The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
is no satisfactory evidence; he had not previously appeared as a
printer, but with his marvelous dexterity and ease in assimilating all
knowledge he might have picked up even this craft, too, with others,
difficult as it is. If so, he may have enjoyed in Berlin an unusual
experience. He may have been an author putting into type his own copy.
One problem had harassed him. Whence could he hope to get the money to
pay for the publication? He was still largely supported by remittances
from home, from Paciano the ever faithful, from other members of his
family; but these were not more than enough to keep him alive. The
Fates that packed his wallet so full of other good gifts seem to have
omitted a facility in making money, but supplied in its stead an
abnormal power of self-denial. He now started out to save the sum he
needed by inciting the spirit to triumph over the flesh. About this
time there came to visit him in Berlin Maximo Viola, a wealthy and
excellent young Filipino he had known in Madrid. Viola records that he
found the young author living in a rear room and subsisting upon one
meal a day, largely bread and coffee, [84] which were cheap.
The raven had come that was not only to feed this prophet but to lead
him out of the wilderness. Viola’s object had been to invite Rizal to
go with him upon a walking tour through rural Germany and Switzerland.
At the proposal, Rizal’s eyes blazed; no project could be more alluring
to him, as Viola had well known. Then he said that it was impossible;
he could not go. Why impossible? asked Viola. Native pride forbade any
direct answer, but Viola extracted the truth. He was saving money to
publish a book. What kind of a book? Rizal told him, whereupon the
Filipino blood stirred in Viola’s veins also, and he offered on the
spot to advance enough money to bring out the book and then enough to
take Rizal on the walking tour.
A few weeks later, “Noli Me Tangere,” a finished novel of five hundred
pages, was printed and bound and launched upon its eventful way. [85]
The facts about this man would stagger credulity if they were not of so
sure and recent record. This novel of his contains more than two
hundred thousand words. He obtained his medical licentiate at Madrid in
June, 1885, and nothing of his book had been written then; nothing was
written until months later. After a time he went to Paris, where he was
employed as a clinical assistant to a busy oculist and also in pursuing
his studies. Thence he went first to Heidelberg, then to Leipzig, where
he entered the universities. Next we find him in Berlin, again an
active and laborious student. Yet “Noli Me Tangere” was completed on
February 21, 1887. The thing does not seem to be in nature. We cannot
recall another instance in literature of such rapid composition under
the like conditions of distraction.
It was a stormy petrel that he had set free, and trouble began early
because of and around it. His first object was to circulate it in the
Philippines. Nothing could have been more unpromising, with a
censorship keeping watch and ward and an author loathed and feared by
the whole System. Yet he accomplished the difficult feat. He had stout
friends in Barcelona and Madrid, Fernando Canon, Mariano Ponce, Damaso
Ponce, Ramon Batle, and, in especial, Teresina Batle, who was Mr.
Canon’s sweetheart. Her quick wit helped the conspiracy. Rizal sent to
Mr. Batle certain boxes containing copies of his book. These his
friends disguised as dry-goods and the like innocent freight and
forwarded to Manila. Ramon Eguarras and Alejandro Rojas were Manila
proprietors of substance and good repute. They smuggled the boxes past
the official Argus and before his very face. [86] When the authorities
awoke, the fierce new appeal was going from house to house with ominous
rumblings in its wake.
This could not last long. To know what the submerged people were
reading and thinking was one of the chief businesses of the bureau of
spies and department of sleuthing. Soon the censor was hot upon the
trail of this omen of unrest. A copy of the book was brought to him; he
read it with a horror that seems to have shaken his soul. Now the
attention of Government was called to the scandalous work. Government,
ever responsive to such ill news, appointed a committee of solemn owls
from the faculty of Santo Tomas, no less, to study and report upon a
literary felony so momentous; Government being apparently impressed
with the notion that a crisis was near and revolution was to be crushed
as usual in the serpent’s egg. For this nothing could be so effective
as the weight of an awe-inspiring authority from the university. No
great deliberation was needed to enable the committee to reach its
findings. In what was plainly intended to be a blasting fire of
ecclesiastical wrath, book and author were condemned, and Government
was austerely warned that here was a most insidious and perilous attack
upon all the safeguards of society, upon law and order, civilization,
monarchy, the supremacy of Spain, business, holy church, and religion
itself. [87]
Long experimentation with the surviving methods of the Inquisition had
made the Government expert in these matters. It issued at once a decree
excluding from the pious Islands a work of such sacrilege and ordered
diligent search to be made for any copies that might have slipped in to
corrupt virtue and overthrow the king. Wherever such copies might be
found they were to be burned by the public executioner. Most rigorous
punishments waited upon the heels of this decree. Any Filipino found
after a certain date in possession of a copy of “Noli Me Tangere” was
to suffer imprisonment or deportation, with the loss of all his
property; this to be confiscated for the benefit of whomsoever should
inform against him. Despite all this valorous resolving and proclaiming
and shaking of the long ears of senile decrepitude, the book continued
to come in and to be circulated. One may suspect that what the
Government chiefly effected was gratuitous advertisement. In a short
time “Noli Me Tangere” became the first topic of conversation
throughout the educated circles in the islands. The classes whose vices
and villainies were most fiercely attacked in it were its most
determined readers. Let the Government do its utmost to annihilate the
book; in the teeth of decrees, Civil Guards, spies, and inquisitors,
Rizal’s purposes were already accomplished. The corrupt, greedy,
tyrannical friar, the plundering, swaggering, brutal Spanish officer,
the beneficiaries of the System and those consenting to it, saw
themselves for the first time pilloried in print. [88]
About this process is always something more potent and salutary than
can be easily explained. It is the elusive, indomitable spirit of that
pitiless publicity, at once the armed champion of modern social
progress, the healer of its diseases, and the corrector of its errors.
