Thursday, May 22, 2014




RIZAL AS A WAGNERIAN OPERA
Siza’s Vengeance: A Radical Interpretation of Jose Rizal
By E. San Juan, Jr.

(Philippine Cultural Center, Connecticut, USA)


Reviewed by PAULINO LIM,
Emeritus Professor of English
California State University, Long Beach


Decentering in Psychology is a mental adjustment that shifts behavioral focus away from the self and its opinions, saving one from becoming too egotistical and solipsistic. In his latest book on Jose Rizal, E. San Juan Jr. introduces decentering as a discursive strategy, shifting the focus as he revisits Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo from the main plot and characters to subplots and minor characters, summing up the pernicious effects of colonization upon the Filipino people, especially the women. Part of the decentering recovers the meaning of the novels as timeless works of art in the country’s colonial past and relevance to the present in light of America’s return or re-colonizing of the Philippines, threatened by China’s redrawing of its territorial borders in the Pacific.
    Following San Juan’s maneuver and premise, this review summarizes a decentering of its own, taking cue from the trope of the opening sentence of Sisa’s Vengeance: “Jose Rizal as ghost or phantom in the colonial opera.” It imagines an opera Rizal would write if he were a composer, and another opera updated from its colonial setting to the postcolonial or neocolonial, as San Juan would have it. The first opera drawn from Rizal’s works is traditional, and the second inhabited by his phantom is postmodern, both performed on the scale of Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods), the theme of Wagner’s Ring cycle.
     Of the many thematic strands of Sisa’s Vengeance, the following equation would thread the two operas: If Rizal’s life-work is a critique of the decaying colonial order of 19th century Philippines (71), it can also be seen as a critique of the neocolonial order of the 21st century. In other words, Rizal’s novels augur not only the twilight of the Spanish Empire but also the twilight of U.S. imperialism and capitalism, the Kapitalismusdämmerung of Rizal’s Ring cycle.
      San Juan embellishes his theatrical trope with quotes from letters and memoirs, and contends that Rizal was, uncannily and unwittingly, “a performance artist avant la lettre.”  (6) Rizal self-dramatized imagined roles he’d perform as a revolutionary. He dedicated El Filibusterismo to the three à
secular priests, Fathers Burgos, Gomez and Zamora, whose martyrdom transformed him into a subversive, a filibustero. San Juan describes Rizal’s account of his parting from his first love Segunda Katigbak as “histrionic and theatrical.” The spectacle of his execution, if not for the real bullets fired and blood that flowed, is operatic melodrama of the highest order, with Rizal echoing Christ who at age 33 was only two years younger, saying “Consummatum est.”

