Joaquín and the angel of history

Last February 2017, I wrote the following in a blog post about the impending publication of Nick Joaquín's The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic:

The inclusion of his famous play A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino (1966) in the Penguin anthology was an inspired decision. The three-act "elegy", which the playwright also labeled as "a novel in the form of a play", was a distillation of his romantic ideas on Spanish Filipino culture, its struggle against modernity and war, symbolized by the protagonists—two spinster sisters—and their tenacious hold on a highly symbolic picture painted by their disillusioned father and inspired by Greek mythology. A Portrait was the writer's statement about art and its role in restoring ceremonial traditions, art and its fragility against the savage wars of peace. The writer was much concerned about the inability of culture (Spanish Filipino customs and ceremonies) to adapt to encroaching lawlessness and to reconcile the history of the past with the chaos of the present. Much like Walter Benjamin's "Angel of History" in On the Concept of History (Thesis IX), after Paul Klee's Angelus Novus (1920), Joaquín's elegiac source spring was looking back at the past with the foreknowledge that the future storm would bring ruin to memory.

Vicente L. Rafael, who introduced the book, was reading my mind, and I, his. The book was published in April 2017, and I did not recall reading an advance copy of Rafael's introduction prior to that. The final paragraph of his introduction reads:

Nick Joaquin's stories provide us with such counsel. Swept by the catastrophes of colonialism and war, Joaquin, like St. Sylvestre [in his 1946 story "The Mass of St. Sylvestre"], looked both ways. Lingering on the threshold of what had happened and what was yet to come, he found himself irresistibly drawn, like the Angel of History, to the debris of colonial catastrophes that just kept piling up around him. He sought to retrieve from the ruins of modernity the means for conveying experience—his own as well as others'—in stories about forgotten legends, repressed events, flawed fathers, two-naveled women, and the miracles of a merciful Virgin that continue to emerge from the ever-perplexing and vertigo-inducing history of a certain Philippines. We, whoever we are, receive his stories told from a ruined world, hearing and perhaps sharing them as we would the shards of our own lives.

Rafael provided an endnote to the penultimate sentence:

The image of the "Angel of History," suggested in this instance by the image of the myriad angels surrounding St. Sylvestre as he leads his procession, is of course drawn from Paul Klee's painting Angelus Novus and discussed by Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in Illuminations, 257-58. I borrow the term "vertigo-inducing" from the great historical comparativist Benedict Anderson, who uses it to describe the conjunctural strangeness of the Philippines in world history. See Anderson, "The First Filipino," London Review of Books 19(20) (Oct. 16, 1997): 22-23 [online]. He, too, was an admirer of Nick Joaquin and Walter Benjamin.

Anderson was of course an admirer of Benjamin. He wrote an introduction to the Filipino translation of Benjamin's treatise, Hinggil sa Konsepto ng Kasaysayan (High Chair, 2013), translated by Ramon Guillermo. To me, the image of the Angel of History, in relation to Joaquín's oeuvre, was suggested by Anderson himself, by Benjamin  himself, and by Joaquín himself.

I bought Guillermo's translation in the Manila International Book Fair 2016. According to my Goodreads account, I marked it as "to-read" in October and "shelved" it in the "2016" folder in December (i.e., read the book in the latter part of 2016). Anderson's striking description of the Angel of History was what particularly drew me to it. Here's the relevant passage; forgive the lengthy context at the start.

