III RIZAL AFTER RIZAL IN FRANCE

III

RIzAL AFTER RIzAL IN FRANCE

Beyond his Masonic connection, Rizal was also known to the French intellectual elite. In 1888, the Revue d'Anthropologie mentioned the publication of Rizal's presentation on Tagal versification at the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie. 130 Two years later, in 1890, the respectable Revue d'Histoire Diplomatique cited his edition of Morga's Sucesos in its bibliographic section.131

A.

RIZAL’S EXECUTION VIEWED FROM FRANCE

But it was the Philippine insurgency and Rizal’s trial that grabbed the attention of the French newspapers. Plauchut was the first to describe the motivations for the rebellion in the daily Le Temps (14 October 1896), noted the increasing frequency of political unrest in the Philippines since 1812, the popularity of Masonry among the local elite, the behavior of religious orders, and the lack of freedom of Filipinos as a whole. Presenting Rizal as “a creole of unusual intelligence”, Plauchut analyzed his arrest upon his arrival from Spain as both retaliation for Noli Me Tangere and a precaution against the spread of insurgency. Moreover, Plauchut wrote about the revolutionary program as published in the leaflet Kalayaan, adding that in case of a rebellion by the Tagal troops, Spain would be unable to reconquer the country.

On 31 December 1896, L’Univers132—a Catholic newspaper— announced, in a few lines and without giving any explanation, that Rizal had been sentenced to death and that on 29 December 1896, he entered ‘into chapel’ (i.e. to prepare for eternal life) assisted by Jesuit priests. Le Matin, 133 on 26 December 1896, wrote “One expects the death sentence of the famous agitator Rizal by the war council”, thus implicitly supporting the death sentence. On the contrary, the anticlerical newspaper Le Radical134 (1 January 1897) announced Rizal’s execution, adding that Jesuits’ efforts to obtain a confession on the conspiracy remained in vain, and that Rizal requested, in extremis, to marry his Canadian (sic!) mistress.135

Le Radical increased the tragic dimension of the drama by adding that the authorities refused to return the body to Rizal’s family to prevent demonstrations and that the Manila Council of War was to indict eleven more ‘other leaders’ of the insurgency, among which “three priests, a millionaire notary and a banker”, thus showing the antagonism between the local elite and Spain.

On 31 December 1896, La Justice, 136 whose political director was the well-known radical politician Georges Clémenceau,137 published similar information, depicting Rizal as a “most distinguished man”, who had studied in “European capitals, mainly in Paris” (which, of course, was erroneous) and obtained three doctorates—in literature, sciences, and medicine—the inflation of Rizal’s diplomas being a way to indirectly criticize his execution.

A.-S. Grenier’s reflection in his Répertoire des faits politiques, sociaux, économiques et généraux, année 1896 (Index of the political, social, economic and general events…) seemed to be the most objective and factual reporting of Rizal’s death at that time:

Like Chief Marshal Campos in Cuba, Chief Marshal Blanco was in favor of conciliation in the Philippines. He was recalled on 8 December 1896 and was replaced by General Polavieja, a follower of General Weyler. Polavieja marked his arrival in Manila with many executions, especially that of a patriot, Dr. Rizal, which was perpetrated in particularly cruel circumstances.138

[…] His unjustified execution came as a painful surprise to the civilized world.139

B.

THE PHILIPPINE DRAMA GOES ON, 1897-1905

As the Philippine insurgency went on, Plauchut gave a detailed analysis of the troubles in the monthly magazine Cosmopolis in mid1897, with a homage to Rizal:140

In spite of the actions of Governor-General Blanco, the religious corporations denounced him to Madrid as incompetent and too conciliatory toward the insurrectionists. They had wanted merciless deportations and countless capital executions. But, what exasperated them — what they held the most against Blanco—was for his not having executed Rizal, a pure Indio. They regarded him as their enemy, the instigator of the rebellion,

This Rizal, whose portrait has been printed on thousands of copies and distributed widely in all the islands of the Spanish archipelago, has become, since his tragic death, a venerated martyr for the rebellious Indios. He was raised by the Dominicans in Manila.141 Once in Europe, he studied medicine, law, sciences, and foreign languages, then went back to his native land, decorated with university degrees, but rather unfortunately, also a freemason and the author of a novel entitled Noli Me Tangere.

