Maria Luisa Torres Reyes

Modernity/Modernism in Philippine Literature

Maria Luisa Torres Reyes The Ateneo de University

Abstract

When the American colonial regime set up the Philippine public school system in the first decade of 1900s, it installed a curriculum that was heavily based on the American educational system. The English literature and humanities curriculum, in particular, was heavily Anglo-American notwithstanding the ’ lack of proficiency in the English language in the early years. By the third decade of the American occupation, the Filipinos who had been able to attend the university in the country and abroad and had developed a higher level of competence in the English language, began to produce writers and critics who had been trained formally in the Anglo-American literary and critical modes. This generation produced the first Filipino “modernist” writers, who would later constitute the canon of Philippine Literature.

Soon after, Filipino writers in Tagalog and the other began to develop a taste for modernist writing as well and soon produced their own kind of “modernistas.” Ironically, as Americanization in literature developed inroads in Philippine letters in the major languages, Filipino writers in English and Philippine languages, specifically, were to be split into two camps, the “art for arts’ sake” camp (the modernists), led by Jose Garcia Villa, and the socially oriented camp (the socially oriented writers) led by Salvador P. Lopez. The first claimed to be heir to Anglo-American- modernist writers whose works they had read; the second were said to be heir to the local tradition of socially-oriented writings in Philippine literature which tradition they ostensibly wished to keep alive. Numerous polemical exchanges would ensue from the 1900s to the 1940s shortly before World War II, which were published in the daily newspapers and weekly magazines. The polemics would embody the contradictions as well as the ambivalences of the Filipino writers’ reception of Anglo- American literary “modernism,” outline the contours of “modernism” in Philippine literature, and underscore the continuing unease that Filipino writers today, especially those writing in Philippine languages, about “western” modernism, and the desire to go past it, resulting in the development of a complex if contradictory kind of modernism and a sense of modernity and the role of language in this development.

Key words: modernity, modernism, Philippine literature

Introduction First, it is said that as a result of “modern” western European and Anglo- In the , often referred to as the American hegemonic imperatives upon first “modern” nation in Southeast Asia, and postcolonial societies, dominantly through the only former Asian colony of the United the setting up of the colonial public States, modernism and modernity are educational system, “modernity” - as a social inextricably linked and loosely and historical phenomenon – has weakened interchangeable yet are distinctly and or destroyed traditional beliefs and practices diversely inflected in incommensurably of non-western societies as the people uneven, overlapping and contradictory ways. themselves are decimated by colonialism. However, historically, such imperatives have had to deal with existing local traditions, 20

Vol. 14 No. 1 – April 2014 languages and practices, nonetheless literary convention, and commitment for producing “modernities” and “modernisms” individualist, avant-garde sensibility in art of differentiated characteristics and uneven and knowledge paved the way for the release development across the different Philippine of new aesthetic energies among Tagalog languages. This is exemplified by the diverse poets. Panitikan was development of “modern” genres in the Philippines like the Filipino novel written in …determined to be “modern,” in the sense the different local languages which ranges that it was to diverge from traditional from the integrative classic realist “modern” along lines being pursued by the writers of types to the discrepant hybrid varieties of Philippine English literature. (Lumbera, pre-moden (traiditonal) to postmodern 2007: 97) (contemporary) varieties. , The poem, “Ako ang Daigdig,” is said to have Second, it is posited that as a cultural and declared a kind of poetic mutiny and social artistic response to modernity, “modernism” insurrection in protest of protest of embodies cultural practices which are hypocrisies in conventional society that had disjunctive of practices that fetter and habits made a as he stripped his verse of rime and that bridle. However, to “make new” is not meter of the dominant conventional Tagalog simply an aesthetic response but a deeper versification. and more sweeping reaction to the experience of modernity, embodying Abadilla was arguably a crusader for appropriative, as well as abrogative or freedom, like Villa, who resisted all aesthetically transgressive in Philippine conventional social and artistic restrictions literature. This is exemplified by such writers like a personal war. Assuming a mythical as Alejandro G. Abadilla (Tagalog) and Jose “real self,” he believed that individual Garcia Villa (English) freedom could be achieved through disengaging himself from other men. Abadilla Individualistic in temper, he was obsessed by the self only because he believed individuals In 1935, the Tagalog writers’ group true to themselves would usher a better called Kapisanang Panitikan, organized as a society. Later on, his experimentation with reaction to Ilaw at Panitik, an earlier writers’ free verse would prepare the way for its group, published a literary magazine, acceptance by younger poets, who would Panitikan, in 1938. Its members staged a then go beyond his theme of individualism revolt against the worsening commercialism while acknowledging his formalist of local magazines, rampant use of clichés and innovations formulaic repetition of old literary forms and worn-out conventions. They demanded AKO ANG DAIGDIG artistic freedom to innovate in theme and Ni Alejandro G. Abadilla technique and led the efforts for artistic experimentation in Tagalog writing. The i. group, which included Alejandro G. Abadilla, ako Teodoro Agoncillo, Clodualdo del Mundo, ang daigdig Brigido Batungbakal, Arceo, Salvador ako Barros, and Genoveva Edroza-Matute, ang tula publicized its cause with a book-burning rally ako at Plaza Moriones in Tondo on 02 Mar 1940, ang daigdig referring to themselves as “radical but ang tula aristocratic.” The group threw into the flames ako literary works they considered “unfit to be ang daigdig passed on to posterity.” ng tula ang tula The leader of the “literary rebels” was ng daigdig Abadilla, whose use of free verse, defiance of ako