In the growing darkness of the 1920s and 1930s, Gramsci, the great Italian Marxist thinker and leader wrote, incarcerated in Mussolini's Fascist jails, that communists had to combine "pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will." Kafka had written not long before his early death: "There is hope, but not for us." Benjamin, who had to flee to Paris when Hitler came to power in 1933, watched Franco bloodily win the Civil War in Spain, Tokyo's armies cruelly occupying a huge part of China, anti-Semitic dictatorships in Portugal and central, eastern and southeastern Europe, France defeated by Hitler and now led by Marshal Pétain's rightwing dictatorship, but only in its southern regions, and Stalin's compact with Hitler in 1939, whereby eastern Europe was divided between them. Benjamin's, [sic] "Theses on the Concept of History", never fully finished, was written in the doomed Paris of 1940. It is from this devastated last work which come some of the most unforgettable, despairing passages. "All documents of civilization are at the same time documents of barbarism" is the shortest, while the most melancholically beautiful is the image of the Angel of History, who has his back to the future and contemplates all human history as an accumulating, unending pile of wreckage, ruin, and disaster. Benjamin wrote that the Angel can not turn his back from the past because his wings are caught in an unstoppable storm coming from paradise, "the storm that we call progress."

Joaquín himself was that same angel of history, enacting the same gesture of looking squarely at the ruins of Manila after the Japanese bombed it in the Second World War. The anguish of the novelist was evident in his elegiac and edgy descriptions of postwar Manila in The Woman Who Had Two Navels (the novel version) as "flat and spiky, its bared ribs and twisted limbs a graph of pain in the air", "traffic brimming between the banks of rubble", "the ruins noisy with night clubs", "a glittering fashion show in the bullet-pocked ballroom of a gutted hotel".

In Nick: A Portrait of the Artist Nick Joaquin (2011)—a biography of the novelist co-written by his nephew Tony Joaquín—the angel of history was pained at the image of destruction and atrocity in the walled city in front of him. The book was quoted in Ruel S. De Vera's review article:

There are many memorable scenes in “Nick,” but probably the most heartbreaking was that of Nick surveying the ruins of Intramuros after it had been razed to the ground during the Second World War: “Intramuros was so familiar and close to Nick’s heart. He knew where each building had stood. As he gazed around him and took in the destruction and realized all that had been destroyed and lost, a deep loud groan escaped from him and his body began to shake all over as sobs rose from the very pit of his stomach.”

I saw Ang Larawan: The Musical in cinema early this year. This adaptation of Joaquín's famous play was full of intimations and prefigurations of war. The role of art, history, tradition, and culture was sustained amid the spreading tentacles of modernity, war, and progress. The controversial portrait at the center of the play, the one owned by two unmarried sisters, might as well be the same horrifying image the angel of history was witnessing: the image that could crush his wings and send him tumbling into the future.

On the natural history of the Devil

How exactly did the devils appear in the Philippines in the the 15th and 16th centuries, as compiled by Isabelo de los Reyes from old Spanish missionary documents and published as El Diablo en Filipinas (Ang Diablo sa Filipinas)? In a variety of expected ways it turned out. In August and September 1595, Fr. Aduarte reported that in the City of Nueva Segaovia, there was "spotted a mastiff of unheard-of size making several turns around the Church and adjoining houses." Fr. Aduarte conjectured that "there can be no doubt who the mastiff really was."

It was notable how, according to the documents, a local demon even predicted the coming of the new faith brought by men "dressed in long robes." And then there was the demon who made "painful pranks" to a solitary man in a forest. "The evil spirit would bring him a number of beings resembling girls. Then, either by deceitful words or force, the man would be put in the midst of some thick shrubs, where the girls would toss him into the air as if they were playing with a pelota ball. Finally, they would leave the man there half dead...."

Sometimes the chronicles also reinforced the folk beliefs and chalked them up to the devil's manipulative designs. An example was the demon jumping on top of a sick man and shutting his mouth, a phenomenon known locally as bang̃ung̃ut (nightmare). Elsewhere, the narrator and Gatmaitan read of the exploits of the demon possessing or tormenting the 'Indios' and being fought off by priests and defeated only after an extended "pitched battle."

These and many other awesome occurrences characterized the various demonic manifestations in the archipelago. Many other horrifying episodes were recounted in the book. One involved the summit of Taal Volcano sinking into the crater and accompanied by hair-raising roars, fearful voices, groans, thunderclaps, and lamentations. The devils often favored the forms of an animal: "deformed and monstrous dog," "fierce, black, and terrifying cat," and "ferocious man-eating caiman." Yet sometimes they appeared with such beautiful face and could even impersonate the figure of Christ! The devil was, then and now, so multi-talented, so spectacular.

