Imagining Ourselves: When FilipinoWriters Address Filipino Audiences

owrites

on Filipino Concerns

Bienven do L. Lumbera

ne of the first ilings I Ieamed as an aspiring \,eriter in the 1950s was that awriter claiming he is all aftist does not write for a-ny speciffc audience-hebecause he has to arrd he wiil ffnd his proper audience if his work is

afly good, that is, il it is able to touch ille huma.dtl in any man, regardless ofnationali5,, period or clime. I do not remember any more how I came upon..he formulation as I had set it dolrTr iI1 $rriting, or how many years it took tojell as some kind of lal, that subdy asseris itself in discussions of literature thatis suppos€d to be "greaC'or "enduring." I do kno\,r, however, that as poet andcritic, I labored under ils lreight for mary years, until it was a.lmost too late forme to cha"1ge. I kro(-, too, that d1e assumptions imbedded in th€ formulatiolhave sunk such deep roots in my consciousn€ss tlat all I need to do is siistill alld focus, ald the ideas would crawl out of my skin and insist on beingattended to or, al the very least, acknowledged, even as ihey elude quotationmaxks a,1d loohotes ard {iscy bibliographical amenities.

"Unive$a.lism" in hterahue may be descnbed as the urge of a creativewriter to trarscend the boundaries oftime ard clime to reach oui i,o a genemlized,abshact audieDce in thc belief that one is ihus able to produce drt that will havepemanert va]ue- Such a.n r:rge has been implanted in the minds of many a

*nter by iiiera.ry education that equated "modemit_v" in art and literatur€ \\,iilrtle ulfeu:edng of i}}e artist fiom his soci€ty. In shorl, "universalism" would haveus believe ihai Philippine a , to be modem, needs to forgo its natiqtality.

The poehy of.Jose Garcia Villa epitomizes rrth6 modem'J in ourliterature-the poems are not "about" anlthing at all, illey a.re "verbal consh.ncts'that may hint at ideas but rever qldte articulate Lhem; they ar-e musicalcomposiiions rather than ideationa.l or emolional expressions. Villa broughtrelief to a litera.ry scene dominated by the polemical novels ofJose Rizal and bythe pahiotic verse of Fjzal (once again), del Pilaf,, Bonifacio, andJacinto. The

Ranan Magsatsat Auatu1 ll.tnte, 3 Stlientut 1 993.

wr:iters mentioned were from ar embatded past, and while iheir works couldstill agitate, the images of the Filipino that they summoned were associated \,yith

defeat and ignominy the Propagandists }vere dispened by the hopelessnexand personal interesis, the Revolutionaries by captiviqr and combat fatigue.

Young writers brardishing a new language ard theh own illusions of mobiiiryand change had a sense ofnew horizons opening up to them.Jose Garcia Villahad appropdated the English language to himself and he could make it pe ormtricks that impressed even the colonizen who brought the language over. Inthe ianguage of the Americans ihat thev had mastered, the young $,nters fromthe Universif, of tlle Philippines found the ground on which they could stand

in demonstrating $,hat they were capable of doing. Given ihis language, theycould paxiicipate in the d):namism of a ne$. world porver which could brag ofliierary ffgures commanding atteniion ihe world over. The poetry and liction ofthe nelv htelligentsia of the hr.entieth centuy Philippines projected a lilipinocapable of striding towards the fuhrre, shoulder to shoulder with &e likes ofSherwood Anderson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edith Sihvell, and even EmestHeminguay.

This rlas the spfit I imbibed ftom reading the weekend magazines ofThe Manila Times attd Th? Manila Chrori.l, and savoring the literary offe ngs

of such distinguished contributors as N.V.M. Gonzalez. Francisco Arcellalla,Estrella Alfon, Oscar de Zuniga, and othe$ rvhile I was still in high school inthe ffnal yeals of the 19'10s. It was inevitable, therefore, that when I began to

r,fl:ite mv first poems and stories as a studert at the University oI Santo Tomas,I had nothing i,o sa]. to a,1y speciffc reader-I was writing simply because I had\rords at mlr command aJld pichres remember€d from other better knownrriters, preferably foreign. Brt because I rvas tsing English, I had hopedthen, that a non-Iilipino reader would chance upon my poem and actuallyread it. Therefore, it rvas impo ant that I did not burden my chance readerunnecessarily with details that might bafiie hin+er. Of course, since the flonFilipino reader might come from the United Shtes or other English+peakingcountries, it was essential ihat my poem demonstxate acceptable awareness oftrends and techniques curent in those countries,

I did not knou at that time. of couse. that under the illusioD of notcate ng to ary audience,I rvas, duough the agency of the lalrguage that rvas mymedium, unknowingly tailoring my work to suit the culture of my iheoreticalchance reader. I was aware, holvever, that I wanled to make a good impressionon whoevo might read me and I was courting hls synpatly.