21 Maria Luisa Torres Reyes ang walang maliw na ako ako. ang walang kamatayang ako ang tula ng daigdig (1940) ii. ako I AM THE UNIVERSE ang daigdig ng tula By Alejandro G. Abadilla ako ang tula ng daigdig i. ako ang malayang ako i am matapat sa sarili the universe sa aking daigdig i am ng tula the poem ako i am ang tula the universe sa daigdig the poem ako i am ang daigdig the universe ng tula of the poem ako the poem ang daigdig of the universe i am iii. the unending I am ako the undying I am ang damdaming the poem of the universe malaya ako ii. ang larawang i am buhay the universe of the poem ako i am ang buhay the poem of the universe na walang hanggan i am ako the free I am ang damdamin true to myself ang larawan to my universe ang buhay of the poem damdamin I am larawan the poem buhay in the universe tula i am ako the universe of the poem iv. i am ang daigdig the universe ako sa tula iii. ako i am ang daigdig the feeling ng tula free ako i am ang daigdig the image ako alive ang tula i am daigdig the life tula without end

22 Vol. 14 No. 1 – April 2014 i am A powerful voice as a avant-garde artist, the feeling critic, modernist poet, fictionist, Jose Garcia the image Villa is known for his technical innovations of the life “reversed consonance” in Have Come, Am feeling Here (1942), for example, and “comma image poems” in The Anchored Angel. His poems life deal with angelic rebellion, the solitary poem genius, and artistic exceptionality i am reminiscent of Wallace Stevens, or e.e. cummings. It had been said that Villa was iv. able to do “much to establish Philippine the universe writing alongside Tagalog and Spanish i am literatures” which had obviously longer in the poem histories behind them. i am the universe He introduced a new rhyming scheme of the poem called ”reversed consonance" wherein, i am according to Villa: "The last sounded the universe consonants of the last syllable, or the last i am principal consonant of a word, are reversed The poem for the corresponding rhyme. Thus, a rhyme universe for near would be run; or rain, green, reign." poem In 1949, Villa presented a poetic style he i am. called "comma poems," wherein commas are placed after every word. (1940) Translation: Bienvenido Lumbera First, A Poem Must Be Magical Jose Garcia Villa Villa First, a poem must be magical, But among English writers, unrest was Then musical as a seagull. pervading the literary atmosphere as well. On It must be a brightness moving one side, there were the Veronicans – also And hold secret a bird’s flowering organized in 1935 by those who were It must be slender as a bell, believed to have stood for art for art’s sake, And it must hold fire as well. like Jose Garcia Villa, forming another avant- It must have the wisdom of bows garde group of Filipino writers. On the other And it must kneel like a rose. hand, there were those who urged their It must be able to hear fellow writers in English to create a more The luminance of dove and deer. socially engaged art, like writers Salvador P. It must be able to hide Lopez, Federico Mangahas, Arturo Rotor, and What it seeks, like a bride. Manuel Arguilla, who became the stalwarts of And over all I would like to hover the Philippine Writers League. Coming God, smiling from the poem’s cover. mainly from the University of the Philippines, and elite universities based in Manila, the Fragment English writers were urged to commit to Jose Garcia Villa great social responsibility even as they also sought for artistic freedom; on the other Anchored Angel hand, Tagalog writers, coming out in And,lay,he,down,the,golden,father, commercial publications, were admonished (Genesis’,fist,all,gentle,now). to raise aesthetic standards even as it was between,the,Wall,of,China,and, tacitly assumed that their works should also The,tiger,tree(his,centuries,his, serve social ends. Aerials,of,light)… Anchored,entire,angel!

