philippine studies

Ateneo de Manila University • Loyola Heights, Quezon City • 1108 Philippines

Rizal’s Novels: A Divergence from Melodrama

Alma Jill Dizon

Philippine Studies vol. 44, no. 3 (1996): 412–426

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 Rizal's Novels: A Divergence from Mekxhma
Alma Jill Dizon

An ongoing problem in Rizal scholarship is the tendency to read him

as a Realist. Why do so many critics do this? For one thing, some
view him as belonging to the school of Realism since he came after
French Realism and was a contemporary of the Spanish Realists. He
also clearly based places, events, and characters in his novels on real
locations, happenings, and people whom he knew? There is, how-
ever, more to these assumptions in that they reveal a continuing need
to bolster nationalism wen while indicating a battle with a cultural infe
riority complex that is still very much a part of Philippine psyche.2
With its attention on the Noli, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Cum-
munities has been crucial in establishing how this novel creates a hith-
erto unknown sense of Philippine identity. The passage that he
studies concentrates on a realistic description of Kapitih Tiago's mi-
lieu, and even though he describes the newspaper as a kind of fic-
tion in his discussion of it as another principle instrument of
nationalism, this combination may have the effect of leading the
unwary reader to the conclusion that Rizal belonged to the Realist
school. Anderson does not, however, delve into the various genres
and theories of the period within the overall category of the nine-
teenth-century novel. As a literary critic, Doris Summer has expanded
upon Anderson's theories by observing how desire comes into play
in literature. Readers wish to read a novel for its romance, and the
drive toward the union of ilushado and in@nue in what she calls
the Latin American national romance in turn allegorizes the creation
of republican government. Summer's emphasis on the notion of ro-
mance over realism should prove helpful in a study of Rizal's nov-
els as there are intriguing parallels between them and the Latin
American works. Moreover, Peter Brooks' study of the French melo-
drama and its profound effect on the nineteenth-century novel en-
hances Sommer's paradigm by explaining the function of an
exaggerated moral tale. Though not specifically examined in Brooks'
study, there is a melodramatic element in works which, like Rizal's
 RIZAL'S NWELS

novels, are in the service of political reform and the creation of na-
tional identity. The preponderance of critical work attesting to the
realism of the Noli and the Fili have had the unfortunate effect of
blinding us to their melodramatic aspects and with these a realm of
possibilities. For, ultimately, if we can examine Rizal's novels as be-
longing to a melodramatic tradition, then we can b e p to see how
they differ from the genre and what this divergence might indicate
for the proto-nationalist novel.
Despite all the factual details of the Noli and the Fili, the vast
majority of the characters lack psychological complexity. Ibarra and
Elias debate for pages before a change of opinion, but this scene is
primarily an intellectual exercise against a backdrop of victims who
fall to flatly drawn villains. When P. Florentino exclaims, 'Tura y
sin mancha ha de ser la victima para que el holocausto sea
a~eptable!"~ (Fili, p. 285, Chapter 391, the native priest's exhortation
not only speaks of a future, it also calls attention to a motif of pure
goodness menaced by evil throughout the novels. And even though
he uses the word holocausto, this sacrifice doesn't promise a return
to a former equilibrium but takes on a quasi-religious sense of mov-
ing on toward a new covenant. Taken in the light of this mix of
melodrama and Christian tradition, the opening verse of the quote
from Schiller's La sombra de Shakespeare takes on additional meaning.
Qub? No podria un C h presentarse
En vuestras tablas? no d s un Aquiles,
Un Orestes 6 Andr6maca mostrarse?
At the start of the Noli, these lines declare a denial of tragic possi-
bility in the modem age, and considering that the melodrama was
the popular theatrical form of the Enlightenment and early Roman-
ticism-the two periods that profoundly affected RizaYs thinking-
then it is well worth pondering the significance of the less realist
aspects of the Noli and the Fili.