Rizal’s chosen medium for his revolutionary critique was the novel. He had written poems and plays before turning to the novel, as Wagner had done before composing operas. If Rizal were a composer, perhaps the Noli and Fili would be operas or, more likely, zarzuelas. San Juan identifies the Aeschylus Oresteia trilogy as “the classical template” of the trilogy: Noli Me Tangere, El Filibusterismo, and the unfinished third novel Makamisa, that historian Ambeth Ocampo stumbled upon while doing research at the National Library. The template will serve the opera in the same way, with the novels, letters and memoirs as source for the libretto. Given the florid diction of Rizal’s 19th century Spanish and the sensuous Wagnerian delineation of emotions, the tone of the opera will be “elegiac and oracular.”  
San Juan defines the leitmotif of the colonial opera centered on “the primal scenario of violation, the initiation into the crucible of Rizal’s life-pilgrimage.” Rizal suffered a profound trauma when he witnessed his mother being forced to walk from Calamba to Santa Cruz, a distance of 50 kilometers, on a charge that was never substantiated. (78) Rizal re-enacts his mother’s ordeal in the episode of Sisa walking to the barracks after being arrested by the guardia civiles as the “mother of thieves,” blaming her for her children’s actions.  
    The second opera played in the Filipino psyche haunted by the phantom of Rizal would definitely not be “Puccini-esque,” as The New York Times describes Noli Me Tangere: An Opera, when it was performed at the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College in New York in October 2013. It would be postmodern, “utopian and carnivalesque,” conflating varied revolutions, religious, socialist, and literary, and genres, folk lore, myth and realism. A revolutionary critique of a social order is mind-forged and utopian. It can either liberate or manacle freedom, to paraphrase San Juan invoking William Blake. (92) It will feature such characters as a lover waving a handkerchief singing a farewell aria, a Medusa-like Sisa bent on revenge, and babaylans turned into brujas. The music will morph from lambent kundimans to ringing anthems and dissonant “mad arias,” underscoring love and death scenes, and most likely a bacchanalian interlude in a brothel. 
To shift from trope to theme, for a moment, is to see a theater larger than the operatic as San Juan stages Rizal’s evolution as a thinker addressing “the woman question” and religion. He traces the hero’s attitude on women from the viewpoint of male dominance in a patriarchal society installed by the Spanish colonization and sustained by capitalism. It starts with Rizal’s awareness of the egalitarian status of pre-Hispanic women denigrated by the “frailocracy,” and ends like Mary Wollstonecraft “vindicating the rights of women.” On religion San Juan tracks Rizal’s stance shifting from the doctrinal Catholicism of his upbringing to the deistic reach of the Enlightenment, and ending with the mystical side of Romanticism, like Wordsworth hymning “intimations of immortality.” Perhaps the act of reading Thomas à Kempis on the eve of his execution and echoing the crucified Christ was not theatrical performance but penitential after all.
Finally, we see San Juan staging his own Marxist criticism rescued from its parodied “vulgar” phase, as he defines the theoretical bias of commentaries on Rizal, from the dilettantish to the flamboyant, the apologetic and the wrong-headed, all vying for canonical status. Marxism is back in mainstream economics, the talks centering on the impending global collapse of America, democracy and capitalism. This is what San Juan has been saying all along in the company of Renato Constantino and the late senator Jose Diokno in the Philippines and Noam Chomsky in America.
This view concludes with a quote from the paper “The Diplopic Consciousness of Overseas Filipino Writers,” that I presented at the 9th International Conference on the Philippines at Michigan State University in October 2012: “San Juan writes poetry in Filipino and polemics in English. He has the sensibility of a poet and the driving logic of a committed polemicist. His persuasive critique of the hegemony of capitalism and of America’s imperialism is unsurpassed, not even by Noam Chomsky and the late Harold Pinter.”
The tribute stands.

Thursday, May 08, 2014

MISTULANG TRANSKRIPSYON--Tulatuluyang Konseptuwal

TRANSKRIPSYON NG ILANG BYTES NG KOMPYUTER NG NASA, WASHINGTON, DC,USA

---"Everyone in the planet is under total surveillance today." --Edward Snowden

--"Nothing is meaningless...."  --Sissi, sa pelikulang The Princess & the Warrior