23 Maria Luisa Torres Reyes

He,in,his,estate,miracle,and,living,dew, Modern Literature and the Philippine His,fuses,gold,his,cobalts,love, Commonwealth And,in,his,eyepits, O,under,the,liontelling,sun— The Tydings-McDuffie Act presented the The,zeta,truth—the,swift,red,Christ. promise of freedom from colonial bondage under American “tutelage.” With the Villa is known for having fought almost Philippine Commonwealth Period (1935- singularly for “art for art’s sake,” and for his 1946), described by some historians as insistence upon the autonomy of art from ushering in the birth of the modern nation, society (Lumbera, 2007: 96). It must be Filipino preparations for self-government noted, however, that against such were underway. Finally, independence aestheticism, some of his contemporaries seemed truly within reach. writing in English believed instead in “proletarian literature” and in using the pen After being referred to only as “Las as a weapon for social change. Filipinas” for centuries as a colony of Spain, and as the “islands” as an American territory, In Philippine literary history, this this time, a vision leading to a unified, particular development towards the modern, democratic, and sovereign nation aesthetic, as exemplified by Villa, is said to was within the realm of possibility, indeed – a have constituted a “radical break from country, finally, to be forged under the flag, tradition,” as despite linguistic, generational “the Philippines.” Between speeches and or even linguistic and ethnic divisions, propaganda of both the American colonial Spanish writing and literatures in the various and Philippine Commonwealth leaderships, Philippine languages had been mostly an image of a prosperous, progressive would- respectful of a more socially-conscious be-nation under a sovereign state was being tradition in the long history of literature. painted everywhere in the media – happy, satisfied citizens living in egalitarian peace Third, while modernism is usually and harmony. In Philippine public schools, understood as a set of literary techniques and such polemical colonial atmosphere was attitudes rooted mainly in Anglo-American accompanied by the developing canon under avant-garde aesthetic and literary American tutelage ranging from Irving and movements as these had influenced literature Longfellow to Shakespeare, Poe, and Matthew by Filipinos through American colonial Arnold. education, in the Philippines, modernism is a conjuncture of diverse fields of forces in the In fact, the country was disintegrating Philippines, at once literary and non-literary, into chaos, as it faced widespread unrest. In a local and foreign, formalist and political, so number of provinces, the peasantry had been that one might refer to modernisms (plural) in revolt against the age-old inequities of the rather than modernism (singular). In the feudal caciquismo. The promises of agrarian context of the country’s struggle for self- reform in huge friar lands by the Philippine determination under Spanish colonialism, Revolution to which they had given up their then, American colonialism, through the lives, had come to naught. Now, neither Commonwealth Period, and then under the having land nor independence, they Japanese Occupation, “non-literary” themes continued to be enslaved even under a so- of nationalism and social justice called democratic system that promised understandably inflect Philippine freedom and equality for all, but which modernism/s. This is illustrated by noted remained unjust and oppressive - a writers during the Commonwealth Period, commonwealth government that could not Salvador P. Lopez (English) and Benigno protect the very people from the very roots of Ramos (Tagalog) in whose writings their centuries-old oppression. Thus, as they modernism is equally politically had done before, the peasants clamored for transgressive. agrarian reform once more even as the struggle for independence was being waged. The Muslims of Mindanao, the country’s

