The Pendulum of a Cultural Encounter

1

JOSé RIzAL AND FRANCE: THE PENDULUM OF A CULTURAL ENCOUNTER

Commercial 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.

A.

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…

Figure 27. Laënnec Hospital (postcard)

Rizal’s second trip to France started on 17 June 1883, and lasted a little more than two months during which—as he wrote to his parents—he was impressed by French culture. He also noticed the absence of the upper-classes—who, as usual during the summer, had deserted Paris for the countryside—abandoning the town to the poor and the middle-classes.15 Alongside the discovery of France’s capital, château de Versailles and Paris’ major museums of art, and a first immersion into French daily life, the purpose of his stay was to improve his medical training by visiting Paris’ hospitals and faculty of medicine.16

In Laënnec Hospital, he followed a consultation17 by Jules-Édouard Nicaise,18 professor at the Faculty of Medicine and member of the Medical Academy, and attended one of the professor’s operations the following day. He also attended another consultation, this time by Dr. Simon-Emmanuel Duplay,19 professor of surgical pathology, in Saint Antoine Hospital. In Lariboisière Hospital,20 he met an old classmate from the Ateneo de Manila,21 Félix Pardo de Tavera,22 who was then training to become pediatric surgeon. In addition, he visited major scientific museums: the Dupuytren Museum, located in the former Cordeliers’ Convent and dedicated to anatomical pathology,23 and the Delmas-Orfila-Rouvière Museum of Anatomy.24 By late August, he was back in Madrid.

Figure 28. Lariboisière Hospital (postcard)

The choice of ophthalmology, 1885-1886

Rizal obtained his bachelor of medicine from the Universidad Central de Madrid on 28 June 1884,25 but remained in the capital to complete his doctoral studies in medicine and his baccalaureate in Philosophy and Letters, which he got in July 1885. During his spare time, he attended a few painting classes at Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando and started writing a novel set in his homeland, which would later become the Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not). Though Rizal never submitted his thesis, he passed all his doctoral subjects which allowed him to practice as a physician.26

Rizal’s third visit to France, which began in October 1885, was crucial for his medical training. For three months, he studied ophthalmology under the supervision of one of the most famous specialists of the time, Dr. Louis de Wecker, aka Ludwig von Wecker.27 Wecker taught private courses in his clinic located at 55 rue du Cherche-Midi, which could accommodate 50 to 100 patients. Though the tuition was free, Rizal was asked to bring his own ophthalmoscope (which cost $12,28 i.e. 12.65 pesos,29 when the average allowance his family30 sent him was only 50 pesos per month) to follow the sessions. Aside from German and French, Wecker spoke English and Spanish, which was of great help to Rizal. As Wecker was the first to fully master cataract

surgery, he had become the ophthalmologist of French Empress Eugénie and the imperial court until the end of Napoléon III’s reign (1870). Wecker then opened a second clinic in Biarritz,31 close to the Spanish border and a highly fashionable city, where he spent the months of August and September to accommodate a royal and international clientele, such as Queen Isabella II of Spain. Wecker also visited Vienna every year, where Emperor Franz Joseph from Austria was one of his patients; the emperor’s brother-in-law, Duke Karl-Theodor in Bavaria,32 himself an ophthalmologist, assisted Wecker during his operations whenever it was possible.

Thanks to the extremely high fees paid by his royal and rich clientele (the duchess of Medinaceli paid a bill amounting to 40,000 francs),33 Wecker was a millionaire: in Paris, he lived in a brand new house (“a palace”, as described by Rizal)34 at No. 31 Avenue d’Antin, completed in 1884 and decorated with numerous masterpieces such as a painting by Raphael. Built in 1878,35 Wecker’s villa in Biarritz (Figure 30) was equally luxurious with two storeys, a Louis XVI-style facade, and featured a terrace with ornate balusters.

