Dugo sa Bukang-Liwayway (Bleeding Sun)

 

Dugo sa Bukang-Liwayway (Bleeding Sun) by Rogelio Sicat, translated by Ma. Aurora L. Sicat (Penguin Random House SEA, 2024)

 

 

 

 

The agrarian novel was a rich vein in Philippine novel writing. It pitted farmers against landlords, the powerless against the powerful. Class conflict was the canvas of the novelist where he painted stories of social injustice and human rights abuses. The imbalance of power originated from cacique democracy, which, according to Benedict Anderson, prevailed during the latter part of the Spanish occupation of the Philippines in late 19th century up to the American imperialism and beyond. Several masterful Filipino writers explored this type of dramatic conflicts, the most notable of which were produced by novelists such as Lázaro Francisco (The World Is Still Beautiful, translated by Mona P. Highley), Servando de los Angeles (The Last Timawa, translated by Soledad S. Reyes), Amado V. Hernandez (Crocodile's Tears, translated by Danton Remoto), and F. Sionil José (Dusk and Tree). An important Filipino novel which had the same thematic concern was Rogelio Sicat's novel Dugo sa Bukang-Liwayway, first serialized in Liwayway magazine from September 1965 to February 1966. It was now finally translated by his daughter Ma. Aurora L. Sicat and published in English translation after almost 60 years.

Dugo means blood while bukang-liwayway is a mouthful, yet beautiful, Filipino term for daybreak or sunrise. The title of Sicat's novel could literally mean "blood (spilled) at dawn." Bleeding Sun was an inspired choice for a title; it had a poetic ring to it. And it was apt, given the agrarian struggle depicted in the novel, which was also subtitled "The Tale of a Farmer's Crushed Dreams and Hopes." The publication of this translation was of great cultural and literary significance. Hence, one could forgive the misspelled "liwaway" in the book cover and title pages. I read the Kindle version, and I'd also buy the print edition, once available, for my collection of translated Philippine novels.

There are two farmers in the novel: Tano and his son, Simon. Their story was set against the backdrop of Philippine history. The novel deliberately interspersed "journalistic" narration of historical events during and after the American colonial period. There were also scenes of Japanese occupation in the country. Through this novelistic melding of public and private histories, Sicat welds the political and historical forces with the farm labor and land economy which favors the landlords and brings them wealth. For tenant farmers working the rich landowner's farm, work was backbreaking.

His [Tano's] legs were shaking. He had patiently been planting the seedlings the whole day. Like other farmers, he was moving swiftly because they did not own the land and hence were not too eager to cultivate the best crops. Nonetheless, growing rice was their livelihood, their bread and butter, their only means of survival. Their only choice was either to work to survive, or starve to death.

Simon's mother died while giving birth to him after the landlord refused to extend help during the delicate childbirth. Tano took care of the child on his own, sent him to school, and taught him farming (the only way he knew to support their living) although Tano never wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and become a slave of land. It was not only masters, however, that poor farmers like Tano had to contend with. Natural disasters, in the form of a very destructive typhoon or an extreme dry spell, were tricks of fate that befall the unfortunate tillers of land. Sicat realistically portrayed the rhythms and routine of agricultural life in the first half of the twentieth century. He imbued his struggling characters with dignity despite the bad luck and cruel and whimsical landlords that accompany their lot in life. 

The sun in the title was the constant witness to this daily grind and toil on the land. In setting and rising without fail, the sun was arbiter of time and shaper of destinies. Tano later fell sick, lost his right to farm the land due to this illness, and died. Although poverty was not a birthright or an asset, it was passed on to Simon. It was now Simon's time to struggle on his own. Because of the abuses he and his family received from the landowner Paterno Borja, Simon vowed to amass wealth and seek revenge.

‘I’m leaving for Manila again, Ka Tindeng.’ Simon embraced her. ‘I will go back to Manila, Ka Tindeng. I will not return without a plan for vengeance. I swear, Ka Tindeng.’