24 Vol. 14 No. 1 – April 2014 second biggest island, as it had been for contemporaries during his lifetime, he is centuries, were fighting mightily for cessation currently so highly regarded by literary as ever despite American colonial efforts at historians that it has been said that his poetry integrating them. (Constantino, 1975: 342- “ought to rank him among the major poets of 383) the Tagalog language.” But unlike the younger avant-garde poets, his later poems especially Ramos were politically purposive as these made his poems “easily accessible to the masses in Although workers in factories had held whose service he had placed his art” numerous strikes within and around Manila (Lumbera, 2007: 101). Clearly, his in open defiance of both capitalists and the modernism is both aesthetic and political. government, bearing powerful witness to this Ramos’ literary creed is embodied in his struggle was the movement. The famous poem, Panulat,” whose tropes speak were farmers who had been of the role of literature in the struggle for fighting for the break-up of the hacienda national emancipation and social justice. system and the oppressive usurious practices associated with it, which had been instituted PANULAT during the Spanish colonial era, only to ni Benigno R. Ramos continue to be perpetuated under the Americans. This movement was founded in Kung ikaw, Panulat, ay di magagamit 1930 by Benigno Ramos, a noted writer in Kundi sa paghamak sa Bayang may hapis, Tagalog and a well-known pro-independence Manong mabakli ka’t ang taglay mong tulis peasant leader, who had worked at the office Ay bulagin ako’t sugatan sa dibdib. of Manuel L. , the President of the Kung dahil sa iyo’s aking tutulungan Commonwealth of the Philippines. He Ang nagsisilait sa dangal ng Bayan, resigned from his office when in 1930, he led Manong mawala ka sa kinalalagyan, a strike by teachers in opposition to the At nang din na kita magawang pamaslang!... Commonwealth leadership; later, he formed Di ko kailangan na ikaw’y gamitin the Sakdalista movement which was perhaps Kung sa iyong katas ang Baya’y daraing, the peasant movement with the most Ibig ko pang ikaw’y magkadurug-durog widespread influence of the period. A fine Kaysa magamit kong sa Baya’y panlubog. writer himself, he established a Tagalog Sa bawat anak mo ay itinatanim language newspaper called Sakdal which Ang dati mong hapis at aping damdamin, became popular among peasants. At bago mamatay, ang iyong habilin (Constantino 367-370) “Iyong ating lupa’y pilitin mong kunin.” Kailangan kita sa gitna ng digma Ramos belongs to a long tradition of At sa pagtatanghal ng bayaning diwa, politically engaged writers in Philippine Hayo’t ibangon mo ang lahat ng dukha literary history beginning with the national Hayo’t ibagsak mo ang mga masiba! hero, Jose P. (Philippine national hero (1930) but also referred to as the father of the modern Filipino novel), who had led the PEN cause of social justice and patriotism. As a By Benigno R. Ramos poet in Tagalog, despite his mastery of poetic conventions, Ramos is known for being a My pen, if your only use precursor in the use of modernist poetic is to cast dishonour on my unhappy country, techniques specifically in his innovations in may you break into two and may your point versification earlier on in his writings at a pierce my eyes and wound my heart. time when, by and large, Tagalog poetry was If I’d be adding my voice through you deeply steeped in the conventions of to those that malign my country’s good traditional poetics, derisively referred to name, today by Tagalog modernistas as may you vanish from where you rest, Balagtasismo. Although his poems had not that you might not serve as an instrument been as widely published as his of death!...

25 Maria Luisa Torres Reyes

I don’t have any use for you “proletarian literature” rather than “art for if the sap you secrete will give my country art’s sake.” pain, I’d sooner burn you or chop you up The Philippine Commonwealth than be a party to treasonous deeds. Government’s Policy: The Role of I refuse to use you to spread Language and Literature in Shaping fragrance along the paths of men of evil Modernism/s will, I’d sooner have you crumble into dust So in this defining moment, how was the than use you to keep my country down. Commonwealth government, whose burden I want to use you in the thick of battle was to prove to the American colonizers that to hold up the hero’s mind for all to it was “mature” enough to self-govern, to emulate, respond to the challenges in this period of go, raise up the poor who lie prostrate! “tutelage”? go, pull down all those who rose through greed! The deterioration of the economy seemed unstoppable, owing to the social (1930) contradictions in a Commonwealth-in-name- Translation: Bienvenido Lumbera but-a-colony-in-fact, and to the forces of global capitalism to which it had been tied as S.P. Lopez supplier of cheap raw materials to industrialized countries like the US. The In response to the polemics of the agitations were coming from all sides, -- “coterie of aesthetes” among the Filipino including the politically committed creative writers in English led by Villa to whom “art is writers and journalists -- so the government a method of escape, ”Salvador P. Lopez set out to work on a so-called “social justice insisted upon the role of the writer as “tiller program” and other state initiatives meant to of the soil, spade in hand, digging into the address in words if not in deed, the concerns roots of things and planting seeds.” of the Filipino underprivileged.

...Despite the fact that events in the odern Manuel L. Quezon, the President under world have made it increasingly difficult the 10-year transitory Commonwealth for artists to do their work, there are still government, hoped to hold back the growing those who fondly cling to the delusion that tide of social unrest by attempting to address there is an Ivory Tower to which the on major fronts some of the socio-economic worshippers of Beauty can retire away issues resulting from the country’s problems from the madding crowd. Of course, there -- including the ones that concerned language is no such tower; only people who imagine and literature. that they dwell in one. By executive Order 134, delivered by In praise of Teodoro Kalaw, Filipino radiocast in December 1937, Quezon writer and editor of the nationalist proclaimed that the Filipino national newspaper El Renacimiento which was forced language would be based on Tagalog; in the to close down by the American regime, Lopez same executive order, he created the Institute described Kalaw’s work as “growing out of of National Language to be headed by Jayme the strong spirit of nationalism and the C. de Veyra, a Visayan and not a Tagalog. universal aspiration for independence from Paradoxically, the executive order also America.” Following the long tradition of indicated that “the adoption of the Philippine socially-conscious literature in the country, in National language shall not be understood as his essays, in the face of so much worsening anyway affecting the requirement that the social injustice in the cities and the instruction in the public schools shall be countryside during the Commonwealth primarily conducted in the English language.” Period, he urged Filipino writers to produce Emphasizing in his speech later during the First Filipino Writers Conference in 1940 that

