Canal de la Reina

Canal de la Reina by Liwayway Arceo, translated from Filipino by Soledad S. Reyes (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2019)

As with most Filipino novels that saw print in the Philippines in the 20th century, the novels of Liwayway Arceo (1924-1999) were serialized in a magazine of weekly circulation. Readers patiently waited for weekly chapter installments of novels in vernacular language, which at that time still commanded huge following from avid readers, when "popular culture" still had not been colonized by audio-visual media.

Published in 1972 after the Martial Law declaration, Canal de la Reina had the usual marker of Arceo's writing: narratives of family relationships and the intertwining of domestic and societal issues. The novel centered on an act of dispossession and a prayer for justice.

Caridad de los Angeles was visiting the property bequeathed to her by her parents. She was accompanied by her son, daughter, and husband. The house and lot was situated right beside a river canal. Unfortunately, Caridad found out that the property was illegally acquired and occupied by the 60-year old Nyora Tentay, a notorious usurer and opportunist in the area, who would not budge from the place. Osyong, the caretaker hired by Caridad's family to look over the house, illegally sold the property under his care. It was a battle of wills and character.

Caridad did not see the humor. The terrifying image of Nyora Tentay clung to her mind, and she could hear the harsh words spewed by the old woman. Salvador met them and he helped [Caridad] step down. "So?"

"Someone is occupying the land ... she [Nyora Tentay] claims she is the owner." Caridad was on the verge of breaking down. And she recounted what happened. "It's pointless to argue!" She complained. "Osyong made fools of us!"

"What now, Ma?" Leni asked as Caridad settled in the front seat. "Has Mang Osyong sold the property to the fake claimant?"

"That's how it looks, Leni," she was barely audible.

"Oh, she's a tough cookie," Junior joined in. "You'd imagine she's a tiger! She was full of hot air ... as if she's immune to bullets ... she looks the part of a villain through and through!"

Caridad the rightful owner versus Nyora Tentay, a foul-mouthed force to reckon with, the singular matriarch, the unwavering queen of the canal. The senyora was the dragon breathing fire into the novel's cauldron of conflicts.

From this first encounter, the novel unfolded into legal wrangling and morality play. For her part, Nyora Tentay firmly believed in the justness of her occupation of the land. Even if she used illicit means to acquire the property, her cause was valid and justified because she paid for the land.

Strange gurgling sounds were coming from the old woman's throat. She was either gathering phlegm to spit it out or about to cough. "Well ... well ... she'd [Caridad] better be careful! I worked hard to have this land. I spent so much in bribes. Anywhere I looked, I saw lots of people asking for something ... goodness! To spare myself all the paper work, I did what everybody else was doing, cut corners for a fee. So, it's not right for me to let go of this land!"

The justification for land-grabbing here was that she took the trouble of bribing people to get what she wanted. Everyone was doing it. In fighting for Caridad's right to the land, Salvador, her husband used the same method and justification as Nyora Tentay's when he resorted to the same illegal means in bribing someone.

"It's a matter of who moves first, dear ..." and he pulled her towards him. [...] He was gently squeezing here fingers. "Our lawyer explained. That is the system in this country; it has sunk to this level. It's enough to make your stomach churn, but with the way things are, we have no choice."

Salvador's moral justification for expediting the case was no less grave than Nyora's. The whole system was corrupt. Patronage was the only recourse to get what one wants. There is no other choice.

In Nyora's case, another variant of the morality of her action was predicated on her economic dependence on usury and land-grabbing for her livelihood. It was the reason she continued to fight Caridad and desperately clung to the land despite the probabibility of losing in court.

"Ah ... uhm ..." and the old woman swallowed hard. Her forehead automatically knitted. She was bright enough to see how serious her problem was. "Well ... about ... about our case," she claimed. "Are we going to lose everything now? Our wealth came from this, Vic!" She could feel the nagging fear dousing her. "I won't ever let everything disapper like a bubble!"

In Moral Politics in the Philippines: Inequality, Democracy and the Urban Poor (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2019), Professor Kusaka Wataru argued that right and wrong is a fluid concept from the perspective of the urban poor whose struggles in society were ever contextualized by marginalization and defeat.

In the mass sphere, livelihood and dignity are regarded as values that transcend the law. In other words, squatting and street vending are essential to one's livelihood, and hence morally justified, even if they are illegal.

Kusaka's analysis was applied in the contemporary times and the immediate past, and also with regard to the plight of the urban poor. However, the fictional plight of Nyora Tentay the usurer and land-grabber in 1970s Manila was already a novelistic symptom of Kusaka's "moral politics" that prevailed in the city as a result of moral fissures created by social inequalities. The survival of the fittest, dog-eat-dog culture subverts our traditional conception of rights and justice. Kusaka's argument was of course more nuanced and subtle than Arceo's black and white depiction of right and wrong.

That Caridad's land was now adjacent to a festering canal was a very obvious symbol of moral degradation and despoiling of values in a society wracked by poverty and inequities, the society that gave rise to Martial Law, its discontents, and its abuses. This symbolism was reminiscent of a similar estero in Rosario de Guzman Lingat's story. Tentay's villainy in turn was reminiscent of the opaque evilness of the mother in Austregelina Espina-Moore's novella Mila's Mother.
 
