Reading Jose Rizal

I REMEMBER having read some chapters of Noli me Tangere†and just the very first chapter of El†Filibusterismo in High School. And both were in Tagalog. †Unless you are a full-blooded Tagalog,†you will have to agree with me that†reading Tagalog manuscripts is quite “un-natural” and can be very challenging.

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Needless to say — but I’ll say it anyway — I wasn’t thrilled with Noli and Fili then. Notwithstanding that I haven’t finished reading the books then, I’ve always thought I know the stories of Noli and Fili. †I think I am like many others in this respect, for though I haven’t completed reading the books, I must have heard and watched bits and pieces of them from different sources including TV adaptations, other people’s version of what they’ve read (or heard), book reviews, etc.

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I am not exactly a Rizal fan. Truth be told, I almost flunked my mandatory Rizal subject in college for always finding faults in Zaide’s biography of the “greatest Filipino who ever lived.” †My professor who, like Zaide, was (most probably still is) blindly in love with Rizal, regarded me with almost the same contempt as the whole of Christiandom regards the Anti-Christ.

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But I was never shy in admiring Rizal as a writer and I can go as far as conceding that he may well be the best literary product of the Indios of all time.

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I recently chanced upon a new TV adaptation of Noli and an urge to read and finally finish Noli and Fili suddenly consumed me. To finish the two novels I knew they better be in English!

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That was in early March. Before March ended I have bought both books — the English versions of course.

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By mid-April I was done with Noli and was already in the 10th chapter of Fili. †By April 23, I have accomplished in approximately one month what I failed to do in high school and in the next 20 years since.

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I was not disappointed with Noli this time around. It helped that the English translation I got was superbly done. It is only now that I come to see Rizal’s true genius as a novelist. †I am very much surprised — pleasantly, that is — by Rizal’s wit and humor. I now believe that that wit and humor are what were lost in some translations of Noli and Fili, particularly in the Tagalog ones.

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Another surprising realization I had after finishing Noli has to do about the fabled death of Maria Clara. I’ve always believed, from stories I’ve heard, that Maria Clara died in Noli. †Apparently not. †Maria Clara eventually died later in Fili, but her manner of death was not as I have always believed it be — suicide by jumping from a convent after being raped by one of the friars who is a key character in both Noli and Fili. †Whoever propagated this false account may not have fully read the two novels and just relied on †word-of-mouth from others who supposedly have read them. †Either that or he/she confused Maria Clara with another of Rizal’s characters in Fili. †There is in fact a lady character in Fili†– Juli (finacee of Basilio) — who took her life by jumping from the top of a convent. †There was an allusion that it was caused by an “indecent act” by one of the Friar characters of Rizal. †But I doubt it very much if rape was actually committed. †My scrutiny of the circumstances and timing of the incident led me to believe that it is unlikely for rape to have been consummated.