Suppose the social malefactor to know full well, as well as he knows
anything, that when he reads in print the story of his misdeeds not one
hundred other persons are likely to see it; he is shaken with ineffable
alarm, nevertheless. The magic of the printed page overwhelms and
confounds him; in his ear every type-letter is a separate demon yelling
“Scoundrel!” Suppose him to have known theretofore that one hundred
thousand men were saying among themselves this that he now reads in
print; the knowledge would have disturbed him not to the quiver of an
eyelash. But to have it thus in visible record, open to the world’s
eye—intolerable! Many a man case-hardened otherwise to conscience or
reproof has fled to suicide before that unwavering finger and
relentless condemnation.
The life of all this is truth. Against printed words that are not true
even the guilty can make a stand, but it is invincible verity that
leaves him naked and trembling. When the first cold shiver had gone by
of the discovery that some one had at last dared to put into print the
horror of the Philippines, one cry for vengeance went up from the
stripped and shamed exploiters. It was a cry like the angry snarl of
hurt hyenas, ready to tear into pieces whomsoever should fall into
their den.
Presently there came among them the very man of their desire, the
author of all this, the object of all their furious hatred;
unsuspectingly he walked into their jungle.
When he had finished his book Rizal felt free to make the excursion
Viola had proposed. They tramped together through remote Germany and
saw something of Switzerland and of Austria. Rizal, as he went, studied
peasant life, and diligently he compared it with the conditions of the
Philippine farmers. At the end of the tour, he went to Dresden. There
he found that by reputation he was already known to Dr. A. B. Meyer and
other scientists, most of whom speedily became his friends. [89]
For some weeks the museums of Dresden detained him; now the splendid
collection of pictures, and now the unusual specimens in the zoölogical
and ethnological museums. Thence he passed to Leitmeritz, old Bohemia,
where he began that close and intimate friendship with Dr. Ferdinand
Blumentritt, the famous ethnologist, that was to last so long as Rizal
lived. For months they had been in correspondence; they had even
progressed in their letters to the stage of a more than ordinary
esteem; for Rizal, as we have seen, having so many other good gifts,
had also this abundantly, that he could cause his real self to shine
through the imperfect medium of the written word and make it appear
what it was, a spirit of power and grace. That he might be identified
at the station by his Austrian friend, Rizal sent in advance a
pencil-sketch he had made of himself, and with this in hand Dr.
Blumentritt knew him instantly. The high opinion the elder scientist
had formed of Rizal’s character and talents must have been justified
upon closer acquaintance; it appears that Rizal spent most of his time
at the Blumentritts’, and Mrs. Blumentritt signified her approbation of
him by cooking for him rare old-time Bohemian dainties, unknown to the
restaurants and hotels. [90] Thence to Vienna, where he became intimate
with Nordenfels, the Austrian novelist, and met other men prominent in
literature and art. Upon all these he seems to have left the uniform
impress of a mind strong, capacious, and candid, and a soul disciplined
and enlightened.
His studies in Vienna completed, he passed into Italy, and in a few
weeks was pondering the antiquities of Rome. Reviewing there his
observations and researches in so many lands, he concluded that the
time had come for him to return to the Philippines. The irregularity of
his passport by which he had escaped from Manila he had since
corrected; legally, he was as free as any one else to travel in the
Islands. His objective had been won; he had made good use of his time.
He might even have congratulated himself on the diligence of his
service. Consecration and an almost prodigious industry had made him
one of the foremost scholars of the day; he must now put to use the
resources he had gathered for the chief purpose of aiding his people.
If we knew more about his disastrous romance we might possibly find
that Leonora’s silence had become a motive to draw him home. What we do
know is that he was distressed by the reports he had of his mother’s
failing eyesight and eager to return to her and help her. For months a
double cataract had been growing upon her eyes. He felt sure that he
could remove it and restore her vision: it was to this branch of
optical surgery that he had given most heed. From Rome he sped to
Marseilles, took steamer on July 3, 1887, for Saigon, and transhipped
for Manila. On August 5, after five years of wanderings and so many