While Caridad sought redress for wrongdoing through legal means, the novelist intervened and decided to let Nature have her say. Arceo's default application of natural justice, of an act of God, to right the wrong, might feel like an evasion. The raging storm and flood that swept Nyora's house and devastate the whole community might as well be the dose of harsh reality to awaken the numb moral fiber of a society sleeping in the midst of human rights abuses during the Marcos dictatorship.

But the choice is the novelist's and her choice might be construed as inspired given the context of the need to cleanse the world of evildoing, to punish with the might of heaven. This was a not-so-subtle reminder that novelists could dispense justice and dramatize redemption transparently, sacrificing complex characterization in favor of didactic denouement.

LIWAYWAY ARCEO (Image from: ALIWW)

Patricio Mariano's romantic upheavals

The Star of Panghulo by Patricio Mariano, translated from Tagalog by Soledad S. Reyes (Ateneo de Naga University Press, 2018)

The Star of Panghulo, the translation of a 1913 novel by Patricio Mariano (1877-1935), was not the best book I read this year. It was a minor novel, but it certainly graced the best book cover I encountered this year. For a synopsis of the novel, I don't think I could improve upon what's in the Wikipedia page of the novel. It's a tale of contrasts: two women, two men, two love affairs.

Here we have Soledad S. Reyes doing the translation once again. This was her sixth translated novel from the Philippines since Macario Pineda's The Gold in Makiling in 2012, making her the record holder for the most prolific novel translator in the country.

I could not fault Soledad S. Reyes for which author she translates next. Other than her curation of Rosario de Guzman Lingat's novels and stories, the rest of the writers she translated were male. She seemed to be interested in how Filipino male writers of the first half of the 20th century portrayed women in their fiction. Hence, the novel (and several stories) of Macario Pineda, and then The Golden Dagger by Antonio G. Sempio, and then this novel. The latter two novels were hardly radical in their approach to the novel.

It would have been ideal if Reyes translated the works of better Tagalog novelists instead. For example, other novels by Macario Pineda, or those of Lázaro Francisco. Better yet, she could always select for her translation project the works of other women writers themselves. And why not take a look at the works of some excellent contemporary writers? I could not fault the translator for her chosen project, but how I wish she took some risks.

In any case, the novel in question, set in 1872, provided ample details about life in rural areas in the vicinity of Manila. The translator likely captured the cadence and richness of the Tagalog language in those days.

—Oh, what a terrible fate befalls a poor man,—Pedro interjected, appearing to mumble the words to himself. —Had I been a man of means, your father's violent objection to our love would not have reared its ugly head; and perhaps your parent would not have vilified my honor because of their desire to acquire tons of silver in exchange for your beauty ...

Since the quality of Tagalog as language had evolved between 1913 and 2018, Reyes was attuned to the register of the old Tagalog which must have proved to be slippery when it comes to rendering it in the English. The translator's project was clearly aimed at characterizing portrayal of women in a society steeped in patriarchy, class conflicts, and tradition. It was an era that idealized beauty of the fair sex.

Lucia was like the flower called alexandria, newly sprung in bloom; a flower grown in the country, a Filipina in whose veins flowed Spanish blood because one of her ancestors was the son of a Spaniard; Berta was the bud of sampagita, a flower native to the country, the flower inducing passion among the modest, delicate hearts of the Filipino race, the flower that embodied the love of the best of Filipino womanhood.

The sentimental mannerisms and romantic notions were here in abundance. It idealized Berta, the "star of Panghulo", not only for her beauty but for her compassion and devotion for the poor. In spite of her poverty, "no one would dare mock or cast aspersion upon her, terrified as these potential character assassins were of the barrio folk's collective revenge". The barrio folk had put Berta on the pedestal for her hard work and charity for the poor.

In contrast to the meek and kind Berta, Lucia was portrayed as a liberal woman who was in a lonely relationship with an abusive husband. In those days, the woman's code was to endure being with her husband no matter what. Both Lucia and Berta were subject to the "traditional values" of self-abnegation, how women should behave in order to retain her honor. Lucia for not breaking up with her husband, Berta for not openly declaring her love for a man lest she be labeled as a loose woman.

—Please forgive me, my love,—Pedro said, after I had regained my consciousness. —Forgive me if, because of the deep emotional wound caused by your refusal to say anything yesterday to convince me of your love, I have caused this upheaval. I know the gravity of my sin, that is why I am laying my heart bare, this heart that has caused untold misery; slash it, for each drop of tear flowing from your eyes is my life itself. Here is my treacherous heart. Drain each ounce of its blood to wreak vengeance and so drive away some of your bitterness ...

The syrupy dialogues in the story would probably constitute its greatest novelty. While definitely a flawed novel through and through, The Star of Panghulo was a historical product of the times. At times the narrator displayed some playful, modernist tendencies, at times the characters proclaimed some feminist ideas, but always the narrative was true to the stereotypical conception of women, the premium given to traditional mores, and the abiding patriarchy that shaped human relationships in the novel's time period.

Rosario de Guzman Lingat's stories of women and desire

The Locked Door and Other Stories by Rosario de Guzman Lingat, translated from Tagalog by Soledad S. Reyes (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2017)

For years translator Soledad S. Reyes had been curating the literary production of Rosario de Guzman Lingat (1924-1997): three novels translated into English, numerous essays on the writer, a critical biography, and critical editions of novels and anthologies of stories in Tagalog. Her latest contribution was a selection and translation of stories from Lingat's prodigious body of work. In her introduction to her translation, Reyes said that "the role played by the female protagonist" was her overriding criterion in assembling the anthology. At the height of her literary powers, Lingat was suddenly afflicted by the "Bartleby syndrome", a sickness of writers first described in Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas. She just stopped writing and became a full time housewife.

