The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
more than questionable. On the subject of the capacity of the Filipinos
for immediate self-government in his own time, it seems to us clear he
was gravely in error. Of the necessity of higher education as a
foundation for independence he made far too much. When he held that
reforms must needs come from above and could not be expected to be
moved from below he must have overlooked some sure lessons of history.
That naïve notion of his earlier years, that Spain would for the asking
supplant exploitation with altruism was, even in his youth, hardly what
men would expect from a mind so original and powerful, so sure and
clear. And yet in all his relations to and great services for his
country, in his incalculable contributions to the cause of eventual
liberty, in his complex relations to science, art, literature, serious
and valuable undertakings for the elevation of his fellows, in great
trials alike and among the midges of everyday existence, the world may
see in him the figure of a man: upright, alert, capable, resolute,
patient, resourceful, and without guile.
As to few men it has been given to bring to the struggles of life so
great a natural armament, few also have been able to wield in so short
a time a power so momentous. To all the Far East he is slowly becoming
a figure of inspiration and hope. To the modern Filipino world he gave
an impetus and an impress it can hardly lose in generations if ever. To
the movement for Philippine independence he gave vitality, character,
and energy that have grown stronger year after year. Even when we
consider the natural passion of the race for freedom and the long
succession of revolts with which it shook Spanish rule, this remains
substantially true. With his teachings first, then his sarcasms and
censures, then his appeals, he showed the way to unity and drove the
people along it. At his death he bequeathed to them his unquenchable
yearning for liberty, while he gave them the necessary background of
sacrifice for it. Whatever has been gained for nationality has been
gained under this inspiration; without or beyond his knowledge, Rizal
was the father of Philippine independence and the lofty model toward
which Philippine life may aspire.
Those that seek to disparage the race (so called) to which he belonged
find some refuge in the assertion that he was a strange and
inexplicable exception to the general incompetence, a star against a
background of ineptitude. Against this all just men will protest.
Elsewhere the great minds of every nation have exalted that nation in
the world’s esteem. The single lives that make up so much of the
historic glory surrounding Greece, Rome, Italy, Holland, and our own
Revolutionary period we do not sharply contrast against a darkness of
general inferiority around these men, but think of them as lighting up
all the land that bore them. Even if it were true that Rizal was the
only great man of the Filipino people, Filipinos might well claim the
same basis of judgment. But the more the leaders of the Philippine
revolution are studied—Mabini, Luna, the two del Pilars, Calderon—the
more men will be convinced that Rizal was the highest expression of an
intellectual force, stimulated by the growing passion for liberty but
still a power inherent in the race.
A race that gave such men to the world, that has at the same time
proved so incontestably its capacity equally for self-expansion and for
self-mastery, may well expect to be heard when asserting the foundation
principles of faith and common honesty, it faces the United States and
in the circle of nations demands the place it has earned.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
Translations of Poems by Rizal
TO THE PHILIPPINE YOUTH
Hold high the brow serene,
O youth, where now you stand;
Let the bright sheen
Of your grace be seen,
Fair hope of my fatherland!
Come now, thou genius grand,
And bring down inspiration;
With thy mighty hand,
Swifter than the wind’s violation,
Raise the eager mind to higher station.
Come down with pleasing light
Of art and science to the fight,
O youth, and there untie
The chains that heavy lie,
Your spirit free to blight.
See how in flaming zone
Amid the shadows thrown,
The Spaniard’s holy hand
A crown’s resplendent band
Proffers to this Indian land.
Thou, who now wouldst rise
On wings of rich emprise,
Seeking from Olympian skies
Songs of sweetest strain,
Softer than ambrosial rain;
Thou, whose voice divine
Rivals Philomel’s refrain,
And with varied line
Through the night benign
Frees mortality from pain;
Thou, who by sharp strife
Wakest thy mind to life;
And the memory bright
Of thy genius’ light
Makest immortal in its strength;
And thou, in accents clear
Of Phœbus, to Apelles dear;
Or by the brush’s magic art
Takest from nature’s store a part,
To fix it on the simple canvas’ length;
Go forth, and then the sacred fire
Of thy genius to the laurel may aspire;
To spread around the fame,
And in victory acclaim,
Through wider spheres the human name.
Day, O happy day,
Fair Filipinas, for thy land!
So bless the Power to-day
That places in thy way
This favor and this fortune grand!
—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.
TO MY MUSE
Invoked no longer is the Muse,
The lyre is out of date;
The poets it no longer use,
And youth its inspiration now imbues
With other form and state.
If to-day our fancies aught
Of verse would still require,
Helicon’s hill remains unsought;
And without heed we but inquire,
Why the coffee is not brought.
In the place of thought sincere
That our hearts may feel,
We must seize a pen of steel,
And with verse and line severe
Fling abroad a jest and jeer.
