LITERATURES OF THE PHILIPPINES

Philippine literature is the body of works, both oral and written, that Filipinos, whether
native, naturalized, or foreign born, have created about the experience of people living in or
relating to Philippine society. It is composed or written in any of the Philippine languages, in
Spanish and in English, and in Chinese as well. Philippine literature may be produced in the
capital city of Manila and in the different urban centers and rural outposts, even in foreign
lands where descendants of Filipino migrants use English or any of the languages of the
Philippines to create works that tell about their lives and aspirations. The forms used by
Filipino authors may be indigenous or borrowed from other cultures, and these may range from
popular pieces addressed to mass audiences to highly sophisticated works intended for the
intellectual elite.

Having gone through two colonial regimes, the Philippines has manifested the cultural
influences of the Spanish and American colonial powers in its literary production. Works may
be grouped according to the dominant tradition or traditions operative in them. The first
grouping belongs to the ethnic tradition, which comprises oral lore identifiably pre-colonial in
provenance and works that circulate within contemporary communities of tribal Filipinos, or
among lowland Filipinos that have maintained their links with the culture of their non-Islamic or
non-Christian ancestors. The second grouping consists of works that show Spanish derivation
or influence in the themes and forms employed, and these may include literary works that are
translations of original Spanish writings, or adaptations of the same. A third grouping
comprises works belonging to the American colonial tradition. Literary production under this
tradition shows the impact of American colonial control, which facilitated through the
educational system the entry into Philippine literature of forms and themes from the literatures
of England and the United States.

In contemporary Philippine writing, one may observe a merging of these three traditions
as these are employed by literary artists expressing their response to historical and socio-
cultural forces that have shaped Philippine society since the Pacific War.

The Ethnic Tradition

Philippine ethnic literature is a rich repository of ideas, ideals, and sentiments,

preserved through centuries of oral transmission. From the samples that exist, ethnic literature
may be classified into three groups: folk speech, folk songs, and folk narratives.

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 The most amusing form of folk speech is the riddle, called tigmo in Cebuano, bugtong in
Tagalog and in Pampango, burburtia in Ilocano, paktakon in Ilongo, and patototdon in Bicol. A
puzzle in which an object to be guessed is described in terms of another unrelated object, the
riddle relies on talinghaga or metaphor. Because it reveals subtle resemblances between two
unlike objects, the riddle whets one’s wits and sensitizes one’s perceptions of things often
taken for granted.

This bugtong ingeniously describes, in an apt personification, the motion of feet:

Pampango:

Adua lang mikaluguran

Tagalan nong tagalan

Two friends

In an endless chase.

Some riddles verge on the obscene, referring to sex-related images to describe what are
actually “innocent” objects.

Gaddang:

Gongonan nu usin y amam

Maggirawa pay sila y inam. (Campana)

If you pu1l your daddy’s penis.

Your mommy’s vagina, too, screams. (Bell)

But the opposite process also occurs. Everyday objects are used to suggest sex or the
genitals, as in this riddle, (Alburo et al 1988:13):

Ibanag:

Kasikallan y levu na

Bawang y tanggna na. (Fuki)

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It’s surrounding is a forest,

It’s center is mud. (Vulva)

While riddles enrich the imagination and sharpen the senses, proverbs and aphorisms
instill values and teach lessons. Called aramiga or sasabihan among the Bicol, panultihon or
pagya among the Cebuano, humbaton or hurobaton among the Ilongo, pagsasao among the
Ilocano, kasebian among the Pampango, and salawikain or kasabihan among the Tagalog,
proverbs are short, pithy sayings, which encapsulate and preserve a community’s beliefs,
norms, and codes of behavior. Usually, a commonplace object or incident is used to illustrate
an accepted truth or cherished ideal.

The idea, strength in unity, is expressed through the figure of the abaca, a commodity in
the Tagalog area.

Tagalog:

Gaano man ang tibay ng piling abaka

Ay wala ring lakas kapag nag-iisa.

However sturdy the abaca, It is weak when it is alone.

An egg is used to symbolize virginity.

Mandaya:

Yang ataog aw madugdug Di da mamauli. An egg once broken Will never be the same.

Perseverance is taught through nature imagery.

Bicol:

An gapo na matagas, sa tinuto-tuto nin tubig malalagas

The hardest stone is eroded by constant dripping of water.

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Other proverbs are more direct in admonishing or in extolling virtues such as gratitude,
diligence, and restraint.

Pangasinan:

Say koli pakalmoay liket. Say ngiras pakalmoay irap.

Industry is the sibling of prosperity; Laziness is the sibling of starvation.

A rather extended form of wise saying is the Tagalog tanaga, a mono rhyming hepta
syllabic quatrain, which expresses insights and lessons on living. It is, however, more
emotionally charged than the terse proverb, and thus has affinities with the folk lyric. One
example reflects on pain and the will:

Ang sugat ay kung tinanggap di daramdamin ang antak

ang aayaw at di mayag

galos lamang magnanaknak.

Submission to wounding

makes the intense pain bearable;

unwillingness

makes the merest scratch fester.

Among the Bukidnon, the basahanan are extended didactic sayings; among the people
of Panay, the daraida and the daragilon. These verse forms often employ a central metaphor to
convey their thesis.

The appeal to the intellect of the various kinds of folk speech is matched by the appeal
to the emotions of folk songs. Among the different forms of folk lyrics are lullaby, love songs,
drinking songs, religious songs, and death songs.

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 Lullabies are sung to put children to sleep. Called oyayi by the Tagalog, ili-ili by the
Ilongo, duayya by the Ilocano, tumaila by the Pampango, baliwayway by the Isinay and Ilongot,
and andang by the Aeta, lullabyes are often repetitive and sonorous. Many lullabyes are
didactic; some are plaintive, expressing the hardships of life; a few express hope in the future.
In this lullabye, the parent hopes that the child becomes a good adult:

Ilocano:

Maturog, duduayya Maturog kad tay bunga, Tay lalaki nga napigsa

Ta inton dumakkel tay bunga, Isunto aya tay mammati

Tay amon a ibaga mi.

Go to sleep, dear little one Will my child please sleep This strong boy

So when the child grows big

He will obey

Everything that we say.

Many children’s songs may be sung and danced to. Sometimes senseless, always playful
and light, they reflect the child’s carefree world. Called ida-ida a rata in Maguindanao, tulang
pambata in Tagalog, cansiones para abbing by the Ibanag, and langan bata bata by the Tausug,
these are often sung as accompaniment to children’s games. A popular children’s song is “Pen
pen de sarapen,” which is sung while the child’s fingers are spread and counted.

Romantic love is a frequent concern of many a folk lyric. The bulk of love lyrics,
however, was suppressed or sanitized by the missionaries. Some verse forms are sad lyrics
about unrequited love, such as the panawagon and balitao. But this laji, a generic term of the
Ivatan for lyric, celebrates the lovers’ power to demolish—or at least their will to demolish—
whatever barrier divides them:

Nangayan mo kakuyab?

Pinangalichavus ko na imo su dumibu a panahehsan ko nimo,

am dichu mo a dali.

Madali mo yaken

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du chinulung da yaken da ama kani luyna koy’

du vitas nu dahurapen, as sineseng da yaken

mu yunut nu maunged a niuy, as valivaliwangen

aku ava nu dima, as valivaliwangen

aku nu addaw ko nimoy’mo nadinchad ko a lipus.

Where did you go yesterday? 1 have asked all the passersby about you,

but in vain. How could you find me?

I was hidden by my father and my mother in the hollow of a bamboo; they stopped it with the
husk of a young coconut;

and I may not be opened

with the hands, but I may be opened by love for you, my beloved.

Courtship songs are many in the ethnic literatures. The Aeta have the aliri; the Tagalog
have the diona; the Cebuano and other groups have the harana or serenade. Many of them
celebrate the beloved’s beauty while expressing the lover’s disconsolation without her.

The Mangyan ambahan, a poem with seven syllables per line, the ending syllables
following a rhyme scheme, frequently deals with love, though not always romantic love, as
some are about parental love and friendship. Many of the more popular ambahan, however,
are exchanges between lovers:

Tunda pagpangumrawan No sa yangko itungpan Payi mamabunlagan

No bunlag di tukawan No bunl

ag bay kar-ayan Una way si suyungan Una way si bansayan Padi yag pangambitan.

My boy, busy courting me, frankly, I will tell you then; I don’t want to give you up. As long as
you are with me,

It will only be through death! And even my mother dear

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or my father, let them try,

all their prayers would not help!

The ambahan is also used as a form of social entertainment and as a tool for teaching
the young. Other forms of love lyrics are the Mandaya and Maranao bayok, the Ibanag
pinatalatto cu ta futu cao (literally, “pounding in my heart”), the Manobo and Bukidnon
mandata, the Bilaan ye dayon, and the Ilocano badeng.

While love lyrics form or strengthen bonds between lovers, work songs foster
cohesiveness within the community. They depict the different forms of livelihood in the
country—farming, fishing, embroidery, salt making, pottery, hunting, rowing, woodcutting.
They are often sung to synchronize the movements of workers. The Ivatan kalusan is sung while
a group is rowing at sea or is clearing a farm. The Tagalog soliranin is another rowing song. The
Kalinga mambayu is a rice-pounding song. The Manobo manganinay is a bee-hunting song.
This mannamili or pot-making song among the Ilocano is spiced with double entendre:

Boy: Ading ko, maluksawak

Ta nabuong tay banga.

Girl: Maisublim pay ita

tay patguek nga banga?

No di mo tinippay saan a nabuong. Agalwad ka ta ipulong ka ken nanang.

Boy: Mano, ading, ti bayad na ay damili nga banga?

Nangina ken nalaka, itured ko latta.

Girl: Nalaka, manong, no sika la ket gapuna.

Boy: Nalaing, ading,

Dios, unay ti agngina.

Boy: I broke your pot my ading, I am sorry.

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Girl: Do you think you can still put back my precious pot ? If you had not tipped it, it would
not have broken.

You’ll see, I’ll tell mother what you’ve done. Boy: How much ading, is this well-made pot?

I will do all I can to pay for it, whether dear or cheap. Girl: For you manong, I’ll give it cheap.

Boy: Good. Thank you very much.

Drinking songs are sung during carousal often brief, always merry, almost hedonistic,
many of them originated in the Bicol area, where they are called tigsik. In Cebuano and Waray,
they are called tagay. In the tagay, everyone drinks from the same cup and partakes of the hors
d’oeuvre.

Waray:

Igduholduhol ngan palakta na it nga tagay Ayaw pagatrasar kay mabutlaw na ug mauhaw Ayaw
palalapos didimdim hahadki namanla anay Ayaw man pagibigla, ayaw man pagbigla

bangin ka lumnunay

Sugod man it aton sumsuman sahid gud mamorot kay basi pa dugngan

Kanugon hadton inagonon konkabuwasan pa di na daw makakaon.

Pass now that glass of tuba, For we are tired and thirsty.

Don’t let it pass without taking a sip;

Don’t take too big a gulp because you might drown.

Everyone eat, for the fish will be wasted

If we do not consume it.

There are lyrics for more solemn affairs, such as religious rites and deaths. They have a
prayer of thanksgiving called ambaamba and an exorcism chant called bugyaw. The Kalinga
have entreaties called tubag; the Aeta, magablon. A good harvest is requested in the dag-
unan; and blessings are asked for in the Cebuano harito:

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Maluoy dili ninyo kuhaan

Kining akong ginsakpan

Labing maayo nga inyong dungagan

Sama niining kadaghanan.

Pity, do not reduce These my members Better if you will add

Like these multitudes.

Deaths occasion the singing of dirges or lamentations, in which the deeds of the dead
are recounted. Dirges are called dung-aw among the Ilocano, kanogon among the Cebuano,
annako among the Bontoc, and ibi among the Kalinga.

Folk narratives include folk tales and epics. Folk tales, generally called kuwentong bayan
among the Tagalog, are of different kinds: myths, legends, fables, and trickster tales. Myths,
often regarded as sacred, explain the origin and the goal of the cosmos. They usually involve
divinities and spirits who interact with humans. From among the pantheon of gods and
goddesses, one is regarded as supreme—called Bathala among the Tagalog, Mangetchay
among the Pampango, Gugurang among the Bicol, Kabunian among the Bontoc, and Laon
among the Visaya. The gods live in the skyworld, sometimes depicted as having several layers.

Creation myths are numerous. According to one version, the world was the product of a
conflict between the sky and the sea. A bird, tired of flying and having nowhere to land,
provoked the sky and the sea to fight. The sky threw rocks and stones at the sea, which
eventually formed islands. The tired bird finally found a place to rest. One version of the myth
about the origin of people also has a bird responsible. It pecked a bamboo open, and from it
rose the first man and woman. The Ilongot believe that the world was populated when the first
couple had children who married one another.

There are myths to explain the greed and violence of the crocodile, the sweet taste of
lanzones, the many “eyes” of the pineapple, and the inestimable height of the heavens. Other
myths are associated with geographical features like waterfalls, volcanoes, and mountains, or
with flora and fauna, like the dama de noche and the shark.

Legends are believed to be about more recent events and, like myths, they explain the
origin of things. They are also used to teach lessons in life. Legends are called alamat in
Tagalog, osipon in Bicol, sarita in Ilocano, istorya in Pangasinan, gintunan in Kinaray-a and
Ilongo. Many supernatural beings figure in legends, such as the aswang (witch), the engkanto

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(fairy), and the sirena (mermaid). A popular engkantada (fairy/enchantress) is Mariang
Makiling. Beautiful and generous, she is said to dwell in Mount Makiling, assisting the people
and rewarding the good folk. But she now hides herself from humans, after being betrayed by
the man she loved.

Fables are short tales, usually involving animals, which teach a moral lesson. Usually, a
comparison between two animals is made to highlight the moral. In “The Monkey and the
Turtle,” for example, the slow-moving but quick-witted turtle contrasts sharply with the lithe
but dull-witted monkey. A similar fable, though more grim, is “The Carabao and the Shell,” in
which a carabao learns never to judge anything by its size. The huge carabao challenges the
little shell to a race. Ever and again, the carabao calls out to his opponent, unaware, however,
that he is responded to by a different shell lying along the way. Thinking that the shell is
quicker than he is, the carabao runs faster, only to die of exhaustion.

The trickster tale recounts the adventures of a clever hero who outwits authority
figures, usually coming from the upper classes. Some of the most celebrated tricksters are
Pilandok of the Maranao, Juan Pusong of the Visaya, and Juan Tamad of the Tagalog. An
example of a trickster tale is “Pusong and the Leaping Frog.” When Pusong realizes that he has
prepared too much food for himself, he buried seven pots of chicken and seven pots of pork in
the beach, and toys with a frog. A boat is anchored, and the curious captain asks Pusong about
the frog. He tells the captain that the frog is magical; wherever it lands is where food is. When
the captain and his crew begin to dig by the shore where the frog leapt, they find Pusong’s
buried food. Believing that the frog is magical, the captain exchanges his cargo for it.

Less humorous, loftier, and much lengthier than the folk tales are the epics. Called
guman in Subanon, darangen in Maranao, hudhud in Ifugao, and ulahingan in Manobo, they
revolve around supernatural events or heroic deeds, and they embody or validate the beliefs,
customs, and ideals of a community. Epics are either sung or chanted during communal affairs
such as harvest, weddings, or funerals, by bards chosen for their wisdom or age. Sometimes,
the performance of an epic is accompanied by musical instruments and dancing.

A popular Philippine epic is the Ilocano Lam-ang. The hero Lam-ang dreams that his
father is being killed by the Igorot, the traditional enemies of the Ilocano, and awakes to
slaughter a group of Igorot. He returns to his hometown, where the women bathe him. The
dirt from his hair pollutes the river and kills all the fish. Lam-ang’s prowess is demonstrated
anew when he slays a fearful crocodile. He then courts and marries Ines Kannoyan, besting his
rivals with his magical powers. When Lam-ang hunts the rarang, a giant clam, a fish swallows
him. Lam-ang’s pet rooster, however, restores him after his bones are recovered.

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 Many epics are full of romantic entanglements. In Labaw Donggon, the first part of the
Sulod epic Hinilawod, the hero Labaw Donggon gets himself a wife time and again, until he
meets his nemesis, Saragnayan, lord of the arc of the sun, who refuses to surrender his wife,
Malitung Yawa Sinagmaling Diwata. Saragnayan fights Labaw Donggon and succeeds in wearing
him out, for, unknown to Labaw Donggon, Saragnayan’s life force is kept inside a pig’s body;
thus, Saragnayan is invincible. Saragnayan imprisons Labaw Donggon in a pig pen until he is
rescued by his sons, who, having been informed by their ancestors about Saragnayan’s life
force, defeats Saragnayan and his allies. When Labaw Donggon is freed, he still insists on
obtaining Malitung Yawa Sinagmaling Diwata; and, although his other wives object at first, he
gets her in the end. He asserts his manhood by shouting thunderously. His voice reverberates
around the world.

Many, though not all, epic heroes are as amorous as Labaw Donggon. The Palawan hero
Kudaman in Kudaman marries as many as 10 princesses, all of whom are captivated by his pet
heron, Linggisan. In Tuwaang Midsakop Tabpopawoy (Tuwaang Attends a Wedding), the
Manobo hero Tuwaang is a wedding guest only to become the groom, having charmed the
bride with his powers. The exiled Bantogen, in an episode from the Maranao epic Darangen,
dies unidentified in a foreign land, only to be resurrected and be wedded to Princess Timbang,
who has nursed him. He marries about 40 other women before he returns to his own kingdom,
Bembaran.

To date, about 30 epics have been recorded. Among them are the Agyu of the Arakan-
Arumanen; the Ulahingan of the Livunganen-Arumanen; the Ag Tobig nog Keboklagan (The
Kingdom of Keboklagan), the Guman, and the Keg Sumba neg Sandayo (The Life of Sandayo) of
the Subanon; the Humadapnon, the second part of the Hinilawod of the Sulod; and the
Mangovayt Buhong na Langit (The Maiden of the Buhong Sky), another song about Tuwaang, of
the Manobo.

Although often marginalized by Western influence on Philippine writing, the ethnic

tradition survives in various forms even in mainstream literature. During the early years of
teaching English to Filipinos, American teachers at the University of the Philippines made the
retelling of folktales in English part of language learning, a paramount example of which is Dean
S. Fansler’s Filipino Popular Tales, 1921. Later on, encouraged by the hospitality of Philippine
Magazine to fiction using “local color,” Filipino writers would dig from time to time into folkloric
material for their short stories.

In the 1920s, Severino Reyes invented the character of “Lola Basyang” (Grandma
Basyang) who spun out narratives based on folktales from all over the world, indigenizing many
of them. Faustino Aguilar employed the form of a legend about ill-fated lovers and the twin
trees that grew over their grave in his novel Lihim ng Isang Pulo (Secret of an Island), 1925. This

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novel about pre-colonial Filipinos actually comments on class conflict in 20th-century Philippine
society.

Carlos Bulosan, writing in the United States in the 1940s, also drew from the ethnic
tradition. The Laughter of My Father, 1944, is a collection of humorous stories about peasant
folk in his native Pangasinan, many of which are based on tales recollected from his childhood,
and recall trickster tales and fables. In Ginto sa Makiling (Gold in Makiling), 1947, Macario
Pineda used the legend of Mariang Makiling and her buried gold to create an exemplary tale
about village people corrupted by greed for gold. The age-old legend was thus revitalized to
teach modern-day Filipinos, caught in the aftermath of World War II.

The spurious reputation of Pedro de Monteclaro’s Maragtas as a pre-colonial epic did

not stop it from becoming a vital source for creative writers from West Visayas. It gave the
Ilongo novelist Ramon L. Muzones his material for the novel Margosatubig: Maragtas ni
Salagunting (Margosatubig: The History of Salagunting), 1947, in which is recounted a people’s
struggle for freedom and justice in pre-colonial times intended to inspire modern-day
audiences to live by the nationalist aspirations of the times.

Interest in the ethnic tradition of Philippine literature was intensified by the nationalist
movement in the 1960s. It was during this decade that writers began to cultivate a deeper
awareness of the possibilities of ethnic oral lore as material for literary expression with a
marked “Filipino identity.” In this, they were benefited by the increased activity of researchers
whose field work yielded new oral texts and fresh information about the culture in which these
texts were embedded. Exigencies of organizing among people who have minimal contact with
print occasioned a rediscovery by young literary artists of the technical devices and techniques
of dissemination of oral lore. The proliferation of poems with rhyme and meter and songs
containing simple melodies and easy-to-memorize lyrics is evidence of the recognition by
contemporary artists of the resources offered by the ethnic tradition.