Lingat's career flowered in the 1960s and 1970s, but even at the height of her popularity, this lovely and highly accomplished woman remained shy and reticent, toiled hard at her stories in between chores as a mother and wife. Indeed, she had no room of her own into which she could withdraw to perfect her craft. Instead, she savored the few precious moments when, having done the cooking and the laundry and having tucked the children in bed, she could be by herself and lose herself in her inner world. She abruptly turned her back on her writing career when she felt that she was no longer getting the professional respect that she deserved.

Reyes's resuscitation of interest into the works of Lingat was commendable. In 2013 alone she came out with translations of three major novels of the writer: The Cloak of God, The Death of Summer, and What Now, Ricky? The present collection of 16 short stories was culled from two anthologies: Si Juan Beterano at Iba Pang Kuwento (1996) and Sa Bukangliwayway ng Isang Kalayaan at Iba Pang Kuwento (2003).

The female protagonists in The Locked Door and Other Stories were either harboring a secret or trying to uncover one. They were either victims of a crime or a witness to one. The stories began calmly but atmospherically, progressing in a silent arc, and terminating in an epiphany, a surprise revelation, or a cathartic ending. In "Estero", for example, a perfect setting was chosen to dramatize a woman's sexual awakening.

To get to their house, she had to cross a wooden bridge that spanned the foul-smelling estero, with its fetid, black, thick water swarming with mosquitoes and other ugly denizens skittering on the surface and plunging into the murky depth. She would cover her nose with a handkerchief as she passed the bridge, enough to bring on the rude catcalls and taunts from the good-for-nothing habitués who, like the mosquitoes and other slimy creatures inhabiting the estero, had entwined themselves around the edges and on the planks of the bridge.

That was such an efficient paragraph to start a story. The few words were not wasted in a story devoted to the main character Sidra's tentative steps to "plunge" into forbidden desire, here crudely represented by the estero. Even the figures of the bystanders in the wooden bridge metamorphosed into the image of mosquitoes and slimy creatures in the background. Sidra, who developed an attraction to Brando, one of the "good-for-nothing habitués", could not decide if she would allow herself to be swayed by her feelings. Even if she was tempted to succumb to the advances made by Brando, she kept her cold distance even as she made signals that she was interested in him. Her grandmother, who lived with her, "drummed into her head, since her childhood, that she must never go to the estero, and not even look at it."

"Bad people live there," her grandmother said. "Women of ill-repute. If I had not been born here and if I had not expressed my wish to die here, we would have packed up and abandoned this place. These people are not from here. One morning, the estero was crawling with those makeshift shanties that seemed to have mushroomed overnight."

After dousing cold water on Brando's overt sexual invitations, Sidra decided one evening to visit Brando's shanty along the dirty estero, only to discover Brando was with another woman. She instantly fled the scene.

Her world crumbled. She shivered uncontrollably. Her whole body had retreated even before her mind made any decision. Breathing heavily, she swiftly took off, blood rushing to her face ...

Back in her room she made a sudden discovery: "It dawned on her that she had lost her slippers, as she hastily fled the shanty and her feet had been smeared with the fetid, foul-smelling mud from the estero."

The elliptical arc of the story was hardly representative of Lingat's style. In this story, however, the dirty setting of the estero functioned as an effective metaphor and image of Sidra's descent into the erotic.

The "locked door" of the title story was another representation of hidden desire. But the image was shrouded in horror and mystery. Like skeletons in the closet, the family secrets contained in the locked door were damaging, precisely because there literally was a skeleton in the closet! In an old country house, two spinsters and their father lived were visited by the brother and son who just married. The wife, walking around the spacious house, was bound to discover an ancient crime in the hidden corners and locked doors. The story was almost a variation of old Gothic novels.

In "The Diary of a Woman", sexual desire was once again upended when one man who raped a woman after knocking her unconscious, discovered, upon reading her diary, that she was infected by HIV by her former lover. Irony was such a potent tool in the stories.

With horror-stricken eyes, he stared at the woman on the bed. Her eyes were open. Her sorrowful gaze was fixed on him.

"We chose the manner of our death, Darmo. We should die happy!"

But not all desires in the stories were repressed and not all cruel expression of desires were rewarded with death-like chagrin. In "The Nocturnal Delights of Mrs. Javelosa", the protagonist experienced an alternative form of sexual liberation from her night swimming in the open sea, her only way of coping with the transgressions of her philandering husband. It was perhaps the very image of freedom and empowerment that Lingat's women characters were striving for.

The night was humid. Even the wind wafted by the ocean was warm. The sounds of the ocean intoned a supplication. The night surrounding her was in deep, uninterrupted sleep.

She stirred, removed her slippers, took off her robe and left her thin nightgown on the swing. The warmth of the wind caressed her body and she felt a sense of liberation. She took some steps, unhurriedly, and bared her lovely nakedness to the shimmering light from the moon.

The wet sand was cold, but the water kissing her feet was warm. The stars twinkled at the waves madly racing to graze her feet. She followed the dancing bubbles as the waves rapturously rose and ebbed, as if desperate to possess her. She succumbed to the waves passionately devouring her body, and reveled in their rhythmical cadence. The caressing touch that overpowered her was blissfully warm and it drove away the groaning sound of the universe.

Amid the groaning sound of the universe, Mrs. Javelosa, like Lingat's other women characters, navigated and "soldiered on" in life, according to the translator, "armed only with a strength and resolve that flow from within". Soledad S. Reyes in fact gave a very cogent introduction and thematic analysis to the collection she meticulously assembled and translated. She was spot on in saying that "Lingat's world is inhabited by characters whose fierce struggles takes place in their world. whose pain is rooted in their own personal errors of judgment and inability to understand their own place in a definite community". The conflicts in her characters' inner world only served to heighten the images and surfaces constituting their outer world.

The Golden Dagger

The Golden Dagger by Antonio G. Sempio, translated from Tagalog by Soledad S. Reyes (De La Salle University Publishing House, 2016)

In her Bibliography of Filipino Novels: 1901-2000 (2010), Patricia May B. Jurilla noted that the most prolific novelist in Tagalog was Antonio G. Sempio (1891-1943) for having the most number of published novels in book form. Most novels in Tagalog/Filipino were first serialized in magazines or newspapers before being published in book form.

Between 1917 and 1942, Sempio produced 19 novels, including a translation. According to Jurilla, it was likely that most of these novels were self-published owing to the fact that Sempio was known for peddling his books as he traveled from town to town.

One such novel—Ang Punyal na Ginto (Nobelang Tagalog) (1933)—recently appeared in English translation by Soledad S. Reyes as The Golden Dagger. This novel was notable for being the basis of the first ever "talking" film in the country. In a way, this was the story which finally broke the "silence" of the silver screen.

According to Jessie B. Garcia in A Movie Album Quizbook (2005), cited by Video 48 blog (link), the exhibition of Punyal na Ginto the movie at the Lyric Theater on the Escolta "was made possible with the importation of American technicians and sound camera equipment by two American businessmen and promoters, George F. Harris and Stewart “Eddie” Tait of the Tait Shows carnival fame."

(IMAGE SOURCE: IMDb)

The plot of The Golden Dagger was a melodramatic and rather tragic treatment of the love between the poor girl Dalisay and the filthy rich boy Dante, with the boy's father, the despotic Don Sergio, doing everything in his power to thwart the affair. In the translator's introduction, Reyes cautioned the reader to look at the novel "against a specific sociopolitical context and an evolving literary tradition", for the reader to "retrieve the novel's original meaning on its own terms". Without the context to situate the novel in the American colonial period fraught with inequalities between the landed rich and the working poor, the novel would be easily dismissed as poverty porn.

The names of the characters were rich in meaning. Dalisay is the Tagalog word for pure and untarnished, and it was her destiny to erase the stain that marked her ill-fated association with Don Sergio and his son. Dante Villa Centeno was the only major character given a full name in the story. It was as if only the rich were the only ones entitled to a full name. Elias, Dalisay's cousin and the third corner of the love triangle, seemed to echo the noble character of Elias in Rizal's Noli Me Tangere. By the end of the book, Elias became like Simoun the jeweler in El Filibusterismo by being rich himself, and like Isagani by derailing Dalisay's plan of revenge. Elias then had the nobility of his namesake, the wealth of Simoun, and the righteousness of Isagani.

The tragic conclusion of the story was foretold in the beginning. What was left to ponder in the novel? The sentimental drama and the momentous, heart-stopping twists and turns; the Philippine sociopolitical background that informed such a story; the ingenious use of the reference code; the narrator's frequent intrusions, his ironic commentaries to the story, and his constant taunting of the reader at the end of the chapters; the verbal and psychological battle of wills between the rich boy and his father, and between the poor girl and the rich boy's father; time lapse and transformations of character. Somehow, too, the corrupt stench of patronage politics and partisanship of the 1930s pre-Commonwealth period still assaulted the nose of the present.

—Oh, no! I'm here to pay you a visit. I'd like to find out what you need and what you think. What can I do for you, friends?

—Ah, if that's what you want to know, there's a whole list—Mang Bastian replied. —First of all, there is only one artesian well that the democrats built at one end of the village nearest the street where their party mates lived; this is not enough. Secondly, the number of students is growing, but since the only public school is small, the students are forced to stop schooling because the school in the town proper is inaccessible.

—But what are your mayor, representative, and senator doing? Why don't you ask them for help?

—Naku! Those officials say they have the people's welfare in mind, that is, when campaigning, but the moment they are elected, they conveniently forget their promises!

—Let me handle this and I'll look into these needs and follow up on them until they reach the office of the Governor-General. We're friends, and I promise to facilitate what your elected officials fail to deliver! [...] But of course they will not dare disappoint me! Do you think the amount of money I donate to their campaigns during election is a pittance? They all entwine themselves around me! Start with Quezon, to the oldest senator, and the representatives, and you may add the secretaries of the various departments. Not one of them can afford to turn me down! They owe me a great deal, and they will not have the nerve to refuse me! Ah! Even the Governor-General has not failed me, not even once!

The proud speaker was Don Sergio, and his certainty of victory spelled the doom not only for the political trajectory of the country but for Dalisay's unwinnable love for Dante.

Don Sergio's "golden dagger" (a transparent metaphor for the unlimited power and resources available to the rich) was poised and ready to fight against Dalisay and her love for Dante. The golden dagger was designed for the systematic terrorizing and breaking down of poor folk who dare cross the path of the ruthless rich.

