The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere
of petty officials, especially of the friar curates, who constituted
the chief obstacle to the education and development of the people.
The friar orders were, however, all-powerful, not only in the
Philippines, but also in Madrid, where they were not chary of making
use of a part of their wealth to maintain their influence. The
efforts of the Filipinos in Spain, while closely watched, do not
seem to have been given any very serious attention, for the Spanish
authorities no doubt realized that as long as the young men stayed
in Madrid writing manifestoes in a language which less than one
per cent of their countrymen could read and spending their money
on members of the Cortes, there could be little danger of trouble
in the Philippines. Moreover, the Spanish ministers themselves
appear to have been in sympathy with the more moderate wishes of
the Filipinos, a fact indicated by the number of changes ordered
from time to time in the Philippine administration, but they were
powerless before the strength and local influence of the religious
orders. So matters dragged their weary way along until there was an
unexpected and startling development, a David-Goliath contest, and
certainly no one but a genius could have polished the "smooth stone"
that was to smite the giant.
It is said that the idea of writing a novel depicting conditions in
his native land first came to Rizal from a perusal of Eugene Sue's
_The Wandering Jew_, while he was a student in Madrid, although the
model for the greater part of it is plainly the delectable sketches
in _Don Quixote_, for the author himself possessed in a remarkable
degree that Cervantic touch which raises the commonplace, even the
mean, into the highest regions of art. Not, however, until he had
spent some time in Paris continuing his medical studies, and later in
Germany, did anything definite result. But in 1887 _Noli Me Tangere_
was printed in Berlin, in an establishment where the author is said
to have worked part of his time as a compositor in order to defray
his expenses while he continued his studies. A limited edition was
published through the financial aid extended by a Filipino associate,
and sent to Hongkong, thence to be surreptitiously introduced into
the Philippines.
_Noli Me Tangere_ ("Touch Me Not") at the time the work was written had
a peculiar fitness as a title. Not only was there an apt suggestion
of a comparison with the common flower of that name, but the term
is also applied in pathology to a malignant cancer which affects
every bone and tissue in the body, and that this latter was in the
author's mind would appear from the dedication and from the summing-up
of the Philippine situation in the final conversation between Ibarra
and Elias. But in a letter written to a friend in Paris at the time,
the author himself says that it was taken from the Gospel scene where
the risen Savior appears to the Magdalene, to whom He addresses these
words, a scene that has been the subject of several notable paintings.
In this connection it is interesting to note what he himself thought of
the work, and his frank statement of what he had tried to accomplish,
made just as he was publishing it: "_Noli Me Tangere_, an expression
taken from the Gospel of St. Luke, [7] means _touch me not_. The
book contains things of which no one up to the present time has
spoken, for they are so sensitive that they have never suffered
themselves to be touched by any one whomsoever. For my own part, I
have attempted to do what no one else has been willing to do: I have
dared to answer the calumnies that have for centuries been heaped
upon us and our country. I have written of the social condition and
the life, of our beliefs, our hopes, our longings, our complaints,
and our sorrows; I have unmasked the hypocrisy which, under the cloak
of religion, has come among us to impoverish and to brutalize us,
I have distinguished the true religion from the false, from the
superstition that traffics with the holy word to get money and to
make us believe in absurdities for which Catholicism would blush,
if ever it knew of them. I have unveiled that which has been hidden
behind the deceptive and dazzling words of our governments. I have
told our countrymen of our mistakes, our vices, our faults, and our
weak complaisance with our miseries there. Where I have found virtue I
have spoken of it highly in order to render it homage; and if I have
not wept in speaking of our misfortunes, I have laughed over them,
for no one would wish to weep with me over our woes, and laughter
is ever the best means of concealing sorrow. The deeds that I have
related are true and have actually occurred; I can furnish proof of
this. My book may have (and it does have) defects from an artistic
and esthetic point of view--this I do not deny--but no one can dispute
the veracity of the facts presented." [8]
But while the primary purpose and first effect of the work was to
crystallize anti-friar sentiment, the author has risen above a mere
personal attack, which would give it only a temporary value, and by
portraying in so clear and sympathetic a way the life of his people
has produced a piece of real literature, of especial interest now as
they are being swept into the newer day. Any fool can point out errors
and defects, if they are at all apparent, and the persistent searching
them out for their own sake is the surest mark of the vulpine mind,
but the author has east aside all such petty considerations and,
whether consciously or not, has left a work of permanent value to
his own people and of interest to all friends of humanity. If ever a
fair land has been cursed with the wearisome breed of fault-finders,
both indigenous and exotic, that land is the Philippines, so it is
indeed refreshing to turn from the dreary waste of carping criticisms,
pragmatical "scientific" analyses, and sneering half-truths to a story
pulsating with life, presenting the Filipino as a human being, with
his virtues and his vices, his loves and hates, his hopes and fears.