If a mixture of the popular Sir Walter Scott and the canonical Jean-
Jacques Rousseau can influence the Latin American novels of inde-
pendence, (Sommer 1991, 26-2714 then it shouldn't surprise us that a
similar blending of high and low can be detected in Rizal. Within
Spanish literary tradition, the high for Rizal would be costumbrismo
in the style of Larra while the low would be the melodramatic
PHILIPPINE STUDIE

tendencies gained from Dumas,@reIronically, the need to view Rizal

as a Realist stems largely from the prejudices of traditional Spanish
literary criticism in that there is an inclination to dismiss almost eve-
rything between the Golden Age and Realism. Like the Enlighlen-
ment, Romanticism came late to Spain, but the movement had the
added misfortune of falling under the shadow of the political tur-
moil surrounding first Fernando W and then Isabel 11. Recent criti-
cism has given rise to a view of Spanish Romanticism as specific to
Peninsular experience and thus no less valid than the period in
France and England despite its short existence. It should be noted
that in Spain wen liberal Romantics expressed scandal when faced
with the French drama of the day, the most famous review being
the one Larra did of Antony by Dumas, pk.e. Writem on both ends
of the political spectrum looked toward a more Spanish and thus
moral form of Romanticism. The canonical Romantics themselves
tended to reject much of the writing happening around them, so it's
not surprising that we still read mainly what they liked. The fact
that Larra's novels never surface on the reading lists for doctoral
candidates in Spanish literature should offer us a clue as to the con-
tinuing judgment on the period's prose. For it is not Larra's prose
fiction but rather his newspaper articles, already anthologized
in Rizal's generation? which have substantiated the idea of
costumbrismo as the realism of the Romantics. Ultimately, a prefer-
ence of historical Romanticism with its medieval and Christian asso-
ciations came to dominate Spanish literary criticism, pushing aside
liberal Romanticism along with the "monstrous" literature that was
the Gothic novel and the melodrama (Flitter 1992, 79).
In nineteenthcentury Spain, the novel is most associated with the
latter half of the century, with Gald6s and Clarin as principal au-
thors in the genre. These writers shunned melodrama and pointedly
wrote against what they regarded as the false illusions of romance
and happy endings. In this way, the tendency to bill Rizal as a Re-
alist stems in part from a dismissal of popular writing by the Real-
ists themselves. Critics who have been more familiar with Spanish
literary tradition have tended to compare him with Gald6s even
though Rizal never mentions him in his journals or letters, instead
reading Dumas, ptre and Sue, both of whom Gald6s looked
down on. Despite the worthwhile nature of examining the many simi-
larities between Gald6s' Do* Perfecta and the Noli,6 we shouldn't al-
low a preference of Gald6s over Dumas to keep us from
 REAL'S NOVELS

contemplating the implications of the latter's visible influence on

Rizal's manner of presenting a moral tale?
An added twist to this tale of prejudices is the cutting off of Rizal
from Spanish literary tradition that occurred so soon after the start
of a Spanish-language tradition in Philippine literature. With the
entrance of the American educational system came an emphasis on
literary models in English and their ammpanying criteria. Even as
Peninsular critics have tended to separate Rizal from a Philippine
realiMin the Philippines, Rizal has been dislocated from a Spanish
literary past, standing often as the lonely creator of Philippine lit-
erature without benefit of models. When he has been associated with
other writers, the primacy of English-language models as well as
Comparative Literatuds traditional emphasis on European writers
north of the Pyrenees have given rise to the need to put him on the
same level with western canonical Realists. And since the Romantics
have been taught using Shelley and Lord +on as central examples,
the separation of Rizal's costumbrkm from that generation in Spain
came about, causing his parody to appear more realist9 and only his
lyricism Romantic.
Quite frankly, "realismf' is a slippery term that takes us down too
many blind alleyways, misdirecting our efforts to understand better
how Rizal's novels have influenced history. In arguing over the word
and trying to make Rizal fit the criteria of a small group of writers
who themselves could not always meet their goals, we are unfair to
the texts,and we are unfair to ourselves. We should instead go back
to the very idea of fiction as manipulated text and not so different
from criticism despite its usually more entertahhg nature. As we
know from Schumacher's work on the propagandists, "propagandaff
in Spanish does not have the peprative overtones that it does in Eng-
lish (The Propaganda Moplsnent: 1880-2895, p. x) Yet it is still "propa-
ganda" in the sense of trying to sell an idea, of trying to manipulate
words to influence the reader or listener. In this way, melodrama is
not less valuable than realism but rather better suited to political
commentary by infusing narrative with a clear moral code?O