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“The constitution provides that arts and All I can say is under my administration, letters be under the patronage of the arts and letters will receive due government,” Quezon seemed adamant in his encouragement and I am prepared to ask decision: the National Assembly….. to appropriate funds for this purpose. (Arguilla 30) The Americans were denying our ability to run our own government on the ground The Writers’ Response: that we did not have a common Modern, Modernity, Modernism language… A common language expresses a common nationality. (Arguilla 27-28) The discussions at the “Modern Literary Objectives” conference centered on multiple The political link between the issue of the if contradictory challenges: granting of Philippine independence by the US and the issue of national language was a. The writers in Spanish were looking clear to Quezon; in his mind, it was as if one back. Having lost the audience they used were a precondition for the other: to have until the 1900s, the so-called Golden Age of Hispanic Literature in the But now that independence is coming, we Philippines, they were concerned with must realize and admit that we need a the Hispanic legacy. In the conference, common language – a common national the speech on Spanish literature was language. (Arguilla 27). evaluating the influence of Hispanic classics in Tagalog translation like Don He also instituted the Commonwealth Quixote and emphasizing the need to Literary Awards on 25 March 1939 “in point out the “democratic spirit that response to the efforts of the Philippine pervades the work” as the writers Writers League to realize the provision of the continued to write in the vein of the constitution…” Hispanic modernistas.

Thus, as mandated by the constitution, b. The writers in Tagalog, on the other the Philippine Writers’ League organized the hand, were looking at the present, First Filipino Writers Conference in 1940. anxious about the state of literature of This conference was attended by the most Tagalog which, unlike Spanish writing prominent Filipino writers in Spanish, that has lost much readership, had the Tagalog and English of the day. masses of readers, but did not have the quality of writing they would have At one fell swoop, Quezon, in an effort to desired. Caught between the mass prove the ability of the Filipinos for self- readers of Tagalog novels in commercial government had also to prove that the magazines and mass audiences of Filipinos could have a common language in Tagalog movies to which the most which would be expressed a common popular serialized novels were being experience and shared culture through adopted, the “maverick” young Tagalog literature. And this literature presumably writers were very vocal of their criticism would be modern and forward-looking, hence of the older writers whose alleged the title of the conference was “Modern passivity and complicity had caused the Literary Objectives.” Thus, towards this end, trend towards commercialization of Quezon hoped to mandate the trajectory of literature to worsen. The young writers Philippine language and literatures, and along were demanding for the raising of its path, unwittingly, some of the basic aesthetic standards. The Tagalog problems as well, that continue to haunt the writers continued to draw from a rich country to this day, unresolved. literary tradition even as theybegan to Understandably, the Philippines Writers’ experiment with the techniques learn League-sponsored Commonwealth Literary from western modernism. Contests was “approved by the Office of the President.” Indeed, Quezon himself said:

27 Maria Luisa Torres Reyes

Finally, the writers in English were looking unmistakable in one of his famous poems, “Al into the future, faced as they were with the ‘Yanklee.’” question of audience by writing in a new foreign language. Carlos P. Romulo, in his AL “YANKEE” speech at the conference, asked “Will Filipino Cecilio Apostol Literature in English Endure?” (Arguilla 31). The writers in English were divided into Siempre que la codicia ideological lines, arguing between the rasga un giron del territorio extrano priority of writing for innovation in ……………………………………………………… craftsmanship to be in-step with the aesthetic poetas, vengadores trends among their modern or modernist de la conciencia universal, acaso Anglo-American models like Walt Whitman podreis guarder silencio, or e.e. cummings, or writing primarily for the la honrada voz de la protesta ahogando? economic emancipation of the country and Ferrari social justice for their countrymen consistent with the writings of Steinbeck or Dos Passos – !Jamas! Cuando la furza in English? As the debates around these con la traicion y la injusticia pacta, themes had been going on for some time, by para aplastar los fueros, 1940, these debates surprised no one. los sacrosantos fueros de una raza; Cuando los hijos del infame Judas Apostol venden la fe jurada; cuando al gemido de los pueblos debiles As generally assumed, “modernity” or the contestan con brutales carcajadas; experience of the modern has historically Cuando el santo Derecho se trucida become increasingly associated with the en el festin de la ambicion humana; modern “west.” However, in the context of cuando como los yankees, the Philippines’ multiple colonialism and a canonazos brindan una patria; resulting in a historical sense of oppression, No es possible callar: la Patria opresa Philippine literature’s modernism has been a protestara indignada, complex combination of temporalities as well y en el pecho traidor del enemigo as spacialities characterized by uneven escondera el punal de su venganza. development. Such complexity is a result of El irredento pueblo the fact that it draws at once from indigenous, sucumbira quizas en la demanda, folk and popular forms and Asian traditions, mas solo a su cadaver as it does from European (mainly Spanish) se lograra imponer covunda extrana. and Anglo-American influences. A Hispanic !Yankee! Situ nos vences, example is by Filipino writer in Spanish, con el potente empuje de tus armas, Cecilio Apostol. no viviras dichose, porque te odia hasta el ambiente mismo de mi Patria. Part and parcel of the modernismo of the writers in Spanish was nationalismo, as !Yankee! Si mis estrofas illustrated by the works of a major Filipino logran sobrevivirme, sus palabras poet in Spanish, Cecilio Apostol, who had vibraran en los siglos venideros written for the revolutionary anti-Spanish el odio eterno del eterno paria. newspaper, La Independencia, under General (1899) , and later, for well-known nationalist publications likeThe Brotherhood, TO THE YANKEE The Union, Renaissance and Democracy during Cecilio Apostol the early years of the American regime. As long as greed Having read modernistas like Miguel de tears a gash in foreign lands Unamuno, Ruben Dario, Rueda who visited …………………………………………… Manila in 1914, Apostol’s commitment for poets, avengers both nationalism and modernism is of the universal conscience