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The Spanish Colonial Tradition

Written literature is a legacy of Spanish colonial rule. Although the oral lore of the
ethnic communities has survived to our day, written literature following the examples
introduced by the colonial rulers was to set the forms and the content of mainstream Philippine
literature beginning in the 17th century. For convenience, writing done under the auspices of
the Spanish colonial regime may be classified into religious prose and poetry and secular prose
and poetry.

Religious poetry may be grouped into lyrics and narratives. Lyric includes
complimentary verse or verses that praise the book in which they appear to attract readers.
Many complimentary verses were written by the so-called ladino, poets versed in both Spanish
and Tagalog. Their poems, in which a line in Tagalog would be, followed by its equivalent in
Spanish, were included in early catechisms and were used to teach Filipinos Spanish, Fernando
Bagongbanta’s “Salamat nang ualang hanga/gracias se den sempiternas” (Unending Thanks),
found in the Memorial de la vida cristiana en lengua tagala (Guidelines for the Christian Life in
the Tagalog Language), 1605, is an example:

Salamat nang ualang hanga gracias se den sempiternas sa nagpasilang nang tala

al que hizo salir la estrella: macapagpanao nang dilim que destierre las tinieblas

sa lahat na bayan natin

de toda esta nuestra tierra.

Undying gratitude is due

to the one who caused the star to rise and dissipate the darkness everywhere in this, our land.

Included in the same book was the first poem written solely in Tagalog, the anonymous
complimentary poem “May Bagyo Ma’t May Rilim” (Though It Is Stormy and Dark). Following
the conventions of pre-colonial literature, it uses the seven-syllable line, the mono rhyme, and
the talinghaga, but it also uses turbulent nature imagery to affirm Christian heroism. It
exemplifies the Christianization of local oral forms of literature where they cannot be
completely eradicated or suppressed.

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 Another type of religious lyric is the meditative verses attached to religious works, such
as novenas and catechisms. Examples of these poems, called dalit, include Felipe de Jesus’
“Dalit na Pamucao sa Tauong Babasa Nitong Libro” (Song to Awaken the Reader of This Book)
and “Purihin ng Sansinukob” (Let the Whole World Praise God); Francisco de Salazar’s “Dalit sa
Caloualhatian sa Langit na Cararatnan nang mga Banal” (Song for the Heavenly Glory That the
Holy Will Come To) and “Dalit sa Pagsisisi sa Casalanan” (Song for Repentance); Pedro Suarez
Ossorio’s “Salamat nang Ualang Hoyang” (Unending Thanks). Being rather generic, the dalit has
no fixed meter nor rime scheme—although a number are written in octosyllabic quatrains—and
are identifiable only by their solemn tone and spiritual subject matter.

Religious narrative poetry is primarily the pasyon, which recounts the suffering, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ in octosyllabic quintillas. Gaspar Aquino de Belen’s Ang Mahal
na Passion ni Jesu Christong Panginoon Natin na Tola (Holy Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ in
Verse), 1704, is the earliest known Filipino pasyon. It appeared as an addendum to his
translation of a Spanish devotional work. Written in octo syllabic verse, the poem relates the
events leading to the crucifixion starting from the Last Supper, in strophes of five mono rhyming
lines. Meant to introduce Christianity to the Filipinos, much of the paschal narrative was
indigenized at the expense of doctrinal accuracy.

Later appeared the Casaysayan nang Pasiong Mahal ni Jesucristong Panginoon

Natin na Sucat Ipag-alab nang Puso nang Sinomang Babasa (The Story of the

Holy Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ That Should Inflame the Heart of the Reader),

In 1814, the least theologically sound and artistically developed, but the most commonly
used, pasyon. It is also called Pasyong Genesis (Genesis Passion) for its accounts of the creation
and the apocalypse, and Pasyong Pilapil, after Mariano Pilapil to whom it is erroneously
attributed. This pasyon was censured by Aniceto de la Merced, who wrote a third pasyon El
libro de la vida (The Book of Life), 1852, the most erudite but also the least read among the
three Tagalog pasyon.

Of the three pasyon, the Pasyong Genesis became the most popular and was translated
into other languages. Today there are pasyon in Ilocano, Pangasinan, Ibanag, Pampango, Bicol,
Cebuano, Ilongo, and Waray, which are chanted during Lent.

Religious narrative prose consists of the various kinds of prose narratives written to
prescribe proper behavior. Like the pasyon, these narratives were channels for instruction in
the Catholic faith and for colonialization. They include such forms as the dialogo (dialogue), the
manual de urbanidad (conduct book), the ejemplo (exemplum), and the tratado (polemical
tract).

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 An example of the dialogo is Antonio Ubeda de la Santisima Trinidad’s La Teresa, 1852,
in which expositions on Catholic doctrines are made within a minimal plot—Juan’s return from
the city where he has married the devout Teresa and has received baptism. The manual de
urbanidad contains prescriptions on social propriety in the form of proverbs, maxims,
dialogues, and short illustrative tales of devout behavior.

Modesto de Castro’s Pag susulatan nang Dalauang Binibini na si Urbana at ni Feliza

(Correspondence Between the Two Maidens Urbana and Feliza), 1864, is a collection of letters
between two sisters, a city dweller and a rural lass. In these letters, Urbana advises her sister
on hispanized manners, choosing a husband, or respecting authority. Here is an excerpt.

Pagbilinan mo, na pagpasoc sa simbahan, ay houag maquipagumpucan sa capoua bata,

nang houag mabighani sa pagtatauanan at pagbibiroan. Maniniclohod nang boong galang sa
harapan nang Dios, magdarasal nang rosario, at houag tularan ang naquiquita sa iba, sa
matanda ma’t, sa bata na nacatingala, nacabuca ang bibig na parang isang hangal na
napahuhula. Houag bobonotin ang paa sa chapin, sapagca’t isang casalaulaan. At sa iyo, Feliza,
ang huli cong bilin, ay houag mong bobonotin sa simbahan at saan man ang paa sa chinelas, at
pagpilitan mong matacpan nang saya, sapagca’t ga nacamumuhi sa malinis na mata ang
ipaquita.

Remind him [Honesto, the youngest sibling] that he must not sit beside other young
folks in the church to avoid laughing and jesting. Kneel with wholehearted reverence before
God, pray the rosary, and do not be like the others, whether young or old who look up and
stare open-mouthed, like one consulting a soothsayer. Do not withdraw your feet from your
slippers, because it is indiscreet.

And to you, Feliza, this is my last reminder. Do not expose your feet wherever you may be;
conceal them always with your skirt, for it is repulsive to chaste eyes—the sight of them
uncovered.

Depicting the lives of remarkable persons, ejemplos, also known as halimbawa

(example), concretize the teachings on virtuous living. Examples are Joaquin Tuason ’s Ang
Bagong Robinson (The New Robinson), 1879, a translation of a Spanish adaptation of Daniel
Defoe’s novel, and Antonio de Borja’s Barlaan at Josaphat (Barlaan and Josaphat), 1712. The
tratado is a polemical narrative. Fr. Miguel Lucio Bustamente’s Si Tandang Basio Macunat (Old
Basio Macunat), 1885, argues against the necessity of education and disparages the character
of the Filipino. This tratado indirectly espouses subservience, as the natives are urged to
submit to their lot.

15
 Not all works produced in the Spanish period were religious or didactic. The emergence
of secular works happened side by side with historical changes. Opportunities for publishing
were opening up with the establishment of commercial printing presses in Manila. As a colony,
the Philippines was beginning to enjoy a measure of economic progress, and a native middle
class was beginning to emerge. This middle class had the money and leisure to avail itself of the
trappings of European culture. Whereas in the past, printed works had been almost exclusively
for the use of missionaries, now they were also intended for the perusal of Filipinos, the
wealthy, and the literate members of the Filipino middle class.

Many 18th- to 19th-century secular lyrics are romantic, following the conventions of
courtly love literature: the languishing but loyal lover, the elusive—sometimes heartless—
beloved, the rival. Jose de la Cruz, aka Huseng Sisiw, wrote poems like “Oh! Kaawaawang
Buhay Ko sa Iba” (Alas! Among All I Lead the Most Piteous Life) which speaks of love unrequited
and now become desperate. “Labindalawang Sugat ng Puso” (Twelve Wounds of the Heart) by
Francisco

Baltazar, aka Balagtas, expresses the plaint of a lover whose unrequited love has
brought about suffering that can only ennoble his affections. “Kay Celia” (To Celia), preface to
Florante at Laura, is probably the most moving paean to a woman in Tagalog poetry. In “Sa
Kinakasi Niyaring Buhay” (To the One I Love), Balagtas’ persona addresses the maiden he loves,
closely guarded by her parents, about his feelings for her:

Inaasam-asam na kahit isang dali masasarili ko ang dikit mong pili,

ng aking masabing poon kang may-ari ng buhay ko’t pusong sa sinta’y lugami.

Y en tu encantada tierra la eternidad dormir

I always look forward to but one brief moment when your rare beauty will be for my eyes
alone, for then I can say that you own my life and this heart languishing for love.

The Ilocano poet Leona Florentino wrote love poems, most of them about unrequited
love: “Asug ti Maysa a Hapaay” (Lament of One in Despair), “Nalpaya a Namnama” (Blasted
Hopes), and “Daniw ti Balasang nga Insina ti Caayan-ayatna” (Song of a Maiden Separated From
Her Lover). Other secular lyricists include Jacinto Kawili, Isabelo de los Reyes, and Rafael
Gandioco.

16
 Another popular form of secular poetry is the metrical romance, called awit and korido
in Tagalog. The awit is set in dodecasyllabic quatrains; the korido, in octosyllabic quatrains. In
content, however, the two forms are similar. These metrical romances, called kuriru in
Pampango, panagbiag in Ilocano, impanbilay in Pangasinan, and korido in Cebuano, are colorful
tales of chivalry, derived from European sources like the Arthurian and Charlemagne cycles,
made for singing and chanting. Well-known titles include Gonzalo de Cordoba (Gonzalo of
Cordoba), Siete Infantes de Lara (Seven Princes of Lara), and Ibong Adarna (Adarna Bird). To
date, about 229 Tagalog romances have been recovered, several of which have versions in
other local languages; 69 romances in Bicol have been recovered, 66 in Ilongo, 65 in Pampango,
48 in Ilocano, and 5 in Pangasinan.

Jose de la Cruz penned numerous romances, although only a handful, and none of them
complete, survive. Some of the romances attributed to him are Doce Pares de Francia (The
Twelve Peers of France), Bernardo Carpio, Rodrigo de Villas, and Adela at Florante (Adela and
Florante). Other known writers of metrical romances include Franz Molteni, Nemesio Magboo,
Ananias Zorilla, Anselmo Jorge de Fajardo, Cleto Ignacio, and Feliciano and Jacinto Castillo.
More often, however, the authors of the romances are unknown.

The first half of the 19th century witnessed the peak of the awit as a poetic genre in the
masterwork of the poet Francisco Baltazar. His Florante at Laura (Florante and Laura), circa
1838-1861, remains the most famous romance in

Philippine literary history. Two lovers, Florante and Laura, are parted by the jealous Adolfo,
who usurps the throne of Albania, Florante’s home. A subplot involves the love story of Aladin,
a prince of Persia, and Flerida, his beloved, who is desired by Aladin’s own father, the Sultan.
After twists in fortune, Florante

and Aladin are reunited with their loves in the woods. Florante ascends to the throne, and the
Persian lovers embrace Christianity.

Many lines from the romance have been immortalized. Memorable passages on the
cruelty of bad rulers, the deceitfulness of evil people, the proper upbringing of children, the
ephemeral of human love; and the unity among people regardless of creed or cult—all these
have established Balagtas’ poem as a compendium of precepts for which subsequent
generations of Filipinos always found new applications to their experience. One of the most
famous passages from Florante at Laura, spoken by the love-struck Aladin whose rival is his
father, deals with the relentless power of love:

Conditions in the late 19th century were conducive to the growth of reformist and
revolutionary literature. The seed of reformist literature was sown with the exposure of rich
young Filipinos educated in Europe, called ilustrado, to liberal ideas, and was quickened by the

17
appointment of a liberal as the governor general of the Philippines. Meanwhile, the oppressed
lower classes saw that the timewas ripe for revolution. The harvest of writers was bountiful,
including Jose Rizal and Marcelo H. del Pilar, both reformists, and the more radical Emilio
Jacinto and Andres Bonifacio.

The poems of Jose Rizal use the Spanish language to speak in the Philippines’ behalf.
Rizal’s “ A las flores de Heidelberg ” (To the Flowers of Heidelberg), written in Germany, is a
poignant expression of homesickness and longing by a pilgrim leagues away from his native
land. His last poem, “ Mi ultimo adios ” (My Last Farewell), 1896, overflows with love for one’s
native soil and willing self-immolation for its sake:

Ensueño de mi vida, mi ardiente vivo anhelo, Salud! te grita el alma que pronto va a partir.
Salud! oh! que es hermoso caer por darte vuelo, Morir por darte vida, morir bajo tu cielo,

Dream of my life, my living and burning desire, All hail! cries the soul that is now to take flight;
All hail! And sweet it is for thee to expire,

To die for thy sake, that thou mayst aspire, And sleep in thy bosom eternity’s long night.

But love for one’s country is as eloquently expressed in Tagalog as it is in Spanish. A trio
of poems shows the growing discontent among Filipinos for Spanish rule. In Hermenegildo
Flores’ “Hibik nang Filipinas sa Inang España” (Filipinas’ Lament to Mother Spain), 1889, the
oppressed daughter Filipinas cries for help to her Mother Spain. Marcelo H. del Pilar’s “Sagot
nang España sa Hibik nang Filipinas” (Spain’s Reply to Filipinas’ Lament), 1889, has Spain
admitting her own helplessness to free her daughter from the friars. In Andres Bonifacio’s
“Katapusang Hibik ng Pilipinas” (The Last Cry of Filipinas), 1896, Filipinas renounces her ties
with Spain. Spain is “inang pabaya’t sukaban” (a negligent and malevolent mother), and
Filipinas bitterly severs herself from her mother. Andres Bonifacio’s “ Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang
Lupa ” (Love for the Native Land), 1896, written in riming dodecasyllabic quatrains, expresses a
patriot’s ardor for the country and a sense of duty, as that of a child to its mother, and exhorts
even the use of force to defend the country’s honor.

Aling pag-ibig pa ang hihigit kaya sa pagkadalisay at pagkadakila

gaya ng pag-ibig sa tinubuang lupa?

aling pag-ibig pa? Wala na nga, wala.

Ypaghandog handog ang boong pag-ibig hangang sa may dugo’y ubusing itiguis kung sa
pagtatangol buhay ay maamis ito’y kapalaran at tunay na langit.

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Is there any love that is nobler

Purer and more sublime

Than the love of the native country? What love is? Certainly none.

Offer your whole-hearted love

Let your blood flow to the last drop

If to free her your life is lost,

Yours is glory then and redemption.

Marcelo H. del Pilar parodied “sacred” forms, giving his attacks against the friars a
keener edge. “Pasyong Dapat Ipag-alab nang Puso nang Tauong Baba sa Kalupitan nang Fraile”
(Passion That Should Inflame the Heart of the Person Who Suffers the Cruelty of the Friar), circa
1885, illustrates the friars’ own tool subverted to be used against them.

The nationalist spirit was equally alive in prose works. Friars were often the target of
essayists of the Propaganda Movement. Graciano Lopez Jaena vigorously attacks the venalities
of friar domination of civil and religious life in 19th century Philippines in Fray Botod (Friar
Potbelly), circa 1889. Marcelo H. del Pilar’s La soberania monacal en Filipinas (The Monastic
Supremacy in the Philippines), 1888, analyzes the implications for the Philippines of the
unlimited powers of friars as a result of their double capacity as religious ministers and political
administrators. Jose Rizal’s “ Sobre la indolencia de los Filipinos ” (On the Indolence of the
Filipinos), 1890, goes to the roots of this “indolence” and “ Filipinas dentro de cien años ” (The
Philippines Within a Century), 1889, advocates immediate assimilation into Spain.

Revolutionary essayists were more exhortative than their reformist counterparts.

Andres Bonifacio’s “ Ang Dapat Mabatid ng Mga Tagalog ” (What the Tagalog Should Know),
1896, is a straightforward account of how Spain has damaged the Philippines, and urges people
to revolt. Emilio Jacinto’s essays, collected in Liwanag at Dilim (Light and Darkness), 1896,
expound on the libertarian doctrines of the Katipunan, the secret society working for the
overthrow of Spain. One of the essays, “Ang Ningning at ang Liwanag” (The Glitter and the
Light), urges people to be wary of appearances:

19
Ang kaliluhan at ang katampalasanan ay humahanap ng ningning upang huwag mapagmalas ng
mga matang tumatanghal ang kanilang kapangitan; nguni’t ang kagalingan at ang pag-ibig na
dalisay ay hubad, mahinhin at maliwanag na napatatanaw sa paningin.

Treason and perversity seek glitter in order to conceal their falseness from the eyes of the
spectator; but honesty and sincere love go naked and allow themselves to be seen confidently
in the light of day.

Prose narratives were equally charged with nationalist consciousness. Pedro Paterno’s
Ninay, 1885, the first Filipino novel, takes the readers on a folkloristic tour of Philippine customs
and traditions, intended to bring out the uniqueness and exoticism of Spain’s Asian colony.
Subtitled Costumbres Filipinas (Filipino Cutoms) this melodrama involving two love triangles
strives for verisimilitude in the faithful evocation of middle-class life in the Philippines.

National consciousness was merely cultural in Paterno’s works, but it took on a

militantly political character in the two novels of Jose Rizal: Noli me tangere (Touch Me Not),
1887, and El filibusterismo (Subversion), 1891. While Ninay romanticized Philippine society, the
Noli and the Fili sought to analyze the problems of the colony. Through them, too, realism
emerged in Philippine writing where it was only superficially utilized in Ninay.

Noli tells about a young man Ibarra who has obtained a university education in Europe
and comes back to the Philippines full of the zeal and idealism of a dedicated reformist. He
believes that education can change his country and gears his energy in this direction. However,
he finds himself obstructed at every turn by two friars: Fray Damaso, who is later revealed to be
the father of Ibarra’s sweetheart Maria Clara, and Fray Salvi, who covets Maria Clara. Through
the machination of Fray Salvi, an uprising is organized which implicates Ibarra as the financier
and leader of the rebels. An outlaw named Elias, whom Ibarra once saved, comes to Ibarra’s
aid, but he is shot by the pursuing Spanish civil guards.

El Filibusterismo is a sequel to the Noli. A mysterious stranger named Simoun tries to

hasten the downfall of the Spanish colonial regime by employing the double tactic of abetting
the corruption of friars and colonial officials through money on the one hand, and instigating an
armed rebellion among the natives on the other. Simoun is actually Ibarra in disguise who has
returned to rescue Maria Clara from the convent. Simoun fails in his endeavor and is pursued
by the Spanish civil authorities. He takes his own life, and a priest, in whom he has confided,
throws his wealth into the sea.

The arrival of the Americans in 1898 marked the end of an epoch. But in the four
decades of US colonial rule, from 1898 to the outbreak of the Pacific War, Philippine writing in
Spanish, but a sapling in the closing decades of Spanish rule, ripened and bourgeoned
bounteously, in number and in quality unmatched to this day. The foremost poets writing in

20
Spanish represented an unbroken link with the poetry of the immediate past. In the poems of
Femando Ma. Guerrero, Jose Palma, Cecilio Apostol, and the younger Jesus Balmori, Claro M.
Recto, Manuel Bernabe, Flavio Zaragoza Cano, among others, Rizal, the Revolution, and the
perfidy of the American invaders were themes that appeared alongside a newly found nostalgia
for the Spanish past that the accelerating pace of Americanization was beginning to blur.
Recto’s “El alma de la raza” (The Soul of the Race) flares out with the patriotism of the
revolutionary poets:

Mi sangre tiene un alma que es alma de titanes

Sangre de Solimanes

corre por sus arterias, que siempre latiran. Tiene el pecho templado al fragor de la guerra, Bajo
sus pies de atleta se estremece la tierra, porque enciende sus nervios la flama de un volcan.

My blood contains the soul of titans

The blood of Solimans rushes through arteries of perpetual pulse. The tempered breast houses
the clamor of war. Beneath the athlete’s stride shudders the world, for my nerves ignite the
volcanic fires.

The many books of poetry published during this period are literature in Spanish at its
finest: Bajo los cocoteros (Under the Coconut Trees), 1911, by Claro M. Recto; Rimas Malayas
(Malay Rimes), 1904, and Mi casa de nipa (My Nipa Hut), 1938, by Jesus Balmori; Melancolicas
(Sad Verses), 1912, by Jose Palma; Crisalidas (Chrysales), 1914, by Fernando Ma. Guerrero; De
Mactan a Tirad (From Mactan to Tirad), 1940, by Flavio Zaragoza Cano; and Pentelicas (White
Marble), 1941, by Cecilio Apostol.