Melodrama
As Peter Brooks illustrates in The Melodramatic Imagination. Balzac,
Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess, echoes of the melo-
drama are to be found even in the canonical Realist novels. It is
PHILIPPINE STUDIES

intriguingly at moments of great moral clarity that the language in

these Realist novels may appear quite melodramatic and lacking in
psychological depth. Brooks then goes back to the origins of the
melodrama around the time of the French Revolution to examine how
tragedy no longer reflected the conditions of a society for whom
Church and throne had been cast into doubt. With the changeover
from Enlightenment to Romanticism, there was a "'renewed thirst for
the Sacred," but without the trappings it had once worn. Thus good
and evil confront each other through flatly drawn characters since
". . . melodrama represents both the urge toward resacralization and
the impossibility of conceiving sacrabation other than in personal
terms" (Brooks 1976, 16). Ultimately, Brooks (1976,351 finds that, due
precisely to its want of character psychology, the ". . . melodrama
exteriorizes conflict and psychic structure, producing . . . what we
might call the 'melodrama of psychology.'"
As for the question of genres and periods, a pattern of fluidity
arises here in that the melodramatic theater came out of the novel
and then later went back into that form during the second wave of
Romanticism in France. Osmosis can and does frequently occur b e
tween apparently discrete categories. As Brooks notes, "Melodrama
pillaged happily in epic, legend, and history for its subjects, but the
principal source was probably always the novel, the genre to which
it is so closely related, the first medium to realize the importance of
persecuted women, struggling to preserve and impose the moral vi-
sion" (Brooks 1976, 86). Even while this aspect of pure characteriza-
tion is readily avoided in the Realist novel, Brooks believes that the
moral dilemma still dominates. He draws an historical connection
between the popular melodrama and Romantic theater before intuit-
ing how the physical limitations of the theatre compelled Romantics
such as Dumas, p&e to change genres, exploring the possibilities of
the novel. As he explains, "In the novel, the struggle of ethical im-
peratives will open up convincing recesses in a world that no longer
need be realized through visual simulacra, but in words alone"
(Brooks 1976, 108-9).
More so than in the Realist novel, the question of overriding moral
struggle as backgrounding a loversf tale is readily apparent in the
political reform or nationalist novel. Ironically, a certain assumption
of "realism" accompanies such works in that the action is based on
real-life social problems that deserve correction even as the more
openly melodramatic qualities of such novels also demand a flatten-
ing of psychological realism. In her study of the Latin American na-
 REAL'S NOVELS

tional romances,which are--like the Noli and the Fili-requid read-

ing in their countries, Sommer establishes early on that these works
are unlike the European Realist novel. The basic story line differs in
that marriage as an allegory for republican govenunent rather than
adultery drives the plot, and the characters lack the internal strug-
gle or psychological depth of their European contemporaries. Instead
of looking to the melodrama, however, Sommer attributes the two-
dimensional heroes and heroines to vestigial aristocratic ideals still
found amongst the elite of conservative republicanism (48-49). Con-
sidering that the French melodramatic tradition entered Latin America
primarily through the novel rather than popular theatre, a connec-
tion between elitism and heroism makes sense, but flat characteriza-
tion also points toward the influence of the melodramatic vision.
Among the works that Sornmer studies, Gertrudis G6mez de
Avellaneda's Sab (1841) most readily provides evidence of the link
between the melodrama and the Latin American national romances.
With its noble mulatto slave as title character, many considered Sub
an anti-slavery novel, and Avellaneda's relatives tried to squash its
distribution in Spain. In addition to its reputation as an instrument
for political reform, Sab serves as a proto-nationalist novel that sets
up a specific Cuban identity even though it first appeared in Spain
during the colonial period. Shikingly, Sub demonstrates the melodra-
ma's drive toward a moral consciousness; there is a strong opposi-
tion of good versus self-serving characters while the narrative clearly
indicates their hidden motives and spiritual states. The work differs
from a true melodrama in that Carlota marries the wrong man, but
moral awareness finally arises with the remorse that she and her
cousin Teresa experience when they realize their errors in love.

