The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
lines. The measure may be called anapestic dimeter, of which old
Skelton was a master and in which Herrick occasionally performed, but
rare thereafter in English poetry until Hood and Swinburne revived it.
A few months later he appeared with a poem of nine stanzas arranged
much after the manner of the Sicilian octave. This was on “Education”
and contained exquisite imagery, while it showed an unmistakable grasp
of melodic resource. [44]
In ranging among all books, old and new, that seemed to promise any
profit, he came upon one in these days at the Ateneo that helped
mightily to direct his career, while it freshened his young hopes to a
new bent concerning his people and what was to become of them. It was a
Spanish translation of “Travels in the Philippines,” [45] by Dr. F.
Jagor, the German naturalist. Something more than the flora and fauna
of these fascinating Islands concerned Dr. Jagor; like so many other
just and reflective visitors in those parts, he had been led to think
much about the remarkable characteristics of the inhabitants and the
singular misfortune that had befallen them. Unless all signs were
deceptive, this was a race endowed for a career and a place in the
world’s procession; of these it had been cheated by an outland
despotism whose sole foundation stood upon force. In all probability
this anomaly could not endure. Spain, still groping in the past, was no
possible cicerone for a race that felt springing within it the strong
man-child of nationality and progress. One thing, if none other, was at
hand to insure the doom of such absurdity. Dr. Jagor had traveled in
the United States and considered its profound influence upon other
nations. Its life and growth were daily proofs before him of the
eternal persistence of the democratic idea, and from that showing the
world could never turn away. He saw that the example of the United
States had spurred all South America to revolt and eventually to win
freedom; hence he concluded that the spread of this influence around
the Pacific was inevitable. [46]
In proportion as the navigation of the west coast of America
extends the influence of the American element over the South Sea
[wrote this prophet], the captivating, magic power that the great
republic exercises over the Spanish colonies will not fail to make
itself also felt in the Philippines. The Americans are evidently
destined to bring to a full development the germs originated by the
Spaniards. Conquerors of modern times, they pursue their road to
victory with the assistance of the pioneer’s ax and plow,
representing an age of peace and commercial prosperity in contrast
to that bygone and chivalrous age whose champions were upheld by
the cross and protected by the sword....
With regard to permanence, the Spanish system cannot for a moment
be compared with that of America. While each of the Spanish
colonies, in order to favor a privileged class by immediate gains,
exhausted still more the already enfeebled populace of the
metropolis by the withdrawal of the best of its ability, America,
on the contrary, has attracted to itself from all countries the
most energetic element, which, once on its soil and freed from all
fetters, restlessly progressing, has extended its power and
influence still farther and farther. The Philippines will escape
the action of the two great neighboring powers [the United States
and Great Britain] all the less for the fact that neither they [the
Philippines] nor their metropolis find their condition of a stable
and well-balanced nature.
These deliberated forecasts deeply impressed Rizal. They were written
about 1874. Looking back now, the applause Jagor deserves for his keen
vision is easy, but in 1874 or 1876 who hailed him as a prophet? If he
found a disciple outside of the grim walls of the Ateneo the fact
escaped record; but to Rizal the sequence seemed normal to his own
reflections. He had an instinctive faith in the latent capacity of his
people; now he noted that this cool-minded scientist came from judicial
analysis of these same people to share the same belief. The next step
was facile; he perceived the logical procession of Jagor’s reasonings
about the rising American influence. It must be so, then, that America
would prove to be light and leadership to the Far East, and from this
time he turned to the United States as an example and a well-spring of
hope. [47]
That same year came the celebration of the first one hundred years of
American independence, and the reports of it fell pat with his new
meditations. As a rule, the newspapers of Manila, inspired by the
Spanish habitude, had referred with phrases of contempt to the American
republic. The centennial festival seemed to modify or to beat through
their prejudices, for space was given to long and respectful reviews of
the progress and achievements of the United States, and with these an
outline of the desperate struggle by which it had won its independence.
Upon a mind like Rizal’s, enlisted for freedom, susceptible to all
things heroic and idealistic, the effect must have been galvanic. It
was a lesson of more than one angle. Here was a people that had been
under such an incubus of political medievalism as was strangling his
countrymen. A handful challenging the greatest power in the world, they
had achieved their emancipation, and he could not fail to note that the
disparity between the Philippines and Spain was hardly greater than
that between America and Great Britain in 1776.
In the next place, the heart of the system the Americans had thrown
over was the idea that the royal authority imposed upon them was of God
and resistance to it was an impiety God would surely punish. One
nation, according to this record, had not only resisted such authority
but cast it off and trampled upon it, and, behold, its reward was not
the curse but the apparent blessing of God in richest measure. He
studied the history of this nation, considered its work in the world,
and deemed the conclusions of Jagor to be sound and just.