Poetry in Spanish continued to be written after World War II, but the harvest dwindled
considerably. Among the collections of poems were Aves y flores (Birds and Flowers), 1971, by
Guerrero; Mi bandera (My Flag), 1945, by Hernandez Gavira; Bajo el cielo de Manila (Under the
Manila Skies), 1947, by Jose Montes; and Perfil de cresta (Profile of a Crest), 1957, by Manuel
Bernabe.

Short fiction in Spanish found outlets in La Vanguardia, El Debate, Renacimiento Filipino,

and Nueva Era. Notable fictionists included Enrique Laygo, whose award-winning stories are
collected in Caretas (Masks), 1925, Benigno del Rio, whose works are collected in Prejuicio de
raza (Racial Prejudice), 1940, and Jesus Balmori, who mastered the art of prosa romantica or
romantic prose, writing in mellifluous prose and employing images intricate and sensuous. The
stories in

21
 Spanish are as varied as the authors who wrote them. Some are religious and
moralistic, warning against vices; others are criticisms of American rule, or are sketches of local
color. Many are lushly romantic. Among the short fictionists in Spanish are Evangelina
Guerrero-Zacarias, Vicente de Jesus, Marceliano Ocampo, Jose Hernandez Gavira, Epifanio de
los Santos, Benigno del Rio, and Estanislao Alinea.

Together with the production of short stories in Spanish was the rise—but quick demise
—of the novel in Spanish. The romantic stream of Pedro Paterno’s Ninay, the first novel in
Spanish, flowed into the novels of Jesus Balmori and Antonio M. Abad. Balmori’s Bancarrota de
almas (The Bankcruptcy of Souls), 1910, and Se deshojo la flor (The Flower Was Stripped of Its
Petals), 1915, explore the strange, paradoxical relationship between love and violence. In
them, too, is found rebellion, sometimes satiric, against conventional society and morality.
Abad’s La oveja de Nathan (Nathan’s Sheep), 1929, is set during the Commonwealth and
questions the extension of American rule. His last novel, La vida secreta de Daniel Espeña (The
Secret Life of Daniel Espeña), 1960, is a journey, through three generations of a family, from sin
to salvation.

The essay in Spanish found various outlets in periodicals: El Renacimiento, La

Vanguardia, La Opinion, and El Debate. Essayists wrote on folklore, hispanidad or things
Spanish, literary criticism, political issues, particularly the American colonization of the islands,
and Philippine heroes.

The leading essayists in Spanish were Claro M. Recto, Teodoro M. Kalaw, and Epifanio
de los Santos. Recto’s essays, many of which deplore the decline of Spanish in the Philippines
and are nationalist in spirit, have been collected in The Recto Valedictory, 1985, with an
accompanying English translation. Kalaw is known for the editorial “ Aves de Rapiña ” (Birds of
Prey), 1908, which exposes the ways of American exploitation, and Hacia la tierra del Zar
(Towards the Land of the Czar), 1908, a travel book. De los Santos was one of the first to
analyze Balagtas’ Florante at Laura as a political allegory in Balagtas y su Florante (Balagtas and
His Florante), 1916.

Rafael Palma won the Commonwealth Literary Award for Biografia de Rizal (Biography
of Rizal), 1949, famous for its chapter on the retraction of Rizal. It was later translated into
English as Pride of the Malay Race, 1949, by Roman Ozaeta. Many memoirs in Spanish, written
early during the 20th century, showed a mistrust of the American colonizers. Some examples
include La Revolucion Filipina (The Philippine Revolution), 1924, by Teodoro M. Kalaw and
Sensacional memoria sobre la Revolucion Filipina (Sensational Account of the Philippine
Revolution), by Isabelo de los Reyes. El Ideal published a series of articles written by Mariano
Ponce and the Rizalist Jaime C. de Veyra. Dealing with folklore, history, current events, and

22
artistic affairs, the articles were later collected as a book entitled Efemerides Filipinas
(Philippine Almanac), 1914.

Other notable essayists in Spanish include Jesus Balmori, Vicente Sotto, Antonio M.
Abad, Pedro Aunario, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Benigno del Rio, Rafael Palma, and Luis
Guzman Rivas.

The installation of English as the medium of instruction in Philippine schools gravely

undermined Spanish. By the close of the 1930s, English writing had overtaken Spanish writing,
the language of the new colonialists having won out as the more prestigious medium for young
writers. But while writing in Spanish is scant today, the triple legacies from the Spanish colonial
period—didacticism, romanticism, and social realism are vigorously alive.

The didacticism of the conduct books is reflected in many a 20th-century novel.

Valeriano Hernandez-Peña’s Nena at Neneng (Nena and Neneng), 1905, for example, recalls the
epistolary Urbana at Feliza. The novel Benjamin, 1907, resembles a conduct book in showing
the ill effects of leading a hedonistic life.

The Ilocano Biag ti Maysa a Lakay, wenno Nakaam-ames a Bales (Life of an Old Man, or Frightful
Revenge), 1909, by Mariano Gaerlan is modelled after the tratado Si Tandang Basio Macunat.

A number of vernacular poems, during the early 20th century especially, were didactic
and/or religious. Ang Pangginggera (The Panggingge Card Player), 1912, by Lope K. Santos was
intended to reform Flipino women addicted to the popular card game panggingge. Poems by
Pascual Agcaoili, Sebastian Bersamira, and Mariano Dacanay were prayers or religious verses.
Aurelio Tolentino’s Daclat Cayanakan (A Guide for the Youth), 1911, is a collection of such
poems, reading like aphorisms, which admonish and teach right conduct.

The pasyon has spawned new versions but with the writers going beyond the religious
content to make statements not always in consonance with the subject matter of the original
pasyon. In preaching, the gospel of socialism among the peasants of Pampanga, Lino Dizon
wrote Pasyon ding Talapagobra, I Cristo Socialista Ya (Passion of the Workers, Christ Was a
Socialist), 1936, also known as the “red pasyon.” In the struggle against the Marcos
dictatorship, a new pasyon appeared to denounce the crimes of the dictator and his spouse.
Francisco “Soc” Rodrigo titled his pasyon Pasyon sa Kamatayan ng Ating Kalayaan (Passion on
the Death of Our Freedom), 1975.

The romantic heritage, derived from the awit and the korido, would survive in
Magdalena Jalandoni’s novels. The plot convolutions, the romantic entanglements, and heart-
wrenching melodrama of the romances figure strongly in her Juanita Cruz, 1968, Ang Bantay
sang Patyo (The Graveyard Caretaker), 1925, and Ang Dalaga sa Tindahan (The Lady in the

23
Market), 1935. Other romantic novelists would include Iñigo Ed. Regalado, Zoilo Galang,
Teofilo Sauco, and Roman Reyes.

Poets would continue to use the dodecasyllabic line of the romance and Spanish
metrics, called rima perfecta. Among them were Flavio Zaragoza Cano, Serapion Torre, Jose
Magalona, and Emilio R. Severino. The form of the metrical romances would also be used by
Jose Corazon de Jesus, aka Huseng Batute, in order to articulate nationalist aspirations vis-a-vis
military and cultural suppression by American colonialism. His Sa Dakong Silangan (In the East),
1928, is an allegory of the Filipinos’ pursuit of freedom lost when the Americans, whom they
thought were friends, became their new colonizers.

Courtly love, introduced through the metrical romances, would be a pervasive theme
among younger poets in the first half of the 20th century. They were too young to be deeply
imbued with the militant temper of their elders, who were then writing patriotic poems in
protest against American intervention. Among the romantic poets were the Bicol Valerio
Zuñiga and Mariano Goyena; Cebuano Vicente Ranudo; Ilongo Flavio Zaragoza Cano, Serapion
Torre, and Magdalena Jalandoni; Pampango Juan Crisostomo Soto; and Tagalog Jose Corazon
de Jesus.

Jose Corazon de Jesus, popularly known as “Batute,” was acclaimed by his

comtemporaries as the compleat poet. He combined in himself the attributes of the bard and
lover, captivating audiences wherever he declaimed his emotive love poems. His early poems
in Mga Dahong Ginto (Leaves of Gold), 1920, are preoccupied with such romantic themes as
passion-slaying, grief-induced insanity, and lover’s suicide. He and a large number of Tagalog
poets, including Lope K. Santos, Iñigo Ed. Regalado, and Florentino Collantes, would follow the
conventions established by Balagtas. In their poems—most of which are paeans to women,
laments, or sermons—are found Balagtas’ twin traits: strict adherence to rime and meter and
the overflow of sentiment.

Among writers using the vernacular languages in the early years of the American
Occupation, Rizal’s Noli and Fili set the development of the Filipino novel in the direction of
social comment. Inigo Ed. Regalado’s Madaling Araw (Daybreak), 1909, and Sulpicio Osorio’s
Mga Bungsod nga Gipangguba (Destroyed Fish Corrals), 1928, would fall squarely within that
tradition. Mga Ibong Mandaragit (Birds of Prey), 1969, by Amado V. Hernandez would take off
from the Fili, as its protagonist discovers Simoun’s buried treasure and uses it to fight new
enemies: greedy capitalists and landowners and corrupt government officials.

Many of the vernacular poems during the American rule were charged with patriotism.
Elder poets, especially, protested against the imposition of American rule on the Filipinos and
against the fads that entered the Philippines from the United States, which were seen as

24
obliterating native culture. Among their ranks were Ilongo Jose Ingalla and Delfin Gumban,
Pampango Amado Yuson and Zoilo Hilario, and Tagalog Benigno Ramos and Pedro Gatmaitan.
Their poetry deplored the absence of independence and challenged the legitimacy of
“benevolent assimilation.“

Other poets trod on paths less conspicuous but equally patriotic by extolling local
heroes, the national flag and language, and by depicting, with fond nostalgia and longing, local
scenes and indigenous customs. Some poets employed allegory, such as Manuel T. Fuentebella
and Marcelino Crisologo Peña, or used images of romantic love to express their love for
country, such as Juan Crisostomo Soto in “Malaya, 1907.”

The presence of modern adaptations of works produced in the Spanish period further
maintains the Spanish tradition. Balagtas’ masterpiece has been made into a musical by
Nonong Buencamino and Tony Perez, into an opera by Lucino T. Sacramento, into a play by
Rene Villanueva, and into a film at least twice. Rizal’s novels have also been repeatedly
adapted. The plays Kanser (Cancer), 1992, and Kabesang Tales (Cabeza Tales), 1974, are based
on the Noli and the Fili, respectively. The underground novel Hulagpos (Breaking Free), 1980,
by Mano de Verdades Posadas (pseud.) contains motifs found in Rizal’s works, as does the short
story, “Ang Pinakahuling Kuwento ni Huli” (The Final Story of Juli), 1987, by Lilia Quindoza
Santiago.

The American Colonial Tradition

The arrival of the Americans at the turn of the century was to alter the course of
Philippine literature. New literary forms were introduced, chiefly, free verse, the modern short
story, and the critical essay. The American influence came with the educational system which
instituted English as the medium of instruction. On the university level, young writers were
exposed to literary modernism, which highlighted the individuality of the writer and cultivated
craft consciousness, sometimes at the expense of social consciousness. The University of the
Philippines served as the center of new writing, with the College Folio and, especially, The
Literary Apprentice leading the way towards writing that kept up with literary trends outside
the country. Writers in Tagalog and Cebuano, principally poet Alejandro G. Abadilla and
fictionist Marcel Navarra, incorporated new techniques and perspectives into their works.
Traditional writing, however, as well as the Spanish heritage, persisted together with the influx
of new trends coming from the new colonizer.

25
 English writing in the Philippines had its beginnings in the first decade of the 20th
century, but began to attain stature only during the 1920s. It was the writers in English who
first experimented with modernism, breaking away from the purposiveness of the works of
writers in Spanish and the native languages. The earliest collections of poems in English were
Reminiscences, 1921, by Lorenzo

Paredes, Never Mind and Other Poems, 1922, by Procopio Solidum, Filipino Poetry, 1924,
edited by Rodolfo Dato, and Azucena, 1925, by Marcelo de Gracia Concepcion.

However, the central figure in the entry of modernism in poetry was Jose Garcia Villa,
whose aesthetic ideas insisted that the artist’s main concern was with his craft, thus positing an
essential dichotomy between art and ideas. While his followers did not go to the extreme to
which Villa’s poetic practice led, young writers whose education put them in touch with the
latest developments of writing in the United States and the West were seduced by a critical
theory that freed them from political or social pressures.

One of the earliest to toy with free verse, Villa earned early notoriety when he was
censured by UP authorities for some poems in free verse that appeared in a national magazine.
But it was not so much the form that the authorities objected to as the subject matter, treated
with, till then unknown, frankness: physical love. “The Coconut Poem”, 1929, also called “Song
of Ripeness,” was specially noted.

The coconuts have ripened,

They are like nipples to the tree. (A woman has only two nipples,

There are many women-lives in a coconut tree.) Soon the coconuts will grow heavy and full.

I shall pick up one … many.

Like a child I shall suck their milk,

I shall suck out of coconuts little white songs. I shall be reminded of many women.

I shall kiss a coconut because it is the nipple of a woman.

Angela Manalang Gloria wrote about love with similar candor and was to suffer
censorship when the Bureau of Education would approve her book Poems, 1940, as
supplementary text for students only after certain revisions. In her poems is heard, perhaps for
the first time, the unfettered voice of a woman. Her “Heloiseto Abelard” speaks of illicit love
with a boldness alien in its time.

26
 Free verse was to establish itself as a hallmark of modern poetry when Rafael Zulueta da
Costa ’s Like the Molave and Other Poems, 1940, won the major prize in the Commonwealth
Literary Contest. Unlike Villa, however, da Costa departed from aestheticism and delved into
sociopolitical issues. The title poem of his collection denounces westernization, the frivolity of
youth, and the neglect of the masses.

Other poets in English before World War II were Aurelio S Alvero, A.E. Litiaco, Fernando
M. Maramag, Natividad Marquez, Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido, Vidal Tan, Guillermo Castillo,
Cornelio F. Faigao, Procopio Solidum, Fernando Ma. Guerrero, Virgilio Floresca, and Gerson M.
Mallillin.

The publication of vernacular works, in sharp contrast to the withering of Spanish

literature, bloomed. The gradual supplanting of Spanish, the voice of the elite, by voices once
suppressed can be attributed to the less restrictive atmosphere of the American Occupation—
although the new colonizers would also censor “seditious” works—and the rise of literacy
among the populace. The end of the monopoly of printing presses by religious groups also
encouraged the production of literature other than the sacred. Popular writing in the native
languages had a vast audience which it served mainly through weekly magazines, such as
Liwayway and Bisaya.

Modernism entered rather late in vernacular poetry. For the most part, vernacular
poetry hewed largely to the conventions established by Balagtas, in form rigidly structured
according to expected metrics, in theme cloyingly sentimental. Although some poets, like
Pedro Gatmaitan, Benigno Ramos, and Cirio H. Panganiban, experimented with form or dabbled
in free verse, their poetry remained by and large traditional in theme or, when read aloud,
followed traditional prosody.

The Balagtas tradition persisted until shortly before World War II, when modernism
would have a vociferous advocate, Alejandro G. Abadilla. Protesting against the excessive
sentimentality and restrictive conventions of vernacular poetry, Abadilla stripped his poetry of
rime and meter, shunned all florid artifice in poetic expression, and celebrated the individualist
spirit. His “ako ang daigdig” (i am the world), 1940, heralded the arrival of modernism in
vernacular poetry. The first part reads:

ako

ang daigdig

ako

ang tula

27
ako

ang daigdig ang tula

ako

ang daigdig ng tula

ang tula

ng daigdig

ako

ang walang maliw na ako ang walang kamatayang ako ang tula ng daigdig

the world

the poem

the world the poem

the world

of the poem the poem

of the world

i without end

i without death

the poem of the world

However, Abadilla was to remain a maverick figure until the arrival in the 1960s of
young poets, such as Virgilio S. Almario, Pedro L. Ricarte, and Rolando S. Tinio, writing modern
28
verse published in campus literary organs. The Philippines, then beset with economic problems
aggravated by World War II, preferred the patriotic and socially committed verses of Amado V.
Hernandez. His collections of nationalist and protest poems include Kayumanggi at Iba Pang
Tula (Brown and Other Poems), 1941, and Isang Dipang Langit (A Stretch of Sky), 1961.

Another form brought in during the American occupation was the modem short story.
The first short stories in English were published in the Philippines Free Press in 1908. Attempts
at fiction in English appeared in periodicals like the College Folio and Philippines Herald. Dean
S. Fansler, a teacher at the University of the Philippines had his students retell Filipino folktales
in English and collected these in Filipino Popular Tales, 1921.

But it was Paz Marquez Benitez’s “Dead Stars,” published on 20 September 1925, that
gained distinction as the first successful short story in English. Following the conventions of the
modern short story—the controlled use of foreshadowing devices, foils, flashbacks, telling
dialogue, recurrent motifs, subtle symbols and realizations, “Dead Stars” depicts the masculine
psyche torn between desire and social constraints, in prose that deftly captures the nuances of
the newly acquired language. Alfredo, the protagonist, has long been engaged to be married to
the devout and orthodox Esperanza, but he falls in love with Julia, a vivacious girl who has
arrived from the province and who reciprocates his love. Pressure from society and Esperanza
and, ultimately, his own indecision compel him to marry his fiancee. He keeps his love for Julia
in his heart, only to realize eight years later when he meets her again, that the flame has died;
that while Julia “had not changed much—a little less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet—
something had gone”; that “all these years—since when?—he had been seeing the light of dead
stars, long extinguished, yet seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens.”

Jose Garcia Villa was equally significant in fiction in English as in poetry. In 1926 he
started his annual honor roll for the best short story in English. He himself received the first
award bestowed by the Philippines Free Press for the best short story “ Mir-i-Nisa.” “Untitled
Story,” written like a poem with its numbered paragraphs and fanciful images, gained Villa
international acclaim, having been selected by Edward J. O’Brien in New York as one of the best
short stories of 1932. “The Fence” achieved similar status a year later. Villa had his first
collection of short stories, Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others, 1933,
published by Scribner’s, New York.

Before World War II, women writers, notably Paz Latorena, Loreto Paras-Sulit, and
Estrella Alfon, who continued to write after the war, demonstrated sensitivity and skill in their
short stories. Arturo B. Rotor and Manuel E. Arguilla came out with early collections that
attested to the Filipino writers’ mastery of the new genre. Rotor’s The Wound and the Scar,
1937, consists mainly of stories in which a doctor is led into painful introspection about himself
and his world as a result of his contact with his patients. Each time, he discovers the gulf

29
separating people from one another. How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife and Other
Stories, 1940, by Arguilla is remarkable for the fictionist’s ability to record in English the speech
and gestures of rural Filipinos as though the characters were using their own dialect.

Early Tagalog short fiction began with the sketch, called dagli or pasingaw. Many
sketches were anti-American and were socially conscious, although they were also spiced with
romance. Valeriano Hernandez Peña, Lope K. Santos, and Patricio Mariano were among those
who wrote these minimal narratives. Among the characteristics of early short fiction were
sentimentality, the use of rhetorical and flowery language, and the frequency of unrealistic
incidents.

It was to be Deogracias A. Rosario in the 1910s who would go beyond the fashionable,
anecdotal dagli and, learning from models Guy de Maupassant and O. Henry, produce short
stories that earned him the appellation “Father of the Tagalog Short Story". His protagonists
often come from the upper echelons of society or are expatriates who grow to love their own
country. “Greta Garbo,” a story about a woman who learns too late of her lover’s infidelity,
shows Rosario’s ability to manipulate the chronology of incidents and to drop subtle hints in
order to build suspense which leads to the protagonist Monina Vargas’ realization.

Four short story collections of note were published during the first 50 years of the 20th
century: 50 Kuwentong Ginto ng 50 Batikang Kuwentista (50 Golden Stories by 50 Veteran
Storytellers), 1939, edited by Pedrito Reyes; Mga Kuwentong Ginto, 1925-35 (Golden Stories,
1925-35), 1936, edited by Alejandro G. Abadilla and Clodualdo del Mundo, both of whom tried
to polish the writing of short fiction; Ang Maikling Kuwentong Tagalog 1886-1948 (The Tagalog
Short Story 1886-1948), 1949, edited by Teodoro A. Agoncillo and Ang 25 Pinakamabuting
Maikling Kathang Pilipino ng 1943 (The 25 Best Pilipino Short Stories of 1943), 1944, a
collection of the prize-winning stories of a contest sponsored by the Japanese government.