Rizal's Novels

As in works like Sab, Rizal's novels present characters whose true

selves appear unmistakably to the reader through gesture and physi-
cal details. The characters are either good, evil, or hapless victims,
so that there is a conspicuous lack of moral gray area?' While we
do not have any evidence directly connecting Rizal to the melodra-
matic tradition in the theatre, we still have his admiration of Sue and
Dumas, p&e as expressed in his letters. With his shift from the thea-
tre to the novel, Dumas remains the clearest link between Rizal and
the French melodrama. It is striking that Rizal's novels, like Dumas'
PHlLIPPINE STUDIES

The Count of Monte Cristo, share certain characteristics with the melo-
drama, such as the confrontation of good and evil, clear physical
markings, mute gesture, and melodramatic peripety.
Where the Noli and the Fili diverge from their model becomes
evident through a few private confesiom which only the reader rec-
ognizes. Melodramatic peripety traditionally calls for some kind of a
confession in order to bring about a full recuperation of the moral
code. As Brooks expresses it, ". . . melodrama typically, not only
employs virtue persecuted as a source of its dramaturgy, but also
tends to become the dramaturgy of virtue misprized and eventually
recognized. It is about virtue made visible and acknowledged, the
drama of a recognition" (27). In The Count of Monte Cristo, all goes
badly for the protagonist in the early chapters, but the following tale
of revenge presents a consistent series of successes. On the other
hand, Rizal's novels contain a number of dead ends. Characters who
attempt to better their or their children's lives through education and
hard work instead lose e v-. Although written by an ilustrado
and often regarded as valorizing education, the novels time and again
offer a completely hopeless view: One might imagine that in a r e
form novel, a desire to learn plus hard work might enable some to
advance as did the Chinese mestizo middle class to whom Rizal be-
longed. Instead, the novels emphasize the brutalizing nature of the
fruilocWs brand of education even as only those who exploit suc-
ceed. Another clear \rreak with the melodramatic storyline is the sepa-
ration rather than the reunion of families coupled with the
impossibility of marriage between hero and heroine. Children and
their elders die, go insane, or become outlaws to the point where
social continuity under colonialism comes under question since only
collaborators do well. Inghues become unreachable love objects who
die, and strangely they do so in the middle rather than at the end.
Their deaths do not figure into a final climax but rather permeate
the atmosphere of the novels.
Throughout Rizal's novels, melodramatic characterization and ges-
ture give structure to and flesh out a morality play that condemns
the hypocrisy and cruelty of colonial life, and yet the novels differ
from the melodrama as well as The Count of Monte Cristo in their
lack of a happy ending. At the same time, the novels do not present
a tragedy that restores society's on@ balance. The novels read
more like incomplete melodrama, as if more should follow about
Isagani to bring that final, public peri~ety.'~To say that the novels
are Realist due to their unideal endings together with close depictions
 RIZAL'S NOVELS

of human experience is to underestimate the power of melodramatic

loss to influence the reader to action. And it is particularly this reac-
tion that has brought the novels into the mdm of historical "real-
ity,' by provoking revohttionaries to complete the truncated uprising
of the FiZi.'3 For while Rizal's novels display many of the character-
istics of the melodrama, the final moment of complete recuperation
is missing. Even when the Fili first appeared, Upez Jaena observed
to Rizal "Has dejado en ella sin soluci6n el problema. Como novela
.
politics, su final no es digno remate de obra tan hermosa. . . Pero,
ya entiendo, has querido dejar que el pueblo filipino se encargue de
la soluci6n del problema social y politica que en su seno se agita."14
(Fili, p. iii, Prefaao)
Besides the possibility that Rizal wished for Filipinos to resolve
the issue themselves, we are faced with other intriguing possibilities
on a literary level, none of which cancels out the other. One is that
without having had a revolution as in the case of the French melo-
drama or the Latin American romance, there was no republic to cel-
ebrate with a happy ending with a marriage of ilustrado and ing6nue
as allegory of republican government. As historically and regionally
specific genres, the melodrama in the French tradition and the post-
independence Latin American national romance naturally have cer-
tain aspects that demonstrate their distinct provenances. In other
words, a lack of resolution outside the Noli and the Fili predicates a
lack of resolution within the novels.
Another possibility, while less positive, is nevertheless worth con-
templating, and that is a built-in discomfort with desire. Brooks does
observe that the Romantics tended to emphasize the strength of evil
with tragic endings, (p. 87) but Rizal doesn't do this. Instead of con-
frontation and climax, the novels have an extenuated ending in the
final chapters of the Fili. In these pages, Isagani steals the bomb that
was to signal the b e p n h g of the rebellion, effectively staving off
open violence. Then he returns to the countryside to live with his
uncle--a falsely peaceful ending for him as we know from the events
of the Noli that the province is just as corrupt as and even more bru-
tal than the city. Adding to an overall atmosphere of evasion is the
comic moment when Don Tiburcio mistakenly believes that the or-
der to arrest a Spaniard means that his wife Doiia Victorina is about
to close in on him. P. Florentino fails to persuade him that the mes-
sage probably refers to Simoun, and so he hides in a woodcuttefs
house, leaving the impression that his flight will last well beyond
the final page like tales of Japanese pilots lost in Mindanao for dec-
PHILIPPINE STUDIES