 

That was Simon's promise in the novel's second chapter ("Escape: 1942"), one he would fulfill in a decade's time. His name, of course, recalled the jeweler Simoun, the vengeful character in José Rizal's El Filibusterismo. In "Return: 1951", the third and final chapter of Sicat's novel, the word "vengeance" appeared three times and the word "revenge" appeared twice. The Simoun revenge storyline of Rizal was borrowed or appropriated in other Tagalog novels: sequels or spinoffs of El Filibusterismo like Lázaro Francisco's Ilaw sa Hilaga (Light in the North), Amado V. Hernandez's Birds of Prey, and Macario Pineda's Isang Milyong Piso (One Million Pesos).

In Simon, however, Sicat conflated the vengeful Simoun with the idealistic Juan Crisostomo Ibarra. His Simon was not only going after his enemies but also establishing an agricultural school in his hometown to enhance the lives of the farmers.

The novel's climax directly referenced Rizal, and its ending was a nod to the ending of Noli Me Tangere. The final words in Bleeding Sun paraphrased the dying Elias's lament in the last chapter of the Noli (translated by Charles E. Derbyshire): "I die without seeing the dawn brighten over my native land! You, who are to see it, welcome it—and forget not those who have fallen during the night!" In Bleeding Sun, this lament was transmuted into a challenge to the next generation, urging them to act, to strive to prove that the death of a progressive man was not in vain.

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In Kapag Sumalupa ang Gunita (When Memory Lands on Earth), a selection of Sicat's journal entries published in 2018 by Ateneo de Naga University Press, he expressed his ambivalent and often hostile attitude toward Filipino writers writing in the English language. He was uncompromising in his position that only one's native language can fully and authentically express one's aspirations.

Saang wika susulat? Sumulat ka sa wika ng iyong panaginip. Iyan ang bukal ng tunay mong sarili. Aral, kundi man artipisyal, ang sumulat sa ibang wika. May malalalim na lugar na di nasisid ng Ingles. Sa tabi o sa gilid lamang ito nakapapaligo pagkat di marunong lumangoy, o kung marunong maý sa swimming pool lamang.

Di sa ilog o lawa o dagat.

(In what language should one write? Write in the language of your dreams. That is the source of your true self. To write in other languages is, if not artificial, merely an acquired habit. There are depths that the English language could not fathom. Because it does not know how to swim, it could only bathe in the shallow parts of the water. Or, if it does know how to swim, it could only immerse in swimming pools.

 

Not in rivers or lakes or seas.)

Sicat believed that revolutionary thought was only possible through the use of Filipino language. It enabled one to look inward, not outward, and to bring out the inner self. The use of foreign languages, he wrote in his journals, destroyed Philippine folklore. Filipino writers in English were only able to build artificial worlds. Ang paggamit ng banyagang wika'y pagbura ng gunita. (To write in a foreign language is to erase memory.) This linguistic position put Sicat at odds with many established writers in his time.

In Bleeding Sun, it was safe to say that he would make an exception to his attitude toward the English language, and that he would even be proud of the result, not only because it was his novel that was translated and that it was his daughter who translated it. Ma. Aurora L. Sicat's version captured well Rogelio Sicat's depiction of rural Philippines farm life of the previous century. It produced English equivalents for the Tagalog rhythms of farm work and its interplay with the natural world, as well as the heroic struggles of peasant farmers.

Rogelio Sicat himself was a translator. He produced a Filipino version of Karel Čapek's R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots (reviewed here) and William J. Pomeroy's The Forest: A Personal Record of the Huk Guerrilla Struggle in the Philippines. He knew how supplanting words from one language to another was a creative act that goes beyond mere word substitution or replacement. In Bleeding Sun, the world of Dugo sa Bukang-Liwayway was not artificial but a dramatic world of feelings and conflicts, an assembly of chronological scenes contextualized in history. Despite its dark ending, the novel was inspiring and fully alive in its story of enduring class struggles from the point of view of the working class.