Writers of short fiction in the different vernaculars before and after World War II
included Liwayway Arceo, Jesus A. Arceo, David D. Campañano, Salvador Perfecto, Nany
Calderon Jr., Ariston Em. Echeverria, Serafin Guinigundo, and Brigido Batungbakal. Macario
Pineda and Genoveva Edroza-Matute, who began as writers in English but shifted soon enough
to Tagalog, became early modernists along with Lorenzo Dilag Fajardo and Abe S. Gonzales in
Ilongo, Benjamin Pascual in Ilocano, Rosario Tuason-Baluyut in Pampango, Clemente Alejandria
and Nicolasa Ponte-Perfecto in Bicol, and Marcel Navarra and Eugenio Viacrucis in Cebuano.

Pineda, first noticed during the Japanese Occupation, wrote of rural folk caught
between their traditional ways and the demands of urbanization, in a language that is colloquial
yet quaint and literary to outsiders. Modernism characterizes his stories, in which seemingly

30
disjointed impressions coalesce in the end; the impact comes from inference, after one weaves
the various narrative strands together. In “Suyuan sa Tubigan” (Courtship by the Watered
Fields), 1943, an unnamed narrator presents scenes from a community ritual—harrowing the
watered fields, while subtly revealing a tender love story.

Matute’s stories are about women and children trembling on the brink of discoveries
that would open their eyes to a new aspect of the world around them. Her stories demonstrate
her deft handling of structure. In “Bughaw Pa sa Likod ng Ulap” (It’s Still a Blue Sky Behind the
Clouds), a young boy salvages recyclable objects during the war years, as he dreams of
liberation, receiving an education, and his father coming home, unaware that his father has
already been killed by the Japanese. Matute skillfully manipulates point of view to heighten the
irony.

“Huwag mong sasabihin sa mga bata.” Iyon ay tinig ng kanilang ina. Antok na antok na si Iding.
Ang lahat nang iyo’y nagdaan sa kanyang pandinig at minsan ma’y hindi siya nagmulat ng mata.
Iyon ba’y karugtong ng sali-salimuot niyang pangarap? At ngayo’y kinakausap siya ni Edo.
“Nabibigatan ka ba sa iyong dala? Malapit na ang atin. “At ngayo’y isinusumbong niya si Islaw
sa kanyang kuya. “Sukat bang agawin ni Islaw ang isang ito? Ha! Ang akala niya’y…”
Nakatatakot ang mukha ng kawal na Hapon. Isang piraso ng kahoy ang hawak sa dalawang
kamay. At ang kahoy ay lalagpak na … lalagpak na! Dumating na si Kano! Bumalik na ang
kanilang ama mula sa pamumundok. Siya at ang kanyang kuya ay naglalakad. Isinusunod niya
ang hakbang ng paa niyang kanan sa kanang paa niyon at sa kaliwa sa kaliwa. Sila ay patungo sa
salikop ng daan, sa may pagpasok ng bayan.

“Don’t tell the children.” It is their mother’s voice. Iding is very sleepy. He hears all and
never once opens his eyes. Is it still a part of his dream? And now he hears Edo speaking to
him. “Does your load feel heavy? We are almost home.” And now he is telling on Islaw to his
brother. “How dare he snatch this from me! Ha! Did he think that …” Frightening is the sight
of the Japanese soldier. He holds a rod in his hands. And he is about to strike … to strike! The
Yankees have come! Their father has come down from the mountains. He and his brother are
walking. He tries to follow his brother’s strides. They are walking towards the crossroads,
down to where the town lies.

American rule also saw the emergence of the novel, particularly the novel in the
different vernaculars. With the appearance of more newspapers and magazines, writers had
more outlets that could accommodate an extended form like the novel. Novels deriving from
the romantic-didactic tradition abounded, but there were also works that did honor to the Rizal
tradition of social realism. Modernism in the novel would arrive later, in the 1950s, in the
works of Macario Pineda and Agustin Fabian.

31
 The romantic tradition was fused with American pop culture or European influences
mediated through America. Adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan series were done by
F.P. Boquecosa, who also made a David Copperfield counterpart, Pepe, in Ang Palad ni Pepe
(The Fate of Pepe), 1937. The Gothic and the Victorian, introduced through American movies
and education, would be evident in Fausto Galauran’s Doktor Kuba (Doctor Hunchback), 1933,
and Magdalena Jalandoni’s novels. The tradition would continue in the hands of Conrado
Norada, Jose E. Yap (aka Pedro Solano), Ismaelita Floro Luza, Susana de Guzman, and Nemesio
Caravana.

On the other hand, the realist tradition was kept alive by Lope K. Santos’ Banaag at Sikat
(Glimmer and Light), 1906, Faustino Aguilar’s Pinaglahuan (Eclipsed), 1907, Francisco
Laksamana’s Anino ng Kahapon (Shadow of Yesteryears), 1906, and Lazaro Francisco’s Ama
(Father), 1927, and Ilaw sa Hilaga (Light in the North), 1946. In Cebuano, socially conscious
novels include Nicolas Rafols’ Ang Pulahan (The Pulahan), 1919, a novel of protest against the
Americans and the Spaniards; Juan Villagonzalo’s Wala’y Igsoon (No Siblings), 1912, a novel that
recognizes class differences; and Tomas Hermosisima’s Balik sa Yuta (Return to the Soil), 1937,
the first proletarian novel.

The scarcity of the Philippine novel in English when compared to the vernacular novel in
the first half of the 20th century can be traced to the writers’ struggle with the language. Zoilo
Galang wrote the first novel in English, A Child of Sorrow, 1921, a love triangle with
sociopolitical overtones. Shortly after World War II, novels on the war were published: Stevan
Javellana’s Without Seeing the Dawn, 1947, Edilberto Tiempo’s Watch in the Night, 1953, Jose
V. Aguilar’s The Great Faith, 1948, and Juan C. Laya’s This Barangay, 1950. Other writers in
English before World War II include Maximo Kalaw, N.V.M. Gonzalez, Fernando Castro,
Felicidad Ocampo, Leon Ma. Guerrero, Ismael Mallari, and Consorcio Borje.

In the essay, however, English was quick to become the leading medium. Zoilo Galang’s
Life and Success, 1921, was the first book of essays in English, but various pieces had met
publication before it. With College Folio as their outlet, Fernando Maramag, Tarcila Malabanan,
and Jorge B. Vargas produced essays of considerable merit. Thinking for Ourselves, 1924,
edited by Vicente M. Hilario and Eliseo M. Quirino, was another early collection of essays, many
of which were written by leaders of the time.

Essayists in English before World War II, many of whom were journalists, included
Carlos P.Romulo, known for his rather oratorical style and his book I Saw the Fall of the
Philippines, 1942, and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for journalism;

32
 Jorge Bocobo, famous for “College Uneducation,” which expresses concern for the lack
of independent thinking among students; Pura Santillan-Castrence, whose column “Woman
Sense” comments from a female perspective on current events; and Amando G. Dayrit, whose
column “Good Morning, Judge” focuses on trivial day-to-day incidents.

Francisco B. Icasiano, known as “Mang Kiko,” wrote familiar, often humorous essays on
the rural life in his column “From My Nipa Hut,” later collected as a book entitled Horizons
From My Nipa Hut, 1941. Camilo Osias’ The Filipino Way of Life: The Pluralized Philosophy,
1940, published in the United States, contains essays on Filipino traits and habits, such as the
bahala na attitude. I.V. Mallari’s The Birth of Discontent, 1940, is a collection of
autobiographical pieces tracing the growth of the author, referred to as the Little Boy in the
book. In one essay, “Into the World of Words,” Mallari narrates, in prose lucid and vivid, his
discovery of the double-edged power of words to delight and to hurt. After being wounded by
an invective, the Little Boy, Mallari’s persona, is described:

He had never thought of words as weapons before, but one lesson was enough for the
Little Boy. He soon learned to dip these weapons in the venom of the serpent and the asp, or
to hide them in the silken folds of other words smooth and glossy. For he was to find again and
again that this world of Christianity and brotherly love was full of people who relished stabbing
one another’s back—with words if not with swords!

Criticism, a form developed during the American period, was written by Ignacio
Manlapaz, Leopoldo Yabes, and I. V. Mallari. But it was Salvador P. Lopez’s criticism, expressed
in Literature and Society, 1940, which would be remembered most. Winner of the
Commonwealth Literary Award for the essay, the book disputes Jose Garcia Villa’s stance that
art exists only for its own sake. Art with substance, claims Lopez, is art with social content; art
for art’s sake is decadence:

Undoubtedly there are men in every generation who will create for their own sake
beautiful things which it is our duty to treasure. But these artists represent an aberration from
the normal course of nature, and if we confer upon them the name of genius, it is genius of a
decidedly inferior category…. Shakespeare, Shelley and Whitman achieved more than mere
beauty in their works; they were, in a fashion that is not to be confused with crude instruction,
teachers of men. We are not forgetting, despite the emphasis on “social content,” that we are
speaking of literature and not propaganda. The challenge which we ask the intelligent writer to
meet is not challenge to beat the drums and to blow the trumpet of progress. We are only
reminding him that of all the ends to which he may dedicate his talents, none is more worthy
than the improvement of the condition of man and the defense of his freedom.

33
 The decades of American colonial rule brought both benefits and drawbacks. On the
one hand, it enriched Philippine literature with the introduction of forms already established in
other parts of the world, such as free verse and literary criticism. The entry of modernism
provided an alternative to the hackneyed conventions of the once vital balagtasismo, when it
later degenerated into linguistic purism and artificiality. The abolition of the Spanish Comision
Permanente de Censura also encouraged the production of local literatures. However,
American rule, through the teaching of New Critical aesthetics, also deployed the writers’
attention from society solely to their craft, and indirectly engendered a disparaging attitude
towards writings in the different vernaculars, specifically the novel. The tension between art
that worships the text and art that responds to the times would recur in the contemporary
period.

The Contemporary Period

The declaration of independence in 1946 officially marked the end of American colonial
rule. However, ties between the Philippines and the United States remained close. In
literature, the bond can be surmised from the virtual triumph of modernism, by the beginnings
of the 1950s, in the works of both vernacular and English writers. Anglo-American New
Criticism, which regards the text as “autotelic” and thus independent of history, established
itself as the dominant critical method. However, sociopolitical pressure in the late 1960s and
the 1970s would produce a wealth of committed literature, defying New Critical norms. Broadly
speaking, literature in the contemporary period has oscillated between personal expression and
social commentary.

In vernacular poetry, the two tendencies can be seen at work. The vindication of
Alejandro G. Abadilla came with the emergence of young poets publishing their works in
campus journals. Modernists Rio Alma, Rogelio Mangahas, Lamberto E. Antonio, Pedro L.
Ricarte, and Epifanio San Juan Jr. wrote in Tagalog but were thoroughly familiar, owing to the
writing workshops they had attended here and abroad, with the poetry of midcentury America
and Europe. Manlilikha: Mga Piling Tula 1961-1967 (Creator: Selected Poems 1961-1967), 1967,
gathered together their poems aimed against the crass commercialism of mainstream writing
appearing in popular magazines.

The bagay movement, based at the Ateneo de Manila University, sought to check the
abstracting tendencies of traditional poets. Headed by Rolando S. Tinio, Jose F. Lacaba,
Bienvenido Lumbera, Fr. Edmundo Martinez, and Antonio E. Samson, the bagay poets built their
poems on concrete images and used colloquial language. Influenced by the Imagists, they tried

34
to capture experience—often commonplace ones till then considered unsuitable for poetry—in
a bagay, which means both “object” and “appropriate.” Tinio’s use of Taglish, a fusion of
English and Tagalog, in “Valediction sa Hillcrest” (Valediction at Hillcrest) exemplifies the revolt
against linguistic strictures.

Pagkacollect ng Railway Express sa aking things (derecho na iyon sa barko while I take
the plane), inakyat kong muli ang N-311, at dahil dead of winter, nakatopcoat at galoshes akong
nagturn right sa N wing ng mahabang dilim (tunnel yatang aabot hanggang Tundo). Kinapa ko
ang switch sa hall.Sa isang pitik, nagshrink ang imaginary tunnel, nagparang ataol.

After the Railway Express collected my things (which go straight to the ship while I take
the plane),I climbed up to N-311 again, and because it was dead of winter, Wearing a topcoat
and a pair of galoshes, I turned right to the N wing, a long dark corridor (like a tunnel going all
the way to Tondo), I groped for the switch in the hall. With a flick, the imaginary tunnel shrank
Felt like a coffin.

These poets, however, later combined national consciousness with craft, an effect of the
intensifying militancy of the times. Rio Alma’s Doktrinang Anakpawis (Doctrine of the Working
Class), 1979, weaves together ethnic forms with modernist irony and detachment, to comment
on a society in turmoil. Jose F. Lacaba’s Mga Kagila-gilalas na Pakikipagsapalaran (The Amazing
Adventures), 1979, retains the minimalist and objective style of bagay poetry but adds a
political dimension, best exemplified in “Santong Paspasan” (By Force), a poem about a gang-
rape contrived by a congressman’s son.

Amado V. Hernandez’s socially committed impulse would emerge anew in his

masterpiece Bayang Malaya (A Nation Free), 1970, a long narrative poem, often considered an
epic of 20th-century Philippines. Tanggol, a peasant leader, urges the peasants to organize
against the oppressive landlord Laki. However, the arrival of the Japanese interrupts their
efforts. Tanggol and his sweetheart Tala fight the invaders to no avail; Tanggol is killed and Tala
imprisoned. Lantay, a newspaperman, is also imprisoned for refusing to collaborate with the
Japanese, but he escapes and becomes a guerrilla fighter called Limbas. Tala also escapes from
her captors and joins a guerrilla group led by the peasant rebel, Dupil. After the war, Lantay
becomes a labor leader. During a strike, Lantay is arrested, and in prison, he realizes that his
dream of a liberated land will become possible only if Dupil and his men descend from the
mountains.

Beginning in the 1970s, poetry showed the influence of the content and intention of
Amado V. Hernandez’s poems, although its diction and rhythms were entirely different in that
these were free even to the extent of anarchy. The Martial Law period produced the “literature
of circumvention,” or literature which sought to expose and criticize political ills without risking

35
the imprisonment of its author. Social realism and social protest were the keynotes of the
poems of the brothers Lacaba, Jose and Emmanuel, Mila Aguilar, Lamberto E. Antonio,
Bienvenido Lumbera, Teo Antonio, Kris Montañez, Tomas F. Agulto, Edgardo Maranan, Romulo
Sandoval, Fidel Rillo, Mike Bigornia, and Jesus Santiago. Poets who had previously written
exclusively in English, like Cirilo F. Bautista, turned to Tagalog in an attempt to reach a wider
audience with their message of protest.

After World War II, poetry in English was written with insight and impact by Dominador
T. Ilio, Ricaredo Demetillo, Edith L. Tiempo, and Emmanuel S. Torres, each one of whom was
following the footsteps of contemporary American and British poets like Wallace Stevens, Dylan
Thomas, T.S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams. Often their poetry sprang from their private
worlds and dwelt on themes of existentialist alienation, quest for meaning and love,
dehumanization, and the search for identity. The poems of Carlos Angeles —with their startling
metaphors; their concrete, often synaesthetic images; their restrained and spare phrasing; and
their themes—exemplify the modernist temper, as in “Landscape II”:

Sun in the knifed horizon bleeds the sky, Spilling a peacock stain upon the sands, Across
some murdered rocks refused to die. It is your absence touches my sad hands Blinded like flags
in the wreck of air.

However, in the late 1960s and 1970s, poets in English moved away from writing
introspective pieces to dwell on social issues. Emmanuel S. Torres exemplifies the shift in his
three books: Angels and Fugitives, 1966, Shapes of Silence, 1972, and The Smile on Smokey
Mountain, 1991. While the first book shows a fastidiously aesthetic poet, full of angst and
loneliness, the second and third books show the poet awakened to sociopolitical realities,
coupling craft with social concern.

The nationalist spirit is evident in the works of Alejandro G. Hufana, Federico Licsi Espino
Jr., and Ricaredo Demetillo. These writers arose from their immersion in formalism and turned
to the delineation of oppression, poverty, social inequity, and political corruption, or returned
to a “pristine,” specifically Philippine past, as Demetillo’s Barter in Panay, 1961, shows.

The declaration of Martial Law in 1972 stunted the production of literature with the
closing of many publications, like the Philippine Graphic and the Philippines Free Press. But the
period also gave birth to the “literature of circumvention,” best typified by “Prometheus
Unbound” by Ruben Cuevas, published, ironically, in the pro-Martial Law magazine, Focus. The
first letters of the lines of the poem read downward the words, “Marcos, Hitler, Diktador, Tuta”
(Marcos, Hitler, Dictator, Puppet):

Mars shall glow tonight, Artemis is out of sight. Rust in the twilight sky Colors a
bloodshot eye, Or shall I say that dust Sunders the sleep of just?

36
Hold fast to the gift of fire!

I am rage! I am wrath! I am ire! The vulture sits on my rock, Licks at the chains that mock
Emancipation’s breath,

Reeks of death, death, death.

Death shall not unclench me. I am earth, wind, and sea! Kisses bestow on the brave

That defy the damp of the grave

And strike the chill hand of

Death with the flaming sword of love.

Orion stirs. The vulture Retreats from the hard, pure Thrusts of the spark that burns,
Unbounds, departs, returns

To pluck out of death’s fist

A god who dared to resist.

The resistance against the attempt of the Marcos government at an “ideological”

reformation of society spawned an “underground” literature that saw publication in loose
papers and pamphlets, and later in anthologies such as Versus, 1986, Kamao, Panitikan ng
Protesta 1970-1986 (Fist, Literature of Protest 1970-1986), 1987, and STR, 1989. Underground
literature is produced to this day.

Protest poetry, induced in large measure by the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr. in
1983, was written by Gemino Abad, Alfred Yuson, Alfrredo Navarro Salanga, Danton Remoto,
Tita Lacambra Ayala, Felix Fojas, Cirilo Bautista, Ricardo de Ungria, Edel Garcellano, and Epifanio
San Juan. Prison poetry was written by Jose Ma. Sison, Judy Taguiwalo, Alan Jazmines, Karl
Gaspar, and Mila Aguilar.

Female voices have never been as voluble as today, with poets such as Marra PL. Lanot,
Elynia S. Mabanglo, Marjorie Evasco, Lilia Quindoza Santiago, Benilda S. Santos, Merhnda Bobis,
Maria Luisa Aguilar Cariño, and Joi Barrios, most of whom write in both English and Filipino.
Their poetry is collected or anthologized in Filipina I and II, 1984 and 1985, by the Women

37
Writers in Media Now; The Forbidden Fruit, 1992, edited by Tina Cuyugan, and Kung Ibig Mo (If
You So Desire), 1993, edited by Benilda Santos and Marjorie Evasco. Many of the women have
also been writing socially committed verses. After World War II, the close analysis of the short
story abetted by New Criticism pushed short story writers to intensified self-consciousness as
artists. In fiction in English, the drift generally has been towards self-expression and
introspection. The English writers were led by N.V.M. Gonzalez, who was himself a creative
writing professor who almost single-handedly fashioned a generation of young fictionists
through his writing classes in the University of the Philippines and the University of Santo
Tomas. He has cultivated a sparse prose that belies its load of suggested meanings to match
the understated plot. His collections cover a wide range of Philippine experience. For example
Children of the Ash-Covered Loam, 1954, presents the harsh struggle of peasant folk against the
malevolence of nature and other human beings; Look, Stranger, on This Island Now, 1963,
unravels the quiet internalized conflicts that middle-class Filipinos in urban areas confront from
day to day.

Nick Joaquin started writing shortly before the war, published during the war years, and
emerged as one of the giants of Philippine writing in English after the war. In his works, the
cultural traditions of the late 19th century live on. An ironic yet compassionate chronicler of
the moral dilemmas of the Filipino upper- middle class, Joaquin has often been praised for the
richness of his language, lushly romantic and sensuous.

Joaquin’s baroque style contrasts sharply with the simplicity of Alejandro Roces’. Roces
achieved international recognition for his “We Filipinos Are Mild Drinkers” and his stories on
cockfighting, all of them comically ironic. Francisco Arcellana was a rebellious young poet and
shortstory writer before the Pacific War, and in the postwar years consolidated the insights
wrenched from his experimentalism. Gregorio Brillantes depicted the alienation between
people in The Distance to Andromeda and Other Stories, 1960, relying heavily on
understatement and the epiphany. Kerima Polotan-Tuvera probed into the psychology of
urban women in Stories, A Collection, 1968, as did Gilda Cordero-Fernando in The Butcher, the
Baker, the Candlestick Maker, 1962.