ades after WWII. As for Simoun's protracted suicide, this moment

of truth in which he confesses his real identity and debates with P.
Florentino does not offer a true confrontation either. After the na-
tive priest's famous speech on how F!ilipinosmust deserve independ-
ence, Simoun falls silent, and a few paragraphs later, we find that
he is already dead. The moment has none of the pathos of, for in-
stance, the moment when Don Alvaro hurls himself off the cliff in
the Romantic drama Don A h r o o la fuerza del sino. Moreover, the
final moment of the Fili in which P. Florentino throws Simoun's suit-
case of jewels into the ocean suggests an unwillingness to imagine
completion as the priest intones, "jQ~ela natudeza te guarde en
10s profundos abismos, entre 10s corales y perlas de sus etemos
.
mares! . . Cuando para un fin santo y sublime 10s hombres te
necesiten, Dios sabd sacarte del seno de las olas. . . ."I5 (chapter 39,
p. 286) As "fin" here means 'end' in its most basic sense as well as
'goal', it underscore5 the present lack of a strong ending for the novel.
The closing statement "FIN DE EL FILIBUSTERISMO" seems rather
ironic after this paragraph, and one might assume that another book
should follow if one didn't already know that none appeared in print
thereafter. This lack of a true climax to the Fili, either positive or
negative, demonstrates a central ambivalence, which we cannot help
but link to the issue of nationalism This ambivalence reveals a no-
tion that independ- the heroine as love object-mnahs ideal
and therefore unknowable, and the unknown-for all its desirabil-
ity-is unsettling and wen fraught with danger. After all, by Rizal's
day, revolution no longer held the promise that it once had a cen-
tury before. The glory of the fall of the Bastille preceded the Terror
just as the Latin American wars of independence preceded genera-
tions of civil war and d i l l i s m . In other words, a resolution as ideal
realized is impossible due to ambivalence and an inability or even
refusal to imagine the intangible goal, whether it be marriage or the
nation.
For a third possibility, it is useful to consider the melodrama it-
self as not totally appropriate for a novel that drives toward change
rather than assuming that Rizal's works fail to complete the melo-
dramatic trajectory. Here, Pedro Patem's Ninay (costumbres filipinas),
published in Madrid in 1885, serves as a useful counterpoint to
Rizal's work. N f q is more obviously a melodrama with a tale of
pure love thwarted by evil ending with the reunion of the lovers
just as they die in an epidemic. This novel shares points in common
with the Noli such as sudden reversals of fortune and a heroic tulisrin
 REAL'S NOVELS

who, like the protagonist, p w up in a privileged background. How-

ever, the similarities are superficial,as G u e m notes, in that Patemo
avoids angering the Spaniards with a Portuguese villain and a no-
ticeable lack of friars (p. 134). Paterno goes wen further to placate
Spanish readers, particularly those in high places, when, after false
charges cause a flurry of arrests within the novel, he interrupts the
story with an assurance that such things didn't happen during
Fernando prim0 de Rivera's term as Captain General ( 1 8 W ) . Ninay
beat out the Noli as the first novel to portray the Philippines-a por-
trayal that the author attempts to achieve through numerous foot-
notes of questionable 'accuracy on fo1klore, c u b , flora, and fauna.
These footnotes take up much more space than the story, and, inter-
estingly, the narration contains phrases that betray an expectation of
welcome by Spanish readers. At the wake, the narrator introduces
the lovers' tale with the strange statement that "Varios de 10s
concurrentes que la ignoraban tarnbih, entre ellos 10s europeos que
h a b h acudido alli s610 para el estudio de las costumbres tagalas,
formaron conmigo un drculo para oir el relaton(p. 16).16 From the
beginning, the first-person narrator posits himself between a native
voice who acts as a witness to the events and an audience from the
metropole. In this manner, an anthropology essentially in the sew-
ice of the colonial regime subsumes a story about Filipino lovers. It
is this odd combination of anthropological study and romance that
demonstrates how a purer melodrama such as Ninay ends up sup-
porting rather than questioning colonialism. The villain remains a bad
individual who takes advantage of an imperfect system, but the co-
lonial structure itself escapes scrutiny. After the death of the villain
and the lovers, one comes away with the notion that all has returned
to normal though without catharsis As a novel that follows more
closely in the melodramatic mold, Ninay cannot help but equate re-
cuperation with a return to a colonial norm. As Brooks notes in his
conclusion:
Melodrama cannot figure the birth of a new society-the role of com-
edy--but only the old society reformed. And it cannot, in distinction
to tragedy, offer reconciliation under a sacred mantle, or in terms of a
higher synthesis. A form for secularized times, it offers the nearest
apprwch to sacred and cosmic m e s in a world where they no longer
have any certain ontology or epistemology. (p. 205)
It makes sense that the melodramatic emphasis on a visible spir-
ituality through the struggle of good against evil would appeal to
PHILIPPINE STUDIES

