Despite the unusual request, Primo consented to grant his friend's request.

There's not a lack of clues in the novel pertaining to the metaphors of twins and trees. The river snake, finally caught and caged and taken away from its natural habitat, would acquire a symbolic meaning in the story. Image association (of trees and twins, habitat and shadows) was deliberate.

Just now she was looking up at the two acacias standing together, at the intermingling branches where the lights were softened by the thick foliage.... "They remind me of that Classical myth. The old devoted couple turned by one of the gods into two big trees, and their branches still embracing and twining together."

The novelist's pursuit of poetic imagery jived well with the way the mind could be seduced by a novel idea. It certainly mirrored Primo's obsession with finding out the truth behind his brother's murder. What happened to Pascual three years ago was consuming the living twin. It was like an itching in Primo's being, a worm wriggling inside him. An atoll colonizing and taking root in the mind.

He was shaking his head, "you don't know what I feel about it. I will retrace the events that ended in the Manago forest. I can't as you say, let it lie. The way I feel, it's as if I've left my cut-off arm somewhere and I must find it before it festers beyond helping and I'm lost."

The story was driven by this obsession with uncovering the identity of Pascual's killer. Its pace and momentum, however, was broken in several directions whenever the story digressed into the situations of other characters. It was rather jarring how undue attention was given to minor characters who were dealing with their own dark secrets. It was as if these characters also began to take root in the story too and it was now hard to uproot them, their identities now a resilient part of the novel's ecosystem.

There was a logger who could not forget an incident in the second world war when he fought as a guerrilla. There was a sideways focus on a teenage son of one of Primo's co-teachers. Baffling scenes and moments intruding on the plot. It was narrative diffusion, stretching taut the novel's boundaries. On the plus side the various concerns made for a dynamic story. The thread of the patchwork vision frayed in unpredictable directions. Moreover, each intrusion was distinguished by a display of small compassionate gestures, small acts of generosity and kindness of the characters.

It was as if in certain places the shafts of light ("the sun's bright pennies") were allowed to penetrate the thick canopy of leaves. The shifted story trained a revealing light on the novel's dark recesses, and the patchwork vision was nevertheless a vision whole and intact. Tiempo's other signature works were similarly built on the rough edges of haphazard plot and imagery, similarly compensated for by the pervading mystery and unpredictable texture of the narrative.

In her late novel The Builder (2004), Tiempo unravelled a murder underpinned by motives to displace indigenous peoples from their ancestral domains. The reluctant detective was a physics professor who was in the middle of building a house for his growing family. Tiempo's characters were often adrift in an exiled or homeless state, as if some meaning was wrenched out from their existence and they were trying to locate or build a traditional home where they can rest their weary, sinful humanities. The image of the house was also conspicuous in her first book The Tracks of Babylon and Other Poems (1966). The collection contained a sequence of five sonnets called "Five Homes"; the first of which was called "The Mason":

Down in the pit, the sanctum, the mason's eyes
Lift to the quarry wall as he taps at the wedge.
From the crumbly blocks jut slowly the edge
Of the sweet sharpness he knows as muscle throes.
Yet it is purpose, too, the astuteness of a rite,
To wield the rod by which a dry stone flows,
To cut his wedge-forms on the towering white,
To pile the bricks of passion and surmise.

Men's rages, his own, he would understand,
A craftsman, he confines them by his hand.
But fashioning his schemes, picking at the stone,
Gouging truth's niches into the echoing walls,
He sees something long since carved: his house of bone,
Where daily his breaths wheeze in the dust-choked halls.

The "house of bone" that harbored "men's rages" was resurrected in "Banhaus", in Marginal Annotations and Other Poems (2001).

Before the furnishings composed the rooms:
Before the bed and the couch conceived
A soft, a warm for the skin and bones,
Before the oven and the freezer cooked up
The hot and the cold
Before the pulled drape let the stray beam
Splatter the shapes and colors,
Would the house then really be?
...............................................................
Old Time, with bell unclappered, may not
Toll old Saxon's house of bone; but
Can never divine it while
The house defines, defiles,
While it confines us.