This novel, which exposed the manners of the monks, showed how, under a paternal appearance, these same monks were the most despotic, rapacious, and vicious of priests. The congregations added the book to the Index142 and the author, after having seen his assets confiscated, his brothers expelled, and his old mother banished, was relegated to Mindanao, a large island entirely populated by fanatical Muslims, the mortal enemies of Spain. He lived there more or less excommunicated, when, by chance, he happened to hear that the troops fighting in Cuba needed surgeons and doctors. At once, he requested the permission to go there to look after patients, in his capacity of being a doctor and surgeon. His request was approved, but, when he was already ashore in Barcelona, and was about to take the boat to

Havana, he was arrested, sent back to Manila, where, immediately upon arriving, he was tried and sentenced, and put to death. […] He fell under the bullets without boastfulness, claiming his loyalty to the crown of Spain, saying that he should not have to be sentenced as a revolutionist when he simply asked for the Philippines to be freed from the odious yoke of the monks. The Indios furiously avenged their champion’s death by massacring a certain number of Spanish monks. From now on, it will be in the name of Rizal that the Philippines will raise and fight.

The anarchist journal L’Humanité nouvelle, revue internationale : sciences, lettres et arts,143 devoted two dozen pages to José Rizal in its first issue (mid-1897), publishing excerpts of Noli Me Tangere under the title “La voix des persécutés (The Voice of the Persecuted)”,144 a critique of Spain’s colonial policy, the French translation of his last poem “Ma dernière pensée (My Last Farewell)” and a short biography by J. (or P.) Mario.145 On 4 September 1897, Ramon Sempau, who occasionally worked for Garnier Frères (Brothers), the publisher of Rizal’s edition of Morga, and was—along with the French Henri Lucas—Rizal’s translator into French, badly injured a Spanish lieutenant who had tortured anarchist prisoners detained at the

Mario’s biography was well-documented and particularly impassioned:

A horrible crime has been just been committed. A young man of very great merit, Dr. D. José Mercado Rizal, has been executed by firing squad in the Philippines, following the sentence of a Council of War. This iniquitous act was the final straw in creating the abyss between the Philippines and Spain. […]

Sleep in peace, dearest friend, your memory will never be erased from our hearts, the bed of oblivion is not the one you will be sleeping on… For the sake of your country, and for it only, you left this fleeting existence to enter immortal life; your deeds will live eternally alongside your memory, as just punishment for your enemies, and as a beneficial lesson for the future generations.

Rest in peace [… ]

When the Philippines becomes the master of its own destiny, it will give your ashes the honor they deserve. When it governs its own history, it will want to write your name in golden letters next to the names of those who suffered the same martyrdom for the same sacred cause.

Until then, let the ardent worship that each Filipino devotes to your memory with the depth of his heart, be sufficient to you.

In a less grandiloquent way than Mario, the professor and journalist André Bellessort, who had spent a few days in the Philippines on his way to Japan in November 1897, depicted Rizal as “the noblest, perhaps the only noble figure of the insurrection” in a paper published in January 1899.146

Jean Jaurès’ Preface

Writing in 1900 the foreword to Henri Turot’s book on Aguinaldo,147 Jean Jaurès provided the most moving commentary on Rizal’s life:

The life and the death of Rizal are undoubtedly one of the most moving episodes of the history of mankind. While in Europe, he soaked up all modern science; he came back to the Philippines not to create an uprising, but to try by a supreme effort to open up the minds of the masters to new

Figure 43. “Mme Josephine Rizal, veuve du Dr Rizal et un des chefs des rebelles des Philippines [Mrs. Josephine Rizal, Dr. Rizal’s widow and one of the leaders of the rebellion in the Philippines]” (drawing, La Revue des Revues, 3rd quarter 1898)148

Figure 44. Josephine Bracken in Filipino dress, Dapitan, January 1896. The opposite portrait and its legend are pure imagination, all the more that Josephine was already living in Hong Kong where she remarried a Filipino in December 1898.

necessities. But he was arrested, tried, shot: and before dying, on the very night preceding his torment, while his fiancée cried kneeling behind the door of his cell, he wrote an admirable poem where the love of freedom merges with an unknown pantheistic worship of earth and sky. Turot was right to give us the details of this tragic event: the life and death of Rizal leave a kind of sacred shiver in our souls, and it seems impossible that the people, who inspired such a devotion, are still not free. The reception of Rizal’s ordeal was all the more significant because most of the journalists and politicians who paid him homage (including Plauchut)—with the exception of Jean Jaurès and a few others—were in favor of colonization not only in Africa, but in a highly civilized neighbor of the Philippines: Vietnam.

C.

LITERARY WORKS OF JOSÉ RIZAL THROUGH THE FRENCH MEDIA

Rizal as a novelist

Not only were the French progressive elites impressed by the character of José Rizal, but they had access to his literary works too. A first French edition of Noli Me Tangere was published in 1897 under the title of Aux pays des moines [In the Friars country], translated by Henri Lucas and Ramon Sempau.149 The Supplément litteraire [Literary Supplement] of the social-anarchist weekly Les Temps Nouveaux immediately gave a mitigated review of the book in mid-1897,150 adding, as a conclusive remark:

And though it does not differ from what you can ordinarily find in novels written forty or fifty years ago, it was this novel which led Rizal to his death. Yet, while the harmful influence of the priests is somewhat exposed there, and while their feigned humility and their fake poverty has been slightly criticized, the author took care not to attack religion since his characters are all believers! And the book shows such respect for the good intentions of the majority of the Spanish civil servants! The economic issue is hardly touched upon there; the novel’s hero, Ibarra, who respects all living creatures, is nothing but a good philanthropist who hopes to cure social evils with the benign plasters of charity and alms. Elias is more revolutionary, that is true, but only in the way Jacobins were–Jacobins thought that they would prevent social evils by changing the men in power, and Elias’s most radical proposal is the separation between Filipinos and Spain.