Gising ka na ba?  Anong gumagapang na hayop sa silong? Bakit makulimlim?  Naramdaman mo ba?  Masakit ba? O nakakikiliti?  Malambot ba? O matigas? May kumakatok ba? Nariyan na ba sila? Bakit may agunyas sa bukang-liwayway?  Gusto mo ba?  Ayaw mo? Barado ba ang tubo ng kubeta?  Inaalimpungatan ka ba?  Anong ginagawa ko rito?  Nabasa mo ba si Kierkegaard?  Malapit ba o malayo?  Biro ba lang? Makibaka ba, huwag matakot? Nilabasan ka ba?  Kailan tayo tutugpa?  Sino iyang nakamaskara?  Peks man? Sino ang nagsuplong?  Swak na swak ba?  Dapat ba nating dalhin ang kargada?  Mabigat ba o magaan?
Sino si Yolanda?  Liku-liko ba ang landas ng mahabang martsa?  Bakit kasing-pait ng apdo?  Doon ka ba nakatira?  Anong kulisap ang katulad ko? May kurakot ba sa mga pulong inaangkin?  Sino'ng nagtatanong? Nasaan ang I-pad mo? Sino ka ba sa kanila?  Iyon ba ang burol o lambak?  Nakarating na ba tayo? Bakit mababa ang lipad ng kalapati?  May kilala ka ba sa Abu Sayyaf?   Nasaan ang hanggahan ng bughaw at luntian?  May umutot ba?  Paano ang hapunan?  Iyon ba ang pulang sagisag? Papasok na tayo o lalabas? Magkano ba ang suhol?  Puwede ka bang sumagot?  Pinupulikat ka ba? Anong ibig mong sabihin?  Bakit nag-alapaap ang salamin? May naamoy ka ba? Paano tayo makatatakas?  Bakit bumaligtad? Na-etsa puwera ba sila?  Ano ang kahulugan nito? Masaklap ba ang nangyari?   Nasaan na ba tayo? May serpyenteng nagpugad sa dibdib mo? Bakit tumitibok ang bukong-bukong?  Anong ginagawa ko rito?  Malinaw ba ang kahulugan ng babala?  Kinakalawang ba ang tulay na bakal sa Camp Bagong Diwa? Ano ang talaangkanan ng diskurso?  Sino ang humihiyaw ng "saklolo"?  May apoy ba sa butas ng karayom?  Susi, anong susi?  Bakit nagkanulo? Naipit ba ang bayag mo paglundag? Bumubulong ka ba?  Ano ang kulay ng sinegwalas?  Ano ang katuturan? Bakit nakunan kundi buntis? Mainit ba o malamig? Paano bubuksan ito? May napinsala ba?  Bawat bagay ba ay kailangan? Puwede na ba tayong umuwi? May hinala ba sa nagpatiwakal? Kilala mo ba si Ludwig Feuerbach? Bakit walang asin ang sinigang?  Paano tayo makalulusot?  Bumulong ka ba?  Kung hindi ngayon, kailan pa? Nasa loob daw ang kaharian? Magaspang ba? Bakit may apog sa kalingkingan? Bingi ba ako? Mangyayari kaya ito?  Kung magunaw ang mundo, mapapawi ba ang utang natin?  Sindak ka ba? Hanggang saan mo malulunok ito? Bakit tayo narito? Mas gusto mo ba ng sopas o salada?  Bangungot ba ito o panaginip? Bakit mahapdi ang lalamunan ko? Malamig ba ang hipo ni Lazaro?  Bakit tapos na?  Inis at yamot ka ba? Bakit may nangangaluluwa? Nais mong dumalaw sa bunganga ng sepulkro? Magkano ba? Pag-ibig ba raw ang makalulutas ng lahat? Niloloko ba tayo? Akin na ang sukli?  Bawal bang mag-alis ng kulangot?  Puwede bang umihi rito?  Bakit walang pinto o bintana? Malikmata ba ito? Bakit wala kang imik?

Sunday, May 04, 2014

ANG TAYA NG SUGALERO

BAGAMAT/DAHIL SA WALANG KATIYAKAN O KAHIHITNANAN, UMAASA PA RIN ANG SUGALERO....



Bigo, walang bathalang liligtas o sasagip sa iyo sukat na ipagsamo
Paltos, anong tadhanang nagbabanta sa pagliko ng daan

Mintis, sinong nag-aabang sa pagtawid mong walang inaasam-asam
Palyado, saan dadako, anong gagawin sa balighong pangyayari

Kulang-palad, saan patutungo na walang paralumang gagabay
Amis, patnubay mo ang anino't larawang nakapinta sa pader

Sawi, siguradong may wakas sa hangganan ng landas
Bagsak, bumukal ang pag-asa sa kawalan at sa paglisan

Talo na, di sinasadya'y tinutukso ka ng pagkakataon
Laos, nakuha pang lumingon upang mapagsino ang sumusunod

Gapi, huwag bumalik o lumihis sa tsansang ipinagkait
Narito, sa imaheng namasdan mo nakasilid ang iyong kapalaran

Bigo man, sige pa rin ang galaw ng imahinasyong nakatiwangwang
Narito, sa sinibak na kahoy galing ang dais na inihagkis ng makapangyarihan

Sandali, dumaplis  muntik na, walang suwerte walang tagumpay
Saglit, kapurit lamang, halos wala, masusulyapan mo sa pagitan ng rehas

Buwisit, kahit malas, sa bawat siwang sumisingit ang tagapag-ligtas
Ngayon, tunay nga, trabahong pagmamahal ang pagpusta sa pagbabagong-buhay


ni E. SAN JUAN, Jr.




LESSONS FROM GRAMSCI

12 AntonioGramsci’stheoryofthe “national-popular” and socialist revolution in the Philippines Epifanio San Juan Jr Though in substance, y...