28 Vol. 14 No. 1 – April 2014 can you be silent, of modernity that came with colonialisms and drowning the honorable voice of capitalism. While being itself problematic, protest? underpinned that it is by the traditions and -Ferrari traditional philosophy of the “west,” Never, when might, modernism configures and reconfigures the joined with treason and injustice articulation of the modern. Such was the to crush the laws and rights Philippine experience during the the sacred rights of a race, Commonwealth Period. When the sons of the infamous Judas sell the faith that has been sworn, Modernist Writing in Other Philippine when the whimper of weak peoples Languages they answer with animal laughter; When holy right is bartered In the 1930s, in the literature of the in the banquet of human ambition, different major Philippine languages outside as when the Yankees Manila, modern developments took root as toast a nation to the sound of cannon; well particularly marking the growth of short Silence is impossible: the oppressed nation fiction; yet, in almost equal measure the shall protest indignantly decade was also witness to the heightening of and bury the dagger of vengeance social consciousness among writers, given the in the enemy’s breast. worsening of the economic situation of the This unredeemed people country. In quick succession, for example, in may perhaps succumb in the struggle, Cebuano, Marcel M. Navarra was said to have but only its corpse “inaugurated” the modern short story with can be yoked by alien tyranny. plotless narratives; while in Ilonggo, Yankee! If you defeat us “modernism” became an issue raised by with the powerful weight of weapons, prominent writers like Lorenzo Dilag-Fajardo you will not live happily, because and Abe S. Gonzalez, who were attempting to you are hated depart from the more traditional forms which even by the air of my native land. they deemed formulaic, as well as the Yankee! If my verses experimentation in free verse by in the 1920s survive me, their words by Hiligaynon poets like Salvador Verroya will echo in the centuries to come and Isidro Escare Abeto. Meanwhile, writers the eternal hate of the eternal outcast. in the other major languages also began to incorporate new techniques and modern Translation: Nicanor G. Tiongson sensibility into their works. However, it should be noted that “traditional” writing, As such, Philippine modernism has not which came out in popular magazines and always broken with the past nor tried adapted into movies, as well as the writing necessarily to be disjunctive of tradition as it following the Spanish heritage, persisted side has been in the “west.” This is illustrated here by side with the influx of new literary by the poem “Bangsamoro,” a poem by an developments mainly influenced by Anglo- anonymous author on the issue of the American trends. struggle for Muslim independence in the Philippines. On the university level, beginning in the 1930s, young Filipino writers started to be In non-west, specifically, in the Philippine exposed to literary modernism which context, modernity and modernism have highlighted the individuality of the writer and taken place in uneven, multiple and even cultivated craft-consciousness, sometimes, as contradictory ways. In Philippine literature, has been observed, at the expense of social modernism is at once constituted by and consciousness. As expected, the University of constitutive of modernity, shaping and re- the Philippines led the way towards writing shaping the experience of the “modern” in a that kept up with literary trends outside the postcolonial society in multiple ways: both as country. Founded in the first decade of a discourse and counter-discourse of the kind American occupation, UP had been patterned