Bienvenido N. Santos was already writing before the war, and when his first collection
You Lovely People, 1955, came out, he stood apart as a portraitist of Filipino expatriates in the
United States. Brother, My Brother, 1960, takes us to Sulucan, the writer’s birthplace. Carlos
Bulosan also wrote about Filipinos in America, but he dwelt on the struggles of immigrant
workers amidst a discriminatory and hostile environment. Bulosan also wrote satirical stories
on life in rural Philippines, focusing mostly on the greed fostered by Western materialism.
Other important fictionists are Aida Rivera-Ford, Estrella Alfon, Edith Tiempo, Sinai Hamada,
and Amador Daguio.

38
 The writing workshop, already established as an institution in the United States, was
brought into the Philippines by Edilberto and Edith Tiempo of Silliiman University in 1957. New
Criticism by this time had become accepted as the critical orthodoxy in American colleges and
universities, and the Tiempos by their practice as writers and their advocacy as teachers set the
trend towards painstaking refinement of the craft of writing.

The workshop concept was to be picked up by the University of the Philippines in the
late 1960s, and given a wash of political color in line with the growing activism in Philippine
campuses during this period. Initially, those accepted into the workshops were exclusively
young writers in English, but beginning with ‘the second UP Writers’ workshop, writers using
the native languages began to be admitted.

In 1970, the Ateneo de Manila University opened a writing workshop exclusively

devoted to Tagalog writers. By this time, a new literary orientation brought in by student
activism had begun to challenge the dominant aestheticist theory associated with American
influence in the academe.

In the generation that learned to write in the workshops of N.V.M. Gonzalez and
Edilberto and Edith Tiempo, noteworthy were Andres Cristobal Cruz, Rony V. Diaz, Juan T.
Gatbonton, Godofredo Roperos, Amelia Lapeña, Erwin Castillo, Luis V. Teodoro, Ninotchka
Rosca, and Resil B. Mojares. Cruz and Lapeña were to shift to Tagalog and Roperos to Cebuano.

Meanwhile, the production of works in the different vernaculars continued, but only
writing in Filipino came out with regular production of literary works. Other vernacular
literatures either stopped or declined because they no longer had regular outlets and lacked
moral and financial support; or writers began to write in a more widely read language.

One of the landmarks of fiction in Tagalog appeared in 1964, when Efren Abueg, Rogelio
Sicat, Edgardo Reyes, Eduardo B. Reyes, and Rogelio Ordoñez — Tagalog fictionists schooled in
the realism of American authors—came out with Mga Agos sa Disyerto (Streams in the Desert),
1962, an indictment of the literary situation in Tagalog writing during the 1950s and the first
half of the 1960s, and a promise of new life—i.e., modernism—flowing into the literary scene.
Departing from the overt and florid style of previous writers, Abueg, for example, combines
meticulous detailing with detachment and subverts Biblical prose style in “Sa Bagong Paraiso”
(In the New Paradise ), a story about young lovers severed by traditional social conventions.

The stories in the anthology also demonstrated the potential of Tagalog writing for the
expression and dissemination of social concern among a wide audience. Rogelio Sicat’s “Tata
Selo” depicts a tenant driven to murder his landlord.

39
 More socially conscious fiction was produced in the 1970s. Many young writers,
influenced by Marxist literary theory, presented the problems of the working class. The works
of these writers, including Ricardo Lee, Fanny Garcia, Norma Miraflor, and Epifanio San Juan Jr.
were anthologized in Sigwa (Storm), 1972.

The book, whose title alluded to the “First Quarter Storm” of 1970, appeared at a time when
questions were being raised on the function of literature in society.

Many of the stories have a middle-class intellectual as the central character who grows
aware of their role in a society convulsed by a changing political climate. Protest against
injustice and the Marcos administration is evident in many of the pieces. Mirasol’s protagonist,
Isagani, expresses his disgust at the First Lady’s ostentation, when he joins a demonstration
near Malacañang. Jun Cruz Reyes uses salitang kanto or street language in his short stories to
express his political leanings towards the masses, the ones who use the language of the
streetcorner. Coolly breaking the taboo against street language, Cruz writes: “Nakadi-jingle
mag-isip” (Thinking makes one feel like taking a leak). His collection of short stories Utos ng
Hari at Iba Pang Kuwento, 1981, especially the title story about a disgruntled student, reminds
one of Norma Miraflor’s works in their use of colloquialisms and critique of conformity. “Utos
ng Hari” is also a covert critique of Martial Law, as seen in the referendums where one votes
either “yes” or “no”.

Social protest in fiction was to find outlets during the Marcos regime in the periodicals
Kamao, Ulos, and Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win. The post-Marcos era saw the proliferation of
newspapers and magazines which provided writers, whether in English or in the different
vernacular languages, outlets for their works. These include National Midweek Magazine,
Graphic, Filipino, Butong Binhi, Philippines Free Press, and Asiaweek.

Short-story writers in the different vernaculars today include Alicia Tan-Gonzales,

Gremer Chan Reyes, Ricardo Oebanda, Lualhati Bautista, Godofredo Roperos, Lina Espina-
Moore, and Dionisio Gabriel.

After World War II, novels with sociopolitical themes would continue to be written.
Among them would be Timawa (Freeman/Serf,) 1953, by Agustin Fabian; Pagkamulat ni
Magdalena (Magdalena’s Awakening), 1958, by Alejandro G. Abadilla and Elpidio G. Kapulong;
Maganda Pa ang Daigdig (The World Be Lovely Still), 1955, by Lazaro Francisco; Mga Ibong
Mandaragit (Birds of Prey), 1960, and Luha ng Buwaya (Crocodile’s Tears), 1972, by Amado V.
Hernandez;

Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (In the Claws of Neon Lights), 1967, by Edgardo Reyes;

Ginto ang Kayumangging Lupa (Gold Is the Brown Earth), 1975, by

40
Dominador Mirasol; Dagiti Mariing iti Parbangon (Those Who Awake at Dawn),

1956, by Constante Casabar; Sakada (Migrant Worker), 1955, by Gregorio Sumcad; and Lilo sa
Kasulogan (A Whirlpool of Dilemma), 1947, by Martin Abellana. These novels addressed the
agrarian unrest in the province and the exploitation of labor in the city.

Novelists in English have dwelt more on the search for identity than on sociopolitical
realities. Notable novelists in English since World War II have been Nick Joaquin, N.V.M.
Gonzalez, Bienvenido Santos, Linda Ty-Casper, F. Sionil Jose, Edilberto and Edith Tiempo.

The problem of identity is depicted in Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels,
1961. Connie Escobar suffers a childhood trauma when she finds out that her father is an
abortionist. The discovery convinces her that she has two navels, and she racks herself with
guilt and self-pity for being a freak. On her wedding day, Connie runs off to Hong Kong
ostensibly to have her second navel removed. Over in Hong Kong, Connie impinges on the lives
of a group of Filipinos. Affected are the younger Monsons, one a veterinarian and the other a
priest, both of them sons of a gentleman who fought in the Revolution but went into self-exile
in Hong Kong after the American takeover. Also touched is the life of the bandleader Paco
Texeira and his wife Mary. Connie’s mother Concha follows the daughter to Hong Kong. So
does Connie’s husband Macho. Running away from her mother and her husband, Connie
meets the bedridden Old Man Monson in a symbolic confrontation between two cultures and
two generations. When Connie runs off with Mary’s husband at the end of the book, the
implication is that she has finally given up the illusion that she has two navels and has accepted
membership in the society of human beings once again.

Like Joaquin, Gonzalez in his novels The Bamboo Dancers, 1959, and A Season of Grace,
1954, probes the problem of identity in the experience of the Filipino middle-class intellectual.
His pull, however, is towards the acceptance of an economic fact about Philippine life, not of
history. Having lived in intimate contact with rural life in his youth, Gonzalez sees the so-called
lostness of Filipino intellectuals as the effect of their failure to harmonize values received from
his Western education with the hard facts of economic underdevelopment.

Bienvenido Santos’ The Volcano, 1965, explores relations between races, and equates
the Filipino with the volcano, dormant but potentially powerful.

Linda Ty-Casper has written several historical novels, the first of which was The Peninsulars,
1964, set in the 18th century. F. Sionil Jose’s Rosales novels, consisting of The Pretenders,
1962, Tree, 1978, My Brother, My Executioner, 1979, Mass, 1982, and Po-on, 1984, are about
the saga of the Samson clan and portray social ills, such as tenant abuse by landlords.

41
 Other significant novelists in English, many of whom are still writing today, include the
Tiempos Edith and Edilberto, Wilfrido Nolledo, Lina Espina Moore, Ninotchka Rosca, Jessica
Hagedorn, Alfred Yuson, Mig Alvarez Enriquez, Kerima PolotanTuvera, and Eric Gamalinda.

After World War II, literary criticism of significance was produced by Leonard Casper,
Miguel Bernad S.J., and Epifanio San Juan. Casper’s The Wounded Diamond, 1964, uses New
Criticism to analyze Philippine writings. Bernad’s Bamboo and the Greenwood Tree, 1961,
steeped in classicism, includes the essay “Philippine Literature Perpetually Inchoate,” which
attributes the “inchoate” state of Philippine letters chiefly to economics and linguistic
heterogeneity. Epifanio San Juan Jr., in The Radical Tradition in Philippine Literature, 1971, and
Subversions of Desire, 1988, uses Marxist and poststructuralist theories. Brown Heritage, 1967,
a collection of essays on various aspects of Philippine culture—Filipino psychology, bilingualism,
vernacular literature, popular culture—till recent times has been a treasure book of data and
analyses. Criticism is done today by Gemino Abad, Ma. Luisa Torres Reyes, Resil Mojares,
Lucila Hosillos, Doreen Fernandez, Virgilio Alinario, Isagani Cruz, Soledad Reyes, Edel
Garcellano, Edna Z. Manlapaz, Priscelina P. Legasto, and others.

The collection and study of regional literatures has also gained impetus in contemporary
times: Hiligaynon Literature: Texts and Contexts, 1992, by Lucila Hosillos; Bahandi-I:16 ka pili
nga mga sugilanon sa Ilongo (Gems: 16 Selected Stories in Ilongo), 1970; compiled by Juanito C.
Marcella; Dagiti Kapintasan a Sarita iti Iluko (The Best Ilocano Short Stories), 1969, edited by
Gregorio C. Laconsay; the two volumes of Cebuano Poetry, edited by Resil Mojares, Erlinda K.
Alburo, Vicente Bandillo, and Simeon Dumdum Jr.; and Lineyte-Samarnon Poems: A Collection,
1974, compiled by Raymond T. Quetchenbach SVD. Ethnic literature has been studied by
Damiana Eugenio, E. Arsenio Manuel, Carmen Ching-Unabia, Elena Maquiso, and others.

In history, a significant figure is the nationalist Renato Constantino. The Filipinos in the
Philippines, 1966, includes his most influential essay, “The Miseducation of the Filipino.” A
staunch nationalist, Constantino links the Filipinos’ colonial mentality to a faulty educational
system. His other pieces criticize social ills and call for Filipinos to “make Rizal obsolete”; that
is, to so alter the social situation for the better that Rizal’s observations of the flaws of society
will no longer be relevant. Other essayists writing of the same vein are Father Horacio de la
Costa S.J., Leon Ma. Guerrero, E. Aguilar Cruz, Luis Teodoro Jr., Petronilo Bn. Daroy, and
Ambeth Ocampo.

The informal essay has been well nurtured in the hands of women. Carmen Guerrero
Nakpil in Woman Enough and Other Essays, 1963, wrote on Philippine contemporary culture,
women, Filipino quirks and habits. Mariel N. Francisco and Fe Maria C. Arriola explored the

42
foibles of a social class in History of the Burgis, 1987. Sylvia Mayuga narrated her experiences
during the Martial Law years in Spy in My Own Country, 1981. Other essayists are Thelma
Kintanar, Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, Sylvia Mendez-Ventura, Zeneida Amador, Jo-Ann Maglipon,
Ma. Ceres Doyo, Marra PL. Lanot, Lilia Quindoza-Santiago, Rosario Torres-Yu, Ligaya Tiamson-
Rubin, Joi Barrios, and Glecy Atienza.

Journalist-essayists, many of whom are still active today, include Juan Gatbonton, whose
articles have been compiled in Little Reports, 1986, Francisco Arcellana, who writes literary
criticism, Alfred Yuson, Conrado de Quiros, Napoleon G. Rama, Nestor Mata, Maximo V.
Soliven, Amando Dayrit, and Alfrredo Navarro Salanga.

The essay is equally alive in the different vernaculars. Notable essayists in Tagalog
include Clodualdo del Mundo whose Mula sa Parolang Ginto (From the Golden Lighthouse),
1969, is the first collection of critical essays in Tagalog; Alejandro G. Abadilla, whose Mga Piling
Sanaysay (Selected Essays), 1950, gathers together pieces on nature, love of country, and
literary criticism; and Genoveva Edroza-Matute, whose essays show a strong nationalist
temper. Her “Liham sa Kabataan ng Taong 2070” (Letter to the Youth in the Year 2070),
comments on the marginaliz ation of Filipino by English. Bienvenido Lumbera, Virgilio Almario,
Buenaventura Medina Jr., Nicanor G. Tiongson, Lamberto Antonio, Delfin Tolentino, Roland B.
Tolentino, and Reuel Molina Aguila write articles on Philippine literature, language, and general
culture in Filipino. Leading essayists in the other vernaculars include Martin Abellano and
Flaviano Boquecosa in Cebuano; Vicente B. Catacutan and Vedasto D. Ocampo in Pampango;
Santiago Alv.Mulato and Raymundo Defante Sr. in Ilongo; Marcelino Foronda Jr., and Benjamin
Pascual in Ilocano.

Contemporary Philippine literature is a product of troubled times, the see-sawing

balance between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, elitism and democracy, art and politics,
leaving a body of writing of considerable variety. Elder writers, who began writing prior to the
Pacific War, reached the peak of their powers, leaving Philippine literature richer with their
novels, poetry, and stories. Younger writers wanting to explore new territory in subject matter
and technique had gravitated towards hollow formalism but found themselves pulled back to
resurgent nationalism into the realities of Philippine society. Among new writers, fewer and
fewer were opting for English when they could afford to choose between English and Tagalog.
Filipino today is no longer a sentimental choice; it is a necessary choice because it is the
language that allows writers to communicate with the masses, who, at the close of the 1970s,
were the audience for whom nationalist writers were writing. • B. Lumbera, J. Chua, R. C.
Lucero with notes from R. Mojares, V.S. Calizo, and M. Manalo

Ways in Studying Literature

43
A literay selction can be enjoyed in various ways.

From the historical point of view, a work can be studied as the outcome of certain
events nd as the producer of certain effects like, Dr. Zhivago byBoris Pasternak and War and
Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

A literary work can also be the reflection of the national life of a people, such as the
epics are; and as a record of the conditions and customs of an era. Journals and periodicals are
good examples of the latter.

On the other hand, literature can be expression of great movements. At other times,
work may be studied simply forits entertainment value, for the richness of its plot, for
comparison with other works, for the ideas it contains, for is emotional power, for character
analysis, as an appeal to move readers to action foe social reforms, for its setting and the
related elements of atmosphere, mood and tone; foe its representation of literary movements
and techniques, for the author’s unique use of language (style), and always, for its reflection
itself.

LITERARY STANDARDS. How can we tell if a literary work is great? Literature, like all
other arts, has certain standards by which all selections can be measured for evaluation. Great
literature is distinguished by the following qualities:

1. Artistry. This is the quality which appeals to our sense of beauty.

2. Intellectual value. A literary work stimulates thought. It enriches our mental life by
making us realize fundamental truths about life and human nature.
3. Suggestiveness. This is the quality associated with the emotional power of literature.
Great literature moves us deeply and stirs our feeling and imagination, giving the
evoking visions above and beyond the plane ordinary life and experience.
4. Spiritual value. Literature elevates the spirit by bringing out moral values which
make us better persons. The capacity to inspire is part is part of the spiritual value.
5. Permanence. A great work of literature endures. It can be read again and again as
each reading gives fresh delight and new insights and open new worlds of meaning
and experience. Its appeal is lasting.
6. Universality. Great literature is timeless and timely. Forever relevant, it appeals to
one and all, anaytime, anywhere because it deals with elemental feelings,
fundamental truths, and universal conditions.
7. Stlyle. This is the peculiar wy in which a writer sees life, from his ideas and epresses
them. Great works are maeked as much by their memorable substance as by their
distinctive style. Style should suit content.

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 POETRY

Poetry may be described as rhythmic imaginative language expressing the

invention, thought, imagination, taste, passion and insight of the human soul. Its
purpose is “Enthtallment”. William Wordsworth describes it as “spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings” taking its origin from “emotion recollected in
tranquility”. For Edgar Allan Poe, poetry is “rhythmical creation of beauty”.
Rhythm is the regula recurrence of stressed and untressed, long and short, or
high-pitched and low-pithced syllables creating a pattern in the lines of a poem. This
gives the poem its melodious quality and makes it grand, solemn and majestic;
sonorous and full; slow and mournful; rapid and light; airy and whimsical; or
crystalline.
Meter and Rhyme have often been regarded as essentials or rhythm. Meter is
the measured pattern or grouping of syllables, called metric foot, according to
accent and length. A group of metric feet forms a poetic line or verse. A group of
poetic lines or verses is called a stanza.

According to the placement of accent, there is a variety of patterns or feet or

which the gour basics are:

a. The iamb which consists of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable.

(x/)
The curfew tolls the knell of parting days.
b. The anapest which consists of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented
syllable. (xx/)
Did you fall in the race?
c. Throchus which consists of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable.
(/x)
Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen
d. The dactyl which consists of an accented syllable followed by two unaccented
syllables. (/xx)
This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock.

The figures of speech. Some of the most important types are:

a. Simile an expressed comparison between two things belonging to different classes,

with the use of the conjuctions like and as.

45
 b. Metaphor an implied and not an expressed comparison. It identifies the object with
another, giving to one of the qualities of the other.
c. Personification the giving of human attributes and functions to inanimate objects,
animals and even ideas.
d. Apostrophe a direct address to a person or thing.

PROSE

Prose is discourse wich uses sentences usually forming paragraphs to express ideas,
feelings and actions. In subject matter, prose generally concentrates o the familiar and the
ordinary. A rigid dividing line in the contents of poetry and prose no longer exists. Prose is
mainly concerned with the ordinary, but it may deal with subjects such as heroism, beauty, love
and the nobility of spirit which usually find the most eloquent expression in poetry. On the
other hand, poetry may be inspired by the commonplace and ordinary as in many poems by
Wordsworth and other poets who have sought and beauty and meaning in simple, everyday
existence.

Prose is usually divided into fiction and non-fiction.

The principal types of fiction are the short story and the novel.

The short story is abrief, artistic form of prose fiction which is centered on a single
manin incident and is inended to produce a single dominant impression. Such an impression
may be one of sadness, surprise, sympathy, terror, or other reactions.

The short story may emphasize plot as in the stories O Henry and Guy de Maupassant.
The chief source of interest is the unfolding of the plot, the development of action through a
complication which leads to the resolution.

Aside from the emphasis on action and character, a third factor is the emphasis on
setting. This factor may consist of the use of local color, a device which gives a prominence to
the picturesque, the exotic of the colorful in the background. Examples may be found in the
stories of Manuel Arguila and Amper. Local color usually includes “superficial elements of
setting, dialect, customs, not as a basic element of the story but a secoration.

The Novel is an extensive prose narrative. The modern novel is a type of fiction which is
rather elastic in form. Its length ranges from the barely one hundred pages of a stream-of-
consciousness novel like Virginia Wolf’s Daloway to epical novel like War and Peace by Leo
Tolstoy.

46
 The length of a novel permits a greater number and variety of characters, a more
complicated plot, a more elaborate use of setting, a greater complexity of theme than the short
story. The novel has the opportunity for character development which the limited scope of the
short story cannot afford. The novel is capable of revealing both a broader and deeper view of
human nature and human experience.

Non-Fiction

The essay is a prose composition of moderate lenht, usually expository in nature, which
aims to explain or elucidate an idea, a theory, an impression or a point os view. In the process,
it may employ narrative and descriptive elements to serve its objectives, but its main purpose is
expository.

Drama

Drama is described as an art form dealing with beauty particularly as it is found in the
imitation of human action from nature. It is also defined as a story presented on the stage by
actors impersonating characters in a given situation. This story, written in the form of dialogue,
is called the play. Unlike other literary works, the drama involves three other elements aside
from the playright and his play, namely: a theatre, actors, and an audience.