But Jagor had supplied also a certain warning. “It seems to be
desirable for the natives [Filipinos] that the above-mentioned views
should not speedily become accomplished facts, because their education
and training hitherto have not been of a nature to prepare them
successfully to compete with either of the other two energetic,
creative, and progressive nations.” Nothing could be plainer; this was
the great work to which he should apply himself. His people must be
trained and educated for the freedom they were one day to have. They
must be educated first and then aroused. Therefore, whatever learning,
discipline, equipment of facts and knowledge, power and resources he
could gain were capital, energy, equipment laid by for their service.
Toward two sorts of men the world has never warmed while they lived;
toward a man of melancholy and a man with a fixed and serious purpose
other than material. Rizal was both of these in one. A school is a
microcosm of the world outside it. He was admired at the Ateneo but
went his way there essentially alone. He seems to have felt that this
must be so and accepted loneliness in the spirit of his philosophy and
as part of the task laid upon him. The natural complement of his
loneliness was an unusual capacity for friendship; the natural
complement of his melancholy was a keen sense of humor and a flashing
wit; for so do men seem to be made up and (except in novels and plays)
never of one piece.
Being real and breathing and not a lay figure of romance, Rizal was
like the rest of us, subject to gusts of this and that and a gamut of
moods; and yet, like other men of strong will, managed to steer fairly
straight for one landfall. When the fit was on him he was wont to draw
for his family vastly funny sketches, to write quips, to make jokes,
and even to fashion comic verses. His gift of portraiture, a singular
power to reproduce with convincing strokes any face he had ever noted,
ran over at the least provocation into rollicking burlesque. In later
times he would have been a priceless cartoonist; to illuminate any
thought that crossed his mind a humorous or grotesque or inspiring
picture fell easily from his pencil. It was from his brooding
introspection that he reacted to his excruciatingly funny caricatures,
and if he had not some such vent might have gone mad or (terrible
thought!) even have become a prig.
But from these adventures he came back to the sobering facts of his
mission as the business and only reality of life. To contribute
something to the helping and enlightening of these people was his
métier and the only thing really important. A many-sided man, as you
shall see. With all the laborious exactions of his time schedule, he
could still continue his worship of art and beauty; he kept on with his
modeling, kept on with his painting and poetry. His holidays he
sometimes spent with his mother at Calamba; and his habit was to go
home to her with a pocketful of verses of his recent making. That
excellent woman and judicious critic set herself to clarify and direct
the fire thus burning. [48] She must have succeeded after good models,
for Rizal freshened the laurels of his Ateneo triumphs by winning
prizes beyond its intellectual tiltyards. The Manila Lyceum of Art and
Literature founded a competition among Filipino poets, “naturales y
mestizos.” [49] Rizal won it with a poem entitled “To the Philippine
Youth.” [50] From a point of view that was never urged he had no right
to win it: the Lyceum was supposed to be for adults, and he was only
eighteen years old. But the subject had called forth the best that was
in him; it offered a chance to preach his favorite theme, to appeal to
his young countrymen, and to stir in them something of the passion that
moved him, while he suggested the Filipinas that might be. [51]
His achievement went beyond prize-winning. By a route that even he had
never imagined, it became a thing of history. In this poem he called
the Philippine Islands his “fatherland.” The Philippine youth were the
Bella esperanza de la Patria Mia! [52] Simple and natural as the
reference was, it started the easy typhoon to blowing. No such phrase
from such a source with such an application was tolerable. In his poem
on “Education,” Rizal had spoken of that sweet wisdom as illuminating
the “fatherland,” but this was naïvely taken to have a wholly different
meaning. To these people, in the litany of lip-service, at least, the
only fatherland they knew was the Spain they had never seen but of
which the image in their hearts was all somber and cruel. With
passionate adoration Rizal now spoke of another fatherland, of the
Filipinas of his birthplace; he dared to address it even as a Spaniard
might address Spain, “Vuela, Genio Grandioso!” “Come, thou great
genius!” Yet he knew it as a country that breathed the effluvium of an
unnatural existence—chained to a corpse. In irony he was dealing; a
terrible, sobering irony. Already he felt in his heart that the
existing state could not last; no proud, capable, normally minded
people with a historic background of their own would long endure it.
Echoes of the great wave that rolled around the rest of the world grew
every day in the ears of these Islanders. Discontent surged in their
hearts, and Rizal in his poem was the first voice and wise articulation
of their protest. [53]
In this, and as a piece of art, it was powerful and significant. He
addressed the young men of the Philippines as if they were like other
young men of the world, free, and able to put forth their powers, to
make their way; not inferior, not the fags and drudges of the hateful