* * *

The idea of the devil in relation to natural environment, as recorded by the friars, was particularly interesting for the insights it gave on sustainability issues and ecological implications. Behind native beliefs in animism, concepts of natural disaster risks, extreme weather events, and ecosystems connectivity were apparent. This could be seen in one passage read aloud by Gatmaitan.

"[...] On the same page you will find something else. Don Luys Pérez Dasmariñas ... spent a night on the slope of a small hill dedicated to the demon (in Cagayan). ... No native would dare to cut down trees to make poles or anything else, except in service to this demon. If these rules are violated, then the ocean will get very rough, and the wind leap high, destroying houses... That very night the most violent of wind-storms blew high and stirred the ocean to surge over the shoreline and reach as far inland as the military billets, usually thought to be very safe under dangerous conditions. The storm obliged the soldiers and even Don Luys to flee, the latter losing a lot of his assets because he had cut down so much on 'his' hill (branches and sugar cane)." [emphases added]

Trees (mangroves or otherwise) had always been seen as a shield against typhoons. Divine, or rather devil's, retribution after violating the rules came in the form of natural disasters like storm, storm surge, and flash flood. To cut down trees was seen as an affront to the demon who dwells in a hill in Cagayan. This environmentalist folk belief, alongside its metaphysical color, was fascinating for sustaining a strategy to conserve the natural environment and prevent loss of human lives and properties.

Another instance of environmentalism in native beliefs which were perversely twisted by the friars was taken from the chronicle of Father Gaspar de S. Agustin, as read by Gatmaitan:

'In the township of Dumalag (in Panay) ... there was a gigantic tree on which uncountable numbers of small birds used to meet. They never stopped making a tremendous noise with the chirping they created, and this was a notable inconvenience for all the people of the township. But the Indios had such superstitious reverence for the tree that they would not approach it even from a considerable distance. They also refused to cut the nearby grass which they likewise regarded as sacred. They explained this custom by saying that the tree was inhabited by Divatas, deities of the forests and mountains, whom they venerated from ancient times.... Father Hernando de Morales came to the tree and carved a cross on its trunk, whereupon all the birds departed forever; even if a few people moved in, they soon fled too, because these birds were demons or [the souls of] Indios of the township, who had meetings with the demon on just that spot.' [emphases added]

The great reverence for the natural components of the ecosystem (sacred tree, sacred grass, hill, birds) was consistent to the beliefs of several indigenous groups in the Philippines. The Molbog tribe in Balabac, for example, also believes in sacred trees. The preservation of these trees—specifically lu-jan and manggis [1]—are important for the survival of their tribe. Another belief of the Molbog is for sacred sea turtles. They are particularly wary of the Leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), a critically threatened species, which they described as having ‘scales’ on the back. They believe that this turtle is the ‘king of the turtles’ and that capturing such turtle will bring bad omen.

A similar concept of taboo (bad omen) could be seen in the indigenous beliefs on "mataw fishing" of the Ivatan in Batanes [2]. The indigenous peoples still retained some of these beliefs even at present times due to their relative isolation and insulation from the mainstream society and colonialism.

The natural history of the Devil in the Philippines showed that colonialism and environmental degradation went hand in hand. The superstitious friars targeted the old belief systems, spun stories over and around them, and encoded a new belief system. Theirs was a most efficient and effective way to propagate the new faith. Anything that appeared strange to them they labeled as originating from the "devil" even when the concept of the "sacred" was associated to divine origin. Devil or not, the spirits guarding the natural environment were evicted and the country's natural resources began to be utilized and extracted in unsustainable manner. After the disruption of spiritual balance, the overturn of ecological balance.