While Les Temps Nouveaux did not find Rizal’s novel bellicose enough, it was not the case of the anonymous reviewer from

[…] Theocracies of the past are depicted with precision by the scholarly Doctor Rizal, who would have been, if the inquisition had let him live, a worthy brother of our great intellectuals. By writing a moving novel, Rizal gave an engaging depiction, in a style that is alternately tender and vibrant, of the very diverse types of people composing Philippine society while a touching and tragic intrigue unfolds. Indios, mestizos, Chinese merchants, priests, monks, Peninsulars and civil servants are all drawn in situ as precise portraits.

Au pays des moines gives the tools to understand the Philippine issue; the book will also interest scholars and amateurs of literature. The ethnologists and naturalists will collect invaluable information through the multiple notes given by the translators on the flora and the fauna of this beautiful country […]

The historian Henri Hauser added in 1904:

Whoever has not read the striking and veracious novel of Rizal Au pays des moines would not know what an oppressive theocracy can do to a people [I mean the Tagal people] that nature did not create dullwitted. And, to give this depicting of clerical tyranny [political, legal, intellectual and economic tyranny] the importance it deserves, nobody should forget that, once he returned to his homeland, this courageous Filipino paid the price for the unpardonable crime of having printed the truth about Spain–he faced an ignominious death. He thus gave supreme honor to his book by being an example of monastic despotism.152

Rizal as a poet

Rizal’s poetic expertise was recognized by the French as well. At the end of 1897, the literary journal Matines qualified Rizal’s last poem, Ultimo Pensamiento (Mi Ultimo Adios), published in translation in L’Humanité nouvelle, 153 as a “remarkable test”, obviously ignoring that its author had been known for his poetry since his youth. In 1900, Henri Turot published once again this “wonderful excerpt” of “the great Filipino poet Rizal” in his paper “La guerre aux Philippines (War in Philippines)”.154

Rizal for French children

At the dawn of the new century, in 1900, four years after his execution, Rizal entered French middle schools. The weekly Le Petit Français illustré, journal des écoliers et des écolières (The Illustrated little

French, a newspaper for schoolboys and schoolgirls), published “Un parisien aux Philippines”, 155 whose main objective was to promote the figure of Rizal as a model for youth:

[…] Let me tell you about this great beaming, noble and high figure. Rizal was erudite, an exceptional scholar, a poet, an artist, a philologist, a writer, and a politician. At the age of thirteen, this Tagal, this colored man, wrote a verse drama praised by the whole Manila high society and triumphed in a Madrid literary tournament with a prose composition entitled “The Council of the Gods”, which is imbued with […] the purest Hellenism.

At the age of twenty, Rizal left for Spain and quickly reached the titles of doctor of medicine and bachelor in philosophy. To his two mother tongues, Tagal and Castilian, he soon added Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and later French, English, German, Italian, and Japanese. He travelled and explored the world, yearning to know everything. He was sad to see that Europe was unaware of his country whose long list of complaints did not cross the oceans. Then, in order to raise awareness of these three centuries worth of suffering, he wrote this admirable book entitled Noli Me Tangere in which, as a poet, he described and bemoaned the enslavement of his homeland, and as a citizen, he protested against the tyranny which subjugated and degraded his race. This sublime cry of revolt resounded in the whole Archipelago, and the Filipinos rose in an impressive and fearsome manner.

As he was well off, Rizal devoted his time to public service—free schools and hospitals; he became a school teacher for children, a physician for the poor, and an honest and devoted friend for all. But treason was just around the corner, luring him into a trap: on October 12th, he was jailed at Fort Santiago; on 30 December 1896, at dawn, this great patriot shed his blood on Dagumbayan [sic!] field.

Rizal was thus the triumphal victim of active and honest patriotism, the unquestionable prestige of which survived his death and keeps making the masses rise to this day. [… Rizal’s last poem follows].

Rizal was thus recognized as an exemplary character by some French authors, several years before the Americans promoted Rizal’s image as a national hero. French authors who recognized Rizal included not only those who found ideological affinity with his writings but also included unpoliticized and ordinary authors writing for middleclass children.

Figure 45. Excerpt from Le Petit Français illustré, journal des écoliers et des écolières