Years later, I would be teachiflg fiction, poelry, and drama to freshmenand sophomores al the Aleneo de Manila Universit). Ifl keeping with theIiterary iheory I picked up at the Arnedcan universitl where I did m,v graduate

study, I generally prescinded from matlers of culture and history in ta.lking

aboui Literaxy works. Insiead, I txained my students to focus on techniquc and

rhouqht the Earde,, Hearr ihe (eener

symbol by way of dmwing out "implications," even when the pieces were quite

explicit in their messages. I asked quesbons that would Iead io the corclusionthat ali men rvhatever their naiionality, siation in Life, or individua.l quirks, are

in achlalitl of ihe same mold, human beings whose aspirations and motivations

may be culled from the texts in which these are imbedded. I must have been

rather successful lnreducingthe texts into compositions affilming thai aU human

beings are the same no maiter ihe background {iom which they came. 1\4ren

a student of mine karsferred to an American universi5, and had to retake

the basic English courses he had talen at the Ateneo, lhe notes he had taken

down in my class eamed him admiration and good marks. \\nrai ii Proved. Isupposed then, was that human behavior analyzed in an Aten€o class did noldiffer much &om human behavior anallzed in Nel, York.

I look back at my studenls case, ard I know norv that the critical

instrument I used in my class was not able to draw out {iom the works discussed

the speciffcities of cultural determination that make the analysis of literar'! works

intellectually rewarding. I also know norv ahat dre same tool brought about

congruent results in qlezon City and New York, not becatse h1lman nature is

"univemal." but because the cultural assumptions behind lhe instrument were

laid out in New York ard taken over by a professor in quezon City.In the mid 1960s, I had begun to write m]. dissertation on Tagalog

poety. M), oiginal inteniion was to demonshate that the delayed process

ol "modemization" could be blamed on the persistence of "h'adition" as

represenied by Balagtas. Somehow. as I 1t.as moving back in iime.I was gaining

inslght into tle impact of hisiory on creative $Titers ard the inflrl\ of influences

ftom the literature of the colonizers. I realized that the "tradition" I wanted

to tag as the "culprit" keeping Tagalog poetry from "cai,ching up" with the

modems in Westem poetrv. was itselfthe source ofthat sense ofwholeness that

enabled poets to maintain their identiry even as thev assimilated the influences

of Spar sh poelry.I had not realized how much my research had politicized me until

my professor in Modem Poeffy, sitting as panelist during my thesis defense,

commented that I was bearing down ioo hard on the distorting tendencies ardaberatrons of colonialism on Tagalog poety. The remark at any other tlme

would have alarmed me, butl was flotpefturbed at all; as a matter oIfact,I was

secretly pleased by ii. Reconsbucting the history of Tagalog poetry rurder r}le

Spanish regime had brought me lace io face with ihe depredations of colonia.i

.ule. At the sarne tme, it allo1ved me to see how at vadous junctures in ourhistory, the poets succeeded in asserting the distinctness of their identity andmad. uhar r-h.r borrosFd their vFry own.

In 1967,I retumed to the Ateneo to resume my teaching, and foufld the

campus astir1rith a new splrit. The students as well as ihe faculty were imbuedwith an opemess to what was new a]ld a readiness to h_y what was as yet

maqfin!olrseves wh€n Fil p no Wr te6 Addre$ Fi PnoAudencesonFlipnocon.erns l1

A Fests.hr ft for 9o edad s Reyes

ulcertain. Outside the campus, a social movement, in $,hich students liguredprominefltly, \ras s\'r'eeping non sectarian colleges and univenities. The nationaldemocratic movemerlt had tarBeted the masses as the "makefi ofhistory," andto reach this vast section ofthe populatioq the leade$ were using the Tagalog-based National Language at meetings, ra.llies, marches and demonshations.

No longer was it recessary to smuggle Pilipino into the classroom. Ithad become fashionable, as a matter of fact! to use the larguage at rvhateveroccasion. tuly, Pfipino ai the close of the 1960s had deffnitelv entrenchediiselJ in ille campuses, even in bastions of the English language like the Ateneode Manila. Teachers of English had begun to rvorry about loss of siaius, &1dthis showed in the questions they asked at q.,mposia a.nd convocations: "Howsoon rdll the change olmedilm of instruction take place? How does one planfor a future rvhen English will have ceased to be the prestige la:rguage of the

Wdtiflg in Pilipino, as earl) as the 6rst haff of ihe i960s, had beengenerating renerved vigor. tsy decade's end, it rvas as though young writers haddiscovered a new medium, such was rhe viirality r,lith $,hich ihey tielded tllelanguage-exploring its rhlthmic poteDtials! probing its crudities for nnpac!experimenting with the vocabulaq. of peasant speech and urban poor sla.ng.