Drama is written either in poetry or in prose, or sometimes in a combination of both.

Most of the drma from the ancient times to the nineteenth century is generally in poetic form;
modern and contemporary drama is usually in prose, although some of today’s playroght have
chosen to write plays in verse.

Reading Selections

Short Stories

Morning in Nagrebcan
by Manuel E. Arguilla

47
 It was sunrise at Nagrebcan. The fine, bluish mist, low over the tobacco fields, was lifting
and thinning moment by moment. A ragged strip of mist, pulled away by the morning breeze,
had caught on the clumps of bamboo along the banks of the stream that flowed to one side of
the barrio. Before long the sun would top the Katayaghan hills, but as yet no people were
around. In the grey shadow of the hills, the barrio was gradually awaking. Roosters crowed and
strutted on the ground while hens hesitated on their perches among the branches of the
camanchile trees. Stray goats nibbled the weeds on the sides of the road, and the bull carabaos
tugged restively against their stakes.

In the early morning the puppies lay curled up together between their mother’s paws
under the ladder of the house. Four puppies were all white like the mother. They had pink
noses and pink eyelids and pink mouths. The skin between their toes and on the inside of their
large, limp ears was pink. They had short sleek hair, for the mother licked them often. The fifth
puppy lay across the mother’s neck. On the puppy’s back was a big black spot like a saddle. The
tips of its ears were black and so was a patch of hair on its chest.

The opening of the sawali door, its uneven bottom dragging noisily against the bamboo
flooring, aroused the mother dog and she got up and stretched and shook herself, scattering
dust and loose white hair. A rank doggy smell rose in the cool morning air. She took a quick leap
forward, clearing the puppies which had begun to whine about her, wanting to suckle. She
trotted away and disappeared beyond the house of a neighbor.

The puppies sat back on their rumps, whining. After a little while they lay down and went
back to sleep, the black-spotted puppy on top.

Baldo stood at the threshold and rubbed his sleep-heavy eyes with his fists. He must have
been about ten years old, small for his age, but compactly built, and he stood straight on his
bony legs. He wore one of his father’s discarded cotton undershirts.

The boy descended the ladder, leaning heavily on the single bamboo railing that served as
a banister. He sat on the lowest step of the ladder, yawning and rubbing his eyes one after the
other. Bending down, he reached between his legs for the black-spotted puppy. He held it to
him, stroking its soft, warm body. He blew on its nose. The puppy stuck out a small red tongue,
lapping the air. It whined eagerly. Baldo laughed – a low gurgle.

48
 He rubbed his face against that of the dog. He said softly, “My puppy. My puppy.” He said
it many times. The puppy licked his ears, his cheeks. When it licked his mouth, Baldo
straightened up, raised the puppy on a level with his eyes. “You are a foolish puppy,” he said,
laughing. “Foolish, foolish, foolish,” he said, rolling the puppy on his lap so that it howled.

The four other puppies awoke and came scrambling about Baldo’s legs. He put down the
black-spotted puppy and ran to the narrow foot bridge of woven split-bamboo spanning the
roadside ditch. When it rained, water from the roadway flowed under the makeshift bridge, but
it had not rained for a long time and the ground was dry and sandy. Baldo sat on the bridge,
digging his bare feet into the sand, feeling the cool particles escaping between his toes. He
whistled, a toneless whistle with a curious trilling to it produced by placing the tongue against
the lower teeth and then curving it up and down.

The whistle excited the puppies; they ran to the boy as fast as their unsteady legs could
carry them, barking choppy little barks.

Nana Elang, the mother of Baldo, now appeared in the doorway with handful of rice straw.
She called Baldo and told him to get some live coals from their neighbor.

“Get two or three burning coals and bring them home on the rice straw,” she said. “Do not
wave the straw in the wind. If you do, it will catch fire before you get home.” She watched him
run toward Ka Ikao’s house where already smoke was rising through the nipa roofing into the
misty air. One or two empty carromatas drawn by sleepy little ponies rattled along the pebbly
street, bound for the railroad station.

Nana Elang must have been thirty, but she looked at least fifty. She was a thin, wispy
woman, with bony hands and arms. She had scanty, straight, graying hair which she gathered
behind her head in a small, tight knot. It made her look thinner than ever. Her cheekbones
seemed on the point of bursting through the dry, yellowish-brown skin. Above a gray-checkered
skirt, she wore a single wide-sleeved cotton blouse that ended below her flat breasts.
Sometimes when she stooped or reached up for anything, a glimpse of the flesh at her waist
showed in a dark, purplish band where the skirt had been tied so often.

She turned from the doorway into the small, untidy kitchen. She washed the rice and put it
in a pot which she placed on the cold stove. She made ready the other pot for the mess of
vegetables and dried fish. When Baldo came back with the rice straw and burning coals, she
49
told him to start a fire in the stove, while she cut the ampalaya tendrils and sliced the
eggplants. When the fire finally flamed inside the clay stove, Baldo’s eyes were smarting from
the smoke of the rice straw.

“There is the fire, mother,” he said. “Is father awake already?”

Nana Elang shook her head. Baldo went out slowly on tiptoe.

There were already many people going out. Several fishermen wearing coffee-colored
shirts and trousers and hats made from the shell of white pumpkins passed by. The smoke of
their home-made cigars floated behind them like shreds of the morning mist. Women carrying
big empty baskets were going to the tobacco fields. They walked fast, talking among
themselves. Each woman had gathered the loose folds of her skirt in front and, twisting the end
two or three times, passed it between her legs, pulling it up at the back, and slipping it inside
her waist. The women seemed to be wearing trousers that reached only to their knees and
flared at the thighs.

Day was quickly growing older. The east flamed redly and Baldo called to his mother,
“Look, mother, God also cooks his breakfast.”

He went to play with the puppies. He sat on the bridge and took them on his lap one by
one. He searched for fleas which he crushed between his thumbnails. “You, puppy. You,
puppy,” he murmured softly. When he held the black-spotted puppy, he said, “My puppy. My
puppy.”

Ambo, his seven-year old brother, awoke crying. Nana Elang could be heard patiently
calling him to the kitchen. Later he came down with a ripe banana in his hand. Ambo was
almost as tall as his older brother and he had stout husky legs. Baldo often called him the son of
an Igorot. The home-made cotton shirt he wore was variously stained. The pocket was torn, and
it flipped down. He ate the banana without peeling it.

“You foolish boy, remove the skin,” Baldo said.

“I will not,” Ambo said. “It is not your banana.” He took a big bite and swallowed it with
exaggerated relish.

50
 “But the skin is tart. It tastes bad.”

“You are not eating it,” Ambo said. The rest of the banana vanished in his mouth.

He sat beside Baldo and both played with the puppies. The mother dog had not yet
returned and the puppies were becoming hungry and restless. They sniffed the hands of Ambo,
licked his fingers. They tried to scramble up his breast to lick his mouth, but he brushed them
down. Baldo laughed. He held the black-spotted puppy closely, fondled it lovingly. “My puppy,”
he said. “My puppy.”

Ambo played with the other puppies, but he soon grew tired of them. He wanted the
black-spotted one. He sidled close to Baldo and put out a hand to caress the puppy nestling
contentedly in the crook of his brother’s arm. But Baldo struck the hand away. “Don’t touch my
puppy,” he said. “My puppy.”

Ambo begged to be allowed to hold the black-spotted puppy. But Baldo said he would not
let him hold the black-spotted puppy because he would not peel the banana. Ambo then said
that he would obey his older brother next time, for all time. Baldo would not believe him; he
refused to let him touch the puppy.

Ambo rose to his feet. He looked longingly at the black-spotted puppy in Baldo’s arms.
Suddenly he bent down and tried to snatch the puppy away. But Baldo sent him sprawling in
the dust with a deft push. Ambo did not cry. He came up with a fistful of sand which he flung in
his brother’s face. But as he started to run away, Baldo thrust out his leg and tripped him. In
complete silence, Ambo slowly got up from the dust, getting to his feet with both hands full of
sand which again he cast at his older brother. Baldo put down the puppy and leaped upon
Ambo.

Seeing the black-spotted puppy waddling away, Ambo turned around and made a dive for
it. Baldo saw his intention in time and both fell on the puppy which began to howl loudly,
struggling to get away. Baldo cursed Ambo and screamed at him as they grappled and rolled in
the sand. Ambo kicked and bit and scratched without a sound. He got hold of Baldo’s hair and
ear and tugged with all his might. They rolled over and over and then Baldo was sitting on
Ambo’s back, pummeling him with his fists. He accompanied every blow with a curse. “I hope
you die, you little demon,” he said between sobs, for he was crying and he could hardly see.

51
Ambo wriggled and struggled and tried to bite Baldo’s legs. Failing, he buried his face in the
sand and howled lustily.

Baldo now left him and ran to the black-spotted puppy which he caught up in his arms,
holding it against his throat. Ambo followed, crying out threats and curses. He grabbed the tail
of the puppy and jerked hard. The puppy howled shrilly and Baldo let it go, but Ambo kept hold
of the tail as the dog fell to the ground. It turned around and snapped at the hand holding its
tail. Its sharp little teeth sank into the fleshy edge of Ambo’s palm. With a cry, Ambo snatched
away his hand from the mouth of the enraged puppy. At that moment the window of the house
facing the street was pushed violently open and the boys’ father, Tang Ciaco, looked out. He
saw the blood from the toothmarks on Ambo’s hand. He called out inarticulately and the two
brothers looked up in surprise and fear. Ambo hid his bitten hand behind him. Baldo stopped to
pick up the black-spotted puppy, but Tang Ciaco shouted hoarsely to him not to touch the dog.
At Tang Ciaco’s angry voice, the puppy had crouched back snarling, its pink lips drawn back, the
hair on its back rising. “The dog has gone mad,” the man cried, coming down hurriedly. By the
stove in the kitchen, he stopped to get a sizeable piece of firewood, throwing an angry look and
a curse at Nana Elang for letting her sons play with the dogs. He removed a splinter or two,
then hurried down the ladder, cursing in a loud angry voice. Nana Elang ran to the doorway and
stood there silently fingering her skirt.

Baldo and Ambo awaited the coming of their father with fear written on their faces. Baldo
hated his father as much as he feared him. He watched him now with half a mind to flee
as TangCiaco approached with the piece of firewood held firmly in one hand. He is a big, gaunt
man with thick bony wrists and stoop shoulders. A short-sleeved cotton shirt revealed his
sinewy arms on which the blood-vessels stood out like roots. His short pants showed his bony-
kneed, hard-muscled legs covered with black hair. He was a carpenter. He had come home
drunk the night before. He was not a habitual drunkard, but now and then he drank great
quantities of basi and came home and beat his wife and children. He would blame them for
their hard life and poverty. “You are a prostitute,” he would roar at his wife, and as he beat his
children, he would shout, “I will kill you both, you bastards.” If Nana Elang ventured to
remonstrate, he would beat them harder and curse her for being an interfering whore. “I am
king in my house,” he would say.

Now as he approached the two, Ambo cowered behind his elder brother. He held onto
Baldo’s undershirt, keeping his wounded hand at his back, unable to remove his gaze from his

52
father’s close-set, red-specked eyes. The puppy with a yelp slunk between Baldo’s legs. Baldo
looked at the dog, avoiding his father’s eyes.

Tang Ciaco roared at them to get away from the dog: “Fools! Don’t you see it is mad?”
Baldo laid a hand on Ambo as they moved back hastily. He wanted to tell his father it was not
true, the dog was not mad, it was all Ambo’s fault, but his tongue refused to move. The puppy
attempted to follow them, but Tang Ciaco caught it with a sweeping blow of the piece of
firewood. The puppy was flung into the air. It rolled over once before it fell, howling weakly.
Again the chunk of firewood descended, Tang Ciaco grunting with the effort he put into the
blow, and the puppy ceased to howl. It lay on its side, feebly moving its jaws from which dark
blood oozed. Once moreTang Ciaco raised his arm, but Baldo suddenly clung to it with both
hands and begged him to stop. “Enough, father, enough. Don’t beat it anymore,” he entreated.
Tears flowed down his upraised face.

Tang Ciaco shook him off with an oath. Baldo fell on his face in the dust. He did not rise,
but cried and sobbed and tore his hair. The rays of the rising sun fell brightly upon him, turned
to gold the dust that he raised with his kicking feet.

Tang Ciaco dealt the battered puppy another blow and at last it lay limpy still. He kicked it
over and watched for a sign of life. The puppy did not move where it lay twisted on its side.

He turned his attention to Baldo.

“Get up,” he said, hoarsely, pushing the boy with his foot.

Baldo was deaf. He went on crying and kicking in the dust. Tang Ciaco struck him with the
piece of wood in his hand and again told him to get up. Baldo writhed and cried harder, clasping
his hands over the back of his head. Tang Ciaco took hold of one of the boy’s arms and jerked
him to his feet. Then he began to beat him, regardless of where the blows fell.

Baldo encircled his head with his loose arm and strove to free himself, running around his
father, plunging backward, ducking and twisting. “Shameless son of a whore,” Tang Ciaco
roared. “Stand still, I’ll teach you to obey me.” He shortened his grip on the arm of Baldo and
laid on his blows. Baldo fell to his knees, screaming for mercy. He called on his mother to help
him.

53
 Nana Elang came down, but she hesitated at the foot of the ladder. Ambo ran to her. “You
too,” Tang Ciaco cried, and struck at the fleeing Ambo. The piece of firewood caught him
behind the knees and he fell on his face. Nana Elang ran to the fallen boy and picked him up,
brushing his clothes with her hands to shake off the dust.

Tang Ciaco pushed Baldo toward her. The boy tottered forward weakly, dazed and
trembling. He had ceased to cry aloud, but he shook with hard, spasmodic sobs which he tried
vainly to stop.

“Here take your child,” Tang Ciaco said, thickly.

He faced the curious students and neighbors who had gathered by the side of the road. He
yelled at them to go away. He said it was none of their business if he killed his children.

“They are mine,” he shouted. “I feed them and I can do anything I like with them.”

The students ran hastily to school. The neighbors returned to their work.

Tang Ciaco went to the house, cursing in a loud voice. Passing the dead puppy, he picked it
up by its hind legs and flung it away. The black and white body soared through the sunlit air; fell
among the tall corn behind the house. Tang Ciaco, still cursing and grumbling, strode upstairs.
He threw the chunk of firewood beside the stove. He squatted by the low table and began
eating the breakfast his wife had prepared for him.

Nana Elang knelt by her children and dusted their clothes. She passed her hand over the
red welts on Baldo, but Baldo shook himself away. He was still trying to stop sobbing, wiping his
tears away with his forearm. Nana Elang put one arm around Ambo. She sucked the wound in
his hand. She was crying silently.

When the mother of the puppies returned, she licked the remaining four by the small
bridge of woven split bamboo. She lay down in the dust and suckled her young. She did not
seem to miss the black-spotted puppy.

Afterward Baldo and Ambo searched among the tall corn for the body of the dead
puppy. TangCiaco had gone to work and would not be back till nightfall. In the
house, Nana Elang was busy washing the breakfast dishes. Later she came down and fed the
54
mother dog. The two brothers were entirely hidden by the tall corn plants. As they moved
about among the slender stalks, the corn-flowers shook agitatedly. Pollen scattered like gold
dust in the sun, falling on the fuzzy· green leaves.

When they found the dead dog, they buried it in one corner of the field. Baldo dug the
grove with a sharp-pointed stake. Ambo stood silently by, holding the dead puppy.

When Baldo finished his work, he and his brother gently placed the puppy in the hole. Then
they covered the dog with soft earth and stamped on the grave until the disturbed ground was
flat and hard again. With difficulty they rolled a big stone on top of the grave. Then Baldo
wound an arm around the shoulders of Ambo and without a word they hurried up to the house.

The sun had risen high above the Katayaghan hills, and warm, golden sunlight filled
Nagrebcan. The mist on the tobacco fields had completely dissolved.

55
How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife

(American Colonial Literature)

By Manuel E. Arguilla

She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace. She was lovely.
SHe was tall. She looked up to my brother with a smile, and her forehead was on a level with his
mouth. 

"You are Baldo," she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her nails were long, but
they were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom. And a small
dimple appeared momently high on her right cheek.  "And this is Labang of whom I have heard
so much." She held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and Labang
never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth more cud and the
sound of his insides was like a drum. 

I laid a hand on Labang's massive neck and said to her: "You may scratch his forehead now."

She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But she came and
touched Labang's forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud
except that his big eyes half closed. And by and by she was scratching his forehead very
daintily. 

My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He paid Ca Celin twice
the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan. Then he was standing beside us, and
she turned to him eagerly. I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran
his fingers through its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.

"Maria---" my brother Leon said. 

He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had always called her Maria
and that to us all she would be Maria; and in my mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful
name. 

"Yes, Noel."

Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself, thinking Father
might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon said backward and it sounded
much better that way. 

"There is Nagrebcan, Maria," my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward the west. 

She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while she said quietly. 

56
"You love Nagrebcan, don't you, Noel?"

Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino real where the big
duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan whip against the spokes of the
wheel. 

We stood alone on the roadside. 

The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide and deep and
very blue above us: but along the saw-tooth rim of the Katayaghan hills to the southwest
flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us the fields swam in a golden haze through which
floated big purple and red and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang's white
coat, which I had wshed and brushed that morning with coconut husk, glistened like beaten
cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with fire.

He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the earth seemed to
tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the field a cow lowed softly in answer. 

"Hitch him to the cart, Baldo," my brother Leon said, laughing, and she laughed with him a big
uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm around her shoulders. 

"Why does he make that sound?" she asked. "I have never heard the like of it."

"There is not another like it," my brother Leon said. "I have yet to hear another bull call like
Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like him."

She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across Labang's neck to the
opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth were very white, her eyes were so full of laughter,
and there was the small dimple high up on her right cheek. 

"If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him or become greatly
jealous."

My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it seemed to me
there was a world of laughter between them and in them. 

I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he was always like
that, but I kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and would not stand still, so that my
brother Leon had to say "Labang" several times. When he was quiet again, my brother Leon
lifted the trunks into the cart, placing the smaller on top. 

She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my brother
Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung up into the cart.

57
Oh, the fragrance of her. But Labang was fairly dancing with impatience and it was all I could do
to keep him from running away. 

"Give me the rope, Baldo," my brother Leon said. "Maria, sit down on the hay and hold on to
anything." Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instand labang leaped forward. My
brother Leon laughed as he drew himself up to the top of the side of the cart and made the
slack of the rope hiss above the back of labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and the
rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road echoed in my ears. 

She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent togther to one side, her skirts spread
over them so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were visible. her eyes were on my
brother Leon's back; I saw the wind on her hair. When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon
handed to me the rope. I knelt on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang
was merely shuffling along, then I made him turn around. 

"What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?" my brother Leon said. 

I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and away we went---back
to where I had unhitched and waited for them. The sun had sunk and down from the wooded
sides of the Katayaghan hills shadows were stealing into the fields. High up overhead the sky
burned with many slow fires. 

When I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of the Waig which
could be used as a path to our place during the dry season, my brother Leon laid a hand on my
shoulder and said sternly: 

"Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?"

His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a word until we were on
the rocky bottom of the Waig. 

"Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do you follow the
Wait instead of the camino real?"

His fingers bit into my shoulder. 

"Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong."

Swiftly, his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of Labang. Then my
brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still, he said: 

"And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us with him instead of
with Castano and the calesa."

58
Without waiting for me to answer, he turned to her and said, "Maria, why do you think Father
should do that, now?" He laughed and added, "Have you ever seen so many stars before?"

I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks, hands clasped
across knees. Seemingly, but a man's height above the tops of the steep banks of the Wait,
hung the stars. But in the deep gorge the shadows had fallen heavily, and even the white of
Labang's coat was merely a dim, grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in the cracks in
the banks. The thick, unpleasant smell of dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated earth mingled
with the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots exposed to the night air and of the hay inside the
cart. 

"Look, Noel, yonder is our star!" Deep surprise and gladness were in her voice. Very low in the
west, almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was the star, the biggest and brightest in
the sky. 

"I have been looking at it," my brother Leon said. "Do you remember how I would tell you that
when you want to see stars you must come to Nagrebcan?"

"Yes, Noel," she said. "Look at it," she murmured, half to herself. "It is so many times bigger and
brighter than it was at Ermita beach."

"The air here is clean, free of dust and smoke."

"So it is, Noel," she said, drawing a long breath. 

"Making fun of me, Maria?"

She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon's hand and put it
against her face. 

I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the cart between the
wheels. 

"Good boy, Baldo," my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart, and my heart sant. 

Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi and arrais flashed
into view and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead, the elongated shadow of Labang
bobbled up and down and swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked jerkily
with the cart. 

