by Rose Churma
It’s still May, but it’s not too early to celebrate the birthday of Dr. Jose Rizal, the Philippines’ national hero, who was born in the month of June.
He is known for his intellect, achievement, and nationalism, but his contributions to children’s literature are often mentioned as a side note to his notable literary works, such as the novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.
This book review serves to commemorate his 164th anniversary of his birth in Calamba, Laguna.
Born on June 19, 1861, the young Rizal was a precocious child who spent his childhood in the family’s bahay na bato home in Calamba.
In the evenings, little Jose would stay at the azotea of the house, where during moonlit nights, his yaya or nursemaid would share fairy tales, or frighten him into eating his meal by telling him aswang and nuno stories.
In the introduction, the editor notes that the bulk of Rizal’s contributions to children’s literature were written (sometimes illustrated by him) between the years 1885 to 1890.
These are the years of his prime when he was preoccupied with perfecting his medical practice, learning new languages, and writing his novels.
This is to differentiate it from the artistic output when he was a child and a teenager.
At a young age, he was already known to write poetry and do portrait sketches, but the artistic and literary works included in this publication were written during his adulthood, when he was traveling in Europe to complete his first novel, getting trained in ophthalmology, and learning other European languages.
The first children’s story featured in this publication that he wrote and illustrated is The Monkey and Tortoise, which is based on a Tagalog folk tale.
He was then staying in Paris in the autumn of 1885 to take up residency in ophthalmology. While in Paris, he lodged at the atelier of the artist, Juan Luna, and was also friends with another Filipino artist, Felix Ressureccion Hidalgo.
The three also formed friendships with the brothers Trinidad and Felix Pardo de Tavera. The two brothers had a sister, Paz, who at that time was being courted by Juan Luna. The trio of friends made regular visits to the Pardo de Tavera home.
During one of the visits, Paz Pardo de Tavera convinced Jose Rizal to contribute to her album. The album was almost full, and Jose Rizal filled up the remaining pages with his sketches illustrating the Tagalog folk tale with its text in Spanish.
The second story is The Baptism of Two Brothers, a comic strip he drew for Etta and Fritz Ullmer, children of Pastor Karl Ullmer, the protestant vicar of Wilhelmsfield, a village not far from Heidelberg in Germany.
After his stint in Paris, Jose Rizal left for Germany in the spring of 1886 to take up another residency in ophthalmology.
He was determined to learn German, and he felt that living with a German family would help him learn the language quickly; thus he decided to stay with the Ullmer family.
It must have been an idyllic time. Installed in the vicarage, Jose Rizal spent the time putting the finishing touches to his novel Noli Me Tangere and endearing himself to the two Ullmer children.
The comic strip he drew for them would only be known to Rizaliana researchers when the comic strip was rediscovered by the wife of the then Philippine ambassador to France in 1959. It was then owned by Pastor Ullmer’s great-grandsons, inherited from their father, Fritz.
The third in the series is Rizal’s translations from German into Tagalog of five fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. These are: Ang Puno ng Pino, Si Gahinlalaki, Ang Pangit na Sisiu ng Pato, Ang Sugu and Ang Batang Babaing Mai Dalang Sakafuego.
The original manuscript, comprising 40 pages, was bound in leather and written in his own script and illustrated with diminutive sketches. He completed this on October 14, 1886, in Leipzig and sent it as a gift to the three oldest children of his sister Narcisa.
The manuscript that was hand-written by Rizal in Tagalog contains diacritical marks (such as the circumflex on some vowels) but is not included in this version due to limitations of technology during its publication.
Similar to the diacritical marks used in the Hawaiian text, the marks denote which syllable is stressed and the glottal stop for its vowel.
The fourth segment in the book consists of two parts: “Specimens of Tagal Folklore” is comprised of proverbial sayings and puzzles (bugtong in Tagalog), while “Two Eastern Fables” is a comparative analysis of the Philippine fable Ang Buhay ni Pagong at ni Matsing and the Japanese fable Saru Kani Kassen. This fourth segment is written in English, which Rizal soon mastered.
When Rizal finally settled in London in the spring of 1888, he boarded with the Beckett family. He spent his Sunday afternoons in the house of a German doctor, Dr. Rost, who had a collection of books on the Philippines.
The Beckett residence was within walking distance of the British Museum, where Rizal spent most of the time annotating Morga’s book Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas.
It would be Dr. Rost who first published the two essays in 1899, which Rizal wrote while in London (along with his completed annotations of Morga at the British Museum) critical examples to prove that the Philippines has “inheritance of civilization” well before the Spaniards arrived to colonize the islands in the 16th century.
The fifth and last piece in the book is called “Mariang Makiling.” This is the retelling of a legend from Rizal’s hometown and was written under the pen name Laong Laan, and was published on 31 December 1890 in La Solidaridad.
Rizal was informed of the formation of La Solidaridad in Barcelona in January of 1889 after moving from London to Paris. It was in Paris that he sent his best writings to La Solidaridad, where he notes that “The principal instrument of the heart and the head is the hand. Some prefer the brush; others the chisel. I prefer the pen.”
It should be noted that the arrangement of the literary pieces follows the sequence of Rizal’s travels from 1885 when he first arrived in Paris, to 1890 when he returned—the written pieces done in five years.
Each of the five segments is preceded by a description of the context in which Rizal wrote the essays, in some cases noting his frame of mind by quoting from letters he wrote to his brother Pascasio, or his fellow expatriates in the emerging propaganda movement against Spain.
This is a one-of-a-kind book, a rare historical piece that documents the little-known writings for children of the Philippines’ national hero, and the context of those times when he wrote these.
ROSE CRUZ CHURMA established Kalamansi Books & Things three decades ago. It has evolved from a mail-order bookstore into an online advocacy with the intent of helping global Pinoys discover their heritage by promoting books of value from the Philippines and those written by Filipinos in the Diaspora. We can be reached at kalamansibooks@gmail.com.
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