Notes:

[1] Beyond cultural beliefs, there are actually ecological and economic reasons for the preservation of the Molbog "sacred trees." According to a field guide on plants by Madulid (2002), the manggis (Koompassia excelsa) is recorded only in Palawan. It is a habitat of threatened birds such as the Philippine cockatoo, the talking mynah, and blue-naped parrot. It is also a place for beehives. Some Molbog believe this tree is sacred because it stands tall over the forest canopy, and so serves as protection against typhoons, although its branches are not that strong.

Lu-jan, another sacred tree, is most probably one of the two species of wild durian (Durio testudinarum and Durio zibethinus). Both fruits are edible. D. testudinarum or Dugyan is a rare species while D. zibethinus, known as Durian or Luad, is indigenous in the Western Malayan archipelago and is cultivated in southern Philippines. The fruit of the first species serves as food for wild pigs, anteaters, and squirrels. The second species has a more palatable fruit; its edible seeds are boiled and roasted and have medicinal properties (Madulid 2002). Lu-jan, which is either or both of these trees, is probably considered sacred because it serves as food for the Molbog especially in times of hunger and days of poverty. There are few other sources of food coming from the forest except for this important tree.

[2] The Ivatan believed in añitu (invisible beings) who have the power and capricious nature to inflict misfortune on people. They believed in dagen (taboo) which prescribes etiquette and protocol and reveals an ethnic respect toward one’s fish catch. For instance, the ‘placing of dirt’ on fishing gear and boat and even on the hands and body of the fisherman renders him unable to catch fish. In catching dorado (dolphinfish), the fisher must be coaxing and not arrogant. The fisherman must remove the hook from the dorado’s mouth while at sea, and the dorado should be faced toward the land and their tails toward the sea when laying them on the shore. While eating lataven (kilawin), one must not spit out the bones but take them carefully from one’s mouth. There are supernatural consequences for violating dagen or not performing an important ritual. This includes the inability to catch fish or misfortune (sickness, accident, death). Breach of dagen may also affect the catches of an entire fishing group. The dagen also prescribes strategies to conserve or regulate the fishery resource use such as seasonal use rights and regulation of gear entry and individual catch quotas. [See Mangahas (1993), "Traditional Fishermen’s Associations, Indigenous Belief System, and Laws," in Indigenous Coastal Resource Management: The Case of Mataw Fishing in Batanes (Quezon City: UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies). For a historical and legal perspective on the plight of indigenous peoples, see Molintas (2004), "The Philippine Indigenous People’s Struggle for Land and Life: Challenging Legal Texts," Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law 21(1): 269-306.]

Ang Diablo sa Filipinas

Ang Diablo sa Filipinas ayon sa nasasabi sa mga casulatan luma sa Kastila (The Devil in the Philippines according to ancient Spanish documents) [bilingual, in Tagalog and English] by Isabelo de los Reyes, tr. Benedict Anderson, Carlos Sardiña Galache, and Ramon Guillermo (Anvil, 2014)

In 1886, when Isabelo de los Reyes was 23 years old, he published a story in Spanish in La Oceania Española, a Manila newspaper. In 1889 it was serialized in four parts in the bilingual La España Oriental, appearing in Spanish and in Tagalog translation. El Diablo en Filipinas is a horror story dealing with supernatural occurrences of a legion of devils in the Philippine islands. It also happens to be a comedy. In fact, this is a horror story of colonialism, based on 15th and 16th century documents produced by four members of the Spanish clergy based on their stay in the country: Diego Aduarte (1566-1636), Francisco Colín, SJ (c. 1625-60), Gaspar de San Agustin (1650-1724), and Juan Francisco de San Antonio (1682-1744).

The horror story arose from the methodical ways with which the four friars collectively inventoried various demonic encounters and their interpretations of them according to the Catholic doctrine. The devilish manifestations in the Spanish chronicles were recounted through the conversation between the first person narrator and his bookish friend Gatmaitan. Like spin doctors, the priests appropriated or retold the native stories of the "devil" and supplanted them with stories consistent to their own dogmatic faith of good and evil, God and Satan (Diablo). The real horror story appeared to be the systematic erasure or recasting of native beliefs, the "exorcism" of folk stories and their replacement by new Spanish versions.