Rizal, paxticularly in the issue of reforming society. Yet the melo-

drama's ending presents us with society reformed, imagining a re-
cuperation that Rizal's novels do not. Rizal's use of biting satire hints
at a need for total change, but the fluctuation between satirical and
melodramatic moments dqes not allow for the creation of a new so-
ciety as in comedy. Ultimately, rather than saying that Rizal failed
to control his hybrid of melodrama and satire, stopping with an
unfinished product, it stands to reason that the novels, as they stand,
have their own integrity. In this manner, killing a heroine rather than
allowing her to many the young ilustrado or, like Ninay, die in her
lover's arms, does not simply mark a lack, a falling short of the
meladramatic resolution. Insled, such deaths indicate a move toward
something beyond the frame, beyond the narrow scope of the mele
dramatic form with its continuity beneath the appearance of change.
In a sense, wen though the d o d r a m a serves to voice a need for
political reform, a goal of total change proves inadequate the con-
ventional resolution of the melodrama.

In reading Rizal as incomplete melodrama, it is possible to un-

derstand the drive to add onto the novels by enacting the revolu-
tion that Sim,un keeps putting off. The melodramatic characterization
introduces and intensifies the social problems of colonial life, with
the suffering of the good helping to make notions of morality and
responsibility personal for the reader. Intentions aside, the lack of
redemption in the novels stimulates a need for action, serving to jus-
tify revolution through their inability to present a happy ending
under the colonial regime.
Did people like the characters really exist? To a large extent, yes,
but on the other hand, we have only to remember a moment in
which a character in The Count of Monte Cristo says to a friend, "No-
body knows better than yourself that the bandits of Corsica are not
rogues or thieves, but purely and simply fugitives, driven by some
sinister motive from their native town or village, and that their fel-
lowship involves no disgrace or stig~na."'~(p. 387) Readers tend to
favor Elias over Ibarra due to his more heroic nature, and yet, like
Patemo's tulidn, he belongs to a European tradition going back to
the melodrama and even earlier to ballads such as those about Robin
Hood. Popular literature as well as experience engenders Rizal's
 REAL'S NOVELS

novels And as literature, his novels are more important for the quali-
fiable than the quantifiable. Whatever Elias' origins may be, his fig-
ure has taken on a life of its own in Philippine culture. Thus it is
that Benedict Anderson, in writing about the newspaper and the Noli,
remarks that ". . .
fiction seeps quietly and continuously into reality
.
. ." (p. 40) As fiction and M r e in a sense untrue, unreal, Rizal's
novels exist as invented memory? helping to shape a sense of na-
tional identity that is itself, like any identity, shifting and tenuous
yet at the same time powerful.