But lr.hat was most signilicant, long standing social problems and issues of thetim€s were discemed in mat€ als for fiction and poehy and given lyrical powerby the politicized imagination ofvouthful.wrile .

Suddenly, it was no Ionger necessarr, to apologize for propagarda inliterar] works. At this time, the assumption behind u,Titing was thaL litemtureought to be in ihe seNice of social change, and to insist on the prior claims ofartistry was the height of in'eleva.nce. What proved to be problematic for methen was hou to get a $ip on Lhe problem and the issues that would go intoliterary norks.

Para kanino? lar \rhoml The quesbor was posed by Mao Zedong towriters and artists gaihered iD thc caves of Yenan some years before the ffnalvictory of the Chinese Revollrtion ill 1949. The questior $.as picked up by thenatiolla.l democratic movemeni in ihe Phiiippines, and the endudng Iegacy ofthe movement ofl Philippine literaD studies resis mainly on iis nising of Mao'squestion to guide the development of politically committed uiting.

"For whom?" rvas a political question, bu! for the Filipino $.dte$, itgenerated anslye* to a number of key problems of creative writing in a societycharacterized by !\,idespread poverty, foreign donination, and elite nrle. Forthe lirst time, dle writer \,\'as being asked to \r'dte for a specific audiencethe peasants, r,orkers, students, and guerilla iighters r.ho were in the vastcolutJside, in crorded u].bar centers and in mourltain fasmesses. The writerhad to know his audience the belter to sene them. In ihe past, the $,riter, evenone with a populist orientation! assumed the dominant role in his relationship

rhouqht the H3rde.i

mag ningOuEeves Wh€nF lprnoWrteuAddressF lpinoAudien.esonFilipnoConcerns 33

\diih his readers; nolr.it was clea.r that he was to sene his audi€nce, ihat his workwas supposed to advarce the cause of the oppressed. This mea.nt that the $riterwould have to adjust the accessibiliq/ of his work according to the needs ardcapabiliiy crf his audieflce. The injunciion extended to the choice of language,

the use of language a-lld lts resources, the approp ateress ard effectiveress ofthe genre, the manner of distdbution, ard, of course, d1e subject maller itselJ.

The short story, in the 1950s. had become the most widely-used of t]leliterary genres. and by the 1960s it seemed to olfer itse]f as the most popularfonn \r-hereb), Fiiipinos could imagine themseh es.

,tl$oa carne out in 1 972 as aI a:rihology of new shoft stodes writter byauilors who nele il one wal or anolher ideniifled with ihe nationa] democraticmovement. Looking at the stories in the book now, we see holv wdter andaudience hadjoined together to creale dTough $e imagination the communirythat uould answer their needs and aspirations. Unlike in previous rvorks oftheimagination where the $riter oeaied images that readers were a.sked to accept,

we have here literary works that imagine the self of the creative artist as he has

merged with the self of his intended rcaders.

When it appeared in 1972, S,gad held bet$,een iis cove$ power thatcould build the sociery of the fuhfe. However, a book bI itself could not unlockthat pot-er. The push of a social movemert was needed so the componentsof anv Biven secto i(.ould learn to unite on common goals and forge ahead

together wiih other sectors.

What,lzgzoa does for or1r time, as do other collectiom of actiaist riting,is to remind us that at a given point in our recent hlstory, creative writenresponding to the times fashioned images of Filipinos awalting actua-Lization-

Rica.rdo Lee\ "Si Tatang, si Freddie, si Tandang Senyong at Iba Pang Tauhanng Ating Kuwento" presents us with a young llriter who leams that nritingabout the oppressed is not enough; more ugent is the need to work with lih€minded colleagues to dis ande oppressive condiiions. In Norma Miraflor's"Sulat mula sa Pritil" a teenager ftom the slums joins a demoDshation just lorthe heck of i! ard comes to understand that tlle condifions he rebels against

at home, in school, and in the neighborhood are part and parcel of *'hat themovement aims io change. "Maria, ang Iyong Anak" by Wilfredo P. Vitusio is

about a woman, who acts as ,ofig (grease money) collector for the police, r.akingup to her complicif $.idr tle forces that killed her activist son. Domingo C.Landicho's "Dugo ang Langit sa Ba.lon" is the story of a youthful labor militalltwho takes over when the elder Ieader dies in a bloody picket line encounterwitl scabs and milita{- men, and is also about a jaded and qrfcal Viehamveteran who finds the resolve to rejoin the strugBle against enploitation andoppression after witnessing the violence that cuts down a labor leader.

Her€ are Filipinos ouselves imagined b,r, young writers uho madeliterature out of the stem shrff of the shxggle for fteedom and democracy in thedecade before the declaxaiion of Marial Law.

A Fests.hr fi lor soledad s Reye: