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JOSÉ RIZAL AND FRANCE: THE PENDULUM OF A CULTURAL ENCOUNTER
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ommercial exchanges constituted the bulk of unofficial relations between the Philippines and France in the first half of the 19th century. However, a few Filipinos braved the long sea travel and the great distance between the two countries and visited France after 1860— mostly students coming from Spain. Among them was the Philippines’ national hero José Rizal, who as a teenager, first discovered French culture through its literature1 translated into Spanish.2 Later on, he read novels by Eugène Sue3 and Alexandre Dumas,4 critical essays by Boileau5 and La Bruyère,6 philosophy by Voltaire7 and Jean-Jacques Rousseau,8 poetry by Victor Hugo,9 and Lamartine,10 historical works such as those by Adolphe Thiers,11 and many other works by other authors.12 After having taken a glimpse of Corsica’s coasts—"Napoléon’s fatherland”—as he described it to his family,13 José Rizal disembarked in Marseilles on the early morning of 13 June 1882. During this brief two-days-and-a-half stopover in France, he stayed at Le Grand Hôtel Noailles de Marseille, located on the Canebière along the city’s old harbor. He barely had time to explore the art museum, the zoo, and the museum of natural history, before taking the train to Barcelona.
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FRANCE AND OPHTHALMOLOGY Tourism and cultural encounters, 1883 Los ingleses en comparacíon con los franceses son bárbaros, me lo puedo aplicar […] hoy que me encuentro en Paris, me hallo y me considero casi hasta grosero... The English in comparison with the French are barbarian, which I can apply to myself […] now that I am in Paris, I am, and I consider myself, almost as crude… -- José Rizal, 21 June 188314 61
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