Muse, that in the past inspired me,
And with songs of love hast fired me;
Go thou now to dull repose,
For to-day in sordid prose
I must earn the gold that hired me.
Now must I ponder deep,
Meditate, and struggle on;
E’en sometimes I must weep;
For he who love would keep
Great pain has undergone.
Fled are the days of ease,
The days of love’s delight;
When flowers still would please
And give to suffering souls surcease
From pain and sorrow’s blight.
One by one they have passed on,
All I loved and moved among;
Dead or married—from me gone,
For all I place my heart upon
By fate adverse are stung.
Go thou, too, O Muse, depart,
Other regions fairer find;
For my land but offers art
For the laurel, chains that bind,
For a temple, prisons blind.
But before thou leavest me, speak:
Tell me with thy voice sublime,
Thou couldst ever from me seek
A song of sorrow for the weak,
Defiance to the tyrant’s crime.
—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.
THE SONG OF THE TRAVELER
Like to a leaf that is fallen and withered,
Tossed by the tempest from pole unto pole;
Thus roams the pilgrim abroad without purpose,
Roams without love, without country or soul.
Following anxiously treacherous fortune,
Fortune which e’en as he grasps at it flees;
Vain though the hopes that his yearning is seeking,
Yet does the pilgrim embark on the seas!
Ever impelled by the invisible power,
Destined to roam from the East to the West;
Oft he remembers the faces of loved ones,
Dreams of the day when he, too, was at rest.
Chance may assign him a tomb on the desert,
Grant him a final asylum of peace;
Soon by the world and his country forgotten,
God rest his soul when his wanderings cease!
Often the sorrowing pilgrim is envied,
Circling the globe like a sea-gull above;
Little, ah, little they know what a void
Saddens his soul by the absence of love.
Home may the pilgrim return in the future,
Back to his loved ones his footsteps he bends;
Naught will he find but the snow and the ruins,
Ashes of love and the tomb of his friends,
Pilgrim, begone! Nor return more hereafter,
Stranger thou art in the land of thy birth;
Others may sing of their love while rejoicing,
Thou once again must roam o’er the earth.
Pilgrim, begone! Nor return more hereafter,
Dry are the tears that a while for thee ran;
Pilgrim, begone! And forget thine affliction,
Loud laughs the world at the sorrows of man.
—Translated by Arthur P. Ferguson.
SONNET: TO THE VIRGIN MARY
(Written in Manila, about the year 1880)
Dear Mary, soul of peace, our consolation,
That to the heavy-stricken heart doth bring
The cool sweet waters from the all-healing spring,
From that skied throne where since thy coronation
Our hearts are bowed in tender adoration,
Lean down to hear my grief’s vague whispering,
And o’er me, bruised and broken, deign to fling
The shining robe of thy serene salvation.
Thou art my mother, placid Mary; thou
Mine only hope, my one sure source of strength.
Wild is the sea and inky dark the night.
One beacon shines!—the star upon thy brow.
Sharp sin assails me; but thy look at length
Puts sin and grief and thoughts of death to flight!
—Translated by C. E. R.
MY RETREAT
By the spreading beach where the sands are soft and fine,
At the foot of the mount in its mantle of green,
I have built my hut in the pleasant grove’s confine;
From the forest seeking peace and a calmness divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my sorrow keen.
Its roof the frail palm-leaf and its floor the cane,
Its beams and posts of the unhewn wood;
Little there is of value in this hut so plain,
And better by far in the lap of the mount to have lain,
By the song and the murmur of the high sea’s flood.
A purling brook from the woodland glade
Drops down o’er the stones and around it sweeps,
Whence a fresh stream is drawn by the rough cane’s aid;
That in the still night its murmur has made,
And in the day’s heat a crystal fountain leaps.
When the sky is serene how gently it flows,
And its zither unseen ceaselessly plays;
But when the rains fall a torrent it goes
Boiling and foaming through the rocky close.
Roaring unchecked to the sea’s wide ways.
The howl of the dog and the song of the bird,
And only the kalaw’s hoarse call resound;
Nor is the voice of vain man to be heard,
My mind to harness or my steps to begird;
The woodlands alone and the sea wrap me round.
The sea, ah, the sea! for me it is all,
As it massively sweeps from the worlds apart;
Its smile in the morn to my soul is a call,
And when in the even my faith seems to pall,
It breathes with its sadness an echo to my heart.
By night an arcanum; when translucent it glows,
All spangled over with its millions of lights,
And the bright sky above resplendent shows;
While the waves with their sighs tell of their woes—
Tales that are lost as they roll to the heights.
They tell of the world when the first dawn broke,
And the sunlight over their surface played;
When thousands of beings from nothingness woke,
To people the depths and the heights to cloak,
Wherever its life-giving kiss was laid.
But when in the night the wild waves awake,
And the waves in their fury begin to leap,