The publication of _Noli Me Tangere_ suggests the reflection that
the story of Achilles' heel is a myth only in form. The belief that
any institution, system, organization, or arrangement has reached
an absolute form is about as far as human folly can go. The friar
orders looked upon themselves as the sum of human achievement in
man-driving and God-persuading, divinely appointed to rule, fixed
in their power, far above suspicion. Yet they were obsessed by the
sensitive, covert dread of exposure that ever lurks spectrally under
pharisaism's specious robe, so when there appeared this work of a
"miserable Indian," who dared to portray them and the conditions
that their control produced exactly as they were--for the indefinable
touch by which the author gives an air of unimpeachable veracity to
his story is perhaps its greatest artistic merit--the effect upon the
mercurial Spanish temperament was, to say the least, electric. The
very audacity of the thing left the friars breathless.
A committee of learned doctors from Santo Tomas, who were appointed
to examine the work, unmercifully scored it as attacking everything
from the state religion to the integrity of the Spanish dominions,
so the circulation of it in the Philippines was, of course, strictly
prohibited, which naturally made the demand for it greater. Large
sums were paid for single copies, of which, it might be remarked in
passing, the author himself received scarcely any part; collections
have ever had a curious habit of going astray in the Philippines.
Although the possession of a copy by a Filipino usually meant summary
imprisonment or deportation, often with the concomitant confiscation
of property for the benefit of some "patriot," the book was widely read
among the leading families and had the desired effect of crystallizing
the sentiment against the friars, thus to pave the way for concerted
action. At last the idol had been flouted, so all could attack
it. Within a year after it had begun to circulate in the Philippines a
memorial was presented to the Archbishop by quite a respectable part of
the Filipinos in Manila, requesting that the friar orders be expelled
from the country, but this resulted only in the deportation of every
signer of the petition upon whom the government could lay hands. They
were scattered literally to the four corners of the earth: some to
the Ladrone Islands, some to Fernando Po off the west coast of Africa,
some to Spanish prisons, others to remote parts of the Philippines.
Meanwhile, the author had returned to the Philippines for a visit
to his family, during which time he was constantly attended by an
officer of the Civil Guard, detailed ostensibly as a body-guard. All
his movements were closely watched, and after a few months the
Captain-General "advised" him to leave the country, at the same time
requesting a copy of _Noli Me Tangere_, saying that the excerpts
submitted to him by the censor had awakened a desire to read the
entire work. Rizal returned to Europe by way of Japan and the United
States, which did not seem to make any distinct impression upon him,
although it was only a little later that he predicted that when Spain
lost control of the Philippines, an eventuality he seemed to consider
certain not far in the future, the United States would be a probable
successor. [9]
Returning to Europe, he spent some time in London preparing an edition
of Morga's _Sucesos de las Filipinas_, a work published in Mexico
about 1606 by the principal actor in some of the most stirring scenes
of the formative period of the Philippine government. It is a record
of prime importance in Philippine history, and the resuscitation of
it was no small service to the country. Rizal added notes tending to
show that the Filipinos had been possessed of considerable culture and
civilization before the Spanish conquest, and he even intimated that
they had retrograded rather than advanced under Spanish tutelage. But
such an extreme view must be ascribed to patriotic ardor, for Rizal
himself, though possessed of that intangible quality commonly known
as genius and partly trained in northern Europe, is still in his own
personality the strongest refutation of such a contention.
Later, in Ghent, he published _El Filibusterismo_, called by him a
continuation of _Noli Me Tangere_, but with which it really has no
more connection than that some of the characters reappear and are
disposed of. [10] There is almost no connected plot in it and hardly
any action, but there is the same incisive character-drawing and
clear etching of conditions that characterize the earlier work. It
is a maturer effort and a more forceful political argument, hence
it lacks the charm and simplicity which assign _Noli Me Tangere_
to a preeminent place in Philippine literature. The light satire
of the earlier work is replaced by bitter sarcasm delivered with
deliberate intent, for the iron had evidently entered his soul with
broadening experience and the realization that justice at the hands
of decadent Spain had been an iridescent dream of his youth. Nor had
the Spanish authorities in the Philippines been idle; his relatives
had been subjected to all the annoyances and irritations of petty
persecution, eventually losing the greater part of their property,
while some of them suffered deportation.
In 1891 he returned to Hongkong to practise medicine, in which
profession he had remarkable success, even coming to be looked
upon as a wizard by his simple countrymen, among whom circulated
wonderful accounts of his magical powers. He was especially skilled
in ophthalmology, and his first operation after returning from his
studies in Europe was to restore his mother's sight by removing a