The story takes place in Bulacan where the narrator and Gatmaitan, upon learning of the death of a directorcillo, visited the house of the dead man's widow. They were ushered into the dead man's library where they found copies of the friars' chronicles mentioning stories about the Devil, local seers, sorcerers, and witches. The bulk of the narrative was the exchange between the two friends, with the narrator playing the part of the skeptic and Gatmaitan the impressionable believer. By the end of the story, they were so steeped with the fearsome contents of the books that when a rat crossed the library floor Gatmaitan was so frightened he thought it was the devil ghost of the departed official. As he ran out of the room, he banged his head on the door. When the narrator hastily tried to help him, the latter tripped over and crashed on top of him.

The comedy was apparent from the credulous reactions of the characters to the passages they were reading. The lengthy quotations and paraphrases from extant documents lent a historic and deadpan air into the conversation. It was surreal fiction when the source stories were documentary sources and there were historical contexts expanded in the copious annotations by the translators. Certainly there was a touch of (evil) fun to be derived in this diabolic treatise of the Devil in the Philippines.

According to Anderson, Isabelo de los Reyes wrote this comedy to show how the "medievally superstitious friars were still wailing about the paganism, animism, and supersitions of the 'natives.'"

The Spaniards brought with them Catholic fantasies, which gradually entered into local languages—e.g. demonio (demonito too), Diablo, Duende, Sirena, Kapre and so on. Thus Satan arrived with the colonial conquest. But more importantly Isabelo wanted to put Catholic conceptions under the microscope of secular science, especially Folk-lore Studies. Legends and myths are well worth studying from the outside as mere passing cultural phenomena. Filipinos should learn to see Catholicism's imaginary in the same category as paganism's—pure Folklore.

Satan arrived with the colonial conquest. Even if the friars considered themselves the 'savior' of a 'heathen' people, Satan himself, it could be argued, is the colonial master, the one who supplanted old superstitions with new ones. Take for example a passage from Historia (1640)  by the Dominican Friar Diego de Aduarte:

The chronicler added that in this manner the witches, with the help of the Devil [el Diablo], made themselves owners 'of the haciendas, food and personages among all the Indios.' It looks like these wicked women are quite unlike the mangcuculam [sorcerers], and these old ladies say that they know how to get revenge in any way they wish.'

Seeing that I looked at him with great admiration, Gatmaitan added: "Yes, that's right. You should believe in the Devil [Diablo]. After all, he presented himself to many of the Saints and even Jesus Christ. And since you have done justice to the reputation of Señor Aduarte, and since we have encountered his ghost in this library, let us amuse ourselves by reading what he had to say about the craziness of demons in the Philippines. What we find on page 70 is curious. There Aduarte notes that a group of Pangasinenses, wandering about in their homeland—before the arrival of the Dominicans, i.e before 1587—heard a powerful and frightening voice. It was the voice of Apolaqui, their God of War, who said to them: I weep to see the completion of what I expected for many years, namely that you would welcome some foreigners with white teeth and hooded heads, who would implant amidst your houses crossed poles (crosses) to torment me all the more. I am leaving you to seek people who will follow me, for you have abandoned me, your ancient lord, for foreigners.

The abandonment of old gods (or devils) was indeed the triumph of colonialism. The chroniclers reinforced the stories of the anguish of the old devils who tried all they could, fancy that, to dispel the new god. To prevent the baptism and conversion of the people into a new faith.

F. Sionil José's re-imagined community

This is an expanded version of a previous post.


Po-on (1984, also published as Dusk) is the first chronological part of Filipino novelist F. Sionil José's epic story consisting of five volumes and collectively known as the Rosales saga. It is a historical and political novel set in Luzon Island during the last days of Spanish rule in the Philippines in late 19th century up to the entry of American imperialists. It traces the southward journey of an extended family evicted from their homes by Spanish authorities. The Salvador family's journey is marked by indescribable hardship. It also depicts the enduring character of small peoples and their continuing struggle against colonial powers (Spanish and American) and greedy landowners.