1. Ante Radaids classic study Jod R i d , nnndntb mrlistn (1961, 11 - uses the
term "reabt" in ib most literal sense m based on e x p e r h a rather than trying to
make the difficult amnection between Rizal and the Realist movement in Spain.
Mojares (1991,475, 477) also makes a si& argument, separabely desaibing Rizal's
realism ar, e q d a r c a before giving a list of Eltropean authon that Rizal read, all of
whom predate the Realbt moveanent
2. Ludla Hodloo 0991, 559) believes that Rizal could arise as a Realist novelist
without i d i g e m u tradition in the -em bemme, m ehc q e d a t e s Dhe was .' . .
steeped in the Realist literature d Emope" Hoaillod placing of Rizal on an equal
footing with European mllen apparently stems from the same need that Nick Joaquin
has seen to defend the Ndi kom Philippine aMc) who find fault with it.
3. "Ihe victim must be pure and without impe&cth, eo that the holocaust may
be acceptabler Spaniahtextsarefran thecenknnialeditianof theaalginaloffsetwith
ninete&th-care acoentuafion and original typographical erras. unless otherwise
noted, all tradatlm are my own.
4. In F m n h t b d Fictitms: The National Rompnus of latin AmcliaP, Ikris Sommer
(1991) examhea how the d&re far marriage between h t r d o and inghue in the
nineteenth-cartury Lath American novel &es as an allegory for &ding repub-
lics; a pamdigm which flnds repetition with Ibarra and Marla Qara in the Noli, and
l3asilio and Jult in the Flli
5. The tendency to cut out the noncanonical was a problem in Rizal's reading
material. He writes repeatedly in his letters that he wants all of Larra's works sent to
him. HoweverDit is &ly known from his mmplaint that he received an anthology,
and whether or not he wer acquired the complete works is uncertain
6. In The PnqmgPndn Movement: 1880-1895, the Cnafors of a Filipino Gnsciousness,
the M a k s c# Rrodutiar, John N. Schumacher, S.J. (1973) dtes Carlos Quirino's The Great
AhJayan as a source for the speculation that Gald6s and in particular Dolir, Pnfccta
Muenced Rizal Quirino's preference of canonical Realism wer lesser writers whom
we h o w that Rizal read comes across when he states, 'The idea of m i h g a novel,
after the manner of PQez Gald6s' I h i a Pnfnta, germinated within him. He read
Eugene Sue's The Wan&ring Jew but found that, although well-written and conceived,
it failed to move him deeply (75). Quirino's biography has no bibliography, and he
has the habit of presenting his speculations in combination with fact Due to the lack
PHILIPPINE STUDIES

of widens in Rizal's diaries and letters of his ever reading Gal- Schumacher (1973,
81 n.12) hypothesizes that since Patemo read Cald6e before writing Nbuty, which in
turn shares many plot devices with Rizd, the influence may have been an indirect
one via Paterno. While this theory is not totally impossible, the textual evidence ei-
ther in journals or letter does not extst In addition, the simillarities between the Noli
and Nbury are not the ones that the former shares with M Pqkcta Considering
also the fact that Patemo was writing in the mcbdramatic vein which Gal& con-
sciously eschewed (though he d not completely give it up), it is more likely that
similarities between this Realist and and say more about shared Uberal concerns of
the day than about literary influemaa As for Doih Pcrfacb~,the n o d is set against a
backdrop of the Carlist wan of succesdon and sap more about a struggle within
Spain between country and dty, tradition and modernity, conservative and liberal.
7. Writing in 1955, Nick Joaquinsaw the need to defend Rizal from accusations of
bad writing and borrowing a pqxxkmu9 story line from Dumas,saying that if any-
thlngRizalfmpnwedonThcCamtofM4ntrcrbto064).
8. Since Unamunds preface to Retana's week on Rizal -language critics
have tended to view R&I in tams of Spanish nationalism, thet is as a-lo* to a
divided Spain.It would be u&d at some time to examine Unarnuno's writings on
Rizal to see how the l a m continues to serve as an instrument of ! 3 p b h s e l f a d
nation. For Unamuno's moments of identification with Rizal in annblnation with his
repeated harangues against an anti-intellectual environment betray the critic's own
angst ~ n a m 6 o ' stendency toward identifying with Rizal make -sense in that, like
him, he felt samething of an ouMder in the mehopole. A Basque, he was a philose
pher, fiction writer, and sometlme redor of the Univdty of Selamanca, founded late
in the twelfth century, and situated, not without h y for Unamuno, in Old Castile.
He often had diWculties with various Spanish regimes, culminating in his death un-
der house arrest when he changed his mind about Franca Some twenty years earlier,
Unamuno (1918) had written of Rtzal's reputation as a PiZ~~~trro in an essay on patri-
otism, "Y se lo wl-n porque la amah con inkligenda, y no con ese amor dego y
brut0 que no es sino una energfa huera, enamorada de una unidad tan huera como
ella; no con ese amar hsthtivo y que, como el toro, se va tras la capa, ese intinto
que a1 sentir "que tremola sin bald611la bandera roja y gualda, siente frfo por la
espalda y le late el camzh," s e g h reza la tan wnodda anno deplorable cuarteta"
'And they called him Pibvstrro because he loved her [Spain] with intelligence, and
not with that blind, brutal love which is nothing but empty energy in love with a
unity that is as blind as itself; not with that love and instinct that, like the bull, fol-
lows the cape when it senses 'the red and yellow flag waving without shame, shiv-
ers, and feels his heart beating" as the famous and deplorable rhyme intones'
(Unamuno 1918,21). It would appear than Unamuno and critics following in his foot-
steps are talking more about ~ & ~ u n o ' sdifficult relationship with swish caudillos
than about Rizal.
9. Without mentioning Romanticism or ~09tumbrism0,Mojares (1991, 475) views
Rizal's satire as part of an overall "realist approach" as this was how he ". . . un-
masked the ign&ce and pretensions of colonial society." Costumbrismo has no true
equivalent in English. It first enters into Spanish literahue with LratrilIo de T m s
(1545) and generally means any dose description of lower and, later, of middle dass
life. From the beginning, however, it has also contained much humorous social criti-
cism and is often more parody than a simple tmmcription of daily events. While
Radaic (1%1,181-82) m m p h s Rizal's satirical tone as aimed toward reform, he uses
 REAL'S NOVELS