"Have we far to go yet, Noel?" she asked. 

"Ask Baldo," my brother Leon said, "we have been neglecting him."

59
"I am asking you, Baldo," she said. 

Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly: 

"Soon we will get out of the Wait and pass into the fields. After the fields is home---Manong."

"So near already."

I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone of her voice as
she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone out of her. I waited for my
brother Leon to say something, but he was not saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into
song and the song was 'Sky Sown with Stars'---the same that he and Father sang when we cut
hay in the fields at night before he went away to study. He must have taught her the song
because she joined him, and her voice flowed into his like a gentle stream meeting a stronger
one. And each time the wheels encountered a big rock, her voice would catch in her throat, but
my brother Leon would sing on, until, laughing softly, she would join him again. 

Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the wheels the light of the
lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his steps. The jolting became more frequent
and painful as we crossed the low dikes. 

"But it is so very wide here," she said. The light of the stars broke and scattered the darkness so
that one could see far on every side, though indistinctly. 

"You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don't you?" My brother Leon
stopped singing. 

"Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here."

With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He was breathing
hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while we drope up the grassy side
onto the camino real. 

"---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves around the foot of the
Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through the fields because---but I'll be
asking Father as soon as we get home."

"Noel," she said. 

"Yes, Maria."
"I am afraid. He may not like me."

"Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way you talk, he might be
an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that was wounded in the Revolution is troubling

60
him, Father is the mildest-tempered, gentlest man I know."

We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did not come to
the window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family. And I thought of the
food being made ready at home and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and Celin,
and I said "Hoy!" calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my brother Leon
and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to them and then told me to make
Labang run; their answers were lost in the noise of the wheels. 

I stopped labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down but my brother
Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned Labang into the open gate and we
dashed into our yard. I thought we would crash into the camachile tree, but my brother Leon
reined in Labang in time. There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the
doorway, and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over the wheel.
The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother's hand were: 

"Father... where is he?"

"He is in his room upstairs," Mother said, her face becoming serious. "His leg is bothering him
again."

I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch Labang. But I
hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling me. I met my brother Leon going to
bring up the trunks. As I passed through the kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia
and Maria and it seemed to me they were crying, all of them. 

There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement. He sat in the big armchair by the
western window, and a star shone directly through it. He was smoking, but he removed the roll
of tobacco from his mouth when he saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before
speaking. 

"Did you meet anybody on the way?" he asked. 

"No, Father," I said. "Nobody passes through the Waig at night."

He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair. 

"She is very beautiful, Father."

"Was she afraid of Labang?" My father had not raised his voice, but the room seemed to
resound with it. And again I saw her eyes on the long curving horns and the arm of my brother
Leon around her shoulders. 

"No, Father, she was not afraid."

61
"On the way---"

"She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang."

"What did he sing?"

"---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him."

He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister Aurelia downstairs.
There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I thought that Father's voice must have been
like it when Father was young. He had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once more. I
watched the smoke waver faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into the night
outside. 

The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in. 

"Have you watered Labang?" Father spoke to me. 

I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn. 

"It is time you watered him, my son," my father said. 

I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon, she was tall and
very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the fragrance of her was like a morning
when papayas are in bloom.

The Summer Solstice

62
The Moretas were spending St. John’s Day with the children’s grandfather, whose feast it was.
Doña Lupeng awoke feeling faint with the heat, a sound of screaming in her ears. In the dining
room the three boys, already attired in their holiday suits, were at breakfast, and came
crowding around her, talking at once.
“ How long you have slept, Mama!”
“We thought you were never getting up!”
“ Do we leave at once, huh? Are we going now? “
“Hush, hush, I implore you! Now look: your father has a headache, and so have I. So be quiet
this instant-or no one goes to Grandfather.”
 
Though it was only seven by the clock the house was already a furnace, the windows dilating
with the harsh light and the air already burning with immense, intense fever of noon.
 
She found the children’s nurse working in the kitchen. “ And why is it you who are preparing
breakfast? Where is Amada?” But without waiting for an answer she went to the backdoor and
opened it, and the screaming in her ears became a wild screaming in the stables across the
yard. “Oh, my God!” she groaned and grasping her skirts , hurried across the yard.
 
In the stables Entoy, the driver, apparently deaf to the screams, was hitching the pair of piebald
ponies to the coach.
“Not the closed coach, Entoy! The open carriage!” shouted Doña Lupeng as she came up.
“But the dust, señora-”
“I know, but better to be dirty than to be boiled alive. And what ails your wife, eh? Have you
been beating her again?”
“Oh no, señora:I have not touched her.”
“Then why is she screaming? Is she ill?”
“I do not think so. But how do I know? You can go and see for yourself, señora. She is up there. 
When Doña Lupeng entered the room, the big half-naked woman sprawled across the bamboo
bed stopped screaming. Doña Lupeng was shocked.
‘What is this, Amanda? Why are you still in bed at this hour? And in such posture! Come, get up
at once. You should be ashamed!”
But the woman on the bed merely stared. Her sweat-beaded brows contracted, as if in an effort
to understand. Then her face relaxed, her mouth sagged open humorously and, rolling over on
her back and spreading out her big soft arms and legs, she began noiselessly quaking with

63
laughter-the mute mirth jerking in her throat; the moist pile of her flesh quivering like brown
jelly. Saliva dribbled from the corners of her mouth.
Doña Lupeng blushed, looking around helplessly; and seeing that Entoy had followed
and was leaning in the doorway, watching stolidly, she blushed again. The room recked hotly of
intimate odors. She averted her eyes from the laughing woan on the bed, in whose nakedness
she seemed to participate that she was ashamed to look directly at the man in the doorway.
“Tell me, Entoy: has she been to the Tadtarin?”
“Yes, senora. Last night.”
“But I forbade her to go! And I forbade you to let her go!”
“ I could do nothing.”
“Why, you beat her at the least pretext!”
“But now I dare not touch her.”
“Oh, and why not?”
“It is the day of St. John: the spirit is in her.”
“But man—“
“It is true, senora. The spirit in her.”
“But, man—“
“It is true señora. The spirit is in her. She is the Tadtarin. She must do as she pleases. Otherwise,
the grain would not grow, the trees would bear no fruit, the rivers would give no fish, and
animals would die.”
“Naku, I did not know your wife was so powerful, Entoy.”
“At such times she is not my wife: She is the wife of the river, she is the wife of the crocodile,
she is the wife of the moon.”
“But how can they still believe such things?” demanded Doña Lupeng of her husband as
they  drove in the open carriage through the pastoral countryside that was the arrabal of Paco
in the 1850′s.
Don Paeng, drowsily  stroking his mustaches, his eyes closed against the hot light,merely
shrugged.
“And you should have seen the Entoy,” continued his wife. “You know how the brute treats her:
she cannot say a word but he trashes her. But this morning he stood as meek as lamb while she
screamed and screamed. He seemed actually in awe of her, do you know─actually afraid of
her!”
Don Paeng darted a sidelong glance at his wife, by which he intimated that he subject was not a
proper one for the children,who were sitting opposite,facing their parents.

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“Oh, look, boys— here comes the St.John!”cried Doña Lupeng, and she sprang up in the
swaying carriage, propping one hand on her husband’s shoulder while with the other she held
up her silk parasol.
And “Here come the men with their St. John!” cried voices up and down the countryside.
People in wet clothes dripping with well-water, ditch-water and river-water came running
across the hot woods and fields and meadows, brandishing cans of water, wetting each other
uproariously, and shouting San Juan! San Juan! As they ran to meet the procession.
 
Up the road,stirring a cloud of dust, and gaily bedrenched by the crowds gathered along the
wayside, a concourse of young men clad only in soggy trousers were carrying aloft an image of
the Precursor. Their teeth flashed white in their laughing faces and their hot bodies glowed
crimson as they pranced past, shrouded in fiery dust, singing, and shouting and waving their
arms: the St. John riding swiftly above the sea of dark heads and glittering in the noon sun— a
fine, blonde, heroic St. John: very male, very arrogant: the Lord of Summer indeed; the Lord of
Light  and Heat─erect and goldly virile above the prone and female earth─while the
worshippers danced and the dust thickened and the animals reared and roared  and the
merciless fires came raining down from the skies─the vast outpouring of light that marks this
climax of the solar year ─raining relentlessly upon field and river and town and winding road,
and upon the joyous throng of young men against whose uproar a couple of seminarians in
muddy cassocks vainly intoned the hymn of the noon god:
 
That we,thy servants,in chorus
May praise thee,our tongues restore us….
But Doña Lupeng, standing in the stopped carriage, looking very young and elegant her white
frock, under the twirling parasol, stared down on the passing male horde with increasing
annoyance. The insolent man-smell of their bodies rose all about her─wave upon wave of
it─enveloping her, assaulting her senses, till she felt faint with  it and pressed a handkerchief to
her nose. And as she glanced at her husband and saw with what a smug smile he was watching
the revellers, her annoyance deepened. When  he bade her sit down because all eyes were
turned on her, she pretended not to hear; stood up even straighter, as if to defy those rude
creatures flaunting their manhood in the sun.
And she wondered peevishly what the braggarts were being so cocky about? For this
arrogance, this pride, this bluff male health of theirs was (she told herself) founded on the
impregnable virtue of generations of good women. The boobies were so sure of themselves
because they had always been sure of their wives. “All the sisters being virtuous, all the
brothers are brave.”thought Doña Lupeng, with a bitterness that rather surprised her. Women
had built it up: this poise of the male. Ah, and women could destroy it, too! She recalled,
vindictively, this  morning’s scene at the stables: Amada naked and screaming in bed while from
the doorway her lord and master looked on in meek silence. And was it not the mystery of a
woman in her flowers that had restored the tongue of that old Hebrew prophet?
“Look, Lupeng, they have all passed now,” Don Paeng was saying.”Do you mean to stand all the
way?”

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 She looked around in surprise and hastily sat down. The children tittered, and the
carriage started.
“Has the heat gone to your head, woman?” asked Don Paeng, smiling. The children burst
frankly into laughter.
Their mother coloured and hung her head. She was beginning to feel ashamed of the
thoughts that had filled her mind. They seemed improper— almost obscene— and the
discovery of such depths of wickedness in herself appalled her. She moved closer to her
husband, to share the parasol with him.
“And did you see our cousin Guido?” he asked.
“Oh, was he in that crowd?”
“A European education does not seem to have spoiled his taste for country pleasures.”
“I did not see him.”
“He waved and waved.”
“The poor boy. He will feel hurt. But truly, Paeng, I did not see him.”
“Well, that is always a woman’s privilege.”
But when that afternoon, at the grandfather’s, the young Guido presented himself,
properly attired and brushed and scented, Doña Lupeng was so charming and gracious with him
that he was enchanted and gazed after her all afternoon with enamoured eyes.
This was the time when our young men were all going  to Europe and bringing back with
them, not the Age of Victoria, but the Age of Byron . The young Guido knew nothing of Darwin
and evolution; he knew everything about Napoleon and the Revolution. When Doña Lupeng
expressed surprise at his presence that morning in the St. John’s crowd, he laughed in her face.
“But I adore these old fiestas of ours! They are so romantic! Last night, do you know, we
walked all the way through the woods, I and some boys to see the procession of the Tadtarin.”
“And was the romantic too?” asked Doña Lupeng.
It was weird. It made my flesh crawl. All those women in such a mystic frenzy! And she
who was the Tadtarin last night— she was a figure right out of a flamenco!”
I fear to disenchant you,Guido— but that woman happens to be our cook.”
“She is beautiful.”
“Our Amada is beautiful? But she is old and fat!”
“She is beautiful— as that old tree you are leaning on is beautiful,”calmly insisted the young
man, mocking her with his eyes.
They were out in the buzzing orchard, among the ripe mangoes; Doña Lupeng seated on
the grass, her legs tucked beneath her, and the young man sprawled flat on his belly, gazing up
at her, his face moist with sweat . The children were chasing dragonflies. The sun stood still in

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the west. The long day refused to end. From the house came the sudden roaring laughter of the
men playing cards.
“Beautiful! Romantic! Adorable! Are those the only words you learned in Europe?” cried
Doña Lupeng, feeling very annoyed with this young man whose eyes adored her one moment
and mocked her at the next.
“Ah, I also learned to open my eyes over there— to see the holiness and the mystery of
what is vulgar.”
“And what is so holy and mysterious about— about the Tadtarin, for instance?”
“I do not know. I can only feel it. And it frightens me. Those rituals come to us from the
earliest dawn of the world. And the dominant figure is not the male but the female.”
“ But they are in honor of St. John.”
“What has your St. John to do with them? Those women worship a more ancient lord.
Why, do you know  that no man may join in those rites unless he first puts on some article of
women’s apparel and—“
“And what did you put on, Guido?”
“How sharp you are! Oh, I made such love to a toothless old hag there that she pulled off her
stocking for me. And I pulled it on, over my arm, like a glove. How your husband would
have despised me!”
“But what on earth does it mean?”
“I think it is to remind us men that once upon a time you women were supreme and we men
were the slaves.”
“But surely there have always been kings?”
“Oh, no. The queen came before the king, and the priestess before the priest, and the moon
before the sun.”
“The moon?”
“—who is the Lord of the women.”
“Why?”
“Because the tides of women, like the tides of the sea, are tides of the moon. Because the first
blood— But what is the matter, Lupe? Oh, have I offended you?”
“Is this how they talk to decent women in Europe?”
“They do not talk to women, they pray to them— as men did in the dawn of the world.”
“Oh, you are mad! mad!”
“Why are you so afraid, Lupe?”

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“I, afraid? And of whom? My dear boy, you still have your mother’s milk in your mouth. I only
wish you to remember that I am a married woman.”
“I remember that you are a woman, yes. A beautiful woman. And why not? Did you turn into
some dreadful monster when you married? Did you stop being a woman? Did you stop, being
beautiful? Then why should my eyes not tell you what you are— just because you are
married?”
“Ah, this is too much now!” cried Doña Lupeng, and she rose to her feet.
“Do not go, I implore you! Have pity on me!”
“No more of your comedy, Guido! And besides— where have those children gone to! I must go
after them.”
As she lifed her skirts to walk away, the young man, propping up his elbows, dragged
himself forward on the ground and solemnly kissed the tips of her shoes. She stared down in
sudden horror, transfixed— and he felt her violent shudder. She backed away slowly, still
staring; then turned and fled toward the house.
On the way home that evening Don Paeng noticed that his wife was in a mood. They
were alone in the carriage: the children were staying overnight at their grandfather’s. The heat
had not subsided. It was heat without gradations: that knew no twilights and no dawns; that
was still there, after the sun had set; that would be there already, before the sun had risen.
“Has young Guido been annoying you?” asked Don Paeng.
“Yes! All afternoon.”
“These young men today— what a disgrace they are! I felt embarrassed as a man to see him
following you about with those eyes of a whipped dog.”
She glanced at him coldly. “And was that all you felt, Paeng? Embarrassed— as a man?”
“A good husband has constant confidence in the good sense of his wife,” he pronounced
grandly, and smiled at her.
But she drew away; huddled herself in the other corner. “He kissed my feet,” she told him
disdainfully, her eyes on his face.
He frowned and made a gesture of distaste. “Do you see? They have the instincts, the style of
the canalla! To kiss a woman’s feet, to follow her like a dog, to adore her like a slave— “
“Is it so shameful for a man to adore women?”
“A gentlemen loves and respects Woman. The cads and lunatics— they ‘adore’ the women.”
“But maybe we do not want to be loved and respected— but to be adored.”
“Ah, he has converted you then?”
“Who knows? But must we talk about it? My head is bursting with the heat.”

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 But when they reached home she did not lie down but wandered listlessly through the
empty house. When Don Paeng, having bathed and changed, came down from the bedroom, he
found her in the dark parlour seated at the harp and plucking out a tune, still in her white frock
and shoes.
“How can you bear those hot clothes, Lupeng? And why the darkness? Order someone to bring
a light in here.”
“There is no one, they have all gone to see the Tadtarin.”
“A pack of loafers we are feeding!”
She had risen and gone to the window. He approached and stood behind her, grasped her
elbows and, stooping, kissed the nape of her neck. But she stood still, not responding, and he
released her sulkily. She turned around to face him.
“Listen, Paeng. I want to see it, too. The Tadtarin, I mean. I have not seen it since I was a little
girl. And tonight is the last night.”
“You must be crazy! Only low people go there. And I thought you had a headache?” He was still
sulking.
“But I want to go! My head aches worse in the house. For a favour, Paeng.”
“I told you: No! Go and take those clothes off. But, woman, whatever has got into you!” He
strode off to the table, opened the box of cigars, took one, banged the lid shut, bit off an end of
the cigar, and glared about for a light.
She was still standing by the window and her chin was up.
“Very well, if you do not want to come, do not come— but I am going.”
“I warn you, Lupe; do not provoke me!”
“I will go with Amada. Entoy can take us. You cannot forbid me, Paeng. There is nothing wrong
with it. I am not a child.”
But standing very straight in her white frock, her eyes shining in the dark and her chin
thrust up, she looked so young, so fragile, that his heart was touched. He sighed, smiled
ruefully, and shrugged his shoulders. “Yes, the heat has touched you in the head, Lupeng. And
since you are so set on it— very well, let us go. Come, have the coach ordered!”
The cult of the Tadtarin is celebrated on three days: th feast of St. John and the two
preceding days. On the first night, a young girl heads the procession; on the second, a mature
woman; and on the third, a very old woman who dies and comes to life again. In these
processions, as in those of Pakil and Obando, everyone dances.
 
Around the tiny plaza in front of the barrio chapel, quite a stream of carriages was
flowing leisurely. The Moretas were constantly being hailed from the other vehicles. The plaza
itself and the sidewalk were filled with chattering, strolling, profusely sweating people. More
69
people were crowded on the balconies and windows of the houses. The moon had not yet
risen; the black night smoldered; in the windless sky the lightning’s abruptly branching fire
seemed the nerves of the tortures air made visible.
“Here they come now!” cried the people on the balconies.
And “Here come the women with their St. John!” cried the people on the sidewalks,
surging forth on the street. The carriages halted and their occupants descended. The plaza rang
with the shouts of people and the neighing of horses— and with another keener sound: a
sound as f sea-waves steadily rolling nearer.
The crowd parted, and up the street came the prancing, screaming, writhing women,
their eyes wild, black shawls flying around their shoulders, and their long hair streaming and
covered with leaves and flowers. But the Tadtarin, a small old woman with white hair, walked
with calm dignity in the midst of the female tumult, a wand in one hand, a bunch of seedlings in
the other. Behind her, a group of girls bore aloft a little black image of the Baptist— a crude,
primitive, grotesque image, its big-eyed head too big for its puny naked torso, bobbing and
swaying above the hysterical female horde and looking at once so comical and so pathetic that
Don Paeng watching his wife n the sidewalk, was outraged. The image seemed to be crying for
help, to be struggling to escape— a St. John indeed in the hands of the Herodiads; a doomed
captive these witches were subjecting first to their derision; a gross and brutal caricature of his
sex.
Don Paeng flashed hotly: he felt that all those women had personally insulted him. He
turned to his wife, to take her away— but she was watching greedily, taut and breathless, her
head thrust forward and her eyes bulging, the teeth bared in the slack mouth, and the sweat
gleaming on her face. Don Paeng was horrified. He grasped her arm— but then just a flash of
lightning blazed and the screaming women fell silent: the Tadtarin was about to die.
The old woman closed her eyes and bowed her head and sank slowly to her knees. A
pallet was brought and set on the ground and she was laid in it and her face covered with a
shroud. Her hands still clutched the wand and the seedlings. The women drew away, leaving
her in a cleared space. They covered their heads with their black shawls and began wailing
softly, unhumanly— a hushed, animal keening.
Overhead the sky was brightening; silver light defined the rooftops. When the moon
rose and flooded with hot brilliance the moveless crowded square, the black-shawled women
stopped wailing and  a girl approached and unshrouded the Tadtarin, who opened her eyes and
sat up, her face lifted to the to the moonlight. She rose to her feet and extended the wand and
the seedlings and the women  joined in a mighty shout. They pulled off and waved their shaws
and whirled and began dancing again—laughing and dancing with such joyous exciting abandon
that the people in the square and on the sidewalks, and even those on the balconies, were soon
laughing and dancing, too. Girls broke away from their parents and wives from their husbands
to join in the orgy.