How would he make the young woman [Dalisay] withdraw her promise? How, ah, how? What if he offered untold riches? He was willing to pay her off since Dante's money was the sole motive driving both mother and daughter [Dalisay and her mother]. He would offer thousands of pesos, or however much it would take, to free his son's ensnared heart. Once she agreed, then there was no more need to talk. Just allow Dalisay to name her price, and he would pay her with alacrity, with a smug smile on his face. But if Dalisay remained firm despite her gentle pleading, he would unleash the terror—he would berate her, threaten her, and put the fear of the Lord in her. If she did not succumb to his entreaties, then he would resort to violence. Nobody who defied him was spared his deadly revenge. This scheme, this one plot was the only alternative that would probably lead to satisfactory results!

The rich were results-oriented, once they put into motion their best-laid plans. Using Plans A to C and other cruel contingencies, their quarry would not be able to escape.

After another round of furious exchange, the police van finally arrived. How could they afford to ignore the master's order? The chief of police was a friend of Don Sergio's, and sending a van over with alacrity was the least he could do.

With the whole political establishment at his side—the so-called "duty-bearers": legislators, judges and lawyers, the police force, the Governor-General!—it was no wonder that Don Sergio would not have the least trouble perpetrating his evil design on Dalisay. The "rights-holder"—the poor, the marginalized, the disenfranchised—would be easily robbed of their rights and freedoms. For her part, Dalisay—even before Miss Saigon—would be forced to perform the ultimate sacrifice. And even if it killed her trying, she would have her revenge, one way or another.

The Golden Dagger was one of the last publications of the De La Salle University (DLSU) Publishing House. According to a major online local bookseller I talked to, the press was no longer in operation. This was a tragedy, not least because the DLSU university press was one of a handful of progressive publishers of translated novels in the Philippines. In 2013, the press released, also in translation by Soledad S. Reyes, two remarkable novels by Rosario de Guzman Lingat.

I am not sure if the movie adaptation is still extant. If it is, I hope I will have the chance to watch this first ever Tagalog movie recorded with sound.

The Cloak of God

The Cloak of God by Rosario de Guzman Lingat, tr. Soledad S. Reyes (De La Salle University Publishing House, 2013)


The novels of Rosario de Guzman Lingat (1924-1997) were finally available locally in English thanks in large part to translator Soledad S. Reyes's championing of her literary outputs. Except for young adult novelist Ceres S.C. Alabado, Lingat happened to be the only female novelist with works translated from a Philippine language.
 
The production of local novels in the Philippines was rather poor in showing. In the 20th century, only 637 novels were published in the country: 365 novels written in Filipino, 95 translated to Filipino, and 177 saw print in English. The list was compiled in Bibliography of Filipino Novels, 1901-2000 (2011) by Patricia May B. Jurilla. I do not know the male to female novel production ratio, but the discrepancy could easily be assumed.

So far, from the 365 Filipino novels of the last century, only five were translated into English, mostly very recently, three of them Reyes's translations of Lingat's novels. This was a measly 1.4% of Filipino-to-English translation rate. In a nation of non-readers and readers-who-would-rather-read-English-bestsellers, this of course was not surprising. The market for translations was minuscule.

Lingat's novels, published in the 1960s and '70s, offered a historical glimpse into the social, political, and economic forces before and during the Martial Law years. Of her three novels translated in English – Kung Wala na ang Tag-araw (1969), Ano Ngayon, Ricky? (1971), and Ang Balabal ng Diyos (1975) – the latter perhaps provided the most oblique and powerful diagnosis of social chaos and confusion of the times, the artful culmination of the personal struggles of the anti-hero in The Death of Summer and the political activist in What Now, Ricky? It brought a tragicomical representation of mass uncertainty and delusion through the adventures of a failed theater actor (Felino Paras) who suddenly found himself revered, then venerated, as a religious prophet. It was all the more notable for being a novel of self-consciousness artistry, teeming with conscious character-actors "acting out roles created by a writer".

Felino was a reluctant prophet, at first. He acted out the part of a prophet of doom in order to avoid being found out as a criminal. He cribbed his lines from a play he was auditioning for and that he failed to get. He transformed his handsome features into that of a man of extreme piety and instantly realized he stumbled upon a mine when goods and donations from believers started pouring in.

But at what cost? His freedom and privacy were invaded. He could no longer keep to himself and freely go to bars and womanize.

Those vampires! There was no way they would leave him alone! They would not stop pursuing him! ...

He was being observed by all these people. They kept watch of his every move; they were waiting for that salvation they mistakenly believed he was praying for. These fanatics gripped by irrational terror!

Despite the stress and hassle his newfound calling gave him, he kept at it for purely material reasons. He acted out the part and continued to amass wealth from gullible people. He accidentally started a religious cult, with mostly agreeable ramifications.

As the days passed, the news spread fast. It reached the whole city and spread to the provinces. The end of the world was at hand! Darkness would engulf the earth and there would be rains of fire...

Felino's ministry grew, spilling over into the countryside. Churches were constructed to honor the True Faith. His charismatic presence, "a man standing erect, with eyes that radiated power, a role he had now learned to play to perfection, each opportunity for the faithful to listen to the full baritone voice", became most sought after. "He evoked fear and diffidence and inspired admiration and respect. Most of all, he was loved."

The novelist played the prophet's character to perfection. The salient role of religion in life was explored with irony and spontaneous comedy. The scenes were to the point; the dialogues were crisply delivered; the comedy of manners, of situations, of an anti-hero was inextricably linked to his accidental fate, and faith.

The Cloak of God was a very possible inspiration or influence to Himala (Miracle), a 1982 popular and critically acclaimed hit (cult) movie about a faith healer in a barrio. There were obvious parallelisms in how religious life took center stage in a needful society, and how the cult of art was manifest in the cult of religion and celebrity.

"But, is it true? Is it true that the end is near? That darkness will engulf the earth and there will be rains of fire?"

"You heard what I said last night."

The old man was gasping for breath; his knees were getting weaker.

"What do those people want from me, Mang Asyas?"

"They'd like to speak with you. Your prophecy has spread like wildfire." Felino's gaze was unwavering. "They'd like to know if salvation is impossible."

Felino was smiling inwardly, extremely pleased with himself. He raised his eyes and examined the ceiling so as not to let the old man get an inkling of this wave of pleasure coursing through his veins. Words plucked out of Gonzalo's [the playwright's] drama, which was never staged, raced through his mind.

And he said, "Compassion is shown to those who truly believe. Salvation is found only in True Faith."

"How is this to be?"

Felino's eyes were glued to the dark corner of his room. How? The script of that mean-spirited Gonzalo did not say how!

The question was repeated. "How, sir?"

Felino lowered his eyes and looked grief-stricken. "I do not know how." It was an honest answer. "Leave me, Mang Asyas. I am preoccupied with my personal problems."

Since Felino played his role to perfection, providing the precise modulation of voice, dignity, and bearing as befits a preacher, who really could say he was a false prophet? In his seamlessly improvised speeches and sermons, in his sincere posture and imposture, who really could judge him?

One is tempted to ask, what kind of society breeds a perfect prophet in their midst? What hidden social arrangements and mores could allow new faith to take root, could compel a passionate and devoted following? Pertinent questions, the answers to which provide strong indicators of social imbalances in unjust, post-colonial regimes.

The final act of the novel was a shocker. The matter of fact comedy suddenly switched genre, into mind-bender speculative fiction or high-strung science fiction. Lingat manufactured values and meanings using the art of modern, self-parodying novel, as if to rattle and shake the devoutness of one's faith in fiction, to measure the depths of satire. She took to a higher level the implications of what it really meant to wear the mantle of God. Her outrageous plot lines would test the capacity of fiction to stupefy, to enact miracles that willingly defy mannered, realist fiction.

What Now, Ricky?

What Now, Ricky? by Rosario de Guzman Lingat, trans. Soledad S. Reyes (Anvil, 2013)


In a famous scene in José Rizal's nationalist novel Noli Me Tangere (1887), the educated protagonist Juan Crisostomo Ibarra was on the run from Spanish authorities and being aided by the mysterious boatman known as Elias. The two were aboard a boat on a lake, planning Ibarra's course of action to evade the authorities. They recalled their previous debate a month ago. Ibarra was then sympathetic to the colonizers. Now he had reversed his position.

“I wish to disillusion you, sir, and save you from a sad future. Recall that night when I talked to you in this same banka [boat] under the light of this same moon, not a month ago. Then you were happy, the plea of the unfortunates did not touch you; you disdained their complaints because they were the complaints of criminals; you paid more attention to their enemies, and in spite of my arguments and petitions, you placed yourself on the side of their oppressors. On you then depended whether I should turn criminal or allow myself to be killed in order to carry out a sacred pledge, but God has not permitted this because the old chief of the outlaws is dead. A month has hardly passed and you think otherwise.”

“You’re right, Elias, but man is a creature of circumstances! Then I was blind, annoyed—what did I know? Now misfortune has torn the bandage from my eyes; the solitude and misery of my prison have taught me; now I see the horrible cancer which feeds upon this society, which clutches its flesh, and which demands a violent rooting out. They have opened my eyes, they have made me see the sore, and they force me to be a criminal! Since they wish it, I will be a filibuster, a real filibuster, I mean. I will call together all the unfortunates, all who feel a heart beat in their breasts, all those who were sending you to me. No, I will not be a criminal, never is he such who fights for his native land, but quite the reverse! We, during three centuries, have extended them our hands, we have asked love of them, we have yearned to call them brothers, and how do they answer us? With insults and jests, denying us even the chance character of human beings. There is no God, there is no hope, there is no humanity; there is nothing but the right of might!” Ibarra was nervous, his whole body trembled. [The Social Cancer (1912), trans. Charles Derbyshire, emphasis added]

A similar awakening was experienced by Ricardo Mendoza (Ricky), the young idealistic activist in the novel Ano Ngayon, Ricky? (1971) by Rosario de Guzman Lingat (1924-1997). This time, however, the oppressors were not only foreigners but fellow Filipinos as well. And the social cancer was not colonialism from foreign power but corruption in government, the shameless impunity being enjoyed by politicos and oligarchs, and the caciques and neo-caciques in Philippine society. Near the end of novel, Ricky confronted the rich, educated man who represented the powerful preying on the blood of youth to advance their perverted cause:

"You knew that your paid assassin was a killer? What was his mission? To sacrifice the dead bodies of activists who desired to change the nation for your glory and honor? And prepare the path leading to your taking over of power? That has always been your goal. You became greedy for power which you first tasted when you were a senator. ... Your family and friends and you yourself were involved in grave scandals when you were in power; you feared exposure and humiliation. Instead of waiting to be exposed for what you really were, you wisely got out of politics. ... But the hunger for power, once in the blood, remains to eat up the innards of an insatiable man. ..."