As with these poems, the novel One, Tilting Leaves was concerned with the teasing out of a metaphor. This project the novelist carried out with the obstinacy of a poet, her single-minded pursuit of organic meaning in the understory of possibilities. The reader is presented an image, deconstructed through several image associations. He is left to ponder the narrative, to see it through (like a craftsman "gouging truth's niches").

In using the image of twins and intertwined trees in the same breath, the writer was guilty of mixing metaphors. Comfort's poem on the split in the mind was also a mixed metaphor of corals and trees. It was in some ways a poem about mixed metaphors (i.e., the divided self). Investigating how the metaphors can hold together or cohere was somehow an act of  reading into, or making sense of, narrative estrangements. The builder of words creates spaces in the text, allowing the reader to recognize the forest from the trees. Perhaps the very reason the other half of the title was withheld was to let us decipher the hidden face of the other.

"Every creature alive is the product of a unique history"—the words of a great naturalist who honored every individual creations.... At what point in my evolution did my twin-nature merged into one? ... Who ... had expunged the secret sharer? In our yoked complexity what was there in us to bring each one to the truth? The spiritual element?—Wasn't this a softened shadow now, the shadow of the old heritage? Risk and harshness and the hungers and drives of the human's evolution. Why else would a man kill, why else could he kill? ... The genetic engineers, should they unscramble the solid intermix to say, This figment is me, this blot is my twin?

Tiempo had defined her ecological ethic from Loren Eiseley. The turn toward evolutionary history as the basis of the animal nature to kill added dimension to the idea of duality. The novelist also hinted at one other habitat from which the characters—all humans, in fact—cannot escape from. The house of memory which either gave man ("the house of bone") the strength to move on with his life or imprisoned him in its insane embrace.

The right metaphor has an insidious way of seizing broken minds. The mind selfishly seizes ideas and owns them. Processed by memory, the mediated images have now a hard time of being erased. Tiempo took upon the task of finding ways to dramatize the force of poetry in a novel. She produced a work which coiled around precise natural images and cultivated the tension between homegrown civilization and primate savagery.

4 Postscript: Black pitcher

When, in 2010, a team of scientists first saw the black pitcher plant in Shumkak Peak in the mountain range of Victoria-Annepahan, they were easily convinced it was a new record species. Spectacular and unique, it evolved for years no human memory can recall; only the genetic memory of plants and animals passed on through the generations could explain it. It nestled in the upper reaches of the mountain, in the central portion of the island shaped like a folded umbrella. Its pitcher was uncommonly black, but its soul, no less innocent, was colorless. It harbored the guilt of existence and the hermetic value of its evolution. For its own sake it curled up to catch the rainwater. Whatever extraordinary medicinal powers its juice possesses, nobody knew for now. Yet it was a novelty ware, occupier of an ecological niche in the news. At another time it will be a desiccated museum piece, or a minor attraction in herbaria and botanical gardens. (Whether it will succumb to future calamities masterminded by Cain’s tribe, nobody could say.) The enlarged vessel was a threat to insects and other small animals. Once they slipped down the cavity, it will only be a matter of sunsets for their components to dissolve and be consumed by the plant. Doubtless, it was guilty of preying on unsuspecting organisms, entrapping and incarcerating them down the food chain.

The name of the black pitcher plant was leonardoi, in honor of the botanist who was killed three days after it was found. While doing field work in the forests of Leyte, Leonardo was allegedly trapped in a crossfire between government troops and leftist rebels. Perhaps it was destiny that led his fellow scientists to encounter this carnivorous pitcher in the mountains. The black deed could not taint the blood of killers but their political hearts were impaled in the color of this plant. The human courts may hold tilted scales, but in the courts of nature there lie the balance of poetry. The always objective systematics of ecological memory.