70
 “Come, let us go now,” said Don Paeng to his wife. She was shaking with fascination;
tears trembled on her lashes; but she nodded meekly and allowed herself to be led away. But
suddenly she pulled free from his grasp, darted off, ad ran into the crowd of dancing women.
She flung her hands to her hair and whirled and her hair came undone. Then, planting
her arms akimbo, she began to trip a nimble measure, an instinctive folk-movement. She tossed
her head back and her arched throat bloomed whitely. Her eyes brimmed with moonlight, and
her mouth with laughter.
Don Paeng ran after her, shouting her name, but she laughed and shook her head and
darted deeper and into the dense maze of the procession, which was moving again, towards
the chapel. He followed her, shouting; she eluded him, laughing— and through the thick of the
female horde they lost and found and lost each other again— she, dancing and he pursuing—
till, carried along by the tide, they were both swallowed up into the hot, packed, turbalent
darkness of the chapel. Inside poured the entire procession, and Don Paeng, finding himself
trapped tight among milling female bodies, struggled with sudden panic to fight his way out.
Angry voices roses all about him in the stifling darkness.
“Hoy, you are crushing my feet!”
“And let go of my shawl, my shawl!”
“Stop pushing, shameless one, or I kick you!”
“Let me pass, let me pass, you harlots!” cried Don Paeng.
“Ahah, it is a man!”
“How dare he come in here?”
“Break his head!”
“Throw the animal out!”
“Throw him out! Throw him out!” shrieked the voices, and Don Paeng found himself
surrounded by a swarm of gleaming eyes.
Terror possessed him and he struck out savagely with both fists, with all his strength—
but they closed in as savagely: solid walls of flesh that crushed upon him and pinned his arms
helpless, while unseen hands struck and struck his face, and ravaged his hair and clothes, and
clawed at his flesh, as— kicked and buffeted, his eyes blind and his torn mouth salty with blood
— he was pushed down, down to his knees, and half-shoved, half-dragged to the doorway and
rolled out to the street. He picked himself up at once and walked away with a dignity that
forbade the crowd gathered outside to laugh or to pity. Entoy came running to meet him.
“But what has happened to you, Don Paeng?”
“Nothing. Where is the coach?”
“Just over there, sir. But you are wounded in the face!”
“No, these are only scratches. Go and get the señora. We are going home.”

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When she entered the coach and saw his bruised face and torn clothing, she smiled coolly.
“What a sight you are, man! What have you done with yourself?” And when he did not answer:
“Why, have they pulled out his tongue too?” she wondered aloud.
And when they were home and stood facing each other in the bedroom, she was as still as light-
hearted.
“What are you going to do, Rafael?”
“I am going to give you a whipping.”
“But why?”
“Because you have behaved tonight like a lewd woman.”
“How I behaved tonight is what I am. If you call that lewd, then I was always a lewd woman and
whipping will not changed me — though you whipped me till I died.”
“I want this madness to die in you.”
“No, you want me to pay for your bruises.”
He flushed darkly. “How can you say that, Lupe?”
“Because it is true. You have been whipped by the women and now you think to avenge
yourself by whipping me.”
His shoulders sagged and his face dulled. “If you can think that of me—“
“You could think me a lewd woman!”
“Oh, how do I know what to think of you? I was sure I knew you as I knew myself. But now you
are as distant and strange to me as a female Turk in Africa!”
“Yet you would dare whip me—“
“Becase I love you, because I respect you—“
“And because if you ceased to respect me you would ceased to respect yourself?”
“Ah, I did not say that!”
“Then why not say it? It is true. And you want to say it, you want to say it!”
But he struggled against her power. “Why should I want to?” He demanded peevishly.
“Because, either you must say it— or you must whip me,” she taunted.
Her eyes were upon him and the shameful fear that had unmanned him in the dark chapel
possessed him again. His legs had turned to water; it was a monstrous agony to remain
standing.
But she was waiting for him speak, forcing him to speak.

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“No, I cannot whip you!” he confessed miserably.
“Then say it! Say it!” she cried, pounding her clenched her fists together. “Why suffer and
suffer? And in the end you would only submit.”
But he still struggled stubbornly, “Is it not enough that you have me helpless? Is it not enough
that I feel what you want me to feel?”
But she shook her head furiously. “Until you have said it to me, there can be no peace between
us.”
He was exhausted at last: he sank heavily to his knees, breathing hard and streaming
with sweat, his fine body curiously diminished now in its ravaged apparel.
“I adore you, Lupe,” he said tonelessly.
She strained forward avidly. “What? What did you say?” she screamed.
And he, in his dead voice: “That I adore you. That I adore you. That I worship you. That the air
you breath and the ground you tread is holy to me. That I am your dog. Your slave…”
But it was still not enough. Her fists were still clenched, and she cried: “Then come, crawl on the
floor, and kiss my feet!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, he sprawled down flat and, working his arms and legs,
gaspingly clawed his way across the floor, like a great agonized lizard, the woman steadily
backing away as he approached, her eyes watching him avidly, her nostrils dilating, till behind
her loomed the open window, the huge glittering moon, the rapid flashes of lightning. She
stopped, panting, and leaned against the sill. He lay exhausted at her feet, his face flat on the
floor.
She raised her skirts and contemptuously thrust out a naked foot. He lifted his dripping
face and touched his bruised lips to her toes; lifted his hands and grasped the white foot and
kissed it savagely— kissed the step, the sole, the frail ankle— while she bit her lips and clutched
in pain at the windowsill, her body distended and wracked by horrible shivers, her head flung
back and her loose hair streaming out the window— streaming fluid and black in the white
night where the huge moon glowed like a sun and the dry air flamed into lightning and the pure
heat burned with the immense intense fever of noon.
 

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 The Small Key
By Paz Latorena

It was very warm. The sun, up above a sky that was blue and tremendous and beckoning
to birds ever on the wing, shone bright as if determined to scorch everything under heaven,
even the low, square nipa house that stood in an unashamed relief against the gray-green haze
of grass and leaves.
It was lonely dwelling located far from its neighbors, which were huddled close to one another
as if for mutual comfort. It was flanked on both sides by tall, slender bamboo tree which rustled
plaintively under a gentle wind.
On the porch  a woman past her early twenties stood regarding the scene before her
with eyes made incurious by its familiarity. All around her the land stretched endlessly, it
seemed, and vanished into the distance. There were dark, newly  plowed furrows where in due
time timorous seedling would give rise to sturdy stalks and golden grain, to a rippling yellow sea
in the wind and sun during harvest time. Promise of plenty and reward for hard toil! With a sigh
of discontent, however, the woman turned and entered a small dining room where a man sat
over a belated a midday meal.
Pedro Buhay, a prosperous farmer, looked up from his plate and smiled at his wife as
she stood framed by the doorway, the sunlight glinting on her dark hair, which was drawn back,
without relenting wave, from a rather prominent and austere brow.

“Where are the shirts I ironed yesterday?” she asked as she approached the table.
“In my trunk, I think,” he answered.
“Some of them need darning,” and observing  the empty plate, she added, “do you want some
more rice?”
“No,” hastily, “I am in a burry to get back. We must finish plowing the south field today because
tomorrow is Sunday.”
Pedro pushed the chair back and stood up. Soledad began  to pile the dirty dishes one on top of
the other.
“Here is the key to my trunk.” From the pocket of his khaki coat he pulled a string of non
descript red which held together a big shiny key and another small, rather rusty looking one.
With deliberate care he untied the knot and, detaching the big key, dropped the small
one back into his pocket. She watched him fixedly as he did this. The smile left her face and a
strange look came into her eyes as she took the big key from  him without a word. Together
they left the dining room.

Out of the porch he put an arm around her shoulders and peered into her shadowed face.

“You look pale and tired,” he remarked softly. “What have you been doing all morning?”

“Nothing,” she said listlessly. “But the heat gives me a headache.”

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“Then lie down and try to sleep while I am gone.” For a moment they looked deep into each
other’s eyes.

“It is really warm,” he continued. “I think I will take off my coat.”

He removed the garment absent mindedly and handed it to her. The stairs creaked under his
weight as he went down.

“Choleng,” he turned his head as he opened the gate, “I shall pass by Tia Maria’s house and tell
her to come. I may not return before dark.”

Soledad nodded. Her eyes followed her husband down the road, noting the fine set of
his head and shoulders, the case of his stride. A strange ache rose in her throat.
She looked at the coat he had handed to her. It exuded a faint smell of his favorite
cigars, one of which he invariably smoked, after the day’s work, on his way home from the
fields. Mechanically, she began to fold the garment.
As she was doing so, s small object fell from the floor with a dull, metallic sound.
Soledad stooped down to pick it up. It was the small key! She stared at it in her palm as if she
had never seen it before. Her mouth was tightly drawn and for a while she looked almost old.
She passed into the small bedroom and tossed the coat carelessly on the back of a chair.
She opened the window and the early afternoon sunshine flooded in. On a mat spread on the
bamboo floor were some newly washed garments.
She began to fold them one by one in feverish haste, as if seeking in the task of the
moment in refuge from painful thoughts. But her eyes moved restlessly around the room until
they rested almost furtively on a small trunk that was half concealed by a rolled mat in a dark
corner.
It was a small old trunk, without anything on the outside that might arouse one’s
curiosity. But it held the things she had come to hate with unreasoning violence, the things that
were causing her so much unnecessary anguish and pain and threatened to destroy all that was
most beautiful between her and her husband!
Soledad came across a torn garment. She threaded a needle, but after a few uneven
stitches she pricked her finger and a crimson drop stained the white garment. Then she saw she
had been mending on the wrong side.
“What is the matter with me?” she asked herself aloud as she pulled the thread with
nervous and impatient fingers.
What did it matter if her husband chose to keep the clothes of his first wife?

“She is dead anyhow. She is dead,” she repeated to herself over and over again.

The sound of her own voice calmed her. She tried to thread the needle once more. But she
could not, not for the tears had come unbidden and completely blinded her.

“My God,” she cried with a sob, “make me forget Indo’s face as he put the small key back into
his pocket.”

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She brushed her tears with the sleeves of her camisa and abruptly stood up. The heat was
stifling, and the silence in the house was beginning to be unendurable.
She looked out of the window. She wondered what was keeping Tia Maria. Perhaps
Pedro had forgotten to pass by her house in his hurry. She could picture him out there in the
south field gazing far and wide at the newly plowed land with no thought in his mind but of
work, work. For to the people of the barrio whose patron saint, San Isidro Labrador, smiled on
them with benign eyes from his crude altar in the little chapel up the hill, this season was a
prolonged hour during which they were blind and dead to everything but the demands of the
land.
During the next half hour Soledad wandered in and out of the rooms in effort to seek
escape from her own thoughts and to fight down an overpowering impulse. If Tia Maria would
only come and talk to her to divert her thoughts to other channels!
But the expression on her husband’s face as he put the small key back into his pocket
kept torturing her like a nightmare, goading beyond endurance. Then, with all resistance to the
impulse gone, she was kneeling before the small trunk. With the long drawn breath she
inserted the small key. There was an unpleasant metallic sound, for the key had not been used
for a long time and it was rusty.
That evening Pedro Buhay hurried home with the usual cigar dangling from his mouth,
pleased with himself and the tenants because the work in the south field had been finished. Tia
Maria met him at the gate and told him that Soledad was in bed with a fever.

“I shall go to town and bring Doctor Santos,” he decided, his cool hand on his wife’s brow.

Soledad opened her eyes.

“Don’t, Indo,” she begged with a vague terror in her eyes which he took for anxiety for him
because the town was pretty far and the road was dark and deserted by that hour of the night.
“I shall be alright tomorrow.”
Pedro returned an hour later, very tired and very worried. The doctor was not at home
but his wife had promised to give him Pedro’s message as soon as he came in.
Tia Maria  decide to remain for the night. But it was Pedro who stayed up to watch the
sick woman. He was puzzled and worried – more than he cared to admit it. It was true that
Soledad did not looked very well early that afternoon. Yet, he thought, the fever was rather
sudden. He was afraid it might be a symptom of a serious illness.
Soledad was restless the whole night. She tossed from one side to another, but toward
morning she fell into some sort of troubled sleep. Pedro then lay down to snatch a few winks.
He woke up to find the soft morning sunshine streaming through the half-open window.
He got up without making any noise. His wife was still asleep and now breathing evenly. A
sudden rush of tenderness came over him at the sight of her – so slight, so frail.
Tia Maria was nowhere to be seen, but that did not bother him, for it was Sunday and
the work in the south field was finished. However, he missed the pleasant aroma which came
from the kitchen every time he had awakened early in the morning.

76
 The kitchen was neat but cheerless, and an immediate search for wood brought no
results. So shouldering an ax, Pedro descended the rickety stairs that led to the backyard.
The morning was clear and the breeze soft and cool. Pedro took in a deep breath of air.
It was good – it smelt of trees, of the ricefields, of the land he loved.
He found a pile of logs under the young mango tree near the house and began to chop.
He swung the ax with rapid clean sweeps, enjoying the feel of the smooth wooden handle in his
palms.
As he stopped for a while to mop his brow, his eyes caught the remnants of a smudge
that had been built in the backyard.
“Ah!” he muttered to himself. “She swept the yard yesterday after I left her. That,
coupled with the heat, must have given her a headache and then the fever.”
The morning breeze stirred the ashes and a piece of white cloth fluttered into view.
Pedro dropped his ax. It was a half-burn panuelo. Somebody had been burning clothes.
He examined the slightly ruined garment closely. A puzzled expression came into his eyes. First
it was doubt groping for truth, then amazement, and finally agonized incredulity passed across
his face. He almost ran back to the house. In three strides he was upstairs. He found his coat
hanging from the back of a chair.
Cautiously he entered the room. The heavy breathing of his wife told him that she was
still asleep. As he stood by the small trunk, a vague distaste to open it assailed to him. Surely he
must be mistaken. She could not have done it, she could not have been that… that foolish.

Resolutely he opened the trunk. It was empty.

It was nearly noon when the doctor arrived. He felt Soledad’s pulse and asked question
which she answered in monosyllables. Pedro stood by listening to the whole procedure with an
inscrutable expression on his face. He had the same expression when the doctor told him that
nothing was really wrong with his wife although she seemed to be worried about something.
The physician merely prescribed a day of complete rest.
Pedro lingered on the porch after the doctor left. He was trying not to be angry with his
wife. He hoped it would be just an interlude that could be recalled without bitterness. She
would explain sooner or later, she would be repentant, perhaps she would even listen and
eventually forgive her, for she was young and he loved her. But somehow he knew that this
incident would always remain a shadow in their lives.

77
POETRY

SA AKING MGA KABABATA

ni:DR. JOSE RIZAL

KAPAGKA ANG BAYA'Y SADYANG UMIIBIG 

SA KANYANG SALITANG KALOOB NG LANGIT, 
SANLANG KALAYAAN NASA RING MASAPIT 
KATULAD NG IBONG NASA HIMPAPAWID. 

PAGKAT ANG SALITA'Y ISANG KAHATULAN 

SA BAYAN,SA NAYO'T MGA KAHARIAN, 
AT ANG ISANG TAO'Y KATULAD,KABAGAY 
NG ALINMANG LIKHA NOONG KALAYAAN. 

ANG HINDI MAGMAHAL SA KANYANG SALITA 

MAHIGIT SA HAYOP AT MALANSANG ISDA, 
KAYA ANG MARAPAT PAGYAMANING KUSA 
NA TULAD NG INANG TUNAY NA NAGPALA. 

ANG WIKANG TAGALOG, TULAD DIN SA LATIN, 

SA INGLES,KASTILA'T SA SALITANG ANGHEL, 
SAPAGKAT ANG POONG MAALAM TUMINGIN 
ANG SIYANG NAGGAWAD,NAGBIGAY SA ATIN. 

ANG SALITA NATI'Y TULAD DIN SA IBA 

NA MAY ALPABETO AT SARILING LETRA, 
NA KAYA NAWALA'Y DINATNAN NG SIGWA 
ANG LUNDAY SA LAWA NOONG DAKONG UNA 

78
 ANG MAGANDANG PAROL 
Jose Corazon de Jesus

Isang papel itong ginawa ng lolo

may pula, may asul, may buntot sa dulo; 
sa tuwing darating ang masayang Pasko
ang parol na ito’y makikita ninyo.

Sa aming bintana doon nakasabit 

kung hipan ng hangi’y tatagi-tagilid, 
at parang tao ring bago na ang bihis 
at sinasalubong ang Paskong malamig.

Kung kami’y tutungo doon sa simbahan 

ang parol ang aming siyang tagatanglaw, 
at kung gabi namang malabo ang buwan 
sa tapat ng parol doon ang laruan. 

Kung aking hudyatin tanang kalaguyo, 

mga kapwa bata ng pahat kong kuro, 
ang aming hudyatan ay mapaghuhulo:
“Sa tapat ng lolo tayo maglalaro.”

Kaya nang mamatay ang lolo kong yaon, 

sa bawat paghihip ng amihang simoy, 
iyang nakasabit na naiwang parol 
nariyan ang diwa noong aming ingkong.

Nasa kanyang kulay ang magandang nasa,

nasa kanyang ilaw ang dakilang diwa, 
parang sinasabi ng isang matanda:
“Kung wala man ako’y tanglawan ang bata.”

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Essay

Where is the Patis?

by Carmen Guerrero- Nakpil

A Filipino may denationalize himself but not his stomach. He may travel over the seven
seas, the five continents, the two hemispheres and lose the savor of home, forget his identity
and believes himself a citizen of the world. But he remains- gastronomically, at least, always
a Filipino. For, if in no other way, the Filipino loves his country with his stomach.
Travel has become the great Filipino dream. In the same way that an American dreams
of becoming a millionaire or an English boy dreams of going to one of the great universities,
the Filipino dreams of going abroad. His most constant vision is that of himself as a tourist.
To visit Hongkong, Tokyo and other cities of Asia, perchance or to catch  a glimpse of
Rome, Paris or London or to go to America (even for only a week in a fly- specked motel in
California) is the sum of all delights.
Yet having left Manila International Airport in a pink cloud
of despedidas and sampaguitagarlands and pabilin, the dream turns into a nightmare very
quickly. But why? Because the first bastion of the Filipino spirit is the palate. And in all the
palaces and fleshpots and skyscrapers of that magic world called "abroad" there is no patis to
be had.
Consider the Pinoy abroad. He has discarded the barong tagalog or "polo" for a dark,
sleek Western suit. He takes to the hailiments from Hongkong, Brooks Brothers or Savile Row
with the greatest of ease. He has also shed the casual informality of manner that is
characteristically Filipino. He gives himself the airs of a cosmopolite to the credit-card born. He
is extravagantly courteous (especially in a borrowed language) and has taken to hand-kissing
and to planty of American "D'you mind's?"
He hardly misses the heat, the native accents of Tagalog or Ilongo or the company of his
brown- skinned cheerful compatriots. He takes, like duck to water, to the skyscrapers, the
temperate climate, the strange landscape and the fabled refinements of another world. How
nice, after all, to be away from good old R.P. for  a change!
But as he sits down to meal, no matter how sumptuous, his heart sinks. His stomach
juices, he discovers, are much less neither as apahap nor lapu-lapu. Tournedos is meat done in
barbarian way, thick and barely cooked with red juices still oozing out. The safest choice is a
steak. If the Pinoy can get it well done enough and sliced thinly enough, it might remind him
of tapa.
If the waiter only knew enough about Philippine cuisine, he might suggest venison which
is really something like tapang usa, or escargots which the unstylish poor on Philippine beaches
know as snails. Or even frog' legs which are a Pampango delight.
But this is the crux of the problem, where is the rice? A silver tray offers varieties of
bread: slices of crusty French bread, soft yellow rolls, rye bread, crescents studded with sesame
seeds. There are also potatoes in every conceivable manner, fried, mashed, boiled, buttered.
But no rice.

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 The Pinoy learns that rice is considered a vegetable in Europe and America. The staff of
life a vegetable!
Where is the patis?
And when it comes a special order which takes at least half an hour the grains are large,
oval and foreign- looking and what's more, yellow with butter. And oh horrors!- one must shove
it with a fork or pile it with one's knife on the back of another fork.
After a few days of these debacles, the Pinoy, sick with longing, decides to comb the
strange city for a Chinese restaurant, the closest thing to the beloved gastronomic country.
There, in the company of other Asian exiles, he will put his nose finally in a bowl of rice and find
it more fragrant than an English rose garden, more exciting than a castle on the Rhine and more
delicious than pink champagne.
To go with the rice there is siopao (not so rich as at Salazar), pancit guisado reeking with
garlic (but never so good as any that can be had on the sidewalks of Quiapo), fried lumpiawith
the incorrect sauce, and even mami (but nothing like the down-town wanton)
Better than a Chinese restaurant is the kitchen of a kababayan. When in a foreign city,
aPinoy searches every busy sidewalk, theater, restaurant for the well- remembered golden
features of a fellow- pinoy. But make it no mistake.

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Task Sheet No. 1

Name: ______________________________________ Time & Date __________________

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