The novel is written in spare, transparent, and direct prose, devoid of any flourishes yet lyrical nonetheless. F. Sionil José is persistently spoken of as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. That he hasn't won yet may be explained by the fact that he is not what one would usually consider a prose stylist and that his novels are sometimes weighed down by their political themes. Among Filipino novelists in the English language (those that I've read so far), the late Nick Joaquín and N. V. M. Gonzalez are arguably better writers than him. Even so, his engagement with questions of national identity and social justice makes him a novelist worth reading. His aesthetic can best be summed up by the words of Apolinario Mabini, one of the novel's pivotal historical characters:

"Remember, Eustaquio, these are curtains to a window. And the words are themselves the window. First, the writing must be neat but not ornate for if I wanted beautiful letters, then I would have nothing but a page of the alphabet in ornate lettering. The Chinese consider calligraphy as an art form and it could be beautiful, but attention, as tradition demands, is drawn to the shape of the characters themselves. Great calligraphers are, therefore, great poets, too. But you are not Chinese. Words should not hinder the expression of thought unless one is expressing poetry. I am not writing poetry; I am writing to convince people of the validity of our struggle, its righteousness, and the utter fallacy and hypocrisy of the Americans in saying we are not capable of self-government."

"But you are not Chinese", Mabini emphasized to Eustaquio (Istak), the novel's protagonist. "You are Filipino", he was implying.

Here I'm reminded of the final scene of the 1976 film Ganito Kami Noon ... Paano Kayo Ngayon? (This Is How We Were ... How Are You Now?), directed by Eddie Romero. The main character Nicolas "Kulas" Ocampo (played by Christopher de Leon) encountered a group of children sitting in the midst of ruined shelters of Filipino revolutionaries. He told them, after they related what happened: "Tandaan nyo ito ha: Pilipino rin kayo" ("Remember this: you are also Filipinos").

I'm looking at the Wikipedia page of the film and I think its synopsis could very well describe Sionil José's novel.

Set at the turn of the 20th century during the Filipino revolution against the Spaniards and, later, the American colonizers, it follows a naïve peasant through his leap of faith to become a member of an imagined community.

At present I'm reading an influential book by the scholar and historian Benedict Anderson called Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983, rev. ed. 1991). "Imagined community" is the definition Anderson gave for a nation (excerpt):

[A nation] is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.

It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion....

The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind....

It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm....

Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.

I am quoting Anderson's definition at length because I think that "nationalism" is the underlying theme of the novel (and the whole Rosales saga) and consequently a robust framework in which to approach it. (Any investigation of national literatures will, I think, benefit from Anderson's ideas in his book.) Po-on is published just a year after Anderson's book came out, and yet the elements of a nation (imagined, community, limited, sovereign) are well integrated into the story.

The idea of sovereignty and self-government, for example, is evident from the first quoted passage. In addition, the imagination of national (territorial) boundaries can be seen in another passage in the novel, the words of Mabini again, replying to Istak's question on why he must care for this "nameless mass" Mabini calls Filipinas and for the people not even related to him:

"If there is no country as such or as you know and recognize, then in your mind you must give it its boundaries. Do this because without this country you are nothing. This land where you stand, from which you draw your sustenance, is the Mother you deny. It's to her where your thoughts will go even if you refuse to think so, for it is here where you were born, where your loved ones live, and where in all probability you will all die. We will love her, protect her, all of us—Bisaya, Tagalog, Ilokano, so many islands, so many tribes—because if we act as one, we will be strong and so will she be. Alone, you will fall prey to every marauder that passes by. I am not asking that you love Filipinas. I am asking that you do what is right, what is duty ..." [emphasis added]

The same hopeful leap from regionalism (Bisaya, Tagalog, Ilokano, etc.) to nationalism marks the ending of Ganito Kami Noon ... Paano Kayo Ngayon? It's not surprising then that these re-imagining of a national community earned for the novelist, as well as the filmmaker, the honor of being elected a "National Artist".