...

"Don't you dare deny what I said, and once again make a fool out of me. The music is over ... You will never again make me dance to your tune. My eyes have been opened. You and [your assassin], two individuals at the opposite ends of life's pole, who ordinarily could not find any common ground, became one because you shared one goal. Self-interest! Personal gain secured in different ways. ..." [What Now, Ricky?, trans. Soledad S. Reyes, emphasis added]

The translator's comprehensive introduction – so comprehensive it should have been an afterword – rightly situated the novel within the tradition of the protest novel that originated from Rizal's Noli Me Tangere. A similar cancer that afflicted the country in Rizal's time also afflicted it in Lingat's time in the 60s and 70s. And it also afflicts it till now. It even afflicted those who hunger for power, a malignant disease eating up "the innards of an insatiable man".

Lingat's novel proposed electoral reforms, not bloody revolution, as a viable solution to the ills of society. The novel's epigraph said as much about how a nation's leaders were only a reflection of the greater society that elected them in the first place.

In a nation that creates

its own Government

by choosing the best

in the populace and clothing them

with power, its Government

is its own mirror.

The novel's backdrop was the First Quarter Storm in 1970, a period of unrest where students and laborers were violently dispersed by the police during demonstrations. Ricky was one of the popular student leaders. His “nagging doubts” and “bitterness” were all locked up inside him.

He exuded bravado, like most young men. He espoused beliefs and convictions all his own. He knew how to laugh, and he liked it when he was called Pogi, and he stood out as a colorful campus figure in the university, and very few suspected of the smoldering anger underneath a happy-go-lucky façade.

“What are the demonstrators fighting for?” Ricky was asked. The burning issues of the day: “Social Justice, Land Reform … [and] the rights of the Filipinos killed in American [military] bases.” Ricky was a respected student leader. His alliance was not part of the leftist segment of the demonstrating groups.

"We don't work with them [Philippine Youths]. They have communist leanings. Our group does not share their beliefs. We want change to bring about real freedom, not to hand over our country to another nation."

The communist ideology of the left as a separate nation incompatible to the current one was an idea present in the writings of other Filipino novelists, particularly in those of National Artists like Lazaro Francisco and F. Sionil José. The latter was quite vocal about it.

Two ongoing rebellions, one communist and the other secessionist [in southern Philippines], have cost us billions and thousands of lives. If the communists win – and I know they won't – they will rule just as badly because they are Filipinos hostage to barnacled habits of mind, to ethnicity.

The real revolution has to start first in the mind and its wellsprings are not in Mao or Marx. It is in our history, in Mabini, in Rizal whose writing inspired the revolution of 1896. [This I Believe—Gleanings From a Life in Literature, p. 16]

For Sionil José, oligarchy is the social disease that is tearing the flesh of the nation. He was not one to shy away from violence to rid the country of the greedy and corrupt elite. In his novel Mass, also set during the First Quarter Storm, his main character Pepe Samson killed a homosexual cacique figure in the end, a man responsible for the disappearance of activists and whose name, Puneta, was emblematic of the curse of the land. This was after Pepe was detained and tortured by the authorities. There was in the the killing of one villain, who stood for the rest of his kind – as a synecdochic or representational figure – an imposition of justice, a righting of wrong. Pepe made good the promise given in the epigraph to Mass.

They lied to us in their newspapers, in the books they wrote for us to memorize in school, in their honeyed speeches when they courted our votes, They lied to us because they did not want us to rise from the dungheap to confront them. We know the truth now; we have finally emptied our minds of their lies, discovered their corruption and our weaknesses as well. But this truth as perceived by us is not enough. Truth is, above all, justice. With determination then, and cunning and violence, we must destroy them for only after doing so will we really be free.

This was supposedly an excerpt from "Memo to Youth", an essay Pepe himself wrote for a writing contest, without at first believing in its message, but later fully subscribing to it when he experienced a "final liberation" after killing "with determination ... and cunning and violence" the villain. This was hard to fault. But taken literally, Sionil José's solution may be hard to implement. There's just too many of the greedy elite that wiping them out would constitute a genocide!

Sionil José, further, ran the trouble of being betrayed by his sexual politics in relation to the nature of evil in his fiction. In Ermita, the eponymous female lead hired someone to practically castrate her gay or bisexual uncle, in retaliation for the latter's lascivious and cruel treatment of her. The uncle also happened to be a landlord who enriched himself at the expense of other lowly peasants. Despite the agreeable elimination of the caciques, the sexual orientation he chose for the villains in his novels was problematic. His lumping of caciquism (as a form of moral turpitude) with that of homosexuality was a sorry choice. It betrayed Sionil José's non-progressive views on homosexuality, while also somehow failing to recognize the patriarchal background of caciquism.

It was notable that in Lingat's novel, the rich villain believed in the necessity of violence ("No change is possible without blood being shed."). Bloody revolution, right of might, use of force. The justification for violence was ever present but their application was always in question. The moral and ethical ways to pursue moral and ethical imperatives continued to haunt nationalist idealists and reformers. In What Now, Ricky?, the same "right of might" that Ibarra proposed to Elias was presented as an option that should be considered only as a last resort. This "pacifist" idea was voiced out by Ricky's friend, Tony, a character who evolved from a poor and vulnerable provinciano at the start of the novel to someone more aware of his surroundings, someone whose eyes have also been opened through education and close observation of society.