the term 'cmtumbrhnd mom in a litexal sense m recolding local customs. Thus he
views Rids nrrxPrmsl um d ooetumb&mo aa a ldnd of cultural anthropology that
". . . le sib a un voluntario y evidarte realismom'. . . situates him in a deliberate
and evident realism' (R.dldc 1%1,189).
10. The inclusion of M e t Beecher Stowe's Unde Tm's Cabin in Rizal's reading
points to an awareneee of the melodramatic novel's usefulness as a tool for political
ieforln.
11. Vivendo Jd perceives the significance of the moral clarity with which the
narrative depicb draracten when he asks rhetorically amcaning the characters in the
Noli, "Who are good? Who are bold and daring? Who are generous? Who are kind?
And who are evil?'' (588). He stape short, however, of declaring the literariness of
the moral struggle, prefemhg inskad the historical basis of Rizal's works as political
novels.
12 In Mahnisa. 7 h samh @ RirPl's third n o d (Metro Manila: Anvil Publishing,
Inc, 1992), Ambeth Oampo (1992) has managed to piece together pages of a Spanish
manuscript Caned hkhuniul that was apparently the beginning of a thlrd n w d in the
series. Isagani m well a characten from the Noli appear in the frapentq offering a
tantalizing hint to a resolution. 'Ihe fact that Rizal abandoned the prow reWorces a
notion of resolution a impowible under colonialism.
13. Ambeth Ocampo (1990, 152) argues that Bonifado's uprising bore a shiking
resemblance to the character SLmoun's aborted plans.
14. "You haw left the problem unresolved, As a political novel, its end is not the
.
proper d m to such a beautiful work. . . But I understand that you wished to
let the Filipino people take responsibility for the solution to their soda1 and political
problem."
15. "May Nature keep you in the depths, amongst the coral and peals of her eter-
nal seas! . . . When men need you for a holy and sublime purpose, God will know
how to lift you from beneath the waves. . . ."
16 "Others there, among than Europeans who had come only to study Tagalog
customs, also didn't know the story, and they formed a drde with me to hear it."
17. The Colmt of Monte Cristo, ed. and intro. by Coward, David, Oxford: Oxford
University Ress, 1990, Brst translated and published by World's Classics, 1852.

References

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined communities: Reflecfions on the origin and

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Brooks, Peter. 1976. The melodramatic imagination: Balznc, Henry James, Melo-
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Flitter, Derek. 1992. Spunish romantic literary theory and m'ticism. New York:
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Hosillos, Lucila. 1991. The refracted echoes: Nationalism and realism in
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Mojaws*Resil B. 1991.The rise of the novel: J d Rizal. In HimnLry: Knlipllnan

ng mga miaurul kny JdRiml, eds Patricia MelendrezCruz and Apolonio
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Sommer, Doris. 1991. Folrndatiod fictions Thc national romanoes of Latin
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