mot juste

I’ve been under the weather, so I did some web-based research on Jose Rizal, the ‘first Filipino’. Though we studied him, I had assumed that he was mere pen pals with Leonor Rivera. She has been described as his ‘lover by correspondence.’

Turns out they had an intense, real world relationship and were secretly engaged. I admire Rizal’s immense intellect (he was a noted polymath, novelist, and linguist). However, I find his amour problematic on two counts. Rivera, his cousin, made the relationship incestuous. Secondly, she was merely thirteen when they met (he was a 19yo medical student).

Resembling a modern day textlationship, they wrote letters for 8 years and never saw each other in the flesh again. Rivera, sickly, often had insomnia, secretly longing for Rizal. Meanwhile, Jose studied medicine in Europe, always thinking of Rivera. Her mother was aware that Rizal was Spain’s mortal enemy. To protect her daughter, she kept Rizal’s letters away from her. Leonor moved on, wedding a Pom and had two kids, before dying in childbirth. Leonor’s marriage devastated Rizal. Still, he immortalised her as Maria Clara in his debut novel, Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not).

I’ll mostly quote the rest of this post from chapter eleven of my 300-page memoir, Topher Wins (2022).

Ballpen

‘As an adolescent, I fell in love with Jose Rizal’s virtuosity. We studied his two immortal novels in class, satires and commentaries that displayed how “The pen is mightier than the sword”.

Rizal proved the potency of words, that you could make a difference without lifting a weapon. He looked tyranny in the eye and put an empire on its knees. A hundred years since his passing, his two texts remain as pertinent as ever.

Boys and men

He wrote this all in his second language, Spanish. Given, it was the lingua franca of his time, but this exhibits his genius. Not many people, even his fellow intellectuals at the time, had the dedication to pull this off. Indeed, Rizal contended with associates who cared more about women and vices than saving the motherland. In the Philippines, Rizal’s initial idea of collaborating with his scholarly peers is common knowledge. Like many things in life, he did so alone.’

Let me pause this for a moment. Rizal’s brilliance directly prompted my poetry collection. I singled him out, together with Jose Garcia Villa as my school heroes. They planted my early artistic seeds. In a separate post, I depicted Villa already. He was known as ‘the pope of Greenwich Village.’

The road to publication

‘In all his glory, the hurdles that Rizal faced is easy to forget. He started writing the Noli in 1882 while studying in Europe. In 1887, aged twenty-five, his debut was published. The road to fruition was far from simple. As a young expat in Madrid, financial constraints tied up Rizal. He got so disillusioned that he hurled precious pages of his debut novel into the fire. He had thought that his first book would never see the light of day. However, as his dream began to fade, he was given a lifeline. His friend, Maximo Viola, was a generous donor. The latter loaned him 300 pesos, which equated to 2,000 copies. The first edition was published in Berlin in early 1887.

The text became a thorn in the Spanish side, resulting in their burning. Rizal became the public enemy. I wonder how it feels to produce a book so powerful that people will ignite them.

‘The good die young’

Rizal lived a full life. He was killed by firing squad at Bagumbayan aged thirty-five. By then, he had already published two novels, crafted four plays, two nonfiction reads, loads of articles, and heaps of poetry. My works will not be required texts for Filipino students, but I haven’t done bad either. If it was only a matter of quantity, I’ve finished this nonfiction read, published one anthology, one poetry collection and maintain a blog with over four hundred posts. My current project is a return to fiction.

…Being born in Laguna, he seems just like anyone among us, and yet was so much more. Rizal has become a mythical figure on a pedestal. All of us have heard about him but no one has met him. The martial artist, Bruce Lee, carries a similar mystique: he died too soon. Already an accomplished actor, he pioneered eastern success in Hollywood. Bo Jackson, the former football and baseball all-star, would be his modern-day equivalent. We are left with stories, eye-popping accounts of a great Filipino, if not the greatest. In time, further generations would ennoble him.

Genius

Watching Jose Rizal with the whole Chinese school at the cinemas was a high point. In grade four, I vividly recall the actor Cesar Montano as Rizal in his tour de force. Elias was brought to life as a hardened defeatist. The firing squad at Bagumbayan may lack suspense, but not the mercy shot.

‘They did that to clinch his death,’ was Jimmy’s response to my question. A senior at the time, he was a presidential candidate at the student organisation. My achi later told me that he moved his teachers to tears by giving his valedictory speech in flawless Chinese. He won the most medals during the ceremony.

The Rizal movie opened my eyes about our national hero’s life. I’ve heard bits about him, but seeing his story played out on the big screen blew me away. The production topped the box office and swept the awards. Montano won most Best actor statuettes. The picture provided great detail from his childhood, when he idolised the martyr Filo priests, to his world beater days as an ophthalmologist…his surreal exile in Dapitan moved me. He had a stillborn baby with his partner, Josephine Bracken.

Yet even though the movie is three hours, this still seems insufficient in plotting out Rizal’s genius. No runtime would ever suffice when profiling Rizal’s greatness.

We live in fiction

Both Rizal and I have written in literary fiction, timeless works of art that resonate with all walks of life. Filipinos and expats who wrote in the language of their time. Both studied overseas, although he plied his trade in the medical profession. Like him, I nurtured my flair for writing in my formative years. Much more than a writer, he was a master of tongues who succeeded in everything he touched…except Leonor Rivera.

In this regard, gauging my progress against Salinger makes more sense. The famous recluse retreated from public life for fifty years, never publishing anything new. He would surface to block others from capitalising on his fame. He was the inspiration behind William Forrester. His body of work includes one immortal novel and three collections. This, I think, is closer to what I’ve amassed thus far. His trio of compilations were all released fifty to sixty years ago but are much critiqued and loved. Catcher is de riguer reading among some American high schools. Remember that scene in Forrester? Jamal loses a bet against William, seeing that all of the latter’s books were checked out. People do read older books.’

See? Rizal might be long asleep but his legacy lives on in present-day authors like me. Even though I’m in Sydney, his lessons reverberate. We can learn from his star-crossed love affair with Leonor. To paraphrase a fictional English professor, ‘A polymath who offered everything and an astute disciple who yearns to offer more…’