29 Maria Luisa Torres Reyes after Harvard University in administrative The installation of English as a medium of structure and curricular and academic instruction in Philippine schools gravely programs. Only two decades of its founding it undermined Spanish. By the close of the served as the center of new writing in 1930s, English writing had overtaken Spanish English. writing, the language of the new colonialists, having won out as the more prestigious Thus, it has been said that the arrival of medium for young writers. But while writing the Americans at the turn of the century was in Spanish is scant today, the triple legacies to alter the course of Philippine literature: from the Spanish colonial period – Particularly during the Commonwealth didacticism, romanticism, and social realism period, new literary forms were introduced, are vigorously alive, with an admixture of including free verse in poetry, the modern Western modernism. short story, and the critical essay as the American influence came with the English was introduced as an “official educational system which constituted English language” and it grew in prestige as the as the medium of instruction. Americanization of the Philippine society advanced. Filipinos were connected into a Conclusion world in which American and, through American mediation, Western literary and Recall that through the 19th century, the intellectual traditions began to build cultural, “modern age” had taken shape in the literary and linguistic inroads. With the Philippines with the rise of secularism and a decline of Spanish, English became an “culture of literacy,” the opening of the important medium specifically for the essay, Philippine countryside with the growth of the adopted language of Filipino intellectuals commercial agriculture and global trade, and in the 20th century; in fact, since the 1970s, the emergence of nationalism. At the same there have been frantic efforts to time, modernity has had to grapple with the “intellectualize”t he Tagalog language as well facts of its own internal divisions in its search by promoting its use in academic discourse. for a more just national collectivity. Given the apparent contradictions in “Modern” trends, apart from those which Philippine society, the writers repeatedly came from or through the United States, debated the issues of ‘tradition” and found their way into the practice of Spanish “modernity” as illustrated in the discussions and vernacular poets in the early 20th that engaged the Tagalog writers’ groups Ilaw century. Writers who were educated in at Panitik and Aklatang Bayan. This debate Spanish accessed modern trends by reading would continue to the present, in line with the works of such Spanish and South the debates on the Philippine literary canon American modernists as Ruben Dario, and the issue of national language. Antonio Machado and Federico Garcia Lorca. Literary modernity has been referred to Despite showing a mistrust of American alternatively as an attitude toward the colonizers, many memoirs in Spanish, written literary world which assumes a early during the 20th century, were also transformative dynamic between writer and influenced by Anglo-American modernist literature, or a structure involving a complex writings. In the decades following the Pacific of state institutions that mandate cultural and War, the presence of modern adaptations of linguistic directions. If so, then it can be said works produced in the Spanish period further on the basis of the foregoing exposition that maintains the Spanish tradition. in the Philippines, literary modernity consists of multiple, complex and contradictory Spanish, spoken and read only by10% of attitudes or structures. Filipino “modernism” the population at the close of the Spanish and “modernity,” as the terms are generally rule, quickly declined, however, though the understood in the West, may seem at once Spanish cultural legacy remained an strange and familiar. Owing perhaps important constituent of Filipino culture. ultimately to the law of uneven development

30 Vol. 14 No. 1 – April 2014 as much in economics as in politics in the crisscrossing of modernities in the history of relations between core and Philippines. peripheral countries, imperial centers and colonial peripheries, the dynamics of In the meantime, beyond Spanish, English “modernism” and “modernity” in the or Tagalog or any other major Philippine literature of the non-West like the Philippines languages, literatures coming from the has involved an amalgam of historical farther “margins” of modernism/modernity impulses that amount to something who had not been represented in the First irreducibly different from the Western Filipino Writers Conference in 1940, simply models. continued to flourish all by themselves. In the face of the Muslim Filipinos’ quest for a As sensibility, there is the intersection of rectification of the mistaken annexation of the liberal individualism symptomatic of the their homeland into the Philippine Republic aestheticism exemplified by Jose Garcia Villa; by the United States during the but there is, too, the collective sense of self- Commonwealth Period, President Quezon’s determination in the nationalism of Banigno call for the landless and the jobless mainly Ramos, and finally, there is the impulse for Christian Filipinos from Luzon and the solidarity in the Socialist internationalism of Visayas to occupy Mindanao, “the land of Salvador P. Lopez, partisan and committed to promise,” only worsened the condition of the Filipino working class. As craftsmanship, internal colonization of the Filipinos from the there is the apparent shift from the medieval south by the north. Although the Muslim metrical romances in drama and the novel, Filipinos are not themselves the “first that had dominated literature under the Nations” in Mindanao, as non-Muslim Spanish colonial era to the “realism” and indigenous peoples of Mindanao had historic experimentation of the modern genres, or the rights of ancestral domain, the shift from the conventions of rhyme and Commonwealth Period, turned the land of meter of Balagtasismo to the free verse of promise into the land of strife, ever Alejandro G. Abadilla. Between those, there aggravating their condition of are as many other shades of “modernism” in marginalization. literature as one might care to name. Modernism: Making New Still, there is, too, the continuing nagging quest for the national language, an issue that As in the rich oral literatures of Muslim certainly has always been implicated in Filipinos, in the poem “Bangsamoro,” written literature – what has been referred to as “the by an anonymous author, the historical cry problem of language” in the Philippines. Not for freedom and desire for Moroland, remains merely a vehicle of communicating power, the battlecry. In the poem, “Bangsamoro” is at especially in the Philippines’ multi-linguistic once a trope for the building of a modern setting, language is itself associative of Philippines in which majority and minority power of class, of culture. For better or for cultures co-exist, a figure for modernity in worst, Tagalog has been deemed by partisans which progress is achieved by a people to be the most developed of the Philippine united under a single flag, and modernist languages, and hence the most modern; ergo, “making new” as it symbolizes the final break it deserves to be the basis of the national from an unjust past. language, following the logic of Quezon more than seventy years go. The “language issue,” Bangsamoro rooted in the country’s colonial history, remains “unresolved” to this day, indeed. Bangsamoro, gedam imaman kanu Meanwhile, in languages as in literatures, in Ka intindig su agama Islam the Philippines, values have been assigned for So kapanlalim sa lekitanu literatures and languages to be either nu taw a lumalapu pampanitikan (high-brow) or pambakya wageb saguna na imbunwa tanu (low-brow), or of having pulitika but not Bangsamoro, a baninindig estetika, further complicating the kanu inged