History is replete with examples of glorious revolutions tragically ending with the leaders themselves conspiring to destroy each other to seize power. Look at the French Revolution, at our own revolution [1896 Philippine Revolution]. And even now, for each victorious moment, contrasting claims are made by different groups to reap the reward and honor. No, Ricky. War should be the last option, and only after everything else has been exhausted.

If for Sionil José complete freedom consisted of "destroying" the greedy elite, for Lingat freedom consisted of the people wisely exercising their right to vote. The denial of that right was also the denial of human happiness, of one's "rightful legacy". To fully enjoy that freedom, everybody is duty-bound to defend the right of suffrage. Ricky and Tony's understanding that reforms in the election system could be a solution had its own caveat. There was, then and now, a need to produce a lineup of "candidates who are morally upright and credible". But these species of candidates are a rare breed in Philippine politics.

So what, Ricky? – a question that could be a more idiomatic rendering of the title. Outside the novel, the full answer has yet to be worked out. The nation is still reeling from entrenched oligarchy before and since the Marcos regime. From the unbroken succession of trapos and epals – corrupt, inept, mediocre, douche leaders in Philippine government. Wake up, electorate, wake up!

What Now, Ricky? was one of the three novels of Lingat translated by Soledad S. Reyes and released last year. The other two, The Cloak of God and The End of Summer, both from De La Salle University Publishing House, were supposedly less political in subject but no less significant for delineating postwar socieconomic pressures on Philippine society. Reyes was probably the most logical translator of Lingat, having earlier written literary analyses of the writer’s works. She also wrote the biography of the novelist, Rosario de Guzaman Lingat (1924-1997): The Burden of Self and History. She was thus not merely the writer's translator but her champion, in the same manner her translation of The Gold in Makiling by Macario Pineda appeared after her literary studies of the writer.

Philippine literature needs more translators and champions to bring out to a wider audience substantive literary works of fiction in vernacular language like the novels of Lingat. More eye-opening works, more works that can shatter deep-seated apathy.

From Darna to Zsazsa Zaturnnah: Desire and Fantasy

From Darna to Zsazsa Zaturnnah: Desire and Fantasy: Essays on Literature and Popular Culture by Soledad S. Reyes (Anvil, 2009)


Ang aklat ay naglalaman ng limang sanaysay tungkol sa popular culture (komiks, pelikula, FPJ, Pacman, telebisyon, atbp.) at dalawang sanaysay tungkol sa panitikan (nobelang Ingles at Tagalog). Sa pagtataya ng antolohiyang ito, idagdag pa ang masinop na pagkakasalin ni Soledad S. Reyes ng nobelang Ang Ginto sa Makiling ni Macario S. Pineda, mamamalas ang masusing kaisipan ng isang manunuri ng panitikan at kultura. Madulas na naipahayag ang mga kumplikadong konsepto at ideya kahit pa sabihing nagmula sa isang akademiko. Maraming bagay ang matututunan. Halimbawa ay kung bakit hindi kailangang basta na lang isantabi ang mga produkto ng popular culture kagaya ng teleserye, mga formulaic na pelikulang aksyon at pantasya, pelikulang slapstick, Precious Hearts Romances pocketbooks. Kailangan ay tingnan sila sa konteksto ng kultura, kasaysayan, at panahong pinanggalingan nila.

Sa panitikan na bahagi ng aklat, masinop na nailahad ang epekto ng kolonyalismo, neokolonyalismo, at diktadurya sa pag-unlad ng nobelang Ingles at Tagalog. Naipakita rin ang balangkas ng mga pagbabago ng istratehiya, tradisyon, at tema ng mga nobela sa paglipas ng panahon, pati na ang iba't ibang paraan ng produksyon nito.

***

The book contains five essays about popular culture (Philippine comics, films, FPJ [the late actor Fernando Poe Jr.], Pacman [boxer Manny Pacquiao], television shows, etc.) and two essays on literature (novels in English and Tagalog). On the strength of this anthology, not to mention Soledad S. Reyes's fine translation of Macario Pineda's novel The Gold in Makiling, one encounters a first rate cultural and literary critic. For an academic, she has articulated well some rather complicated concepts and ideas. A lot of things are in store for the reader. One is persuaded, for instance, to not discriminate against the products of popular culture such as sentimental telenovelas, formulaic action and fantasy movies, slapstick movies, and chick lit pocketbooks published by Precious Hearts Romances. They have to be seen in the context of culture, history, and period that gave birth to them.

In the literature part of the book, Reyes systematically surveyed the effects of colonialism, neocolonialism, and dictatorship in the development of Filipino novels in English and Tagalog languages. She has outlined the shifting strategies, tradition, and broad thematic elements of these novels through the years, including the different modes of their production.

We should learn to examine not only what is being said—this is being too literal—but what cannot be said, couched in words and images that, upon closer examination, constitute a huge chain of meanings perhaps already understood by some instinctively, but still waiting to be deciphered more fully and systematically. The hope is that eventually, the layers of meanings, still lodged beneath the surface of things, will be made known in order to dispel the cloud of "unknowing" that hovers above us all.