The door to Germany

Louis de Wecker’s patronage opened for Rizal the doors to the best German universities, as the former was a friend of Professor Otto Becker36 from Heidelberg, and of Rudolf Virchow37 from the

Figure 30. Biarritz, Villa de Wecker (postcard)

University of Berlin. On 3 February 1886, Rizal arrived in Heidelberg38 where he stayed for four months, working at the university eye clinic.39 He contacted Ferdinand Blumentritt, whose ethnological research on the Philippines had been published in July 1882.40 Blumentritt wrote him letters of recommendation for Prof. Rudolf Virchow and Dr. Andreas Fedor Jagor, author of Reisen in den Philippinen41 which Rizal had read in Spanish while studying at the Ateneo de Manila.42

Rizal then stayed in Leipzig for two months where he translated Friedrich Schiller’s William Tell into Tagalog, and met on October 31, the director of the Königlich Ethnographischen Museum [Royal Ethnographic Museum] of Dresden, Dr. Adolf Bernhard Meyer (1840–1911).43 Later, he left for Berlin, where he remained for six months, joined in December 1886 by his friend Maximo Viola44 (also a physician like him), after a brief stopover in Paris. While working at the faculty hospital, Rizal increased his knowledge on the anthropology of the Philippines thanks to his contacts with Dr. Jagor, whom he and Viola met in 1887.45 Prof. Virchow, who founded the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte in 1869,46 invited Rizal to join the Berlin Society for Anthropology in January 1887.47 Rizal was admitted into the Society for Geography the following month.

As a result, Noli Me Tangere, which Rizal had begun writing in Spain and continued in France, was completed both in Heidelberg and Berlin, and published in Germany. On their way back from Germany, Rizal and Viola visited Leitmeritz, Brunn, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Munich, Stuttgart, Geneva, and Rome, reaching Marseilles on n1 July 1887, from where he boarded the Djemnah48 to Manila on 3 July 1887.

B.

PARIS’ ‘EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE’ [WORLD EXPOSITION], 1889

After six months in the Philippines, and a return navigation across the Pacific Ocean (via Hong Kong, Tokyo, and San Francisco), Rizal took the railway to New York, sailed to Liverpool, and settled in London, where he found accommodations close to the British Museum. As he was preparing his scientific edition of Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos, 49 he came to Paris for a week in September 1888 to search for documentation on the Philippines in the Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library). In January 1889, while he was still working on Morga’s book, he worked on a proposal that will take advantage of the opportunities offered by the holding of a universal exposition in Paris starting on 6 May 1889—one year after that of Barcelona—to promote scientific research on the Philippines: a good way to inform the European intellectual elite on the current situation of the country.

The project of “Association internationale des Philippinistes”, Paris

Rizal's plan was to gather the Europe-based scholars working on the Philippines into an academic society, the Association Internationale des Philippinistes, which would be chaired by F. Blumentritt, with Edmond Plauchut, journalist at the respected fortnightly Revue des Deux-Mondes and at the daily Le Temps, 50 as vice-president, and José Rizal as secretary. Dr. Reinhold Rost (Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society), Rizal’s best English supporter in London, and Dr. Antonio Maria Regidor51 would eventually complete the board.

His proposal was to use the society to organize an international conference during the Paris World Exposition to be scheduled in August, with four provisional panels:52 1) pre-colonial Philippines; 2) from the arrival of the Spanish to the integration of the Philippines into the Spanish nationality [translation of “dans la nationalité

Figure 31. Rizal’s project to establish an academic society, January 1889. (CRPFB II 1888-90, p. 433) The document mentions that “E. Plauchut, Ant. Regidor and J. Rizal” already accepted their appointment.

Figure 32. Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, Paris, Garnier Hermanos, 1890

espagnole”, original text in French by Rizal] (1521-1808); 3) from the integration of the Philippines into the Spanish nationality [id., translation of the French original] to the Cavite military insurgency (1808-1872); 4) Linguistics and literature.

Rizal thus arrived in Paris on 19 March 1889, to prepare for the conference and consult documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale to complete his work on Morga’s Sucesos. Unfortunately, he found the Bibliothèque Nationale collections rather disappointing as far as the Philippines were concerned.53 He launched an informal club for incoming Filipinos, named Kidlat (lightning), for the duration of the Exposition, but the name was short-lived, and it was soon replaced by Los Indios Bravos. 54

In spite of the interest among scholars such as Dr. Schmeltz55 of the Leiden Ethnographic Museum, or Dr. Jagor from Berlin,56 the project of an Association Internationale des Philippinistes remained in limbo,57 even though Rizal still considered organizing a conference on the Philippines on September 30, but only for the ethnology section.58 If the French limited the number of conferences during the Exposition, it was for logistic reasons; the postponement of the workshop was mostly due to Rizal’s work on Morga, his regular

contributions to La Solidaridad59 (the new bi-monthly journal of the Filipino elite in Madrid), and his preoccupation with the outlines of a new novel—a sequel to Noli Me Tangere, which later will be known as El Filibusterismo (The Reign of Greed).

During the Paris Exposition, Rizal received a visit from Dr. Adolf B. Meyer, from Dresden, on 4 June 1889. As he needed to go to London to compare his draft edition of Morga’s Sucesos with the original in the British Library, Rizal took the train to Dieppe at the beginning of July;60 there he stayed for a few days before sailing to London. Back in Paris on July 12, he resumed work on his translation, sending the first proofs to Blumentritt, with the accompanying request for him to write the foreword. His friend obliged him. The book was published in Paris and in Spanish by the French publisher Libreria de Garnier Hermanos, i.e. Garnier Frères.61 Rizal sailed back to London on 6 January 1890 for a two-day trip, to buy some specific paper for Meyer.62

Sojourns in Brussels and Madrid

In late January 1890, Rizal left Paris for Brussels,63 where, in addition to his work on his second novel, he wrote ten articles for La Solidaridad. Meanwhile, back in the Philippines, his family was plagued by more troubles. The petition written by the Calamba agrarian elite— asking for either proper contracts with Dominican estate managers,64 or the option to purchase the lands they had been working on—had been rejected by Governor-General Valeriano Weyler.65 Moreover, the Calamba petitioners were sued by the Dominican lay brother managers of the estate. If the Dominicans lost before the Calamba lower court,66 they won their appeal both before the Court of Laguna and the Manila Real Audiencia. Even though the tenants had already collectively secured the support of the Spanish Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo, Madrid), their families received notices of eviction, which were finally implemented on 14 August 1890. They were not even allowed to take their furniture with them and had to leave them on the street.67

Rizal, who was torn between leaving for the Philippines or staying in Spain, chose the latter and went to Madrid in August 1890. He devoted five months and spent time getting in touch with contacts and in writing papers for La Solidaridad regarding the situation in Calamba.68 All of his efforts were largely unsuccessful. Rizal decided instead, to complete the publication of El Filibusterismo before sailing back to the Philippines.

As Rizal had been previously invited by the Boustead family, whom he first met in 1889,69 he went to Biarritz on 27 January 1891, where he spent two months writing and courting the charming Nelly Boustead. After a few days in Paris in early April, he went back to Brussels on 8 April 1891, and finally settled at the end of June in Ghent where he found a publisher, F. Meyer-Van Loo,70 who was willing to be paid on an installment basis (obviously upon the advice of Antonio Luna, who was then working in the Flemish city). He remained in Ghent, next door to his publisher, to complete the editing of El Filbusterismo and to correct proofs. He returned to Paris on 3 October 1891 with several hundred copies of the book and he left for Marseilles after a fortnight, then sailed to Manila. He was never to return.

Figure 33. Villa Eliada, Residence of Edward Boustead in Biarritz (Retrato Collection of the Filipinas Heritage Library)