31 Maria Luisa Torres Reyes

lila su ngiwa indi lugo Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities Mamagayon, mamagisa-isa (London: Verso, 1983. apas tanu su kandaludaya Palaw ataw didsan Arguilla, Manuel et.al. Literature Under the Pawas kadatalan Commonwealth. Manila: Philippine su kandaludaya Writers Guild, 1940. ataw pakuburan Constantino, Renato. The Philippines: A Past Revisited. Quezon City: Publishing People of Bangsamoro Services, 1975.

People of Bangsamoro, awake and make up Cruz, Isagani R. and Soledad S. Reyes. Ang your Ating Pantikan. Manila: Goodwill Trading Mind Co. Inc., 1984. Stand for our faith The oppression they did to us Cultural center of the Philippines Encyclopedia The immigrants of Philippine Art. Ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson. now is the time to fight them Vol. 9. Manila: CCP, 1994. 24-97. People of Bangsamoro who fight for our Cause Gonzales, Lydia Fer et.al. Panitikan ng offer your body and blood Pilipinas (Pandalubhasaan). Manila: Rex Cooperate, unite Book Store, 1982. aim for freedom in the mountains even how many our enemies are Lumbera, Bienvenido L. and Cynthia Nograles Freedom Lumbera. Philippine Literature: A History or Martryrdom. and Anthology (revised edition). Pasig City: Anvil Publishing Inc., 2007. Translation by Zamzamin Ampatuan and Nikita Lauban Maramba, Asuncion David. Early Philippine Literature: From Ancient Times to the Indeed, caught between these Present to 1940. Pasig City: Anvil crisscrossing lines in literature are the publishing Inc. and Asuncion David intersecting issues of sensibility, Maramba, 2006. craftsmanship and languages in the Philippines, of historical divisions of class, of Medina, Jr., B.S. Tatlong Panahon ng ethnicity. Modernism and modernity at once Panitikan. Manila: National Book Store, involve a break with the past, an affirmation Inc. 1972. of the power of the individual to create and the power of a people to determine their Nicasio, Paz N. and Federico B. Sebastian. collective destiny, and the faith in the Manila: Rex Book Store, 1965. capacity of literature to make all that happen. But having remained an “ongoing project” in the literary scene of so many places for so Panganiban, Jose Villa et. Al. Panitikan ng long, modernism might also perhaps be a Pilipinas. Manila: Rex Book Store, 1995. symptom of a global modernity in crisis. Pineda, Ponciano B.P. et. al. Ang Panitikang Pilipino: Sa Kaunlarang Bansa (Pandalubhasaan). Pasig: National Book Store, Inc., 1979. References Report of the Chairman of the Board of Judges Abueg, Efren R. et. al. Talindaw: Kasaysayan for English in the Commonwealth Literary ng Panikan sa Pilipino para sa Kolehiyo Awards. n.p. at Unibersidad. , Metro Manila: authors, 1981.

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Rubin, Ligaya Tiamson et.al. Panitikan sa Pilipinas. Manila: Rex Book Store, 2001.

Sauco, Consolacion P. et. al. Panitikang Filipino (Pandalubhasaan). Quezon City: Katha Publishing Co., Inc. and authors, 1997.

Serrano, Josephine B. and Trinidad M. Ames. A Survey of Filipino Literature in English. Quezon City: Phoenix Publishing House, Inc. and Josephine Bass Serrano and Trinidad Ames, 1987.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. ‘World Systems Theory’ in A. Giddens and J. Turner Social Theory Today. Cambridge: Polity, 1987.

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